Today on Real Life Radio. says Well, there are now in the 21st century only certain gifts that the Holy Spirit. Has left with us today. Do you realize, do you understand that when somebody says that, he's flying in the face of the biblical word of God? This is real life.
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That's real life devotions at jackhibbs.com. On today's edition of Real Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series called 1 Samuel and a message titled Church Growth 101. This is part one. Samuel of the Old Testament was the last judge of Israel and the first of its prophets.
So, here as we continue in chapter 16, we'll look at how the Spirit of the Lord comes upon David and even today, comes upon the life of the believer. You see, the Lord comes to us by the person of the Holy Spirit. Every believer has the Holy Spirit within them at the moment of coming to Christ as Savior. It's the Holy Spirit that is our helper and comforter, and is both with us and within us.
So today, Pastor Jack teaches that church leadership is really not about position or popularity, but it's about God's will for us to embrace His character and be empowered by the Holy Spirit to strengthen the body of Christ.
Now, with his message called Church Growth 101, Part 1, here's Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs. Your spirit that's been born again agrees with his spirit that we're the children of God. It's really exciting stuff.
Some friends, I know people who need to understand that. They're Christians, but they walk around like this. Oh, golly. What's the matter? I don't know if I'm going to be a Christian tomorrow.
Why? I don't know. I could really goof up. That's not what I read in the Bible. Our spirit bears witness with His Spirit that we are the children of God.
Pretty clear. It's exciting. The Holy Spirit at work. By the way, he's a comforter. He brings comfort.
John 16:7, Jesus says, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I leave you. For if I do not go away, the comforter will not come to you. But if I depart I will send him to you.
So now we got Jesus telling us it's better for us that he least because he's going to send us the Holy Spirit, who is the Comforter. Amazing, exciting. And so that's very, very good news. Jot down these verses concerning the work of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit baptizes every believer into the body of Christ.
That's the Holy Spirit's work. Watch this. 1 Corinthians 12, 12. For as The body is one and has many members. But all the members of that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ.
For by one Spirit, that's capital S, Holy Spirit, we were all baptized into one body. What does that mean? As I mentioned a moment ago, the moment you're born again, the Spirit of God baptizes you once and for all. Listen, some of you need to hear this. Once and for all, the Spirit of God baptizes you into the body of Jesus Christ.
That means, you guys. You got saved and you got saved once because you don't need to get saved again. You mean I don't need to come forward again? No.
Well, how about every Sunday? I come because I had a bad week. I'll come forward again on Sunday. You don't need to. The moment you were born again, the Spirit of God baptized you into the body of Christ.
Now, you may feel better coming forward. But quite frankly, you're probably trusting in an external outward act of coming forward. But don't let me be the one to tell you that and bum you out. The truth is, you're saved. If you've accepted Christ, you're saved.
Yeah, you may have a difficult week, you may have a rough time. But you don't need to go back and get born again again. It's very good. It's very exciting. He gets born again.
Yeah, you may struggle, but you're born again. The Spirit of God, and the Greek is emphatic and clear. He baptizes you, the Spirit of God baptizes you once into the body of Christ. How about this? Term.
The Spirit of God places you in the church of Jesus Christ, which is the bride of Christ. which he speaks of as being one with him and his body.
Okay. The second thing we want to talk about, the Holy Spirit takes up residence within every believer. In John 14, 17, Jesus says, The Holy Spirit will be in you. That happens at the moment of conversion. But there is this event that we're talking about tonight, and when David experienced.
In 1 Samuel 16:13, and what every believer ought to experience if they will just open their heart and understanding to the work of the Spirit. And it is this: the Lord Jesus Christ. Is the one who baptizes his believers with the Holy Spirit. There's a big difference. The holy, are you guys with me?
The Holy Spirit baptizes you into the body of Christ. I have to talk like. This. The Holy Spirit does it. But Jesus baptizes us with the Spirit of God.
So the Spirit of God Baptizes the believer into the body of Christ. But Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. Do you get that? That's very important. Mark 1.8.
John the Baptist said, I indeed baptize you with water. But you will be baptized, or he will baptize you, excuse me, with the Holy Spirit. You see that with? Very important. Matthew 3.11.
