So often we slip into being unkind and unloving because it's almost like we get into this religious thing.
I've got to point out what's wrong with that person. Maybe even what you're saying is true, but the Bible says to speak the truth in love. And if you can't speak the truth in love, don't speak the truth. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David Magee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. As a believer, we should let love be our highest goal, our greatest quest, if you will. Today, Pastor David helps prepare us for that adventure in love as he continues in his teaching from 1 Corinthians chapter 14. Before we join Pastor David, we want to let you know about an outreach opportunity that could bring hope to countless prisoners. This month, Cross the Bridge is teaming with men and women like yourself in order to provide Pastor David's devotional book, Cross the Bridge Every Day, to inmates. When you call today and help support the ministry with a gift of $25 or more, we'll send you a book and also provide one to a prisoner in need. To take part in this important outreach, call 877-458-5508.
That's 877-458-5508 or go online to crossthebridge.com. Now here's David Magee with part two of his teaching, Love the Great Quest. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 14, and the title of this message today is Love the Great Quest.
Love the Great Quest. 1 Corinthians chapter 14 says, Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. So, we're talking about, you know, coming out 13, faith, hope, love, desiring spiritual gifts, and prophesying. And let's understand, because I think the rub we hit sometimes as Christians, followers of Jesus, we think, well, you know, I want to be loving, but I really think I should emphasize being righteous, like the two are at odds. The two are not at odds.
They're not at odds. And we're supposed to be more like Jesus in what we do and what we say and becoming more righteous, but let's remember Jesus, who we say we follow, said, look, you can wrap up all the law in this. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Now, either Jesus was way off the mark when he said that, or he really is summarizing for our benefit to help us understand what we're supposed to be doing.
Obviously, I believe he was summarizing, helping us. And when we talk about our righteousness, here's the thing. How are you made righteous? How am I made righteous? By what we do?
No. We're made righteous only one way, through him. I am the righteousness of Christ.
If you ask Jesus to forgive you, you are the righteousness of Christ. There's your righteousness. Well, how about your love?
Ooh. Love is a fruit of the Spirit. That's something that we need to manifest. That's something that we need to choose.
We need to decide. So we ask ourselves, am I righteous? Well, yeah, we're made righteous through Christ. The question is, am I loving? And we can't say, well, yeah, I'm loving because God loved me and therefore... No, no, no. Your love is worked out in a daily fashion. Again, this verse in the Amplified says, Eagerly pursue and seek to acquire this love. Those are strong words. Make it your aim, your great quest.
I love that. That's why it's the title. Love, the great quest. And earnestly desire and cultivate the spiritual endowments, the gifts, especially that you may prophesy, interpret the divine will and purpose in inspired preaching and teaching. So let's talk about this prophecy word. And a lot of times when we talk about prophecy, we think in terms of predicting future events. And that is one application of prophecy. But if you read the Old Testament prophets, it's not a large percentage of what they did or what they said.
Sometimes they did predict future events. But more than that, prophecy is speaking to people on behalf of God. You're speaking to people saying, look, this is what the Lord has said. This is what the Lord has told me to share with you or impressed on me to share with you. I believe in the gifts of prophecy. I believe the teaching that we have on Sunday morning is a manifestation of the gift of prophecy. I believe that God has gifted me, God has anointed me to speak to you on his behalf. That's prophecy. It's the gift of prophecy. And I believe that according to my calling, I am to see this gift manifested in other people. I want to teach you, I want to share with you how you can speak to other people on behalf of God. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you're anointed or called to be a senior pastor, but we're all called to speak to people on behalf of God. Again, that doesn't mean that you're called to predict events, but it means that, you know, there's an aspect when you're witnessing, when you're sharing your faith, when you're sharing the plan of salvation, there is an aspect of the gift of prophecy in that. Now, I'm not neglecting, I'm not saying that God will never use you in a predictive fashion or won't use me in a predictive fashion, because he will. I want to open up the definition of prophecy.
And one of the things that you see, and there's an interesting chapter that's talking about prophecy and this sort of thing. Moses, when they went through the desert, his father-in-law comes in, and his father-in-law watches, basically, you know, people lining up to speak to Moses all day long, asking him questions. And in Exodus chapter 18, verse 15, his father-in-law is asking, and you can read the whole chapter to give you some great insight, but his father-in-law says, what are you doing? And Moses said to his father-in-law, because the people come to inquire of, come to me to inquire of God. And then two verses later, Exodus chapter 18, verse 17, so Moses' father-in-law said to him, the thing that you do is not good. See, if you'd have been sitting there watching, well, Moses is meeting with the people, what he's doing, that's good. His father-in-law's under the unction, the empowerment of the Spirit says, no, what you're doing is not good.
