Prophetic Ecstasy

SERMON: 2013-05-05--sg1302--prophetic-ecstasy SOURCE DURATION: 00:54:37.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with a scripture passage introduction and continues through theological exposition, pastoral application, and concluding remarks (including repeated calls to worship/revival). All segments are integral parts of the main sermon. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:50:50.280-00:54:33.700 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- A first passage of scripture comes from 1 Samuel chapter 10. Let me give you the background here. Samuel has just anointed Saul to be king of Israel, and he says, "These are the signs that are going to happen to you to confirm that it is God who is calling you to be king." And that's where we pick up the story in verse 9, "As Saul turned to leave Samuel, God changed Samuel's heart, and all these signs were fulfilled that day. When they arrived at Gibeah, a procession of prophets met him. The Spirit of God came upon him in power, and he joined in their prophesying. When all those who had formerly known him saw him prophesying with the prophets they asked each other, 'What is this that has happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?' A man who lived there answered, 'And who is their father?' So it became a saying, 'Is Saul also among the prophets?'" Keep that phrase in mind. Our next passage, similar to this, comes from chapter 19. Again, the background here is this story, "Saul has now become jealous of David because he knows that God is blessing David in ways that his life is not being blessed. He has already tried to kill him by throwing this spear at him, and now he is going to arrest him, but David's wife, Michael, M-I-C-H-A-L, who happens to be Saul's daughter, warns him and David escapes." And that's where we pick up the story in verse 18 of 1 Samuel chapter 19. "When David had fled and made his escape, he went to Samuel at Ramah and told him all that Saul had done to him. Then he and Samuel went to Naoth and stayed there. Word came to Saul, 'David is in Naoth at Ramah.' So he sent men to capture him. But when they saw a group of prophets prophesying, but Samuel standing there as their leader, this is the school of prophets that we talked about last week, the Spirit of God came upon Saul's men, and they also prophesied. Saul was told about it, and he sent more men, and they prophesied too. Saul sent men a third time, and they also prophesied. Finally he himself left for Ramah and went to the great cistern at Sequeu, and he asked, 'Where are Samuel and David?' Over in Naoth at Ramah, they said. So Saul went to Naoth at Ramah, but the Spirit of God came even upon him, and he walked along prophesying until he came to Naoth. He stripped off his robes and also prophesied in Samuel's presence. He lay that way all that day and night. This is why the people say, 'Is Saul also among the prophets?' What a story there. In that first story we have King Saul before he has become a king meeting up with a procession of prophets. The Spirit of God falls upon him and he begins to prophesy, much to the consternation of the people that have known him all his life, because it is so contrary to everything they know about him. And then in the second story we read where in a fit of anger he sends soldiers to arrest David who has found refuge among Samuel and the school of prophets with him. They're all worshipping the Lord and as they do, the Spirit of the Lord falls upon each of the three companies of soldiers that Saul sends. And then when Saul decides to go look for himself, and remember now this is the Saul who had been possessed by an evil spirit who had already tried to kill David in his fit of peak, and the Spirit of the Lord falls on Saul. He not only begins to prophesy, but he lies there half undressed for a full day and a full night in the presence of God. So what do you make of stories like that? And why are they in the Bible? Well many times there are multiple levels of meaning of course to stories, and the most obvious explanation for this story being in scripture is twofold. Number one, it gives us the explanation for a proverb common in Israel at that time that said "Is Saul also among the prophets?" It was apparently, as I said, a proverb that was well known then. It was one of these rhetorical "duh" kind of questions, kind of like "Is the Pope Catholic?" or "Is the sky blue?" or "Does water freeze when the temperature drops below freezing?" It's one of these self-evident kind of questions, and to ask that kind of question is really to show your ignorance. But there's a second reason there, and that is the fact that this story shows God's power to change both persons and situations. Because in the first story, of course, God transforms Saul's heart from a timid, resistant candidate for kingship to a man who begins to prophesy and who is empowered by the Holy Spirit to be king over Israel. The Bible says God changed his heart. It made him a different man. And in the second story, of course, this phenomenon of spiritual ecstasy, if you will, saves David's life and shows again God's great power in moving his purposes forward in the coming of his kingdom. Now, each of these two reasons is story enough to build a whole message around if one was so inclined. But that is not the focus of where I think the Lord wants us to take these two stories this morning. I think what he wants us to do is to focus on the spiritual phenomenon that we see in these two stories, namely the fact that the Spirit of God falls upon these people. And in the process of falling upon these people, they prophesy. You may recognize this as being an Old Testament equivalent of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, except on the day of Pentecost they broke out not necessarily speaking prophetically in a language-- well, yeah, let me back up and say really it is the same in the sense that the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost was