Person & Work of the Holy Spirit
Mike Doyle · Sep 8, 2013
Holy Spirit (2013), No. 35
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492640512540

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We are in Lesson 17, Chapter 4, talking about the gifts of the Spirit. I listened to the class last week, it was a really good class. Maybe to slide into this, the first question is, what is a spiritual gift? Where is that question? It's not there. It's so easy, I thought. It's a variety, isn't it? It's a variety.

It's wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, working of miracles, deserving spirits, tongues and interpretations, same spirit, same God. The Holy Spirit is the gift. Alright, I'll make it easy. What's a gift? Something you receive from the Holy Spirit for the building up of the body. Wonderful. Everybody hear that? No. Something given by the Holy Spirit for the building up of the body of Christ. And the reason I asked the question was so I could get that answer.

Spiritual gifts have nothing to do with you getting a case of the warm fuzzies because you have one. Okay? or being really disappointed because you don't think you have one. Because the word of God says that every one of us has one, at least one. The best way I think to look at spiritual gifts is this way. The word gift is like the word charis, like grace. It is something that God freely gives for a purpose that he has in mind and you're the recipient of it and you can't do anything to deserve it, earn it, or anything like that.

And it's for the express purpose of edifying the body of Christ. You're the PVC pipe through which the Spirit of God works in the body of Christ. The great thing about PVC is that it doesn't get any credit for what it's doing. It's just a conduit. Really important to understand that because in contemporary Christianity, especially with certain theological viewpoints, spiritual gifts are really, really used as some sort of merit badge of spirituality. has nothing to do with that, nothing to do with that, as you guys started talking about last week. Recognize that spiritual gifts are given to a spiritual body to accomplish spiritual ends. Because the body of Christ is a supernatural creation, isn't it? It has to be.

And there isn't anything within the power of the flesh or your humanity to accomplish the spiritual ends that God intends to accomplish through his body. You just can't do it. You can do all the spiritual push-ups you want and it isn't going to accomplish anything that God has intended.

Quickly, last week we tried to differentiate between the gifts of 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4.8. What was the difference? Remember?

In 1 Corinthians there are gifts that appear miraculous. Yeah, miraculous gifts. And the other gifts are for specifically, clearly for the edification of the body. And then we talked about what was the purpose of all the sign gifts. What was the purpose of it? Well, I had to authenticate the messenger. Okay, now, here's the thing.

In Acts and a couple other places, the writers say that look, the Jews always demanded a sign, right? If you were, in the Old Testament times, you were a prophet or you were whatever you claimed to be, You better be able to authenticate what you were doing by some sort of supernatural sign. If you prophesied, it better come true. Otherwise you get the stone party.

When Nicodemus went to Jesus at night, what did he say to him? He said, I know you're from God, and I know you're special. How come? How did he know? What did he say? He said, because you couldn't do what you were doing if you weren't. Signs. See, Jesus was healing. He was doing all these wonderful things. Nicodemus, because he was a good Jew, he recognized that right away. See, he had to be from God, because if he didn't, If he wasn't then these things wouldn't be happening. Enter the body of Christ. The body of Christ is not made up of just Jews. There are Gentiles. The Jews demanded a sign.

What are the Gentiles more interested in? Signs and wonders or wisdom? Wisdom. It's because most of the mentality of the Mediterranean basin was Greek and they're the wise guys. They want to think through something, come to a logical conclusion. And so that's why you see Paul's epistles written in such a way that they are very logical. They are very laid out. You know at one time if you were a law student at Harvard Law School you had to study the book of Romans and the reason you did is that it is the most logical argument ever written about anything. It systematically goes through and comes to the conclusion that Jesus is who he says he is, logically. So, think about this now. You get 50s, 60s and after 77 AD now you have a body of believers who has expanded from Jerusalem out into the Mediterranean basin and the population is beginning to be greater with Gentiles than it is with Jews.

How much do you need the sign gifts? You really don't need them because the Gentiles aren't impressed. They are impressed with wisdom. They are not impressed with signs and wonders. They have enough guys walking around in their temples and places like that who can pull off all these signs and wonders and no big deal to them. When Paul goes to Mars Hill, it's logic. Notice he didn't stand up on Mars Hill and do a magic show. It's logic. It's really important to understand. that from about the end of maybe 70, 80 A.D. the psychics were going away, they weren't around.

Now here's a question to ponder, would God use them today? What do you think? Give an example. Randy and Jessica get called to be missionaries to somewhere in Botswana and they are way back there somewhere. To verify Randy's ministry to the tribe's people that he's dealing with, would he have the ability to heal somebody? What do you think?

