1 Corinthians 14 - Order In Spiritual Gifting

Thank you. Thank the Lord for these

wonderful servants of the Lord serving in the armed forces.

Something I didn't have to do. Fortunately I had a high lottery

number, so I didn't have to go. But I remember the night that

the numbers were picked, my best friend said that was Vietnam.

He said I'm going to join the Navy tomorrow.

And that's what he did. He had number six.

I think I had 234, so Lord knew I probably wouldn't have been

the best of soldiers. I was a hippie at the time, so I

had other reasons. But I'm so grateful for the

freedom we have because of you guys serving as you have.

So before I get into today's message, I'd like Sam and

Miranda Morris to come up front for a SEC, please.

So we talked a lot about Turning Point recently and that'll be a

continual theme in our ministry because we are at a turning

point in our lives. Personally, you go deeper with

Jesus. But Sam and Miranda, good to see

you, buddy. Good to see you guys.

I've taken the the order from the Lord to give their lives

completely to ministry. That's what they're planning on

doing, like Cason Harrell. So this is the future of our

church, so you guys can be encouraged, even though you got

Gray haired guys. And Louis, he's Gray now too.

We'll be here for a while, however long Lord has us.

But we're smart enough to know we won't be here forever, right?

And so we want you to know that the church will be in good

hands. These guys are pastoral interns,

so I wanted Sam just to tell a little bit about how he sensed

the call of God in his life years ago.

And when I met with him to talk to him about this, that was

really encouraged because the Lord had already spoken to him

about this. What you share a little bit?

Yeah. Just press that button.

There. There we go there.

Thanks. You hear me?

OK, yeah, so Clark talked to me maybe a few weeks ago, a little

bit out of the blue, sent me a text message asking him to speak

about church leadership. And I thought, OK, so end up

talking to him about. I'll get a little bit of a back

story. So my wife and I, we got married

eight years ago now, and we moved out the Lancaster.

I was originally from this area, went to College of Saint

Vincent, went to College of Penn State for two years, had a job,

been cracking for six months right before I got married that

I'm still actually working for utility that is based on

Lincaster area. So we were out there for four or

five years, right? Yeah.

So the time we had out there was great, just us, newly married.

She was from Florida. So when we were dating it was

sporadic, One day, one week, maybe a couple weeks at most

together, right? So we got married, we got to

spend a lot of quality time alone, away from our families,

just us together. First year is a little rough

just being by ourselves, but we couldn't have asked for anything

better for us to grow with each other and with the Lord, but to

getting a little bit of Baxter Clark was talking about.

So when we were out there, we were looking for churches.

I grew up in the Calvary Chapel. I think we were here.

My parents probably test this when I was 5 or 6, maybe back

when I was at the Y. So I was familiar with Calvary

Chapel, went through through high school and college.

And then, you know, I went to Penn State.

I was there for two years and I came back and I was maybe here

for just for a few months and then we moved out there.

I was, we're looking for a new church, right.

So there's a couple of Calvary chapels in the area.

We tried a couple of them. We eventually went the one that

was down next in area, Calvary Chapel, Chester Springs.

So the pastor there, I think he actually worked for Cork when he

was younger, Right, Right. Yeah.

Chris Swanson. So it's kind of a weird

connection that Cork actually knew him.

So we were sitting under Chris for a while.

I was attending. We were going to his Wednesday

night. We didn't have kids yet.

We could go on Wednesday night. We're going to the Sunday

mornings with the so they had three services there.

They'd one at 8:30, I think 9:30 and then one at 11.

We were attending the earliest one.

We had no kids yet. We could get up early and go.

It was, it was kind of nice, but at that time, before we had

Grace and we just felt the Lord calling us more and more towards

him. And Miranda was going to dental

school and I was thinking, I need to do something with my

time, right? I'm, I'm kind of sitting there.

So I started taking Bible college courses for probably a

year, right? So I was taking those, but I

didn't end up taking them for a very long time.

I took maybe a year's worth. And then our pastor at our

church actually taught a Tuesday morning class and it was more of

like a biblical class for people who are doing church planning,

church leadership, leading ministries.

So actually still listening that today.

He has it on their app, so I can still kind of follow it.

So I spent a lot of time listening to that instead of

going, you know, paying money to take these courses.

It was the same thing. And he was in person or I could

talk to them and ask him questions, right?

And we were also involved with the young adults group out

there, Stephen Stauffer. He's still actually, he's

leading worship for Chester Springs out there.

He's also, I believe he's in their ministry leadership there

as well. So I had I had a good connection

with the group there. So at that time in my life, I

felt the Lord calling me possibly in the pastoral

ministry. And I said, no, why me, right.