to declare the mighty works of God. And we'll come back to that and talk about that a little bit this morning. And so as we look at these two stories this morning, I want to try to make three observations, if time allows, that illustrate a very important spiritual truth that most of us are probably not that much in tune with or perhaps even that comfortable with. And I'll talk about that a little bit as time goes on, too. Observation number one, the Christian faith has an element of the ecstatic. It has an element of the ecstatic. The English word ecstasy comes from the Greek word extasis. You see the immediate link there. The word extasis means literally being put out of its place or standing outside of or beside oneself. And the word beside oneself is sort of the English equivalent that we use in a very similar fashion. For example, we will say concerning a child who is throwing a tantrum, he is beside himself. Or we talk about a person who is consumed with grief, he or she is beside himself with grief. Or a person who is overcome by anger or strong emotions, he was just totally beside himself. And what we mean by that expression is that that person is overcome by emotions that are so strong that he or she is no longer fully in control of his or her life. He or she, in extreme instances, loses touch with reality and lives for at least a moment in an altered state. We've all heard the stories of people who have done terrible things and afterwards they say I don't know what came over me. And they will often not even have a recollection or a memory of what it was that happened. That's the word beside oneself and that's at the root meaning of the word ecstasy. And so it is interesting that in the Christian life there is a place where we are said to be beside ourselves, where ecstasy can overtake us in the way that we're talking about it. And just to illustrate that, listen to these words from Paul, 2 Corinthians 5.13. This is the Revised Standard Version translation, the NIV is a little different but it means the same thing. Paul says if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. He says if we are beside ourselves, the NIV says if we are out of our right mind, it is for God. But if we are in our right mind, it is for you. And I think maybe the best way to try to understand that is to put it in the context of something that all of us are familiar with, if not by personal experience, then by having watched others and that is people that are under the influence, the influence of alcohol, the influence of drugs or some other force that overtakes them where they are not their normal selves, they are beside themselves. And it's very interesting that in scripture there is always a close linkage between being filled with the spirit and being drunk. It's an interesting phenomenon what happened on the day of Pentecost when the church was filled with the spirit. What was the accusation? These people are drunk. Peter's response was can't be because it's only nine o'clock in the morning, I guess you don't get drunk that early in the day. Similarly, when John the Baptist is conceived and the angel Gabriel comes to make the announcement to Zechariah, the instruction is he's going to be filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb, it's a very unusual kind of thing, illustrating just how important his calling in life was going to be, but he was to refrain from drinking alcohol. And the reason isn't hard to figure out, the effects can superficially look the same. And so God wanted to avoid the possibility of somebody crediting a prophet's inspiration as coming from alcohol rather than from the Holy Spirit. And once you understand that, you will understand why Paul says in Ephesians 5.18, do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery, which is loose living, you're out of control, instead be filled with the spirit. Let me say it again, the Christian faith has in it an element of the ecstatic. Now let me be the first to admit that being a good rational Dutchman, I'm not always comfortable with the ecstatic. I have very limited experience with it myself, I think I know the presence of God, I think I have experienced his encouragement, his comfort, his leadership in my life, I would like to think that my life is filled with the spirit, but ecstatic experiences such as we're describing about here are pretty much foreign to my experience and I suspect to the experience of many of us here. And chances are we're a little cautious. For one thing, there's a lot of flaky people in the world, how many people haven't you known that sit in jail because they murdered somebody because God told them so. Not exactly the kind of company that most of us are very comfortable in keeping, right? So there's an element of the weirdness of the spiritual where life is out of control that most of us, including myself, are not terribly comfortable with. At the same time, scripture makes it very clear that these sources of ecstasy can come from multiple different sources, can they not? They can come from God obviously, but they can come from Satan, pagan religions have people in modes of ecstasy, think of Elijah and the prophets of Baal trying to call down fire from heaven, they were worked themselves up into a frenzy of ecstatic experiences. Means that ecstasy can come out of certain unhinged type of personalities. And so it's not hard to be skittish of experiences that are not helpful and that are not up-building. Yet my commitment before the Lord and before you is to preach the full counsel of God. And uncomfortable as elements of this are to me personally, I have to let you know there is an element in the Christian life that includes the ecstatic. The counterfeit only proves there is the real. The issue of course is we have to learn to discern which is which because the danger is always, as I've said before, the danger is that we embrace something that is not of God and that will lead us astray. The equal danger is that we reject something that