Thank you. Thank the Lord for these
wonderful servants of the Lord serving in the armed forces.
Something I didn't have to do. Fortunately I had a high lottery
number, so I didn't have to go. But I remember the night that
the numbers were picked, my best friend said that was Vietnam.
He said I'm going to join the Navy tomorrow.
And that's what he did. He had number six.
I think I had 234, so Lord knew I probably wouldn't have been
the best of soldiers. I was a hippie at the time, so I
had other reasons. But I'm so grateful for the
freedom we have because of you guys serving as you have.
So before I get into today's message, I'd like Sam and
Miranda Morris to come up front for a SEC, please.
So we talked a lot about Turning Point recently and that'll be a
continual theme in our ministry because we are at a turning
point in our lives. Personally, you go deeper with
Jesus. But Sam and Miranda, good to see
you, buddy. Good to see you guys.
I've taken the the order from the Lord to give their lives
completely to ministry. That's what they're planning on
doing, like Cason Harrell. So this is the future of our
church, so you guys can be encouraged, even though you got
Gray haired guys. And Louis, he's Gray now too.
We'll be here for a while, however long Lord has us.
But we're smart enough to know we won't be here forever, right?
And so we want you to know that the church will be in good
hands. These guys are pastoral interns,
so I wanted Sam just to tell a little bit about how he sensed
the call of God in his life years ago.
And when I met with him to talk to him about this, that was
really encouraged because the Lord had already spoken to him
about this. What you share a little bit?
Yeah. Just press that button.
There. There we go there.
Thanks. You hear me?
OK, yeah, so Clark talked to me maybe a few weeks ago, a little
bit out of the blue, sent me a text message asking him to speak
about church leadership. And I thought, OK, so end up
talking to him about. I'll get a little bit of a back
story. So my wife and I, we got married
eight years ago now, and we moved out the Lancaster.
I was originally from this area, went to College of Saint
Vincent, went to College of Penn State for two years, had a job,
been cracking for six months right before I got married that
I'm still actually working for utility that is based on
Lincaster area. So we were out there for four or
five years, right? Yeah.
So the time we had out there was great, just us, newly married.
She was from Florida. So when we were dating it was
sporadic, One day, one week, maybe a couple weeks at most
together, right? So we got married, we got to
spend a lot of quality time alone, away from our families,
just us together. First year is a little rough
just being by ourselves, but we couldn't have asked for anything
better for us to grow with each other and with the Lord, but to
getting a little bit of Baxter Clark was talking about.
So when we were out there, we were looking for churches.
I grew up in the Calvary Chapel. I think we were here.
My parents probably test this when I was 5 or 6, maybe back
when I was at the Y. So I was familiar with Calvary
Chapel, went through through high school and college.
And then, you know, I went to Penn State.
I was there for two years and I came back and I was maybe here
for just for a few months and then we moved out there.
I was, we're looking for a new church, right.
So there's a couple of Calvary chapels in the area.
We tried a couple of them. We eventually went the one that
was down next in area, Calvary Chapel, Chester Springs.
So the pastor there, I think he actually worked for Cork when he
was younger, Right, Right. Yeah.
Chris Swanson. So it's kind of a weird
connection that Cork actually knew him.
So we were sitting under Chris for a while.
I was attending. We were going to his Wednesday
night. We didn't have kids yet.
We could go on Wednesday night. We're going to the Sunday
mornings with the so they had three services there.
They'd one at 8:30, I think 9:30 and then one at 11.
We were attending the earliest one.
We had no kids yet. We could get up early and go.
It was, it was kind of nice, but at that time, before we had
Grace and we just felt the Lord calling us more and more towards
him. And Miranda was going to dental
school and I was thinking, I need to do something with my
time, right? I'm, I'm kind of sitting there.
So I started taking Bible college courses for probably a
year, right? So I was taking those, but I
didn't end up taking them for a very long time.
I took maybe a year's worth. And then our pastor at our
church actually taught a Tuesday morning class and it was more of
like a biblical class for people who are doing church planning,
church leadership, leading ministries.
So actually still listening that today.
He has it on their app, so I can still kind of follow it.
So I spent a lot of time listening to that instead of
going, you know, paying money to take these courses.
It was the same thing. And he was in person or I could
talk to them and ask him questions, right?
And we were also involved with the young adults group out
there, Stephen Stauffer. He's still actually, he's
leading worship for Chester Springs out there.
He's also, I believe he's in their ministry leadership there
as well. So I had I had a good connection
with the group there. So at that time in my life, I
felt the Lord calling me possibly in the pastoral
ministry. And I said, no, why me, right.