He can't do it. He can't do it. He can't do it. You think God would do it through him just so that they could say, wow, there's Randy something else. He must be real. Otherwise he couldn't do what he's doing. What do you think? He could. I think he could. He would recognize it was God who did it. It wasn't Randy who had the spiritual gift of healing.

I think where you see the work of the spirit, I gave you all that book, What's Going On Downriver. Notice how the spirit worked in those tribal people without signs and wonders. See how he did that? I mean to the point where one of the mothers who was a tribeswoman, or a man who was an elder, ministered to the wife and mother of one of the missionaries, whose son was sick. You remember that part in the book? And he said to her, Hey, you know, you've been teaching yourself and stuff. How come you're not, why are you so loose in the corners? Don't you have faith?

You know, it's like, see, so I think the spirit of God works in such a way that he doesn't need a big show to pull off what he's going to pull off. What about now? I mean, I'm like pretty skeptical because there are so many people out there that are, you know, ripping people off and everything. But, you know, what if there are legitimate healings? Like, you know, someone says on TV or whatever it may be, it's like, I doubt that any of them are. But what if they were? OK, I have two answers to that. The first answer is that the contemporary charlatans that you see, never healed anybody. And if they did, it wasn't the Spirit of God who did it. You see that?

You notice that the Bible talks about the Lord Jesus went about healing people and those that were oppressed by the devil. Could the devil undepress somebody so that he could make it look like... because he is the master of deception. Sure he could. Sure he could. But I remember when I was a young Christian, Oral Roberts was sort of at the end of his hallelujah trail. And I mean, you know, this guy claimed to heal everybody from everything, no matter what it was, as long as they wrote checks. Yeah. But when he got cataracts, he had to go to California and have him taken care of. Why did he fix them? You know, why? Why didn't he do something about it?

I got I used to be kind of impressed with Peter Popov. Oh, but then it turns out what he did is his wife would go ask all these people, where are you from? Why are you here? And then she put a script together for him. So I think I feel there's somebody here that has like this vision problem. And I think you're from this address, this street. But they had a little system where he had earphones and they had like a thing that would tune to a frequency and then he just. hear the message. This is what you're supposed to ask next. So it's literally just he would get information from his wife sitting in a room telling them, OK, this lady has this problem.

This man has this problem. They're from this state. And it looks so real. Yeah. And the other thing that you see today is that there's a whole list of new ones. Like John Wimber has got the new spiritual gift of laughter. Is that because he's a jokester?

So I guess the important thing would be like okay let's say there was somebody who was out there healing The important thing is that, let's say I didn't recognize it. Let's say somebody healed my eyes or allergies or something and it went away and I knew it. I knew that it was from God. Other people say, you know, Tui, what is she looking for, something like that, but then I guess the Holy Spirit for those people who it was important to see that, or maybe personal people that I would say, it went away and I believe it's God that did it, and maybe those particular people were the ones that the Holy Spirit was working on Maybe to show them the sign rather than to say like, oh here's the sign and I'm all that because God's using me. You know what I mean? So maybe it can happen, but it maybe happens based on who the Holy Spirit wants to reveal. Or He just did it to you. Just to bless you. And didn't use anybody.

I have a sister that I'm absolutely convinced that God cured her from cancer. From stage 4 melanoma cancer. Cured her. And you know what? She didn't appreciate it spiritually. To this day she doesn't. Her oncologist told her that she was the only stage 4 melanoma patient that they had alive. That was 15, 18 years ago. So maybe it was for you. Well, I don't know. For your faith. To be honest with you, I've been probably ought to turn the tape off. I've been disappointed in the negative effect that it's had on her life. She hasn't glorified God in it. At first, yeah.

In the paragraph three, elaborate on his last sentence there where he says, page 57, paragraph 3, I do not judge that scripture warns us to live up to these special manifestations in a day of ruin and declension like this. So is he taking more of a view of our condition rather than our position in saying that? Yeah, he is.

Here's the thing, it's like nobody has the gift of prophecy in the sense that there's some additional information that you're going to get from the Spirit of God that isn't already in the Bible. But that doesn't mean that the Spirit of God can't use the Word of God to reveal something to you that's particular and pertinent just to your circumstance, that you see it very clearly. where the guy sitting next to you doesn't see it at all. Did the Spirit of God do a work in you? Yes he did. He works in all of us.

