1 Corinthians 12 - Unity Through Diversity of Spiritual Gifts

So that leads me into spiritual gifts.

You do see a couple of them working here today, right at the

worship and Carrie and and our sister here and Kevin, I mean

the body of Christ coming together and using their passion

and their hearts for the things that are Lord.

And how awesome is that, right? So I wanted to talk this morning

about the church and how God sees it and how he designed it

and the purpose of why he created a church in general and

the initial purpose of of the Lord's heart for the world.

We can see in the book of Matthew chapter 28, where he

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

says to the disciples and those following him before he

ascended, it says, and Jesus came and spoke to them, saying,

all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them

in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Amen. So that's what we do here every

week. We we teach you the things that

God desires you to know so you know how to follow him.

You know how to keep your life on track with him so you can be

blessed by him and enjoy your relationship with God on a daily

basis because of your knowledge and understanding of the word of

God. Living the word of God,

meditating on it, receiving it, listening to it, hearing it and

applying it to your lives daily. That's the job of the the pastor

teacher to feed the sheep. Jesus said if you love me you

feed my sheep. And I know any man that teaches

in the church as well as the women that teach the women our

hearts desire is not to give an impressive message or whatever a

motivational speech, but to give you the truth of God's word.

So it goes into your art, your hearts and begins to change your

thinking and change your lives. And it happens, doesn't it?

Week in and week out, our lives are being changed little by

little. Our hearts become softer.

We learn to love God and we learn to to love each other.

We learn to be patient with each other.

As Cindy and I were talking about something recently, you

know, we have conflict at times in our marriage.

We all do, but we love each other.

We've been together 54 years and we just never gave up on each

other. It's easy to quit and to say I'm

moving on or whatever, but in church relationships, we work,

we endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace

because we, we love one another and none of us are perfect, but

God is perfecting us. But also, the first thing you do

after you become a new believer in Jesus is to get baptized.

So if you haven't been baptized yet, on September 20th, water

temperature will be about 85° and no worries, we're going to

baptize. OK, So let me know, Pastor

Lewis, if you want to get baptized at our house at 10:00

on Saturday, September 20th, that'll be the last baptism for

this year unless we go to the YMCA.

So take advantage of it. Some people are calling us and

saying, you know, I never been baptized.

I really need to get baptized. And that's something God will

bless you for. Doesn't save you, but it will

make you go deeper in the Lord because you're being obedient to

what it is he told you to do. OK and and then also what it

says in that little gospel message, Aaron Matthew, is he

going to all the world? So I know it's hard to have a

conversation sometimes with people about your faith.

And maybe you're nervous or you don't know how to do it.

And you, you learn as you come here how to share your faith.

But this is a real simple thing. You're standing in a

supermarket, you're bored, you're impatient, and you see

someone in front of you and you strike up a conversation and

they they're sharing their life with you or whatever.

They're just talking about whatever they're going through.

You have an opportunity to say, hey, you know, I go to this

church called Calvary Chapel. They have a radio station.

You can listen to it and hear good news.

Everybody needs to hear good news.

And there's AQR code. You can find out more about it

and see messages and all that kind of stuff.

I like to invite you sometime. It's real simple.

So I have a pile of them on my shirt.

So if I'm driving through Starbucks, hey, here's 1 here

and you're going through Chick-fil-A, here's 1 here.

Do me a favour, do the Lord a favour, bless him by taking some

of these and passing them out and inviting people.

And if we do that, one of these days, this place won't have

enough room to fill the people. And that's what God wants.

He wants to fill his church with people that desire to know him

and to follow him. So this is a great little tool.

OK, I don't know about how many times you've been around and

said, boy, I wish I had something to give, something to

tell them about the church, where it's at, what time it is.

I can't remember all that stuff. You know, I'm the pastor.

I don't even know what time at the time.

But anyway, you are invited to Calvary Chapel.

So grab some of those, maybe take 3 this week and pray and

say, Lord, give me 3 like arrangements or providential

meetings of people you want me to give these to.

And I guarantee the Lord will give you an opportunity to give

them out. OK, so let's pray.

Father God, we thank you today for your word.

We thank you for the privilege we have to be together here.

And Lord, we pray for the people that are listening live on Grace

FM even now, people who are tuned into YouTube.

