Father, we thank you for the reminder of your love for us, that sacrificial devotion that sent your only son. It wasn't our idea. We didn't even realize we needed him. You provided not only salvation, but sanctification, eternal life, fellowship, and the privilege of being in your presence to glorify you and to learn from you forever and ever and ever. As we go into a study of 1 Corinthians 12 to 14, may this be helpful, may it clarify, may it simplify, may it draw our attention back to where it belongs, on you, instead of on our performance or what we get out of going to church. So bless this time, Father, teach all of us and help us to walk closely with you, with this truth. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. We're looking at 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14. As you go to the book of 1 Corinthians, you realize it has a number of rebukes in it. The Corinthian church was not doing well. It was made up of believers, you can see that back in chapter one, but they had gotten off track in a variety of ways. They were very immature and thus they were very selfish. It's the opposite of what God wants us to be. As we look at spiritual gifts, which is what I'm entitling every message and then a clarification with each one, it's a controversial subject in the church today, but it's not controversial in the Bible. The problem is people have taken what they think it teaches and run with it and created all kinds of other personal experiences, selfish experiences, and they've done some things with it that the Bible's not teaching. So my desire as I prayed is that this would clarify that these misunderstandings and abuse of spiritual gifts would stop with those who are genuinely saved. They wouldn't be looking for some kind of thing to prove their value to God, or even the fact that they even got saved. But the need, as you look at this, and what we're gonna get into more in the middle of the study, in chapter 13, and then on into 14, the real need is love. That's the problem with the Corinthian church. That's the problem when spiritual gifts are misused. We see it back in chapter eight, verse one, as he was on a different topic, he says, now concerning things sacrificed to idols, We know that we all have knowledge, but knowledge makes arrogant, love edifies. So as you recognize this picture here, and he goes into that regarding idolatry and where idols come from and what value they really have, he does the same thing going into 1 Corinthians, but he starts off clarifying some things with some contrasts, controls, and contributions that he's gonna share with them. And so we want to take some time and dive into this, but I don't want it to be like my last two weeks where I was trying to race through and cover everything. I really want you to see the simplicity of what's just sitting on the page. So once again, we have this little phrase, now concerning. You saw it in 8.1, it's in 7.1, it's in 16.1. It shows up a number of times because what Paul is basically doing is he's bringing up the next topic. It literally carries the idea now about this, or now respecting spirituals, which is literally what's there, and we know it zeroes in on spiritual gifts. He begins to clarify. He's talking to the brethren. Who would that be? Believers, so again, unbelievers are not gonna understand this. Unbelievers do not have spiritual gifts. They may act like they do, and they may try to seek after some things, but they're not coming from God's Holy Spirit. And so he's talking to these brothers, or these believers in Christ, and he says to them specifically, I do not want you to be unaware. The one here, the desire is, he says, I do not wish or intend for you to be unaware. He says it elsewhere, he says it in 1 Corinthians 4, regarding the return of Christ, and what's gonna happen to those that have died in Christ. Same exact phrase, I don't want you to be unaware. I don't want you to be ignorant, not understanding experientially. So the word no here is, no. that he gets up to in verse two is, I'm sorry, a little further down. Verse three, I make known to you, it's experiential knowledge that he's wanting to pass on to them. They're not understanding things experientially here. They're not aware. And that word unaware is a form of the same word godoska with a negative. So they're not knowing. They're lacking experience regarding spiritual gifts. And you think, how could that be? Didn't they have all the gifts? Weren't they really going crazy with this? Wasn't this kind of out of control? And yet he brings up to them, I don't want you unaware of what's happening here. And there's a problem. So Paul wanted them to practically understand spiritual gifts. This would clear up their confusion, their disunity, their selfishness as they approach the relationship with the body of Christ. You got that part so far? Kind of quiet in here. I'm looking around to see if anybody's taken a nap yet. I don't think so. So he goes through the experience, verse two. He says, you know, this is a oida, but it's a perfect tense. He's just bringing up the idea you have been mentally aware of the fact that you were pagans, you were, in perfect tense, continually living that lifestyle. You were led astray to dumb idols however you were led. He brings up a number of things here. He's pointing out to them that you were unbelieving heathen as a lifestyle. You were continually being brought along or dragged along, kind of like an animal to the slaughter, is what he's trying to describe here, in your previous lifestyle with these dumb idols. Now we don't use the word dumb that way very much anymore. All he's talking about here is these idols that couldn't speak. They're voiceless, they're silent. They're worthless. It's like any idol that we create out of wood or stone or metal, it's unable to listen to us, it's unable to respond to us, it's unable to deal with the prayer requests that are being brought. And yet as you look at your world today, even the world of Lapine, you see idols here. You walk into a certain restaurant and you see an idol that is sitting there that gets offerings and incense and different things presented to it. And our heart should break when we see that. There's a need to share Christ and understand what needs to go on. This is the lifestyle of an unbeliever, but not the lifestyle of the Corinthians. And so they mentally understood what they had been in the past, these voiceless images of false gods. It was filled with them. And so he goes into the problem now with their extremes in verse three. Therefore, I make known to you, another Gnosko, I am revealing in an experiential way, a practical way, that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Now that seems pretty straightforward. But you're