Guidance for the Gathering - 1 Corinthians 14:26-40

This past week, Carrie and I celebrated the 30th anniversary of us moving to Kansas City, from Springfield, and started to come to Northland and serve at Northland Church, and I was thinking about all the things that have changed over 30 years. One of the things that has really changed is the way that people look for a new church. When I 1st came to Northland 30 years ago, if you came to town and you wanted to find a church, you would get out the phone book. Now, some of you don't even know what that is, you've never seen a phone book. You would get a phone book. We actually had a line in our budget for our listing in the yellow pages. We pay every year to have our number in the phone book, and people would look up Baptist churches in the phone book, and then they would call them. I would be here at the church, at the office, and the phone would ring, and someone would say, I found your number in the phone book, and I want to know more about your church, and they'd ask us about our service times, and what we wear to church. They'd ask what the music is like, how long is the sermon? They have all these questions. You try to convince them over the phone, like a telemarketer, to come and check out your church. Now it's totally different. Now someone wants to find a church. They Google churches near me. And then they check out those churches, and then what they'll do, once they find the churches near them, they will do their research by watching the live stream or the recording of that service. How many of you before coming to Northland watched us online before you ever came here. Okay, fewer than I thought, but several, every week, someone that said, we've been coming, we'd move to town, or I'll meet people. We've had one couple, they knew they were going to move to Kansas City. They started watching us online. They watched us for like a year before they ever came in person because they wanted to see what was like, start getting connected, and so you can look and see what's that church like? Now, I wish we had that ability to go back in time and watch the live stream of the church at Corinth because they have a lot of problems. We've been going through this book for a while, and the Apostle Paul has been addressing a lot of the challenges they're having. And I wish we had a window into what it looked like. That would help us a ton in understanding the dynamics at play in this church, and it would really help us today. Because today in our past, we made it to the end of chapter 14. Today, Paul's going to continue. been talking for a little while about the misuse of their spiritual gifts. God gives every follower of Jesus with unique particular giftings from the Holy Spirit to enable us, empower us to serve others, to serve him, and to build up the church. They were taking those gifts God had given them and they were misusing those gifts. They were abusing those gifts. And we'll see today, they were misusing them in the context of their gathered worship. So what the writer here, the apostle Paul, who's writing to give them some instruction. He's going to correct some of the behavior that was happening in their service. And I wish we could see what it was like, because we're a little bit of a disadvantage. We have this tiny little passage where he's going to say, this is what's happening, and here's how you fix it, but we want to know so much more about what was going on. We don't have that ability, but we're going to try as the best we can with the text in front of us to understand what was happening in their gathered worship. How are they abusing those gifts? What is the instructions he's giving them? And then how do we apply this to our lives? What we're going to see here, we've been really, to fully understand this, you have to go all the way back to chapter 12, verse one. Really, chapters 12, 13, 14, one big thought. Now, we've diced that up over several weeks, but we're going to conclude today all he was saying about this. But it's a big issue he's been dealing with. And at the heart of it was their pride. They were driven by pride and not love. They were prideful about the gifts they had. They wanted to show off those gifts. They wanted to put those gifts on display. And for that reason, they were no longer using their gifts to edify others, and it caused distraction and disorder in their public gathering. So in our pastors before us this morning. Paul is going to bring some order and proper focus back to their service. Now, this is a challenging passage of scripture. We knew that when we started going through 1st Corinthians. There's a lot of passages in this book that are a little bit difficult to understand. They're a little difficult to apply in our culture, and they're controversial. Frankly, there's a lot of division among Christians today over how we interpret certain passages in this. And this is going to be one of them, okay? So I'm going to just give you a little disclaimer. Because of time, we're not going to be able to dive as deep into each of these issues as I would like to, you may be left with a lot of questions. I'm going to make a lot of statements that I'm not going to have time to back up necessarily to give you the full scope of why. I think that's what's going on here, but your pastors are available to you to dive into this deeper. If you say, I want to talk more about this more about that, okay? Because we're just going to take a sweep through here. We're gonna ask, what is the issue? What is Paul saying about it? And then how do we apply that to our lives today? It's going to be hard to interpret some things, and then it's also going to be hard to apply some of these