Lord, we pray you would bless all of them and bring fruit from

your teaching today and the lives of your people and your

church. And we pray all these things in

Jesus name, Amen. So we are in First Corinthians

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

chapter 12 continuing where I had left off several weeks ago

before we were away on vacation at the beach.

And the first first chapter 12 verse one, it says Now

concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to

be ignorant. So this is a heads up from the

Lord. He doesn't want us to be

unknowing about spiritual gifting.

This is very important and you may or may not know what your

spiritual gifts are. Every one of you have at least

one. Some of you may have more than

one, and the only way you can really get to know what your

spiritual gifts are is to begin to dip your feet in the water to

find out maybe where you fit in the body of the church, what

type of ministries that are available, things you can get

involved in. Laurie and Paul are away this

weekend on their vacation and no drummer today.

So all we need is a drummer for people who only have a beat.

You remember who sang that flying the family stones you got

you win. I'll give you one of these cards

when you leave here. You get a prize.

But anyway, if you know how to play drums and I mean if you

know how to play drums, let let our worship leader Gina know So

when Paul is in here, you can fill in.

OK, there's other worship opportunities, there's sound

room opportunities, there's opportunities in kids ministry,

and there's opportunities and things that we don't even know

yet or even thought about yet. You might have an idea of a new

ministry you believe the Lord wants you to start.

And there's no bureaucracy here, no hoops to be jumping through,

no groups of people. You got to sit down and get

judged by you to say, hey, I want to do this.

I have a heart to do this. We have a sister here that's

helping us with social media right now and she's very excited

about raise your raise your hand Brenda back there.

And she's a newer believer and she came out of the Catholic

Church and she's finding something special here in her

life because of the word of God. And she, she's getting getting

used to getting used to our worship, though our worship's

different than a Catholic Church because like we go on and on.

So she comes in a little late, but that's OK.

You know, she catches part of it.

But she's her and Kevin and others are working with the

social media now to let people know that's another way of

evangelism. So if you, if you know how to do

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube X all these things I don't know

anything about ask Brenda or tell her you want to get

involved in helping get the word out about Calvary Chapel.

That would be awesome. But spiritual gifts are

something that you have to have faith to ask the Lord to show

you what he created you for and why he made you a son or a

daughter of his. Not to just sit and listen to

messages week in and week out. I mean, that's important to hear

the word, but how can you get mobilized and actively involved

in the preordained calling of God upon your life?

And this church believes in giving people the opportunity to

use their gifting. Years ago, I had to do Sunday

morning and we did Sunday nights and we did Wednesday nights.

And every time there was a teaching, I had to be the one to

do it. And I I don't want to be the one

that has to do it all the time because that's not sustainable.

God created men and women with spiritual gifts to serve in the

ministry to use their teaching abilities.

And Wednesday nights we have 5 different men that are gifted to

teach through the Old Testament. What a blessing.

We have women Bible studies. We have a men Bible study on

Tuesday night. On Tuesday mornings we have

women's studies over here. Sunday morning.

We have all these gatherings and opportunities.

A Bible study at a Home group that started last Friday night

at the Fred and Mary Ellen's home.

It's just so exciting for me to see after all these years of

ministry, the body of Christ actually working and and Deb, I,

I heard amazing things about what the Lord did at that

women's retreat. Cindy said you had like notes

all over the table and he's like, are we going to have to

listen to all these pages and you only read a couple things

she said, but it came from her heart, the flow of the Holy

Spirit through your life to give whatever the Lord wanted to

give, give to those women and they were truly blessed.

I know my wife was for sure, and so take advantage of these

things. This men's retreat coming up in

a couple weeks, that is going to be an awesome, awesome time out

in Ligonier. I don't stay overnight.

So guys, sometimes you don't want to stay overnight.

I drive up Friday evening, listen, go home, sleep at home,

get up Saturday morning, come back and then leave Saturday

afternoon when it's over. So please pray about attending

that because if you go, it'll change your life.

The guy that's teaching this year is a friend of mine from

Colorado, Ed Taylor. He teaches on our station.

I talked to him on the phone periodically.

He has a radio station like ours, Grace FM, wonderful Bible

teacher, came out of cocaine addiction, came out of running

around on his wife, came out of all kinds of stuff.

And the Lord got a hold of his life and saved him.

So you've got a tremendous, tremendous testimony to share

with us. So how Jesus changed his life.

