The Person and Work, of the Holy Spirit lesson 27

Okay. Morning. Morning. So we are on Lesson 27, and we only got one question done last week, which was, if you have the book or the manuscript, the pages that we're talking about in the PDF is page 57 through 59, and in the book, page 132 to 136, Last week we talked about what are the roles of an evangelist, a pastor, and a teacher. You know, basically, Rite Out says, an evangelist, when used of God in the salvation of a soul, has, by that very act, prepared another channel of the gospel testimony. The pastor, in caring for a sheep of Christ, is preparing that one in his turn to exercise care The teacher who unfolds God's word is putting the key into other hands who will pass on the precious things to still others. Right on ends up saying what a beautiful scene of activity all actuated and controlled by the blessed spirit of God and love the very bond of perfectness knitting saint to saint.

It's a really cool paragraph. So having said that, question two is, what does 1 Peter 4, 10 and 11 tell us about our gifts? So somebody read 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 10 and 11. Preferably somebody who can read English. I got it here. As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Whoever speaks is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God. Whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Okay, the question is, what do those two verses tell us about Argus?

Really cool information there. The first thing is that we're stewards. We're good stewards. It means we have responsibility. And we're stewards of what? What's the verse say? Verse 10. Grace of God. Yeah. So we're stewards of grace. How cool is that? Grace being that operating system where it's God acting on his own all the time. And we're the receivers. But this verse says that as receivers of God's grace, we're steward as receivers. What's that mean? How would you define that?

I have a stewardship. You have a stewardship. Well, first of all, everybody has at least one gift. And the gift is given to you by the grace of God. And you have a stewardship about that. So what is that stewardship? We're responsible for its faithful use for one thing and then possession of a gift is our authority for its use. Okay.

So, first of all, if you'd like to speak the oracles of God, you should know that you have the gift and what it is and how it works. But, you know, how many classes have you been into where Somebody raises their hand and says, I don't have a gift. I don't know what it is. Well, that goes directly against what God's Word says.

You have one. Everybody has one. Tell me a gift that every single human being, everybody in the body of Christ has. We all have one for sure. Know what it is? We are ambassadors of the reconciliation. Everybody has that gift. Mike, are you advocating that we take a test to see what our gift is? Well, I'm working on the test. Okay. Okay. Just one to see.

The point is that, you know, we look at grace as, you know, like free money, winning the lottery. But there's a stewardship that comes with the grace. There's a stewardship that comes with the gift. And we should know what it is. And we should guard it. It should be precious to us. So, Mike, I guess I'm kind of, you know, reading this. What is this kind of our definition with grace? And, you know, what is our response to grace?

Thank you. Receive it. Receive it. Sure. So is that the stewardship? Yeah, that's what it is. Receiving. Yeah. I mean it says receiving the manifold, so... Sure. That is our stewardship, is just receiving it. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. That shouldn't be that hard. You wouldn't think so, but... I don't know. I don't know what it is. It seems like a huge problem to me. Yeah.

That people don't know what God would have them do or what he's gifted them about. And they sort of shine it on. As an example, I was listening to Macaulay this week on something else, and he made this interesting comment. He said, with the Apostle Paul and the Lord Jesus, he said, you either loved them or you hated them. There was nobody that ever met the Lord Jesus or the Apostle Paul that went, There's none of that.

And I think a lot of us have that attitude about a gift that God may have given us. Nah. I think it's a lot more important than that because we have a stewardship to minister. It's what we do. Every member of your physical body ministers to the other members so that it functions properly. When it doesn't minister, we go see the doctor. And he says, I got the knife, we're going to take care of that. Or I got the juice, or whatever. But do you see that there's a responsibility that we have under grace? And responsibility is just the ability to respond. That's really all it is. I accept God's grace in whatever form it comes at me. Yeah?

The first ten talks about each one of us It's interesting that this is a gift that not only is received, but is employed. And it's employed in serving one another as stewards of manifold grace. So it sounds like we might have two. At least. Here we have another that is like we all have this gift of grace that we employ through serving one another in the manifold grace of God. that word employee is the same for servant or deacon, diakonos.

