Person & Work of the Holy Spirit

OK, we are in less than 17 and I'm sorry, but I saw Nancy on Tuesday and you know, all the papers we had spread up here. She decided she was going to organize them and give them to me. And she did. And I left them at home. So I think I'm going to do is get one of those files and put them in a box up here.

So you better have enough. Spread out. Because this always looks like my desk and I was really comfortable. So anybody need a 17? If you do. Find somebody who has a blank one in their glossary. Everybody has. Does anybody need a 17? That's like Monique. Monique, you've got to start paying attention. OK, thank you.

And we have worked our way down. We're talking about spiritual gifts. And we had worked our way down last time from the two categories that we have described. And those that were miraculous and those that were primarily focused on edification of the body of Christ. And we looked at question five that talked about Ephesians 4, 11, and 12, where God gave gifted men to the church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, and why they were given. And then we talked about the general gifts of a public character. and we had arrived at, which is really kind of a redundant question, what are the roles of an evangelist, a pastor, and a teacher?

I find it interesting that the ward has, well, let me say it this way, hopefully you've noticed that spiritual gifts are focused on the body of Christ and its edification, right? And you also have noticed that there is no discussion about the warm fuzzies a believer might have who possesses a gift, because it isn't about them.

It's about serving the body. So the focus is not on the individual, the focus is on the building up of the body of Christ. That's what it's about. And so the body of Christ functions perfectly as long as the focus of all the members of it are on its corporate well-being rather than my personal well-being because the life of the Lord Jesus is sacrificial. It isn't about me, it's about the body. So when the Lord gives men to the body of Christ who are gifted, it is totally for the focus on the well-being and the health of the body itself.

It's never, never so that an individual person can go around and try to convince you that they are much more spiritual than the guy next to them because they have some sort of gift. It's not like that. It's focused on the building up of the body, which means it's other than self-centered. We have in contemporary Christianity made spiritual gifts self-centered.

So what's an evangelist's job? Let's say Gary's an evangelist. What's he called to do? Preach the gospel and gather souls. Put it in contemporary language. What would he be? He's a recruiter. Isn't that what he is? He's the one that goes around to those who don't belong explains to them the benefits of belonging.

That is a spiritual gift. And we've all known men that had this gift of evangelism who can walk up to somebody in the grocery store and just start talking to them and gather their attention and they'll listen and they'll just say the right thing. And before you know it, a person has believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and his work. I'm not one of those who has that gift. I've made a career out of telling the right thing to the wrong people. Jane Fuqua is one of those.

Whenever you run into one of those people, I marvel at what God does through them. that they don't practice, they don't go home and memorize testimonies, they don't do any of that. The thing I think is neat for all believers in light of that, because I'm not an evangelist, that's not how I'm gifted, but it is neat to see how the Lord can still use the direction of the Spirit in our own lives on a day-to-day level to where we are still sometimes the It doesn't mean that if you're not an evangelist you don't have to ever share the gospel. It just means that the Lord will still give you that opportunity. You don't have to sweat it if you're not just winning souls left and right. Yes, exactly right. And who's keeping score anyway?

The Baptists. Southern Baptists. One of my best friends is a Southern Baptist. We're not going to that town. While many of us are not evangelists, and there's a million different tracts out there, there's a fellow by the name of Ron Shea over at Duluth Bible Church. He's got just the neatest 24 short page gospel tracks out there that's not about him and not about anything other than just the straight facts of the gospel. Now you just brought up a very interesting point. An evangelist and a pastor and a teacher. How do I ask this question?

In the exercise of their gift, is there any sense in which what they're doing points to them? No. All three of those gifted men point people to Christ. As a matter of fact, they can't wait to get out of the way. You see that? It's a really important issue because you will notice, and it's subtle, you will notice that there are evangelists who make it all about you've got to go through them to get to Christ. There are pastors like that. You have to go through them to get the really inside scoop to get to Christ. Teachers the same way. When all three of those men's job is to do this, Him, that's what, they're just the pointing tool, the conduit through which the life points to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's how you can tell, I think. That's how you know. When you're listening to somebody teach, or you listen to a pastor where he's counseling you, he better be pointing you to Christ. That's the deal.