But you might be here today. OK, spiritual gifts.

What's this have to do with me? It has everything to do with

you. And the Lord doesn't want you to

not be aware of the fact that you have something special He's

given you to serve the Lord. But if you don't test the water,

if you don't step out by faith, even though you might not be

sure that's where you're being called to, you'll never know.

But if you step out by faith and you find what it is God's gifted

you for, you'll never turn back again.

You love what it is he's told you to do.

And it's not a burden, it's a joy.

It's no pressure. It comes naturally.

And so there's, there's no expectations of me or Lewis or

anybody else in the church in regard to what you do or what

you don't do. Just the fact that you show up

on a Sunday, that's the gift of helps.

You're helping me be encouraged today by you just being here,

wanting to hear God's word. When you're able to give, that's

another gift of of helps and gift of giving.

That's part of what makes all this work on a week in and week

out, the daily basis here at Calvary Chapel.

So he doesn't want us to be ignorant.

And down in verse four, he says there's diversities of gifts.

I covered this the last time I was reviewing a little bit, but

the same Spirit. So there's all these different

kind of gifts that we're going to talk about here in a moment,

but it's the one Holy Spirit that gives these gifts.

I don't give him. Lewis doesn't.

No man gives them. This is from God, the Holy

Spirit. There's differences of

ministries and I could go on and on about all the various things

that happened here. You're, you're aware of them

through the constant contact and the announcements of all the

things that you can get involved in.

But it's the same Lord. There's diversities of

activities, all kind of different things going on.

You can't be involved in everything, but you can't be

involved in some things that you have a heart and a passion for.

I know Operation Christmas Child is going to come up pretty soon

and Kerry's very passionate about that.

I'm so thankful that she spearheads that because that's

her gift and the passion and Michael, but others have that

same gift and they get on board with her to help her.

And that's a form of missions around the world with Franklin

Graham's organization. And we we had a ton of little

boxes that went out last year because of that.

But even though there's all these different activities, it

says it's the same God who works All in all.

So this is all by God's grace. These things occur verse 7.

But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for

the profit of all. That's where I want to hang out

for a little bit. The gift that you are given

isn't to elevate you or to make you feel important or more

special than maybe someone else. That's that's Father's removed

point of why we got these spiritual gifts.

It's given to each one of us to profit other people.

So whatever your gift is, when you serve in it, it's blessing

other people. I think of John and Kelly and

they go to the to the nursing home ministry several times a

month. That's obviously a gift of

theirs of they wouldn't be doing it, a passion to reach these

older people. I know some people in the church

have joined up with them to go with them when they're able to.

That's something that is endless because those people in the

nursing homes usually have no one seeing them or caring about

them, not even family seeing them.

And when they bring their little dog in with them and they bring

the, the worship and the word in it, it changes their lives.

It brightens them up, doesn't it?

John and Kelly and the women's breakfast that Kelly has once a

month. She does that not to show off

their beautiful home, which is beautiful.

She does it to show off her beautiful Savior Jesus, who she

who she loves and she wants to share that with you women.

So all these opportunities to get engaged and develop

friendships and to and to get to know the Lord deeper and to get

to know one another deeper as well.

It says for the one is given the word of wisdom through the

Spirit to another, the word of knowledge through the same

spirit. It's taken me a lot of years as

a Christian to move away from what is called Cares mania, not

Karismata, which is the real empowering and outpouring of

spiritual gifts, which is biblical and supernatural, but

presumption and deception and false teaching in regard to

spiritual gifts. And the word of wisdom and the

word of knowledge isn't something that has to be

trumpeted. That what I'm going to say right

now, I believe is a word of wisdom from God or a word of

knowledge from God. Pastor Chuck used to say be

supernatural. Naturally, you don't have to act

like some TV evangelist roaming around the stage pushing people

over and slaying people in the Spirit to think that God's alive

or is real when the over the Holy Spirit's moving through his

Spirit who dwells in us through the Word of God in the midst of

a group of people. You don't have to advertise

that. It's a phenomena that any guy

can do. And many times when these

giftings are working in US, we're not even aware of it

unless someone comes up and says, and I'll hear this once in

a while when people leave, did my wife call you or did you read

my mail? Or like, I'm like, what are you

talking about? And it's like, you were talking

to me in there and I'm thinking like, I don't even really know

who you are. What do you mean?

