Peter said to Ananias, He didn't just say you withheld the money, the gift of knowledge, he also said, Satan has filled your heart. He could have just said, Well, you're just a crook, you're just dishonest. No, he took it to the spiritual realm. Discernment is a gift. That smells the sulfur when nobody else smells it yet.
It is a great benefit. And unfortunately, many people who have nothing like it claim they have it. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastorik is currently teaching through a topical series.
Please stay tuned 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. Today, Pastor Rick will continue teaching through his message called Spiritual Gifts. In the 1 Kings 14, 5, there's the prophet Ahijah. He's losing his eyesight. He's old, and his eyes are failing him.
And Jeroboam the king sends his wife to the prophet to find out if their sick child is going to live. And the prophet Ahijah Says the Lord had said to Ahijah, Here is the wife of Jeroboam coming to ask you something about her son, for he is sick.
Well, he couldn't see and recognize God as giving him information. That's one example, there are many of them. But that's a gift of knowledge. In operation in the Old Testament, and I mentioned. Peter in the New.
The gift of faith.
Now faith, saving faith, is not a gift. It is the outcome of a response to an invitation by Christ. Which reform theology recoils. You don't have free will. In the free will they have decided that.
Anyway. This is serving faith. When Peter In the midst of a storm, Peter could hear the voice of the Lord when he said, If it is you, tell me to come out to you. He could hear him. What a lesson for life.
To be in a storm in life and hear the voice of the Lord. This is serving faith. He wants to walk on the water too. He wants anything he can get from Christ. to give him an advantage over this life.
That's a good thing. God-given trust. In God's promises. In critical moments. The gift of faith.
You can't possess this. You're going to have it in one critical episode in your life. and then scramble to find it. 10 years later, going through another Critical moment. Faith helps us do the impossible.
And Hebrews 11 writes all about it. Thomas Watson Said a weak faith can lay hold of a strong Christ. And of course, Peter, so long as he had his eyes on Christ, we know the lesson. He walked on the water, he walked on it. If he took two steps, he did it.
You took one step. and didn't sink. But he took his eyes off of Christ. And so, what a lesson for serving the Lord. You want to serve the Lord.
When some catastrophe has come your way, you got to keep your eyes on him. But Peter looked at the sea. The gift of prophecy.
Now I covered this. We tend to think that prophecy is always telling the future, foretelling. It's not. That's part of it. It is forth telling.
It can include singing songs. It could include reciting scripture. It could include praising the Lord. And if Spiritual language in agreement with Scripture is a form of prophecy. And that's why they said about King Saul, is Saul amongst the prophets?
He's not the only one. This one comes up in Romans 12 also in 1 Corinthians 12. You find it there.
So looking at 1 Corinthians 14, but he who prophesies, speaks, listen to this, edification, exhortation, and comfort to men. I didn't have to tell the future. The future could be dire. That wouldn't be edifying. How would you do that?
Well, a word in season, a scripture verse that God put on your heart.
Some people don't know when to stop talking. They want to help. and they won't stop talking and they end up talking in Jesus' name and is not Jesus. Others can have a word in season. You know, God just put this on my heart.
I don't, you know, I'm just gonna share it with you. You brought it up. And they say it, and the listener goes, I confirm that. That's right. That is the Lord.
I've been asking the Lord about this. And you just said it to me. I have witnessed that I've been part of those kind of things even before becoming a pastor.
So Always according to the Scripture. All of these gifts, every single one of them, is according to the Scripture. We do nothing contrary to the Scripture. unless it is contrary to God. That's the consequence.
Acts 19.6 When Paul laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. And that prophesying is praising God. They didn't have any much. They had some Old Testament. They could have been quoting scripture.
The Bible leaves it out because it's a broad area. There are 10 different people there, just for example. They might not all be praising.
Some might be quoting scripture, some might be praising, but there's this movement of the Holy Spirit. There's some are speaking in tongues. There could have even been interpretation of tongues by these new believers. I knew an assistant pastor in New York who's also the music leader. I mean, he's just great.
played the piano, just great at teaching songs. Anyway, He said when he got baptized He knew very little about Christianity. When he came out of the water, he was speaking in tongues. He never heard of tongues.
Now I can say you're lying. to suit my theology. Or I can say, well, that's a credible witness. I'd rather do it that way. They walk around suspicious and and paranoid of any gift that makes me uncomfortable.
Because of my I'll get back. We'll get to that when if we get to Cessationist. You can't even say it. It's cease like ceasing cationists. It's hard for me to say that without spitting.
