Spiritual Gifts- The Source
June 6, 2021
Scripture- 1 Cor 12:1-6
This morning we're going to be getting a new series for the month of June about a subject I haven't spoken often about since I've been here as the pastor.
Since I've been here, I've talked a lot about the basic theology and apologetics- two of my favorite subjects. Apologetics is the defense of the Christian faith
I also like prophecy, because it informs us about our current world scene, and now we are to live as we anticipate Jesus’ return.
That anticipation is important, but we can’t live for Christ without HIS power. We talk about resurrection power, and the Holy Spirit making us into the image of Christ.
But what are the ways HE does so?
That’s what I want to answer in the next several weeks.
Part of it will be discovering how we function as a church family.
The apostle Paul dedicated three chapters about this subject in his first letter to the church in Corinth. First Corinthians chapter 12, 13 and 14 are all about how the church family interacts, serves, and coexists with one another.
One of the big ideas I want to show you today is that
Paul shows us that church is not a competition to see who the most spiritual is, but instead a group of people who's personalities, talents, giftings, life experiences, and even individual faults bring greater depth to the whole.
One of the ways this happens is through the talents and abilities God gives out to each individual person. In the church this is known as the spiritual gifts.
During my ministry here I have not focused a lot on what we know as spiritual gifts. Tammie and I did not come to know Jesus as LORD, God savior and KING in an AG church, but in an independent Pentecostal church that closely mirrored AG beliefs, but then went a bit off the rails into some things that were not biblical and I’d even say borderline heresy, and they used many of the spiritual giftings in ways that did not follow biblical guidelines as an excuse for their behaviors.
Because we saw Spiritual gifts abused and used in ways that did not bring glory to God and lead to division in the church, I've always kind of shied away from putting those first and forefront.
Saying all that we are an Assembly of God affiliated church. By definition the Assemblies of God is a Pentecostal Christian fellowship, which means we believe that the spiritual gifts described in the Bible are available and for us today.
So over the next few weeks we're going to look at these gifts, what they are, what their purpose is, and how we use them to glorify God and strengthen the body of Christ.
1 Cor 12:1-6
Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. 2 You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3 Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.
4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.
Prayer-
Because many people here might listen to radio or TV pastors, many of whom may not believe that they spiritual giftings are for today, I’m going to start out with saying that are two different beliefs about them that exist today.
The first one is the cessationist (to cease or stop) belief that teaches the spiritual gifts ceased to be necessary or used after the death of the Apostle John. Those who believe this will point to the writings of the ante Nicene fathers. Ante Nicene means that which existed before the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. These writing rarely refer to the spiritual gifts, and people who are cessationist will conclude that they must have died out after the Apostolic age. The Anti-Nicene books are writing from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generations of Christians that existed after 100 AD to the council of Nicaea in 325 AD.
It’s important to note that the ante Nicene church did not have a central, agreed upon theology at this point because it was under the constant threat of death from the Roman Empire, at varying degrees depending who was emperor.
One thing is clear about these writings- they offer a rich history and insight into the early church after the last of the apostles died, up to Emperor Constantine becoming the ruler of Rome and ending the persecution of Christians.
Saying that- These books are not canonical- meaning they don’t carry the same weight or authority of the bible books, so pointing to them to say that the spiritual gifts are not for today is pretty shaky logic.
Cessationist will also point out 1 Cor 13
1 Cor 13:8-11
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
People who believed the spiritual gifts died with the apostles use this scripture to say that since we now have the completed canon of the bible, we don’t need the spiritual gifts- that they were available in leu of having the completed truth at our fingertips.
Personally, I reject that argument because in no place in this entire chapter of 1 Cor 13 is the Word of God mentioned. The plane interpretation of this scripture points to a future event- meaning heaven either through rapture or death or the millennial kingdom, where the spiritual gifts will not be unnecessary because of the fullness of Jesus being part of our spiritual nature.
That’s the cessasionist group. That’s the vast majority of mainline church’s today- Lutheran, Catholic, Methodists, Most Baptists, ect.
Obviously, we are not that group.
The AG doctrine teaches that these spiritual gifts are available for today, and in particular the gift of speaking in other tongues. We will get into the specific gifts in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
Today we will focus on the source of these gifts. Spiritual gifts, as indicated by their name, come from the Holy Spirit.
