Real Life Radio

Jack Hibbs: Today, on Real Life Radio. He says right here, you got to get along with each other. You got to forbear each other. Well, how do you do that? Are you always lowly? Are you always gentle? Are you always exercising long-suffering in your life? Are you always perfectly in Christ putting up with people? If you do, then you're hired.

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David Jay: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's Word, the Bible.

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David Jay: On today's edition of Real Life Radio. Pastor Jack continues his series called First Samuel and a message titled Church Growth 101, part five. Samuel of the Old Testament was the last judge of Israel, and he was the first of its prophets. So, here in chapter 16, we'll continue to see that just as the Spirit of the Lord came upon King David, God wants to do the same thing for us.

For the church to grow in a healthy way, there's got to be a dependency upon the Holy Spirit's anointing rather than simply human effort. So, when a church aligns itself with the Holy Spirit, the growth that follows is both productive and meaningful. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that God wants us to be involved in a healthy church that's filled with the Holy Spirit, loving one another with each person using their gifts according to His will and according to His Word. Now, with his message called Church Growth 101, part five, here's Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: It says there in First Samuel 16:13, then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him, that is David, in the midst of his brothers, and the Spirit of the Lord, that is the Holy Spirit, came upon David from that day forward, and so Samuel arose and went to Rama. And so we've been talking about the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer and how powerful God wants to work and move in His church.

And the person of the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believer is really a theme that should not only have started in the Book of Acts, but it should be continuing today. The Book of Acts, technically, there should be a 29th, 30th, 31st, 32nd, 195th chapter, if you were thinking about it, the Book of Acts have never really come to an end.

But if you were to correctly entitle the Book of Acts, it would be something like the Acts of the Holy Spirit and the lives of the believers. Because God the Holy Spirit wants to move in His church. And He does that by imparting to the church gifts that edify the body of Christ. Very important.

And so, in Acts chapter one, I'll read it, or you can turn there, follow along with me if you'd like, take notes if you'd like. And Acts chapter one, verses one through four, there's a wonderful portion that Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, introduces to us. And He says there in verse one, Acts chapter one, the former account I made, oh Theophilus. Two things about that, the former account is referring to the Gospel of Luke. Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke and Luke wrote the Book of Acts. He says the former account, or the Gospel of Luke, which I wrote, He says, oh Theophilus.

Now, Theophilus, we honestly don't know who Theophilus is. Most scholars believe that Theophilus is a man. The reason why we have question about it is because the name Theophilus in Greek is lover of God. One who loves God.

And so we don't know if Luke as a slave, remember, Luke was a physician, he was a doctor. In those days, doctors were slaves. Wouldn't it be great if your doctor was your slave tonight? Hey, doc, I got a headache. But rich people owned doctors back then, rather than doctors owning rich people. Today. And everybody else.

If you were rich, you had a doctor and he lived in servants' quarters and Well, it's believed that in church history, that Luke was a physician and his master was saved. And having fallen in love with Jesus, his master said, Luke, go as a slave, giving him to Paul, and he traveled with Paul because Paul needed a doctor everywhere Paul went. He was either getting stoned, and that's not with drugs. That was with rocks as his opponents and protesters came against him. And Paul was often sick, he battled malaria, he battled eye trouble. Paul had a lot of things that ailed him. And so Luke traveled with him.

But a beautiful portion of scripture here in Acts chapter 1 verse 1, he says, of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day in which He, Jesus, was taken up. After He, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles, whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them 40 days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God. And being assembled together with them, Jesus commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, He said, you have heard from Me. And that promise of the Father is the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 14. Ephesians 4:1 through 14 says, I therefore, Paul is speaking, the prisoner of the Lord Jesus, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling. With which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love. Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, He says, when He ascended on high, He led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. Now, this, He ascended, what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? That's a reference to Sheol or Abraham's bosom, prior, I don't want to go off into that, that's a wonderful fun study, but when Old Testament believers died, they didn't go directly to heaven, they went to Abraham's bosom, also called paradise, until Jesus rose from the dead. You can study that later on your own, but it's a neat thing.

Verse 10. He who descended also is the one who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastor-teachers. For the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Till we all come together in the unity of the faith, of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect or complete man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. Real quickly, this portion of scripture is where we'll find our teaching for tonight. And we're going to end this mini-series, it was not exhaustive, but it was a mini-series on the gifts, and we're going to be focusing on this one that I just made mention here in the reading, and that is that of evangelism or witnessing. And specifically, though, the gift of evangelism, or what that might mean.