things. So not necessarily issues that we might have today. At Northland Church, we typically go through books of the Bible. We pick a book, we start, we go all the way through the end. We don't skip anything. I was listening to Spotify this week, a playlist, and if it came to a song I didn't like, I just hit Skip, went to the next song. I watch maybe you watch a show on Netflix and maybe watch the Office and you don't like Scott's Tots, you skip it and go to the next episode. Two people got that reference. We have that luxury today to skip stuff we don't like. We can't do that with scripture. We don't get to come to a passage of the Bible and say, oh, that's a hard one. That's a tough one. I don't understand that. I don't like that. I'm not sure what to do with that. Let's skip it. So we're gonna dive into it, okay, church? And we're gonna see what this has to say. We got 3 problems going on in the church. Tongues, prophecy, and talkative women. Tongues, prophecy, and talkative women. That's what he's addressing. Well, then we got we got to get some order back to what's going on here. We're going to talk about what he means by this and how do we apply it? Let's jump in. Verse 26. First Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 26. What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation, let all things be done for building up. When you come together. He's talking here about their gathered worship service, the structure and flow of their worship service. And he says, when you come together, each of you brings something, some bring hymn, some lesson, some a relation, some a tongue, some interpretation. Well, he's describing what's going on here. Now, it was different then. The church was small. It met in a home. Picture, the environment is probably more like your life group than this gathering on Sunday morning. More like your Sunday Night Live group, and you're in a living room. You're in a big circle. everyone's interjecting. It's that sort of vibe, rather than a room packed with people sitting in rows. And we're not sure here whether he is, um, telling them this is what you should do, or he's describing this was what you were doing. In other words, he's saying, this is what you should be doing, or this is what y'all are doing, but I'm going to tell you how to do it a little differently. What he does see at the end of that verse is let all things be done for building up. So whatever you do, make sure that people are being built up through your hymns, through your lessons, your revelations, your tongues. You need to be sure that people are being built up. Perhaps what's happening. is that everyone is jumping in with their hymns, with their revelations, with their lesson, and it's created, it seems, what's happening. It's created some chaos in the church, and it's created a distraction that he wants to clear up and give them a little bit more structure to what they're doing rather than the chaos and disorder that they're experiencing. Now, look at verse 27. It begins this 1st topic. So 26, general statement. Y'all are bringing all kinds of stuff to the thing. You need to make sure you're doing it in a way that people are built up. And he's going to say there are 3 particular issues that I want to give you some specific instructions on. First is tongues. Verse 27. If any speak a tongue, let there be only 2 or at most 3 and each in turn and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and God. So specific instructions here. Now, again, tongues. There's a topic we could take a whole day on. Okay, a whole lesson on to talk about this. I'm going to give you some general things of where your leadership at North, and our pastors are always talking about, hey, how are you going to deal with this? And what are you saying about Ruston and I do most of the preaching? We loop in the others as well. Where are you on this? We're on yet. We want to make sure. Now we don't always agree 100%, but you pastors are generally in the same ballpark here. And even yesterday afternoon, there was a text thread in our pastor thing. What do you mean by this? This, this, this, this. I want to stand before the truth, say, this is general where we are. So I'm gonna make statements where we land with this. There are other views on this. Maybe even in this room. If not in this room. If you go tomorrow and talk to a friend about the sermon you heard, they might disagree with it, okay? So I'm going to say, generally, if you want to talk about why I feel this way, why generally we lean this way. And I'll say also, approach this with grace, because there's a lot of really smart people who love Jesus a lot who come into a different position on some of this, all right? So I'm going to tell you where your pastors generally lean on these issues, okay? Russ and settle one of these things the other day. We were talking Wednesday. He goes, I'm 6040. Maybe I'm 7030. you know, like, because it's not, it's not, there's a, there's a diversity of use. We generally hold that the tongues mention in the Bible are known languages. We see that in Acts 2, and that it's very clear in Acts 2, it's a known language, a language you've never learned that's spoken in another part of the country that the Holy Spirit empowers you to suddenly be able to speak so that a person from a different country understands you clearly, even though you've never learned their language. That's a miraculous thing that God would do to point to the message of what he was doing, to validate the truth of what was being declared by saying, I'm going to deliver it in this miraculous way. And so they were all speaking in tongues, and it created some chaos there. And so he gives them the instructions that they