I think that's everyone's question when they get called

into something, you know, what's this calling?

Why are you choosing me? And I kind of put it off for a

while. I said, OK, you know, I was

really interested, you know, I want to know more about God.

I was getting this word and I felt him calling me towards

that. But the same time, I never felt

like, oh, I need to go do a church plan.

I need to get my job and go here and do this or do that.

And I said, you know what, Lord, if you want me to do something

like this, I'll abide. And this was probably when I was

what, 2223, right? I'll abide in your word.

And if you want me in something like this, you need to call me

because I'm not going to go out on the ledge and put my foot in

something and go over, right? Because it has to be the Lord

calling you. Because if he's not calling you,

you're going to fail. It's of your own ability.

And you step into something, you're going to fail, right?

It's any, any ministry, right? I know Brad and Janelle could

probably test you in the children's ministry if they

weren't specifically called for that.

You won't be able to do it. You won't be able to sustain it.

So I told the Lord that ten well, not ten years ago, eight

years ago now about 7 years ago. So Clark reaches out to me a

couple weeks ago and, you know, he sent me a text message.

I'm thinking about it. OK, what's this going to be

about? I'm sitting down with him.

He's talking about it. And the Lord has on my heart.

And Clark says, is any of this ringing a bell to you?

And I'm like, I was like, man, I was like, I told the Lord if he

he wanted me to do something, he would have to be the one that

came and got me for it, right? Because I'm not going to go out

and do it. And that's what happened.

Court came out and he texted me and we had a, a lunch the one

day and he's he's asked me if I ring the bell and I said, yeah,

a little bit. You know, I think God laid

something in my heart, you know, eight years ago.

And it seems like right now it's it's coming up.

So I'm happy to be here. And I think from our end, we're

just, we're just here to serve, right?

I don't, I'm not one to put myself out there.

I don't like being on the front of things.

I'm done with pretty quiet reserved.

But yeah, we're just, we're here to serve and love on everyone.

That exciting, huh? Let's pray.

Father God, we just thank you. And Miranda comes from a long

ministry family. Her daddy's a pastor down in

Florida. So a wonderful family.

And we have our bass player. He's away.

Is he down there in Florida now? Yeah.

Yeah. It won't be too long before he's

going to be getting married to one of your friends, right?

It's exciting. So it's just cool how the Holy

Spirit works and puts all this stuff together, right.

So, Father, we just thank you for this dear couple.

And Lord, you've called them for them.

Lord, you, you come after us. We don't come after you.

You come after us first and teach us to follow you and and

you draw us to you. We pray, O God, your anointing,

your blessing, the power of your Holy Spirit on this couple for

the days ahead. Give them insight and wisdom.

Let Sam sense more and more your presence.

We look forward to the day that he'll be sharing your word with

the congregation as long as along with Cason and we just are

excited about the the new energy that will be coming through

these younger guys. And we just thank you for their

willingness to be yield to you and surrender to you.

And we pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.

God bless you guys. So exciting things, huh?

Exciting things here at Calvary Chapel.

So we're in the first verse of First Corinthians chapter 4 on

1 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

spiritual giftings. So I want to delay some

groundwork on this chapter before I just get in and teach

it. There's a lot of history behind

my own understanding of spiritual gifts and why I'm part

of Calvary Chapel and not another church group.

When I first got saved, I I got saved in the Jesus hippie

movement. And so I, I didn't understand

much about churches or anything like that.

I went to a Presbyterian Church and everyone and nice people,

nice, beautiful building, but I, I never heard the gospel there.

I never knew that I needed a savior.

I, I knew I was a Sinner, but I figured I was too far gone and

I'm just going to go my own way and try to do the best I can.

But I, I didn't really feel or sense a connection with the

Lord, but I always believed that he existed.

I believe that the Bible was real.

I believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and he was

buried and he rose again the third day.

But that was all mental. It wasn't internal.

And so I had to go through some tough times before I realized I

was lost and I needed a savior. And so I got saved by reading

the Bible, the New Testament. My brother gave it to me and

said you might find some answers from this.

And so I read it. And by the time I got through

the Gospels, I realized that like Jesus was like no one else

I ever met. And if I wanted to be close to

someone and have a friend, I wanted him to be Jesus because

no one else was ever a friend of me like that or ever has been

since that time. And so go to Atlantic City to

work. Cindy and I are living, get

married or live down there. And so I started going to First

Baptist Church of Atlantic City and it was amazing church.

The pastor was one of the most anointed, spirit filled godly

men I ever met in my life. Him and his wife.

