Corinthians 12 reading from verse 1 to verse 11 and continue our series through 1st Corinthians. Let's give your attention to the Word of God. 1st Corinthians chapter 12 reading from 1 to 11. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed. And no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of service, but the same Lord. And there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. To one is given through the spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit. To another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one spirit. To another, the working of miracles. To another, prophecy. To another, the ability to distinguish between spirits. to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. As you heard this morning from Hunter, something new happened when Jesus ascended to heaven. When he ascended to heaven, he ascended not just to go to heaven, but to reign. Why the Apostles Creed spends time, not just on his death and resurrection, it goes on to say, he ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, from where he shall come to judge the living and the dead. Spends time on that in a very brief creed, because each of those things is important. And when he sat down, then he poured out the Holy Spirit on the church. And these two things, that Jesus reigns in heaven and that he has poured out the Holy Spirit on the church, these are the two things that explain why the church lasts. The church is often lukewarm. It is often badly led. It is usually suffering. It is frequently divided. So how is it spread? It grows and spreads because Jesus reigns in heaven and because he's poured out his spirit on the church. Now, having poured out the spirit on the church, of course, leads us into the realm of spirits. And so the thing that we must understand is that evil spirits exist. Evil spirits exist. And if that seems unlikely to you, I will give you three lines of evidence to show you that they exist, together with a brief explanation of why that may seem unlikely to you. One, the Bible testifies to us that evil spirits exist. It introduces us early to a chief evil spirit named Satan. And as we continue to read, we discover that Satan has quite a few lesser evil spirits who work under him. so we find Jesus frequently being confronted by people possessed by demons and we see him casting out those demons with a command also in the book of Acts we see Paul and Silas being followed by a slave girl who has a spirit of divination and this girl is able to correctly cry out these men are servants of the Most High God when Paul by the power of the Spirit casts out that evil spirit, then they get in trouble, because then the slave masters can't make money off that girl anymore. So we see in the Bible, and you see it also here in 12.2, that's what's behind this mysterious statement. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. You were led, it's a passive, who was leading them? I'm saying evil spirits led you astray to those mute idols. Second line of evidence that evil spirits exist is that it is the universal belief of all animism, all paganism, all folk religion, Native American religion, what have you. All of them believe in evil spirits. Are they all wrong? And the third line of evidence comes from experience of people who have testified to me. One of our own members has told me very soberly that when she was growing up, a young person in another religion, she'd go with her father to the temple, and her father was the assistant to the medium. And the medium, I believe he'd climb on the table, though maybe I'm making that up, I don't remember that part. But anyway, he would sit there at a point in time, and the spirit would come on him, and then he would give you the answers for the questions that you brought him. This from a scientifically trained member of this congregation who works in the downtown. And like I've told you before, a story that we heard in my family a year and a half ago from a Christian friend. She was on the boardwalk and she saw a fortune teller preparing to entertain the crowd by fortune telling. She said, I don't want this to work. So she started to pray, not out loud, just silently to herself. She's standing there praying, Jesus, stop this. And lo and behold, the fortune teller felt thwarted. But the fortune teller could identify her and say, you, stop praying. What is that? How does that work? Evil spirits do exist. Now, why does that seem unlikely to many of you? It is not because we are so scientific and modern. That's a subsequent reason. The prior reason, prior in time and history as well as necessarily, is that In these Christianized places, Jesus Christ long ago triumphed over the evil spirits and drove them from the field. C.S. Lewis somewhere observes that the devil would like to be worshiped. He would like to possess. He would like to openly dominate us and rule us through fear. He'd like to be acknowledged. But when Jesus deprives him of this power, then he has to be like a guerrilla army, popping out of the shadows, taking a pot shot at you and then running away. And so in the devil's present warfare in these parts, he finds it more useful to convince us that he does not exist. He wants you not to believe in evil spirits, because then if you have no fear of evil spirits, you have one fewer reason to rely on Jesus Christ. Notice what it says. Brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. Evil spirits exist. And Paul, you see, appeals to their own past experience for that. He doesn't run through everything I said. He just says, you remember. that when you were pagans, you know what happened to you. You were led astray by some power to worship mute idols. The second thing to know is that we should not be afraid of evil spirits, because the one who is with us is much greater than the one who is with them. Read your Bible. Jesus commands and the evil spirits depart. They cry out in fear. They are overmatched. That fits my friend's experience. She prayed, Jesus, don't let this fortune teller do anything. And the fortune teller was stymied. This fits also my mother-in-law's experience. When they were missionaries in Japan, there was someone across the street who was very into either Shinto or Buddhism. In Japan, those things are quite close. And so this lady would have a bunch of priests come to her house and chant all night on occasion. On those occasions, my mother-in-law might wake up and have a sense of a