Welcome to Between Sermons. I'm Pastor Carlton, the executive pastor of operations here at Christian Life Center. No, I am not Pastor Brent. Pastor Brent is in Japan on the mission trip. He's there to get every Japanese person saved. I may be exaggerating, but he's out today, and so I'm here joined with our founding pastor, Pastor Jerry.
He had a sermon on Pauline Epistles, or Paul's letters to the early church, and the sermon was absolutely amazing. Pastor, I think listening to your sermon, you could have just quoted scripture, and the whole church would have gone up. You didn't need any points, you didn't need an introduction or a conclusion; you could have just read through scripture because that's how powerful the Pauline Epistles are and how great the sermon was. I felt like the passion that you had behind the teaching you did, those verses that you came across were very impactful for us as a church.
Sometimes we just need basic scripture, especially for our sermons on Sunday. There's one scripture that stood out to me, and that's in Ephesians, chapter 3:20. I'll read it: "Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us." I just love how you broke that down in the sermon.
Can you kind of walk us through that?
I tried to just make it as easy to understand as I think Paul wrote it. It's almost backwards from the order that it appears in our Bibles, but he was saying that the God that we serve is able to do what we ask or even what we think. But that's just the first level. Then he's able to do above all that we ask or think; that's the second level. Or he can do exceedingly above what we ask or think. Each one of those just expounded it a little bit bigger, and I love that about the verse and the Apostle Paul. He's building our faith for what God can do.
I think sometimes we put God in a box, and the box that we put God in is the limits of our own thoughts. God is so much greater than our thoughts; he's so much more beyond anything that we can think of. I think that's how we need to read our word. Even the fact that he said "all that we ask or think."
Take it to Christmas, you know, your son, my kids—they could ask for a whole lot of stuff for Christmas, right? But there were some things that they wouldn't ask for. They might think it, but they would never ask for it. I think as Christians, we're the same way. Sometimes we ask him for some things; we ask a lot of easy prayers or simple prayers instead of dangerous prayers. I think he's stretching our faith that he can even do what we think instead of just what we're asking.
Yeah, I think that's amazing. You really dove into some of Paul's letters, and Philemon is one of the letters that we rarely listen to in sermons about or even read. But there's a character in it, Onesimus, who is a slave, and he sits under Paul. Paul converts him to Christianity, right? Like the meaning of his name, he now becomes useful in his work.
So can you talk to us a little bit about how we as Christians today can apply Christianity in our own lives? I mean, Christianity is not just something that we have in our heart; it's not a mystery or secret that we're holding on to and keeping, but it's something that we should have as usefulness in everything that we do.
You took the words out of my mouth. That's exactly the case, though. Our walk with God is not just a Sunday morning thing. It's not just a go-to-church thing. It should impact every area of our lives. It affects our marriage, it affects our work, it affects our health; it affects everything about us.
I really like that because we look at that story and we say, "Okay, well, this is just a story about a one-off character in the Bible." But we think about how we apply that to our lives. The Christianity that we have, or the Jesus that we have, that light needs to be shined on everything that we do and everyone that we come in contact with, right? Not just people knowing that we are Christians, but we are also useful in the world and in every aspect of our lives and our family and work, right? Certainly in church.
So we need to take that lesson that Paul is teaching in that moment and say, "Okay, how can I be useful to the people that are around me?" Especially in work. We talked more about the Roman soldiers who were with Paul, and you mentioned that they could only be with Paul for four hours as a form of policy. Can you explain that a little bit?
It's a saying, I guess, or I don't know the right word to use probably, but there's no proof of this. It's something that I've heard handed down that if a soldier stayed with Paul, chained to him, that was part of their assignment. If he stayed chained to Paul for more than four hours, he would become a Christian because Paul would have that great of an impact on him.
But to me, what's amazing about the soldiers being attached to him and all of that business is, you know, Paul's whole ministry and his whole passion was planting churches and reaching people. Yet, for those three or four letters, he was in prison. He couldn't preach, he couldn't have a church service, he couldn't have an evangelistic crusade. And yet he didn't complain about it. He didn't say, "This is what went wrong; God doesn't love me anymore." He didn't do any of that. Those soldiers were later said to be a part of Caesar's household because that was the position that they held, and yet they were Christians in the midst of this wicked emperor. So it's just amazing the impact that Paul was able to have on them.
And those soldiers probably went back home or back to their line of work and became useful as Christians. True, but it struck me as interesting the fact that they could only be with him for four hours because any amount of time over that, they would convert to Christianity. I start to reflect on my life and think about how long I am with the people that I know are not believers. How long before they realize that I'm a believer, that I'm a Christian? And then how long does my Christianity or my salvation impact them in their lives or even convert them to Christianity?
