Speak Out 1982

I'd like to start out today by reading from Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 4, and then 17 and 18. When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place, and suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as a fire distributed and resting on each one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

From the book of Joel, and in the last days it shall be God declares that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. Now, when we think about the Word of God being proclaimed in a 20th century church, we usually picture a gathering of people in a large room and somebody standing up front preaching.

And somebody says, well, what's wrong with that? Didn't that same kind of thing go on in the apostolic church, in the New Testament church, in Corinth, or Ephesus, or Antioch? I mean, they came together and they sang hymns, they worshiped, they said prayers, sometimes there was a prophecy or two that would come forth, but invariably there would be somebody who stood up in front and preached. That's true. And yet, when we think of the Word of God being proclaimed in those congregations in the New Testament age, we rarely think in terms of one, or two, or three people standing up front preaching.

Most of the time when we picture the apostolic church, think of the Word of God being proclaimed coming forth with living power from every mouth. Now, the test, the proof of our worship really comes when the service is over, and the preacher has finished preaching, and the prophets have finished prophesying, the prayers and the praises have ended, the last hymn is over, and now the saints are standing around greeting each other. What kind of words do we speak to each other? What words come forth in our conversation as we head for home, and as we move forward into a new week? This is the place where things were different in the apostolic church.

The cause of a fantastic, rapid increase and growth in the body of Christ in those days never was tied to the eloquence of one, or two, or three preachers. It was always tied to one thing. The growth of the apostolic church was the result of one thing, the fact that these men and women opened their mouths and renounced their fear of man and spoke a living word.

They spoke to God, they spoke to each other, and they spoke to the world, and the words that they spoke were spirit and life. The proclamation of the Word of God in the apostolic churches was never restricted to the apostles and the prophets and the teachers. The proclamation of the Word of God in the apostolic churches was the meat and drink of every believer.

From Colossians chapter 3, verse 16, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Now, what we have most of the time in the 20th century churches, we have a preacher and then we have a few people who love to talk, and then we have a few people who really claim they don't like to talk but they feel compelled sometimes, and then there are those who really have a compulsion to talk, and the rest of the people keep pretty quiet. Now, part of the problem is that the preacher and the other talkers monopolize the conversation and so that the other ones feel intimidated and they shut up.

The other part of the problem is that there are people who have a message burning in their hearts but they hold it back out of fear of man, or perhaps even out of fear of hearing their own voice. See, it's not that they don't have a message. They have a message but it's locked inside because they won't speak.

Every follower of Jesus has a message and every follower of Jesus is called by the Lord to proclaim that message. Look forward. Taken from Isaiah, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to preach.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovering insight to the blind, to set at liberty the oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Obviously, this prophecy applies to the head of the body, Jesus, but also to every member of the body, including you and me. We are called to preach, to proclaim, to speak.

It's the word that comes forth from our heart across our mouth that brings life to the ones around us. In the last days that you'll be, God declares that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. And to prophesy doesn't mean just foretell the future.

It means simply to speak forth a word from God. And your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. Yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days, I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy.

The sign of the last days. The signal that the Messiah's hour has arrived. Is that men and women renounce their fear, their self-consciousness, their confusion of mind, their preoccupation with other things, and begin to speak a living word from God in this world.

Surely the time has come for this clock. All of us, menservants and maidservants, to open our mouths and speak. And this is a hard one because, you know, people say, well, yeah, that's right.

I agree. That's right. But that doesn't mean that I'm supposed to really do it.

Well, it happens in really three steps, but the three steps take place all at the same time. It's not like one year we do step one, the next year we do step two, and the third year, if we live that long, we do step three. We do them all.

First of all, we are, all of us, in need of opening our mouths and speaking to God. We have all kinds of wonderful thoughts of worship, and often in our hearts, we breathe a prayer of thanksgiving and praise to God. But it's so helpful, not only to us, but to the Heavenly Father, to hear it cross our mouth, to say it.

From Revelation chapter seven, after this, I looked and behold a great multitude, which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God, who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb. Now, if we're going to be in that multitude, which no man can number, it would be helpful for us to get a little practice. And it's wonderful how the Lord, in many ways, has given us a foretaste of this already.

Here we are, from every nation, kindred people and tribe and tongue. We have a tremendous mix. We have that.

And we're before the throne and before the Lamb. Even now, the Spirit brings the Father and the Son down into our mix. And we're already clothed in white robes.

He's clothed us. He's put the palm branch in our hand. Well, we don't just stand around and wave our little palm branches.

We open our mouths and we speak clear, loud, wonderful praises to the Father. The first thing we do, when our tongue has been set free, is glorify the Father with that tongue. We praise Him.

We worship Him. We give thanks to Him. We magnify Him with His tongue, which has been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

The refreshing that always comes to the saints when they come together in the name of Jesus is vastly increased. That refreshing is vastly increased when we open our mouths and speak praises to the Father and to the Lamb. God helped us to use these tongues, which have been instruments of such problems in our lives, now as instruments of praise to God.

Step two. Again, that's not for 1983, but for now. We need to speak to one another.