Let's everybody move a little closer. Discernment of spirits.
Well, this is distinguishing between the true and the false spiritually. Not necessarily, that guy's a con artist. If you live around him long enough, if you could pick him out without the spirit pointing, you could point him out to the spirit, too. Don't you see that with me? That's a little humor there.
But anyway. This is being able to say This is from hell what's happening here. and have proof. You may not have the proof immediately because if you have that gift, You're going to get a lot of people in the church. Rebuking you, and then it comes true.
But they won't tend to come back and say, I should have listened. Paul He saw that Elimus was filled with Satan. Peter said to Ananias, He didn't just say you withheld the money, the gift of knowledge, he also said, Satan has filled your heart. He could have just said, Well, you're just a crook. You're just dishonest.
No, he took it to the spiritual realm. Discernment is a gift. That smells the sulfur when nobody else smells it yet. It is a great benefit. And unfortunately, many people who have nothing like it claim they have it.
And they will go to a visceral church that is emotional, not spiritually sound, and they will claim, I have the gift of discernment. If you did, you wouldn't go to that church. Healing is another one. The ability to restore health. Without Medicine.
I believe if there are a medicine that can help me, if I feel a headache coming on, I am going for the Tylenol. And I'll pray, Lord, make this Tylenol work quick, please. I tr when I first became a Christian, I tried to fight off a headache. in the spirit. And I lost.
I learned a valuable lesson. Don't tempt the Lord. You know, if I'm thirsty, but I'm not going to drink water. The Lord's gonna solve my thirst. No, He's not.
She's not going to do it like that. If there's water there, drink it.
Well This one A reminder: the believer does not use God's power. God's power uses the believer. Why should God heal people? Why? And if you look at it from heaven's perspective, his people, when they get sick, if it's terminal, We're praying to keep them here.
God, I'm trying to get him up here There's more pain. No more this, no more that. You're down there, Lord, heal them. I'm making light of it somewhat, but the truth within that is this. Why should God heal people?
Well, if you look at the life of Christ and the apostles, they were healing people because it had something to do with healing souls. With salvation. It wasn't just, well, all right. You know, I got nothing else to do and I've got this gift. clanging around everywhere I walk.
This is not a gift you possess.
Now, when Paul wrote this. The Apostles Some of them that we know of. We're exercising these gifts from time to time, but not all the time. Paul couldn't heal Erastus. Paul could not.
fix his eyes. We believe his eyes remain troubled. Until He went home to the Lord. He said, I bear in my body the marks of Christ.
Well, you think they didn't come without aches also? You didn't think on cloudy days some of his joints didn't hurt from the stonings and beatings that he received?
So it's not a possessive thing. 1 Corinthians 12, 11. But one of the same Spirit works all these things, distributing each one individually.
Now, here comes. As he wills. Twice that I can c recall in my pastorate. And for both for little girls that were sick in the hospital and weren't supposed to pull through, at least one of them that I recall. The other one I don't recall, but someone reminded me about two months ago.
Or maybe a little bit longer than that. But recently, someone said, Yeah, Pastor Rick prayed for my daughter, and she got healed. I have no recollection of that. I have a recollection of the people, but Don't come up to me asking if you got, hey, I got this toothache. Can you work on this one?
Yeah. Turn to the left. Anyway. And the other one, again, you know, just prayed for the child and the Lord. And I can't tell you, oh, I felt my heart.
I felt the fact I didn't feel anything but pastoral duty. That's what I felt. The Lord is who we go to. This is my duty. I believe He can.
I don't know if He will. And but I'm going to approach it. just in the humility of the spirit that I can muster up. and the child pulled through.
So, I do believe in the operation of the gift of healing, but not possessive. Because if I had if I could possess that gift, I wouldn't be here right now. I'd be going I'd hit all the first of children wards. Then I'd work my way through.
So, you see the fallacy attached to the gift of healing if you think it's something you can just turn on and turn off when the Spirit moves you. God possesses it.
Now I think it's collective.
So, if three people lay their hands on you and pray about something and you do get healed, because I believe it does happen. Who gets the credit?
Well, I don't know. They all three of them all can't get her, can they?
Sort of like a reverse firing squad. You know, in a firing squad, they give one of the guys the blank, usually. in more civilized armies.
So no one knows for sure if they fired a fatal shot. And so now we have prayer chains, we have Christians. You know, how many people go to hospitals, Christians, and they do experience healing? And they've got like 50 people around the country praying for them.