You know, we are around our friends and our co-workers, and we may be with our co-workers for 15-minute segments of a day over the water cooler or maybe at lunch. But a lot of people have worked in their jobs for over 20 years. So that amount of time surely is more than four hours total. How long does it take for someone to recognize that you're a Christian and for their lives to be changed because you're a believer? And then for them to convert to Christianity and come to salvation because of it?
I heard a guy one time who said he'd been a Christian for a week, and nobody knows it yet. He was trying to keep it a secret. You know, that's not the goal, right? The goal is to share our faith.
Right. So we have to take that into consideration and think, "Okay, how long does someone need to be around us before they recognize that we're Christians?" Before their lives are impacted and before they come to salvation?
Paul wrote some letters when he was in prison, and he wasn't just in prison because he committed a small crime. He wasn't being sentenced to just a few years or months in prison. I mean, he was tried and sentenced to death eventually. So his life is on the line, but yet he still writes these letters of encouragement and contentment, and they're beautiful.
I wonder, how are we today as Christians with the stresses of life? Not even being in prison, even though some may find themselves incarcerated. But we take the stress of life and the pressure of life and the burdens of life, and we completely shut down our Christianity.
You're right, and I think that's true. I think I'm guilty. I think most every Christian I've met has been guilty of that. We let it rub off on us instead of us rubbing off on it, you know? And it's not what God intended.
Yeah, and I remember you saying that in the sermon—that you're preaching to yourself or you're speaking about yourself. I said, "Pastor, you're speaking about yourself, but you're also talking to me and probably everyone else who's listening." When the smallest things go wrong in our life, we just completely shut down.
It's one thing to shut down our work or ourselves or our relationship with people or shut down our positions in our family, but when we shut down the light of Jesus that's inside of us, I mean, that's when it really becomes a problem.
Paul writes these letters at the worst time of his life. I mean, he's locked up, he's in prison, and he's still preaching encouragement. He's still delivering doctrine and correction, right? It's just amazing to see Paul have such enthusiasm about his salvation while in prison.
In one of those prison epistles, I didn't use it yesterday, but he was talking about those palace guards that were chained to him. He said, you know, because of that, the ordinary Christians in that particular church, that particular city, they were encouraged now to try to share their faith because they saw what had happened with these prison guards. So rather than complaining, he used it as an object lesson and a teaching for them.
And more about the letters, you know, Paul's writing like in Ephesians. He's giving some fundamental truths about our doctrine and Christianity, some basic theology about grace and peace, our salvation in Jesus. In other letters, he's giving correction to churches, like in Corinthians. He's trying to correct conduct; he's trying to establish Christian character. That's important in the early church because they're just establishing themselves as a church. They're just understanding Christian doctrine, and they're also suffering through persecution and cultural issues that they're experiencing being new believers.
So we understand why it was important for Paul to preach doctrine and correction then. But Pastor, you've been a pastor for many years. You've founded churches, you founded Christian Life Center, and you've been our senior pastor for over 30 years. How important is it for our church today, 2,000 years later, to understand those same concepts of doctrine and correction?
I think it's of the utmost importance because we still have the same issues. The church at Corinth, in particular, was known to the name Corinth, even from what I've read in history, just blasted people for the sexual sin that they had. There were about a thousand temple prostitutes, it said. The fact that they had a man in the church that was sleeping with his own stepmother probably didn't bother anybody because they were accustomed to sexual sin, sexual misconduct. So Paul addressing it with them—well, it's the same way. We still have the same issues today, and so somebody has to address it. The word of God is our strength, and it's clear what we should do.
So some of these cultural issues that we are experiencing in the world today, and how it's in the church—is it new? Not all of it is new to the world; it's not new to Christianity. So even more so, we should be looking at the Pauline Epistles to identify how do we deal with some of the issues that we're having today? It wasn't just for the early church, but it was for us now.
It got me wondering, how much of the Pauline Epistles apply to our lives today? Because we could read through it and say, "Well, that wasn't our culture, and it's not for our time." As a believer and a person who's reading the New Testament, is all of it applicable for where we are today?
I think pretty close to it. I've never tried to discern what percentage would not be applicable, but if it's not 100%, it's in the high 90s, I think.
Absolutely. So I want to transition to one thing that you talked about in the sermon on Sunday, and that's speaking in tongues, okay? The importance of speaking in tongues and having our prayer language. I think a lot of people think that is just something that you may get to in your walk with God. Maybe there's like a spiritual hierarchy of having a prayer language, you know, that one day I'll graduate to that point. But can you walk us through what it means to have our prayer language, to speak in tongues? When should we expect that to happen in our lives, and maybe how we go about getting it?