going, I can say those words. Jesus is accursed. There, I just did it. Is that what he's talking about? No, he's not talking about just mouthing the words. He's saying to have this as your belief, as what's dominating you, and the idea of being a curse carries the idea to be doomed to destruction. Jesus is rejected by God. Jesus is severely condemned. That's kind of what the anathema, the curse, is describing here. No one can say that. The Holy Spirit's not gonna lead you to say that as a believer because it isn't true. That's the problem with it. And so he's clarifying, compared to your past life with the dumb idols, this is what you used to do. You may have even picked on Jesus. You may have cursed him. You may have used him as a swear word, which happens all the time around us. But nobody can do that in the power of the Holy Spirit. No one can do that who is being led by the Spirit of God. This is what he's trying to set up so you understand the difference in these spiritual gifts from what the world was trying to practice. And so he goes to the other extreme. Moves from the negative here and he moves to the positive side of it and says the same time, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. This is the idea, this word Lord, is Jesus is my master, I'll insert my in there, Jesus my owner, Jesus is my king, Jesus is my God. Who is not their God compared to the lifestyle or the culture they were living in? Who did most of the people around them declare as being God? Nero, the Caesar. So that's who it would have been. And many people, many Christians died. Because they gave him a choice. Are you gonna declare Caesar as God or are you gonna let Jesus be your God? And there are many who died publicly declaring that Jesus is God. And this is what he's trying to bring out here. But this only comes by the Holy Spirit. This isn't a flippant thing that you worship and submit to him. That you have this sincere confession in contrast to severely condemning Jesus Christ. It's all about Jesus. Real believers only exalt and follow Jesus Christ. So that described your life this week, right? What you did on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday was a total focus and worship of Jesus Christ. He's my master. He's the one I wake up to in the morning and I report for duty. He's the one that I glorify to the glory of God the Father. I thank, I praise, I recognize as the one who's provided all my needs, which is what communion's all about. So you can't degrade Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. You won't elevate Jesus Christ without the Holy Spirit. Does that kind of show or explain what the world's doing today? Is that kind of obvious? They don't want him because it's the Holy Spirit who brings out that truth and reminds us of where we're coming from. And you may ask yourself, okay, why did he start off with these three verses? He's going into a section, he says, now concerning spirituals or spiritual gifts, he's gonna take three whole chapters, he's gonna zero in on a major need of theirs in chapter 13. Not just for spiritual gifts, but for all of their life, including communion that was just a chapter earlier, the Lord's Supper. And so he's trying to bring out that the world that we need to dwell in is not an idolatrous world, it is not a world of worshiping men like Caesar, Nero, but it's specifically a world that is led by the Holy Spirit and exalts Jesus Christ. And he does it, and if you notice there in verse three, says Jesus is accursed. Say Jesus is Lord. It is a verbal, public declaration. Remember what he told you back in Romans 10? What was the issue there? Romans 10, if you turn your electronic devices to that passage, in silence, which I can never tell if you're really turning there. He says in verse nine, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord. Sounds familiar. And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. If I was able to walk around with you this past week and record your conversations with people, how often did Jesus Christ come up? And when he did, were you kind of hiding? Were you trying to not let people know where you stood? Or were you the one initiating the conversation and recognizing this is what makes my life all worthwhile? Because I know Jesus Christ is my personal Lord and Savior. If I'm truly worshiping Him, if I'm really being led by the Spirit, Jesus Christ is going to bubble up. to be the T-shirt I wear. I don't wear T-shirts. Just in case you haven't wondered, if you haven't noticed. Well, I wear T-shirts. I don't wear T-shirts with things on them. I don't care if you do. I like some of them. I think some of them are great. I just never did that. I'm not demonstrative in many ways. Nothing wrong. So you need to set an example for me and keep encouraging me. It's not that I will never wear them, that's not what I'm saying, but I just don't choose to. I may get a little bitty emblem up here. I don't even like that horse. What's that, polo horse? It is polo. When my wife gives me one of those kind of shirts, I go, do I have to have that on there? I feel like I'm declaring something with it. So I should get in the habit, right, of putting something up that declares Jesus Christ. But the part of me that struggles with that is I don't like cramming it down somebody's throat. I sold Fuller Brush when I was in Bible college. You know what sold it? The rain. These poor ladies, I come up knocking on the door with an umbrella and all my stuff half soaking wet. And they had to invite me in. It's blowing, windy, Portland rain. And so I got a lot of sales that way. It wasn't me. Only rainy, windy days did I go sell. Then you can make pretty good money doing that, but I'd probably make more if you want to push it. And it was a good product, but it just wasn't me. I had a paper route when I was a 12 year old and I went around collecting. I hated doing that. I liked putting the newspaper on their porch because that's what type A's do, but I hated having to go around and talk to them about taking their money. Some of you identify with me, other ones don't. But it's a personality thing, it's not trying to reflect on Jesus Christ. You get me into a conversation on an airplane, you allow me to even open up, like I just did at the gas station the other day, and I asked a gentleman because of how things went, if he went to church, and that opened up a whole thing of conversation. and it was fun, and I gotta go back, and I'm still praying for him, but I don't mind doing that, and I'm not ashamed of Jesus Christ, I'm just kinda like, I don't wanna be pushy, and it's probably because that's how I was raised. If you go back, one or both of your parents was either that way or not, and so it depends how you turn out. And here's this issue