Faith, Love and Hope - Part 1

Today on the Fellowship in the Word pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ you have to do something that's not. Once you want to add a single word just for the grace member the story. The Galatians Judaizers payments and I know you want to be saved, here's the point. You do need to believe in Jesus and is not enough. You also have to be served see if you're not circumcised Paul Went Ballistic. He Called Another Gospel Is Anyone Intelligent That First Because You Realize Adding a Single Word to the Grace of God Destroys the Grace of God Is No Longer Grace. You Learn Joining Us Today on This Additional Fellowship in the Word Pastor Bill Gebhardt Fellowship in the Words the Radio Ministry of Fellowship Bible Church Located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's Join Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Now Once Again He Shows Us How God's Word Meets Our Work.

Not at All Sure That You I Know You Haven't Had a Raise Often As I Have Because I Have Time and That Is How Would God Evaluate Our Church, Not People. People Evaluate Churches in All Kinds of Crazy Reasons. Well I Love That Church Because of the Music I Love the Church Because of the Coffee Shop. You Know I Mean It's Just, and Pastors Are No Better. I've Been around Pastors for a Long Time and Pastors Would Try to Evaluate How Well the Church Is Doing Based on Either Number of People Attending the Size of the Budget or How Many Buildings You Have Never Tell You How You're Doing. As You Serve God. The Bible Doesn't Contain Any Criteria like That at All. But When You Look at the New Testament You Finds That There Is a Clear Evaluation by God to How He Evaluate a Local Church and When You Really Think about It and I Have This past Week. It Not Only Evaluates the Church, but It Also Evaluates the Individual Believer and How Mature or Immature You Are and I Think As We Go through These Things. You Might Be Just a Little Bit Surprised. In Light of How We Often Evaluate Ourselves and the Church before I Look at the Church and Went to Look at Its Inception. I Want to Go with Me to Ask Chapter 17 the Book of Acts Chapter 17. This Is Paul's Second Missionary Journey Verse One. Now When They Had Traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia and They Came to Thessalonica, Where There Was a Synagogue of the Jews and According to Paul's Custom He Went to Them for Three Sabbath Any Reason with Them from Scriptures Explaining and Giving Evidence That the Christ or the Messiah Had to Suffer and Rise Again from the Dead and Saying This Jesus Whom I Am Proclaiming to You Is the Messiah.

He Is Christ and Some of Them Were Persuaded and They Join Paul and Silas, along with a Large Number of God-Fearing Greeks and a Number of the Leading Women. But the Jews Becoming Jealous and Taking along Some Wicked Men from the Marketplace. They Formed a Mob and Set the City in an Uproar and Attacking the House of Jason.

They Were Seeking to Bring Them out to the People When They Did Not Find Them, They Began Dragging Jason Some Brethren before the City Authorities, Shouting These Men Who Have Upset the World Have Come Here Also, and Jason Has Welcome Them and They Act Contrary to the Decrees of Caesar, Saying That There Was Another King, Jesus Ago Miss the Irony Here.

The Jews Hate Caesar. They Hate the Romans, but They Hate Christ More and so That's Why They're Going to Seem As Though Their Patriots to Caesar and Are Not, They Stirred up the Crowd and the City's City Authorities Who Heard These Things, and When They Had Received a Pledge from Jason and the Others They Release Them. The Pledge Could Have Been a Money Pledge Fine. It Could Have Been That We Won't Have Them in Our Home Again. They're Not Sure Exactly What That Meant When He Says, Pledge It Says the Brethren Immediately Sent Paul and Silas Away by Night to Berea and When They Arrived They Went into the Synagogue of the Jews Once Again Is Paul's Custom and These Were More Noble Minded Than Those in Thessalonica, for They Received the Word with Great Eagerness, Examining the Scriptures Daily to See Whether These Things Were so. Therefore, Many of Them Believed along with a Number of Prominent Greek Women and Men.

But When the Jews of Thessalonica Found out That the Water Got a Been Proclaimed by Paul in Berea Also. They Came There As Well. Agitating and Stirring up the Crowds and Then Immediately the Brethren Sent Paul out to Go As Far As the Sea and Silas and Timothy Remained There. That's the Background of the Birth of the Church of Thessalonica, so Now I Invite You to Open Your Bible Attorney to Buy Was the First Thessalonians Chapter 1. Thessalonica Is a Greek City in Macedonia. It Was Established around 325 BC by a General Name Cassondra.