John says in Matthew 3, 11, I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. But he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. and with fire. Post-salvation filling or baptism recorded in Scripture, Jesus said it again just before he left.
Acts chapter 1, verse 5. This is a post-salvation filling. In other words, If you're arguing with, well, I don't think this is in the Bible, I'm going to fight this. The church group I came from, we never even talked about this thing.
Well, check this out. Jesus said this to believers who were born again. And they had the Holy Spirit of God in them. Because in John chapter 20, Jesus breathed on them, remember? And they received the Holy Spirit.
He was dwelling in them, but he had not yet come, what? Upon them. That happened on the day of what? Pentecost. Listen to what Jesus says in Acts chapter 1, verse 5.
For John truly baptized you with water. But you shall be baptized with... The Holy Spirit not many days from now. Speaking about the day of Pentecost. Acts 13, 52.
And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Post-salvation. Experience. Acts 11.15. And Peter said, As I began to speak, this is when Peter's given account of Gentiles getting saved, which the Jerusalem church.
You guys, the Jerusalem church. They couldn't stand it. These guys were born-again Jews. who couldn't believe that God would save wretches like you and I. What?
Honky? Chinese. Blacks? Hispanics? Non-Jews?
He's saving non-Jews? Can this even happen? That's what the Jerusalem church was thinking. How can this happen? See, the Jews had always been taught in their traditions.
Not from the Bible. But even perhaps James and others were so polluted by tradition. That when they heard Gentiles getting saved, they didn't think it was possible because they had been taught. By rabbinical teaching, that God created Gentiles to be fuel. Charcoal For hell.
That's what they taught. In fact, in Israel today, Orthodox, they still teach that. that you're nothing but fuel for hell. Yeah. Give her give her ha.
When's the last time you had an Orthodox Jew knock on your door and try to evangelize you? They don't want you. If you run into their place of worship, they run out! They're not going to knock on your door and say, become a Jew today. It's not going to happen because they believe that you're fuel for hell.
So, when the Gentiles were getting saved, the Jerusalem church was going, oh, there's something really weird here. This grace, this message. This salvation is getting out of hand. And Peter said, Hey. Here's the deal.
Yeah. I began to speak. And he says, The Holy Spirit fell upon them as I was speaking. Just as it happened to us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but he will baptize with the Holy Spirit.
For if therefore God gave them the same gift, As he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, Who was I? To withstand God. That was Peter's words. I'm a Jew too. But I saw Gentiles get saved, and He gave them the Holy Spirit.
I saw it happen. Isn't that great? I love how God works. He doesn't care what anybody thinks. Acts chapter 19.
Verse 1 through 6, and it happened while Apollos was at Corinth, That Paul, having passed through the upper regions, and there's Ephesus and all listed there, finding some of the disciples, these guys are born-again followers of Jesus Christ. Paul says, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
So they said to him, We have not even so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. There's some churches today that We don't even know if there's a Holy Spirit.
So then what were you baptized into?
So they said the baptism of John's. And so Paul said to them, John did baptize. A baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on him who would come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. And when they had heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid hands on them, The Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.
They were already believers. You see, it happened to them after they had gotten converted. In fact, they didn't even believe there was a Holy Spirit at all. Is that interesting? Powerful.
You're listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. And for now, let's get back to our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor Jack.
One of the functions of the Holy Spirit is to give, as we see here in this last verse quoted, ministry. Works, gifts to strengthen the body of Christ. Ephesians 4:11. Ephesians 4:11 says, For the gifts are given for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body. You ought to mark that because that's what the gifts given by the Holy Spirit are all about, to build up the body of Jesus Christ, the church.
To a perfect, or that is a complete man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Wow, how do we grow? Listen, according to Ephesians 4:11 to 13, how are we as a church going to grow mature? It will only be by the gifting and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And so tonight we want to consider a few things.
In Acts chapter 2. We're going to look here for a moment because we need to consider this gifting, this filling, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that you understand this, that when on the day of Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, the Holy Spirit was poured out, Now, class, that was 2,000 years ago. Yet Peter Peter says, whoa, everybody, listen, this is great. This is what was prophesied by the prophet Joel. Joel That was in the Old Testament.