I'd see this guy walking to me and I was so conditioned to

think about the New Testament, the Gospels, that when I, when I

saw this guy was so intimidating because he, he just had this

countenance of Jesus in his life unlike anybody I've ever met in

my life. I mean, whenever I was with this

guy, the Lord was all around the conversation and whether we were

playing tennis or they were over at our house mentoring.

Cindy and I are in their young years.

And so he's teaching the Bible pretty much like we teach it.

I didn't understand that there was a division in the body of

Christ between cessationists, people that believe that the

gifts of the Holy Spirit, the the sign gifts of miraculous

gifts ended at the at the time of Christ coming into the world

and then leaving and the apostles leaving eventually.

And this normal people like us on the face of the earth,

endeavouring to. Follow the Lord.

And and then I I met, you know, continue continuous with, you

know, what's a continuous with someone like we are in Calvary

Chapel that we don't believe that the miraculous gifts ended.

We believe they're still present and available and God can use

them as he wills. But we're we're also wise enough

to realize that we don't have Apostolic authority, nor do we

have Apostolic anointing in a sense of the miraculous gifts

like the apostles and just this is the way it is.

So there was a Pentecostal church there that got to know me

and was interested in me being on the radio, given my

testimony. And so I went to this place to

give my testimony. And I began to realize there's

these two sides of the of the story here and what we're going

to be teaching eventually here in this chapter.

And so my pastor at the Baptist Church is warning me of some of

the aberrant teachings that can come out of the Pentecostal

movement. And one of the advantages I

think you have coming to this church is that I've been in

every church group that you can name.

I've been with Catholics, I've been with Orthodox, I've been

with Reformed people, I've been with Baptists, I've been with

Pentecostals, I've been with Charismatic.

And God help me, I was a season of my life where I was with the

Word of Faith movement. And I'll tell you a little bit

about that. So one of the things I pray

you'll be open to as we teach on this.

And I was thinking as as I was waiting to teach today and

praying with Lewis and my brother and this guy over here

with a beard, always praying Ted for me and with me.

Thankful to these guys and all you guys that pray for us.

But as I was back there thinking and saying to the Holy Spirit, I

don't want to confuse anybody. I don't want to divide anybody.

I just want you because this is about you, God the Holy Spirit.

I don't want to quench you. I don't want to grieve you And

I, I pray because all of you have come from a lot of

different backgrounds. I'm sure that have some

different views, maybe positions.

But I thought in John chapter 3 verse 8 like the Lord put it on

John 3:8

my heart when I was praying. The wind blows wherever it

pleases. You hear its sound, but you

cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.

So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

Cell phone. Sometimes it just don't

cooperate. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, a

religious leader who was a smart guy and knew a lot about a lot

of things, but he couldn't grasp Jesus telling him that he needed

to be born again to enter into the Kingdom of heaven.

It made no logical sense to him whatsoever, and Jesus spoke this

verse to him regarding how the. The movement of the Spirit

works, and so in my early Christian experience, I said to

my pastor when I read through the book of Corinthians.

Especially chapter 12 and 14. I said, pastor, why can't the

church be like this? And he just looked at me and he

says I don't know Clark. I never saw him get frustrated.

I don't know Clark. That's just the way it.

Is well, he was in a denomination that would not

allow him to talk about some of these things, like we're going

to talk to him about the day. And so I'd been around long

enough and all these different churches to experience all these

different kind of people and, and belief systems and, and

pastors and, and different things that I, I just for years

this wondered, you know, why can't there be a church that has

people from both sides that can worship together and focus on

the essentials and not get uptight about the things that

are non essential? Pastor Chuck was an amazing man

of wisdom. He came out of the Foursquare

movement, which is highly Pentecostal, called taken away

Amy Semple McPherson and she was a female pastor, which we don't

believe is biblical. The Bible teaches it isn't

biblical. And she moved in a lot of what

would be called signs and wonders.

Some of them were conditioned by psychological manipulation and

and God, being faithful and sovereign as he is, would work

in that church in spite of her at times too.

So Chuck saw the good, the bad and the ugly.

So when he started ministering and pastoring, he was a

charismatic pastor. And, and so then this event

happened, the Jesus Revolution, the Jesus movement, and all

these hippies started coming to Calvary Chapel, this little

church that was about 25 people at the time.

And they were coming in with no knowledge of Jesus, no knowledge

of the Bible, no knowledge of anything other than they knew

they needed help. And Chuck simply preached the

gospel to them and began to teach them the Bible.

Chuck used to teach topical sermons.

And he said to his wife, you know, we got to move on in three

years because I'm running out of sermons.