he's trying to bring up, though. As he sets up this issue of spiritual gifts, or this picture he's trying to bring out here, that it's done by the Holy Spirit, not by man. If you stop and ask yourself, where have you seen or heard about spiritual gifts causing problems in churches? And you'll find they cause problems not by the Holy Spirit. They cause problems because people get ideas in their head, or they get personal experiences that they believe you must have, especially when someone tells you you have to speak in tongues to be saved. That didn't come from the Holy Spirit. It doesn't come out of the word of God. I share with them, and I try to have examples. The book of Acts, there's at least 22 times in the book of Acts that somebody becomes a believer. How many times does tongues show up in the book of Acts? Three. and one on the day of Pentecost, and they're always focusing on what 1 Corinthians 14, 20 to 22 is gonna bring up. The tongues were assigned to unbelieving Jews. That's why you see it in Acts 2. That's why you see it in Acts 10. That's why you see it in Acts 19. It has nothing to do with salvation being demonstrated. It has everything to do with assigned to unbelieving Jews. That's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. So why are there so many churches that are promoting and making people feel guilty? I haven't spoken in tongues yet. We'll get to that eventually. I know that's what you're really wanting me to preach on, but it's the Holy Spirit who's in charge of all of this, and he's elevating Jesus Christ, not you, not me. That's not what the gifts are about. They're about you almost being not seen or heard, but ministering and building up, edifying the body of Christ. not about being recognized for that. And so the Corinthian church turned it upside down, the elevating tongues made that a big showy thing in the church and it was worthless. to really edify it compared to what prophecy is supposed to be on the top, which it should do. And so if you're reading ahead, go ahead and read 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14, and understand what the big picture is, but zero in on chapter 13, and we'll bring out some things that are just sitting on the page. It's not like I'm trying to invent something. I'm trying to un-invent things. I'm trying to get rid of commentaries and study Bibles and all the rest of it that make up stuff of what it's supposedly saying when you can see it for yourself and take a few minutes to, dive into something that isn't quite clear of what he's actually trying to bring out. There are contrasts here. People are making excuses about their past, they're being led, because they were led astray to dumb idols in their experience, and they try to bring up the idea that the Holy Spirit can do these things, and he can't, he won't. And so he moves toward controls, verses four, five, and six. And he explains here, regarding the Trinity, the issue of the same Spirit, the same Lord, the same God. They work in harmony. God is not divided, they aren't just, oh, you already did that over there, well, I wanted to do that next week. That's not how God works. They're all in unity doing the same thing together. So look what he says in verse four. He says, now there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit, and there are varieties of ministries in the same Lord, and there are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons implied there. Well, that's interesting. Now, why does he shift from verses one, two, and three to verses four, five, and six? What is he trying to bring up here? And he moves from this work of the Spirit that's clearly God-driven to show you that all three persons of the Trinity are involved, and he points them out in a little different way. Is there a difference, or is he just trying to make sure you understand that they're all doing the same work together. In verse four, there are varieties of gifts. The idea of varieties here, it just means distinctions, differences, or distributions of gifts. That makes sense. How many are there? Depends. Where do you get the list from? 1 Corinthians 12, which you're gonna move into. Romans 12. 1 Peter 4, verses 10, 11. There aren't a lot of places with a lot of gifts listed. They're not all the same either. And so you go back in there and you'll realize the number is very limited and they're not all here in 1 Corinthians 12. But there is a variety, there are differences, there are distinctions between them. And when it gets to the word gifts, he's trying to bring up the idea of supernatural abilities. This is the first key thing I want you to lock onto. A spiritual gift is not a talent. It is not something that you have to develop or learn to do. So if you're in a church and they're sitting you down and they're gonna show you how to speak in tongues, they've just violated scripture. It's not something you learn how to do. I grew up in a church back in the 70s where they made a big deal out of trying to figure out what your spiritual gift was. Where does the Bible tell you to do that? If you had a spiritual gift at the time in the first century, they laid these out, it was rather obvious. And it was obvious because you were putting it into practice. Not because you had to sit there and go, oh, let's see, I'm supposed to speak in tongues today. That's not how it worked. The Holy Spirit oversaw that. That's what he was trying to tell us here. That's who's controlling it. And in this case, he is presenting these. But you are not trying to develop. You don't get the gift of tongues when you get saved and then you're a lot better at it 10 years from now. Or the gift of prophesying. Now that may seem really simple and really straightforward, but that is totally what confusing out there today. People think they have to figure it out. There's nothing to figure out. Did you have to figure out how to breathe? Doctor may have helped a little bit, but that's only in the movies. I don't think I saw any of our children have to get slapped on the bottom. They probably would have slapped them back. That's how some of our children are. But you didn't, it was a natural process in the physical world and it's the same thing with spiritual gifts. It is a supernatural process in the spiritual world. It's not up to you, it's not controlled by you. Walk by the spirit, that's what he's gonna produce. Now you can abuse the gifts because you are a believer and you do have the gift, you can abuse it, don't get me wrong. But the point of what he's trying to do here is he says there are a variety of these differences, these distinction between the gifts, but they're all supernatural abilities. I'm gonna explain that as we go down through here further. They are favors bestowed without any merit. Unearned