But he didn't make you a prophet. Just like he didn't make Randy a faith healer. Now, in contrast with that, there are guys that are pastors. There are guys that are teachers. There are people that are gifted to do that in the body of Christ. And what's it for? It isn't so that they can look cool, put clergy on their bumper. It's because they've been called by God to be involved in the edification of the church. But everybody that they edify in turn is somehow equipped to edify the body too. Everybody is.

It may not be real visible. There's one of those hungry hearts that talks about God may have called you to be a flower alongside the road and as people walk by they just admire God's glory because they see the beauty in the flower. What if you're a flower? It's enough. It's plenty.

There are implications of the spiritual gift of administration. And when I was charismatic, one of the elders did actually say, and I thought this was wise, he goes, I never once heard someone pray for the spiritual gift of administration. They all want tongues, they all want healing, they all want whatever else it is. I don't even want to talk about it. What you see today demonstrated isn't anything like what the word of God talks about what tongues were. It's all selfish and personal.

Sociologists have done some research and tongues tend to be regional and people in certain areas tend to have the same speech patterns. When you go to the charismatic churches it's the same things. You don't know what they're saying, but it's regional. Whatever your language is, you sound like someone else in your area that you probably learned the patterns from, but it's different from different places.

But it's not a language, which of course obviously was shared with them. What was the purpose of tongues? What was the purpose of it? To communicate the gospel in a language unknown. I think it was Carol last week said, when I was listening to the table, she thought that They spoke it in their language and everybody heard it in a different, in whatever their own language was.

Well that would be the spiritual gift of hearing. See the difference? These men could just, if you only understood Spanish, and I was one of the apostles, I could give you the gospel in Spanish having never learned it. And if you knew Spanish you could understand exactly what I was saying.

It wasn't a mystery. Did they have to repeat? Sure. They had to repeat it. So the person who hears and understands Spanish would be the interpreter also? Sure. And Paul said that. He said boy you guys have come together and you got people speaking. Nobody gets to speak without an interpreter. That was one of the rules. You know, no gibberish without somebody who can translate. Why? Why would that be important? What's the purpose? To edify the body. If you're all sitting there listening to something you don't understand, how edified are you? You're not. Simple. So simple.

Well, it also like authenticates it, right? Because if there's a person and no one else speaks Spanish, He could be saying anything, and so to have a translator would be like, yeah. Notice how careful God is to not let anybody go off on a tangent on their own. He's very careful about that. It's like teachers and elders. You're not on an island unto yourself. There are others around who you're sharing stuff with and bouncing things off of.

So, that winds us down to question four. On page 57, paragraph 3, I said, which question appeals to you the most? The first one is, do you covet, beloved brethren, a gift of tongues or of working miracles? Is that what appeals to you most? Or, do you not rather long for a fuller knowledge of the truth of God and a greater wisdom and power in declaring it? Let's see how many people are honest here. How many thought the first question was really appealing? Oh cowards. A room full of cowards. It's associated with ripping people off. Think about this for a minute.

Do you see how self-centered the first question is? And look at the tone of the second question. to long for fuller knowledge of the truth of God and greater wisdom and what? for the power of declaring it. That's really cool. So when you stack that up against spiritual gifts, signed gifts, I think I'll take the latter. So why do the gifts of the Spirit, question 5 in Ephesians 4, 11-12, more directly concern us. Somebody read Ephesians 4, 11 and 12. And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ.

Now this is really cool. Notice that these are not spiritual gifts. You know what these are? But what are they? What really are the gifts here? They are men who have these gifts. They are men given to the body of Christ who are gifted. Do you see that? He gave the body of Christ these men who were gifted. Does that make sense? So the focus goes off of apostle, prophet, it goes on, he enables these men for the benefit of the body of Christ. Isn't that cool?

That's different than, oh I'm a prophet. You know, I was just struck, you know, those first gifts, the miraculous gifts, was kind of like, or I was thinking, that's kind of like announcing to us that God is who He is and He's here among us and He's done some really special things. And then the second gifts that you talk about, you know, are now to educate us on who this God is that's down here working among us because it's to teach us in most cases isn't it? It's to let us know.

And why? Notice how much of this is designed for the education of the body of Christ. Why is that so important? Why is it really important that you kind of know Because we're heavenly people. What's that? We're heavenly people. We're heavenly people? Are people perished? What's that? Are people perished due to lack of knowledge and wisdom?