I think that's everyone's question when they get called
into something, you know, what's this calling?
Why are you choosing me? And I kind of put it off for a
while. I said, OK, you know, I was
really interested, you know, I want to know more about God.
I was getting this word and I felt him calling me towards
that. But the same time, I never felt
like, oh, I need to go do a church plan.
I need to get my job and go here and do this or do that.
And I said, you know what, Lord, if you want me to do something
like this, I'll abide. And this was probably when I was
what, 2223, right? I'll abide in your word.
And if you want me in something like this, you need to call me
because I'm not going to go out on the ledge and put my foot in
something and go over, right? Because it has to be the Lord
calling you. Because if he's not calling you,
you're going to fail. It's of your own ability.
And you step into something, you're going to fail, right?
It's any, any ministry, right? I know Brad and Janelle could
probably test you in the children's ministry if they
weren't specifically called for that.
You won't be able to do it. You won't be able to sustain it.
So I told the Lord that ten well, not ten years ago, eight
years ago now about 7 years ago. So Clark reaches out to me a
couple weeks ago and, you know, he sent me a text message.
I'm thinking about it. OK, what's this going to be
about? I'm sitting down with him.
He's talking about it. And the Lord has on my heart.
And Clark says, is any of this ringing a bell to you?
And I'm like, I was like, man, I was like, I told the Lord if he
he wanted me to do something, he would have to be the one that
came and got me for it, right? Because I'm not going to go out
and do it. And that's what happened.
Court came out and he texted me and we had a, a lunch the one
day and he's he's asked me if I ring the bell and I said, yeah,
a little bit. You know, I think God laid
something in my heart, you know, eight years ago.
And it seems like right now it's it's coming up.
So I'm happy to be here. And I think from our end, we're
just, we're just here to serve, right?
I don't, I'm not one to put myself out there.
I don't like being on the front of things.
I'm done with pretty quiet reserved.
But yeah, we're just, we're here to serve and love on everyone.
That exciting, huh? Let's pray.
Father God, we just thank you. And Miranda comes from a long
ministry family. Her daddy's a pastor down in
Florida. So a wonderful family.
And we have our bass player. He's away.
Is he down there in Florida now? Yeah.
It won't be too long before he's
going to be getting married to one of your friends, right?
It's exciting. So it's just cool how the Holy
Spirit works and puts all this stuff together, right.
So, Father, we just thank you for this dear couple.
And Lord, you've called them for them.
Lord, you, you come after us. We don't come after you.
You come after us first and teach us to follow you and and
you draw us to you. We pray, O God, your anointing,
your blessing, the power of your Holy Spirit on this couple for
the days ahead. Give them insight and wisdom.
Let Sam sense more and more your presence.
We look forward to the day that he'll be sharing your word with
the congregation as long as along with Cason and we just are
excited about the the new energy that will be coming through
these younger guys. And we just thank you for their
willingness to be yield to you and surrender to you.
And we pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.
God bless you guys. So exciting things, huh?
Exciting things here at Calvary Chapel.
So we're in the first verse of First Corinthians chapter 4 on
spiritual giftings. So I want to delay some
groundwork on this chapter before I just get in and teach
it. There's a lot of history behind
my own understanding of spiritual gifts and why I'm part
of Calvary Chapel and not another church group.
When I first got saved, I I got saved in the Jesus hippie
movement. And so I, I didn't understand
much about churches or anything like that.
I went to a Presbyterian Church and everyone and nice people,
nice, beautiful building, but I, I never heard the gospel there.
I never knew that I needed a savior.
I, I knew I was a Sinner, but I figured I was too far gone and
I'm just going to go my own way and try to do the best I can.
But I, I didn't really feel or sense a connection with the
Lord, but I always believed that he existed.
I believe that the Bible was real.
I believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and he was
buried and he rose again the third day.
But that was all mental. It wasn't internal.
And so I had to go through some tough times before I realized I
was lost and I needed a savior. And so I got saved by reading
the Bible, the New Testament. My brother gave it to me and
said you might find some answers from this.
And so I read it. And by the time I got through
the Gospels, I realized that like Jesus was like no one else
I ever met. And if I wanted to be close to
someone and have a friend, I wanted him to be Jesus because
no one else was ever a friend of me like that or ever has been
since that time. And so go to Atlantic City to
work. Cindy and I are living, get
married or live down there. And so I started going to First
Baptist Church of Atlantic City and it was amazing church.
The pastor was one of the most anointed, spirit filled godly
men I ever met in my life. Him and his wife.
