Supernatural Gift Signs — Hebrews 2

0:00 Well, my children always laugh at me because I'm so old fashioned and out of date. I wear old man blue jeans and all of that, right? So there you go. I'm going attempt to do a PowerPoint with you today. Be patient with me as we attempt to do this today.

0:20 And that's not the right thing. Do you want me to hit a button or something? We have the assistant here. Once we get it going, we'll be good. There we go.

0:43 Okay. All right. Well, we're very happy for all of you who may be visiting. We pray that you will feel at home. We love the Lord here, and we try to be true to the scriptures.

0:57 But we do hope that you feel welcome and that you are feeling at home. Today, I'm gonna take the the subject of supernatural sign gifts. And let me just start with a brief explanation before we get into it, just in case you do not know what that means. I thought it'd be appropriate that I would explain first. In the Bible, when Jesus was on earth and after he went back up and the apostles started to preach, Jesus and the apostles would do many miracles, tremendous things that the scriptures talk about.

1:37 They would heal people. They would remove demons. They would... Some people were resurrected from the dead. All sorts of supernatural things were happening.

1:49 And so the question is, are those supernatural sign gifts, those abilities that certain men had still around? Or does God work differently today? So that's going to be what we're going to try to explain today. So may God give me grace. So let's get started then.

2:11 And let me just pray real quick. Father, we pray that you will be glorified as we look at your scriptures and we pray for wisdom and guidance to the Holy Spirit. In your blessed name, amen. Amen. Now, what I want to do is take you through a brief look at history, at how God worked in the past.

2:30 So you look at the scriptures and what we notice is that there was three times in the history of the world where God worked in a supernatural way. Number one, during the time of Moses. And if you remember, maybe you haven't read it, but you've seen it on TV, right? You've seen the Moses during the Easter time and when they were slaves and they went from Egypt to the promised land. Alright.

2:57 Now, during that time, God did many, many, many miraculous supernatural, powerful signs for the people. Now why did he do it? Why did he do it? They were there and he did 10 plagues so that he can crush the supposed gods of Egypt. Then they come to the Red Sea and the Red Sea opens and they cross on dry land.

3:24 After that, they're walking through the desert and they had no water. They're in the desert and they hit a rock and water started gushing out. A little bit down the line, they were hungry and God started to send manna, these little flaky things. I guess the Bible said it looked kind of like snow coming down. And it was food.

3:42 And they would pick it up and it's like, man, that's miraculous. You ever seen that happen? And so they were walking down. They said, oh, we're hungry. So they pray and God sends a bunch of birds and a bunch of birds fall down right in front and they had meat.

3:55 And it goes on and it goes on. They're experimenting one miracle after another as they're going through the desert, going through the promised land. And what was the point? What was the point? Deuteronomy chapter one and verse 32 says, I did all of this.

4:12 I I did all of these miracles, all of these powerful signs for you so that you can learn to trust me. That was the point. So when they got to the promised land and it was time to start conquering the enemy, guess what? The people didn't trust them. In spite of the fact that he did all of those miracles, you would have thought by that time, if God says we're going to win and we're going to conquer the enemy, we're going to do it.

4:42 But they didn't they didn't trust. And so you can read that in Deuteronomy chapter one and verse 32. With everything that I did, you never believed me. You never trusted me. God wants you to believe them and to trust them.

4:58 Alright? So that was the first time in the history of the world where God intervened and did supernatural miracles and so forth so that they could learn to trust them. And as we said, they never did. Secondly, during the time of Elijah and Elisha, which were two prophets, two prophets, and they were powerful prophets. They did tremendous miracles.

5:26 Some of the miracles they did, for example, an axe had fell into the river, and the prophet made that thing come out of the water and raise up and come back and land on ground. It's like, wow. And you see a lot of different miracles during that stage. Now during this stage in the history of Israel, they were in total absolute rebellion. They had gone into idolatry.

5:49 They weren't following God, and they were doing these miracles so that the people would repent and come back to God. Well, did they repent? Superficially. A few people did. There was a small remnant, but the nation in general, in spite of the fact that they saw all of these miracles did not repent.