But notice with me as we've looked in verses 1 through 14 in Ephesians 4, Paul said this, that we would walk worthy. How many of you feel worthy right now? You just worthy. If you have a healthy handle on your position in Christ, you may not feel worthy, but you know that you are worthy in Christ. But I don't know about you, but I don't feel worthy.

But Paul says here that we're to walk worthy of the calling. So, right there from the get-go, I feel a little deficient. Then he says with lowliness and gentleness and long-suffering. Bearing one another in love. That word means in the Greek, putting up with one another. See, we're really brothers and sisters. We have to put up with one another. You ever wonder why we don't always get along? Because we're related. He says right here, you got to get along with each other. You got to forbear each other. Well, how do you do that? Are you always lowly? Are you always gentle? Are you always exercising long-suffering in your life? Are you always perfectly in Christ putting up with people? If you do, then you're hired.

Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit. Endeavoring? Do you in every way, shape or form strive and endeavor to keep the unity that, that in no way, that is in all of our lives, this should be our conduct, by the way. In all of our lives, we conduct ourselves in such a way that we're not really so much concerned about the other person because we've elevated them even higher than who they really are. We see them as their Jesus themselves, and we treat them like that. Well, I fail at that.

For the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry. Are you, am I equipping the saints? Are we doing the work of the ministry? I hope so. And does it result in the edifying of the body of Christ? When people are with you, do they walk away from you saying, I can't wait to be with them again. I just felt so encouraged being around them. I want to be with them. Or do people, they can't wait to get away from you? Because all they heard while you were in their presence, you were hearing them tear down somebody and, oh, that guy's a bum, and, oh, look at her. Ew.

No, an edified church is a healthy church. And God has given us the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that the church might be edified. Why? That the church might be healthy. That the church might be productive. Pastor Chuck has taught for years, and he still says it to this day, and it's a wonderful thing, that all you have to do is feed the sheep the Word of God. Feed the people the Word of God, feed the sheep. Because the key to the growth at Calvary Chapel should be this, that healthy sheep reproduce sheep. When people are healthy, when sheep are healthy, when animals are healthy, when fish are healthy, they reproduce. And when you're healthy spiritually, you're going to be reproducing other believers. You're going to be telling people about Christ, you're going to be excited. You're going to be sharing the love of the Lord. And even if you don't say a word to anybody, you're going to be glowing for God in how you conduct your life. It's very important.

The exercising of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In my opinion, the exercising of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the church is a test of that church, of the pastor and of the congregation itself. I had somebody tell me a couple Wednesday nights ago, and it really stuck with me. This young lady said, the church that I was attending, they always talked about the Holy Spirit. We recognize Him as the Lord God that He is in the Trinity and have no problem with that. Talked about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but we never ever stepped out to exercise those gifts as a church. Just never did it. Place was never given for it.

To exercise the gifts of the Holy Spirit, both in a congregational setting or outside these walls, be it preaching or evangelism or teaching or whatever it might be, it's a test. I believe it's a test from God. If you were to take litmus paper and test the church that you attend, I'm assuming maybe you all attend here, or maybe you're visiting, I don't know. But either at this church or some church that you attend, if you were to test that church according to the Word of God, one of the things, first of all, that you're concerned about is is our church following or doing the utmost to follow what is written in the Word of God, the Bible. Number two, is our pastor promoting what the Bible has to say concerning the Word of God? Or does he offer up excuses? That was done 2,000 years ago, it's not done now. Why is that the case?

Or is the congregation not receiving what the Word of God clearly teaches? That the congregation picks and chooses what is comfortable for them. These are all dangers if we're not applying the Word of God to our lives as a church, as a pastor, as a congregation. We could be in big trouble. As a people, we can appear to have the power thereof, but deny that power. We can look just like a church. But I'm wondering if it would be a church that the Lord would want to work in, that He would want to move in.

I don't know, let me lay this out before you. If God is going to go heal tonight, let's say he's, can you imagine? Let's say Jesus was to somehow speak tonight and say, He shows up and, that would be pretty wild, wouldn't it? He shows up and He says, hey, Calvary Chapel, come on, get in the bus, we're going to go out to Loma Linda, and we're going to walk through the hallways of that hospital and I'm going to be healing everybody. In fact, I want you to go down that hallway. Can you imagine? I want you guys to go down that hallway, and I, and in My name I want you to go and just pray for those people and they're going to be healed. Can you imagine? It's a land. It'd be something. Yeah, it'd be something. But I want to be the kind of church that if God's going to say that, I want Him to say it here. I want Him to say it. Pastor, watch out now, you watch out now, if you expect something really big and it doesn't happen, you're going to get discouraged. I'm discouraged most of the time anyway. It doesn't matter.