endowments. Does that make sense? If you put that in your head and you start, now start checking me out in this three chapters here to figure out that they are received by grace. You have a different word used here for the spirituals, or the spiritual gifts, in verse one. You go to Romans 12, it's a form of the word charis, as a gift. You go to Ephesians 4, 7 and 11, it's doreas, it's a gift. Another picture of he gave gifted men. It's the same, but he's bringing up the same pictures with the word prophet in all three of them, so you know it's part of the spiritual gifts. He's not hung up on this word here, but the idea, when you get down to verse four, he's bringing it out a little differently. When he uses the word gifts here, it's a form of the charis word again that shows up in Romans 12, six. So you've kind of gone, well, this is interesting to me. There's varieties of these supernatural abilities, but it's the same Holy Spirit that does them. Then he says in the second one, there are varieties, in verse five, of ministries, diversity, distributions, divisions, or differences, distinctions of these ministries, but it's the same Lord. He moves the word ministries, and all it is is a form of the word we get diakonos, a deacon, of a minister or a servant. People wanna break down the gifts. I don't think, I wouldn't say it's wrong, but anytime you start creating boxes for anything in scripture, you gotta watch out. Because once you lock in, it may be the wrong box that somebody taught you. And then it's hard for you to break out of that. So you always wanna be available to let the Holy Spirit clarify and change things in your mind from scripture. It's not gonna be the deity of Christ or that God exists or God created everything out of nothing. All those are clear, but it's gonna be things that we're learning on a regular basis. So here's these varieties, these different ministries, but it's the same Lord. Special commissions that have been given out by Jesus Christ. The same Lord is the same master, one divine master. The same authority, the same powerful ruler is what he's trying to bring out there. Pretty straightforward. There isn't a whole lot in here that is very confusing. But you get down to the third one in verse six, and he says, there are varieties, differences of effects. This is operations are working specifically, but to me, it kind of carries the idea of these powerful results in the church, which is what the gifts were designed for. The impact of the operation and the working of these gifts is coming from God, the same God. God the Father is who we're recognizing here. The one true deity, the creator, the sustainer, the judge, they're all working in unison, perfect unison, but not idols. They're not idols. They're not fake gods. They are not voiceless, as in dumb idols. They're real. and they're not sitting back waiting for you to, oh, God forgot me this week, so I've gotta carry on the ministry somehow. You got a lot of people trying to do that. The problem typically when that happens is it wasn't God forgot you, it's that you drug something into your life, some kind of sin that has broken fellowship, and that's what you need to work on and figure out, and then get back to the other. This must be a hot topic, because you guys are still very quiet. You're waiting for me to slip up, aren't you? I'm not gonna do that for a few more messages. Lord willing, I will not miss a message until the middle of September. All right? I'm not planning to be gone for a Sunday in spite of the fact we're not meeting tonight and Wednesday night Bible study will not meet until the next week. Don't get in your mind that you get an excuse, the pastor's not there, I can go play. I'm gonna be here, Lord willing. but he's trying to stress something, he's trying to set up the parameters for what he's gonna go into with the Corinthians and their spiritual gifts, and it's God, the same God who has these effects, these powerful results come from him, and they're all in unity. The special commissions to serve, the supernatural favors to give, the powerful results to impact other believers with. It's from the Trinity, and it's a package deal, and who carries it out? God, the Trinity, Spirit, Son, Father. They're all involved in this. The Spirit, I mean the Father and the Son aren't sitting back kind of playing checkers or finding something else to do because that's the Holy Spirit's job. Nope, they're directly involved. He's the one that's been sent as the comforter or the helper to get directly involved with the church. He's the one who's taken up residence in us in a unique way. We cannot explain God. You're not gonna explain the Trinity, which is a man-made word to try to explain the Godhead, which is not a man-made word. You can find that in Romans 1. We don't know God in the sense of understanding everything. People think, well, when I get to heaven, I'm gonna know everything. Not. We are going to know almost nothing when we get there. And next to God, for the rest of eternity, we'll be slowly starting to add a little bit. We're not God, but we sure like to act like God, don't we? Some of us dictator types, control freaks, dominators, type A's. There's no such thing as a type A. I have to clarify some of this as we go along. When it comes to the body, is there? See, Robin knows, she laughed. We're all blends of stuff and sometimes it depends on how we're doing that week or how we feel. Some of us type As chuck it out the window. I don't feel like being a type A today. Go away, leave me alone. I'm not organizing your life. I'm not picking up after you. And I'm not being a nice guy. We get there, don't we? You can nod. She won't nod. but this is critical that we understand who's behind these gifts. It's God's department, it's God's work, and he knows exactly what he's doing, and he can handle it just fine. We don't need metal, we don't need to get in there and start figuring out stuff or trying to push certain gifts. Why we're pushing tongues, I have no idea. I don't find very many people pushing prophesying. Pushing faith? When we get into these, which are down here a little further, I'm not gonna take a lot of time today, but I'm gonna mention them. I dare you to explain half of the gifts. You cannot tell me what they were and how they worked. What is a word of knowledge? Is it gnosko or oida? Gnosko, it's experiential knowledge. You are instantaneously, supernaturally given a message that you have not experienced, but you have the experience built in. Boom, there it is. Share it. Word of wisdom. People don't know. Even faith, isn't faith something that every believer's supposed to have? How does it become a special supernatural endowment from God where he favors certain individuals with the faith, and he says