6:09 They didn't turn back to God. They didn't turn back to God. Now this is important. So we see the first instant, God did all of these miracles so they can trust him, but they didn't trust him. Secondly, he sends these two prophets doing all sorts of miraculous things, and they still didn't repent and turned to the living God.

7:02 And only someone sent by God could do it. And so Jesus was able to, as you know, as you read the gospels, perform tremendous miracles, such as walking on water, stopping a storm, and things of that nature. So they were to verify and to confirm that he was the legitimate savior of the world, the one God sent to save us from sin and send us to heaven if we believe in him. So after Jesus resurrects from the dead and goes back up to heaven, the apostles then were given the same authority that Jesus had. And as you see through the book of Acts, they were performing all sorts of powerful miracles.

7:49 And people were like, wow, look at what these men are doing. People who were paralyzed, they had the power to make them get up and walk. But why were they doing it? To to to confirm their message that these men are sent by God to preach Jesus as the only way to heaven. In other words, they weren't doing it just to do it.

8:10 Hey, let's put on a dog and pony show. Come on. Anybody wanna come? And we're gonna start doing these miracles and magic things. That that wasn't the point.

8:18 They were doing it so that people can believe the message that Jesus Christ died on a cross, was buried, rose from the dead, and whoever believes in him will have eternal life. And so that was the purpose. It's important to understand this as we keep getting into this particular topic. Okay. Let's continue.

8:40 Jesus used healing and miracles as proof of his deity, confirming that he was the Messiah. Let's go to Luke chapter seven and verse 19, for example, and we'll give some explanation to what we mean by this. Luke chapter seven, and I had to be selective in some of my texts. Otherwise, we'd be here all evening. So I just selected a few that gave enough proof that you can understand what we're saying.

9:13 So Luke chapter seven and verse 19, John the Baptist was imprisoned. And when he was in prison, he was discouraged. And he sent his disciples to go talk to Jesus and to ask this question. Listen to what the Bible says. And summoning summoning two of his disciples, John the Baptist that is, John sent them to the Lord saying, are you the expected one or do we look for someone else?

9:42 And when the men had come to him, to Jesus, they said, John the Baptist has sent us to you saying, Are you the expected one or do we look for someone else? Now look at verse 21. This is important. At this very time, he cured many people of diseases and afflictions and evil spirits, and he granted sight to many who were blind. So in other words, they come with a question, are you the expected one?

10:10 Are you the one? Are you the savior? Are you the Messiah? And he says, okay, here's how I'm going to answer you. He starts to perform all these miracles.

10:19 He healed people. He gave blind people their sight. Now notice verse 22, and he answered and said to them, go and report to John what you have seen and heard. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear. The dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to him, and blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over me.

10:45 In other words, how did Jesus answer the question, are you the expected one? By performing miracles, supernatural miracles that proved that he was the one. He says, so go and tell John the Baptist, I am the one. Look what I just did. I just proved to you because it was prophesied in the Old Testament, and this is true of me, and I'm doing it now.

11:11 Do you believe me now? You see what I did? Go and tell John the Baptist. And John the Baptist then could understand that indeed he was the Messiah. Okay.

11:23 John two eleven, the gospel of John chapter two and verse 11. Look at this. As you know, the gospel of John is constructed around seven miracles. These seven miracles were specifically put into the gospel of John so that you can believe in Jesus. And we're going to go to that in a minute.

11:48 But notice John chapter two and verse 11. This beginning of his signs, that is the miraculous signs, the signs that he did when he was healing people and giving people their sight. In this case, he turned water into wine. I think most people are familiar with that particular miracle, right? This, the beginning of his signs, Jesus did in Cana Of Galilee, notice, and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him.

12:20 They believed in him. They're like, look, no ordinary man could do the things he's doing. He has to be the one. And when they saw some of the signs that he did, they believed in him. Another example, Acts two twenty two, the next book over, Acts two twenty two.

