Welcome to Gateway Church's podcast. Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

All right. So we are beginning a new series called the Gifts of Jesus. And this is not to be confused

with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And yet there are many categories of gifts that there are

many that take these five and join them with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Now I want to say,

most of you know this, but we believe fully in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the person of the

Holy Spirit and the work of the Holy Spirit. So this is not to minimize the gifts of the spirit

at all. But these five are gifts of Jesus. And many, many people don't know that Jesus Himself

gave these gifts. And it actually follows up on Pastor Joshua's series to humanity. It's the

Greek word here to humanity or to mankind. Jesus Himself gave these gifts. And they're in

Ephesians 4. So we're going to go through an apostle prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher.

But what we're going to talk about is how does an apostle help me? How does a prophet help me?

How does an evangelist help me? In other words, why did Jesus give you these gifts? And this series,

let me give you the story of how this series came about the burden for it. We have some friends

that we went to high school with that we reconnected with. And we just have a blast with them.

And we get together normally every Memorial Day weekend and talk during the year when we can.

And one of them, this is a great, great, great guy. He sent an email to five friends and very,

very honest and with a good spirit, very good spirit. And just said, why do I need a pastor?

And he said, I've been trying to read the Bible, study the Bible on my own. And he's been a believer

for years. But he was just admitting that, hey, I don't know everything. And I see deacons in the

Bible. I see elders. I even see overseers. But why do I need a pastor? I grow, I read the word,

I study, I pray, I have friends that speak into my life, my wife speaks into my life.

I'm just wondering, scripturally, why do I need a pastor? And so I called him and said, hey,

...