Matt Chandler - A Supernatural Community and A Personal Word

All right, 15 years—that’s my favorite bumper music video ever. Alright, if you have your Bibles, let’s go to First Corinthians 15. If you’re with us for the first time in a while this morning, this is week four in a six-week series on First Corinthians 12 through 14. We’ve really just been talking about how God has gifted all of the children of God with some manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. We argued in week one that everyone who’s a Christian has been gifted by the Holy Spirit with a gift that is to be used for the building up of the body. If you are a Christian spectator, then you are not actually stepping into what God has designed you for, what God has saved you for, and what God has put into you by the power of the Holy Spirit. So, all of us need to reject what I called in week one the «LeBron James rule» and instead have everybody play their part. It’s not just these men and women that we look at, like Jen Wilkin here, and think, «Man, what an unbelievable gift of teaching! I can’t do that, so I must not be able to do anything.» We can’t afford to do that. In the eyes and in the heart of God, the one who practices hospitality and administration is every bit as needed and necessary for the flourishing of the body as a teacher like Jen Wilkin or a leader like Josh Patterson—or on and on I could go. That was week one: everybody’s got a gift. I just wanted to press gently and say if you’re bored in your Christian faith, it might have something to do with you being a spectator rather than a participant. Nobody wants to read about a game all the time and not actually play the game, right? Many of us are guilty of thinking, «I’m not as gifted as this person or that person, so there’s probably no space for me.» We rob ourselves of God supernaturally using us in ways that would blow our minds if we would just surrender to it. Practice hospitality, use your gift of administration, do the work of an evangelist—on and on I could go. Then I headed out for my two weeks, and I thought Trevor Driwod did an incredible job. I’m still not quite sure how he preaches sermons in 27 minutes—don’t expect that today; I’m back! But he does. In fact, the last message there was a song in the middle of the sermon, and it was still like 30 minutes. Alright, that’s like a devotional, not a sermon! Anyway, this one’s going longer because of that. I loved how Trevor worded it. He said First Corinthians 12 is about pulling all of us, as God’s instruments unique in design and contribution, onto the same sheet of music. I loved that. Then, last week, he said chapter 13 is how love is the music of heaven that we make together in the here and now, and I just loved his verbiage. Now, First Corinthians 14—I know some of you have been really eager for First Corinthians 14, and others have been really nervous about it. Regardless, here we go. Okay, let me just, so we can all breathe, tell you exactly where I’m headed. Here’s what I want to do today. I’m going to do it in probably 42 minutes. I want to show from the Bible and church history, part of a bunch of names—unless you’re a theological nerd, you might not have ever heard of—that the Church of Jesus has always been a supernatural community. Always. It is more odd when she is not than when she is. You tracking with me? I want to show you that, and then I want to get into what prophecy is, what prophecy isn’t, and how to step into it as the children of God. Let me quote Andrew Wilson real quick: the early church was a charismatic community, of that there can be no doubt. From the day of Pentecost onward, the book of Acts is a story of Holy Spirit breakthrough—speaking in other languages, prophesying, healing, casting out demons, angelic encounters, miraculous prison breaks, visions, dreams, evangelistic preaching, buildings shaking, the dead being supernaturally brought to life, and on occasion, the living being supernaturally brought to death—boldness in the face of persecution, joy, and even one story of teleportation. I think what happens in the book of Acts is that because of our experiences, we read the book of Acts, then we look at our own lives, and we’re just like, «Gosh, man, my faith—this is not what it looks like in my house, at my church.» So then we do, «Okay, is the book of Acts descriptive, or is it prescriptive?» Right? Maybe it’s just a history, but maybe he’s just telling us what happened, not what should be happening. That’s one of the ways that some people deal with the book of Acts. I think, though, what you can’t overlook is that when the Apostle Paul is writing to the churches, and when James, the half-brother of Jesus, writes to the churches, they assume the churches are experiencing miraculous manifestations of God’s power via the Holy Spirit. They always assume it. Let me show you this in Romans 1:12 through 6—the book of Romans, which is known to be loved by the mystics, says, «Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy, in proportion to our faith.» So it’s interesting that he starts this way.