in 1 Corinthians 13, two, to do what? I can't have you silent the whole time. You guys have to respond some. 1 Corinthians 13, two, if I had the faith to remove mountains. You see, that's what he gets into in chapter 13. He's explaining to them that they're abusing the gifts. If you don't have love, if you don't have love, if you don't have love, if you're not driven by this sacrificial devotion to one another in the body of Christ, your gift is worthless. It won't work. But when you have love, your gift is unnecessary. I'll explain that down the road. That's what 1 Corinthians 13's getting into. When the perfect comes, the in part will be done away. Tongues are gonna cease. Prophecy and knowledge will be done away. So you look at this, and again, keep reading it, bring questions to me, give them to me ahead of time and it'll help me to know what you're looking for. But to understand that he's clearly trying to lay out here that the Holy Spirit's in charge, don't try to put on the general's uniform and expect people to salute you in this department. It's not yours. And also don't feel inferior or worthless because you don't have some showy gift that other people can be impressed by. Just walk by the Spirit and let him work in a life that is clean, that is not carrying sin, where sin has been confessed and our fellowship with God is right. So he gets into this last section. After he explains again the contrast of what's going on here and what the Holy Spirit does and what he doesn't do, the controls are built in by the Trinity is doing all the same things, these gifts, these ministries, these effects. But he gets to verse seven, and now you start seeing some of the specific contribution in the church, by the church. He says, but to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. How many gifts does he list here? I didn't give those to you in your outline. Nine of them, very good. If you looked ahead, you'd realize there are at least 15. If you pick up and make this list and then go into Romans 12, 1 Peter 4, and then see if you can find something somewhere else, Ephesians 4, where are you gonna grab onto some of these to understand what's going on? But to each one, each individual believer is given, is bestowed upon, is supplied with, is granted, there it is, a supernatural favor. That's why they call it a gift. You don't earn it, you don't develop it, you don't improve on it. Each one is given the manifestation, and this manifestation here is the visible revealing, this clear display of the Spirit, outward evidence from the Spirit, not from you or me, but from the Spirit of God. Supernaturally, instantaneously. Perfectly. Is that kinda locking in? You need to lock onto that when you go into this passage to understand what's going on here. But he does that work, this manifestation of the Spirit is demonstrated in each of these gifts, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healings, miracles. It's the Holy Spirit that really is being revealed, not us. And that's part of where the problem comes in. But he says that these spiritual gifts are for the common good. Literally, the word for there is toward, it's processed toward the benefit of all believers. It's toward their profit, toward their expedient or advantageous growth and benefit, edification. This is what he gets to when he gets further in, especially chapter 14. What he's after is to edify. It's the Holy Spirit again carrying that out. It's for everybody to benefit. It doesn't leave anybody behind. This is what the Lord's Supper's all about that we celebrated this morning. Remember, you go back and look at that chapter 11, and he again is rebuking them. What were they doing wrong? They were showing up hungry and eating in front of other people, they were showing up Drunk? Why would you get drunk at all? That's sin in itself, but what does that tell you the person has done? They've imbibed to the extreme, and what have the other people had? Nothing. You shouldn't be getting drunk. You should be sharing if you have that much excess. Let somebody else enjoy it, if you like that kind of stuff. I hate wine. Never tried anything else. But if that's a benefit to you or your culture, it fits in with that, that's fine, but never to an excess. It's for the common good that all of these things take place. And so nobody with a spiritual gift wants to get up on the platform and brag about it. They're not up there to prove something. Well, look at me. Remember the suspenders come out again? We haven't had those for a while. Yeah, oh, you got them on today, good job. But it's kind of like, yeah, look what gift he gave me. What did you get? You didn't even get tongues, which is on the bottom of the list. You got interpretation of tongues. How do we even know that you're getting it right? When you go on and explain that in chapter 14, they want two or three to make sure it's all confirmed. You are a lowlife. You're a nobody. I am a prophet. I am a pastor teacher. I never make mistakes. "'cause I always walk by the Spirit." You get the idea? This is what's going on in their church because they're immature. This is what children do. And so he explains to us and he makes it clear that is not the purpose. It was not selfish. It was to be done out of love and he explains. He gives nine examples here. In case you don't understand, he could have given three or four and it would have been sufficient and said et cetera. You know, there's a bunch more, but these are enough. He simply says to them, for to one is given a word of wisdom. It's not the word, it's not like you get the secret book, you know, like the president's supposed to have, what's that called? President's Book of Secrets or something like that. All of the things you ever wanted to know about UFOs and whatever else is out there in the world, if it even exists. You get a word of wisdom for the particular moment, at the particular time that you need to share to do what? Benefit the body for the common good. That's all it's there for. And it's almost like the Holy Spirit lets those words come out and then puts a piece of duct tape on your mouth. That's the word for today, or a word for today. I'll let you know when we have another opportunity for you to share a word. But, but, but, they're gonna think I'm not important. If I only do this once a month, how often do you get to do these things according to this passage? Don't know. Who decides? God. He gives out the gifts, he causes the gifts to be used, and to benefit the body, and so we are simply servants who are reporting for duty, and excited when he chooses to use us, that we can be a benefit and bring him glory. But a word of wisdom here, Sophia, this utterance of intelligence revealed, it's a form of, kind of this insight that you have. You