Yeah, in the last days I will pour out my spirit. And listen, in second chapter of Acts, People were gathered around from all over the known world. And as they were gathered on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended from heaven, answering Jesus' prayer, by the way. This is also referred to as the promise of the Father. The Holy Spirit came down, and you've all read about it, and the Spirit manifested himself.
As Uh Clove it or split flames. Over their heads. You've seen the artist drawings of that, right? Kind of weird looking thing. And uh A strange, unusual showing.
But that wasn't the point. In fact, What happened? The 120. began to speak with other tongues. Remember that?
And what do they speak? The Bible says that they spoke. All of these various languages of the world known languages of men. We call it Uh oh. Tongues of men.
They spoke known languages. Here's the miracle. There's a bunch of them, but here's the deal. When The Arabians were there and when the Cretians were there, and when all these various Ethiopians were there, When all of these people were there, And The Spirit was poured out. They heard.
Untaught, unlearned people speaking perfectly in the languages that we're standing around. They heard perfect language of their own tongue in their ears the wonderful works of God. And they even said, How is this that these people who have never learned or known our words? Proclaim the glorious works of God. And then Peter answers their question: This is what the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophet Joel.
Now that's amazing. That is certainly the gift of tongues. The gift of tongues, mark it down. If we have time, we'll see it tonight. The gift of tongues is mentioned in Scripture.
It's one of. And scholars differ on this.
Some scholars say there's nine gifts, and some scholars have gone so far out to say that there's 21 gifts.
Well, the point is, the gift of tongues is one of the gifts. And here. In the book of Acts, it talks about how they opened their mouths and they spoke, and they, by divine presence, they knew these other languages perfectly. The Spirit of God spoke, and it glorified God. Those are the tongues of men.
tongues of a known language. But there's also a tongue That is not known to men. And the Bible makes mention of both these. There's tongues of earth. And there's tongues of heaven or angels, the Bible says, 1 Corinthians 13, 1.
And God gives both those things.
So, why are we bringing that up? Because it's important in light of what we saw last week. And I'm going to answer some questions that you might have. But know this. Make no mistake about it.
The Bible says, I believe. I didn't write it down in my notes, but I believe this is true.
Someone look it up and tell me if it's wrong. Raise your hand. But I think Romans 11:29 says that the gifts and the callings of God are given without. Really the word means him taking them back.
Okay, the Old King James, I think, says without repentance, means that God, once He gives a gift, He doesn't take them back. Say, why am I bringing this up? Because the Holy Spirit is so for today in the life of the believer, so for today in this church. That you cannot And I and I can't tell you how much pleasure it gives me to say this, even though it creates a firestorm. I kinda like a fight.
I don't care who says What? And I don't care how famous they are. I don't care how big their church is. If a guy on the radio says Well, there are now in the 21st century only certain gifts that the Holy Spirit. Has left with us today.
Do you realize, do you understand that when somebody says that, he's flying in the face of the biblical word of God? Period. If somebody says, well, there's, yeah, and I always find it interesting, they always promote the gifts that they have and they put down the gifts they don't.
Well, yeah, there's pastor, teacher, there's evangelist, there's this, there's that, but there's no healing. There's no healing anymore. In fact, I heard a guy on the radio, you'd know his name if I said it, very famous man. He says, God replaced that gift with the understanding today that we have through medical doctors. That's insane.
That's nuts. He said there's no more healing. There's no more tongues and interpretation of tongues because there's no use for it.
Well, who made him the Holy Spirit? Poor God, he didn't know this. And then There's this argument, well If our church, if our denomination can't explain it, then it can't exist. It goes against our denominational sway, so we're just going to ignore it. We're going to skip over those chapters.
We're not going to go through those verses of the Bible. And because you can't listen, because the Holy Spirit refuses to be controlled, he'll only be quenched, by the way. Did you hear that? He refuses to be controlled. But you can quench him.
You can send him away if you'd like. And God help that church that sends away the Holy Spirit. It has the form of godliness, but denies the power thereof. But the important thing is this. All of the gifts recorded in your New Testament have been given.