He Later Became King of the Macedonians Is a Strategic City Located in a Very Interesting Spot Is a Big City for the Ancient World Has about 200,000 People in the City of Thessalonica. William Barclay Says If Christianity Was Settled There. It Was Bound to Spread East along the Nation Road until Always It Was Conquered and Weston to Explore and Even the City of Rome. The Coming of Christianity to Thessalonica Was Crucial in Making in the Making of Christianity Is One of the Great World Religions Is an Interesting City.

It's Very Strategic City, but There's Something More Important about It.

It's the Best Church in the New Testament. If You Look at All the Different Churches in Paul's Turning Is a What's the Best Churches Thessalonica This Is a Really Solid Church Has Very Few Problems and It at All and so Paul Was Writing to Them and He's Going to Give Us This Can't of How God Evaluate the Church and Ours. He Starts on Sis Paul Savanna's and Timothy Now That Make Some Sense. The First Missionary Journey Was Paul and Barnabas but Barnabas and Paul Had an Argument after and by John Mark Barnabas Took John Mark and Paul Took Silas and Timothy Is Paul's Young Disciple Lisa Mr. He. He Was Raised by a Godly Mother and Grandmother, and He Says to Them, to the Church in Thessalonica. In God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Notice the Equivalency of the Two God the Father Lord Jesus Christ. The Churches in Both Grace to You and Peace and Process We Give Thanks to God Always for All of You, Making Mention of You in Our Prayers and Then He's Says Something Here That Is When Use Read It First You Don't Think about It Much but Once You Think about It. It's Very Profound.

He Said, Constantly Bearing in Mind Your Work of Faith and Labor of Love and Steadfastness of Hope in Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Presence of Our God and Father. This Is How God Measures a Church.

This Is How God Measures Our Church.

This Is How God Measures Your Maturity. This Is the Measurement That God Uses, and Is an Interesting Thing's Reason Different Things Are Mentioned. The First One Is Your Work of Faith That That Seems Paradoxical, Doesn't the Masonic of Macon Works and Faith Well It's Not Paradoxical. The Word Workers Word Aragon and It Means Deeds Almost Always Good Deeds He Saying Your Deeds, Your Good Deeds of Your Faith, the First Thing He Said Is the Work of Your Faith Now That Sherry Is Not Paradoxical Hold Replacer Will Become Right Back and Go with Me to Ephesians Chapter 2 and Verse Eight. Ephesians 2 Just A Few Pages to Your Left and Verse Eight, and These Are about to the Simplest, Most Profound Verses in the Bible about Salvation.

You'll Find Paul Says in Verse Eight for by Grace You Have Been Saved Have Been As a past Tense past Perfect Results Gone Forever.

For by Grace You Have Been Saved. It Is Grace That Saves You Grace Is Carless, It Means a Gift You Buy the Gift of God. You Have Been Saved. He Said through Faith That Are Part He Says. And That Is Not of Yourselves, It Is the Gift of God. Salvation Is a Gift of God See It's a Gift for by Grace You Have Been Saved Hours or Maybe You Still Don't Get It. Maybe All Be Clear, Not As a Result of Works, so That No One Can Boast.

When Someone Tells You You Have To Do Something and Work That's Not True.

In Fact, Once You Once You Add a Single Work to It. You Destroy the Grace of God.

Remember the Story. The Galatians Judaizers Came and Said Look I Know You Want to Be Saved.

But Here's the Point. You Do Need to Believe in Jesus and You Do That's Nice but That's Not Enough. You Also Have To Be Circumcised. You See, and If You're Not Circumcised. Acamprosate and Paul Went Ballistic.

He Called Another Gospel. He Said Anyone. It Tells You That Should Be Eternally Cursed Because He Realized Adding a Single Work to the Grace of God Destroys the Grace of God. It's No Longer Grace, It's Something You Learn.

Now What Works Commend Next Verse for We Are His Workmanship, Created in Christ Jesus for Good Works, Which God Prepared Beforehand That We Should Walk in Them. You See Your Saved by Grace and Grace Alone through Faith and Faith Alone, but the Faith That Saves You Is Never Alone Results Works about the Thessalonians. Think about This. This Is Where James Wrote James Wrote His Whole Epistle about This and A Lot Of Christians I Met over the Years Really Don't like James. They Think It's a Bad Book but It's Not. It's a Great Book I but James Is Talking about Being Saved.

James Is Talking about. What Does Faith Produce That's Why James Said Faith without Works Is Dead. That's Just Dead Faith, He Said That's Just Dead She Not Make Sense. That's Exactly What the Word of God Tells Us Now with Interesting Is That When He Says Here Is Costly, Bearing in Mind Your Work of Faith. In Other Words, Your Deeds of Faith. If You Just Talk.