So again It's never possessive. It's I believe it's more collective. 2 Chronicles 16.12 gives us a look at A godly king who got tired of trusting God, Aesa became diseased in his feet. And his malady was severe. Yet in his disease he did not seek Yahweh.
But the physicians I think it would be fine if he sought the physicians, if he saw Yahweh first. And Christians, I don't know of a Christian that when they are facing something serious, they're praying, they're asking people for prayer, they're putting things in the prayer box in the back, they're coming up to have prayer on the side. God's people. They go to God. when the pressure is on.
Now, of course, we go to God also when the pressure is not on. These kind of gifts that are relatively dormant would work well in environments where Christ has not been preached. That's sort of what we see in the New Testament. And even the early reformers like Luther even John Calvin. And John Owen God can use any of the gifts as he sees need.
believe that. With that, we have this new generation, though, of Calvinists? They want to take that from you. They want to say that's a signed gift and it no longer is an operation. That's their hypothesis.
And when they're interviewed, they look very convincing and they give all these arguments. Let me just give you one. That maybe I've been guilty. No, not me. I'm not going to confess to you right now.
But here's one. We only there are three periods of miracles. in the Bible. I'm not saying there is. This is what they're saying.
The days of Moses and Joshua The days of Elijah and Elisha In the days of Jesus and the Apostles.
Well, what about Genesis? I think, Abraham, Abraham, do your child no harm. I think it's pretty miraculous. To have a ram in the thicket at that moment I think that when Samson's parents saw a Christophany, that's pretty miraculous.
So they're wrong. And yet, they're using their clout very smugly. I'm not leaving that part out because they don't. They come off that way to me. And you should agree with me.
They use these kind of arguments. And Christians listen to this and say, wow, that's deep. is deeply wrong. Like the one I mentioned about Paul, well, you know, after Corinthians was written, they were really waiting for the canon of Scripture to be complete, and we didn't need these miracles anymore. Show me where it says that.
It doesn't. You can't. It's a hypothesis that you are presenting as doctrine.
Well, coming back to miracles. which is pretty much under healing, performing Supernatural acts that defy natural laws. Do you know there are people that have been in war zones, Christians in war zones, whether they're troops, whether they're military or civilian? They've experienced miracles. They've experienced healing miracles.
Calling on the name of the Lord. And you're not going to take that from them with your theology. The gifts of the Spirit. Are not a swift army Gift. In for the pocket.
What you need? I've got just that. And you pull out your little swift miracle knife, and you've got a fork on it, you've got a saw, you've got. Yeah. I would like a safe cracking device put on mine.
Paul healed on Malta, as I mentioned. He healed almost the whole island. Not everybody, but a lot of them. And this is long after he wrote the Corinthian letter. But he couldn't heal his beloved Erasus.
who he left behind sick, Because it's not his gift. Apostleship is another one.
Well, this has to do with leading being a leader Under authority. Both times, there are two types of apostles in the Bible. There are apostles of Jesus Christ. Under his direct authority, his direct appointment, You know, Timothy cannot say, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. Barnabas could not say, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ.
At best they were apostles of the church, but who were servants of Jesus Christ. Paul could say it. Peter could say it, John could say it.
So, the two types: you have an apostle of Jesus Christ. Which are the apostles? Who had the authority of the church? They established. New Testament Christianity for them.
That's how Jesus set it up. And then you have people that the church That was established by the apostles, sent out. to establish more churches. Those were apostles. Or sent on any mission for the church.
So this one has to do With, as I mentioned, Establishing churches under divine authority. Paul and Barnabas, Acts chapter 13, separate now for me, Paul and Barnabas. And they sent them out from Antioch, and they went into the regions of Galatia and they established churches, and we got the Galatian letter out of that and other things. But in that case, Paul was both an apostle of Jesus Christ and an apostle of the church. Barnabas was just an apostle of the church.
That's not an insult, it's just a fact. And if you understand these things, you can see how things are going, you know, what you know, come out with good doctrine. The next one is the gift of teaching.
Well, this is of course instructing others in spiritual truth.
Now, there are gifted teachers of the world, and maybe mathematics or science or whatever it is. They just are. Talented teacher. Gifted has to do with the Holy Spirit. has to do directly with God.
This one Shows up not only in Romans 12, but also Ephesians 4. He Himself has given some to be apostles. prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. For the work of ministry, in the edification of the body of Christ. There are a lot of Good.
teachers and there are a lot of carnal ones. And Christ has not always stopped the carnal ones. He continues to use them to teach and hopefully. Develop them.
