Chapter 12, good to see each of you here this morning. Every week we want a quick refresher of just a few basic principles about spiritual gifts so that you can be mindful of those. So, Romans 12, and then also I want us just to very quickly look again at 1 Corinthians 12. So we'll start in Romans 12 first. And just look at the gifts, and the next gift we were going to study is teaching, but we're going to skip over that for just a moment, because I didn't have time to finish my slides on that one, and I wondered why I didn't already have it done, and I decided it was because I didn't want everybody to know what my weaknesses were. So we'll talk about those later. But in Romans 12, beginning of verse 6, it says, "...having in gifts, differing according to the grace, that is given us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to proportion of faith, or ministry, let us wait on our ministering, or he that teacheth on teaching, or he that exhorteth, so today's gift will be exhortation, on exhortation, he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity, he that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness. And then for each of those seven verses, there's one verse after that that corresponds to that, and so verse 9 corresponds with the The gift of prophecy in verse 10 corresponds with the gift of ministry that we talked about last week. Verse 11 for teaching. Verse 12 is going to be our caution for those with the gift of exhortation. And it says, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer. And so that will be our caution. And then if you just turn over to 1 Corinthians 12, And again, this is a lot for the benefit of those who maybe haven't been with the whole series so far. And I was talking to one dad this last week. He said he'd been looking for something to do with his family during devotional nights and he hadn't been here during the spiritual gifts. I said, you ought to find out what all your... spiritual gifts in your family are. So they were going to go to the website and listen to these lessons after they were taught and try to figure out what the spiritual gifts in his family were. So that's a great way. So if you don't get it here, you need to get on the website. In 1 Corinthians chapter 12, it says at the very beginning, I love the first verse, now concerning spiritual gifts, brother, and I would not have you ignorant. Your inflection means a lot there, right? I would not have you ignorant. Or, you know, I would not have you ignorant. It all depends on how you say that, right? But did you notice, he says in verse 4, there are diversities of gifts with the same Spirit, differences of administrations with the same Lord, diversities of operations with the same God that works in all, but the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. So in those few verses, the Apostle Paul just used four different Greek words to describe spiritual gifts. And the reason God uses different Greek words is because they have different meanings, different things we understand. So there's differences of administrations. That's one kind of thing. And then there's the diversities of operations, another Greek word. And then there's the manifestation of the spirit, still another Greek word. So what I want us to do is just by way of quick review, we've been kind of looking at a brief description and how to discover and develop your spiritual gift. And let's review these types of spiritual gifts. The first kind is the motivation gift, and these are listed in Romans 12, verses 3-9, so that's the first passage we just read. There's a list of seven of these gifts, and you have one of these seven. It says in 1 Corinthians 12 that you were given, that God gave severally to every man as He will. In Greek that means that He gave each person one of these gifts, and He referred to the Greek words that correspond with this passage. So when He says there's diversities of gifts, the charismata is the Greek word, then He says each person is given one of these at the moment of salvation. So when you were saved, you got one of these gifts. So every believer has one of these gifts listed in Romans 12, and the purpose for that is so we can focus on it, so we can concentrate on it. And then also, you know, the list, of course, we've gone over. But we want to concentrate on it and know we need others. Then there are the ministry gifts. In 1 Corinthians 12, 5, this is what are called the diversities of administrations. In Ephesians 4, it mentions this, it gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastor-teachers, and these were given for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ. And in 1 Corinthians 12, this is the word diakonion, from which we get deacon, it means a minister. And usually this is a gift given by the church and possibly even through the gift of ordination. And then we have the manifestation gift, which says that what does the Holy Spirit do in the life of someone when they hear you minister or see you minister with your spiritual gift? Well, this is the Greek word energēma, or effect. It can also be the word phonērosis, which means to show. And so when someone hears you use your spiritual gift, or they see you use your spiritual gift in what you're doing, what it results in the ability to, you know, that God gives them something. So for example, they may get a word of knowledge that they know something they didn't know before. They have a word of wisdom that now they see how something applies to their life that they have never seen before. So the relationship between the gifts is when you use your motivation gift in a ministry opportunity God gives you, then God produces the manifestation in the life of that person. And so, what goes wrong in a lot of churches today is when they start studying spiritual gifts, they all want to focus on the manifestation gifts. They say, oh, I like those gifts, those look cool, I want one of those. They don't understand they're not to seek those. Those are what God produces in the life of the person being ministered to. What they're supposed to do is figure out which one of the gifts in Romans 12 is their gift, and they're supposed to figure out what ministry that the church offers them can they get involved in to glorify God. So there's a real wrong focus in spiritual gifts