12:43 Hope you're patient with me as you follow my argument as I'm trying to explain or answer the question, do supernatural signs and spiritual gifts still exist? Acts two and verse 22. Now listen, this is Peter preaching now, and he's preaching to people. The first message after Jesus resurrected, this is the first message. Listen to what he says.

13:30 Listen, by God with miracles and wonders and signs, which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourself know. And so as Peter is preaching the gospel, he's saying, I'm talking about Jesus, the one that God worked powerfully through him performing signs, miracles, and wonders to prove that he was the true Messiah, the true savior of the world. And so the scriptures are making it clear to us then that the signs of the wonders, the miracles that Jesus did were being done so that he can prove to the people looking at him and to us, we can read that he was the true one. He was a true one. Because couldn't any man just say, Hey, I'm the Christ.

14:18 I'm the savior. Another man can come. In fact, during that time, there were other people saying it. How do we know who's who? So he did miracles that couldn't be explained that people said, wow, he has to be the one.

14:36 He has to be the one, especially when he stopped that storm in the middle of the sea. So the the healings and miracles and the supernatural gifts that he did were were to prove who he was. Okay. Next, the the apostles' responsibilities. As you know, when Jesus is going to return to heaven, he had to give responsibility to someone to preach the message.

15:02 Alright? Now, what if a band of 12 or 15 guys said, well, we're the ones representing them and they just start speaking nonsense. How do we know that they were speaking the truth of God? Well, God says, I'm going to give you my same authority. Now he gave it to the apostles.

15:20 Now outside of the apostles, there was one other man recording scripture who did miracles. What was his name? Philip. That's right. You're going to say Philip, weren't you?

15:30 Yes. Yes, he was. He was like, yeah, I know who it is. Way to go. Philip.

15:34 That's right. That's right. And you can read it in the acts of the apostles. But Ephesians two twenty tells us that the church, like right here, where we preach truth is founded on the teachings of the apostles. They were the ones that laid the doctrines down.

15:56 What do we believe? What are we preaching? What are we teaching? Everything that they wrote, the whole New Testament was written by the apostles. Right?

16:05 So they had an unbelievable authority from God to speak doctrine. And acts two forty two says that they would come together and they would sit at the feet of the apostles and listen to their teaching. Because the apostles were teaching, this is truth. This is who Jesus is. Jesus is God and Jesus is man.

16:29 God and man came together to form the person of Jesus. And Jesus died on the cross for sins and rose again from the dead and so forth and so on. They started teaching all the biblical truth. And they had that authority given to them by Jesus so that they could lay then the truth of what we believe, what saves you and send you to heaven. Number two is to give confirmation of the word through signs, wonders, and miracles.

17:00 Now follow with me. Second Corinthians two twelve. Turn there. Second Corinthians two twelve. Alrighty.

17:09 We're moving our Bibles today, aren't we? Don't you love it? Let's move them. Let's look at what the word of God has to say because what Ray has to say doesn't matter. Amen?

17:19 But what the word of God has to say, that's what we're looking for. That's what we're looking for. Look at second Corinthians two twelve. Twelve twelve. My bad.

17:29 Thank you. Twelve twelve. Here's twelve twelve. Wait a minute. I don't hear any more rustling.

17:36 That means everybody's there. I want you to highlight this verse if you want to. It would be important that you will. Listen to what he says. The sign of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by what?

17:52 Signs and wonders and miracles. There's your three words. Signs, wonders, and miracles. That means that they would do supernatural things. They would do supernatural things, miracles.

18:30 Alright. Let's look at verse three and four. Hebrews two verse three and four. The Bible says, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it had first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard.

18:49 Now look at verse four. God also bearing witness with them. Who's them? The apostles. The apostles.

18:58 All right? The 12 apostles, you know, minus Judas Iscariot, plus Matthias, and then later plus the apostle Paul. Right? Okay. So the apostles, God bearing witness with them both by what?

19:12 There's your word, signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his own will. And so God supernaturally endowed these men with the power to do miracles. And yes, yes, they were able to restore blind people's sight to lift up men who were paralyzed and to do all types of healings. But notice, the Bible says it was the apostles that were doing it plus Philip. It wasn't just everybody.