got some kind of insight. And it's different from knowledge. It isn't necessarily an experiential thing on the second one, a word of knowledge, but it is simply something that you got an insight that nobody else has. And you're passing it on to the church. Why is that? What was lacking in that day? The Word of God, it wasn't completed, and what was even written, maybe a letter here, a letter there, they were still scattered around, took a long time for it to be rewritten or copied and passed around. It took ages for that to go on. So many of them wanted to memorize it. That way you could take it with you if your memory served you right. You'd have to be checked on and verify that it was true, but you'd pass it around. So the church at that time in that first century, they needed someone with a word of wisdom. They needed someone with a word of knowledge. They needed a prophet to pass on information, not only about the future, which is what we think of with prophets, but about everyday life, that God just given out a message. Prophet, prophetess literally just means to speak forth for God. That's it. They were necessary. If you, I would say some things right now, but I'm afraid I will drive you away and you won't come back. But I have serious questions about where the spiritual gifts are today. All of them. I don't just get rid of tongues and healings, and I have reasons for all of that from scripture, but the question is, are they no longer necessary? Chapter 13 will reveal an answer to that. When the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. You know the word for partial there? You need to check it out. It specifically describes what is individual. Individual gifts will be done away. Why? Because your gift isn't needed by the body anymore. The scriptures have been revealed. That'd cover one area, where the wisdom, the knowledge, it comes out of the word of God. The prophecy coming out of the word of God. Even the distinguishing the spirits to be able to recognize whether something is from God or not. We come from the word of God. What do I tell you to do all the time? Read your Bibles. Does that mean you're gonna know everything? I just read Romans last week. I now have Romans just oozing out of me. I have it all nailed down. I have sorted out Romans, and if you need anything out of Romans, just touch me. It'll come out like one of those old canvas tents that you never wanted to touch, because it would start leaking. But that's what it would do. That'd be a positive way of looking at that. That's not how it works. The opportunity here is a word of wisdom. I cannot honestly defend or explain to you what exactly that would have looked like. But I can tell you it was instantaneous. I can tell you it was given to an individual. I can tell you it was impactful for the common good of the body, but I don't know what it looked like, and most people today don't even try to explain it. You'll notice in your study Bibles or your commentaries or wherever you might go, they skip over a lot of stuff. It's kind of convenient. Because they don't know. Why are we all hung up on it? How come people aren't running around and saying, well, you have to have a word of knowledge to prove you've been saved? They have just as much reason to base it on that as they do that you have to speak in tongues to be saved. We're making up stuff. We're making it so common and regular, especially in songs that we sing, that people think it's the truth. And they're lazy, they don't wanna read their Bibles. They don't wanna study diligently to present themselves approved of God. As a workman that doesn't need to be ashamed, because he's cutting straight the Scriptures. If you don't know how to use a concordance, If you haven't ventured into maybe a expository dictionary or a lexicon or some of the other things, and you say, oh, those are for the preacher, you got a problem, because pretty soon the preacher won't be here. And if we go into persecution, there won't be anybody to go to. You won't even have a Bible in front of you. What are you gonna do? That's where they lived. That's what the first century was. Rome hated believers. Nero finally blames the burning of Rome. They don't even know how that even started or what went on with that, but he blamed it on them so he could persecute them. God used those things, he killed some, took them home, he scattered others, but the issue was he, God, the Holy Spirit, had given out these special gifts for the common good of the body, and one of them was a word of wisdom. Why is it listed first? It's just interesting to me. Second one, then he puts on there, another is a word of knowledge, and it's forma gnosco. So this is that experiential knowledge. It's able to speak out of experiential knowledge without the experience. You ever been to Tokyo? This person, if God wanted to give him that utterance, if that was the knowledge that was useful just for illustration's sake, all of a sudden they could describe Tokyo like they're looking at the map in their brain. favorite restaurants, special people, where the church meets, who the believers are there. Those are the kind of just, I'm not saying that's what it was used for, but I'm saying that's what this word of knowledge is able to do. Why would God do that? The church needed it for the common good. None of them had been there. None of them had gone to seminary. None of them were understanding things at a level that you can easily find today if you wanna take the time and spend the money. You can go get trained. But they weren't able. They were in a culture that would persecute. And so God provided it to the church, supernaturally through the Holy Spirit to an individual to make an impact on the body. He says another is faith, and I mentioned that one earlier. How do I even describe that? This idea of faith is a firm persuasion, a strong conviction to act. It's used in 13 too about removing mountains. And so, and again, that's a figure of speech. You need to go, we'll go look at that and understand what is going on there. God's not asking you to go around moving mountains around Lapine. I don't like Polina right there. It blocks my view of the sunrise. I'm gonna move it over to the south. Well, what did you just do? You block the sunrise for those in Gilcrest, Shemal, wherever they're living, that's kinda selfish. That's not the idea behind it, but this faith here is you recognize with confident, strong conviction, a firm persuasion that this is what God wants us to do, and you move on it. You look at Hebrews 11, you see a lot of that in there. People who really believe God, and it cost them everything. Some of them died. When you eventually get to the latter part, you realize some were sawn in two. You ever, you've seen that on shows with