I have nothing else to preach on.

And then he read in Haley's Bible handbook, if you want to

really do something good for the church, take the people through

a book of the Bible. He thought, wow, that's novel.

I never thought of that. So he took him through the book

of first John. It took him 13 months and he saw

the lives of the people changing because of the word of God

simply teaching the Bible. Simply, he sort of laid aside

his past preconceived ideas about.

The work of the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, he still believed

that they all existed to gifts, but he wasn't interested in

manipulating or or or making these things happen in his

church meetings, and he also understood the confusion that

would occur at times. From aberrant movement of what

people would say would be the Holy Spirit.

He started reading Charles Spurgeon, who was a

cessationist, Martyn Lloyd Jones, who was a cessationist.

Pink. These guys are strongly Reformed

kind of thinkers. He began to read commentaries

that were rooted in the truths and the depths of the scriptures

and not taking one little teaching and blowing it out of

proportion. And so whenever we started going

to Calvary Chapel, I felt like I'd found a miracle church

because I am not a cessationist. I understand why people can have

those views, but I I could just never see blotting out certain

verses in Corinthians and saying with these things aren't true

today or they're not real. And, and I'm also more of a

reform thinker. You get this division between

Arminianism and reform kind of theology.

I realize very clearly that I can't bring anybody to Christ.

Christ has to draw them. He says clearly himself, no man

comes to the Father except I draw him.

So took a lot of pressure off of me as a pastor because I can't

save you. I can tell you how to get saved,

how to believe, how to trust in Christ, give the gospel, but I

can't make it happen. It's a work of the Holy Spirit

as Jesus said in John chapter 3, how the Holy Spirit moves.

John 3 · chapter mention

I was able to then be with people that believed in the

gifts of the miraculous, gifts of the Spirit, and they were

humble and they weren't using these things to draw attention

to themselves, which is the biggest problem in regard to

what we would call the charismatic movement.

The spiritual gifts are given to us to edify the body, to build

the church up, not to build our egos up, or to make ourselves

feel like we have something that someone else doesn't have.

And I like Chuck's balance teaching on the fact that when

we get saved, the Holy Spirit comes into our life and we have

gifts as the Holy Spirit comes into our life.

And there are other experiences you can have with the Holy

Spirit. Not this one, but many

throughout your life. And that's called the filling of

the Holy Spirit, which is taught in the in the in the gospel of

Ephesians, that we're commanded to be filled with the Spirit.

We're commanded to walk in the Spirit.

We're commanded to have this deep intimate relationship with

God, the Holy Spirit. I was speaking to someone last

night. We had a little gathering of

some leaders and she just said, I want to tell you guys

something. And Lewis and I were in the

hallway. She says, I am so thankful that

this church talks about the Holy Spirit.

She said a lot of churches you go to now don't even mention the

Holy Spirit and they sort of ignore him.

We would never do that here. We believe that the work of God

is conditioned on the empowerment and anointing of

God, the Holy Spirit, to give us the ability to use our gifts for

the glory of God and the feeding of his sheep, his flock.

So we're going to get into 14 about prophecy in tongues, and I

wanted to read something about this Word of Faith movement,

which is very big in our country.

Unfortunately, in Pittsburgh, some of the largest churches are

part of what is called the Word of Faith Movement.

And I used to go to the conventions.

I knew some of the people, I experienced some of the

phenomena, if you may, and my wife Cindy was never a fan.

But I'm a seeker, so I'm always like God.

If I'm missing anything, reveal it to me.

Let me experience it. Hunger, where the Word of Faith

teaching is decidedly unbiblical.

It is not a denomination and does not have a formal

organization or hierarchy. Instead, it's a movement that is

heavily influenced by a number of high profile pastors and

teachers. And I'm going to name some names

and some of you might be following them or reading them.

I'm not trying to offend you, but if you want to hear more

about my own story and my experiences with some of these

people, I'll tell you why I'm not part of this.

Kenneth Hagin. Benny Hinn.

Kenneth Copeland. Paul and Jan Crouch and Fred

Price. The Word of Faith movement grew

out of the Pentecostal movement the late 20th century.

Its founder was EW Kenyon, who studied the metaphysical New

Thought teachings of Phineas Quimby.

These are cultic, heretic kind of teachings.

Mind Science, where name it and claim it originated, was

combined with Pentecostalism, resulting in a peculiar mix of

Orthodox. Christianity and mysticism.

Kenneth Hagin in turn, studied under Kenyon and made the Word

of Faith movement what it is today.

Although individual teachings range from completely heretical

to completely ridiculous, what follows is the basic psychology

most of Word of Faith teachers align themselves with.