I think, first of all, the mistake that I've seen in so many people is the thought that this is a gift, and some people have it and some people don't. That in itself is really a misreading, I think, of 1 Corinthians 14. The times that Paul's referring to a gift of tongues is not the same as the prayer language that I was trying to emphasize. But I think it was God's plan for all of us as believers to be able to experience the prayer language because it builds us up. He names in 1 Corinthians 14 several benefits that we receive from having a prayer language and stresses the idea that this is for your private use. This is for something, you know, your daily devotions. I think you can pray in tongues every single day. I think he's encouraging that, and he challenged us with that by saying that he does it—he prays in tongues more than anyone.
Right, that's pretty strong emphasis when the man who is the greatest of all the apostles is saying that he prays in tongues every day. I think all of us should look to that as our model, as our guide.
So now, Pastor Jerry, it could seem weird to pray in a language that's not yours. How does one get to the point where they can experience praying in tongues and speaking in their prayer language?
I don't know if I'm fully following your question, but I would say that you first have to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. That's the key that kind of unlocks the door. Then it's just a matter of using it. Sometimes people just, even after they've been baptized in the Spirit, it was like a one-and-done, and that was not what God intended.
Right, yeah. I think it takes a matter of faith and believing that the Holy Spirit can do this through you. Because a lot of times, you know, I grew up in a different denomination, and in that denomination, it was a matter of repeating the same words. It got to a point where it's not that that's necessarily bad, but you get to a point where you think you have to manufacture the tongues, and that's not the case at all. It's the Holy Spirit speaking through you.
Can you give us your story of when you first started speaking in your prayer language?
Oh wow, I grew up, as you know, in a very legalistic Pentecostal church. I was baptized in the Spirit at, I think I was 13 years old at a youth camp, actually. But I wouldn't say that I started using it as a prayer language for several years. I think I was in my early 20s or something when I first started using it on a regular basis.
What was the question now?
Yeah, when was your first experience speaking in your prayer language?
Yeah, my first experience would have been at age 13, but it wasn't until later that it became a daily occurrence. It was more, I think probably the best way to describe it is it was more of an occasional outburst of tongues because of the move of the Holy Spirit in a service. You know, it was something you had to be emotional about, and that's not true at all, but that's how it was practiced in my denomination.
You know, Paul writes a lot of letters, and there's a lot to get from those letters. Some of the application is tremendously useful for our lives. One of the greatest things for me is when he talks about how a husband should be in marriage. That's something that I apply to myself, you know, loving my wife like Christ loved the church, right? For an example, can you give me an application from the Pauline Epistles that you've held on to in your life? Maybe something that you go back to more frequently than other doctrines or character corrections or any type of application that you've learned in reading through Paul's letters?
Wow, I think you took the most common one for me would be Ephesians 5, I believe it is, where he talks about husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. I know there have been many, many times that I've had to go back to that passage and say, "You know, are you really loving Chris the way you should and the way Christ would?"
So that's probably the most common for me, but there are others. The verses that talk about how we treat our employers, how we are as workers. That's in more than one of his letters; he addressed that two or three times. I heard Pastor Brent say once that if every employer knew what Christianity does for the people that they employ, they would all hire nothing but Christians. Absolutely, and I think that's accurate, you know, because the New Testament makes it clear that we're to treat them the way God has ordained.
I like the scripture, "We can do all things through Christ that strengthens us." Understanding that Paul is not a free man when he's writing that, and when you read chapter 4 of Philippians, he's telling us that we can pretty much suffer through anything through Christ that strengthens us. He's telling us to be content in every area of life, and this is a man that suffered quite a bit and is currently suffering as he's writing that.
For me, it's like when trials and tribulations come, it's like, "Okay, Carlton, I can get through this through Christ that lives in me." And then when I am in a position where I'm like, "Okay, I could be doing more," or "I think I deserve more," or "I should be trying to achieve something," I get the contentment that Paul is talking about. It's like, "Okay, well, I'm following the path that God has got me on, and he's got me in this place for a reason, and I can be content."
I think a lot of people need to merge the scripture with where Paul was and fully understand the context of the verse. I think that's something that we really need to understand.
So how important is it to understand the cultural background of what's happening when Paul is writing this or the condition that Paul is in himself when reading through verses?
I think it's very important, and it's also very neglected. The idea of the prison epistles—I was acquainted with that knowledge, I guess, but I don't think I had really given it as much thought as I should have until I was preparing for this sermon yesterday. It was like, you know, that was amazing that he did all of that in prison. Before I had a call that I need to address this, it was just a fact that didn't impact me, I guess.
Right, right. Yeah, and it's funny that Paul ends up in prison in Rome because he almost chooses to, you know?
Take out the "almost." He absolutely chooses to at the end of Acts. I think it's Felix who's the governor of the region in Jerusalem. He says, "Paul would be free if he didn't ask to go to Rome."