is of God and then we will equally miss out on that which is of God. In that regard, let me talk just very briefly about afterlife experiences that have become incredibly popular these days. This is the current issue of McLean's Magazine. It covers story what if heaven is real, why so many people including scientists suddenly believe in the afterlife. And there has been a whole plethora of books published in the last little while about people who claim to have gone to heaven and who have seen and heard things that are in many cases inexpressible to the human experience on vacation the other day visiting our son and daughter in Austin. On the way back home, I finally had a chance to read "The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven" by Kevin and Alex Malarkey, bad name, bad name, bad name. And usually I don't give much credence to after death experiences and I'll tell you why. Because too many of them come back saying there is no judgment, it's all love and God embraces everybody. And I want you to know when you hear a message like that, I don't care what spirit inspires it or what experiences you claim, it is contrary to the message of the cross. Remember the Apostle Paul says, "If I or an angel from heaven declare to you an other gospel than what has been proclaimed to you, let him be anathema." Let him be accursed. Now that said, this book's rather different. This was a young man who in 2004, Kevin and his six-year-old Alex were driving in a car, his father was distracted and they were T-boned by another car. The boy was seriously injured, totally out of it, airlifted to the hospital, was in a coma for two months and then when he came out of his coma, began to tell stories of having been caught up in heaven that ring extremely true biblically. And he was able to testify to things that had happened in the course of the recovery from the accident that he simply would have had no way of knowing because he was in a coma, but he also burst forth in what's known as glossolalia or the speaking in tongues, which he said was the language of heaven. And the ultimate judgment, whether things like this are of God or not, you know, will have to be in the hands of others. And as I said, I'm extremely skeptical of most stories that I read, but I also know there are experiences that are beyond my experience, that are beyond your experience. The Apostle Paul was given revelation where he was caught up into the third heaven and saw things that he was not allowed to explain or speak about when he came back. All of that is to say we not only need discernment, we need to always measure things as I'll show you in a few moments by the cross of Jesus, but we also need to be aware that there are things beyond our current experience. There is a place in both the Old Testament and the New Testament for the ecstatic in the spiritual life that is beyond where most of us have done our living. Second observation that I want to make is that ecstatic experiences in Scripture always have a twofold purpose. One is to worship God, and the second is to proclaim the coming of his kingdom. Let me briefly talk about each of these. First of all, the purpose of ecstatic experiences is to worship God. Let me take you back one more time to that verse that I quoted earlier from 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 13 where Paul says, "If we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you." The phrase there, "If we are beside ourselves," is for God. And so the function of ecstatic experiences is not so much to bless other people first and foremost as it is to engage in worship with God. And one of the very interesting things about the school of the prophets that we've been talking about here in 1 Samuel chapter 10 is the emphasis on music. Because notice again how Samuel puts it in chapter 10 verse 5. He says to Saul, "As you approach the town, you will meet a procession of prophets coming down from the high place with lyres, tambourines, flutes, and harps being played before them and they will be prophesying." Now it doesn't say whether that prophesying was words spoken or words sung. It can easily be a combination of both. The point is this, when the Spirit of God falls upon God's people historically, one of the first things that it does is that it inspires worship. When God grants His Holy Spirit, eyes are open to the grandeur and the glory of God. Eyes are open to the grandeur and the glory of the gospel, to the purposes of God, to the love and to the power of God. And all through scripture, whenever people are in the presence of God, they fall flat on their faces, if you will, and they burst forth in prophetic declaration. And music is an important part of that. Because there's something about music that bypasses sometimes all the rational doors that we keep closed to the presence of God. It gets in through the back door, it engages deep-seated areas of our lives, and before you know it, you're caught up in the presence and the reality of God. I mean, how many times does it happen in your own life? You hear a song, maybe on the radio, maybe at church, or you're part of a corporate worship experience and all of a sudden, you're moved to the core of your being. Because some song or some music gives voice to something that lives deep inside. How many of you would say that you can identify with that kind of an experience? That's the power of music. That's why when Saul was overtaken by this evil spirit, and he didn't know what to do with himself, they'd call in David, and he'd play the harp. And the playing of the harp, the prophetic declaration of David's ministry, would quiet down his angst and his anxiety that he was experiencing. And even as music opens the door, music also becomes an expression of our collective love and power for God. Because again, how many of us haven't been part of worship experiences sometimes, or you know how it is in worship, sometimes you're just opening your mouth and you're just going along with it and