need to do this in a way that everybody can understand what's going on, and that there wouldn't be counterfeit experiences here, and that everything could be done orderly. So he gives them guidelines. Let's look at them. Here are 3 guidelines he gives for the proper use of tongues. Number one, only 2 or 3 people can speak. Don't need everybody doing this. Two people, maybe three, can do this. They need to speak one at a time, so there's not chaos and confusion, and he says, someone needs to interpret, so there's clarity. If you speak in a tongue and no one knows what you said, that's not helping to build up the body. And so if you're going to bring a tongue, make sure there's someone that can interpret that tongue so that everyone could benefit from what was being said. Now, we lean toward the camp, that God was doing something unique in this period of time while the scriptures were being canonized. Now what does that word mean? We don't try to drop a lot of new words on you a lot, but canonization is the word that refers to the process by which we now have the old and New Testament. It was the process by which the early church leaders discovered, they didn't determine, they discovered which books were divinely given and authoritative for the church, of all the writings out there, which ones should be, and what we would say today, which ones make it into the New Testament. That's an overloadsimplification of the process. While that was happening, God's operated in a different way to reveal his word, we're now what's more normative today is that I can get up, or rust in order up has given, and preach the word of God. You can open up the word of God. You have the revealed word of God. We're not having a lot of special revelation because God has fully revealed himself in the old and New Testament that we have available to us today. Again, we can talk more about that. Later. If you want to dig more into that kind of offline. Second issue, similar, but prophecy. What's going on here? Verse 29. Let 2 or 3 prophets speak and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the 1st be silent, for you can all prophesy one by one so that all may learn and all be encouraged. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. Now, what's going on with prophecy? In a similar way, in that time, God would use prophets to directly reveal his will to someone, different from me saying, to someone, hey, Brad, I know you're going through a difficult time right now, he's not. Okay, maybe he is. I'm not picking on anything, I know, okay? If you go to the difficult time, I was thinking about you today, praying for you. God put a verse on my heart. I read the verse. it would encourage. I want to share this verse with you. That's different for me saying, Brad, the Spirit of God gave me a direct message for you. In 7 days, you shall quit your job and move to. That's different, okay? It's like when I say, I'm declared this morning that winter's over. You can put your ice scrapers away, put away the, it's done. Today, it's over. Matt declares it, okay? If I'm saying the Lord's, I'm not saying that. If I said, the Lord told me, put away your snow shovels. That's a prophecy that I'm bringing. It's different. And so what's going on here? We see it in the book of Acts. We see Agabus, Acts 11, verse 27. Agabus was a prophet who predicted a famine all over the world. Acts 2110, Agabus predicts that Paul will be bound by the Jews and handed over the Gentiles. Acts 131. We were told that at the church in Antioch, there were teachers and also prophets. Acts 21, 8, 9, mention the daughters of Philip, 4 unmarried daughters who prophesied. And so it was a gift operating in a way in that time where God was using prophets to deliver a direct word from God to the people, bigger conversation about how does that operate today, does it operate today, but what they were doing is they were receiving a word from the Lord, that they were declaring to people, different than us taking the divinely given word of God and teaching it to people. So what does he tell them? Some instructions. Only 2 or 3 should speak. What they say, verse 29 said, should be evaluated, you should weigh it, you can't just make a prophecy and it just hang out there. The leadership, someone, we don't know who the others are. It says others should weigh it, or others, the other prophets, was it the church leaders? Was it the larger body, but someone in the room should evaluate what was just said to see if it was really from the Lord. Now you should test it. We see this in scripture. 1 Thessalonians 520. Do not despise prophecy, but test everything and hold fast to what is good. 1st John 4.1. Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. So test it, evaluate it. Third, they must take turn speaking. Just someone's given a revelation. Someone else has one, you need to be quiet and let that person speak. We don't want this chaos. The goal, verse 31 tells us, is that everyone learn and be encouraged. Now, notice verse 32. It's important. The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. What does it mean that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets? What he's saying is you have control over what you're doing. I think there's this, they have this idea, and maybe sometimes we do today, that when the spirit comes upon you, you somehow lose control. That evidence of the spirit in your life is you're no longer in control. The spirit is causing you to do things that you wouldn't ordinarily do. What he read here, that's not the case. He says, the prophet can control his spirit. Like, you don't just say, I'm sorry, Paul, it's just when the spirit comes on me, I do this. He said, no, no, no. You have