Evangelism is the same way. I think Bruce you're right, it's critical That's the whole message. The book we all read, What's Going On Down the River, boy you could really see that principle operational in that book, couldn't you? I mean even the people who weren't believers, those indigenous people, kept going up to them and saying, show us the way to Christ. That's what they were saying. We've waited long enough.

Okay, what's the job of a pastor? Well according to, let me ask it another way, according to Rite Out, what is the job of a pastor? Tends the lambs of Christ's flock. That's right, he tends the lambs and the sheep of Christ's flock. That's not the same thing as teaching. although teaching is part of that. Do you understand what I'm saying? A lot of times, especially people want to say, well, I'm a pastor teacher. Well, you might be, but you might just be a pastor and not a very good teacher. You're tending the lambs and the sheep. What is that about? What does a tender of the lambs and sheep do? Is he a comforting person? A comforter? And what's the primary tool they have to comfort?

The Word. That's right. The Word of God. Now that means that they understand the Word. And we'll talk in a minute the difference between what that is and what a teacher is. But their job is, maybe put it another way, their job is to feed the sheep and protect the sheep. They feed him with the word and they protect him from the wolves that would come in and subvert the word, screw up the food. Well, feed him the word kind of sounds like teaching. I think a pastor does. Part of that is teaching, but that's not his whole job. And I think teaching can be separate. There's plenty of teachers that aren't pastors. I think a pastor has to have a certain heart for the job. Some of you knew Hal Molloy. Hal Molloy was a pastor. He just knew it. He had a heart for you.

You'd go to him and he would say that spiritual counseling is 90% biblical education. Believers need to know who they are, where they are, and what they have. And that settles them down, that protects them, and that feeds them. That's what a pastor does. Recognizing that my opinion, or somebody's opinion, or your anecdotal experiences are not what they're looking for. They're looking for an opening up of the word of God that will settle them down. Hebrews says they keep watch over your souls. Isn't that something? And they do. They really do. Verne does that job. He watches over our souls. He really does.

And so, it's important to understand that you could conceivably be a pastor and not a very good teacher. Now personally, one on one, who was it? There was somebody, I can't remember, way back early in our Christianity that said, Well, the guy's a great preacher and a proud pastor, but he's terrible one-on-one. Which I thought to myself, well then he's not a pastor.

He should have just been a teacher. A pastor is a one-on-one guy. You go in and sit down with him, and you can pour your heart out, and he's got the biblical answer for you. And it's in his heart. Say that again? It's in his heart. Yeah, it's in his heart. He's gifted. That's right. Yeah, he's gifted. Well that's kind of tough because what if you're gifted at doing that but you're not gifted at sort of being in a group and then that's sort of part of your job, isn't it?

Like every Sunday? Okay, see that's the problem with the term pastor in the United States and in First World American Church or First World Church. We've turned pastor into a job and a position whereas in the biblical context this is a gifting for someone within the body and it doesn't It doesn't matter if they're getting a paycheck or that they're on a board of whatever.

You see that? And that's true. And there may be more than one pastor in a group of believers. One or two people that you can go to and sit down and they just watch over you. They pray for you. They do all kinds of cool stuff that isn't sometimes visible. Now, teachers. What does Rideout say about teachers? He says the teacher unfolds the word of God for their instruction.

Now that just isn't a guideline. I'm a realtor and in order to maintain your license you have to do continuing education. And every year you have to do this mandatory update course. And the Department of Regulatory Agencies in the state of Colorado and they are real geniuses down there.

They decided that none of the teachers knew how to teach this course correctly. So when you go to the four hour class, they read it. You talk about brain damage. You have to sit there for four hours and then you have to take a test. They are required to read it.

We are going to institute that principle here, what do you think? A teacher can unfold the word of God so it's clearly understood, for you. See that? For you. And it isn't because, I mean there may be a person who has a lot of experience, if they don't have the gift of teaching, the unfolding process doesn't happen. Does that make sense to you? Now, all of these gifts are one of the reasons that you see around here we have, like in this class we have myself, Courtney and Randy teaching, and all the other classes have, because we recognize that there's a development of gifts, of the gifts, and so we're always looking for someone who God has gifted as a teacher. And how do you find out?