At the heart of the Word of Faith movement is a belief in

the force of faith. It is believed words can be used

to manipulate the faith force and thus actually create what

they believe. Scripture promises health and

wealth. Laws supposedly governing the

faith force are said to operate independently of God's sovereign

will and that God himself is subject to these laws.

You talk about a big heresy. It's frightening.

This is nothing short of idolatry, turning our faith, and

by extension ourselves into God. From here, it's theology just

strays further and further from Scripture.

It claims that God created human beings in his literal physical

image as little gods. Before the fall, humans had the

potential to call things into existence by using the faith

force. After the fall, humans took on

Satan's nature and lost the ability to call things into

existence in order to correct the situation.

Jesus Christ gave up his divinity and became a man.

Give up his divinity. God help us, died spiritually,

took Satan's nature upon himself, went to hell, was born

again, and rose from the dead with God's nature.

After this, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to replicate the

incarnation and believers so they could become little gods as

God originally attended. Following the natural

progression of these teachings as little gods, we again have

the ability to manipulate the faith force and become

prosperous in all areas of life. Illness, sin and failure are the

result of a lack of faith that are remedied by confession

claiming God's promises for oneself into existence.

Simply put, the Word of Faith movement exalts man to God

status, reduces God to man status.

Needless to say, this is a false representation of what

Christianity is all about. Obviously, Word of Faith

teachings does not take into account what is found in

Scripture. Personal revelation, not

Scripture, is highly relied upon in order to come up with such

absurd beliefs, which is just one more proof of its heretical

nature. Countering Word of Faith

teaching is a simple matter of reading the Bible.

God alone is the sovereign creator of the universe and does

not need faith. He is the object of faith, God's

God, His spirit does not have a physical body.

Man was created in the image of God, but this does not make him

a little God or divine. Only God has a divine nature.

Christ is eternal, the only begotten Son and the only

incarnation of God, and Him dwelt the fullness of the

Godhead bodily. By becoming man, Jesus gave up

the glory of heaven, but not His divinity, though He did choose

to withhold His power while walking on the earth is a man.

The Word of Faith movement is deceiving countless people,

causing them to grasp away a life and faith that is not

biblical. At its core is the same lie

Satan has been telling since the garden.

You shall be as God. Sadly, those who buy into the

Word of Faith movement are still listening to Him.

Our hope is in the Lord, not in our words, not even in our own

faith. Our faith comes from God in the

1st place and it is not something we create ourselves.

So be wary of the Word of Faith movement and any church that

aligns itself with the Word of Faith teachings.

Joel Osteen. Rodney Howard Brown.

Joyce Meyer. These people all flock together.

Their conventions are filled with each other, and they're all

multimillionaires at the expense of the people that blindly

attend their churches and follow their teachings.

Serious stuff. Kenneth Copeland I remember as a

young guy waking up in the morning, he would come on WPIT

or whatever, Bless God, glory to God, you're, you're not the

tail, you're the head, you know, and I'm thinking like I'm, I'm,

I'm in a job I hate. I'm in a marriage I'm struggling

with to see survive. I got little kids I don't know

how to raise. I, I needed a quick miracle.

And Kenneth Copeland at the time was my I thought my way to find

the quick answers in overcoming life and having no problems.

It was never about the money. So I ended up getting his study

Bible to Kenneth Copeland study Bible and starting reading some

of these heresies and and I was grounded.

I went to a really good Bible college and my wife would see

him on TV and she says, Clark, how can you listen to that guy?

Don't you see the devil in his eyes?

Cindy hated him. So I, I got to the convention

down in Philadelphia, you know, the Word of Faith convention and

Jerry Savelle and kind of Copeland and, and, and, and I

forget the name of some of these other people, some used car

salesman. He still preached like a used

car salesman, a comic committee kind of guy.

Kenneth is there talking and getting the audience all

exciting, starts speaking in tongues.

He has one of his buddies come up on the stage.

He's speaking in tongues of this guy.

This guy's speaking back in the tongues of him.

And then Kenneth has the audacity to say, God, you hear

what we're saying here? I'm thinking like, where?

Where do people come up with this stuff?

It's like a carnival. And they said everybody's going

to be healed here tonight by faith.

We're going to take an offering first.

And the more the offering is, the better chance you have of

getting healed. That was the bottom line.

And so I'm there as an usher in collecting offerings.

And this wasn't yesterday. Don't be afraid.

This is a long time ago my pilgrimage, OK.