Faith I'm Suspicious. You See, Because Once You Are Born Again into the Family of God in the Spirit of God Takes up Residency and You and He Takes up Residence in Your and 12 Forever by the Spirit of God, It Should Produce Something Shut It Is He Got God Has Invaded Your Life.

Something Should Happen with Your Life and Our Faith Can't Be Reduced to No No I Don't Have Any. My Life Has Nothing to Do with with with Good Deeds at All.

My Life Is Just Telling People the Truth. I'd Be Leery of That Said Be Suspicious of That Now. To the Degree of Works. That's between You and God. Nobody That Become Legalistic to Start Saying You Need to Come up with 26 of Them or Something.

No, You Don't Have To Do That.

I'm Not Talking about That but He Says Notice Your Work of Your Work of Faith. That's What Happens Your Deeds of Faith.

One of the DJ Habits Are Extremely Persecuted the Jews Hated Him and the Romans Don't like Him Either Because the Jews Hated Him and Cause Trouble for Rome As Other Persecuted and That They Persevere. That's a Good Work That's a Deed Because of the Work of Faith Then Secondly He Says This and the Labor of Love, Your Labor of Love. The Word Labor Is Called Loss and That's a Great Word to Describe This Kind of Love Co. Poss As a Verb Simply Means This to Be Weary to the Point of Exhaustion.

Notice He Didn't Just Say You Have Love, Peace and Know Your Labor of Love Weary to the Point of Exhaustion, Love the Sea That Make Some of Us Uncomfortable Because It Isn't Easier for Us to Just Tell Everybody We Love Them I Love Them in Lovely Yemen Evening. Let Me Know, but I'm Going to Bargain Right Now but Hey If You Ever Need Something Just That. Let Me Know I Love You Man See That's Not Co. Poss Is a Co. Poss Is Different Than That.

Co. Poss, He Said, Is the Point of Exhaustion.

He Said Just like You Would to the Philippians You People Consider Everybody Else Is More Important Than Yourselves.

You Live for Other People Wake Churches Don't Always Do This If Thessalonica Is the Best Church in the New Testament the Worst Church in the New Testament by a Mile Was Corinth Is a Terrible Church. If You Could Do Something Wrong As a Church. The Corinthians That Are Wrong.

Everything You Could Do Wrong. They Did Wrong All the Way through the Book but You Know What Is the Completely Lack That Made Everything Go Wrong in Their Church and Love Each Other.

They Can Love People, Prideful and Arrogant.

You See, That Was a Problem. Again, You Can Hold a Place to Go to Me to First Corinthians 13 First Corinthians 13. The Corinthians Had Great Wealth Was a Large Church. They Had Big Numbers and They Were Carnal Fleshly Week Childish When He Said There Carnally Paul Said to Them, You Know, When I Look at Your Lives, and I Look at the Life of an Unbeliever Pagan Greek It's the Same.

I Can See Any Difference in Your Little but They Had All the Gifts in Fact They Completely Wrecked Their Church with the Way They View the Gifts so Paul Is Writing an Obsession about the Gifts He Says Look, You People Don't Understand Something You Think That If You Had a Certain Gift to Be Spiritual. You See Anything and in Our Case It Was Glossolalia Times If You Had a Gift That Made You Spiritual Absolutely Not See Said That Is Nothing to Do with Spirituality.

So He Gets a Chapter 13 He Says This. If I Speak with the Tongues of Men and of Angels. Now Please Understand Everything You Said Is Hyperbole. I Bet You Heard Some Guys That You Know I I Know Now That Glossolalia Met You Spoke like Angels Speak That's Not What He Saying at All. He Say, but Even If I Could Speak like an Angel Speaks If I Had an Angel Language. What If I Speak with the Tongues of Men and of Angels, but I Do Not Have Love, I Become a Noisy Gong or a Clanging Symbol Symbol. All I Make Is Noise so I Do I Just Make Noise and so I Do.

There's No There's Nothing Coming Here If I Don't Have Love, I Don't Have Anything Else Even If You Speak Our Language and You Don't Have Love You Don't Have Anything Else but Noise See That's What Paul Was Saying. Next He Goes on. If I Have the Gift of Prophecy Know Much the Hyperbole and Know All Mysteries and All Knowledge. Now, Who Knows All Mysteries and All Knowledge, Only God so He's Not Saying Hey If You Ever Get the Props You Know Everything Is Not Saying That Each Is an Hyperbole.

He Said If I Have All Faith, Notice Faith so As to Remove Mountains Now.

I Love That Is Never in Scripture.

Even Jesus Said You Had Enough. If You Could Move a Mountain Concept. I'll Take a Step Further.