I was talking to you. I heard God speak to me through

what you were saying. Well, praise God.

That's like what we're praying will happen, but we're we're

clueless of that. We're just going through the

Bible simply verse by verse. And God is using it in your life

specifically in a way that I'm, I'm not even aware of, right?

I just want to do what he tells me to do and be faithful to

cover the, the text and the information and, and the rest is

up between you and the Lord, what he's going to do with that

with you. But the word of wisdom is when

someone comes to you and you're talking with them about

something and, and it's complicated and they don't know

what to do and you really don't know what to recommend either,

but you're waiting on the Lord. Maybe you're praying as you're

talking to them, and then all of a sudden the Lord says something

in your conscience, your heart, your mind that you communicate

to them, and all of a sudden their countenance changes and

the smile comes on their face. Why didn't I think of that?

That's amazing. That's how that should be

handled. That's God's wisdom being poured

out through US periodically, the word of knowledge.

That's really amazing because God is giving you a sensitivity

about something in someone's life that you're just made aware

of. You have no evidence of the

problem or the sin or the issue whatever, or the struggle or the

heartache that that person's going through.

But perhaps you just say, you know, the Lord's laid you on my

heart and I wanted to share this with you.

I don't know if this is from Him or not, but I believe such and

such is happening in your life. And all the sudden they look at

you and they think, how in the world did you know that?

What's the Lord, His knowledge? It's imparted to you at times to

say things, and you can't command these things to happen.

You can't make them happen. It's according to how He wants

it to happen, how the Holy Spirit does these things.

He gives these things out severally as He wills through

the same Spirit to another faith.

Faith. How much faith you need to get

by every day? How much faith you need to

believe God for impossible situations?

How much faith do you need when the diagnosis isn't good or the

marriage is beginning to fall apart or the children are going

awayward or making wrong decisions?

How much faith do you need to overcome and to be able to walk

on the waves and not sink because of the waves?

That's a special impartation of God to to believe God in

impossible situations and still be able to be OK.

He tells us without faith it's impossible to please him, for

those who come to God must first believe that he is and that he's

a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

The man in the Gospels said to the Lord when he was challenged

with a very difficult situation, he said, Lord, I believe helped

by unbelief. And we all have times of

unbelief. Even even though we know God's

completely faithful, we need to have him empower us with this

kind of faith that isn't human. It's it's supernatural.

How can you trust God when everything seems to be falling

apart? That's the gift of faith.

Faith is believing God for things in ministry too.

Cindy and I-30 years ago had a heart and a vision to plant a

Calvary Chapel in Greensburg. We had no real experience.

Little did we know what we were getting into at the time.

If we knew way back then what we would have to go through or

experience, I would have said no thanks, Lord.

That's why it's good that the Lord doesn't show you everything

in advance, but He gave us enough faith to believe Him to.

For a church plant, I'm very modest little humble place at

the YWCA. We would sit, sit up and take

down for 12 years, people coming, people going back and

forth, all that kind of stuff. And, and man, I'll tell you, you

know it, it does never seem like it would develop or work out or

whatever. And the day he's made this this

place with you wonderful people with a full power radio station

with a wonderful facility that we never dreamed would be

possible. But more importantly bringing

gifted people and raising them up in the ministry to serve the

Lord here. This not my ministry.

It's his ministry and it's your ministry as you serve him in

this ministry to another gifts of healing.

Now, in the Apostolic days, the apostles had supernatural

capabilities that no one else has ever had since they've left

the earth. Apostolic anointing and giftings

to bring miraculous healings and to raise people from the dead.

And you read in the book of the Acts the things that were

accomplished to the hands of Peter and Paul and others.

Healings are something that we all want to see manifest in our

lives whenever we're diagnosed with a serious illness or

disease or tragedy or accident, whatever.

And we would love just to be able to go into a hospital room

and lay hands on someone and see them instantaneously healed and

raised up where they don't need the medicine anymore.

They don't need the doctors anymore and occasions that still

help. That still happens on occasions,

but the degree of it happening is, let's say less manifest as

it was in the book of the Acts. But nonetheless it still occurs.