I'd see this guy walking to me and I was so conditioned to
think about the New Testament, the Gospels, that when I, when I
saw this guy was so intimidating because he, he just had this
countenance of Jesus in his life unlike anybody I've ever met in
my life. I mean, whenever I was with this
guy, the Lord was all around the conversation and whether we were
playing tennis or they were over at our house mentoring.
Cindy and I are in their young years.
And so he's teaching the Bible pretty much like we teach it.
I didn't understand that there was a division in the body of
Christ between cessationists, people that believe that the
gifts of the Holy Spirit, the the sign gifts of miraculous
gifts ended at the at the time of Christ coming into the world
and then leaving and the apostles leaving eventually.
And this normal people like us on the face of the earth,
endeavouring to. Follow the Lord.
And and then I I met, you know, continue continuous with, you
know, what's a continuous with someone like we are in Calvary
Chapel that we don't believe that the miraculous gifts ended.
We believe they're still present and available and God can use
them as he wills. But we're we're also wise enough
to realize that we don't have Apostolic authority, nor do we
have Apostolic anointing in a sense of the miraculous gifts
like the apostles and just this is the way it is.
So there was a Pentecostal church there that got to know me
and was interested in me being on the radio, given my
testimony. And so I went to this place to
give my testimony. And I began to realize there's
these two sides of the of the story here and what we're going
to be teaching eventually here in this chapter.
And so my pastor at the Baptist Church is warning me of some of
the aberrant teachings that can come out of the Pentecostal
movement. And one of the advantages I
think you have coming to this church is that I've been in
every church group that you can name.
I've been with Catholics, I've been with Orthodox, I've been
with Reformed people, I've been with Baptists, I've been with
Pentecostals, I've been with Charismatic.
And God help me, I was a season of my life where I was with the
Word of Faith movement. And I'll tell you a little bit
about that. So one of the things I pray
you'll be open to as we teach on this.
And I was thinking as as I was waiting to teach today and
praying with Lewis and my brother and this guy over here
with a beard, always praying Ted for me and with me.
Thankful to these guys and all you guys that pray for us.
But as I was back there thinking and saying to the Holy Spirit, I
don't want to confuse anybody. I don't want to divide anybody.
I just want you because this is about you, God the Holy Spirit.
I don't want to quench you. I don't want to grieve you And
I, I pray because all of you have come from a lot of
different backgrounds. I'm sure that have some
different views, maybe positions.
But I thought in John chapter 3 verse 8 like the Lord put it on
my heart when I was praying. The wind blows wherever it
pleases. You hear its sound, but you
cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
Cell phone. Sometimes it just don't
cooperate. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, a
religious leader who was a smart guy and knew a lot about a lot
of things, but he couldn't grasp Jesus telling him that he needed
to be born again to enter into the Kingdom of heaven.
It made no logical sense to him whatsoever, and Jesus spoke this
verse to him regarding how the. The movement of the Spirit
works, and so in my early Christian experience, I said to
my pastor when I read through the book of Corinthians.
Especially chapter 12 and 14. I said, pastor, why can't the
church be like this? And he just looked at me and he
says I don't know Clark. I never saw him get frustrated.
I don't know Clark. That's just the way it.
Is well, he was in a denomination that would not
allow him to talk about some of these things, like we're going
to talk to him about the day. And so I'd been around long
enough and all these different churches to experience all these
different kind of people and, and belief systems and, and
pastors and, and different things that I, I just for years
this wondered, you know, why can't there be a church that has
people from both sides that can worship together and focus on
the essentials and not get uptight about the things that
are non essential? Pastor Chuck was an amazing man
of wisdom. He came out of the Foursquare
movement, which is highly Pentecostal, called taken away
Amy Semple McPherson and she was a female pastor, which we don't
believe is biblical. The Bible teaches it isn't
biblical. And she moved in a lot of what
would be called signs and wonders.
Some of them were conditioned by psychological manipulation and
and God, being faithful and sovereign as he is, would work
in that church in spite of her at times too.
So Chuck saw the good, the bad and the ugly.
So when he started ministering and pastoring, he was a
charismatic pastor. And, and so then this event
happened, the Jesus Revolution, the Jesus movement, and all
these hippies started coming to Calvary Chapel, this little
church that was about 25 people at the time.
And they were coming in with no knowledge of Jesus, no knowledge
of the Bible, no knowledge of anything other than they knew
they needed help. And Chuck simply preached the
gospel to them and began to teach them the Bible.
Chuck used to teach topical sermons.
And he said to his wife, you know, we got to move on in three
years because I'm running out of sermons.
I have nothing else to preach on.