today because people don't understand the relationship between these different spiritual gifts. So let's look specifically this morning at the motivation gift of exhortation. And sometimes the word exhortation, you'll hear some people call this the motivation gift of encouragement, because exhortation and encouragement have a lot in common. This is best illustrated in the life of the Apostle Paul. He is an exhorter through and through. For those of you who've ever known Mr. Gothard, he's an exhorter. His gift would be as an exhorter. Now, I've often said that the best way to figure out what your spiritual gift is out of those list of seven gifts in Romans 12 is to figure out what it is that irritates you about other Christians. And what irritates exhorters is when they see somebody not growing spiritually. They see, here's somebody that's saved, But they're not discipling others. They're not reproducing. They're not winning others to Christ. They're not discipling others. And when they see discipleship not happening, it really bugs them. It just really bugs them. They don't like to see Christians just park their selves in a pew, and that's all that they ever do. They want to see them grow. And it's a wonderful gift. In fact, we'll talk later, when we kind of finish these seven gifts, we'll talk about how God uses the gifts in the church But the exhorter is the balance to the teacher. And I'm the teacher, so I need one of these people around me to kind of balance me out. And I have benefited in my life more from exhorters than I probably have from any other gift. They minister to me in great ways. So there's some guidelines. Again, we read these in Romans 12, verse 12. It says, Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be in constant readiness for prayer. And the most important principle that they need to understand in Exhorters is they need to understand God's design so that they can explain God's principles to others. If they understand God's principles, they understand how God designed life and how life works, then they can encourage people in spiritual growth by explaining how this works. Well, let's go back to our humanist cartoons we've looked at a couple of times before. And so I posited the idea that if each person with a spiritual gift went to a dinner party and somebody dropped dessert on the floor, how would they react? Well, the exhorter might say, well, next time let's serve the dessert with the meal. In other words, they want to correct the problem so it's not repeated in the future. They want to figure out, okay, what can we do? What can we change so that we get better results next time? And that's kind of an exhorter's motivation, is they're looking for what can we change to improve things. Now, if you're sick and in the hospital and an exhorter visits you, they want to know, what is God teaching you through this? What are you learning through this? that you can use to help others in the future. Because they want everything in life, even the bad stuff. One of the cool things about exhorters is they have a knack for looking at the bad stuff and figuring out what the benefit or the blessing is. And the fact is, if you go and complain to an exhorter, they'll probably tell you, well, let's get out a legal pad and let's write down every possible way that God is using this bad thing to bless your life. And most of us don't think that way. We're thinking, blessing? What do you call this, a blessing? And yet, you know, it's a great exercise. And I'd encourage every one of you to do that exercise when something bad is happening to you. Sit down and make a list. How is God using this to bless my life? Now, you may remember we've talked a lot about how Paul sets forth, both in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, the fact that the church is the body of Christ. And just as the body has seven different kinds of sense perceptors, each spiritual gift corresponds to one of those perceptors. The prophet, that was the sense perceptor of heat. When you get close to a fire, there's a special kind of nerve in your body that says, whew, I'm getting too close to the fire, I better back off. God sends prophets to people to say, you're sinning and you're getting very close to judgment, you're getting very close to chastisement, you better back off. And then you have the get to service, that's that little thing that feels the lightest touch because servants, man, all you've got to do is tap them and say, I've got a problem, and they're ready to help you. And then exhorters, there is a special kind of nerve in your body that actually senses that when something's being stretched. And I tell you what, my stretch perceptors are a lot more keen in my older age than they were in my younger age because I can definitely tell when I'm stretching because it hurts. But they can feel when your skin is stretching, they can feel when you're stretching your muscles, you can tell something is being stretched and that's a great Corollary, because a person with the gift of exhortation, what are they trying to do? They're trying to help you stretch and grow spiritually. So if your skin gets tight and something, you ever had your foot swell up or another part of your body swell up because you had an injury or something, and you could actually feel that your skin was tight? So that perceptor is kind of a corollary to this gift of exhortation. See, exhorters are keen to whether or not someone's growing spiritually, and they know how to help those people grow spiritually and give them kind of practical steps. So let's talk about some characteristics of the exhorter. They're trying to help you make progress up the spiritual chart, as it were. And let's talk about some of the characteristics. So you may remember every week we kind of talk about some of the positive uses of gift, and we talk about the negative uses of gift, because we usually, if we don't know what ours is, we probably recognize it from the negative uses. The first thing is, the exhorters committed to spiritual growth. They want spiritual growth. They don't like to see you just warming a pew. Now, it's interesting, Paul said, My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. He was saying, I want to see you grow so bad, I'm having labor pains to watch you grow. Now, that's pretty