And anybody that would say that they have the gift of healing

would really be presumptuous. The people on TV, whether it's

Benny Hinn and these kind of people, I mean, they, they've

made multi millions of dollars taking the word of God out of

context and making people believe that if they gave an

offer, if they did this an offer, if they had enough faith

that they would have these miraculous healings, their sight

would be restored or paralysis would be taken away and they'd

be able to walk again on and on and on.

And so people look at these things on TV and they get their

hopes up and they're desperate and they'll go from one church

to the next church to the next preacher to the next preacher

and trying to find Jesus somewhere that can do a miracle

for them through a human being. But that isn't what was taught

in the Gospels. None of these things I'm talking

about Jesus didn't specifically cover these things in any of the

Gospels. These became Apostolic teachings

of Paul and Peter and James and John began to discuss in the

early inceptions of the church, but they gave us another

methodology for healing and that's in James chapter 5.

James 5 · chapter mention

It's not to get all the people all hyped up through worship and

have have me or Lewis or someone come up.

I I sense God wants to heal someone today of diabetes.

Come on up here. I, the Lord put it on my heart

and I believe it, you know, on and on and on.

Instead of people come up with the diabetes or whatever and,

and, and everything's going on and, and, and you're, you're

healed in Jesus name. And then they're, everybody's

excited and they go home and they go to the doctor the next

week to get the, the blood tests and, and what's up?

Well, are you taking your insulin?

Well, no, I stopped taking my insulin and I'm healed.

Well, according to your blood tests, you, you have sugar

diabetes. And if you don't take your

medicine, you're going to die. The presumption has to be

justified by a medical doctor that can give the clarification

that there's been something that's occurred, it's

miraculous. And you no longer have the

cancer. I don't understand it.

You no longer have the clogged artery.

I don't understand it. But you don't need the medicine.

And then you tell them, well, I was praying the Lord would heal

me and maybe he healed you just through your own prayers and

your own desperation before the Lord.

Maybe your husband laid hands on you and really prayed and or the

wife laid hands on the husband or the children or whatever.

And it has nothing to do with the service at 10:30 on a Sunday

morning. It's the supernatural of God

working through these giftings, through his people, the body of

Christ. And he tells us in James 5, if

any are sick among you, let them call upon the elders of the

church that they would come and be anointed with oil, which is

symbolic of the Holy Spirit, and that they would confess their

faults if they have a sin that they're not turning from.

So they come up and, and we have the elders and, and the persons

confidentially saying, you know, I'm, I'm in a unhealthy

relationship that isn't of God and I'm repenting of it.

And I, I want to, I want the Lord to forget.

You know, they're dealing with this according to James 5 and

the Bible says that the prayer of faith will save the sick and

that sometimes means physical healing, but it definitely

always means spiritual healings and reconciliation to the Lord.

And that's something that feel free to avail yourself to.

We, we don't have healing services here, but we are

willing as elders to do what the Bible says in regard to the fact

that if people are sick, we will do this.

But you have to want that, right?

You have to desire and you have to call upon the elders of the

church to do that. And sometimes that's like the

last stop. Maybe you've been to the doctor.

Maybe you've been with the medicine and you've, you've

tried all these things and, and nothing's working and, and you,

you, you want to give it a shot and see, well, maybe the Lord

will do something with this, this prayer of faith according

to James Far. But there's no guarantee that

you'll be healed physically, but there is a guarantee that you're

going to be forgiven of the sin. And sometimes the sin is what

manifests the illness and the disease.

Not every sickness is caused because of sin.

Through the fall. We're getting older and our

bodies start wearing out. I wish they didn't.

I wish someone had the ability to lay hands on me and make me

feel like I was 20 again. Right?

But that's not reality. The outward man perishes.

The Bible says the inward man's renewed day by day.

But these gifts of healing are still relevant and evident and

miraculous. By the same capital S Holy

Spirit to another. The working of miracles.

How I wish there was more miracles that I could see

occurring in the lives of desperate people, people in our

own church. I see them suffer.

I don't want to see you suffer, brother and your wife.

I wish I could touch you and all the sudden you're climbing

ladders again, you know? But I know their eyes are on

Jesus. Regardless of whether they get

healed now, they know they're going to definitely be healed

when they go into the presence of God one day.

But never stop praying for a miracle.