dark presence there in their room. She'd pray to Jesus Christ. No one in her house was ever harmed. So we should not be afraid of them. We should rely on Jesus. We should rely on Jesus. We should pray to Jesus. Jesus, you are the one who is stronger. I pray for you to cast out or to stop or to prevent the spirit. And he goes on here in verse three, he says, therefore, I want you to understand two things. No one speaking in the spirit of God curses Jesus, and no one praises Jesus as Lord, except by the Holy Spirit. And here is building on what Jesus himself said, as we read it in John chapter 16. Jesus said to them, I'm gonna go to the Father, and I'm gonna send you the Spirit, And the Spirit will not glorify himself, he will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and give it to you. So notice that, the Holy Spirit comes into the world to glorify the Son, not to bring glory to himself, but to bring glory to the Son. So the true Holy Spirit is not saying, attention here on me, he's saying, worship Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And so you will notice that there. The key test on the Spirit of God is what's being testified by a spirit about Jesus. And the Apostle John adds a little more to the confession. He says, whoever denies that Jesus has come in the flesh, that's not true spirit. So you can see the devil, once he's forced to concede one truth, he may try to take away a different one. If you want, from a spirit is a full acknowledgement of the truth about Jesus Christ. So do not believe every spirit, it says, and do not seek out spirits. Many of them are evil. Rely on Jesus Christ. He baptizes with the Holy Spirit. That's all the spirit you need, and you are safe in him. Now, at that time, the Holy Spirit gave many obvious gifts to Christians. At that time, There have been three great periods of miracles in this world. When God established Israel, the time of Moses and Joshua, many miracles. And the time of officially introduced paganism, the time of Ahab and Jezebel, the time of Elijah and Elisha, as we heard this morning, a time of many miracles to testify to them who the real God was and who was not a god at all. And the third great period of miracles was the time of Jesus and the apostles. The Messiah had to be the climax, right? Because he is the son of God, not a mere servant. It had to be the time of the greatest miracles because Joel 2 prophesied, in that day I will pour out my spirit, your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams. Had to be the climax, the time of the most miracles to show that John the Baptist was correct when he said of Jesus, this one will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. So that's one reason why at that time the Holy Spirit gave many obvious gifts. Here's another reason. It was key for these former Gentile pagans who were familiar with demon possession to see that in Jesus they had something stronger. To know for certain that when the Holy Spirit came on them visibly that now they belonged to one stronger and they were set free from their past. And thirdly, it was right for them to have obvious spiritual gifts, because the New Testament was only in the process of being writing, hardly distributed at all. And so they needed a word of wisdom and a word of knowledge and prophecy. So at that time, the Holy Spirit gave many obvious spiritual gifts. And there are many Christians today who want to be back there at that time. The whole Pentecostal and charismatic movement is saying there's something wrong if we don't have this going on now. But again, through most of the Bible's history, there were not that many miracles. And through most of Christian history, we have not been at a time of the in-breaking of Jesus Christ. Most of us are not on the mission field. And we have the New Testament. The same was true of Christendom's time. Christendom preached around 380 to 400. And he says, this is a lot obscure here. Obscure to us, because back then, the Holy Spirit would visibly make the person speak in tongues when he came on him. And he doesn't anymore, says Christendom in 400. So at that time, the Holy Spirit gave many obvious and varying gifts. And the trouble with variation is it can be misunderstood. You can misunderstand it from a polytheistic kind of frame. If I see different gifts, are they coming from different gods? He says, no, they all come from one God, one spirit, one Lord, one God. Then you can have Christian questions. If there are different gifts, is that because of something that he did? Is there some secret sauce that he has? And he did something and that's why he has that gift. And if I strive for that, I can have that gift too. He says, no, the gifts are distributed by the will of the spirits. But if somebody has a different gift than mine, is he more favored by God? See, the varying gifts have the potential for envy, pride, factions, and divisions. And so he says, true spiritual gifts, then and now, all come from the will of the triune God. He says there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit. Kusum says he speaks to console those who think they have the lesser or the fewer. He says they all come from the same source. You all have the same patron. You are blessed by the Lord and giver of life. So they all come first from the one Holy Spirit, even though the gifts vary. Secondly, since we're all blessed by the same spirit, we're all on the same level. We have the same great patron. Furthermore, there are varieties of service, but the same Lord. He points here to the point of a gift, to serve with it. And in that, maybe he takes away some envy. When you simply see a gift, you can say, I wish I had that or could do that. But if you're reminded, yeah, the point of having that is now you have a job you have to do. Well, then maybe that takes away your envy. You can have that. And why should I? Because there's one Lord. There's one Lord who calls us into various places of service. And it says there are various activities, various energies. But there's the same God, there's one source of almighty power. So we're not to measure and say, well, mine is bigger than yours. There's one source who gave them all. Now you will have noticed that he has lined up spirit, Lord, God, in parallel, the three persons of the Trinity. He's also lined up three terms for the same things. He's spoken of gifts, he's spoken of service, he's spoken of activities, but it's evident in the paragraph