picturesque language for a man, actually. I don't think I've ever told anybody that. I want to see you grow, I want to see you grow, you know. And then in Colossians 1.28, he says, talking about Christ, he says, whom we preach, warning every man, teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect. And the word perfect here means teleos, it means to be mature, to be complete. So what was his goal? He wanted to see people be mature. That was his goal. A teacher might teach you because he just wants you to know something you don't know yet. But an exhorter, if he's going to minister to you, he wants to help you mature to be like Jesus Christ. And that's crucial. Another thing is, exhorters are very good at seeing root problems. Once an exhorter understands cause and effect, and by the way, this is something I've kind of changed in a lot over the course of my ministry. I remember when I was very young in the ministry, and seminary, I reveled in theology, where you could get all the theological facts and all the Bible verses and all the theological terms, and you knew the difference between exegesis and eisegesis, and you knew the difference between post-mid and pre-trib views and all of that, and you really reveled in that and you were ready so that if anybody came along with the wrong theology, you could assist them by improving their level of knowledge and fixing their misunderstanding. That was kind of the focus. What I've discovered is over the years, I've become much less interested in theological terms, and I've become much less interested in being able to debate people on theology. I now practice what I call practical theology, which is, how does the Bible tell us to live? In other words, forget the ivory tower discussions between theologians about which view is right on something. How does the Bible help people to know how to raise their families, keep their marriage intact, run a business by God's principles? Where is the Bible practical? Because I think for too long, too many churches have focused on just explaining the theology. And so I actually was online the other day on our Our sermon site, there's some statistics on the back of the bulletin, by the way, in case you're interested and didn't see the printout last week. Kind of interesting, but I was on our sermon site, and I saw another one of our BMA preachers that had some sermons out there, and I'd gone to the seminary with this man. I thought, I'm going to go listen to this guy, and I hadn't seen him for a long time. I went out and listened to the sermon. And it was an intensely theological sermon and it really deserved, it should have been a thesis paper. And he was reading it from a manuscript just about word for word. Very intellectual, but the topic, it was kind of interesting, the topic that he preached on was something of the effect of the error of charismatic error among Calvinists, I think was something like that. And I listened for a long time, and I was impressed with his Bible knowledge. But I thought, how much practical good is that doing for somebody in the pew that we're discussing people that maybe aren't even there? And how interesting is that? I wonder if some of those people really just needed to know how they get from month to month honoring God in their finances and following God's principles and not follow the world's way of finances. I wonder how many of those people out there had broken marriages that really would like to hear something from God's Word about what does God say about resolving conflict? How do you forgive somebody when they've hurt you so deeply you feel like a knife has been buried in your back? Yeah, I think my perception about all this has been shaped by exhorters because exhorters help make the Bible practical. They help bring the Bible down to the rubber, down to the road, so to speak, so that we really do that. And that's one of the things I really appreciate about exhorters. Now, by the way, they see these root causes. Paul talked to the Corinthians, he says, I, brethren, could not speak unto you as spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes and Christ." So an exhorter seeks out anything that's keeping them from growing. In other words, Paul is looking at the Corinthians thinking, what is wrong with you people? What is wrong with you that you're not growing? Why are you still fleshly? Why are you still carnal? What are the hindrances to that? And they encourage those who are growing spiritually. They want to encourage that kind of thing. Another thing an exhorter can do is that they can see steps of action. In other words, an exhorter can give some practical steps, and say, you know, I think you ought to work on this first, and then you ought to work on this. Very often in Scripture, we have these things called precepts. They're concepts, they're principles, and you need to be able to put precept upon precept, Psalm 119 mentions. So we need to build upon our understanding of Scripture and build this, and you know, Probably doesn't do you a whole lot of good to spend a long time studying some deep theological content if you haven't, first of all, just spent some time figuring out how to integrate Christ into your life. So we need to build precept on precept. Now then second, Timothy, Paul's talking to Timothy and he's got some practical advice and I love this because He called Timothy a young man. Timothy was in his 40s. Brother Fulton and I are both in our 40s. I'm not there for very much longer, though. But I still like the idea that being in your 40s is youthful. But he says, flee also youthful lust. And then he says, OK, here's something you need to flee. If there's sexual immorality, just run from it. By the way, it's interesting in Scripture that we're to resist all other kinds of sin. Resist the devil and he will flee from you, but when it comes down to sexual immorality, you don't resist it, you just run from it. He says, flee from it. Don't even put yourself in a place where that's going to be a temptation. He says, flee also youthful lust, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart, but foolish and unlearned questions avoid. So he says, OK, Timothy, you need to stay away from sexual immorality. You need to follow and focus on these character qualities And by the way, stay away from theological arguments. They're