You can emphasize your points. You can use humor, as I have attempted. But what you cannot do, I think, is turn it into a sideshow or try to embellish it, make it more than what it is. A lot of Christians want the sensational. Be careful.
Be careful of that. And with this gift, there is no falsehood. It is falsehood free to be in the role of or to exercise the gift of prophecy. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Romans.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick beginning in the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and then he'll continue in Romans chapter 12 on this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. 1 Corinthians 12. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Do all have gifts of healing?
Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? Now it's unfortunate that he had to say this to Christians who were so envious of one another they wanted all the gifts.
And he had to straighten them out. 1 Corinthians 12, 7. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all, for the benefit of all. Gotta watch how you use the word prophet amongst Christians, phonetically. What kind of prophet are you talking about?
Bonus or incredible dude. So verse 5 now. So we, being many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. Well, since all born-again believers are members of Christ, churches are to be more fellowships than memberships. I know, I'm not picking at that. A lot of churches, you know, you gotta, you know, pass tests to become a member.
And I'm not, that's the way they do it. We believe that you're a member when you believe in Christ. That you're part of the body and that's that. So members of Christ, 1 Corinthians 6, 15. Members of his body, Ephesians 5, 30. And members of one another. Guess where that one is? Right here in verse 5.
Christ, Christian, and church, hopefully in rhythm. And when they're not, when they're not working well together, guess who is going to exploit that? The devil. The, you know, what's the first thing if someone would say, well, I'm moving away and I'm looking for a good church. Well, stay here then.
No. What's the first thing? How they treat the Word of God. That's not the only thing. But without that one, it's not a church. It's a group, a crowd, a mob, whatever. But it's not a church. What makes church that the word church comes from? Lord. Curios. The lordship of Jesus Christ.
Words mean something. Pulpit. The word church, it cringes when I hear people say it's a campus. It ain't a campus. It should not ever be a campus.
A campus is where you go to hear some professor lecture to you. A church is where the people of God assemble together to learn how to fight better together and individually. And you say, that's old school.
Yes, you got that right. It's connected to the words that we get from our scripture. And it should mean something. You know, some people like to say the minister is here, referring to the pastor. But all Christians are supposed to be ministers. Every single one of us are, the word, a servant. There we are, we are to be zealous servants. Well, anyway, coming back to this, verse six now. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. If prophesy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith. Well, the word there for gifts is where we get our English word, charisma.
And actually, that's what it is in the Greek. Christian strong points. And they're given by God. But they're developed through us. God can gift you and will gift. But if you don't use it, it won't get developed.
It will wither. And it gets developed through serving. First Corinthians 12, 11, but one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as he wills. That's what makes him king and Lord. That we are subject to his will, his dictates.
We must identify them and develop them, otherwise they wither. And after a while, you say, well, this is who I am and this is what I'm going to work. I was telling David yesterday, you know, I got to work on my teddy-baredness. And he pretty much says too late.
I didn't argue because he was driving. Anyway, there's always room to try to do better, to adjust, to critique yourself without hating yourself or puffing yourself up, to find the balance, what Christ is after, what is it that you want. And here he mentions prophecy, speaking forth inspired truth. That is the short definition for prophecy. A prophet is one to whom God has spoken to before they speak. So Elijah the prophet would not have much to say until God gave him something. That is supposed to be Christianity at work.
We call it being led by the Spirit, being fed by the Spirit, built up in the Spirit. Even repeating inspired truth falls under the category of prophecy. Preaching the Word of God is a form of prophecy. It's not all speaking forth versus foretelling.
That's the future. Telling the future. We can't all run around saying, oh, this is what's going to happen tomorrow.
Well, I think you get the point. I don't have to stay on that anymore. We need more forth tellers than foretellers. We do not need new revelations. We need fresh experiences in the existing revelations. Don't get bored with them. When you feel yourself being bored with the Scripture, that might be an indication that you're very knowledgeable of the Scripture. And now you've got to take it to the next level. And to get to that next level, you're going to have to refresh your dependency on the Holy Spirit because you can't do it by yourself. That's been my experience. You know, to know a section of Scripture, you know, let's just say John 3.16.
That could get boring if you know it too well, right? Unless you remain spiritual and understand the depth of what's being said. God loved sinners and acted upon that love, even though he didn't have to do anything about it.
And I'm one of those people. And God loves me. And that's hard to do when you feel you're being bypassed by God.
You feel that others are being promoted and you're being left behind. We have a song, pass me not, O gentle Savior. When on others thou what calling, do not pass me by.
Well, we don't want to be passed by. But in those times of development, you may feel unloved by God. It's not true. He loves you very much, all the time. If you are aware of God's love, one thing I've noticed is that it creates its own energy. There's a courage that comes out of that.
It's called blessed assurance and is hated so much by hell that they invest a lot of energy keeping you hating yourself or not feeling loved or putting too much attention onto yourself and not enough on Christ. Well, Christians who refuse false religions or not refuse, refute, that's the word I want. Christians who refute false religions, the cults, things like that, they're acting in the office of a prophet. Two of my favorites are Dave Hunt and A.W.