19:45 Hey, I'm gonna go do some miracles today, you know, and then started. It wasn't that way. It was the apostles and Philip and maybe someone. I don't know. There there wasn't many in scriptures who did it.

19:59 And of course, you know that the apostles must have been with Jesus until he was taken up into heaven. So there was only a select number of apostles. So hopefully you understand this point. Let's go to the next one. Healings and miracles.

20:17 All right. Now, when you go to scriptures and you look at what happened, healings and miracles were always, number one, intentional. Intentional. In other words, they they work for a purpose to prove who Jesus was, and in the apostles' case, to to authenticate their message. Secondly, confirmatory.

20:40 Confirming Jesus as the Messiah. So they were intentional to prove a point, and it was it was confirming who he was, and there was no explanation. In other words, you couldn't take him to a doctor and say, doctor, how did he get healed? Well, we gave him an antibiotic and we did this surgery and so we healed him. No, no.

21:01 There was no medical explanation. We don't know how this guy can walk now. We don't know how this man is blind. We've known him and he's over 40 years old, it says in John, for example. How is this guy seeing now?

21:14 We know that he was blind. We would see him beg every day. And so you couldn't explain how suddenly he could see because it was miraculous. And then of course, supernatural. It has to be supernatural in order to happen.

21:30 In other words, if I could do it as a man with medical advancements or whatever, it's not supernatural. Supernatural means it's outside of the laws of nature, of medicine. No one can do it medically. It has to be supernaturally done by God. That's what we mean by that.

21:52 Healing. Jesus and the apostles healed all kinds of illnesses, supernatural, not aided by medicine or any type of human intervention. For example, the paralytic, the issue of blood, raising three people from the dead, fever, the shivered hand, demon possession. And you can read the scriptures. There's a lot more.

22:08 I just gave you a couple of examples there. All right, MacArthur. MacArthur, here's the question. Does God heal today? Does God heal today?

22:18 Listen to what he says. We can ask God to heal an illness. God may choose to heal in order to accomplish some purpose of his and to show his glory. But he is under no obligation to heal because he has made, he has made no blanket promise to heal during any age and he no longer is authenticating his word because the completed word is his own verification. All right.

23:05 My mom was as committed as can be to her religion of idol worshiping. And then one day, we discovered that my sister had cancer. And the doctor says she only has three months to live. Well, suddenly my dad and my mom said, oh my word, where do you go when you're confronted that your daughter's gonna die because she has cancer? And they realize, look, this religion we're in does nothing.

23:35 It's just religion. Where do you go? And at that time, the church where we later started attending, when we got saved, they put a two minute gospel presentation in a secular radio station. And my dad and mom are listening to music and suddenly, bam, they hear it. God loves you.

23:55 Christ left heaven, became a man. He died on a cross for your sins to give you hope so that you can be saved and forgiven and you can go to heaven. And like, wow, we never heard this before. All our lives are so religious. Why haven't we ever heard the good news, the gospel?

24:12 And so they write to these people and say, would you come visit us? They came with a Bible and they shared the gospel. To make a long story short, my sister who was in the hospital trusted the Lord as her savior. And so did my dad. My mom fought it.

24:28 She fought it and fought it for two more years, but my sister was saved and so was my dad. Powerfully saved by God, trusted in the Lord as a savior from sin. What a moment. What a moment. So God used sickness to draw my whole family to Christ because two years later, my mom finally bowed the knee and trusted the Lord Jesus as her savior.

24:50 And then as the years progressed, I did, my brother did, my other sister did, those five of us. We all were saved. And so God uses sickness sometimes to bring you to Christ. Now listen, my sister has had cancer four times. That was just the first instance.

25:07 By the she never died. God spared her life. But three more times after that, she got cancer. And there was another time that she she was this close to to dying. You look at her body right now.

25:19 It's all racked. She's missing pieces everywhere, literally. She's weak. She's always sick. But you know what?