So I said to the guy I'm working with, I said, if we have this

power here tonight, why don't we go to Children's Hospital across

the street where all these kids are dying and they got serious

illnesses and diseases and go lay hands on them and see them

raised, raised up. And the guy looks at me like I

ruined his night. It was like the balloon popped

that night. I went home and I never looked

back. So I'm very, very, as Pastor

Lewis and John and George, very on guard with any kind of false

teaching. We've left.

We've had people leave the church because we mentioned a

name. Someone once, one time told me,

don't you touch my Joel Osteen. I think, what do you mean you're

Joel Osteen? You know, I mean, it's really

weird that they ended up leaving them and it's fine.

So what? What happened though, because of

this heresy, it put a real bad taste in people's mouths about

spiritual gifts. Like, you see this kind of

nonsense going on and the first thing you think I'm going to

have nothing to do with any church?

It even like closely mirrors that kind of false teaching.

Chuck Smith to this day I admire this guy because he never was

thus saith the Lord or he never tried to hype the audience up.

He just simply taught the word because he knew the power to

change a life comes from the the exposition of the Bible verse by

verse through the whole Bible so you hear the whole counsel of

God. When Chuck would have pastors

conferences he never divided between a cessationist and a non

cessationist. He loved where, where and

where's be we used some of his commentaries.

He was a cessationist. Alistair Begg spoke at our

conferences. He's a cessationist.

He had other people that he would learn from and, and and it

was never like, well, you don't believe the gifts are here

today, so I'm not going to have anything to do with you.

He never acted like that. So we we collaborated.

Jim Boyce, the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in

Philadelphia, very large Reformed Presbyterian Church

that Cindy and I attended for a period of time until they got

into infant baptism. And I, you know, I, I, I can't

swallow that. But, but anyway, it's a story

for another time. But anyway, when Jim died, him

and Joe were so close. Joe the pastor of Calvary

Chapel, Philadelphia. They loved each other and the

God used them both mightily and is using Joe mightily, but they

didn't have to draw a line in the sand.

They, they, they were able to, to agree on certain things and

disagree on other things and still have fellowship.

The Boyce's eulogy in his funeral was it was in Calvary,

Philly, because it was the largest place to have all the

people that would come to, to honor Jim's, excuse me, Jim's

life. And so that's sort of the long

and short of what I wanted to to talk to you about before I

actually get into the. The teaching Chuck Smith, the

founder of the Calvary Chapel movement, taught that all the

gifts of the Holy Spirit are available and active for

Christians today. A continuous view, but emphasize

their proper scriptural use for the edification of the church

and the glory of God, not for personal gain or drawing

attention to oneself. Smith believe the sign gifts

like tongues, healing, miracles and prophecy as well as service

gifts are still distributed by the Holy Spirit as He wills.

Not as you and I will, but as the Holy Spirit wills.

The primary purpose of spiritual gifts is to minister God's grace

to others, build up the body of Christ, and glorify God.

He warned against using them for personal notoriety or enrichment

while believing in the gifts. He stressed the importance of

order and church services, particularly regarding the use

of tongues. Based on 1st Corinthians 14, he

taught the public use of tongues, and we'll read this

later. Should be limited to two or

three people and must have an interpreter.

Otherwise, a person should speak only to themselves and to God.

He preferred the gift of prophecy, speaking and

understanding the Word from God in public assembly for the sake

of edification. Smith emphasized that the Word

of God, taught through the Enlightenment of Holy Spirit is

essential for spiritual growth. He believed that relying on

experience alone or seeking signs without faith in the Word

was a mistake. He highlighted the diversity of

the gifts teaching, helps, giving, showing mercy,

leadership, and taught that each is important and given grace by

God. He noted that some gifts like

helps often receive more honor from God even if they are

unnoticed by people. He taught that the power of the

Holy Spirit is referred to the indwelling and empowering of the

Spirit that's promised to all believers to experience.

Chuck advocated for a balanced approach, that approach that

embraced the full range of spiritual gifts for remaining

firmly grounded in biblical principles and focus on the

glory of God and the benefits of the church.

I was at Costa Mesa numerous times.

Never once did I ever see anybody speak in tongues in the

church. I've been to pastors conferences

with many of the leaders that have come with us from this

church to experience the conferences.

Never once have I ever heard anybody speak in this meetings

in tongues. I didn't hear anybody behind me

during worship speaking in tongues.

We don't believe that that's biblical within the confines of

the of the worship of the church.

Do we believe that people, some people have the gifts of praying

in the Spirit and tongues doesn't make them any better or

any less than any other Christian, but it's to be used

in your private prayer clause and alone with the Lord because

the Bible will teach us as we get into this.