You get them up there and let them do it. Give them a chance, an opportunity. If they're not, that's fine. But if they are, then you encourage them and nurture them and bring them along, because when you leave, there better be somebody standing there to take your place. Same way with the evangelist, same way with the pastor. The gifted men that are given to the church, when we get into, in a minute or two, about ordination, that isn't a succession thing.

I was laughing, I went on a camping trip, you ladies will love this, I was sitting in my camper up there and I said to Don, you realize I'm the oldest guy here by 30 years. I hope these kids are paying attention. What do you mean? I was the oldest person there by 30 years. Oh, camping. You were great for like 100. That's what Berthie says, will somebody catch up? You know what's great about that? In amongst all of those young families, there are really good folks there. And there are gifted men there. And so here they come. Over the next years and decades they will be in line to replace as other guys leave. It's really cool to see.

Where do evangelists fit in our lifestyle today? In our church going? The evangelist's job is the only spiritual gift that really functions outside the body of Christ. I look at you as an evangelist. You know why? Because you came here and you liked what you heard and then you recruited all of these people. Well you know when I grew up we would have evangelists periodically come to the church from different places. I don't see that as prevalent today. It's not. It's not. You know what is an evangelist? If you're a A true evangelist, how do you function?

Are you always looking for targets? Subjects? The Lord opens up, at least this is my observation, not being an evangelist, I will answer this from an observational standpoint. I've watched evangelists in action and the Lord opens up a conversation point where a person will make a statement that reveals their world view, reveals their heart, and the evangelist comes and asks a question that opens up the discussion that requires them to think about their world view and how really true it is in light of the world view that Christ has presented in Scripture. This is my personal opinion.

I think that evangelists aren't necessarily heralds with a megaphone. They may be an evangelist just because of who they are and the way they live, or they have an impression on the sphere of influence that they live in. But I think it's partly there's say thousands of evangelists to do one on one evangelism rather than rooms full of people. Evangelism has deteriorated into counting at the end of the night how many people came to Christ. That's not the issue. I think about this actually quite a bit.

A friend of mine sort of does that. She'll go places. I believe her intentions are really good. apparently just wants people to go to heaven. But then it seems like it turns into sort of like that, like a goal to do. But then it kind of seems then, well it doesn't, I can't, I don't want to judge. It doesn't seem like it's real. effective, at least for her as an individual, so she can't really count because I think she's at zero and probably, you know, but still continues to do it because she sees it as planting and wants people to, I guess the goal is eternal life, but then it seems to kind of fall short because, I mean, it's not for her to say, come to my church, It's kind of like once a person's safe, then that's the end of their dealing with them.

You know, it's like seeing a grocery store. I don't know. I just kind of don't get it. And I actually feel kind of guilty about it. Because I don't really go out saying a lot of stuff. And so I do have like a little bit like, oh, should I have said something? Or, you know, should I be wearing a necklace?

You could be at zero too. I didn't come to you with flowery speech or anything like that. I came to you humbly and quietly and I preached one thing, Jesus Christ and him crucified. That was it. I was going to say, in relation to the zero, we all ought to be at zero, because it's God that gives the increase. I mean, that's not her motivator, though. She's not counting off. She's not going, 10, 11, because there aren't any, so I don't know. That's exactly it. It's nickels and dozens. I think as believers, if we are abiding by the Spirit, He's going to open the door. I've had people come to me from high school, several that came to me and said, I became a believer because of you.

And I thought, I don't remember one single time I was too scared that I shared the gospel. And yet they were like, you just were, you were different. Isn't it cool that the Lord doesn't let you know until later? Yeah, because if my head would have been so big, I would have been the pompous gospel church. So between the three evangelist, pastor and teacher, are we kind of talking about different gifts and abilities of relating to people?

And all the content still funnels through the same channel. It's like Randy just pointed out, some people are able to pick up on a conversation. But content wise, does it always boil down to the same issues? Or do each three of these have ability to concentrate on different things? Yeah, the focus is always the same.

It's the Lord Jesus Christ. Anybody know what the Great Commission is? You guys ought to know. What's the Great Commission? Go unto the Lord. You know what's great about the word to go unto? You know how that's supposed to be translated? In the going. Wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, it's not a command. It's whatever you're doing, wherever you're going, preach the gospel. And you can preach it with your mouth or with your life. Right.