25:27 I praise God for sickness because through that sickness, my whole family was saved. Alright? So God doesn't always wanna heal. Sometimes he uses that to bring you to Christ, to bring you to your knees, to humble you so you can look up and be saved. See?

25:47 So can God heal? Yes, he can. Anytime he wants, immediately, instantly, he can do it. If he will or not, that's up to God's good and perfect will. As it says in Romans chapter 12.

26:03 Now, Paul, God chose not to heal him. Second Corinthians 12. And we're not going to read it for the sake of time. But he says, I prayed and I asked God three times and he wouldn't take away the thorn in the flesh. And Paul, his body was all broken.

26:19 He had been stoned. He had been beat. He had scars. He had pain. And God chose not to heal him, even though he himself healed so many people.

26:27 He healed a lot of people. And yet God didn't heal him. Epaphroditus, he was sick and he almost died. And Paul says, I beg God not to let him die. Why didn't he just heal him?

26:43 Because God wasn't empowering Paul at that time to heal this man. And he begged God and God spared him and he recovered from his illness. Timothy, it says in first Timothy five twenty three, Timothy, take a little wine because of your stomach and because of your frequent illnesses. And he was the disciple of Paul. And if God just wants everybody healthy and healed, why didn't he heal them?

27:11 Why did he have to watch them and say, why was he frequently ill? Because God sometimes allows sickness. Trophimus, I'm sorry. In second Timothy four twenty, Paul says, I left him sick at Miletus. Why didn't he heal him?

27:29 Because it wasn't God's will. Paul could have done it because he healed so many people. But at that time, he didn't want to. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't. God knows what he wants to do.

28:03 I'm going to read it. And there's a reason why I'm doing this. Isaiah 53 and verse five. I'll get there eventually. Just hang on.

28:22 All right, here it is. But he was pierced through for our transgressions, that's Jesus. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastising for our well-being fell upon him, that Jesus being our substitute dying for us on the cross. Listen, and by his scourging, we are healed.

28:42 By his scourging, we are healed. Or your Bible might say, by his stripes, we are healed. Now, I have heard it over and over again. In fact, I have close relatives who say, I call them on the phone, how are you doing, Ray? Well, I'm in a cold.

28:58 Well, by his stripes, we're healed. Claim it and Jesus will heal you. I said, mom, mom, my mom does that too. You know? Like, mom, mom, Jesus didn't die on the cross to take away my cold.

29:12 And so I don't feel achy. And and and if that's true, why were you sick? And why do I have to fly to Houston to see you in the hospital? You see? And so what does that verse mean?

29:25 The striped scourges of Jesus on the cross were to heal us from sin and all its effect. They were never intended to be a healing from sickness. Well, if you will, the sickness of sin. Because why do we suffer? Why do people die?

29:40 Why is there cancer? Why is there suffering? Because of sin and its effect. If there was no sin, there will be no sickness. And so Christ went to the cross and he died on the cross and by his scourging, by by him paying the penalty for us, we're healed from sin and the penalty of sin, which is going to hell forever, separated from God.

30:02 But it wasn't so I wouldn't get a cold or so I wouldn't get cancer or a fever or have some kind of sickness. It was for my spiritual needs. Consequently, through the power of Christ, you can be healed. You can be healed. Sometimes there's emotional sickness.

30:19 And when you come to Christ, Christ fixes that. You could be a drunk and God will heal you from the power of the drink or you can be a drug addict or you can... Whatever it may be, God can heal you of that. But above all, he heals you from sin and its effect. And that's a beautiful thing that no matter what happens, God healed me from my sin.

30:42 He took it away. He paid for it on the cross. And also I can be sane in my thinking. I can be sober because God makes you stable and he transforms you. The power of the work on the cross.

30:59 And so the miracles then I already talked about it. It was a supernatural intrusion into the natural world and its natural laws that can't be explained. And I already said the miracles were to confirm. Right? Okay.

31:11 Now, let's go into tongues. Okay. Acts chapter two verse five. Let's go into tongues. What do we mean by tongues?