Yeah, I think that's really good, J.D. We're to serve one another and in order to serve in the body of Christ you have to be gifted by the Holy Spirit, otherwise you're going to do it out of the flesh and it won't avail anything. So we're gifted to do that, you know. And a lot of times it's just little tiny things that you do or are involved in and nobody notices.

Essentially in this definition it says, for the word employed, to serve, wait upon, with emphasis on the work to be done and not on the relationship between the Lord and the servant. Yeah. To wait on the Lord for the work to be done. That's right. And that's what stewardship is all about. I wait. God told me years ago, just because the need's there doesn't mean you go. You wait for the Lord to direct you to go. You know you're supposed to be there, be involved. He does a lot of waiting together.

I think so. You know what I mean? I think so. And we pray for physical ailments. We're all waiting. We're hoping that God will fix them, or whatever we ask Him to do, or maybe not, and we're asking for the ability from him to endure. Right? Physical pain, emotional pain, whatever it is. We always have needs. I don't know if any of you in the course of your life spent 15 minutes without a need. I always have had at least a couple working. I think it's, what this verse tells us about our gift is that one to receive it, we know it's by the grace of God, and we know that with the gift comes the ability which God gives to implement it.

Interesting, huh? That ability is a really cool thing. And what's the purpose of all of this, the last phrase of the verse? The purpose is that God may be glorified. That's always the purpose. So, Rideout said that the possession of a gift is the authority to use it. Isn't that cool? So, just to use the example, if you have the gift of teaching, with that gift comes the authority to use it. With the gift of exhortation comes the authority to use it. Any gift that you have gives the authority to use it. It's really cool. Yeah, that's right. The strength to do it. You have the ability and the strength to do it.

And so when we look around in the body of Christ, and we think about, like we talked about last week, well, Don and I had a great conversation about how many manifest gifts exist in this little body of believers. When you look around, just look at the people here that do different things. You know? And I know really big churches that don't have half of the people involved like this place. Look at Phil. Phil's gifted. Not only in his skill, but his heart. He's gifted about that. And he came over to my house this week to bring one of those tilt tables over.

He wanted them to be upside down right away. I was dizzy. I said, I can't do this. But I just happened to mention that I had a broken spring in a window. Well, that's all I needed to say. We were upstairs, tools, here we go. And I'll be darned if pieces are broken, but he got it working. So I thought he was going to go around my whole house with a can of silicone spray. He wouldn't leave until it worked. And then he told me to get on the web and find the pieces. But he's an obvious one, but we all have something, at least one something, that we're involved in. And usually it has to do with the building up of the body.

We talk about really practical needs and when we come alongside one another, but I think one of the things that's neat about Holly Hills, and hopefully the body at large, but specifically for us, is the small encouragements and just the small listening, the moments of listening, right? So, you come to church and you get, you know, oftentimes, if you've ever been to a more energetic type of environment, oh, that pumped us up for the week, you know? We really got into some worship music. Maybe we did a prayer meeting.

I don't know what it is, but I just find the encouragement and the listening and the genuine interest, that's the uplifting nature of the body. I agree. It's kind of the undertone, right? But you don't think of it as being special gifts and things of that nature, but it is. It's part of this verse. I agree. I totally agree. I think fellowshipping is a gift that we all have. You know, I mean, I don't know about you, I really look forward to coming here Sunday, every Sunday, because of the fellowship.

Where else do you know, other than in your own home, you can be around people who love you? You know, you can't find it. Go to Courtney's house, you get it there. Go to anybody's place where the people love you. Cool. Come here. Look at what happens. And you're just back and forth, back and forth. And I always leave here, and Don and I talk on the way home. Well, so-and-so told me, da-da-da-da-da, and we ought to do that. I had no idea they were advising me about something, but it was a great idea. You felt that way in Canada? We sure did. We did feel that way in Canada. We loved being there. So, I think that's how the body is to function. And guess who's responsible for all that?