you do your job, and that's okay. Better than keeping your mouth closed and not going along with it. But every so often, there is a holy moment, isn't that true? Every so often, the music and the words and where you find yourself individually and where we all find ourselves collectively and where the song leaders find themselves, it all comes together and you know that God's there. How many of you would say you've had experiences like that where you know God was present? See? It was Friedrich Handel in writing The Messiah, who was so overcome by emotion that when his servant asked him the question what was happening and why he was so enraptured, spoke these words he said as he held up the score for the hallelujah chorus, he said, "I did think I saw heaven open and saw the very face of God." That's ecstasy, you see? There's a place of being moved so powerfully that the worship of God isn't just a chore, it is something delightful, and that again then is why Paul in Ephesians chapter 5, the verses 18, 19, and 20 goes on to admonish us, "Be filled with the Spirit." This is preceded by, "Don't be drunk with wine, be filled with the Spirit, speak to one another with songs, hymns, and spiritual songs, sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Speak to one another with songs, hymns, and spiritual songs. Every revival that has ever taken place that I know of in the course of history when God pours out his Spirit upon the church, the product is new music, new songs, and a new desire to worship God because that's the Spirit of prophecy, and one of the things that you and I can do is say to the Lord, "Grant me more of your Spirit. Give me a better revelation of who you are, of who I am in Christ, and teach me to worship you with fervor and with energy and with power." I sometimes wish that people were as powerfully inspired by the Holy Spirit as they are when they are drunk with booze because we've all heard drunken people sing and sing on top of their voices regardless of how stupid they might sound or look. If we could put aside our personal sensitivities and our worriedness and make a joyful noise to the Lord, how pleasing that would be to God because that's the fruit of the Holy Spirit. That's why we encourage you to sing out and to step into it. Don't be timid. Those of you that have good voices and that can carry a tune like some of us, you have a responsibility to guide the next 15 feet of people all around you so they learn how to sing, so do it for the glory of God. You can do it. It rises before God as praise and incense. Think of how many cuss words God has to put up with every day and how anxious he is to hear heartfelt worship coming from God's people. One function of the prophetic is the worship of God, but the second function that I want to talk about just a little bit then is to proclaim the mighty acts of God because what happened on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church and they all broke forth speaking in languages that everybody understood, the declaration of the public was we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues. And so when these prophets are prophesying, they are declaring the coming of God's kingdom. There's a school of thought that believes that what the prophets were prophesying in that second story when the Spirit fell on the soldiers and everybody burst forth in prophecy was that they were prophesying that David would become the king of Israel. Now I don't know if that is speculation or if there is biblical cause to say that other than to say it really lines up of course with Samuel's prophetic declaration that God was taking the kingdom away from Saul and he was entrusting the kingdom to David because David was a man after God's own heart. And all through scripture, God raises up prophets to speak to God's people. And the prophetic word throughout scripture can always be summarized in this fashion, you've seen this many, many times but let me just use it again to summarize the whole message of scripture because the clearer we are on this, the clearer we can discern whether prophetic words that we hear are truly of God or not. The prophetic word always begins with the fact that God created everything in relationship and in relationship with each other. The world fell into sin because we turned our backs on God, we became selfish and Satan is the God of this world. And the prophetic word is always a call to repentance. Turn away from your sin, turn away from Satan, seek to be reconciled with God and seek to be reconciled with each other. The prophetic word is always this reconciliation can only take place through the person of Jesus Christ and if you will come to him, if you will repent of your sins, if you will turn to God, he will graciously forgive, he will bring you into his kingdom and ultimately he will restore everything. To some degree we have the foretaste of that as you know in this life and the rest is in the life to come. That is the prophetic word and it's interesting that in the book of Revelation we read this word Revelation 19 verse 10, the angel says to John who has fallen on his knees because he is overcome by the glory of the angel, the angel says don't worship me, he says worship God for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So the second reason that God gives his Holy Spirit in these kinds of sometimes ecstatic experiences, and it doesn't have to be ecstatic to be the Holy Spirit but there is that element in Scripture is to call people to repentance, to call people to faith in Jesus and to call people to live lives that honor and glorify God by faith in Jesus. And that just for the record without spending a lot of time on that this morning is one of the ways in which you can tell true prophecy from false prophecy because the question is always does it focus on the Jesus of Scripture, not the Jesus of popular culture, the Jesus of popular culture is a Jesus that wouldn't harm a fly and that loves everybody equally regardless of who they