And then he read in Haley's Bible handbook, if you want to
really do something good for the church, take the people through
a book of the Bible. He thought, wow, that's novel.
I never thought of that. So he took him through the book
of first John. It took him 13 months and he saw
the lives of the people changing because of the word of God
simply teaching the Bible. Simply, he sort of laid aside
his past preconceived ideas about.
The work of the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, he still believed
that they all existed to gifts, but he wasn't interested in
manipulating or or or making these things happen in his
church meetings, and he also understood the confusion that
would occur at times. From aberrant movement of what
people would say would be the Holy Spirit.
He started reading Charles Spurgeon, who was a
cessationist, Martyn Lloyd Jones, who was a cessationist.
Pink. These guys are strongly Reformed
kind of thinkers. He began to read commentaries
that were rooted in the truths and the depths of the scriptures
and not taking one little teaching and blowing it out of
proportion. And so whenever we started going
to Calvary Chapel, I felt like I'd found a miracle church
because I am not a cessationist. I understand why people can have
those views, but I I could just never see blotting out certain
verses in Corinthians and saying with these things aren't true
today or they're not real. And, and I'm also more of a
reform thinker. You get this division between
Arminianism and reform kind of theology.
I realize very clearly that I can't bring anybody to Christ.
Christ has to draw them. He says clearly himself, no man
comes to the Father except I draw him.
So took a lot of pressure off of me as a pastor because I can't
save you. I can tell you how to get saved,
how to believe, how to trust in Christ, give the gospel, but I
can't make it happen. It's a work of the Holy Spirit
as Jesus said in John chapter 3, how the Holy Spirit moves.
I was able to then be with people that believed in the
gifts of the miraculous, gifts of the Spirit, and they were
humble and they weren't using these things to draw attention
to themselves, which is the biggest problem in regard to
what we would call the charismatic movement.
The spiritual gifts are given to us to edify the body, to build
the church up, not to build our egos up, or to make ourselves
feel like we have something that someone else doesn't have.
And I like Chuck's balance teaching on the fact that when
we get saved, the Holy Spirit comes into our life and we have
gifts as the Holy Spirit comes into our life.
And there are other experiences you can have with the Holy
Spirit. Not this one, but many
throughout your life. And that's called the filling of
the Holy Spirit, which is taught in the in the in the gospel of
Ephesians, that we're commanded to be filled with the Spirit.
We're commanded to walk in the Spirit.
We're commanded to have this deep intimate relationship with
God, the Holy Spirit. I was speaking to someone last
night. We had a little gathering of
some leaders and she just said, I want to tell you guys
something. And Lewis and I were in the
hallway. She says, I am so thankful that
this church talks about the Holy Spirit.
She said a lot of churches you go to now don't even mention the
Holy Spirit and they sort of ignore him.
We would never do that here. We believe that the work of God
is conditioned on the empowerment and anointing of
God, the Holy Spirit, to give us the ability to use our gifts for
the glory of God and the feeding of his sheep, his flock.
So we're going to get into 14 about prophecy in tongues, and I
wanted to read something about this Word of Faith movement,
which is very big in our country.
Unfortunately, in Pittsburgh, some of the largest churches are
part of what is called the Word of Faith Movement.
And I used to go to the conventions.
I knew some of the people, I experienced some of the
phenomena, if you may, and my wife Cindy was never a fan.
But I'm a seeker, so I'm always like God.
If I'm missing anything, reveal it to me.
Let me experience it. Hunger, where the Word of Faith
teaching is decidedly unbiblical.
It is not a denomination and does not have a formal
organization or hierarchy. Instead, it's a movement that is
heavily influenced by a number of high profile pastors and
teachers. And I'm going to name some names
and some of you might be following them or reading them.
I'm not trying to offend you, but if you want to hear more
about my own story and my experiences with some of these
people, I'll tell you why I'm not part of this.
Kenneth Hagin. Benny Hinn.
Kenneth Copeland. Paul and Jan Crouch and Fred
Price. The Word of Faith movement grew
out of the Pentecostal movement the late 20th century.
Its founder was EW Kenyon, who studied the metaphysical New
Thought teachings of Phineas Quimby.
These are cultic, heretic kind of teachings.
Mind Science, where name it and claim it originated, was
combined with Pentecostalism, resulting in a peculiar mix of
Orthodox. Christianity and mysticism.
Kenneth Hagin in turn, studied under Kenyon and made the Word
of Faith movement what it is today.
Although individual teachings range from completely heretical
to completely ridiculous, what follows is the basic psychology
most of Word of Faith teachers align themselves with.