You know, you can be a fisher of men without being a genius. I certainly don't know everything. So I think it's just great to be able to just by your being to sometimes say the right thing. But you should know that there is an onus on somebody who has a gift of evangelism to know what to say. It's not that they're winging it. They know exactly what to say from the word of God.

So does a teacher. You can't do any of this without the word of God. Does an evangelist operate within the church? I mean, I've always thought that an evangelist is, as you said, a recruiter. He's someone out in the world. Yeah, I think you're right about that. All the other spiritual gifts are for working within the body, except for the evangelist. If he's never going to come in to recruit a Christian?

Yeah, they're already recruited. I'm sorry, I couldn't hear what they said about our Southern Baptist friends. But when I was young, we had in our little town of Tupelo, Mississippi, we had in our Baptist church, we had a great big tabernacle outside that was open.

And that's where we'd have our revivals. And I can remember, especially two of these young evangelists who came. remember mostly was how they always had their handkerchiefs out and sweating, you know. And we had our funeral department fans. But anyway, the thing is they would, I think their motivation certainly, and they certainly had a gift for preaching. And they were, like we say here, they were ringing in the body.

They changed into, I remember Leo Green became a seminary professor. And he was for years at our Southern Baptist Seminary. And I remember Carl Bates, who was one of those young evangelists, became the executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention. So what I'm saying is they changed. They were gifted in teaching and administration and so forth from time to time. They say they say moved.

So I don't know how you know. I was going to say my first became a Christian. I got saved when I was in a Nazarene church. And I really realized you had to believe in Jesus or you were gone. When I was working at Lockheed and I was sharing with all my friends and one of my friends, told me, he said, you know, Russ, if you tell me one more thing about the Bible, I'm going to take your Bible and kill you. So I realized that there's also God leading you when to say. Sure.

And that's that's part of spiritual growth. My staffer told me years ago, because I called him one day and I was mousing about how God wasn't using me. And his answer was, look, he said, it takes the Lord a long time to teach you the truth. And then it takes him twice as long to teach you how and when to give it to somebody else. But he said, when you're ready, the woods will be full of them.

So don't be in a hurry. And boy, that was great advice to me because now the illness was off. I could just rest and let God do what he was going to do. You know, I'm thinking about what everybody's saying and it seems to me like the evangelists and the teachers and the pastors, if they kind of focus only on doing what they're gifted at and aren't examples themselves, of the life to live, that's when I think it goes bad. I would add one thing to that. Their focus should be on the Lord Jesus. Yeah. On Him alone. Yeah. And let Him do the directing. Hey, you know what? Oh, sorry. You don't get to ask any more questions. This isn't a question. This is a statement. I was thinking about your keep looking down. And I thought, why would you look down if Christ is right next to you? Well, the idea is that you're looking at your conditional perspective from a heavenly perspective.

And I have one line to say that the one thing I did also find out is that I would try to share the gospel, that there would be like this one time I did as one of the first times. And this I shared basically the gospel. And this girl accepted Christ just like that. Wow, let's see, I use the roll and draw, bing, bing, bing, bam, she's safe. But I'd try this on someone else and they'd be going, go away. They have to be ready. God has had a zillion people talking to them. They do have to be ready. And you have to know that. That's part of the gift, you know when they're ready.

One of the things I think is neat about the sequence of evangelist, pastor, teacher, is that you get the evangelist the purpose of that in the next verse is that you grow into the image of Christ and you're taken to the point of being a true believer. Without the evangelist, without you hearing the gospel, you don't get to wear the diapers. You don't get to start. Even though it's not always activity within the walls of the church or within the bounds of the normal social circle of the church, that's how it starts.

You have to have that evangelistic Next question, if we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, are we adequately equipped for ministry? Maybe I didn't ask the question right, but what Rideout said, which I thought this was really interesting, he said, when we remember who has endowed us, who dwells in us, and in the Church, the Blessed Spirit of God, we see the reason for this. The Sovereign Administrator, who is the Holy Spirit, is present, in full charge, endowing, sending forth and sustaining his instruments for service. What else do you need? A lot more. What's interesting is that if you understand that the Holy Spirit is the one who has gifted you. Then are you prepared for the ministry?