You can pray for a miracle, and you never know what the Lord

might choose to do. To another prophecy and this

idea of prophecy isn't so much being able to foretell the

future course. There are these times in our

lives that the Lord gives us insight into something and a

life of a brother or sister or husband some I was on vacation

and a pastor was with me and his wife and Cindy and, and as he

was praying, he said, the Lord has given me a vision right now

of your life. I'm thinking, OK, I hope it's a

good one. I like the good visions, not the

bad visions, but it was a good vision.

He said, I see you like a, a fish going into the ocean and he

knows I love the ocean swimming and you're going down way, way

deep. And it was sort of symbolic of,

of what he thought, you know, my, my life of wanting to go

deeper with God, which I do want to go deeper with God.

And it says all of a sudden you ran into the school of fishes

and they were all colorful and they were flying everywhere and

they were jumping up and down and swimming all around.

And that's probably a picture of the privilege I have to serve

you guys, your lives that are being impacted through the word

of God by Jesus Christ. Watch out for people that tell

you that Jesus is coming in October 10th of 2025.

There's so many books that have been written I'm so weary of how

do you want to hear it? I know he's coming back.

He said he's coming back. That's good enough for me.

I don't need to know the date or the time.

I just better make sure I'm ready when he's coming back.

That I'm doing what it is He's called me to do to another.

The discerning of spirits to be able to know because of your

grounding on the Word of God, what you're hearing is biblical

versus false teaching. And there's a ton of false

teaching out there today. And if you're not grounded in

the truth of the Word, you're going to be deceived.

You're going to be shifted, you're going to be moving by

every wind of doctrine. You're going to be unstable in

your walk with the Lord in your relationship with Jesus because

you don't have discernment. But discerning of spirits is to

be able to recognize that there's something that's not

right there. Maybe it's someone you meet and

they're telling you this and that and they're trying to give

you this great picture of how wonderful they are and, and

everything is perfect in their lives and they want to serve in

the church and they want to do this and they want to you know

you. That's why we have like a six

month waiting period for people. They want to get involved in

ministry. Make sure this is a church you

want to be in, but more importantly, make sure that we

know each other. The Bible says, I know those who

labor among you so you don't make a wrong choice, a wrong

decision. And in relationships, when

you're dating, you need to have discernment to know like, is

this person really brought into my life from the Lord or is this

like a real problem here? And most of the time when we

first meet someone we're infatuated with or we're

attracted to our bodies, what's driving us.

It isn't like listening to the Lord to give us a heads up like

this. This isn't a good thing.

So we need to ask the Lord for that discernment.

And I believe we all can be given discernment from the Lord

through being grounded in the Word.

But there are some people that really have the ability to 0 in

on evil, evil kind of spirits to another, different kind of

tongues to another, the interpretation of tongues.

This is a real controversial subject, more so today than it

was back in that day. The Bible wasn't codified yet in

the sense that it is now. So when they had meetings, it

would be someone who would speak by the Spirit of God and they

would have to discern whether whatever, what is what is it

that they were saying was tied into the teaching of the

apostles. And Corinth had all these

spiritual gifts going on and it was a mess spiritually.

People were angry with each other, they were bitter, they

were unforgiving, they were immoral.

They were like into drinking too much of the agape feast.

They were into pride and following certain people and

lifting others above other. And it was just a disaster.

And the whole book of First Corinthians is correction as to

the church getting back to what it needs to be and how it needs

to function. In First Corinthians 13, which

we'll move into the next several weeks, is all about what's most

important. And it isn't all these gifts I'm

talking about. The most important thing is a

manifestation of agape love toward one another, loving each

other unconditionally, caring for one another, loving the Lord

God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your

mind, and loving your neighbors, yourself and those two

commandments. The whole law is hinged

together. And I was talking to someone

recently had a meeting with them, younger brother who's

digging into the Lord and really fun to be around.

He said to me, we were talking about all this profound theology

stuff and doctrine stuff and all that.

And it's, it's fun to to have good conversations about that

kind of stuff with people who are interested in it.

But I said at the end of the day, though, like the most

important thing is love, right? All we need is love.

McCartney was on to something. But without Jesus, that Love's

going to not hold up. You know, you can love

supernaturally with the supernatural of love that God

gives us, not human love because it can wear out quickly.

But I said, why is it that, like, Christians so often have

this ability to really know truth or know the Word and all

that kind of stuff, and they can't love each other?