31:22 What do we mean by tongues? Well, the Bible says in the Bible here, you're going read it in a minute. So hopefully within the next ten minutes, I can explain this one and then we can close it out. All right. Now, it's the ability to speak another language to present the gospel.

31:45 Now, I'm going to say it again. It's the ability to speak another language to present the gospel. What did I just say? No, I didn't. Good try.

32:15 I'm not going to make it that easy on you. Alright. Now, I spoke another language. I wasn't stammering. I wasn't gibbering.

32:27 I wasn't going none of that. I spoke another language. And in that language that I speak, I have led many people to Christ. Praise God. Praise God.

32:40 All right. Now, notice that when he preaches the gospel, I want you to see this clearly, Acts chapter two and verse five. Now, there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitudes came together and were bewildered because they were each one hearing them speak in his own language. It wasn't some gibberish, some blah, blah, blah, blah, I've because I've gone to a lot of those meetings.

33:16 It had nothing to do with that. Listen, in their own language. And they were amazed and Marvel saying, why are all of these who are speak I'm sorry. Let me start again. Why are not all these are speaking Galileans?

33:32 Aren't they Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? So in other words, here let me read a little more. Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Persia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the Egyptian, Libya, so forth, so forth, so forth. Verse 11, Christians, Arabs, we hear them in our own tongue speaking the mighty deeds of God.

34:04 Listen. They... Here's where here's where the miracle came. You you had Peter speaking, and he was probably speaking the Hebrew language. Then you had all the other apostles, each one speaking a different language to the different people represented there.

34:20 As you can see, those 13 countries represented with their own language. And God wanted the good news to be declared to them. And so each one of these men were able to, without having learned it or got Rosetta Stone or any of that stuff, right? They Suddenly, were able to, in their own language, preach the good news to them that you can be saved. That's the point.

34:46 How do we know that? Because church history, even information outside of the Bible tells us that there was churches started in Egypt and all over the world by these men who heard the good news and they went with it wherever they went. It wasn't some ecstatic, something where an angel gives you the ability to start feeling funny and and and gibbering or whatever. It has nothing to do with scripture. I don't know where that came from.

35:12 But it has nothing to do with the Bible. In fact, one historian was saying that it started about one hundred and ten years ago in California in some gathering. But if you look at church history and some of the writings of the disciples of John and the Gospel of John, if you want to borrow them, I have them at home, the men who were discipled by the Apostle John. And they explained how they had their church services. None of them mentioned tongues.

35:56 First Corinthians. Go there. First Corinthians 14. I'm a just let the scriptures speak for themselves. First Corinthians fourteen and twenty two.

36:18 First Corinthians fourteen twenty two, so then tongues are for a sign not to those who believe. Just told you right there. It's not for Christians, not for those who believe, but to unbelievers. But prophecy is for is for a sign not to unbelievers, but to those who believe. Right?

36:40 What's the purpose? To present the gospel to get them saved. God gives you the ability to speak their language so that they can hear the good news. So tongues and languages are a sign for unbelievers. Secondly, it was never gibberish, stammering, mumbling, or whatever else you want to call it.

37:02 Just on a side note, I've been invited to speak at services where they do this, and and I've been through all that for many years. I don't believe it. And lastly, it's a sign to unbelieving Israel. First Corinthians fourteen and twenty one. In the law, it is written by men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers, I will speak to these people and even so they will not listen to me, says the Lord.

37:34 Now, follow me please. Follow me. He's quoting Isaiah chapter 28. In Isaiah 28, the prophet Isaiah was speaking to them and saying, if you don't repent, God is going to bring Assyria, he's going to come back and he's going to destroy you as a nation, and they're going to take you prisoner and disperse you throughout the world. They didn't repent.

37:56 And the year 07/22, Assyria came and took them prisoners and put them in shackles and they're dragging them off as slaves. And guess what? Assyria spoke another language. So they're saying, come on, move in their own language. And they're what?

38:11 And they're whipping them and dragging them with chains. And so they were... It was a sign of judgment. As they were being dragged off in chains, yeah, Isaiah said that if we didn't repent, men of different stammering tongues were going to drag us off. Read chapter 28 carefully.