It's the Spirit of God. Who are the gifts for? I think you said mostly for the body. I think, aren't they for the body? Yeah, they are. It isn't for the general, other than an evangelist maybe that is reaching out or the evangelistic part of it. It's for the edification of the body. That's what the gifts are for. It's not the betterment of society. It's not the betterment of the neighborhood or anything like that. It is for the edification or building up of the body. I agree. I absolutely agree with that. The only one that's outside the body is the evangelist. He's the recruiter. But he's edifying the body of Christ in that way. I agree. There's uniquely four.

I've been working on some verses about not being unequally yoked. And some of the people I've read talked about this incredible difference between a believer and a non-believer. That they have absolutely nothing in common from a spiritual standpoint and a lifestyle standpoint and everything like that. Well, if that's the case, where do you hang around with people like you?

Although we're supposed to be a light and obviously we are we're all Evangelists in some respects and we are as you said the ambassadors of reconciliation We are we are to be in the world to bring people. Yep. You know to be used by the Holy Spirit You know draw people, you know, I think that's right. And I think the fellowship Helps us along that road Enables us we learn things You know that that matter that just the way we function with each other people notice that you know that the Epistles of Christ the great thing about an epistle is a letter and that's a nonverbal communicator people get to read What's in your heart?

How cool is that? You know just the way you live your life makes a difference to I non-believers who are just sort of paying attention. Or maybe not paying attention. Okay. Next question, three. If we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, are we adequately equipped for ministry? And I said explain. We are, which is a third class conditional clause, which means we are equipped.

What is it? Rideout says you may not be gifted as a public speaker, comparatively few are, nor would a multiplicity of public speakers be for the profit of the church. But that's only one channel of service. Who can enumerate the countless varieties of Christian activity?

We serve unconsciously when we are holding the head. Do you understand what he means by that? We serve unconsciously as we are beholding or we are holding the head. As we behold the glory of the Lord Jesus, reflectively, face to face, Rite Out says we are unconscious, we serve unconsciously by doing that. How would that, what's that look like in shoe leather?

2 Corinthians 3.18 says that the beholding as in a mirror of the glory of the Lord were changed from glory to glory into his very image.

Is that very image something that nobody can see? No, people see that. They see that. And that's just in that thing alone you serve. So, if we wind that down, we find out that if we behold the glory of the Lord, The resulting service is there. Does that make sense? It's just there because of the transformation, the conformity that's going on. And the problem we Christians have is that it's not a very fast process. You know, your favorite saying is drive through Christianity. We want it now. But, you know, God has all eternity.

And he's so thorough, sometimes I wish he wasn't so thorough. Let's just move on. So, Rydell says, when we remember who endowed us, the Spirit of God, who dwells in us and in the Church, the Blessed Spirit of God, we see the reason for this. He, the sovereign administrator, is present in full charge, endowing, sending forth, sustaining his instruments for service. And then he says, what more do we need? Great question.

So a lot of times we don't think he's working because we don't see fireworks going off or we don't see, you know, somebody really screaming about a drastic change in their life because it's slow. But over time, I mean, how many people have come up to you sometime and said, you know, you used to be, and now you're, you used to be kind of jerky, and now you're a lover. Anybody ever say that? But then maybe they don't use those words. I say it to Courtney all the time.

No, I mean, I observe, and I'm sure you observe, The growth in people. Don't you see it? I see it all the time. It's a cool thing. What it does is it verifies, authenticates what a guy like Rideout or the Apostle Peter is writing. You see it happening.

I was with a guy yesterday who said, I'm just not like I used to be. And he wasn't bragging. He just knew he wasn't that way. Not that he didn't admit that he used to be that way. He did, but he isn't like that anymore. And it isn't because he's got a set of rules that he's memorized.

There's just an intrinsic change that has gone on with this person over the years. So then Rideout does a really interesting thing. He gets all wrapped up into ordination. Having come out of Catholicism, ordination was a big deal. So let's address that a little bit. He says, what is meant by ordination? Is it proper for us today? What is ordination? You know what I mean, or what he means when he uses the word ordination? Let me give you an example.