Why do you think he asked to go to Rome?
I think he was convinced that this was God's will for him, you know? This is what he was supposed to do. I don't know if that was correct or not, but that's what I get from reading in Acts—that he felt like this is the next step for me, even though everybody was predicting and prophesying that he was going to face persecutions and hardships. But with him, it was like, "That's what I'm called to do." In fact, he said, "Don't break my heart," to the Ephesian elders. "Don't break my heart by telling me all these things. This is what I'm going to do."
I felt that he wanted to go to Rome because Rome is the center of all things in the world. Him going to trial in Rome, it wasn't just Paul on trial, but it was Christianity on trial. I think that was a way that he could get the word of God to everyone in the world because Rome was the center of the world at the time.
I think it was a very strategic plan for Paul to try to get to Rome. Whether it's God's will or not, I'm not sure 100%, but it certainly worked. The letters that we get from that time of his life, the gospel being spread all over the world as people heard what was going on in Rome—who was this man Paul who's in trial, who's in prison?
I think that it was a strategy that worked well, and for me in my life, it lets me know that no matter what circumstances I'm in, the word of God needs to get out. Even if I think something is bad, it could boost my enthusiasm about spreading the word. It could give me charge. It's not always when things are going good in your life. A lot of times, we keep the word in, but when you're suffering or going through some kind of hardship or tragedy, that's when your faith is built even more, and then the gospel can be spread even more.
So a strategy from the Holy Spirit, a strategy from Paul—it certainly worked in getting the gospel out to the world.
It did, yep. He shared that again with the church that he talks so much about those Roman guards. It's all worked out for the good of the gospel.
Right. Because those Roman guards, would they have heard the gospel maybe in their lifetime if they weren't with Paul during the time that he was in prison? No.
And then we learn that salvation is not just an isolated thing for yourself. It's not just something—it's something that you take and you share with your family so your whole household can come to salvation. I imagine those Roman guards, with the enthusiasm of Christ that lives inside of them, went home and told their family members about their experience, you know?
And were able to share the gospel with other Romans who may not have heard the gospel because they had other gods and different practices of faith that were not Christianity. That could have been a way to get Christ to Rome. Just the example in, I think it's chapter 17, where there was the earthquake while Paul and Silas were in prison.
Absolutely, yeah. They were ready to— the guard there was ready to kill himself because that was the Roman law. If he lets them escape, then he's going to die. So he's ready to go ahead and take his own life when Paul says, "You don't need to do that." The guy comes into where they were and says, "What must I do to be saved?" That tells me that God was already speaking to him before the earthquake. That's not the first thing that comes out of your mouth when you're in a bad situation, but it's like, "What must I do to be saved?"
As you mentioned, he took his whole family; they were all baptized that same night.
Right, right. All because of what Paul had preached.
That's so encouraging when you said that the Holy Spirit may have been working in this man for some time. When we look at what Paul did as an apostle sharing the word of God, Jesus tells us that we need to go and make disciples of all nations and baptize them. We kind of feel a burden on us or a weight, I should say, that that's a monumental task. But to understand that the Holy Spirit is already working, you know, our position in this is very low. We don't have much of the work to do except for sharing the gospel. It's the Holy Spirit that's doing 99.9% of the work; we just cooperate with him.
Yeah, all we have to do is cooperate, be obedient, and watch God work. I think that's what's happening in Paul's letters and the people that Paul comes in contact with—from Roman soldiers to the prison guard when he was in prison with Silas—that the Holy Spirit's working.
It's our job to be obedient and to get the message out.
Yeah, and I think Paul's letters really demonstrate that.
They do. There's a song that we sing from time to time here at CLC about, "He's working even when I don't see it; he's working." That's really true. Sometimes we get discouraged or depressed, and we feel like God's not paying attention to what I'm doing, but that's all just a lie.
Right, absolutely. He is working, not just in our lives but in the lives of everyone around us, especially unbelievers. The Holy Spirit is constantly moving, constantly working, and God is just waiting for us to open the door to invite people to know who he is.
True. So when we tag team with the Holy Spirit, it's amazing what we can do—the miracles that can be performed, the salvation that can be had with the people that we know when we partner with the Holy Spirit and understand what the Holy Spirit's work is and what our obedience should be.
Right. So I think Paul really—go ahead.
I love it. Yeah, I think Paul really does a good job and demonstrates that for us in sharing that in his letters.
So if you don't have anything else, Pastor, I think that's about all that I have for today. Thank you guys for joining us on the Between Sermons podcast. Next week, hopefully Pastor Brent will be back if he doesn't stay in Japan and be a missionary. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
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on Nov 05, 2023