Tozier. Those men just had insight that a lot of believers don't have. Not just insight, they were able to articulate what God had given them. Insights that when you read it, you say, why didn't I think of that? Well, because God didn't give it to you, but he gave it to them.
Instead of competing with them, embrace it, learn from it, memorize what you can, apply it. It takes a certain kind of Christian to be patient with the false religions of the world. I mean, that's all garbage.
I'm not wasting my time reading that stuff. Well, I don't have to deal too much in those environments, but if I lived in an area where there were a lot of Muslims, and make no mistake, there's nothing peaceful about Islam, absolutely nothing from top to bottom. It's in their Bibles, their version, their books, their Hadith and their Quran, it's in there. Whereas the Christians, we're commanded to love and to forgive.
The contrast is stark and it's irreconcilable. And any time you, oh, this is peaceful, you're being set up. And their goal is to take over the world. You wait till the Mahdi gets here. He's going to take over everybody.
He's going to force you to get a little upset at this. But if I lived in these areas, because they're getting away, because Europe is so incredibly dumb with how they do business, they're waking up now, but it might be too late. If I lived in these places, then I would study up on those materials a little bit more, because I would have to engage them. But my ministry is to preach the word, to teach the Bible. And that's what I focus on.
What you and the Holy Spirit do with that after that is up to you. There might be times you hear something and you say, well, I don't agree with that. And you might, well, you might be right if you heard somebody else, if you did it with somebody else, but not with me. But I mean, that's how, that's how we grow. We hear things and we say, no, that's a peer review in the pew. We pastors try to not let that happen. Why does the pastor study?
So that he can be right, he can be ready, and he can bring glory to the Lord. And it hurts when someone corrects you. I don't mean if you misspeak.
You meant to say Noah, but you said Moses. That happens. That's just public speaking. But if you get a point wrong and someone points it out, it, it stays with you for two, three hundred years. Anyway, inspired truth.
It can carry emphasis, but not theatrics. If you have the gift of prophecy, speaking forth the word of God is operating in you. You can make your, you can emphasize your points. You can use humor, as I have attempted. But what you cannot do, I think, is turn it into a sideshow or try to embellish it and make it more than what it is. A lot of Christians want the sensational. Be careful.
Be careful of that. And with this gift, there is no falsehood. It is falsehood free to be in the role of, or to exercise the gift of prophecy. Having then gifts differing.
Well, like various tradesmen on any job site, electricians, glazers, steam fitters, you get a whole range of different tradesmen. Well, the church should have the same. First Peter 4.10, as each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
Whoa, that was a mouthful there. He's saying, use it, minister it, serve it. But then he says, as stewards of God. Well, what is a steward?
A manager of someone else's property. Well, that's profound all by itself. God has invested in me.
Whatever he's given to me belongs to him, whether it's cash or abilities, insight, whatever, it's all his because he could take them away very, very quickly or just not give them. According to the grace that is given to us. Well, this grace, we don't parade or show it off, but we do look for opportunity to bless, be a blessing through these things. Why do some people think, some Christians, that other Christians want to hear them speak in tongues? There are some of them out there. They can't wait to show you the high speaking tongues.
And for what? I think they don't understand why these things are given and that they could better serve the body in other ways than drawing attention to themselves. It's not, it's very easy to get tripped up anywhere. And it is also very important to know that and guard against it. And most of you probably are honest enough with yourselves to know where your weak points are.
Hopefully, you also know where your strong points are. And then you try to work one and starve the other. And that's how things get done.
A lot of people do it without even thinking about it. They just, their strong points are dominant and their weaknesses and shortcomings, they try to let those things die off. Anyway, verse 7, or ministry, let us use it in our ministering, he who teaches in teaching. So he's going to talk about ministering, the word ministry there, diaconia, from where we get our word deacon. And it's a servant, that's what it is. In a contrast, there are several Greek words in the New Testament for servant. And they're translated in various ways, oarsman, bondservant, servant, minister.
But the two dominant ones are diaconos, or diaconia here, and doulos. Now doulos is slave. And we put, well the translators put bondservant on it, tying it into the Old Testament willing slave, a slave that's willing to be one.
And it's a fair, it's a fair move on the translators part. But this one here is just a willing servant. You could say a hired servant, or one that's a volunteer servant.
That would probably be closer to the use of the word. So between prophecy and teaching, Paul has placed serving. A church needs God to work in the heart of people to serve, always.
There's attrition, most churches just always need servants. We have always needed children's workers, all the time. We try not to, you know, put it out there too much, we don't want to seem like we're begging for workers, we don't want to do that, it's up to the Holy Spirit to raise up workers. But way back, way back when we met in Battlefield Elementary, my wife did all the children's work, no one ever asked to help. When I see their kids going off, I'm like, see ya, I'm on a break right now, I'm going to get some sleep. So when we got these pews, we asked could we put tasers in the seats to little cattle prods, and they weren't into that.