the ability to be quiet when it's time to be quiet. You have the ability to make sure there's an interpreter. You have the ability to evaluate a prophecy and not just say the spirit made me do it. You can, in an orderly way, control what's going on. This is not a sign, being out of control, is not some evidence of the work of the Spirit. In fact, why? verse 33. This is what governs this. Look at verse 33. God is not a god of confusion, but of peace. If something is happening, it's causing a lot of confusion in the body. And you say, oh, the Holy Spirit's doing. That's not the Holy Spirit, because God is a God of peace, not confusion. So there's confusion, there's disorder, that's not the Lord doing that. We need to get more focused on what the Lord wants to bring to the body. Okay, tongues, prophecy, talkative women. Verse 33. Here we go. I study a lot, I read a lot of commentaries and study Bibles in the 2 weeks leading up to each message that I bring. I read more this week than I normally read. I read a ton, okay? And what I've done, I'm going to read this, and then I'm going to tell you, I've taken everything I've studied on this, and a lot of conversation with others. I think you can put every interpretation into one of 4 categories, one of 4 positions. Tell you what those are in a second. lets look at it. As in all the Church of the Saints, the women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission as the law also says. If there's anything they desire to learn, Let them ask their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. All right, what are the various interpretations, 4 positions. Here's the 1st is that Paul is stating the Corinthian position and then refuting it in verse 36. Say, what does that come from? If you've been with us for several weeks through this book, you've already seen where Paul sometimes will quote them, and then he'll correct them. Have you caught that through this? He'll say, you all are saying this, but let me give you some more clarity on that. Some will take the position that that's what's happening here. That the Corinthians were saying, women be quiet. Paul then in verse 36 is correcting them with the phrase, was it from you that the word of God came, or are you the only ones it has reached? In other words, you're saying this, but men, the word of God comes to the ladies also. So that's what he's doing there. That's the 1st business. Second position is that he is speaking about, he's addressing the practice of women speaking in tongues or women speaking prophecy in the church service. First Timothy 212. He'd given the instructions that women are not permitted to teach or exercise authority. In other words, the authoritative teaching of the church is from the male, elders, or pastors of the church. So therefore, the women should not be engaged in prophecy, because they would be delivering authoritative teaching to the church, and that should be reserved for the male, eldership, pastoral leaders of that church. That's the 2nd position. Again, enough time to give you all the pros and cons. Third position that he's prohibiting women from being involved in the evaluation process mentioned in verse 29. A prophet speaks. It's time to be evaluate what was spoken. It's the pastors who should evaluate what was spoken. The ladies in the church should not get involved in the evaluation of the prophecy. That's the time for them to remain silent and let the overseers of the church evaluate the prophecy, whether that is from the Lord. Right? Fourth position. The 4th position is where generally the pastors of your church lean in this, again, I'll use the word lean in this, because there's strong cases for each of these positions, is that he was addressing a specific situation in Corinth, where the women were causing a disruption, by asking a lot of questions in the moment. This position points out that in 1st Corinthians 11, he had already given instructions regarding head coverings for when women speaking the church. And there would be inconsistent for Paul to say, in chapter 11, now ladies, when you speak, this is what you do, and then come to verse 14 and say, oh, actually, don't speak at all. that that would be inconsistent there. That what it's connected to the chaos that's happening. If you look at verses 28, 30, and 34. You'll notice a common denominator, and that's the phrase keeps silent. You see it? Keep silent. If you don't have an interpreter, keep silent. If someone else is prophesying, keep silent. Ladies with all the questions you have, keep silent, that he's saying here, there's a lot of chaos going on, and we need to bring some order and some calm and some peace back to what's going on, that what is likely happening, this position holds, that I lean to, is that in the midst of all this going on, women were asking a lot of questions of their husband, in a culture, in a historical context, where the women would be far less educated than the men, and the husband was far more likely to know the answers than the ladies would have the answers to the biblical, spiritual questions they had. And they were asking a lot of questions that Paul says, those could be handled at home. Let's not do that here in this setting. Wives, when you get home, ask those questions of your husband, that's the better context for all this to be hashed out. Give you just a lighthearted example of this. When I, uh, Charles, one of the adopted kiddos in our life, came to live with us. He was in high school. He was really into superhero movies. If you know me, I don't know anything about a superhero or a wizard or an elf, anything of any fantasy or science fiction, I'm clueless, all right? And so he would watch this movie. I