he means the same thing by these terms. And so he doesn't confuse the three persons, spirit, Lord, God, but he also says that they share an essence because this is the source of these gifts. They come from this divine essence, the one who is three persons, one spirit, one Lord, and one God. And why did the gifts come? He says that in verse 11 at the end. comes from the same Spirit who gives to each one individually as He wills. The Holy Spirit wills. Just as the Father wills and the Son wills, so the Holy Spirit wills. That's one reason why we speak of the personhood of the Holy Spirit. Persons will things, want things, purpose things. We have a very powerful passage here, actually, taken together on the doctrine of the Trinity. And when he says the gifts are given according to the will of the Spirit, he says it's not up to us. We're to relax. You're not to work yourself up, get yourself in a right emotional state so that you can speak in tongues or something. You have to go seeking that experience. It's dangerous, actually, to go seeking spiritual experience. Just rest in the Lord's will without ego or envy. Because if the Lord is sovereign in our salvation, for none can say Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit, how much more is he gonna be sovereign in the gifts that he gives? So he says, the Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts for the good of the whole, for the common good. And perhaps one reason God does not ordinarily give such obvious gifts is because they tend so much towards display and show, and there's a strain on our unity. As you'll see as we go on in the next few chapters, the Corinthians were so proud of their gifts and not just fed into their divisions and disregarding one another. When you have this kind of thing, it can be a temptation to be turned inward. Look what I have or look what I don't have. So the scripture turns us up to God. It says it comes from the will of God and that also turns us out to our neighbor. God gave it for the good of others. So what? What was being given to them? To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom. There was some wisdom? Well, then it was to be uttered. It was to be spoken for the good of others. And he puts that first because to know what to do, to know what is the right response and the right word, this is primary. Wisdom is a great thing. To another, the word of knowledge. It is to be uttered in order to help others. And it doesn't sound like the dangling of a mystery in front of people. Somebody here has cancer. Somebody here is having an affair. I see a couple people reacting, because you've been in churches like that. The rest of you are like, what is that? No, actually, that's a thing. And they call it a word of knowledge. But you notice, is that knowledge or is that not knowledge? Somebody. I don't know who. This man here by a word of knowledge is something else. To another one, faith by the same spirit. Now we all have faith, so this must be a special gift of faith. Perhaps a special ability to believe in God in difficult circumstances. To another one, healing. So we see Jesus and the apostles healed. To another, the working of miracles. Now when you read missionary literature, you do hear about miracles out on the mission field. Again, as God comes in a new field to give a witness to his word when it first comes. To another one, prophecy. Yes, without a completed New Testament, they'd need a word from God. To distinguish spirits. Well, yes, the devil likes to prophesy, so you better distinguish what spirit is speaking. To another, various kinds of tongues. He puts the tongues in late. You'll notice as we go into chapter 14, a great focus on tongues because they were wrapped up in tongues. And so he depreciates it. He says, you know, is it coming late on my list? And after that, let's speak of the interpretation of tongues, which again, he will come back to. And he'll say, if you don't have an interpretation, then don't spend time in church speaking in tongues. Now, this is not a complete list. because he gives a list in other places and he has some other things listed. But it's a representative list. And we ought to rejoice in what God gave them. The Spirit provided for them. They were in a tough spot in this huge pagan city, a tiny brand new church, powerful government, powerful paganism, and God provided for them. Provided for them what they needed. And we should rejoice in what God has given us. Like them, we also need to be good stewards of the gifts that we have been given. What has he given us? For starters, he's given us a completed Bible, which may seem less glamorous than having a prophet, but is a lot faster and surer. What is God's word on that? Well, hang on a second, we have it right here. It's much more accessible to all. He also gives us the Holy Spirit, because we confess Jesus as Lord. And no one confesses Jesus as Lord, except by the Holy Spirit. He has given us of his Spirit, and we are protected from the evil one. And he continues to give us varying gifts, less showy than before, but they are still for the good of others. And I don't need to exhort you now to use your gifts for the good of others. First, the point is obvious. Secondly, that's Hunter's job next week, because that's the rest of the chapter. But this comes to say, I don't want you to be uninformed. So be informed. There are evil spirits, but Jesus is Lord of all. You do not need to be afraid of them. Just rely on Jesus and you are safe in his hand. Know that the Holy Spirit acknowledges that Jesus has come in the flesh, is the Lord. Should you be in some situation where there's some other spirit speaking of something else, shun that spirit and rely on the Lord Jesus. Understand that the triune God distributes his gifts as he wills. You are to rest in his will without envy or ego. And whatever you have received, spiritual or physical, whatever you have is to be used for the common good. So then the Holy Spirit has given gifts to us, not according to what we demand or claim, but according to his will to exalt Jesus and to help his people. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you care for us, that you provide for us, that you give us the things that we need, that you've blessed us in Christ with every spiritual thing. So help us, Lord, to rest in you and also to be bold, to be strong, to carry out your will in the world. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.