We need to speak to each other. And not just about the Super Bowl. Colossians 3. It's easy to talk about the Super Bowl.

And, you know, it's no problem to talk about the weather, or to talk about our headache, or your headache, or my headache, you know, or what do you like, aspirin or anisine, or whatever it is. But, you know, to talk about this, all of a sudden it's embarrassing. You know, they might think I'm a little crazy.

I mean, to believers now. We're talking about talking to believers. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to the Lord.

The fellowships of believers that have a strong witness in the world always will, first of all, have a strong witness one to another. You know, if it stops there, they're going to turn sick after a while. But it begins there.

You know, God's order is that we're going to have the word of God will become strong. The word of Christ will dwell in us richly as we teach and admonish one another, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to the Lord. How can you sing a hymn with thankfulness in your heart to the Lord when your chin is 15 miles down? You know, thanks be to God.

You know, go in peace, serve the Lord. Thanks be to God. You know, I don't know this hymn.

I want to depict that. Oh my goodness, can't they give us some good ones? No, I agree. We'll try to do that too.

But speak. You know, we were given to each other. We often think that we stumbled.

What an accident, you know, and what a ridiculous accident that we should be thrown in with these people. You know, often when kids begin to grow up, they wonder why God picked these parents for them. You know, I'm sure we all thought that.

I'm sure our kids think that about us. But it's no accident that we are with each other even now. God has given us to each other just the way we are for us to comfort each other and to strengthen each other and to encourage each other and to stir each other up.

And this is done by speaking. Of course, with good deeds and with deeds of mercy and helpfulness, of course, but always with a spoken word. What kind of a marriage are we going to have if the husband and the wife never have one good word for each other? Where'd you put my shoes? Hey, what's this here? The eggs are cold.

You know, and then she says, put them where you left them, you dummy. And what a transformation takes place. What a wonderful in that same marriage where this husband and this wife deliberately now determined that they're going to speak encouraging, helpful, inspiring words to each other that are honest and true, not just a bunch of social chatter, but they're going to try to speak a good word to each other.

How ridiculous, you know, I mean, we can go out and speak a good word to everybody else and we don't have a good word for our husband or our wife. How much more is this true now in the family of God? What a transformation takes place in the assembly of believers. When we begin to speak to each other, a good, encouraging, helpful word.

This is absolutely holy and heavenly and precious. When the saints begin to speak to each other, the things of God. Step number three, we need to speak to the world.

Matthew 28. And Jesus came to them and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always to the close of the age. Now there are people who say, but that was only meant for the disciples. Yeah, but where are the disciples now? The age hasn't closed yet and this still has to go on and who's going to do it? And how are we going to make disciples and baptize and teach without a spoken word? We will, we will never fulfill our purpose as disciples of Jesus until we begin to speak to the world.

And we're always going to be frustrated and dry inside until we circulate out there in the world and speak that name of Jesus. Now, what is it that keeps me bound up so I can't do it? I'm just afraid. I just feel intimidated.

I don't want to talk. Why don't I speak the name of Jesus to my old friend, to my neighbor, the person I've worked with, the business associate, the person sitting next to me on the bus or the plane. God helped me to renounce my fear, open my mouth and speak, to speak up.

What a difference it makes when I begin to do this and when I begin to speak to the world in the name of the Lord, the world will hear a voice that they will know is from heaven and many will be drawn by what they hear. If the spirit of the Lord is upon us today in this place, he is here not only to set our tongues free that we may worship and praise God, not only that our hearts may be encouraged to start encouraging each other with a spoken word, but also that we might know that we've been anointed to preach good news to the poor and proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. And when we open our mouths and do that, there will be a word of God coming forth with boldness from us and the world will know that they have heard from God.

Tuesday night at the meeting, one of the brothers shared from his heart that he believes that we are not only as a congregation being called to give away a good slice of our income as it is now 40% of our income given away to health ministries in other places. That's what we're for sure to do. And perhaps in time, maybe even this year, who knows a bigger slice, but we are also called to give away and send forth people.

So the people from here are sent forth to other places. And maybe somebody is needed over in the church where Milton and John Castecchi and Ron Mulford and their wives are serving right now. Maybe somebody's needed in the Bronx.

Somebody's needed down in Dallas. Somebody's needed in Bolivia with Bruce and Marlene Inglis, wherever. And I'm sure most of us who heard that, if not all of us felt it, that's that's right.

That's true. We need to do this and we will do it. And the ones who will be sent forth from among us will be people whose mouths have been opened and living water flows forth from them.

I mean, what's the point of sending another body to fill somebody's pews? They will be sons and daughters who prophesy, men servants and maid servants who speak as the spirit gives them utterance. When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind.

And it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as a fire distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance.

And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. And your young men shall see visions.

And your old men shall dream dreams. Yea, even on my men servants and my maid servants in those days, I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. May the God who pours out his spirit upon us continue to stir us and really give us no rest until in obedience we open our mouths and speak as the spirit gives us utterance.

Let's spend some time before the Lord, shall we?