Let's understand something, folks. Early on, you know, we, in the house, after, at the, for six months, nobody came, it was my wife and three kids and a couple stray visitors who wandered in because they smelled food cooking or something, I don't know, but then after a year, we had about 15 people, and then we moved out, and that first year we moved out, the church started growing pretty rapidly. And one thing I figured out very quickly is, you know, I need God's help in raising up leadership to help me lead these people.
I can't do it by myself. Now, at that time, I was the guy who answered the phones, who cleaned the church, who, you know, my Sunday got to be interesting. I would do, I would lead worship and then do the teaching, and then, you know, it got to be three Sunday morning services.
I would grab a quick bite. Then I would do, I led the youth group at four o'clock, and then I had a six o'clock teaching on Sunday nights about, you know, what we believed called equipping the saints. And then I fell into a coma. And, you know, during that season, God was using me to cast the vision to other men, other women, other families that we could run with it. Why?
Because it was quickly getting beyond what I was able to handle and accomplish. This is part of growing up as a church, gang. If we, as a fellowship, I'm the only one that God speaks to here, we're in trouble. Now, I don't pretend to think that, but sometimes we can slip in, oh, I need Pastor David to pray for me. When there's another elder or another pastor standing in front of you wanting to pray for you. You know, or sometimes people say, well, why aren't you more available on Sunday? And I talked about worship before.
Sometimes I got stuff that I'm doing the night after the service. And the reality is I can't meet the physical and the spiritual demands of everybody that is here. And to be blunt and honest, it's unfair to require that of me. It'll crush me.
I won't be able to spend any time with my wife and kids. And that whole thing will be a train wreck. And then, I mean, is that what people really want? So, this is going on. And Moses finally says, this is not good.
So, what's the answer? Exodus chapter 18, verse 17, 18. So, Moses' father-in-law said to him, the thing that you do is not good.
Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear themselves out, for this thing is too much for you. You're not able to perform it by yourself. And so, there's a model here of delegation. And then, a few verses later, Exodus chapter 18, verse 22, it says they should always be available to solve the people's common disputes, but have them bring the major cases to you. Let the leaders, the delegated leaders, decide the smaller matters themselves.
They will help you carry the load, making the task easier for you. If you follow this advice, and if God commands you to do so, then you will be able to endure the pressures, and all these people will go home in peace. That's a great model of leadership in Exodus 18.
And what we're gonna see, well, we'll go ahead and jump there. Numbers chapter 11, it's the 70 elders. So, Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered the 70 men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tabernacle. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took of the spirit that was upon him and placed the same upon the 70 elders. And it happened when the spirit rested upon them that they prophesied, although they never did so again. In the aspect of prophecy, to speak in the people on behalf of God, there's more than one person that that happens to in this place, there's leaders, there's pastors, there's elders, there's deacons, there's the board of directors, there's all these things that are instruments of God speaking to people.
And that's important, why? Because this fellowship, this ministry, has to continue to grow up. And incidentally, if you read 14, you thought, well, this is all about tongues.
Not really, as we go through it, you're gonna see. You know what it's really about? It's about edifying and building up and strengthening the church.
It's great for us as a body to understand that. And there's kind of an irony there because here you have the church, this indestructible force, but we're told to strengthen it. God gifting other men to speak to people on his behalf, as it talks about in Moses, God did that.
Why? So Moses could focus on some of those things that were really mission critical. Prophesy is speaking to people on behalf of God. You may have been in a church service before where somebody said, this is the Lord, I feel like this, I feel like that. Or maybe in a small group, somebody says, I feel like the Lord wants us to focus on this or wants me to share this verse.
That's the gift of prophecy. Interceding is the reverse, if you will. Interceding is speaking to God on behalf of people. Interceding is speaking to God on behalf of people. So we're supposed to do both. We're supposed to speak to people on behalf of God. We're supposed to speak to God on behalf of people. Which one's more important, prophesying or interceding? Love, love. 1 Corinthians 13 told us, gang, in verse two, it says, if I have the gift of prophecy and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge and if I have such faith that I could move mountains but didn't love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it. But if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing.