That leads us to the next point of today’s message-
One of our fundamental beliefs is that our God exists as a trinity. That means that God exists eternally in three persons- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are not three separate gods but one God in three persons within the same godhead. This idea of the Trinity' caused most of the fights in the early church. It is probably one of the most difficult things to accept because it makes no sense to us and any earthly analogy we come up with at best falls short, or leads us into heresy or wrong thinking. Its something that just has to be excepted by faith.
I bring that up because we need to understand that the Holy Spirit is
a person,
equally part of the Godhead with the Father and the Son,
and carries the same power and authority as the other two members.
At least in my day, if you went through Lutheran confirmation, you had to memorize the Apostle’s and Nicene creed.
In the version I memorized it says of the Holy Spirit
I believe in the Holy Spirit the Lord the giver of life who proceeds from the father and the son and through the father and the son is worshipped and glorified and has spoken through the prophets.
It a creed expressing the deity of the Holy Spirit to us.
I lay that foundation to say this-
Within that trinity, there are different expressions or roles that each member as chosen to express the fullness of the Godhead.
To understand that, let’s break down verses 4 and 5
4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.
5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.
6 There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.
Let’s get specific about a few things-
Spiritual gifts are subject to and given by the Holy Spirit
Spiritual offices are subject to and appointed by the Son (Jesus)
Spiritual powers are subject to the will of the Father
Let’s break that down a little-
To get more specific on each of these categories-
The Holy Spirit distributes the Spiritual gifts. We will get more in depth in the next few weeks, but they include- speaking in tongues, prophecy, discernment, interpretation of prophecy, Words of wisdom and knowledge, and exhortation. These gifts are meant to be used corporately to build up the body, to serve as personal witness of the Holy Spirit’s power in your life and in others, and serve as a witness to the unbeliever that God is present among HIS people.
More about that next week.
Spiritual offices are found in Ephesians 4, starting in verse 7 just so establish who Paul is talking about-
Eph 4:7-8
7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.
Now down to verse 11-
Eph 4:11-13
It was he (Jesus) who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, (The Reason)12 to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Jesus sets the offices within his church. These are the offices as described in the bible. The Greek word for office is diakonia which is a root word for deacon- meaning a person who serves the body.
This idea of serving is very important because many will want the title, but not the consequence of it- which are a life of services, not prestige.
I make this point because we have wandered quite a bit from the biblical interpretation of these offices in the 21st century.
A quick synopsis of these offices, and will probably be a series in the future
The apostles- ones who go to the unreached and establish church’s. They are what the modern-day missionary represents functionally in today’s church, but the office also carries the weight and giftings of the other offices mentioned here.
The prophets- those who carry supernatural messages from God. These messages are usually forthtelling meaning they are speaking to a situation occurring in the present that God wants to give direction, correction, or encouragement about. Biblically speaking, this was the main ministry of a prophet. However, they are most known for given messages that are foretelling future events.
Evangelists- Those who speak the gospel and have and have an usually strong Holy Spirit charismatic gifting that draws people to them. In the modern day, we have diluted this title to mean a number of things.
What it does not means-
person on TV, even though they are called tele evangelists.
itinerate preachers who go from church to church holding crusades and such.
The evangelists whole being is wrapped around telling the unbeliever about Jesus.
Pastor- One who cares spiritually for the flock. The word pastor means to shepherd.
They are those who guide people into deeper relationships with Jesus.
In the modern church we have misused and misapplied the title of pastor to two extremes- either the ultimate authority over everything in the church, or watered it down to mean anyone who works full time at the church.
Pastors of IT, pastors of finance, pastor of facilities.
If you are interested in seeing the role of a pastor-shepherd, You can see the role beautifully illustrated in the 23rd Psalm.
(shepherds crook illustration)
One quick aside before we talk about the teacher-
A position not mentioned in Ephesians 4:11, but is a position spoken about throughout the New Testament, particularly in 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1 is the position of elder. Elder and pastor are fairly synonymous in the early church, with the exception being that when it came to authority, elder was usually the person who was the leader within the church, while the pastor cared for the needs of the congregation.