That's he who speaks in an unknown tongue, speaks unto God,

not unto men. So sometimes people come here

and they wonder, well, in our worship, why can't we just have

people break into tongues? Well, because it's not biblical,

that's why. And you got some people like,

why is that person making a spectacle themselves?

They're getting my eyes off of Jesus and I'm hearing them.

And it's not what the Lord would want.

So that lays the foundation of I think who we are, where we are

and and how we function. I, I knew Chuck personally, he

was the most quiet, humble, meek, God exalting person that

I've ever met. Outside of that first pastor I

met. Chuck would tell us in a

conference is that the importance of the power of the

Holy Spirit that we need is pastors and men to do what it

is. It's an impossible job without

the Holy Spirit. His life first is Zechariah 46.

It's not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, sayeth the

Lord of hosts. And he wasn't into semantics.

Many times enters into the conversation.

He says, I don't care what you call the experience, baptism,

filling, outpouring, overflowing.

He says those are just definitions.

He says just make sure it's happening in your life, that the

Holy Spirit is filling you and that he's living out of you to

be a blessing to other people. How awesome's that?

So here we are in the city of Greensburg.

Very few churches teach the word of God anymore.

That's why this church is planted.

A lot of these churches are LGBTQ affirming, pro-choice

affirming. That's the way it is.

It's the last days. There'll be a famine for the

word of God in the last days. So when you find a church like

this, thank the Lord for it because they're few and far

between In California right now. Mike McClure is being sued still

for opening the church during COVID.

This is under Calvary Chapel magazine.

Coming up, Jay Sekulow and a couple other legal people that

work with churches for their rights or petitioning and

working to say that this is unlawful lawsuit.

It was a $5,000,000 lawsuit. Now it's down to 1.6 million.

Mike said in his interview that Calvary Chapel knew that it

needed to open during COVID out there because people had no

place to go. The sheep had no place to go.

And the church, instead of having 600, it had 4000 within a

period of a few months because all the other churches were

closed. And a lot of the people that

attended the church heard the gospel for the first time and

got saved and they had massive baptisms there.

And I talked to Mike at one of the pastors conferences a couple

years ago. I said, how in the world have

you been able to get through that?

Not just want to quit and move to a different state.

He says, Clark, it's, it's the Holy Spirit.

And this is what he's calling us to do.

And he says, I, I wish we could get in a car and go somewhere

else, but this is where the Lord told me I got to be.

He said in California. And you guys know what's going

on out there. He said it's hard to say this,

but he says there isn't a lot of alternatives for believers to go

to church anymore because of the false teaching and the heresies.

And Calvary Chapel is one of the few churches and we're not a

denomination, we're a fellowship of like minded believers is one

of the few churches that are holding to the simple teaching

of the Bible verse by verse. And I'm so thankful for the men

in this church and the women in this church that teach

expositionally the whole council of God.

Someone told me that they've been coming here and they've

become dear friends of ours. We had dinner with him a while

back and he's and, and, and the wife said I will never attend

one of those crazy churches again.

My life changed when I started hearing Grace FM and started

coming to Calvary Chapel. All my confusion dissipated and

I began to love the Word of God and see how the Word of God

changes me and changes us. I believe and this is the

challenge to you guys. You have friends and people who

are in dead churches that quench and grieve the Spirit.

You have friends that are in churches that aren't teaching

the Word anymore. Speak into their life and let

them know there's alternatives today and Calvary Chapel

Greensburg is 1. Invite them.

Tell them to listen to Grace FM Tell them to get into the

scriptures, get into the word of God.

If I die tomorrow, this church will continually be stronger and

stronger. Young men like Cason and Sam

growing up, the guys are teaching the church, just stand

up for a minute. The guys are teaching the

Wednesday nights and Bible states stand up.

Any guys they're teaching, stand up for a minute.

Stand up. Pastor Lewis, stand up back

there. Thank you.

Everybody knows you. But you, you know, you got to

you got to have my back all the time.

But OK, now, now the women stay up.

Stand up. Women that teach in the Bible

study in the church, stand up. Women, Karen, stand up.

Don't be shy. Who else are we missing?

Anybody else here? The people that teach our kids,

they're teaching the same way. Stand up, Brad and Janelle.

Isn't that amazing? Let's thank the Lord for these

people. So because of what they do, and

they're on, the guys are on Wednesday night, they're

recorded, they're on the radio live and Grace FM, thanks to

Kevin, he made that happen. Get your friends, get the people

that know you say, hey, listen to me on the radio at 7:00 or

whatever on 91.7. They're going to come to this

church because they know your life and your example, your

testimony, and they're tired of not having the Word of God

available to them. That's the priority of of this

church is to have the word of God available to as many people

as possible. We have a lot of seats here

today that need to be filled, and we believe God's going to

fill them, but He's going to fill them because of your

influence and your invitation to have people come to this church.