38:32 And as they... And Assyria did come. And so they're being dragged off in chains. They're hearing another language spoken to them that they don't understand. That's what that means.

38:42 And guess what? Israel as a nation still did not repent. Even after they're being dragged in chains and they know that it came true, what Isaiah said, they still did not repent. And when they heard Peter preach and they heard other different languages, Some people believed, right? A group of people, but the nation did not repent.

39:07 The nation did not repent. The opposition to the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ was mainly by the Jewish people. They didn't repent. And in the year '70, again, men of another tongue, the Romans came and completely destroyed Israel. And yet they didn't repent even though they heard the preaching of the gospel through Jesus and through the apostles.

39:37 So it's a sign to unbelieving Israel, but it has nothing to do with coming together and speaking and making noises and saying that it's spiritual. Okay. Now, but the Bible says verse 23, if therefore the whole church should assemble together... Fourteen twenty three... Verse fourteen twenty three.

40:22 But but notice what the scripture say. But if I prophesy and an unbeliever or an ungifted man enters, he is convicted by all and he is called to account by all. The secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you. Look also in chapter 14 and verse three. But but one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation.

40:53 So what is the point of prophesying? In other words, to speaking forth God's word, to teaching it. What is the point of it? Verse three, to edify, to exhort, and consolation to comfort you. So we teach God's word and it builds you up.

41:09 It edifies you. It exhorts you and it comforts you. And as we read in fourteen twenty three-twenty five to bring men to Christ because they're going be able to understand in their own language what you're saying. Right? Now, if I would have spoken Spanish the whole time, would it have benefited you?

41:30 Would you had said, oh man, I had a spiritual experience. It was like, woah. No. You would say, what was that? I didn't get anything out of it.

41:38 And that's the whole point of chapter 14. I'd rather speak five words that make sense, he said, than a thousand that make no sense. All right, now, I've been to mission trips, and I was in a mission trip in Mexico up in the high mountains where there's Aztec Indians. And I ran into one of the missionaries that they're called the Wickliffe translators. And we sat down for lunch one day.

42:04 We talked for a long time. Says, Ray, I've been here twenty years trying to learn their language so that I can interpret the Bible in their language and give them the Bible. Two years later, I went back to that same place. He goes, look, we finished it. They're so excited.

42:17 Twenty something years of work. Now, if God still used tongues, don't you think he would have just given that man the supernatural ability? They would have just written it out. Here you go. There's your Bible.

42:28 And yet there's Wickliffe translators all over the world spending night and day with those people because they want to know the language so they can give them the scriptures. Why? So they can get saved. So they can get saved. All right.

42:43 Now, you know what? I'm going to leave this one for another time. Just going to do this one right here. I would love for God to heal you of all your pains and diseases and to give you the ability to do miracles and to fix the world's problems. I would really love that sincerely, but that's not what the scripture say.

43:05 Romans eight twenty three says that we groan. We groan. Right now, we groan. Yeah. The apostles did the signs and wonders and miracles.

43:16 Philip, maybe a few others at that time, but that ceased. It ceased. We know it. We know that by the time of the apostle John, by the time of his passing away, that was no longer around. It was no longer around.

43:30 Does God still do miracles? Yes, he does. Can God still give you the ability to speak another language so you can minister to people? Yes, he can. No doubt.

43:57 And we're going to have to go to funerals. And we're going to have to go get chemo. And some of my dear friends right now are having to do with cancer. And they know the Lord and they love God and they serve God. Yet God has in his perfect will allowed them to be sick.

44:15 I don't understand God all the time, but I praise him because I know he knows more than I do. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. And we thank you above all that that you proved to us through these miracles and these signs that Jesus was indeed the Christ, the savior of the world. And you proved through the apostles and the supernatural ability you gave them that that his...

44:46 He was true, and they completed scripture, and that time came to an end. Meanwhile, we love you and we trust you. And I pray, Lord, that if someone has yet to trust you as savior, that today they would believe in you. I pray this in Christ's blessed name. Amen.