Yeah, but if you were up here saying it, it'd be funny to you. Alright, coming back to this, back to ministry, the church needs workers of all types. There's some churches that need pastors, they're looking for pastors, they can't find a pastor.
Maybe it's their fault, maybe not. But servants are those, here's, what's outstanding about a servant? They get it done. That's what a servant is. They get the job done without stripping their environment of all the good things, without negatively impacting their sphere of ministry.
The servant is the one that doesn't mind being the servant. Now, of course, people, you know, some folks, their ideas, you know, they got ideas, and that's fine, but when your ideas are not accepted, do you pout? Do you want to pack up your Tonka toys and go home? Or are you going to stand your post and get it done? Why not?
Why not just serve? Servants are those, again, who they get it done. Once a month, well, often we get comments, the floors are so nice and shiny here. Yeah, they polish themselves.
We found, we discovered this neat little app. Of course they don't. It takes offering money to pay the company to come in and buff the floors. We used to do it ourselves, that didn't work well. But who gets the furniture out of the way and who puts it back? Servants who get it done. Not only those servants, but the wives that don't fuss about sharing their time.
Oh, you're going out to the church again? I mean, you can abuse that, of course, and we don't want that. You've got to find that balance. Then there are those servants that drive other people to medical. We thought I was going to say drive crazy. That too.
I'd rather walk, but you can't. Anyway, there are those servants that do things like that. They'll drive people to medical appointments or other. They get things done. Sometimes under the authority of the church, sometimes under the authority of Christ. Independent of the church.
We need them all. This gift is frailty free. If you're going to be a servant, don't have a thin skin or a proverbial glass jaw.
You've got to be tough a little bit and just take some hits. He who teaches in teaching, well those who can grasp the material, read materials without falling asleep in the first two minutes regularly, and distill the information that they've put together. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 3, for I delivered to you first of all that which I also received. Now he's going to teach on the communion, but he's teaching. A lot of Christians like to get information about the Lord and the scriptures, but they all can't teach. Some are too impatient to teach. Some are not available. Incidentally, when it comes to serving, your availability may be more important than your ability. What uses it if you're really good at something or capable, but you're just never available. That's no help.
What does that do to the schedule and throws off other people when you don't show up and things like that. So be mindful of those things, the basic decencies. All the apostles were teachers, and this has continued. Jesus said, go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. Remember, the New Testament has commandments.
Don't think, oh, we're under grace. There are many commandments in the New Testament. Proper teaching would help the first Christians understand their Old Testament and the life of Christ in connection with each other, especially when the Gentiles started coming into the church. The teachers had to help them understand the connection between Jesus Christ and King David, the promises to Abraham, the ministry of Moses.
You need the teachers, and we still need them. Again, if you're new to Christianity, you have a lot to learn. First thing you should learn is to seek humility, to be an empty vessel, to let the Lord pour into you. I wrote a book on humility, not even a page. You can't write a book on humility, and you can't really write one on encouragement. Teaching would be difficult. Some can do it, and it's more of not, well, this is how it's done.
It's more like, well, this is what I've discovered. Warren Wiersbe, a pastor, he's very old now, I think he's still around, prolific writer, one of those people that should write books. One of the reasons why he should write books is he could probably read two or three in a week very easily.
But he had a series, Walking with the Giants, Living with the Giants, I don't remember. Mainly, I think, is pastoral material, but others would benefit. And in that series, he would capture sermons from many of the churches of decades and centuries ago, and he'd share some of the materials that he used as a pastor, and that's teaching.
And that's writing a book for teachers without teaching how to teach. I'm talking about in the church, because these gifts do not cross over easily into the world. For instance, when we get to encouragement, you cannot encourage an unbeliever with the same authority that comes with encouraging a believer.
There is a difference. You go into a workplace, it might be we rebuke people, hope they get fired. But in the church, encouragement is a powerful tool. When used properly, false encouragements are kind of annoying and painful. So again, dependency upon the Lord. Just because you have a good idea and you want to lift up the other guy's spirits doesn't give you the right to go in there and say things you shouldn't be saying. We'll come back to encouragement in a little while.
And see, this is what I mean by painful things. Some Christians are just impetuous. They want to tell you they're led by the Holy Spirit, but they're just impetuous. And it would be better if we just steadied ourselves, all of us.
I'm not singling out anyone. Well, the gift of teaching should be show-off free. My brethren, let not many of you become teachers knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. James 3, verse 1. There's an encouragement. You better get it right, Pastor, or else. Verse 8. He who exhorts in exhortation. He who gives with liberality. He who leads with diligence. He who sows mercy with cheerfulness. Some again are genuinely encouraging.
They're not cheerleaders. They're wise. And their wisdom is in recognizing what God is working in them and the timing of it. Timing is critical to your gift. What use is it if God parts the Red Sea the day after the Egyptians were chasing the Jews? Timing is critical. And we don't know.
We can't control that. First Chronicles 12, sons of Vishkar, one of the tribes of the Jews, who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again, or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio. So make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans, here on Cross-Reference Radio.