are or where they stand in their relationship with God. I don't know where people get that from but they don't get it from reading the Gospels I can promise you that because that's not the Jesus you meet. The Jesus you meet in the Gospels is a Jesus who loves sinners, calls people to repentance, hates religious hypocrites but he loves sinners and he offers the glories of God's kingdom to those who will bend the knee, who will repent of their sin and who will forsake their sin and who will be reconciled to God. And so it's interesting in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 if we can get that verse up for a moment, "You know that when you were pagan," says Paul, "somehow or another you were influenced and led astray to mute idols." Here you have pagan ecstasy. People are being moved to think of the idols they worship as the source of life. Before I tell you, no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. A true prophet will always point to the Jesus of Scripture and it's very important for us to understand how that works. So you get these two elements that come together. You have the ecstasy that produces worship to God directed towards him and you have the ecstasy that produces bold prophetic declaration that declares the coming of God's Kingdom. And if you want to see in Scripture how those two come together, I can think of no better place than the narrative of the nativity in Luke's Gospel. Because what happens to John the Baptist, or back up a little bit, what happens to Mary when she is visiting her cousin Elizabeth and the babe in Elizabeth's womb stirs because the mother of our Lord has made her appearance? Anybody remember? The song of Mary. My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. He has been mindful of the humble state of his servant from now on all generations will call me blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me. Holy is his name and it goes on how the Lord is going to send the rich away hungry and the poor he's going to bring into the coming of his kingdom. Same thing happens a little bit later when John the Baptist is born. The Bible says his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and what did he do next? He prophesied praise be to the Lord the God of Israel because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David as he said through his holy prophets of long ago. Salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant the oath that he swore to our father Abraham to rescue us from the hand of our enemies and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our lives. And then in the next chapter when Jesus is being presented in the temple what happens to an old man called Simeon "Sovereign Lord as you have promised now dismiss your servant in peace for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all people a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." When the Holy Spirit comes he inspires worship and he inspires prophetic declaration because God is not silent. So there's a place in the Christian life where an ecstatic experience, ecstatic experiences are intended to produce worship and prophetic declaration about the coming of God's kingdom. It is never for the purpose of trying to figure out the future. It's never for the purpose of fortune telling. It is for the purpose of the purposes of God being fulfilled in your life and in the history of the world and in the history of the church. Third reason though that I want to talk about briefly before we wind up this morning and that is this spiritual ecstasy is not the same as spiritual maturity and I can think of no better example than King Saul himself because he started so well didn't he? I mean he was a changed man because the spirit of the Lord fell upon him. He prophesied, declared the praises of God, gave origin to the proverb is Saul also among the prophets and Samuel says to Saul after the Holy Spirit has fallen upon him do anything which your hand finds you to do and God will be with you. That's how mighty was his anointing. What happens to Saul, he gets abandoned by God. He turns to witchcraft and how does he die? He dies by suicide at his own hand. Why the tragedy of Saul? Because for all the anointing of the Holy Spirit and the momentary change of his heart, his heart was not really changed. I've often thought if you put David and Saul together in the Old Testament in many ways Saul is the better man, did you know that? And yet at the end of this story it is Saul who is rejected, it is David who is chosen and declared to be a man after God's own heart, why? Because fundamentally Saul was not yielded to God. He was a proud man, Bible says he stuck ahead above everybody else in Israel. He was impressive but he cared what people thought more than he cared for what God thought. And so through a series of acts of disobedience the kingdom was taken away. David sinned powerfully, was as human as human can be yet at the core of David's heart there was a desire to know God and to serve God and to walk with God and when he was convicted of sin he didn't rationalize, justify, he owned his sin, took his lickings and received God's gracious forgiveness. And what you have here is what Brad Long who used to minister Holy Spirit conferences here many years ago used to say is the difference between the spirit upon and the spirit within. The spirit upon is an anointing of God's Holy Spirit to equip you to do the work of God. That's what Paul talks about when he says to the Corinthians in one Corinthians chapter one the verses five and seven for in him he says that is in Christ you have been enriched in every way in all your speaking and in all your knowledge here you have prophetic gifting. This isn't just your good talker no these are gifts of the Holy Spirit therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. That's the spirit upon the one who calls forth spiritual anointing so that we can do the work of God boldly and courageously. Saul became a new man because the