Okay. Doesn't your faith have to have an object? There's no such thing as I have faith for faith's sake. There's nothing like that. I have faith in specific principles, doctrine. I believe this exact fact to be true. And then I find out that my faith goes beyond that to the person who's behind it, which is a love and affection for the Lord Jesus Christ. I get to the point where I believe whatever the word of God says only because God said it. He doesn't have to prove anything to me. He said it, that's good enough for me. And his explaining it and expanding it and my entering into it is up to him.

One thing that's been kind of striking me lately is that with the fruit of the Spirit, even faith itself, it seems like that's a gift. It's like we don't even work on increasing our own faith. It's a gift to have increased faith. Yeah, that's an interesting point because every human being has faith.

Ask Debbie, she works for an airline. Everybody, every human being has faith because they take chances. They believe what somebody tells them and they say, okay, I'm going to go get on that airplane. You say it's going to fly, so let's do it. You say you're not going to kill me between here and King Soopers so I'll get in the car with you. Everybody has faith.

It's the object that's different. What do I believe? Do I believe basically centered around my ability to sort of make it happen or someone else who I really admire says something to me? I'm sitting in class and here's a philosophy professor giving me a bunch of garbage and oh, that sounds good to me. Seems to work out for him, maybe I'll buy into that.

Or, here comes the word of God and now the object is different. Now, where does the Lord come in on that? You've already got the ability to believe, but then he reveals a divine truth to you. If you're not a believer, you don't get any of that. The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, the foolishness under him, he can't know that. But you're a believer, so here comes a revelation.

Say you're cruising down the road, you're really happy as one of these warm fuzzy Christians and all of a sudden one day you read in the Bible that you were crucified with Christ. I was? What does that mean? There's brand new information. The Bible says that my old man was crucified. What does that mean?

Okay God, I buy it because you said it, but now the work of the Spirit begins to grow me into that information and to get me settled down in the facts and to expand my knowledge through the word of exactly what that means. My faith is enhanced. It grows. It increases in capacity. to know and learn the things of God through his word. See that? Laura?

So that verse that says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, would that principle also apply to everything else in the world? No. Because what you just said, everybody has faith. Yeah. The difference is the object. So obviously the only way to have faith in God is by hearing the Word of God.

Is that how people have other kinds of faith too, by hearing other things in the world? No. No, the difference is that when the Word of God comes towards you, built within it is the ability to believe it. Yeah, but the other kinds of faith that are not Biblical, like you say, if everybody has faith in something, make the Biblical one out. One of the big differences is that non-biblical faith isn't absolutely true.

But they got it from hearing? They got it from hearing too? I don't think of faith as volumetric as much as you are abiding and therefore you are walking by faith. You are not abiding by faith, you are not walking by faith. and I don't think the problem with the more faith analogy where it becomes volumetric is that you get this problem where people while we have a relative by marriage who went to a faith healer faith healer said your hip is healed and yet she's still walking with a limb and we said you should probably go check a doctor out she said no way because if I don't have faith then it won't get healed I need to have more faith That's where the volumetric side of the analogy always makes me a little twitchy.

How much faith? Did it happen or not? Did God say it's true or not? Well, and therein lies the point. Faith is specific for the believer. And I can't find in the word of God where it's said that you're hypocele. So that's not information that I'm going to rest my faith on, even if the person you're talking about doesn't walk with a limp anymore. That's fine. But it doesn't increase or decrease my faith.

Isn't it true that we have to have the new birth in order for faith to mean anything? Because we can't hear from God unless we're new creatures in Christ. Yeah, it's interesting that you don't receive the things of God, the understanding of who He is. without new life. You have to have that life.

I just quoted it. A natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God. Why? Because there is foolishness under him. He can't know them. It doesn't matter if he wants to or not. He can't. You know, God is broadcasting on channel 7 and you're listening on 9. You don't pick it up. Sorry. I think there's an earthly faith and then there's the real faith. People do have earthly faith, but it has no real meaning. Well, it won't hold you up in a crisis either.

That's the issue. I was thinking, too, the passage that Laura quoted. I think that's, I think Bernard taught that one time as the faith. coming by hearing and hearing where the word of God is in a different article. Oh, that answers it. Is that only the salvation faith or is that the faith we grow on? Well, it's both. It's both. Have you ever read Malloy's book on faith?

It's floating around here somewhere. I think I've got copies, electronic copies of it up there. Talk to Roy Smith, I think he can get you a copy. He distinguishes between just general faith, specific faith, the faith of Christianity, you know the different kinds of things and that's important.