At the heart of the Word of Faith movement is a belief in
the force of faith. It is believed words can be used
to manipulate the faith force and thus actually create what
they believe. Scripture promises health and
wealth. Laws supposedly governing the
faith force are said to operate independently of God's sovereign
will and that God himself is subject to these laws.
You talk about a big heresy. It's frightening.
This is nothing short of idolatry, turning our faith, and
by extension ourselves into God. From here, it's theology just
strays further and further from Scripture.
It claims that God created human beings in his literal physical
image as little gods. Before the fall, humans had the
potential to call things into existence by using the faith
force. After the fall, humans took on
Satan's nature and lost the ability to call things into
existence in order to correct the situation.
Jesus Christ gave up his divinity and became a man.
Give up his divinity. God help us, died spiritually,
took Satan's nature upon himself, went to hell, was born
again, and rose from the dead with God's nature.
After this, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to replicate the
incarnation and believers so they could become little gods as
God originally attended. Following the natural
progression of these teachings as little gods, we again have
the ability to manipulate the faith force and become
prosperous in all areas of life. Illness, sin and failure are the
result of a lack of faith that are remedied by confession
claiming God's promises for oneself into existence.
Simply put, the Word of Faith movement exalts man to God
status, reduces God to man status.
Needless to say, this is a false representation of what
Christianity is all about. Obviously, Word of Faith
teachings does not take into account what is found in
Scripture. Personal revelation, not
Scripture, is highly relied upon in order to come up with such
absurd beliefs, which is just one more proof of its heretical
nature. Countering Word of Faith
teaching is a simple matter of reading the Bible.
God alone is the sovereign creator of the universe and does
not need faith. He is the object of faith, God's
God, His spirit does not have a physical body.
Man was created in the image of God, but this does not make him
a little God or divine. Only God has a divine nature.
Christ is eternal, the only begotten Son and the only
incarnation of God, and Him dwelt the fullness of the
Godhead bodily. By becoming man, Jesus gave up
the glory of heaven, but not His divinity, though He did choose
to withhold His power while walking on the earth is a man.
The Word of Faith movement is deceiving countless people,
causing them to grasp away a life and faith that is not
biblical. At its core is the same lie
Satan has been telling since the garden.
You shall be as God. Sadly, those who buy into the
Word of Faith movement are still listening to Him.
Our hope is in the Lord, not in our words, not even in our own
faith. Our faith comes from God in the
1st place and it is not something we create ourselves.
So be wary of the Word of Faith movement and any church that
aligns itself with the Word of Faith teachings.
Joel Osteen. Rodney Howard Brown.
Joyce Meyer. These people all flock together.
Their conventions are filled with each other, and they're all
multimillionaires at the expense of the people that blindly
attend their churches and follow their teachings.
Serious stuff. Kenneth Copeland I remember as a
young guy waking up in the morning, he would come on WPIT
or whatever, Bless God, glory to God, you're, you're not the
tail, you're the head, you know, and I'm thinking like I'm, I'm,
I'm in a job I hate. I'm in a marriage I'm struggling
with to see survive. I got little kids I don't know
how to raise. I, I needed a quick miracle.
And Kenneth Copeland at the time was my I thought my way to find
the quick answers in overcoming life and having no problems.
It was never about the money. So I ended up getting his study
Bible to Kenneth Copeland study Bible and starting reading some
of these heresies and and I was grounded.
I went to a really good Bible college and my wife would see
him on TV and she says, Clark, how can you listen to that guy?
Don't you see the devil in his eyes?
Cindy hated him. So I, I got to the convention
down in Philadelphia, you know, the Word of Faith convention and
Jerry Savelle and kind of Copeland and, and, and, and I
forget the name of some of these other people, some used car
salesman. He still preached like a used
car salesman, a comic committee kind of guy.
Kenneth is there talking and getting the audience all
exciting, starts speaking in tongues.
He has one of his buddies come up on the stage.
He's speaking in tongues of this guy.
This guy's speaking back in the tongues of him.
And then Kenneth has the audacity to say, God, you hear
what we're saying here? I'm thinking like, where?
Where do people come up with this stuff?
It's like a carnival. And they said everybody's going
to be healed here tonight by faith.
We're going to take an offering first.
And the more the offering is, the better chance you have of
getting healed. That was the bottom line.
And so I'm there as an usher in collecting offerings.
And this wasn't yesterday. Don't be afraid.
This is a long time ago my pilgrimage, OK.