The last office spoke about is-
Teacher- one who is gifted to understand and teach the truth of God’s word to the church. It is strongly tied in with the office of pastor, but it can be a separate function. In all honesty, teaching is more my gift than pastoring. Tammie has more of a gift of pastoring then I do, and she thinks the things I get excited about are dull and unimportant, so spiritually speaking she probably isn’t a congregation wide teacher, but does great with kids.
Those are the positions that fall under the dominion of Jesus.
The Father’s role is providing and deciding when and where to manifest his power.
6 There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.
The Greek word for “working” is “energeia” meaning a powerful, supernatural outpouring of what we would consider miraculous power that changes, or overrides known physical laws.
To put it another way- it’s God stepping outside of the natural order and natural laws that he has established and changing them to bend to His will.
An example- healing, time slowing, resurrection, raptures, floods, what he does and does not allow evil to do. In short, God exercising his sovereignty over HIS universe.
Now, God’s power is not something you can conjure up according to your will. Even Jesus, a fellow member of the Godhead, was seen interacting with the Father through prayer to determine the Father’s will for HIS power to be released.
If you remember when we began the message today I said that I was hesitant to speak and promote spiritual gifts, and this point is exactly why. There are a lot of things done under the guise of being Pentecostal that are not biblical an even heretical.
Admittedly many of these are done by men and women who are either self-deluded or worse trying to deceive others into believing they have some spiritual power from God that they can use however they want.
It's primarily those kind of people that I want to guard our church family against.
If any type of manifestation of the Holy Spirit occurs in our church I want it to be just that - the Holy Spirit because then Jesus and the Father are glorified in the midst of it.
In everything in our lives and in our church- the Glory of God has to be our primary aim and focus.
And that brings us to our last point for this morning-
How do we know if what is being manifested, spoken, or done in God’s name is actually God?
In fact, it's one of the objections of those who are cessationist is that people who practice voodoo or some primitive religions can speak in tongues and therefore if a Christian speaks in tongues we must be manifesting the same type of evil spirit.
Fortunately, Paul addresses this right off the bat and gives us a criteria to use. You may have wondered why I didn’t address these verses earlier- but it was because I wanted this point to be the last one we talk about-
Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. 2 You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3 Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.
Isn't it interesting that the Bible, written thousands of years ago, can speak to an objection being leveled today?
Let's break down what the Bible is saying here-
It's overly simplistic to use this as a litmus test to see if what is being manifested is from God or from Satan. What I mean is a demon is not under any obligation to tell you the truth. Even if you asked a person under the influence of a demon if Jesus is Lord they will respond yes and they would be telling the truth.
Really what Paul is trying to explain to us here is where the person manifesting the gift or power pointing you toward.
If he or she is pointing you toward them or their (quote) gifts, they are in essence cursing Jesus in trying to set themselves above HIM as your functional savior.
A functional savior is someone that is substituted for the real one, and performs a certain role that brings you a sense of peace or safety.
A person who is truly manifesting God’s gifts according to God’s nature and God’s will, then they will always point you back to God in your praise.
That is how you discern true spirituality and use of the spiritual gifts.
And that leads us to the conclusion of today’s message, and gives us a preview of next week-
1 Cor 12:7
7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
Whatever talent, gifting, or ability that God gives you is meant to be used for the good of others, particularly within the church.
Here is a personal example-
For a long time, I wondered why I had such a high level of resiliency. If you don’t recognize the term, resiliency is the psychological ability to witness or experience trauma and still be able to function at a high level.
What would give one person nightmares for the rest of their lives is simply shrugged off by the next person. I am one of the people that by in large can shrug it off, and therefore would be considered to have a high level of resiliency. I used to question why that was- what made me special?
Tammie and I were discussing it once after I heard of yet another former coworker committing suicide. Tammie said, “Um…it’s the Holy Spirit…duh!”
It’s true though. It wasn’t because I was stronger than anyone else, but He who was within me was.
Greater is HE who is within YOU, then he who is within the world.
If you are a Christian, you have all of the power of almighty God living within you, and that is what the spiritual gifts are for- to remind you of God’s love, power, strength, and grace manifesting in your life.
All rise
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