Thanks Al, that's exactly right. Was there someplace that someone in the New Testament said, Lord help my unbelief? Help, I believe help my unbelief. Yes. Great question. Trick question. Is that the proper attitude for a believer? Think about it. Is it the proper attitude for a believer to go to the Lord and say, I believe, help my unbelief? Well, I don't know why. I don't think you can relate to him for anything. Yeah, that's true, you can. And he's so tolerant. He is. But it really isn't applicable to me as a believer. Why? Because I've got all the information. I've been enabled by being recreated in Christ with the capacity to know. I have two choices. I can either accept or reject.

Now if I reject, do I go to the Lord to help my own rejection? No, it's there. We as believers, when God says it in his word and you see it, you only have one response to it. You're either going to accept it by believing it, or you're going to reject it, or you're going to say to him by rejecting it, well I've got to think it over. That's rejection. I grew up in Missouri, you're going to have to show me what you mean there.

He says, yeah, but do you believe me? It's like identification, when he shows you that you were crucified with Christ and you take him at his word and you say I believe you. I don't understand it very much yet, but I believe you. Once you say I believe you, hang on to the chair because you're going for a ride. because he intends to take you through the fullness of the understanding of your being crucified, buried and resurrected to newness of life. If you say to him, oh okay, it's nice, but I'm not buying that, guess what, you're not going for the ride.

Why? So do you go to him and say, well help my unbelief? He says, no, no, all you have to do is just say yes, I do believe you. It's not complicated. A Jew would say that, help my unbelief, and that's why it's in the Gospels. You won't see it, that kind of mentality in the epistles. Now you got out of that one, didn't you? I did well, didn't I?

So, Whiteout's answer to question 5 is here again the apostles and prophets have done their work in laying the foundation from Ephesians 2.20. We have too. Their inspired writings with us.

This leaves the normal gifts of the spirit for ministry classified under the general heads of evangelists, I think of it, they all change it to recruiter. Pastor and pastors and teachers. This leaves the normal gifts of the spirit for ministry classified under the general heads of pastor, teachers and evangelists.

What do we need today other than those three guys? What do we need? Prayer for all of them. For spiritual gifts in terms of edifying the body of Christ, what else do you need but those three? And notice the rest of the verse. It's such a great verse. Why are those guys there? Why does God give those gifted men to the body of Christ? For the edifying of the body of Christ, the building up of it, for the work of the ministry and the perfecting of the saints.

In my Bible there's no commas between any of those. That is an entire thing that they all do cumulatively. And you know what that means? If I'm a teacher, what is my job? My job is spelled out right there. I'm perfecting saints. The word perfection means that we're working to bring you into the fullness conditionally of what you already are positionally. so that you can be involved in the ministry, ministry where? Right here, locally, for the edifying of the body of Christ. What are we doing? We are replacing ourselves. That is what we are doing. That is our job.

Now it is perfectly sound to think that well he is going to perfect Ralph, He's going to teach Ralph the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ and then he's going to move Ralph to Florida. But when he gets to Florida, that's what he's going to do there. He may have learned it here, but he's going to go there. So we don't need seminaries. Sorry.

The other thing is that he continues on in 13 to say, until we all attain the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ." Boy, what a statement that is. So we're getting all of those things from the pastors and teachers and evangelists, and that's the result. As a result, you get unity of the faith.

And I think that for me, scared me a lot when I was younger because all I saw was division. And I can't say that I had a unity of the faith with the people I went to church with. The only thing we could agree on was that we still believed that the spiritual gifts functioned in a miraculous way. Yeah, and you may not understand this, But trust me, I do, because I teach. It's a miracle. What you learn is the work of the Spirit of God, not me. It has to be Him. And why are you learning this? So you can glorify God, but you can also pass it on. You know, when you do it, say that again. Is that number six you're talking about? No, I didn't get to six, but I'm just about to. How do the general gifts of a more public character serve the purpose of perfecting and preparing a scene? Yeah, I'm kind of giving that answer. I went to a family reunion last weekend and I talked to my brother Jim all about the identification truths and when he shook my hand and gave me a hug at the airport to say goodbye, he said, keep looking down. Oh my goodness, that's cool.

He said keep looking down. Which is a saying of knowing your position in Christ, you're not here looking up, you're in Him looking down. Miles, that was one of Miles' great sayings. I have it on the wall in my house. If you're in the second story of my house and you're coming down the steps, there's a wall up here. That saying is up there.