So I said to the guy I'm working with, I said, if we have this
power here tonight, why don't we go to Children's Hospital across
the street where all these kids are dying and they got serious
illnesses and diseases and go lay hands on them and see them
raised, raised up. And the guy looks at me like I
ruined his night. It was like the balloon popped
that night. I went home and I never looked
back. So I'm very, very, as Pastor
Lewis and John and George, very on guard with any kind of false
teaching. We've left.
We've had people leave the church because we mentioned a
name. Someone once, one time told me,
don't you touch my Joel Osteen. I think, what do you mean you're
Joel Osteen? You know, I mean, it's really
weird that they ended up leaving them and it's fine.
So what? What happened though, because of
this heresy, it put a real bad taste in people's mouths about
spiritual gifts. Like, you see this kind of
nonsense going on and the first thing you think I'm going to
have nothing to do with any church?
It even like closely mirrors that kind of false teaching.
Chuck Smith to this day I admire this guy because he never was
thus saith the Lord or he never tried to hype the audience up.
He just simply taught the word because he knew the power to
change a life comes from the the exposition of the Bible verse by
verse through the whole Bible so you hear the whole counsel of
God. When Chuck would have pastors
conferences he never divided between a cessationist and a non
cessationist. He loved where, where and
where's be we used some of his commentaries.
He was a cessationist. Alistair Begg spoke at our
conferences. He's a cessationist.
He had other people that he would learn from and, and and it
was never like, well, you don't believe the gifts are here
today, so I'm not going to have anything to do with you.
He never acted like that. So we we collaborated.
Jim Boyce, the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in
Philadelphia, very large Reformed Presbyterian Church
that Cindy and I attended for a period of time until they got
into infant baptism. And I, you know, I, I, I can't
swallow that. But, but anyway, it's a story
for another time. But anyway, when Jim died, him
and Joe were so close. Joe the pastor of Calvary
Chapel, Philadelphia. They loved each other and the
God used them both mightily and is using Joe mightily, but they
didn't have to draw a line in the sand.
They, they, they were able to, to agree on certain things and
disagree on other things and still have fellowship.
The Boyce's eulogy in his funeral was it was in Calvary,
Philly, because it was the largest place to have all the
people that would come to, to honor Jim's, excuse me, Jim's
life. And so that's sort of the long
and short of what I wanted to to talk to you about before I
actually get into the. The teaching Chuck Smith, the
founder of the Calvary Chapel movement, taught that all the
gifts of the Holy Spirit are available and active for
Christians today. A continuous view, but emphasize
their proper scriptural use for the edification of the church
and the glory of God, not for personal gain or drawing
attention to oneself. Smith believe the sign gifts
like tongues, healing, miracles and prophecy as well as service
gifts are still distributed by the Holy Spirit as He wills.
Not as you and I will, but as the Holy Spirit wills.
The primary purpose of spiritual gifts is to minister God's grace
to others, build up the body of Christ, and glorify God.
He warned against using them for personal notoriety or enrichment
while believing in the gifts. He stressed the importance of
order and church services, particularly regarding the use
of tongues. Based on 1st Corinthians 14, he
taught the public use of tongues, and we'll read this
later. Should be limited to two or
three people and must have an interpreter.
Otherwise, a person should speak only to themselves and to God.
He preferred the gift of prophecy, speaking and
understanding the Word from God in public assembly for the sake
of edification. Smith emphasized that the Word
of God, taught through the Enlightenment of Holy Spirit is
essential for spiritual growth. He believed that relying on
experience alone or seeking signs without faith in the Word
was a mistake. He highlighted the diversity of
the gifts teaching, helps, giving, showing mercy,
leadership, and taught that each is important and given grace by
God. He noted that some gifts like
helps often receive more honor from God even if they are
unnoticed by people. He taught that the power of the
Holy Spirit is referred to the indwelling and empowering of the
Spirit that's promised to all believers to experience.
Chuck advocated for a balanced approach, that approach that
embraced the full range of spiritual gifts for remaining
firmly grounded in biblical principles and focus on the
glory of God and the benefits of the church.
I was at Costa Mesa numerous times.
Never once did I ever see anybody speak in tongues in the
church. I've been to pastors conferences
with many of the leaders that have come with us from this
church to experience the conferences.
Never once have I ever heard anybody speak in this meetings
in tongues. I didn't hear anybody behind me
during worship speaking in tongues.
We don't believe that that's biblical within the confines of
the of the worship of the church.
Do we believe that people, some people have the gifts of praying
in the Spirit and tongues doesn't make them any better or
any less than any other Christian, but it's to be used
in your private prayer clause and alone with the Lord because
the Bible will teach us as we get into this.