Yeah, because he's doing it. Yeah, but not unless you have that gift, even though you are filled with the Holy Spirit. We're going to distinguish between filled and indwelt here in a minute. Everybody works indwelt with the Holy Spirit, right? Right. But you're not all filled with him. Oh, okay.

It's sort of like the sad commentary of a fellow that I ran into one time. I'd spent three years in Bible school and upon graduation I said, what are you going to do? And he says, oh, well now I've got to go and get my divinity degree in order to be a pastor. As if he's looking to the world to affirm what the Holy Spirit's already done in him. Now, this wasn't a set up, but he swerved right into the next question. And the next question, what is meant by ordination? And is it proper today? Now I come out of Catholicism, what do I know about ordination?

I went to a boarding Jesuit high school and half of the teachers there were these guys called prefects, is that what they called them? Prefects in the dorm, yeah. And these guys were young men who were studying to be Jesuit priests and they were all smart guys.

We had brothers. We had one brother, he did the laundry. He was the most spiritual guy in school too. He was a neat guy. But these men were recruited into the Jesuit order and then they were put through this process of 12 to 15 years of study to get a couple of degrees and then they were ordained priests and then they became whatever they became, teachers, administrators, whatever they are. It was a system. And I always wondered, because they would always try to recruit young men in high school like us. Gee, don't you think you'd like to be a priest? I know your mother wants you to be one. That's a big quiz. I would really like it.

And I never could figure that out. It seemed to me like if you were going to you know it's 18 years old, enter into what they called a novitiate, there had to be something either weird about you or special. Because you were walking away from the world. At least that's what I thought at the time.

And so to study and to go through all of this processing that they put you through, to end up a priest, well and then you get ordained. What's the problem with ordination? If you read the book you'll know right out get it. I found that very hard to answer. I have several separate things that he said about ordination but all this about ordination and succession and so forth I couldn't get just one There are two aspects here.

One is that the apostles, because of who they were, ordained. They could enter into a town or a group of people, begin a body of believers, and then they would say, well, you three guys are elders, and you three guys are deacons, and you're going to do this, and you're going to do that.

And you see it was Stephen, right? But once the apostles died out, there weren't any more Apostles, right? They were the only guys that had the ability to ordain. But that didn't stop man from picking up on the idea, like the Catholic Church. We don't have an apostle, but we've got to have this Vicar of Christ guy who's the Pope, and he can ordain. And then we'll get some bishops and they can ordain.

And the problem is that it becomes a coerced process And successors are appointed by men and not by the Lord. That's the big question. So where was the pivot point on that change? I think the pivot point was when the Apostle John died. He was the last one. What does it mean that apostolic authority alone can ordain? Only the apostles have the authority to ordain. They were the only ones that could say Randy I ordain you I designate you as an elder. So did Paul do that for Timothy then? No. He didn't. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, he did do it. Yeah, he did. When the church spread through all of that Mediterranean area, that still applied? As long as the apostles were alive.

Now, once they passed on, how did you know there was an elder? How did you know if God picked a man to be an elder? Randy. He looked at what God's word said, what Paul wrote, what qualified an elder, and he said, okay, this matches. Yeah, God raised a man up in the midst of your body of believers. You recognized him as having the qualities in his life and what he did as an elder and all you did was recognize that he was that. But it's the Spirit of God who did the choosing now, not men.

See, here's the thing. Are we going to create a deal around here? We're going to have a board. It's going to be Gary, myself, Randy, and a couple of other guys, and we're going to be the ordination committee. And we're going to ordain Alan to be something. Well, first of all, we better check with the Lord and make sure that he's in on the deal. Because ordination means that we decided, Lord, and now you've got to bless it. Does that mean Alan's teaching next Sunday? Is Alan teaching next Sunday? Alan will be teaching next Sunday.

Tiled by fire. So, rather than letting the Holy Spirit do his job, which is to raise up gifted men and give them to the body, and you recognize them. But I was going to say, what about people themselves? Sometimes they're just totally drawn to do the Lord's work. Oh, there's no question they are. But that's part of the work of the Spirit. Yeah, nobody designates them. It's within them to do God's work. Here's the proper attitude, and it comes from the Apostle Paul back in 1 Corinthians. The proper attitude of a gifted man. You know what it is? That one of you plants, another one of you waters, but it's God who gives the increase. So therefore all of the planters and all of the waterers share the same ideology. You know what it is?