Doesn't make sense, does it? Because Jesus said let's lay all

that stuff aside for a moment. He said without love in First

Corinthians 13, we're nothing clanging, gong, noisy cymbal,

just a bunch of noise. And the thing that he said most

profoundly was to all of us, by this people will know you're my

disciples, not by these cards, but by the love you have for one

another. The early missionaries when they

would go into various countries in the Mideast, the pagans would

say to people when they asked them about these followers of

Jesus, they just say, oh, how these people love one another

because they don't see that in the world.

And unfortunately, so often in churches, church blitzes people

leaving because someone hurt them or offended them.

Or it's like love covers a multitude of sins, doesn't it?

I want to learn to grow in the love of God.

That's my heart's desire. I want to be able to love truly

love enemies, not this because it says I'm supposed to, but

because God's worked on my heart where now I can right and not

remembering wrongs and not easily offended all that Chapter

13, we get into it man. We could spend the rest of our

history and as Christians in that chapter, but the tongues

gift is temporal. It's fleeting.

It's the last gift mentioned in order as far as significance and

importance, but nonetheless, it is a gift.

Some people have it, some people don't.

Paul says later on that all people have all these gifts.

Nope, they don't. So if you have a prayer language

where you commune with God and it's supernatural and you've had

it your whole Christian life, allow the Lord to use that in

your life to build you up. We're not cessationist.

Calvary Chapel is not a church group that would teach it all

this. All the gifts are done.

They aren't. There's no nothing in the

Scripture that would indicate that they are done.

But they're used differently. And some churches you go in and

I've been in them where everybody's speaking in tongues

at the same time. It's like insanity.

What, what and what are these people doing here?

Is there any like even if there was an interpreter, how would

they interpret all this noise? And Paul gives real direction

later on, like when the gift was used, there had to be a public

manifestation, a gift. There had to be a public

interpretation that would tie into what it was that the Lord

was doing. But in all the years of my life

at the pastors conferences and they've been miraculous in the

word of God being taught so deeply and people worshipping

and we, we never had anybody break into tongues wasn't

important. But maybe people were praying in

the Spirit prior to those conferences so that the Lord

would really pour out His Spirit upon us as servants to be able

to come back into the ministry and the places we're from and

the towns and the cities and carry on in the work that God's

called us to do. So that's just the beginning of

this subject. And some of you are sleeping,

which is good. Something wrong with that.

So the worship team can come forward now and we'll call it a

day. All right, Enjoy the Steeler

game today, guys. See how Aaron Rodgers does

against his former team. That'll be interesting.

And then watch the US Open at 4:00 with the guy from Spain

playing. Playing Sinner.

What a name? Can you imagine a professional

tennis player? What's your name?

Last name, Sinner. I don't want a name like that,

but he's a really good, really good tennis player.

So let me say a prayer. We're going to take the Lord's

Supper. Oh Lord, we're so grateful for

your Holy Spirit, how you teach us, how you deepen us, how you

work in our hearts, refine us, cleanse us over and over and

over. You forgive us continually.

Lord, there's no one like you in the universe and the, and the,

and the whole creation that has this kind of capacity to love

and forgive over and over and over again, forgiving for the

same offense. Jesus said 70 * 7.

We're lucky if we can forgive someone once, let alone twice.

God work on us and make us like you, Jesus.

That's the purpose of your church, to conform us to your

image and likeness to make us more like you and we know you're

doing that and we thank you for it.

We yield to you today, Lord, we surrender.

If there's anyone here that doesn't know you, Lord, we pray

today that they would say, Lord Jesus, I want to know you.

I want you to forgive me of my sins and come into my life and

save me and change me. Only you can do that.

Lord. If there's prodigals here and

people who are drifting away from you, Lord, draw them back

because you're you got your arms held out and ready to receive

them again, to have that deep close relationship with you.

And Lord use us this week wherever we go, to be salt and

light, and be a blessing to others.

On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread in

his hands, and he broke, and he gave thanks.

And he said, Take, eat, this is my body which was given for you.

Eat this in remembrance of me. In the same manner, in that

evening he took the cup and he said, This cup is a new covenant

in my blood, which was shed for the forgiveness of sins of many.

Drink this in remembrance of me. For as often as we eat this

bread and we drink this cup, we show forth the Lord's death till

he comes again, Amen. And he's coming again, right?

Get ready. Love you guys, God bless.