those guys, yeah, magicians that do all that stuff, and it's usually fake. If they start screaming really loud, something went wrong. These people were literally cut in two. usually for a public audience, to make an impact, to make a statement, just like the reason they crucified people right outside where the main city road was. They didn't want you to miss it. And so here's this person, however it worked, cannot explain it. This isn't saving faith, this isn't a special gift given so you could have salvation because they already had salvation. This is a gift of faith for the common good of the body, that you would recognize God told me this, and this is what we need to do. and he'll take care of us. Or God told me, as you see coming down here, but it's prophets that usually are predicting that there's a famine coming, or there's something gonna happen to Paul, he predicts ahead of time. Here's how you're gonna get treated. We focus on prophets, but the person with faith has confident conviction that God is directing them to do this thing. How about the gifts of healing? Both of them are plural. Kind of an interesting description. Somehow the ability to cure the sick, I don't think it's a focus on raising the dead. I think the next one would fit in with that better. But this is a literally walk up to somebody like an Acts 3. I don't have silver and gold, but what I do have I share with you. In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk. What was that for? Did they come to Christ in the story? Was the church edified and encouraged for the common good? Why wasn't that guy healed when Jesus was there? He was sick for a long, long time. He sat at the temple. People, I just read something in one book I was reading for some of this, and they said, yeah, all the diseases were healed when Jesus was here. And I'm going, nope. And there's an example of one that wasn't. For some reason, Jesus skipped over him. He had to leave somebody for Peter. I mean, you can't heal everybody and then have your apostles doing the same thing because it had to verify who they were. They produced signs as well, so you knew they were from God as well as Jesus Christ. But these gifts of healing fade out in the New Testament. We'll talk about that when we get further along. Paul even asked you to do what? Ask God three times, take away a thorn in the flesh. Answers were no, no, stop asking. Is that how it worked? But he said no. This is Paul. It's like God, do you understand who you're talking to? This is the apostle Paul. They could touch him with handkerchiefs and take him wherever they wanted to and people would get healed. You can't tell him no. What did Paul learn from that? His grace is sufficient. Your power is made perfect in my weakness. We don't like being weak. Do you understand the spiritual gifts are all about weakness? It's all about the fact that nobody else around you has that gift supernaturally endowed to you. You're gonna meet a need because they can't meet it themselves. This is the whole body working together. This is why he rebuked them so severely in the Lord's Supper. They weren't thinking of each other. They were not loving each other. They were being very, very selfish. And so the Lord's Supper is a focus on relationships. It's not a focus on sin. It's a focus on specific sin in the relationships of the church that were being addressed. And God thought it was serious enough to take some into sickness, weakness, death. He doesn't play around. But here you have individuals who are supernaturally endowed with this ability to heal other people. That's a hard thing to have. You have to be discerning to know how and when to use it. Don't use it on Paul. God told him no three times. Oh, and by the way, you can leave Epaphroditus sick. I'm gonna get names mixed up. Tell Timothy, take a little wine for your stomach's sake. Whoa, what happened to the healing? And you see it fade out. Even James 5 is not physical healing. It's spiritual refreshing. It's individuals who were depressed spiritually. That's what the book is about. He told them right up front, count it all joy when you encounter various trials. How were they doing at the end of the letter? Not. Okay, well here's the next step for you guys. If you haven't figured this out, how to rejoice and trust God and grow in your faith, then here's the final solution for you. Call for the elders, have them pray over you. The prayer of faith will restore that individual. It's not about physical healing. And so you go in here and you find people grabbing onto verses and making up all this stuff without looking at the context, without understanding what the Bible actually teaches. And now I just deflated all your bubbles, right? You thought I'd go through this series and at the end of it we'd have a public meeting and say, okay, what do you need? We'll get somebody with that gift up here and we'll take care of it right now. You need wisdom, you need knowledge, you need faith, And here I'm just bursting bubbles all over the place. So he comes down to this one in verse 10, and he ascribes the effecting of miracles. That's kind of interesting, and there's no definite article on that either. but he's trying to bring out this working of powers. The word for miracles here is a form of dunitas, and it's describing supernatural ability to control creation if you're talking about the dead, or storms, or demons, or whatever else you may be involved in the process of doing. Does he specify what it covers? No. Isn't it amazing how much people think they know about spiritual gifts until they actually start reading their Bibles? This is the Holy Spirit's department. He's the one that's gonna carry it out and make sure it's done and he's gonna pick who he wants done by and they're gonna do it if they're obedient to him and submissive and then it will be carried out. You don't have to make a fuss over it. You don't have to even know what your gift is. You know how many quizzes I filled out to determine what my spiritual gift was? And I ended up with like six of them. And everybody I talked to gave me a little different list. I go, you people don't even know. Here I'm 20 to 25 in that range trying to sort this out. I wanna know. And then I realized the Bible doesn't tell me. The Bible doesn't tell me I need to know. Just get busy. If God is still using gifts today, then he will take care of you in the process for the sake of the common good of the body. Focus on what matters. Focus on Jesus Christ, as the Holy Spirit's trying to do here. Another one is prophecy, and I mentioned that earlier, to speak forth God's message. This can just be a message of truth, revealed from God, or it can be discussing the future. We have people today that think half of that's gone, that they no longer