not profitable. It's just knowing that they do gender strifes. You get into these little arguments and all they really do is promote strife. They're not really helping. So he brings out the fact that here's some action steps you need to take. Paul's always doing that. Paul's always giving somebody It's practical steps of action. By the way, the Apostle Paul, if you read all of his writings, you'll notice that very frequently in a verse he'll have a long list of things. And he puts them in a specific order, expecting you to follow him in that order. Now, another thing the exhorters do is exhorters help you... experience hope again. I'll tell you what, if you are in a situation where you just feel hopeless, you feel like there's no point in going on, there's no reason in going on, you need to be around an exhorter. You need an exhorter to be around because they can help you see the potential of your life. One of the wonderful things an exhorter can do, they can look at somebody that's having a lot of trouble, they're not living for Christ, and a lot of times they can look at a troubled youth and they can talk to them for a few minutes, and then they'll ask them some weird off-the-wall question about, have you ever considered that maybe God wants you to do so-and-so? And you're thinking, wait a minute, this person's ready for juvenile hall and somebody's saying, God may want you to have this ministry. And I'm thinking, you know, where did you come up with that? But that's what an exhorter is so good at doing, because they say they give a person a vision for their life. You know, what is that verse? Where there is no vision, the people what? That's right. If they don't have a vision for their life, they kind of give up. And we just found out this last week about a young lady we know who has really just, I think, kind of given up on life. She doesn't even venture out of her house most weeks in her entire life. It's just on the computer, and this is not... the way this young lady has been in the past. So we're very concerned about her. So Paul used the testimony of one church to motivate another one. So he told the Corinthians, he says, I know the forwardness of your mind for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia. that Achaia was ready a year ago, and your zeal hath provoked very many." He says, listen, I know that you've had some zeal. I've told about your zeal to other people and encouraged them. And Paul in Philippians, you know, he talks about the generosity of the people in Philippi. And he actually told other churches about how generous, how Philippi gave beyond their ability. They gave sacrificially, and Paul was doing that to motivate others to give like the Philippians had given. And so they're always sharing stories as a hope of motivating other racing solutions. He used his own life as an example. He says, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am cheap. Howbeit for this cause I obtain mercy that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering for a pattern of them which should believe hereafter on him to life everlasting. Basically what he's saying is he's telling his testimony. He's saying, listen, if you think that you are too sinful for God to use, let me tell you something. I am the chiefest of sinners. And if God would save me and make me a part of His grace, there isn't any of you that He can't do something with. That's how he motivated it. And Linda, it sounds like you and me talking about our lives. So, you know, it's like if God can use me, He can use anybody. The exhorter turns problems into benefits. Usually, exhorters get a lot of trials in life, and they often actually take time to figure out. They do a debriefing to figure out why did that trial come? What was the benefit in that trial? And the cool thing is, they can then look at you when you're going through a trial, and because they've probably already been through something pretty similar, they can go, huh, let me share with you what I think God may be doing through this, because here's what happened to me, and here's what I learned from it. And suddenly a light goes on in your head and you go, wow, I never thought about that before. This might actually be a blessing after all. You know, Ron Dunn preached a sermon many years ago talking about Jacob wrestling with the angel. And of course you know that before Jacob had his encounter with that angel, he had heard Esau was on his way to kill him. And so he sent half of his flocks off this way and half of his flocks off this way. He even split up his family. He said, if any of you meet Esau, tell him that Jacob, his servant, is coming and give him gifts and kind of butter him up a little bit. And then somebody came and told him, well, yeah, we found Esau. He's coming this way. He's got 400 men with him. So now Jacob is really freaked out. And so he's all alone. He's sent his family, his flock, everything away. I think he was all alone, hoping that all these other gifts going ahead of him would just appease Esau and there wouldn't be any problem. All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, somebody jumps on him. I mean jumps on him hard. Who do you think he thought was jumping on him in the middle of the night? I thought he thought Esau was after him. I don't think he thought Esau had just jumped him. And so they start having this wrestling match. And it's dark outside and they don't have street lights and mercury lights and whatnot, so it's dark. You can't really see who he's wrestling against, but he's sure it's Esau. But they wrestle for a while and suddenly he figures out it's not Esau because the way I think about it, These brothers had wrestled before, and he knew where Esau's weakness were, and he knew how to pin Esau's shoulders to the mat, and suddenly he's not getting this guy, and he thinks, no, wait a minute, this isn't Esau. Esau's not this good. And so he says, you know, I don't know who you are, but I'm not letting go of you until you give me a blessing. And the interesting thing about that, I remember Ron Dunn saying in that message, that blessing and curse are like two rails of a railroad track. Blessing and curse often travel down to your life and arrive at the same time. And very often, it's the very trial that comes that is in a way so heavy upon us, but