Some can teach, but they can't pastor. And that's a problem because you get a lot of men that say, I can teach and I want to be a pastor. And they get into the pulpit and they find out there's more to being a pastor. That being in the pulpit is the outcome of everything else that happened before you got into the pulpit. That you have to find that people are on your heart and on your mind and different with them when they're going through a struggle and you have to confront them.
Everything, the people are on your heart and you're on your mind. There's no getting away from that. And if you're not built for that, Then you shouldn't do it. And I'll circle back to that because the Bible makes it clear this one. is different from all of them.
James 3:1 makes that very clear.
Some can teach in the children's ministry. Spiritual truths. God's given that to the church.
Some are know-it-alls and they can't teach.
Some say they're teachers and they're drawing people away from churches so they can come listen to them teach. That's a big, those are Absalom's. The cessationists, they won't let this one go, though. We're teachers.
Next one is helps. I don't need to stay on some of these. I'm trying to just touch them briefly. The Helps and Service Ministry. assisting others in practical needs.
In the spirit. Not in the flesh.
Some They help others out of a guilty conscience.
Some help others because of their good upbringing. It's a decent thing to do.
Some help out of peer pressure.
Well, everybody else was doing, I gotta do it now. That's awful when that happens. Then there are those who do it out of their love for the Lord. It's almost, it just fits, it's just they're there. And they help.
And they do it well. It's like the good soil in the parable. That's them. and they do not walk around with a placard. or a sandwich board I just helped everybody.
They know who to help. They know not. to help. Who not to help? Because the Spirit speaks to them.
Now, again, the cessation is: God doesn't speak to you. That's blasphemy.
Sola scriptura. The scan is closed.
Now I'm saying, we're not writing new scripture when we say God speaks to us. He speaks to us according to the Scriptures. As Jesus said, he who believes in me, as the scriptures have said, out of his heart will flow living water. Why can't that water also be the voice of the Lord? That still small voice Well You know, if you don't believe it, then you don't get it.
That doesn't give you the right to criticize it if it's in the scripture.
So we come now to administration. Organization Within the body, Wisdom What makes this kind of gift special is that it shines amongst volunteers. You know, there are bookkeepers all over the place that go to church. But when you get one that knows their place, So the bookkeepers get to see the books. They get to see what's spent.
A gifted bookkeeper doesn't have a problem with, I can't believe you spent that on hair products for the pastor. They don't say that. It's not their job. They know what they're supposed to do. They reconcile their numbers.
They pass that information on? And they have served the Lord. If the pastor is up to no good, God will get him.
Now, if there's something that's blatant and desolate and of course they're going to blow the whistle. It's what makes them gifted also. And so, this gift magnifies their ability when used in the church, in contrast to just being a bookkeeper out in the world. They come into the church. This is for God.
There's a whole nother thing going on there. They don't put their two cents in. If their gift is administration. And you can have. In a bigger church, you might have it in other areas, not just the offerings in the tithes section of the church.
There may be other departments of the church that require administration. Maybe it's inventory for a chapel store. Or something like that. Evangelism is next. Sharing the gospel.
Effectively.
Now Some are disqualified. Because of ignorance of the scriptures. If we're trying to get it right. Just blurting out the gospel.
Well, what happened in Philippi? When the girl went before Paul and Silas. These are the apostles that bring us the way of salvation. What did Paul do? He cast a demon out of her.
It's not enough to echo the scripture. These, all Christians want to reach the lost, but there's a difference between preaching and witnessing. The evangelists can preach it. D.L. Moody or Billy Graham.
Look, you might not like a lot of things Billy Graham did. outside the pulpit. Maybe, you know, meeting with certain heads of state and stuff like that. But when he stepped into that pulpit and he talked about Jesus Christ, you're not going to find a better preacher. creature.
of the gospel with those results. I could preach a sermon of Billy Graham to unbelievers at a funeral and nobody will come forward. An evangelist, a teacher can come up and just just say five words, they get ten people come up. Give their lives to the Lord. I don't get it.
I've seen this happen in Greg Laurie and men, Greg Laurie, Ral Rees, I've seen them. give evangelistic messages that just people come to Christ. Thanks for tuning in today to Cross Reference Radio, where Pastor Rick has some answers for various questions that have been asked. We can't fully express how grateful we are that you've been with us today. But if you're ever looking for more teaching and content from us, you're welcome to subscribe to our podcast.
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