If You Have Enough Faith in My Example, You Can Remove the Mountain. I Have Faith That Mountains Gone and It Vanishes You, and I Was A While, That's Really Something Pulse Again If I Have Faith That Could Do That but Do Not Have Love, I'm Nothing, Absolutely Nothing, Not a Little.

I'm Nothing. He Then Says If I Give All My Possessions to Feed the Poor, and I Surrender My Body to Be Burned but I Don't Have Love, It Profits Me Nothing.

No Matter How Much I Do for People. No Matter How Much I Work If I Don't Have Love Doesn't Profit Me at All. That's How Important the Labor Love Us and Then Paul Says This Now Notice the Context in Which Paul Said It and You and I and I Gotta Say I Do It to You and I When You Often Hear This at a Wedding Man. This Is for the Bride and Groom Season for the Bride and Groom. This Is for You and Me Is for the Church. See That's What He Saying Love Is Patient, Love Is Kind.

It's Not Jealous. Love Does Not Brag.

It's Not Arrogant.

It Does Not Act Unbecomingly Does Not Seek Its Own, It's Not Provoked, It Does Not Take in Account a Wrong Suffered, It Does Not Rejoice in Unrighteousness. It Rejoices in the Truth. Love Bears All Things.

Love Believes All Things. Love Hopes All Things. Love Endures All Things. Love Never Fails. That's How Important It Was the People You See That's What Love Is in the Corinthians That Have Any of It. Even Back in Chapter 11 When They Had the Lord's Table in the Agape Feast on Sunday Evenings. There Was No Love.

So They Knew That All of the Poor People and the Slaves Couldn't Come. Still Sunday Evening That Come Late Because I Had to Work so Those People Who Are the Haves Versus the Have-Nots That Got Together Have the Agape Feast Together and Do the Lord's Table for the Other People Got Theirs. They Could Eat All the Food, No Pulses When You Do the Lord's Table That Way. That's Why Many of You Are Sick and Some of You Sleep. Which Means You Been Killed by the Lord Sent Him to Death Had No Love at All.

That's What This Church Did. They Didn't Have a Labor of Love, Knowing the Back. Two Thessalonians. Jesus Christ Was Asked by His Enemies, Trying to Trap Him If You Could Summarize the Whole Old Testament but If You Could Come up with One Law That Is Greater Than the Others. What Would It Be in a Thought Here. Say What You Can Do That and He Said That's Not a Problem.

You Love the Lord Your God with All Your Heart Mind Soul and Strength. Love Your Neighbor As Yourself.

He Said Everything Is inside of. That's How Important a Labor of Love Is See.

That's How Important This Ideas the Labor of What It's That Important.

Jesus Even Took It a Step Further and Makes Us Uncomfortable. I Not Only Have To Love God and I Have To Love You and I Have To Love the Lost but I Also Have To Love My Enemies. That's Us Going Too Far to See. That's the Supernatural Love of Christ While We Were Still Enmity with God, His Enemy, God Loved Us so Much He Sent His Son into the World. This Is the Love of God.

That's What He's Talking about. Paul Said, and Later Another Scripture, the Love of Christ Controls Me. I Do What I Do Because of the Love of Christ. So He Says You Have the Work of Faith, You Have the Labor You Have, to the Point of Exhaustion You Consider Other People Is Better Than You. You Demonstrated by the Way You Love.

You Demonstrated You Demonstrate the Level You Demonstrate His Love the People She Do We Do It Collectively. But Do You Do It Is Important for Us Because He God's Going to God's Evaluation of Use Different and You Think God Doesn't Think You're Mature Christian Because You Spend 15 Minutes Every Morning Reading Away through Scripture.

He Doesn't Think You're Mature Christian Because You Have a Perfect Attendance See That That Kind of Thing Is Not about Evaluate You. He's Going to Evaluate Your Bike Though the Deeds of Your Faith by the Labor of Your Love. You See, That's What He Wants to Know What You Really Doing Not What You're Learning What You Doing with It and Then Thirdly, He Said, and the Steadfastness of Hope, the Steadfastness of Hope That Works. Steadfastness Is Different. See Steadfastness to Us Means It Steady.

But That's Not Exactly What Steadfastness Means in Greek the Word Is Who Paul Monet. It's a Compound Greek Word and It Means in This Sense to Stay under the Pressure.

Whatever Pressures Me Importing You. You Just Stay There That Steadfastness. He Said You Stay under the Pressure of Hope… Is the Word and I Produce over the Years That Were Hope Doesn't Mean Prussian Fingers and Hope That Were Hope Means Future Certitude.

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