at that very same time, God's trying to bless us. One preacher once said that when you feel like Satan's trying to drown you, God's trying to teach you how to swim. He wants you to learn from the benefit. So exhorter look at problems and they turn it into benefits because they say if you'll humble yourself, God will exalt you in due time. If you'll humble yourself, he'll give you grace. God gives grace to the humble. Because of this, Paul gloried in his tribulation. Remember, he prayed three times for this thorn that was in his flesh to be taken from him, and finally God says, hey, it's in your weakness that my grace is made sufficient. He said, well, much glory then. Much then will I rather glory in my infirmities than I may. You know, I can have Christ. I can experience Christ. I can have His grace. So the good news is, you know, the bad news is you've got a problem. You've got a curse. You've got a very difficult time in your life. The good news is God's trying to bless you through that bad time, and He's trying to give you some spiritual blessings. 2 Corinthians 1, it says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, Timothy, our brother, unto the church at Corinth with all the saints of Nicaea. Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God, even the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ." Now look what he calls God. The Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. And here's what he says. Who comfort us in all our what? Our tribulation. In other words, God gives comfort, God comes alongside, God gives blessing when? In the midst of our trials. That we may be able, and here's why, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble. He says, listen, the reason I have these trials is so I can experience God's solution and God's comfort, so I can turn around and help somebody else that's got the same mess. Now that's the perspective of an exhorter. He says, the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. So it's a great gift to have. He says, for as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation. He says, I'm suffering, I'm experiencing God's comfort, and I'm going to pass that on to you. It's for your benefit that I'm suffering. Man, not too many people understand that. It's a perspective of an exhorter. Here's another thing about exhorters. They have a desire to be transparent. They don't want to just play the game. They don't want to just give you the factoids and not be walking. In other words, they want their walk to match their talk. They know that spiritual growth doesn't take place where there's guilt. And so they want to make sure that they don't feel guilty about something. They don't want to be hiding anything from you. They don't want to have a guilty conscience. They know that the greatest strength in the life of a Christian in terms of being able to minister to others is that they have a clear conscience. There's a power of a clear conscience. Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 1, he says, that thou by them mightest swore a good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. He says, listen, you're in spiritual warfare and the only way you're going to win the battle is if you have a clear conscience and you have faith. That's what you need. And by the way, when it says holding faith in Greek, you can also translate those same two Greek words as holding faithfulness. It's like that Mark 11, 22, when it says have faith in God, Hudson Taylor, who was the first missionary to the inland parts of China, came across that. He was trying to translate that verse into Chinese, and he looked at it, and it's ekatepiston theou in Greek, and he looks at it, and it could be translated have faith in God, but because theou is what's called a genitive, he said, hold fast to the faithfulness of God. And that's an equally correct translation. In fact, I kind of like it better. I'll tell you why I like it better. Probably none of you here like this, but in my life, sometimes my faith does this. It's more ragged than the stock market. But you know what? The faithfulness of God It's there all the time, isn't it? Lamentations 3, it says of the Lord's mercies that were not consumed because his compassions fell not. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. I just, man, I like that. I'd rather hold fast to the faithfulness of God than rely on my faith. So exhorters open their lives and they're transparent because they want to open the door to people getting God's grace and especially to the gospel. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul is very autobiographical. He says, under the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To them that are as lawless under the law, that I might gain their law. To them that are without the law as without the law, being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ, that I might gain them that are without the law. To the weak I became as weak, that I might gain the weak. And by the way, I want to give you a word of caution about this Scripture passage, because I think a lot of people misuse this Scripture passage in my estimation. They get the idea that what they're supposed to do is we're supposed to go out and we're supposed to make our church more seeker-friendly in the sense of we've got to be more worldly. We've got to have the world's style of music and style of dress and everything else in order to attract the world into the church. That's fishing with a lure. The disciples didn't fish with a lure. They went out at night. We know this from Luke chapter 5. They hung lights over the edge of the boat. The fish were drawn to the light. And when Jesus said, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men, He didn't say, throw something out there that looks like the world and we'll trick them into coming in. He says, you go out in the midst of a darkened world and you hang the light over the edge of the boat and there will be some fish that are drawn to the light. As you know, Peter says, Master, we've toiled all night and caught nothing. Nevertheless, at thy word, we'll let down the nets for another draft. And so what we need to be doing instead of being more like the world, because if you if you make your church more like the world, you just wind up with a worldly church. What we