So this is the huge question before us. Am I being loving? And since the heart and the tongue are tied, is the person I'm talking to being loving? Or am I one of those situations where I need to point out to somebody that they're not being loving, that they're being unkind?
Is this discussion or topic we're having being loving? So often we slip into being unkind and unloving because it's almost like we get into this religious thing. Well, I gotta point out what's wrong with that person or that individual.
But in those times, gang, you gotta be so careful. You have to ask, am I, okay, maybe even what you're saying is true but the Bible says to speak the truth in love and if you can't speak the truth in love, don't speak the truth. In other words, I've heard it put like this, if you can speak about the concept of hell without a tear in your eye, don't speak about it. I've seen people that actually, it seems like they take glee in telling somebody they're going to hell.
What is that? That's not Jesus. That's not Jesus who before Jerusalem crucified him stood above the town and wept over it.
So we ask ourselves, am I being loving? You're listening to Cross the Bridge with David Magee. We'll be back to the teaching in just a moment. This month, we're focusing on prison ministry and I have the chance to sit down with Pastor David. Pastor, what is Cross the Bridge prison ministry all about?
Cross the Bridge prison ministry is consistent with Cross the Bridge itself. We believe that we need to share an effective presentation of the gospel, to invite people to have a relationship with the Lord and then for those who do have a relationship with the Lord, that we would teach them the word of God to equip them to walk in that life, that abundant life that Jesus talks about. Pastor, we know that sharing the word of God is always important to you. And why is it so important to get God's word into the prisons as well? Our prison system is built around trying to change the lives of people who've made bad decisions. And yet you can't change a life without changing the heart. And that's where God's word and God's spirit are so powerful. They can change a life.
They can change a heart. We can share the word of God with somebody. You can help send us into the prisons to share the plan of salvation, see that prisoner get saved, and then begin to disciple him and teach him the word of God so that when he gets out, he is different than when he came in.
Thank you for sharing, Pastor. If you're listening and agree with David about our need to help those in prison, we would love to hear from you. You can call 877-458-5508.
That's 877-458-5508. And when you give $25 or more, we'll send you a copy of Cross the Bridge every day. Not only that, but we'll match your gift by sending another copy of David's devotional to an inmate in need. Also, your gift of $200 or more will provide a case of 10 books that will be used to help change lives for eternity.
Again, that number is 877-458-5508, or go online to crossthebridge.com. Now let's return to Pastor David's teaching. Verse 2 says, For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him. However, in the Spirit he speaks mysteries.
Okay, now we've opened the big tongue debate up. Let me say as we go through this chapter, we're not gonna agree on everything. And we're all gonna have different perspectives, if you will, on this issue of tongues. But one thing we need to be able to agree on is that we're gonna look at what the Bible says about this issue, okay?
Not what your experience has shown, not what the church that you grew up in taught you, or what you personally just have clung to, but what does the book have to say? And let's understand, this is where you really need to be careful with commentaries because there's a lot of teachers that I really admire and respect. Then when it comes to the issue of spiritual gifts, boy, they begin to kind of twist it a little bit. You know, some of the commentaries I was reading were talking about, you know, well, this is a tongue, it's a foreign language, it's not an unknown tongue. Let me read this verse to you again. For he who speaks in the tongue does not speak to man but to God, for no one understands him. Well, if I'm speaking in a foreign language, somebody's gonna understand me. Somebody's gonna speak that language, so is it an unknown tongue?
Duh. Pardon the expression, but I mean, it says for no one understands him. So obviously, it's an unknown tongue in this instance. Now, in other places, when it refers to tongues, somebody there does speak, it's a foreign language, but there's also a supernatural, a heavenly language, and this is biblical. In the New Living Translation, it says, for if you have the ability to speak in tongues, you will be talking only to God since people won't be able to understand you. You will be speaking by the power of the Spirit, but it will all be mysterious. Now, does everybody speak with tongues?
No, no. 1 Corinthians 12 talked about that. And let's understand something, too. There's a key in interpretation here in verse two because it says when somebody speaks in a tongue, they don't speak to men but to God. If you've ever been in a service or a small group, and let's understand, when we talk about this, this church has grown so much that I really, I wanna see these gifts taught and discussed and emphasized in the small groups because it's a much better setting, to be honest, because you can imagine a group this large, and Paul's gonna get into this in this chapter, how to have church. If somebody over here starts prophesying, interpreting, and all this stuff, I mean, it's crazy. And let's also understand that, again, going back, I believe God has gifted me to speak to you on his behalf and for somebody to stand up in the middle of the service and start saying something when I'm up here talking, God doesn't interrupt himself. But that being said, if you've ever been in a small group or church and somebody gave a message in tongues and then somebody else interpreted, I've been in those situations where the interpretation, it really wasn't the interpretation.