We have the Guineon Bible app. It's wonderful.

Fred's provided these with AQR code along with the Calvary

Chapel Connect card, plus these little Bibles that you can give

out the people when you're out and about in the community,

going through a Starbucks or wherever, and ask them how their

days going. Ask them if there's something

you can pray for them about. Get the conversations going,

give them a Bible, tell them about the QR code.

They can connect with this and if they're having troubles in

their lives, they can find the answers in the Bible to the

troubles that they have for the solution.

And then our our connect card also QR code for the website.

It tells us where we meet, the time we meet the address and

it's you are invited. Is anybody willing to do that

here? Stand up if you're willing to do

this. OK, There's a few of you

sitting. Is there any reason why you're

sitting? That's OK.

Well, Fred, Fred tells me, you know, Fred, like he's all

excited about Turning Point. He says, Clark, you know, we got

to get moving for the Lord. The time's running out.

And he's right. We got to get active in the

community. And as a side note, there's a

pamphlet out there for the food bank.

If you guys want to be part of Turning Point, you don't have to

come to the meeting. But Turning Point is just being

a Christian and caring about people and sharing the gospel.

That's what Turning Point's about, right?

And so there's a food bank is a flyer.

It tells you what they need. We're going to collect and put

it in the hallway back here wherever Karen wants it up until

the date that they're going to pick it up.

Someone's going to come in a truck and pick it up, I think on

Monday the 24th. So it tells you exactly what you

can get. No perishable items, but we can

help. A lot of people are hungry right

now. Government workers aren't

getting paychecks right now, right?

There's a lot of things going on in our culture.

People are having trouble with food stamps, all these kind of

things. We got to be salt and light and

be part of the solution, right? And this is a real simple thing

you can do to be part of this movement that's happening right

now in the country. So I gave you some background.

I don't recommend TBN. Be honest with you.

You might find one or two good pastors on there occasionally,

but you got to go. You sift through a lot of

garbage and your mind will get skewed, unfortunately, by false

teaching very easily if you're not careful.

Oh, it's 12:00 already. OK, I'm going to read this one

verse here. This is first Corinthians 13

before we go into the teaching next week and now abide faith,

hope and love these three. But the greatest of these is

love. Pursue love and desire spiritual

gifts, but especially that you may prophecy.

So read chapter 14 this week with an open heart.

I'll do the best I can by God's grace to give it to you straight

and it's going to be exciting and ask the Lord to give you

whatever it is that he wants to give you to use for his glory

and to serve people and to build the church up.

Amen. Well, let's take the Lord's

Supper and they, I'm sorry I took a little bit longer than I

thought I would, but I felt like to go, to go into this teaching

without some background would be ridiculous.

I hope that helped a little bit, You know, did it help?

All right, good. So anybody mad at me here today?

That's a, that's a good thing. That's a good thing.

We'll take the Lord's Supper and at the end you can come up and

pray if you want pray for the movement of the Holy Spirit in

our city in your lives that we're going to pray for Cliff up

here. He's having surgery this week,

back surgery and Lewis's wife Terry's getting surgery, hip

surgery. I'm getting a colonoscopy

tomorrow. So please pray for me to my

colon doesn't get blown out. But anyway, it's fun serving the

Lord with you guys. It really is it's a blessing.

I'm so thankful for all of you. Lord Jesus, we honor you today.

We worship you, we celebrate you, and thank you that you've

given us your word to guide us into all truth.

Holy Spirit, we're thankful that you were here with us and that

you're moving in our hearts and our midst to give us this desire

to know Jesus better and to praise Him and to lift him up to

worship Him, to glorify Him. We thank you for the gift things

that you give us of your Spirit, Lord, because there's no way the

church would exist apart from you, Holy Spirit, and how you

empower each of us as believers. Help us to study, to show

ourselves approved unto God, Rightly dividing the word of

truth. Workmen that need not be

ashamed, Rightly dividing the word of truth.

Help us to do that. Lord, on the night that Jesus is

betrayed, He took the bread in his hands and he broke it and he

gave thanks and he said, take heed, this is my body which is

given for you. Eat this in remembrance of me.

The same manner in that evening He took the cup and he said,

This cup is a new covenant in my blood which is shed for the

forgiveness of sins of many. Drink this in remembrance of me,

for as often as you eat this bread, and you drink this cup,

you shall force the Lord's death till he comes again.

Amen.