need to do instead is be so different and people look at us, they say, well, there's something different there because we're not relevant to the world if we're not different from it. Because otherwise you get a lot of people come in and then after they're here for a while they think, shoot, this is just like it is on the outside, why am I wasting my time? That's why we're not retaining a lot of people even though we're being more contemporary in many of our churches. Now note, what Paul is saying here isn't saying he became worldly. What he's saying is, hey, if I was talking to somebody that had a college education, hey, I went to the University of Tarsus, I'll talk on their level. If I'm talking to somebody that dropped out of the 8th grade, you know what? I'm going to talk in a simpler vocabulary. I'm going to talk at his level. If I'm talking to a Jew, then I have a big background as a Jew. I was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I was of the tribe of Benjamin, which was the first tribe to have a king. I was circumcised the 8th day. I'm of the stock of Israel. I'll talk to you from that perspective and show you how the law of God points to Christ. And if you're a Gentile, you know what? I'm not going to mess with any of that law stuff or try to impress you with my Jewishness. I want to impress you with the fact that Jesus is the very Logos of God, the Word of God, and I'm going to win you to Christ that way. In other words, adapt not your lifestyle, And don't change the message, but maybe adapt the vocabulary so that you're talking on the same level. You're not over top of people's head because you use theological language and everything. But notice, he's opening himself up and he's sharing from his vast wealth of experiences and he uses whatever experience identifies with the user. Another thing the exhorter does is he gains insight through experience. So he understands that scripture is about cause and effect. We studied here for a little over a year the 49 commands of Christ and basically every problem in life that we experience as Christians can be attributed to a violation of one of those 49 things Christ commanded us. And we're still in the process of finishing getting all those out on the web if you haven't heard those. Because, you know, the most important thing, you know, Christ said discipleship. He says go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them what? Whatsoever things I have commanded you. So if we're going to be disciple, we need to understand what Christ commanded us. His motivation is to promote spiritual growth and to bring diverse groups of Christians together to serve the common gospel. Another thing the exhorter does is they communicate urgency to act on clear steps. They explain truth logically, but then they want you to do something about it. Exhorters are always very good about asking for commitment. They'll be the ones in a church meeting who'll say, you know, bow your heads, close your eyes. Everybody that, you know, if you're ready to make this commitment together, would you raise your hands? You know, they want to know that you're making commitment. 1 Corinthians 15, Paul wrote this wonderful treatise on the fact that the resurrection is for real. It's the real deal. In fact, if we didn't have the resurrection, Paul says, we would of all men be most miserable. But it was a reasoned logic. He reasoned with King Agrippa. He reasoned with the Greeks. He reasoned with others. And they gave clear steps. And in Acts 18, verse 4, it says, "...he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath." He persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. Before King Agrippa, he persuaded Agrippa, and Agrippa finally said, "...almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." Which, by the way, is probably the saddest sentence in the New Testament that didn't go that way. Another thing Paul liked is he liked to be face-to-face. He would not have liked Facebook or email or Twitter, you know, all of which we use a great deal of here. But he wanted to get face-to-face with you because he wanted to see you. You know, there's a lot you can tell about a person when you're looking them in the eyes. In fact, you can tell a lot about a person if they can't look you in the eyes. You ever notice that? You know, but they want to be with you in person. They want to personally motivate you. They want to have that relationship with you. And Paul was always saying, I long to see you. I wish I could be there. I wish I could see you. He liked those personal meetings whenever he could. He told the Thessalonians. But we, brethren, being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart, endeavor the more abundantly to see your face with great desire." He said, man, I wish I could see you in person. He told another place in Thessalonians, he said, we charged everyone, we exhorted and comforted and charged everyone, as a father does his children, that you'd walk worthy of God. And he's talking about, hey, when I was with you last time, don't you remember how I exhorted you to live for God? Don't you remember how I encouraged you to do that? He longed for those personal meetings. Now, let's talk about the misuses very quickly. A lot of times we know our gifts, how they're misused. Exhorters, a lot of times, keep other people waiting on them. Now, by the way, that does not mean, guys, that your wife is automatically an exhorter, okay? That's another whole problem we'll talk about another time, okay? And, uh-oh, I got a dirty look. So an exhorter, they see somebody that needs help and needs spiritual encouragement and they go and they start, they get down to encourage them, spend time with them in practical application. They may forget that a whole bunch of people are out waiting in the van for them. And it may cut into their personal responsibilities, their time. And he assumes that, hey, my family will understand I'm doing ministry. Tell you what, let me give you one little thing every man in here needs to know, and every preacher in here especially needs to know, is that your family is your ministry. Let me say that again. Your family is your ministry. If you haven't raised a godly family, you have forfeited the credentials for future ministry. They're your credentials. I tell you what, who's