would be in the middle of the movie, and I would start asking him questions, and he would get frustrated. Like, why, who's that guy? What's that guy doing? What's that guy? Because you have to hold the whole Marvel universe. There's like, 30 of those movies? How many of those movies do I have to watch to get caught up? I had no clue. And I was frustrating him with my questions. Now, I had that in my notes. And then yesterday, I'm on Facebook. You feel me with the Babylon B? You know, the Babylon B? It kind of a satire Facebook page. This was a Babylon B post yesterday, a paraphrase of 1st Corinthians 14. Women should remain silent during movies. If they want to inquire about something, they should wait until the end, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak while the movie is still playing. Do you have a spouse like that that just bugs you the whole time? What's this movie about? In a lighthearted way, a lighthearted way, that kind of illustrates what might be happening in this church. A lot of asking of questions that was distracting from what was going on. This is not the place for that. All right. That's what I think is going on. What I think Paul is saying. Now look at verse 36. This is important. Or was it from you that the Word of God came, or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. Now what's he saying there? He's saying, listen, I know you're going to want to just keep doing your own way, but I'm telling you, again, this is Paul speaking with the authority of an apostle, and he is writing what is now, we know, to be the authoritative, divinely inspired word of God. He's saying, you need to listen to my words and not follow your own preferences and feelings that you want to do. And he says, if you are really spiritual, verse 38, if anyone does not recognize this, he's not recognized, if you were really as spiritual as you think you are, you'd recognize that this is what the Lord has for you. And so he says, don't just keep doing what you want to do. You don't get to, everyone is going to just make up their own rules here. This is how the Lord wants you to operate. And if you really are indeed spiritual people, you'll receive the instructions I'm giving as an apostle to your gathering. Verse 39. So my brothers earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently in order. These 2 verses really bring together all of chapters 12, 13, 14. He's saying, just, we got to bring this chaos to some sense of decency and order. And so he has these, yes, exercise gifts, but do it in a way that the church is built up in unity and love. Now, how in the world do we apply that? Okay? What's the application of this to our lives today? Russ and I were talking Wednesday. I said, we were talking about our position. we both kind of lean toward the ladies, we're asking a lot of questions. I said, what do we do with this? He said, well, you know, you guys know Russ, you appreciate this. He goes, I'll tell you what I'll do. Is that a good impression? I'll tell Leslie, just talk a lot while you're preaching. Then you can tell her to be quiet, and that'll be the application. I said, I don't think so. I know that's the application of this. So what is the application? All right? What are the general principles? I think there are 5 guiding principles for our service and worship. When I use my gifts to serve God, I use my gifts in the gathered worship, here are 5 principles. Number one, worship and service must focus on love over pride, love over pride. The biggest issue in all these 3 chapters is motive. The heart of the problem was a heart problem. And we noted that in in chapter 13, 2 weeks ago, it's possible to do the right thing for the wrong reason. That's what they were doing. They were doing good things from a bad motive. They had made it about themselves, not about the growth of others, and not about the glory of God. And so he says, we need to get back to the right motive. What is your motive for serving God? What is the reason you do what you do? What motivates you? Is it love or is it pride? Second, Our worship and service must focus on edification over exhibition. What do I mean by that? edification over exhibition. They were putting their gifts on display. They wanted to exhibit their spirituality. God gave me this gift. God gave me this word. God gave me this message. They weren't interested in giving a message to build up others. They were interested in bringing a message to try to impress others. It said, we don't exercise our gifts in the body to try to impress other people. We do them to build one another up and edify them in their walk with Jesus. Third, we need to focus on clarity, over confusion, clarity, over confusion. Now, Rustin said a lot about this last week, so I'd encourage you to go back if you missed. You can go to just your podcast app that you use, just search Northland Church Sermons. show up there. You go to website, Northland.church. It'll be there. We need to be clear when we talk. Make sure that people aren't confused. And so we need to ask ourselves, am I really focusing on the understanding of my hearers, making sure that people can follow us and track with what we're doing? Are we doing anything that's unnecessarily confusing? Now, some things in the body of Christ. You're confusing. We just gave you a cup of juice and called it blood and told you to drink it. That's weird. There are things we do that are odd. Last week we dunked a guy in this tank of water on the stage in front of all of you. That's a little, if you come here for the 1st time, we do things that are odd. We want to be careful then to explain all of that. What is this cup and this bread? What is the act of baptism? What is this