That they're nothing. They're clay pots. They are of no value. It's perfect, because then your ego doesn't get there. You see that? If you recognize that it's God who's doing the work, and he's through you, he's doing some planning, and doing some watering through somebody else, but it's he who gives the increase, then you can't take credit for success, or you can't be down for failure. Because it wasn't up to you. You were involved in it, but the success and the outcome was not up to you.

That's cool. It's perfect. It leaves you free to do what God has called you to do. We only had six this week, but we had twelve. Wow, aren't we great? No, none of that. I think gifted men understand that. They do their job and they look and they watch and they see the Spirit of God doing His work in edifying the body. They know it's not anything that they did. You see that?

It's like the PVC pipe taking credit for the water that goes through it. It doesn't get any credit. It kind of answers Holly's question about her friend. If she's in the right spirit, sharing the gospel of people, if she remains at zero, And God can be watering and doing things that she doesn't even know about. It's like Brandy's friends got saved just by his presence. I got saved by a guy I went to college with. He took me to lunch one day and he's a fellow Jesuit trained guy like me.

He said, I want to tell you about Jesus Christ. I said, I think we were in religion 101 together. I know who he is. He said, no you don't. Let me explain him to you. Well, that's kind of different from what Randy said because it's not like you came to that guy saying, hey, would you tell me more about Jesus? Let me tell you what the Lord did with me. He took another guy that I went to school with who I was having a lot of trouble in my life and I was having lunch with him.

He said, you need to call this other guy up because he's got the answer for you. This guy never came to Christ to this day. But he said that I should go see this other friend and he had the answer for me. That's the spirit of God working, and I've prayed for this other guy for 35 years now, and he's never come to Christ, he has no interest at all. And I keep telling him, I said, you know, I became a believer because of you. So why did he tell you? Why did he tell you about Christ? He wanted you to know Christ, yet he doesn't, so what happened? I don't know what his motivation was.

No one other than, you know, Doyle, you got to clean up your act. Go see this other guy. Or God can use non-believers. God can say, hey, for some reason. And I said to the Lord, why don't you save this guy? He kicked me out of his house a month later because I wouldn't shut up for Christ.

The Holy Spirit, a living divine person, dwells in and presides over the Church of Christ. This is answered with question 11. How do we determine who the Holy Spirit is chosen to minister to? Question 11. I'm reading a paragraph from right out. He says, the Holy Spirit, a living divine person, dwells in and presides over the Church of Christ. He especially inspired apostles for the work of establishing assemblies. Who now is going to claim apostolic authority? Nobody, if you're paying attention.

When we think of his sovereign will, his mighty power, exercise, and selection, calling, equipping, sending forth, sustaining a servant of Christ in his ministry. He's got to do it all. The greater always approves what is done by the lesser, not the other way around. Last question, and Randy's up next week.

Can the spirit not be trusted to maintain the dignity of God's house in which he dwells? No, that is kind of a double negative. It's a double negative, but you understand what I'm asking? Can we trust him to maintain the dignity of the body of Christ.

We don't need to trust each other, we trust him because he's the one that's doing it. It's Christ's body, that we can. It's really important that we do. Because otherwise we're going to get systems and programs and ordinations and all of this nonsense that you see in contemporary Christianity going and it's all so that they don't have to rely on the Spirit of God. He says he believes that unbelief lies at the root of the human arrangement. Not trusting in the spirit to maintain the dignity of God's house. Unbelief is the problem.

The reason the Catholics have ordination is because they don't believe that the spirit of God can run the church the way he wants it. So they are going to step in and help him out. That's what it is. We can't find a pastor for this church so we better align ourselves with a denomination and they'll send us a guy. Because we can't trust the spirit of God to do it. Okay, let's close.

Father, I want to thank you for your spirit. In terms today of gifting men for the edification of of your body, the body of your son the Lord Jesus. We thank you for him and the fact that you are the one who is the driving force in the growth of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray in his precious name. Amen.