going to listen to you talk to them about marriage unless you've got a happy marriage? Who's going to listen to you about how to raise kids unless your kids are living for the Lord and walking the Lord and deporting themselves appropriately? Now, by the way, you'll notice that Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, he basically said that he had chosen to remain unmarried. Now, most Bible scholars think that he was married and he was widowed because he'd been a member of the Sanhedrin at some time. But he says, you know, I have to choose to remain unmarried because he wanted to devote himself more fully to serving others and ministering to others. I won't take time to read that, but it's interesting. He says in 1 Corinthians 7, it says, Unmarried woman careth for things of the Lord, she may be both holy, both in body and spirit, but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. One of the benefits of being single is it gives you the ability to focus on serving God in ways that you won't be able to do after you're married. Can husband and wife serve God after the marriage? I certainly hope so. That's what I've been trying to do for the last 30 years. But you have the ability to make decisions about going places and engaging in ministry without having to consider how many other people it is immediately affecting. Now, I can't make a decision about changing a post of ministry without thinking, how does this affect my wife? How does it affect my children? You know, a whole bunch of other things, but you look at it. Another thing is, exhorters can sometimes look to themselves for solutions. In other words, they've had so many experiences that sometimes they just think that their vast wealth of experience will give them all the insight they need to help someone. And sometimes they don't completely stop and listen. They don't stop and pray. You remember in Joshua chapter 7 where Israel went into battle against Ai and they didn't pray first? They had a disaster. I think a lot of times exhorters can rush headlong into trying to help somebody because they've seen the problem before, they know the problem. Sometimes they don't even listen to all the problems. They're ready to go help because they've already seen it and already have a solution. One thing I've discovered is that no two people are alike and no two problems are identical. So you really do need to take time to listen, and I think you should pray before you give anybody any advice. Proverbs 18, 13, great verse for husbands. I call this the key verse in the Old Testament for husbands. It says, he that answers a matter before he hears it is a folly and shame unto him. In other words, if you give people an answer before you've heard them out, you're being stupid. OK, so we need to we need to do that. The exhorted also can be proud of visible results. When they've helped someone, and maybe this was a person headed for Juvenile Hall, and now they're the model, sometimes they want to kind of trot them out as their trophies and say, hey, look what we've accomplished. And if they're not careful, they can fail to give the glory to God, and they may want to take credit for it. So this is another thing. We have to be careful that God alone gets the credit. If God uses you to work in somebody's life, you need to understand it wasn't you, it was the Holy Spirit. Now, let me tell you one of my favorite stories in the Old Testament is when Moses had been on the back side of the desert of Midian keeping sheep for a whole lot of years. One day he looks up and he sees a bush burning. Now that wasn't anything special. Big whoop. You know, big deal. Bush burned. Bush burned all the time. Acacia bushes are full of oil in their leaves. You get lightning. You get something else. They were breaking into fire all the time. Now what was weird about this one is that the bush wasn't being burnt. It was just the fire was in it. And Moses said, now there's something different about this bush, I've got to go see this. So he goes up there, he gets close, God makes him take off his shoes because he says he's on holy ground, which by the way is my son's justification for why he never wore shoes when he lived under my roof. But at any rate, he would go up and I think what God was really saying, and there's a book by Ian Thomas called The Saving Christ, it makes a great, great point. He says, God was telling Moses, there isn't anything special about the bush. What's special is the fire that's in it. And the fact is, all of us are just bushes. There's nothing special about any of us that we should take credit for anything that God is doing. What's special is the fire that's in it. God's blessed our church tremendously in the last three years. We can't take credit for any of it. It's the fire, it's the spirit that's in it. And he alone deserves credit, and we've got to be careful about that. And also, exhorters, sometimes if they just see a change on the outside, they're content with that. The behavior's changed. How many of you have ever changed your behavior but not changed your heart? You know that. The kids that, you know, they clean the kitchen but inside they're out playing in the playground. They're not cleaning the kitchen. They can start projects prematurely, and this is probably one of the biggest problems that exhorters have. They visualize projects, they get people excited about them, and then they never fall through to make it actually happen. They'll come up with whole grandiose ideas about, okay, we're going to have this university, or we're going to do this, we're going to do that, and then it never falls through to completion. because they fail to delegate it to somebody that has that ability. They use projects to motivate people, but they only stay on that until they find a better project, and then the better project suddenly becomes their new pet thing, and they kind of leave it. Another thing is you can treat everybody around you like they're a project. It's kind of like, you've got a problem. You're my new project. Let me give you some steps. You're going to come back, you're going to check on that project. Once that project, that person has reached a certain level of maturity and they don't have the big problems anymore, the exhorter is kind of like, oh yeah, it's nice to see you. He doesn't even