For the edification of the body of Christ. Is that not what the scripture says? Then let me ask you this. Do you not need to be edified? Do you not need encouragement?
Do you not need strengthening? Then, whenever any gift, I don't care if it's tongues or healing or as I'm doing now, this is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Did you know that? I'm teaching. Every gift is to be used to strengthen the body.
Well then, why do people go, oh no! Last Wednesday we had tongues, interpretation tongues, we had a word of wisdom and a word of exhortation. People can handle the words of exhortation and the word of wisdom. Did you know that? You didn't have any problem with that.
But some people, no! What was that?
Well, wave, why are you acting like that? The only way that you would act like that is because someone's fed something to you. They scared you, or you were in a church setting when, you know, somebody says, All right, let's worship the Lord. And people are going, blah. Boom!
It's like, what is this?
Well, that was a service out of control, obviously, out of order. But just because someone's had a bad experience doesn't mean the Word of God is void. It means that you had a bad experience. It means that you were involved in a weird setting. No matter how sincere they might have been, everything is written with great detail and order concerning the operational use of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
And the funny thing is, every one of you who are born again tonight, you rely upon and you need greatly the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Some of us have just gotten by, though, because we refuse to acknowledge all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God wants to move. Are we not closer to the days of Joel? Than ever before. We are.
Hey, what happens if your sons and your daughters start prophesying and seeing dreams and visions? Sit down Junior. You're out of control. What are you gonna do? I know what you do.
You're gonna quench the Holy Spirit. Can you imagine?
Now, I don't know if you're visiting here, but I'm really mellow tonight. But on Sunday mornings, I'm like, I'm excited on Sunday. And you could come in here and say, you know. But where's his robe, for one thing? Where's his robe?
And why is he talking so loud? Why is he getting so excited? You could say, you know what, Pastor, you need to sit down, you need to shut up, you need to get control of yourself. You know what? Quench.
No, no, no. Quinch. Can you imagine when Jesus says, consider the lilies of the field? Oh, you're getting weird on us. What do you mean, lilies of the field, Jesus?
Calm down. Just talk normal. A certain man went out to sow seed. I'm not a farmer. What does that mean to me?
Be careful, Quench. You have to be careful. Tragically, the church. And it's exactly what the Bible warned about. We ought never to be ignorant about prophetic things, prophetic events.
Did you know that? The Bible warns us in 1 Thessalonians 4: don't be ignorant about future events referred to in the Bible. In other words, know them. Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio, and his message called Church Growth 101, Part 1. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called 1 Samuel.
A series highlighting the prophet Samuel who was called by God during one of Israel's darkest times to bring the people back to a heart of true worship and will continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. Hey everybody, we got our first time ever actually devotional. We have a 40-day devotional called Watching Waiting. 40 days of walking you through biblical passages that excite you and prepare you for the soon coming of Jesus Christ. Watching Waiting is a 40-day devotional that's all tied to biblical prophecy.
Watching Waiting. It is our featured resource for this month and it's available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com/slash real radio. Jackhibbs.com/slash real radio. Everybody, how many people have you ever talked to? Either A They said they gave Christianity a try, but it didn't work.
Or. How many people do you know? Who have been Christians, so-called, for a long time. They even got. They're Master's degree in divinity.
They got a doctorate. In theology, They studied. They got into the books. They heard all the sermons, they wrote all the papers. Where are they today?
Listen. Here's the secret that's not a secret. The only way Christianity works is that once you learn something about Christ, He's expecting you to go do it. If you learn about Christianity and you don't do it, it will actually come back to bite you. How many people know so much About the Bible, and then decades go by, they never put it into practice, and they wound up becoming really weird about things.
And they kind of fell off the edge, you know? Why would happen? They never took what they knew and put it into practice. They never took what they learned and did it. They learned, they talked about it, they wrote a paper about it, or they might have even written a book about it, but they never did it.
Christianity is all about doing it. And that's living out God's will for your life. If you're not doing that. then your Christianity will fail. Because God's definition of Christianity Is to go tell the world, go minister to the hurting, visit orphans, comfort widows, get involved, put your faith in Christ in action.
It's actually called. Christianity. It's not a noun as much as it is. A verb.
So let's get up, let's do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word.
We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