can prophesy about the future, but there's still prophets around who are telling people the truth. How does that, does that make sense? What do you have in your hand? The Bible. and a pencil. You have the truth. Who did God give in the last days? We're talking about in Hebrews 12. His son. You remember that? I better read it again. We haven't been to Bible study for two weeks. Did I say chapter 12? That's probably where I confused you. In Hebrews chapter one, I hear my things resonating in my brain. Hebrews 1.1, God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, for whom also he made the world. The end of Revelation makes it really clear, God's done. You're not receiving prophecy today. Whether it's the Mormon church that thinks they still have living prophets, and they don't do very well, but they never admit. Or Katherine Kuhlman. Her percentages were really, really low of what she actually predicted. You gotta be older to understand who that is. Or whoever else they're claiming that's out there today doing that. Go check them out. One misstep, one false statement, and what does Deuteronomy tell you to do to them? Kill them. Now that's in the Jewish economy, and we're not allowed to do that anymore. But God says they're not one of mine. My prophets never make a mistake. They bat 1,000% in that realm. No mistakes. Oh, but they're really good. Nostradamus, his predictions are worthless. And yet I'm seeing new stuff coming out about him. And on the TV and they're talking about how great he was and we're learning all these things. I'm going, this is garbage. Get the original prophecies from him and you'll sit there and you don't know which way to read them. They make sense the same way, right side up or upside down. I'm not trying to mock it, I'm being honest. So a lot of this I was told over the years of what was, you know, you could use and not use. And then I finally started, I said, and which is what I've done, I wanted to learn for myself. I went to Bible college, I wanted to learn how to get into the word for myself. I wanted to check out people, which is what the Bible tells you to do anyway. I went to seminary because my father-in-law made me. Never thought I would. God opened up doors and there I was. crying for the next four years. Sometimes. But the prophecy here, what is, I'm still crying? I know, I at least got a nod. That was a positive nod. But the prophets were there and they've done their work and they were called in Ephesians 2.20 and Ephesians 3.5, the foundation. I don't know if you've ever built anything that required a foundation, but when you get the walls up and the roof on, you don't build another foundation. Make sense? The foundation's been laid with Jesus Christ being the cornerstone. This is just right on the page of the paper, and I went, wait a minute, why are they claiming there's prophets today when the foundation's done? They aren't necessary. Am I bursting more bubbles? Oh, they want my prophets, they want my tongues, they want my faith. I don't have anything left. He goes in here with the distinguishing of spirits. Explain that one to me. It is arbitrary for me to throw out. These are some kind of discernings. When you get to 1 John 4, 1 and 2, they appear to be gone. When you look at 1 John 4, And you say, well, why doesn't John bring up the idea of someone with discernment? But he writes instead, 1 John 4, one, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. No, no, no, John, you got it wrong. I'm supposed to get somebody with the distinguishing of spirits gift, and they can tell me. Now. Takamatsu, put it to the test with the idea to prove it correct. Test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets are going out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses. He goes on explaining that. So I'm going, well then, was that gift gone? kinds of tongues we talked about, different sources of languages, not gibberish, not babble. You could find someone in the world who spoke that language like he did on the day of Pentecost. And on the day of Pentecost, he went out of his way to explain not just the general language, but dialects from the south, from the north, from Galilee, from wherever. They recognize each other's accents. And they're sitting there listening to them, and they're going, he's speaking my language with my accent, What is this? He's a Galilean. There's no way he could do that. And so he's using it as a sign to unbelieving Jews, even on the day of Pentecost. And the interpretation of tongues, because as you got out and you had some unbelieving Jews, you had others around that would not understand it. It wasn't for them. It wasn't a sign that revealed to them that this is supernatural. So somebody needed to interpret. They didn't want people going to church and half of them came home and, you know, the neighbor, hey, what'd you guys study at church today? I don't know. couldn't understand a word they said. I know that's normal. But this would have been even more normal, kind of abnormal. So he's trying to explain to them, here's the same thing, and he gets down to verse 11. From the display for the common good by the Holy Spirit, to the distinctions with each individual, to the distributions of verse 11, he says there, but one and the same Spirit. Mentioned Spirit six times in this section. He works or He operates all these things. He's the one in control, distributing to each one individually or separately, just as He purposes, just as He wills. He knows exactly what He's doing and He's in charge. I'm gonna suggest for you, and I know I get in trouble by bringing this up, but I want you to start looking at this and asking yourself, where are the spiritual gifts today? As we go into each one of these, Sections, breaking this down, it'll take about, I don't know, I didn't look at it, 10 weeks, something like that, before we're done. You need to have conviction based on the word of God, not on Jack. You need to have disagreement with Jack if I'm not basing it on the word of God. You need to develop convictions that you can stand on and share with other people because this is the truth, not me. Jesus is the truth, not me. So get serious, read your Bibles. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your perfect love for us, your generosity, the fact that you would work supernaturally in creatures that really just deserve to go to hell. Yet you chose to save us and to sanctify us and one day to take us to be with you. We thank you for that. We don't want to take it for granted. We just ask you to help us, like the Corinthians, to get something straightened out. They were abusing the gifts. They needed to love each other. May that become clearer and clearer as we go through this series. And thank you in Jesus' name, amen.