How did I know that? Because it says if somebody speaks in a tongue, they're not speaking to men but to God. In other words, if somebody says something in tongues and then somebody else starts talking to the people saying that's the interpretation, that's wrong. It says you're not speaking to men but to God. So any interpretation of any tongue should be speaking to God.
It's a great litmus test. So tongues will always be addressed to God. That's why in one of the areas it talks about this being an unknown prayer language. Well, who's an unknown prayer language gonna be addressed to? To God. I know y'all and I love y'all and y'all are getting way too nervous right now.
You can just feel it. He's talking about tongues. It's gonna be okay. Relax, man.
I just teach in the Bible. It'll be okay. Trust God. Amen. Amen.
Amen. There's a book called Jude in the Bible for Revelation and Jude verse 20. It says, but you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. Now this is another instrument, if you will, of this unknown tongue. Praying in the Spirit is another phrase that we use of this unknown prayer language. In Romans chapter eight verse 26 it speaks about this and it says, and the Holy Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. For example, we don't know what God wants us to pray for but the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. So sometimes if you're in travail and you have this gift you'll speak in this unknown tongue this prayer language to God. And if you don't have that gift just understand that some people do. Some people don't.
I do not believe that everybody has this gift. I do not believe that you have to have this gift to go to heaven. Those are not biblical stances. And let's understand too, first Corinthians chapter 14 verse 15, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but well then what shall I do? I will pray in the Spirit and I will also pray in words I understand.
You see the contrast there? I will pray in the Spirit, words I don't understand and I will also pray in words that I do understand. I will sing in the Spirit and I will also sing in words I understand. So Paul in verse 15, and I'm not going in depth with this but he's saying I pray in a language I don't understand, I pray in a language I do understand. Because Paul says in this chapter, he says you know what, I praise God, I speak in tongues more than you all. He's not saying I know more languages than anybody else. He's saying he has this gift and he uses it.
That's a powerful weapon if you have that. And again it really, there's no other way to define this but as an unknown tongue. First Corinthians 14, 14 says for if I pray in a tongue my spirit prays but my understanding is unfruitful. As a Bible teacher what I wanna do is I read the Bible and I teach the Bible is to take what's called the main and plain interpretation of the scripture. I don't wanna try to twist the Bible to get it to mean what I want it to mean. I wanna read it and say well obviously it's saying this.
In this instance if it looks like it's talking about an unknown tongue, maybe that makes you a little uncomfortable but it's obviously, Paul's saying I don't know what I'm saying. Verse three says but he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men. These three things are so important man. Edification, exhortation and comfort. And again anybody that's speaking to somebody else on behalf of God needs to keep these three words front and center. Edification, exhortation, comfort. What is edifying and exhorting? Those aren't words we usually use on a every day. It's talking about building up. It's the easiest way to say that. Building up, encouraging would be another phrase. To encourage, to build up and to comfort. Friend do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?
You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short simple prayer simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.
And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.
Amen. Friend if you prayed that prayer according to the Bible you've been forgiven. You've been born again. So congratulations friend.
You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time we would love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-5508 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. God is using Cross the Bridge to impact lives across our country including the lives of those currently serving time in our nation's prisons. While materials provided by Muslim organizations continue to increase within our prisons our distribution of Pastor David's book Cross the Bridge Every Day has been making a significant impact for Jesus with prisoners. And you can help continue that outreach by calling today. When you call today with a gift of $25 or more we will send you David McGee's devotional book and then match your gift by sending a copy to a prisoner in need. And if you're able to give a gift of $200 or more we will send a case of 10 books to inmates who are without hope.
Help us reach those in prison. Call today at 877-458-5508 that's 877-458-5508 or go online to crossthebridge.com Also, if you're not able to make it to your home church this Sunday why not join us for our live stream at 9 and 1130 Eastern. Just visit crossthebridge.com and click on our live stream link. There you can watch Pastor David teach from his home church, The Bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. Again, that website is crossthebridge.com. Thanks again for listening. We hope you'll join us next time as we continue to cross the bridge.