word saying? Be careful that we're not confusing people. And we need to evaluate it. Does it glorify God? Is it biblical? Does it build up the church? Is it spoken in love? Even yesterday with this text thread going with the pastors on this. I want to make sure we bring clarity to these things rather than people being confused. Am I using my gift in a way that I'm clearly communicating God's word to people? Fourth, we need to seek control over chaos. control over chaos. Let me just say that if you've ever had the idea that structure is not spiritual. I hope that this puts that to rest. Sometimes we we value make the joke. Our sons makes it a Micah. Some people ask me, how are they different? Micah's more of a planner than Mason is. He likes structure. He likes order. He likes to know the plan and follow the plan. Mason doesn't know. I think this morning someone told him it was Sunday and he should grab his drumsticks and go to church. You know, it's like, they're just they're wired different. It doesn't make, someone say, Mason is like able to be led by the spirit. He doesn't, he's not bound by calendars and schedules. And, and Mike is the less... No, Paul, you're not less spiritual if you have structure in your life. Hey, he said, you can be led by the spirit and do that in a way that brings control and peace and clarity to what we're doing to serve him. So put away any idea that anyone ever put in your head that when the spirit moves, chaos breaks out. And in fact, he would say here that I think if we understand his argument, I think if I understand his argument correctly, he's saying that actually, um, structure is the sign of the work of the Holy Spirit, not an enemy of the work of the Holy Spirit, that God brings God wants control and thoughtfulness to what we're doing. Sometimes people ask me about my process to prepare a message, and I'll talk about how I start studying on Monday, usually the Monday 2 Mondays before I preach, because typically we have 2 weeks, sometimes we go back to back. And I'll talk about studying. And once in a while, someone will say, do you feel like that limits the Holy Spirit a little bit? And I'll say, what do you mean by that? They said, just all that study, like, like, days ahead. Don't you think? like, aren't you like on Sunday? Don't you want just the Holy Spirit to just like speak through you and all this planning? will really kind of get in the way of that. And I think the Holy Spirit speaks on Monday? as easy as he speaks on Sunday. And I think we can look at these things in an orderly way. And so don't think that things have to break out crazy for that to be a work of the Holy Spirit. What we do for the Lord should be thoughtful. Finally, biblical authority over personal preference. Our worship service must focus worship and service, must focus on biblical authority over personal preference. There is something bigger at play here than our opinions, our feelings in our preferences. that we look to the Word of God. I don't know if your parent ever said something like, hey, this is my house, you're going to follow my rules. And as way you say, look, this is his house, we're going to follow his rules. We're not going to do it's not the Wild West. We want to look to the Word of God and let the Word of God be our guide. The word of God trumps my feelings, my opinions, and my preferences. Have you ever said a phrase like, I don't feel I just feel led to do this? Or I feel a piece about this or I don't feel a piece about this? I always said as Christians, we have these really cool Christian cliches to get out of stuff. Like, will you help me with this? Let me pray about it. You know, I prayed about it and I just don't have a piece about it. I don't feel led to help you move. I prayed on it, and I know the piano's heavy, but I just don't have a piece about lifting that. Like, we can't, like, like, we don't get to use a PR piece to be our guide. The word of God is our guide, and we need to be careful that we're looking to it. So, uh, we trust. I was the other night went somewhere. It was kind of a windy road. It was dark. I left and I just turned the wrong way, the opposite way I should have turned. It felt like the way I should have turned. It seemed like the right thing. But I thought, am I? I got my phone out. I opened the maps. I was like, nope, nope, wrong way. Did a U-turn, went back the other way. Like, the GPS told me, you're not, you don't, what you feel is wrong. So this tells us what you feel is wrong. God will never give you a piece about something that contradicts his word. You might use it, but I have a piece. God didn't give you that piece, okay? It didn't come from God if your peace doesn't match the word of God. And so he says, listen, you don't get to just everybody do whatever they want. God is going to guide us here. All right. So that's a lot. All right, let me give you 3 questions. Okay, as we wrap this up. Three questions. Have you have more questions? Take your connect card and check the I want to talk to a pastor box. Grab one of us, email us, text us, let's grab coffee. We can dig into more of this. The time didn't allow us to do all this. I think there's some general principles here that we see in here that probably can apply. You got to do the work, though, of how do I apply that? Let me give you 3 questions that might help. Number one, am I using my gifts to build up others? Am I using my gifts to build up others? God has given you a gift. Are you using it? Are you hoarding it? You were gifted for a purpose, and God wants you to be using that to serve him. You see, I don't know what that is, how to use that. I had a conversation Wednesday with someone. Just, hey, here's what I think God's