It says, keep looking down, old guy's going down the steps, before your life is hit with Christ and God. Where is that in the Bible? Your life is hit with Christ and God is in the words that keep working down, isn't it? Well, and I just heard someone say that you're, I always think, you know, well, I'm anchored, you know, that's good. But the anchor is in heaven. Isn't that cool? That's awesome, isn't it? Not going to be a surprise when we get there. Kind of already know the surroundings, you know. So I think we've discussed six.

He says evangelists when used of God in salvation of souls has by that very act prepared another channel for the gospel testimony. The pastor in caring for a sheep of Christ is preparing that one in his turn to exercise care. That's what hopefully you're learning as you learn to exercise care for the next one who's coming along. The teacher who unfolds God's word is putting the key into other hands. That's the passing on. Who will pass on the precious things to still others. What a beautiful scene of activity all actuated and controlled by the blessed spirit of God and love and the very bond of perfectness knitting saints to saints.

I mean, that's just a great paragraph. Did you pick that up? No. I don't. I didn't write down exactly where it is, but in the answer to page 50. Page 58 is the end of paragraph 2. It just simply lays out there how these three gifted people to the body of Christ, what they're doing and what they're trying to accomplish. We're not all trying to become super saints. we're being equipped to minister. That's how the body works. It's like your own human body. If one part of your body gets out of proportion to the rest, it doesn't function in harmony.

Let me ask this, what's the purpose of the body of Christ? Why have such a thing? What are we here for? We're here to glorify God. Not you and me individually as being really cool Christians. We're here to glorify God individually and as a body of a realist.

This is how he does it. It's important to know the doctrine. It's also important to know how he does things. What we're discussing here, that's number seven to us. I still don't I don't quite know how you answer number six, the general gifts of a more public character. That's not where everyone has faith is the object of the faith that's important. That's not the answer to that.

How do the general gifts of a more public character serve the purpose of perfecting and preparing saints for the world? What did I do? I wrote down the general gifts of a more public character are for the purpose of perfecting or preparing the saints for their work. I really ask two questions. The reason that we are prepared, the work that we do is public. What we're doing right now is public. And not only that, there's some guy upstairs recording all of this and that's real public.

But then he gets down and I really did, I should have, I combined really one question into two or expanded one question into two by seven by saying what are the roles. of the evangelist, the pastor, and the teacher. And that's what I did. I did it that way because I know that repetition sometimes is the best way to learn something. Well, but you still didn't answer the question. Yeah, I did. Six. We're still not satisfied.

How do the general gifts of a more public character serve the purpose of perfecting and preparing the saints for their work? And like Francis says, what is the more public? What does that mean? If you have the gift of evangelism, it's a very public gift isn't it? What are you doing? You're recruiting. Well where do you do your recruiting? Out in the public. Don't you? So it's very public.

Now once you have done your job of gathering the souls from the world by preaching the gospel, Then the next guy, the pastor, what does he do? He takes over the job of looking after the lambs and the sheep and God's flock. It's his job to feed them and protect them. Is that public?

Sometimes it's very public because you have to stand up publicly and protect them from the wolves that have come in. And then the teacher unfolds the word of God for their instruction. That may or may not be a public ministry. More than likely, probably. Is what we're doing here this morning public? I think it's public. Anybody can come in and sit down. Sure.

So I would say that these general gifts are of a more public nature. that are out there for everybody to see them functioning. And the result of the ministry of those three men culminates in your being conformed to the image of Christ and your life is very public.

Or maybe God has called you to be an evangelist or a teacher. Okay, I'm going to hit the woman thing. Women teach women, right? So you're saying men, so it can be women also teach women. Oh, absolutely. I didn't know if you're using man and the man. And listen, in a private setting, a woman can teach a man. Look at Priscilla and Akua. Was it with Apollos? Is that who they took in and they taught him? They taught him things he didn't know.

That's fine. It would be stupid for me to say, I can't learn from the women, so I'm going to take Hannah Whitehall Smith's book and throw it in the trash. Because she's a woman author. Nonsense. I learned a lot from that book. Who is that? Hannah Whitehall Smith. Who? Hannah Whitehall Smith. Yeah, I've heard of her. Have you heard of her?

Christian Secret of a Happy Life. Yeah, Christian Secret of a Happy Life. It's to the clock. Oh, didn't the buzzers go off? No. But you should know, it's ten now. I won't go into some lengthy close, I'll just pray to God. Father, how we thank you for your word and we thank you that you have done what you've done with your body. the body of the Lord Jesus to manifest your glory, not only through us and to us, but for the whole world to see, Father. We thank you, we pray in the Lord Jesus' precious name. Amen.