That's he who speaks in an unknown tongue, speaks unto God,
not unto men. So sometimes people come here
and they wonder, well, in our worship, why can't we just have
people break into tongues? Well, because it's not biblical,
that's why. And you got some people like,
why is that person making a spectacle themselves?
They're getting my eyes off of Jesus and I'm hearing them.
And it's not what the Lord would want.
So that lays the foundation of I think who we are, where we are
and and how we function. I, I knew Chuck personally, he
was the most quiet, humble, meek, God exalting person that
I've ever met. Outside of that first pastor I
met. Chuck would tell us in a
conference is that the importance of the power of the
Holy Spirit that we need is pastors and men to do what it
is. It's an impossible job without
the Holy Spirit. His life first is Zechariah 46.
It's not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, sayeth the
Lord of hosts. And he wasn't into semantics.
Many times enters into the conversation.
He says, I don't care what you call the experience, baptism,
filling, outpouring, overflowing.
He says those are just definitions.
He says just make sure it's happening in your life, that the
Holy Spirit is filling you and that he's living out of you to
be a blessing to other people. How awesome's that?
So here we are in the city of Greensburg.
Very few churches teach the word of God anymore.
That's why this church is planted.
A lot of these churches are LGBTQ affirming, pro-choice
affirming. That's the way it is.
It's the last days. There'll be a famine for the
word of God in the last days. So when you find a church like
this, thank the Lord for it because they're few and far
between In California right now. Mike McClure is being sued still
for opening the church during COVID.
This is under Calvary Chapel magazine.
Coming up, Jay Sekulow and a couple other legal people that
work with churches for their rights or petitioning and
working to say that this is unlawful lawsuit.
It was a $5,000,000 lawsuit. Now it's down to 1.6 million.
Mike said in his interview that Calvary Chapel knew that it
needed to open during COVID out there because people had no
place to go. The sheep had no place to go.
And the church, instead of having 600, it had 4000 within a
period of a few months because all the other churches were
closed. And a lot of the people that
attended the church heard the gospel for the first time and
got saved and they had massive baptisms there.
And I talked to Mike at one of the pastors conferences a couple
years ago. I said, how in the world have
you been able to get through that?
Not just want to quit and move to a different state.
He says, Clark, it's, it's the Holy Spirit.
And this is what he's calling us to do.
And he says, I, I wish we could get in a car and go somewhere
else, but this is where the Lord told me I got to be.
He said in California. And you guys know what's going
on out there. He said it's hard to say this,
but he says there isn't a lot of alternatives for believers to go
to church anymore because of the false teaching and the heresies.
And Calvary Chapel is one of the few churches and we're not a
denomination, we're a fellowship of like minded believers is one
of the few churches that are holding to the simple teaching
of the Bible verse by verse. And I'm so thankful for the men
in this church and the women in this church that teach
expositionally the whole council of God.
Someone told me that they've been coming here and they've
become dear friends of ours. We had dinner with him a while
back and he's and, and, and the wife said I will never attend
one of those crazy churches again.
My life changed when I started hearing Grace FM and started
coming to Calvary Chapel. All my confusion dissipated and
I began to love the Word of God and see how the Word of God
changes me and changes us. I believe and this is the
challenge to you guys. You have friends and people who
are in dead churches that quench and grieve the Spirit.
You have friends that are in churches that aren't teaching
the Word anymore. Speak into their life and let
them know there's alternatives today and Calvary Chapel
Greensburg is 1. Invite them.
Tell them to listen to Grace FM Tell them to get into the
scriptures, get into the word of God.
If I die tomorrow, this church will continually be stronger and
stronger. Young men like Cason and Sam
growing up, the guys are teaching the church, just stand
up for a minute. The guys are teaching the
Wednesday nights and Bible states stand up.
Any guys they're teaching, stand up for a minute.
Stand up. Pastor Lewis, stand up back
there. Thank you.
Everybody knows you. But you, you know, you got to
you got to have my back all the time.
But OK, now, now the women stay up.
Stand up. Women that teach in the Bible
study in the church, stand up. Women, Karen, stand up.
Don't be shy. Who else are we missing?
Anybody else here? The people that teach our kids,
they're teaching the same way. Stand up, Brad and Janelle.
Isn't that amazing? Let's thank the Lord for these
people. So because of what they do, and
they're on, the guys are on Wednesday night, they're
recorded, they're on the radio live and Grace FM, thanks to
Kevin, he made that happen. Get your friends, get the people
that know you say, hey, listen to me on the radio at 7:00 or
whatever on 91.7. They're going to come to this
church because they know your life and your example, your
testimony, and they're tired of not having the Word of God
available to them. That's the priority of of this
church is to have the word of God available to as many people
as possible. We have a lot of seats here
today that need to be filled, and we believe God's going to
fill them, but He's going to fill them because of your
influence and your invitation to have people come to this church.