If you wanted to, as a young man in Catholicism, if you wanted to really be a servant of the Lord, And at some point in your teenage or young twenties, you would go to seminary. And it isn't like seminaries that we're familiar with. It was, you studied to become a priest. So that was usually, if you're going to be a parish priest, that was probably six, seven years of study and education and teaching and that kind of thing. If you're going to I went to Jesuit schools. To become a Jesuit priest was 12 years of work before they gave you the holy water on the head, right?

So you become, at the end of the day, who ordains you in that respect? Who does the ordination? Man does it. Man came up with the system. Man came up with the educational process and the requirements and that's what seminaries do. They are man's replacement of the Spirit of God's working in the body of Christ. That's what they are. And ordination is when you have a ceremony and you officially put some imprimatur on somebody and say you're now a leader. or a teacher or whatever you are, you're ordained. You can't find anything in God's Word about ordaining anybody for giftedness. Am I right about that or not? We think it's a big deal because, I mean, I drove by Denver Seminary Friday night. I thought, well, I'm not in there.

Ordination is one of those things I read one time that when we were, I remember back when we were studying Galatians and then we started into 1 Corinthians, how many problems the Corinthians had and the religious world's answer to that was clergy. They would appoint and ordain people to fix the problems. What was Paul's answer to the problem in the Corinth? And specifically, The young man that was living with his step-mom. What was Paul's answer to that problem?

What did he do? Turn him over to Satan. What's that? Turn him over to Satan. Turn the person over to Satan. And he was the only one who had authority to do that, we found out. But what was the church supposed to do? Pray for him. Pray for him? Not have any fellowship with him? They were to ostracize him.

Right? Now, what was the bigger sin that Paul said? The fact that what this guy did? Or what was the other thing he said was actually a bigger sin? They tolerated him. So why is there feedback? You guys hear it? I don't know what that is. So the bigger sin, if there is such a thing, was the toleration of that evil going on. His answer was the Spirit of God, you rely on Him to deal with that issue. You should have done it. You should have taken care of it. And then, The remedy worked and the guy's life turned around and now he wants back in the assembly and they won't let him back in. So clergy ordination has to do with this putting people on pedestals.

I can't tell you how many people in the last three years have asked me if I called seminaries to find a pastor. I'm not going to do that. Because I don't think they're qualified. They don't know any of us. First of all, probably the seminary they went to or are going to wouldn't qualify them to hang around here anyway.

You know, you guys would all be smarter than him. And so, you know, we're reduced to trusting the Lord in this circumstance. So Mike, the difference between ordination and recognition. There's a difference between that, because we recognize you and Roger as elders. You're not ordained, but you're recognized. And that was with the early church that Paul recognized elders and set up elders. So not clergy, but a recognized structure.

So how does that work? What's that look like? How do you know? How do I know if he's alive? It's like 20 years from now. Dre's the guy that needs to be the elder. How do you guys know? How would you know? He's eldering all the time. That's right. He's doing the job. He's doing the job of an elder. Just doing it. No one had to ask him. He just does it. And he's not, you know, lording it over anybody. He's a servant. He's all that is required.

And so we all get together and, you know, we kind of rose on his nose and say, okay, you're officially an elder. We ordained him. You just recognized what the Spirit of God was doing. You know? It's like teaching. It's like any of the other gifts. You see them operational. And you can point them out. Oh, I see that in that person, and I see that in that person. You know. Plus the qualifications. Say that? Plus the qualifications. Qualifications. Yeah. Do they have the heart for the job? Is the Spirit of God working in them? Yeah.

Or no, or they're not. Or, yeah, the person's a servant. But we were thinking it was this, but it really isn't. This is something else. We weren't paying close enough attention. You know? Yeah. It seems like from reading right out that he's saying that ordination just applies to the apostolic age. That's it. Yeah. That's right. That's what he is saying. And the apostles were the only ones who did it. Yeah.