remember your name anymore at that point because you're no longer a project for them. And so you've got to be careful that people don't become projects. And the other thing is you have to be careful that you don't share illustrations because exhorters love telling stories about how God did so and such and such in this person's life. You've got to be very careful that you have that person's permission to share that illustration. There are some things my wife doesn't give me permission to share. She doesn't let me tell that whole joke about furniture disease in public anymore, Tom. She doesn't give me permission to do that. Anytime I say something about my chest falling into my drawer, she's embarrassed, so I don't say it in church anymore. But you've got to be careful that if you've got an illustration, you have permission to share it. And here's the other thing, is that exhorters can present truth out of balance. And this is why the balancing gift for an exhorter is a teacher. An exhorter needs a teacher to make sure that the Word of God is being taught in balance. Let me tell you something. You can take any verse in the Bible. And you can give me that verse, and I can preach that verse out of balance, and I can preach heresy. Every verse has a balancing verse to it, and you need to keep it in balance. So what happens is sometimes exhorters get so focused in on one little thing, and they keep talking about it, that they actually have error. They also can set unrealistic goals. They assume that people can accomplish the goals, and they say, here, here's your project, and they dump something on you, and it's like the dump truck backed up and said, here's all these projects for your life. And they don't tell you how hard it's going to be to accomplish them. And here's another thing. If an exhorter meets somebody that's just kind of uncooperative, they'll work with them three or four days and then they'll just want to give up. You know, it's kind of like, well, you're not you're wasting my time. I've got other people I can help and they'll give up on you. You know what? We need to we need to not give up on people. I'm glad God hadn't given up on me. So last slide, here's the instructions to the exhorter. He says, first of all, you need to be rejoicing in hope. In other words, keep your own hope up. You may give up on people, but guess what? God may not be done with them. God may use you to to give somebody an idea about what they need to do in their life, and they may not do it instantly. I learned this the hard way. The very first church I pastored, I went out there, and I think sometimes, and I don't know if Brother Fulton had this experience, I think sometimes the first church you pastor is designed to see whether or not you're going to stay in the ministry, because they will eat you alive many times. And that's what I felt like at that first church. And I was there for two years. I kept praying for God to let me leave. And God would say, nope, not yet, nope, not yet. Finally, God gave me the opportunity to leave. Years later, the church called me back to pastor them again. And I made probably one of the greatest mistakes of my life. I said yes without praying about it, and I went back and pastored this church a second time. Boy, if you thought the first time was rough. But I did get one bit of encouragement from them. I was walking down the hall one day, and I passed by a Sunday school class, and I overheard one of the teachers in the side room saying, do you remember when Brother Roland was here the first time and he taught at such and such? And I thought, Somebody actually listened? I didn't know they listened. That just blew my mind. You know what? You may minister in somebody's life and they don't respond, but I want you to have hope because sometimes it just takes a long time for that truth to process and get in their life. Then he says, you need to also be patient in tribulation. You need to develop messages from your own suffering. When you're in tribulation, think of it not just as, I've got to get out of this problem, but start thinking about, OK, how could I put this problem into a PowerPoint presentation to share with people later? What can I learn from this to give to other people? And then finally, he says, continuing instant prayer. We need to all do this, by the way. Every one of us needs to develop the attitude, and it's especially important for exhorters, that we don't ever think that we have what it takes to help somebody in and of ourselves. It's very tempting sometimes if you've got a lot of experience or a lot of knowledge to say instantly, I know how to help you. And I'll tell you what, one of the best things you can do, and by the way, people respect you if you do this, is when they tell you your problem, you say, could we just stop right now and pray about that? Before you ever give them a piece of advice, before you ever give them a piece of counsel, could we just stop and pray about that? And I'm going to tell you something. You may then have some counselor advice to give you, but God may talk to them directly and he'll give them far better advice than you did. Never answer a problem without stopping to pray about it. And I think that's why he tells us to be continuing in prayer. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we are thankful for the different spiritual gifts that make up the body of Christ, and we desperately need exhorters. We need them to look at us and tell us when we're not growing spiritually and tell us how we can progress, how we can grow to be more than we are in Christ. Father, give our exhorters here at this church wisdom to never treat people like projects, to always stop and pray before they offer a vision or a project for somebody's life. And help us to all be more like the exhorter in that we should never be content with a lack of spiritual growth and help us to all be rejoicing in tribulation and continuing instant in prayer and never giving up hope on others. Father, there's sometimes I just want to I just want to say that somebody is beyond hope, but I'm glad that nobody said that, that you didn't say that about me, that you waited on me. Father, we love you. Glorify yourself today. Fill Brother Fulton with your spirit as he preaches. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.