We have the Guineon Bible app. It's wonderful.
Fred's provided these with AQR code along with the Calvary
Chapel Connect card, plus these little Bibles that you can give
out the people when you're out and about in the community,
going through a Starbucks or wherever, and ask them how their
days going. Ask them if there's something
you can pray for them about. Get the conversations going,
give them a Bible, tell them about the QR code.
They can connect with this and if they're having troubles in
their lives, they can find the answers in the Bible to the
troubles that they have for the solution.
And then our our connect card also QR code for the website.
It tells us where we meet, the time we meet the address and
it's you are invited. Is anybody willing to do that
here? Stand up if you're willing to do
this. OK, There's a few of you
sitting. Is there any reason why you're
sitting? That's OK.
Well, Fred, Fred tells me, you know, Fred, like he's all
excited about Turning Point. He says, Clark, you know, we got
to get moving for the Lord. The time's running out.
And he's right. We got to get active in the
community. And as a side note, there's a
pamphlet out there for the food bank.
If you guys want to be part of Turning Point, you don't have to
come to the meeting. But Turning Point is just being
a Christian and caring about people and sharing the gospel.
That's what Turning Point's about, right?
And so there's a food bank is a flyer.
It tells you what they need. We're going to collect and put
it in the hallway back here wherever Karen wants it up until
the date that they're going to pick it up.
Someone's going to come in a truck and pick it up, I think on
Monday the 24th. So it tells you exactly what you
can get. No perishable items, but we can
help. A lot of people are hungry right
now. Government workers aren't
getting paychecks right now, right?
There's a lot of things going on in our culture.
People are having trouble with food stamps, all these kind of
things. We got to be salt and light and
be part of the solution, right? And this is a real simple thing
you can do to be part of this movement that's happening right
now in the country. So I gave you some background.
I don't recommend TBN. Be honest with you.
You might find one or two good pastors on there occasionally,
but you got to go. You sift through a lot of
garbage and your mind will get skewed, unfortunately, by false
teaching very easily if you're not careful.
Oh, it's 12:00 already. OK, I'm going to read this one
verse here. This is first Corinthians 13
before we go into the teaching next week and now abide faith,
hope and love these three. But the greatest of these is
love. Pursue love and desire spiritual
gifts, but especially that you may prophecy.
So read chapter 14 this week with an open heart.
I'll do the best I can by God's grace to give it to you straight
and it's going to be exciting and ask the Lord to give you
whatever it is that he wants to give you to use for his glory
and to serve people and to build the church up.
Amen. Well, let's take the Lord's
Supper and they, I'm sorry I took a little bit longer than I
thought I would, but I felt like to go, to go into this teaching
without some background would be ridiculous.
I hope that helped a little bit, You know, did it help?
All right, good. So anybody mad at me here today?
That's a, that's a good thing. That's a good thing.
We'll take the Lord's Supper and at the end you can come up and
pray if you want pray for the movement of the Holy Spirit in
our city in your lives that we're going to pray for Cliff up
here. He's having surgery this week,
back surgery and Lewis's wife Terry's getting surgery, hip
surgery. I'm getting a colonoscopy
tomorrow. So please pray for me to my
colon doesn't get blown out. But anyway, it's fun serving the
Lord with you guys. It really is it's a blessing.
I'm so thankful for all of you. Lord Jesus, we honor you today.
We worship you, we celebrate you, and thank you that you've
given us your word to guide us into all truth.
Holy Spirit, we're thankful that you were here with us and that
you're moving in our hearts and our midst to give us this desire
to know Jesus better and to praise Him and to lift him up to
worship Him, to glorify Him. We thank you for the gift things
that you give us of your Spirit, Lord, because there's no way the
church would exist apart from you, Holy Spirit, and how you
empower each of us as believers. Help us to study, to show
ourselves approved unto God, Rightly dividing the word of
truth. Workmen that need not be
ashamed, Rightly dividing the word of truth.
Help us to do that. Lord, on the night that Jesus is
betrayed, He took the bread in his hands and he broke it and he
gave thanks and he said, take heed, this is my body which is
given for you. Eat this in remembrance of me.
The same manner in that evening He took the cup and he said,
This cup is a new covenant in my blood which is shed for the
forgiveness of sins of many. Drink this in remembrance of me,
for as often as you eat this bread, and you drink this cup,
you shall force the Lord's death till he comes again.
Amen.