From that time on, the body of Christ was gifted by gifted men, you know, in Ephesians and other places, and that people recognized that that's what the Spirit was working, you know. And when the Spirit doesn't work fast enough for man, what does man do? He creates a clergy and a seminary and a bunch of black robes and, you know, whatever, and collars that go on backwards. Is it still okay to get ordained online? Sure. I mean, I'm just asking. We're selling clergy bumper stickers if you want one.

Getting back to what J.D. said also too, there are qualifications given what Timothy or That that lays out, you know, not only are you recognized or you know, or you're doing the job Sure, you know lay, you know, you don't pick somebody who's a new believer. There's you know husband of one wife, you know their whole bunch of things very intimidating qualifications actually for an elder and a deacon to and But there are some kind of guardrails on it as far as recognizing somebody as an elder or as a deacon. It's not just they're doing it, you know.

But let me state that I don't know of any single passage where ministry of the Word was attended by ordination. Nowhere do we find an evangelist, a pastor, a teacher ordained as such. You see that? So we're going to put out a directive that says these are our teachers, these are our this and these are our that. Ordination, he uses the term rule. Ordination only applies to rule.

You want to rule over somebody, you have a hierarchy of ordained people. When we think of his sovereign will, his mighty power exercised in selection, calling, equipping, sending forth and sustaining a servant of Christ in his ministry. The greater always approves what is done by the lesser. But this would be to make man approve, would make man approve of what the Spirit does. We recognize what he's doing. We can see it. See that?

Last question, can the spirit not be trusted to maintain the dignity of God's house in which he dwells? A question that, duh. Right off it says, I know too that the plea of regularity and order will be raised, but again, is God the author of confusion? Can the spirit not be trusted to maintain the dignity of God's house in which he dwells?

Yes he can. Yes he can. Beloved brethren, unbelief lies at the root of most of this human arrangement. Talking about ordination. Human unbelief. We don't think that the spirit of God is actually the one who drives the body. He is the one who does it. He is the one who does.

I mean, if it wasn't, how would we ever have a Bible study in somebody's house? Or even on Zoom? Who would have the authority to do it? You'd have to find somebody with a long line of credentials. You know, let me show you my resume before we start. Ugh, boring.

Let's see. He sums up, I said, let us trust more implicitly, let us prove our gracious God and we will ever find the presence of his spirit a blessed reality. If we trust him about the circumstances in terms of gifted people in the body of Christ, he'll do it and he'll work it out. I think we're a good example of that.

Don't you? I mean, I know that all of you three years ago looked at Roger and I like, I don't know about these two guys. But we are most, we're, the two of us are the most two surprise guys in the place. You know, that we're doing what we're doing. We love what we're doing. But none of you said, well, we'll give you a medal if you make it three years. We're going to give you a raise. I love that one. You just don't know about that, Mark. You're the only two that don't know what's really going on. Maybe. Maybe that's true. You're the only two guys that don't know what's really happening around here. So, OK.

It's a five-year middle. There's something that is creepy when you think about the idea of a man's automation I think that's where the charismatics go off the rails. take the assigned gifts and they make a big deal out of them. Tell me a signed gift that ministers to the body. It's always about me and my gifts, where the true gifts are all about serving the body. That's what it's really about. You know, I think also in getting the ordination and clergy and all that, this is, you know, round two, 2.0.

Israel wanted, give us a king. That's right. Give us a king. Give us order. Give us what we want, a king. It's going to be better if we have a king. That's exactly right. How did that work out for them? Now we're, you know, give us a bishop. Give us a pope. Give us an ordained priest. Give us, you know.

Same thing. No, you know it Man's order is not the way to go and it fails each time every time every single time All right, we got a close so the singers can go sing Father how we thank you for your word and we thank you that we can it's a it's a privilege but also a stewardship to trust you and all the circumstances that relate to our your Spirit's work in our body of believers that we might grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and manifest to everyone amongst ourselves and amongst the whole world of influence that we're in the love and the glory of your dear Son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in His name. Amen.