gift to me to do. How would that play out? Again, check the box. I want to talk to a pastor, talk to a pastor, talk to your life group leader, talk to another friend. What gifting do you see in me? And how might you see that being used to build up others in the local church? Really seek to use the gift God's given you? Second, Are there areas where I have put my personal preferences ahead of biblical authority? Are there areas of my life where I am doing what I feel led to do, but maybe it's not the biblical thing to do? I have a piece about it, but I don't know if that piece is from God. How do we do that? Number one, you stay in the word daily in the word. Let the word of God be a part of your life. And second, invite evaluation. What did he say? When the prophet speaks, weigh it. Let other people weigh, what you think God is telling you. Go to your believing friends, your friends who are followers of Jesus and share, this is what's going on in my life. This is what I believe the Lord is leading me to do. Would you speak into that in some way? Do you see any blind spots here? I want to put the authority of the Bible ahead of my opinions and feelings in the moment. I'm going to get in the word, get in community where people can help me, bring the word to bear on my life. Then finally, do I need to confess any prideful motive? Is there any pride? And here's the thing, humility can be evasive. I mean right when you think you have it, you lose it. A joke one time that a guy was so humble. His church gave him a medal for his humility. He wore it to church the next week and they had to take it away. Humility is that way. Just when you think you have it, there it goes. You, you, um, You, you, you do something and you feel good about doing it. And your motive was right for doing it. Now you're hooked on that feeling you got, and now you realize I do it for that feeling I get, not for really the love of people, or you do something with the love of the goal of humility, and then someone says, you did a great job, and now you want more people to say you did a great job. So you go do it again, not for the love of people, but some more people can tell you you did a great job. I mean, the moment you think you have it, it's gone. This is a daily prayer. God search my heart. Reveal in my heart. Is there any prideful motive to what we're doing? What are the signs of it? Frustration when you when you feel like others fail to see your value? I'm frustrated that no one sees how important I am. That's pride working through your heart. Discouragement when you don't feel like your accomplishments are recognized. I don't know why you even do this. I probably ought to quit because no one even cares that I do it anyway. That's pride. Unwillingness to involve others in your ministry because you think they might mess it up. That's pride in your heart. I'm the only one that can do this the right way. Failure, fear of failure that comes from pride that we sometimes mask is humility. We say, oh, I'm just really bad at that. Maybe you just, you're afraid of doing it because you might not do it as well as you want, and then you might feel like you get, and you want to act like it's humility, but it's pride. Lord, search my heart. You where the remedy for pride is? The real remedy for pride is to look to the cross. Well, look to the cross. Why? The cross reminds us of our unworthiness. Jesus' death on the cross reminds me that I bring, I have nothing to offer, that I am a sinner, and my only hope was Jesus dying on the cross for me so that I could be forgiven. The cross reminds me that I bring nothing to the table. that God can do this without me, that I didn't. I brought nothing to my salvation. I bring nothing of any value that what he allows us to be a part of. And the cross puts humility on display, the humility of Jesus, who took on flesh, died on the cross, putting our need for salvation ahead of his glory that he laid aside momentarily in heaven to take on the form of a servant and die a death on a cross. Look to the cross, to be reminded of our unworthiness, our insufficiency, and the model of what Jesus did for us, that we would serve others from a heart of love, from a motive to see others built up, and to see God glorified. I'll be at the back in a moment. If you want to come back and pray, I'll be at the prayer corner. Would love to pray with you about anything that this has put on your heart or anything in your life. You want to talk more, you check that box with that connect card. We'd love to unpack more of what this means for your life, but let's pray together. God, would you search our hearts? Would you show us where we're hoarding spiritual gifts? where we should be serving others, building others up, and we've let our laziness or pride or selfishness, or distraction, whatever, get in the way. God, remind us of our giftedness and show us where that gift can be used to build someone up. God reveal in our hearts, the pride that's there. When we do the right things, but for the wrong reason. Help us to serve you from a place of humility and love. Help our eyes to be often fixed on the cross, where we see your humility put on display Jesus. And then God, help us, when we listen to our feelings more than your word, when we seek after our preferences more than your instructions for our lives. Let us seek the order and structure and peace and clarity that your Holy Spirit wants to bring to our church. Let all we do at Northland Church be done for your glory, for the building up of others. And from a heart of love and humility. When you ask for your help, it's something that we will not be able to do without you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.