spirit of God was upon him and he had courage and insight and wisdom that he lacked up until that moment. That's what Jesus means when he says wait in Jerusalem until you receive power from on high for you will be my witnesses but the spirit upon is not the same as the spirit within because the spirit within cultivates the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It changes our hearts on the inside that we become more and more like the person of Jesus and you can have and this is very confusing to people you can have tons of spiritual anointing because it is a gift that God gives you that is unrelated to your spiritual maturity and yet be a spiritual baby at heart which is the issue with the Corinthians that's why Paul goes on to say two chapters further along on Corinthians 3 1 2 and 3 he says brothers I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly mere infants in Christ I gave you milk not solid food for you are not yet ready for it indeed you are still not ready you are still worldly and so what matters biblically is a healthy balance between spiritual gifts and spiritual fruits Paul ends 1 Corinthians chapter 12 which is a chapter that deals with spiritual gifts with the exhortation to desire spiritual gifts but to desire the greater good which is the fruit of the spirit and so as you read through Corinthians 1 Corinthians 12 deals with spiritual gifts 1 Corinthians 14 deals with spiritual gifts but sandwiched in between what do you find the love chapter and Paul puts it this way he says if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol if I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love I am nothing and if I give all I possess to the poor surrender my body to the flames but have not love I gain nothing and so let me end with this it isn't one or the other sometimes people say oh we don't need spiritual gifts because oh we have the fruit of the spirit and sometimes people who have spiritual gifts look down on people who don't have the same spiritual gifts as they do and they say oh you're secondary second-rate kind of Christians because you don't have what I have and the Bible says we need both we need spiritual gifts because they are the power tools of the kingdom of God if I have a garden that I want to plow I can do it with a shovel but I tell you it is an awful lot quicker with a power tool but all the power tools in the world are not a substitute for the importance of love because love becomes the glue that binds it all together let me end with this because many years ago when I first started pastoring a church and some of you have heard me tell this story I prayed diligently for the Lord what kind of church do you want us to be because if you're going to lead people then you got to have some place to lead them to don't you and I had a wide variety of different spiritual experiences by then and I said Lord do you want us to be an evangelistic church do you want us to put our emphasis on soul winning and I said our Lord do you want us to be do you want us to be charismatic do you want us to cultivate spiritual gifts or I said Lord do you want us to be a church in the traditional sense of the word and I prayed about this for months on end because what you emphasize is ultimately going to shape where you lead people you understand that don't you and so when the answer came a couple of months later it was so elementary I burst out laughing this is honest the truth because what the Lord impressed upon my heart at that point in time was it wasn't an issue of evangelistic wasn't an issue of charismatic it was an issue of being traditional the Lord said to me as clearly as he's ever spoken to me about anything he says I want you to focus on two things people that love God with all of their heart soul strength and mind and people that love their neighbor the way they love themselves and he made it very clear to me that if that is our focus all the other stuff will fall into place because you see if I love God and I love you spiritual gifts will be used to serve you not to aggrandize myself and to make something out of me and if I love you with all of my heart then whatever God gives us collectively will be for the building up of the body of Christ isn't that amazingly simple isn't that amazingly simple and I'll tell you to this day whenever I get confused about where the emphasis ought to lie I always come back to that great commandment love God above all and your neighbor as yourself because you see it takes care of evangelism takes care of spiritual gifts takes takes care of everything in the body of Christ and one day spiritual gifts will all disappear but how does one Corinthians chapter 13 in read it out loud with me and now these three main faith hope and love but the greatest [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:50:50.280; remove through 00:54:37.000] of [CUT] these is love. Let the angels of the earth, let your sons and daughters speak your words of prophecy. Send us dreams and vision. Reveal the secrets of your heart. Lord our faith is rising. Let our heavens sound the coming of your day. There's gonna be a great awakening. There's gonna be a great revival in our land. There's gonna be a great awakening. And everyone who calls on Jesus, say, will be saved. Lord, pour out your Spirit on all the nations of the world. Let them see your glory. Let them fall in revenue. Show your mighty power. Shake the heavens and the earth. Lord, the world is waiting. Let creation see the coming of your day. There's gonna be a great awakening. There's gonna be a great revival in our land. There's gonna be a great awakening. And everyone who calls on Jesus, say, will be saved. There's gonna be a great awakening. There's gonna be a great revival in our land. There's gonna be a great awakening. And everyone who calls on Jesus, say, will be saved. And everyone who calls on Jesus, say, will be saved. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:54:37.000; resume after this marked segment]