David Jay: You're listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. To learn more about this ministry or to catch up on some previous episodes, go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. And now, let's get back to today's message. Once again, here's Pastor Jack.

Jack Hibbs: So here's the cool thing. If Jesus says it, just imagine for a moment, if Jesus says it, let's go do it. God forbid that He would show up here, and you'd pull up in the parking lot. Pull out his Palm Pilot. He wouldn't have a Palm Pilot, but he pulls up and he checks our address, shakes his head and drives away. He goes down the street to some other church. Oh, I can use them because they're open to me.

Look, I want to be open to the Holy Spirit, and I can rest at ease with that because the Bible is my guideline for what happens concerning the moving of the Holy Spirit. Pastor Jack, what if somebody jumps out of the walls and swings around and says, this is a message from God. I'm going to say, wait, time out. Sit down. You don't interrupt the teaching service. The Holy Spirit would never do that. He never interrupted Himself. But if we were waiting upon the Lord and such a thing happened, I'd say, sit down. I'd still say, sit down. Sit down. Now, what's your message?

And we would hear that message and judge it according to the Word of God. If it's off the off the wall from the Bible, and wacky, then we'd either rebuke that person honestly, say, don't ever speak again, until you get your Bible right. Or it's time for you to go. Now, we had a lady on our third service. I don't know if you know this or not. We had a lady in the third service. She's sitting right about here. Nothing personal, but that's a hot seat right there. We were, the service was coming to a conclusion, a third service, and Bruce began to play the music, and this lady, and I saw in her eyes. She stood up. Everybody stood up. As soon as she stood up, though, she started coming toward me right here, and I looked in her eyes, and that concerned me instantly. Honestly, I looked and I said to myself, I don't like her eyes. This is something wrong. And she was, I have a message. I have a message. And I heard every word she said. And I said, what? And she goes, I have a message. And I'm telling you, her eyes, something's wrong.

And I said, I tell you what, it's loud in here, the music's playing, step over here and you can tell me about your message. She's, okay. So, as we're walking out, she's talking, she's trying to talk to me about something. And all I can think about, and I really felt the Lord say, get out of the building. Get out of the building with her. And I went through that door right there. And she goes, now, I have to hurry up and get back in there because I have a message for a young man in there. And I said, tell me the message. She goes, oh, I can't tell you the message, it's not for you. And I said, where's the young man? She goes, oh, I don't know. I'm going to get up behind the pulpit. I'm going to announce it. And I said, oh, I can't hear it, but you're going to announce it to the people? I said, look, I don't know who you are. She goes, it doesn't matter, I work for God. And I said, you do? Well, I do too. If you work for God and I work for God, then tell me what the message is. She goes, I'm not going to tell you what the message is. And I said, Lady, if you work for God and I work for God, if you're a prophet and I'm a pastor, surely, we can get along. Now, here's the deal. Tell me the message, or you're not going in the building. And she goes, I'm not going to, I am not going to tell you the message, and I am going in the building. I said, two things. Number one, you physically won't make it in. Secondly, it's a federal offense to disrupt a religious service, which we'll have you arrested for. So, tell me the message. And she said, you blankety blank blank and language you could not believe. And I was like this, and there was an usher behind her, and he was just red, I was red, the cussing. People were coming out, and we got her out of the way. And I tell you, thank God she never came back. But God protected this body, and that stuff has happened from time to time.

And you'd say, Jack, that's why we don't want to be open to the Holy Spirit. Don't ever think that. Because didn't Jesus, when He was ministering, even when the apostles were ministering, and Jesus had long time ascended back into heaven, didn't they contend with imposters and strange difficulties? They were open to the work of the Holy Spirit, but they knew the Word of God to judge things by. And they didn't allow things to go on. That's very important.

And so, as we conclude this mini-series, know this, that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, remember, are not infallible. Did you know that? They're not infallible. People will make mistakes concerning the use of the gifts of the Spirit. You want to know why? Because God's using imperfect creatures. He's using us. And people will say, I really felt like I should have spoken out this word, this verse, Pastor Jack, was in my mind, and I, I couldn't get this verse out of my mind, but I didn't say anything during our after-glow setting on Wednesday nights later on. I didn't say anything because I, I didn't think people, I didn't want people to think I was crazy.

And that's a shame, because, you got to step out in faith. But so many within the church are so afraid of making a mistake in the usage of their gift, that they don't use it at all. And I think that's a sad thing. It must be by faith. Well, tonight we look at what is called the gift of evangelism. And I think it would be right for me to just tell you from the start, as we've read in Ephesians 4:11,