Receiving Spiritual Gifts
1 Corinthians 12:8-11
We’re in a series called Supernatural Stories,
we’ve been looking at some of the stories in the Bible
where God did amazing things.
Well today I want to start
by telling you a supernatural story,
but its not a bible story,
though it does start in the bible.
The story actually starts on what is now called the day of Pentecost,
which was 7 weeks after Jesus resurrection.
Acts 2:1-4
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now this is the first time anything like this had ever happened,
and so everybody was amazed,
and it started off an explosion in the growth of the church.
That day alone, 3,000 people committed their lives to following Jesus Christ,
and that growth spread around the world.
Much of the excitement that started that day,
was because of the fact that the Holy Spirit was coming into people’s lives in obvious ways,
and doing miraculous,
supernatural things.
People were speaking in different tongues,
or languages that they didn’t know.
Others were prophesying,
or had words of knowledge which means information or facts told them by the Holy Spirit,
that they couldn’t have known except that the Holy Spirit spoke to them,
Other people were healing the sick miraculously,
and doing miracles,
and just all kinds of amazing stuff going on.
In fact, the apostle Paul listed the different gifts that were given by the Holy Spirit to the church, that day
(there are other gifts of the spirit listed elsewhere,
but this is the list of what you might call the miraculous gifts,
or the supernatural gifts)
They’re listed in 1 Cor 12:8-11 For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.
These are the gifts from God
that were given to people on the day of Pentecost,
when the Holy Spirit came on them.
Within a short while, these kind of things became so commonplace in the church.
that Paul had to write instructions to one of the churches
to tell them not to let all this supernatural stuff
get out of control.
Now you have to remember that
when he wrote this the churches all met in homes,
they didn’t have any church buildings,
so it was like he was writing to people in our small groups,
and saying, okay guys, when you get together in your small groups,
and you’re prophesying,
take turns, go one at a time, so everyone can understand.
And if you speak in tongues,
make sure there’s somebody in your group who has the gift of interpretation,
so that everybody can understand what’s being said.
There’s so many people using these spiritual gifts,
that Paul tells them they have to take turns.
Now as you study church history,
and you read what was written by church leaders since that time,
it seems that these spiritual gifts were widely used,
for about 300 years after Christ.
For example,
The greatest theologian of the third century
was a leader of the church named Tertullian, who died in 225 AD He used to instruct new Christians that when after they were baptized in water, they should expect the gifts of the Holy Spirit to come upon them. They should expect to prophesy and to speak in tongues.
So we see these spiritual gifts being widely used,
for about 300 years after Christ.
Well, what happened then?
In the year 313, Emporor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire,
So all the sudden instead of being persecuted for their faith,
now everyone wanted to be a Christian,
the church became very weak in faith,
because a lot of people were in it just because it was politically correct.
And then the church split into two main groups,
east and west,
the east was Greek speaking,
the west was Latin speaking,
The east eventually became the Orthodox church,
the west became the Roman Catholic Church.
The east never did lose an emphasis on the Holy Spirit,
and the gifts of the spirit.
You can read writings of Christians all through the middle ages,
and they’ll talk about speaking in tongues,
and prophecy,
and healings.
Unfortunately, most of the areas of the East were conquered by Islam over the next centuries, and so the Eastern church became very small,
and now you find the remnants of that church primarily in Eastern Europe.
But in the west, in the Roman Catholic Church
after 300 AD the emphasis on gifts of the Holy Spirit
essentially disappeared for 1,600 years.
Even after the reformation, in about 1600
when the Protestant churches got their start, there was still little or no use of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
But then
in the first hour of the first day of the 20th century,
that changed.
On January 1, 1901
at a little Bible college in Topeka, Kansas there was a 31 year old woman who was seeking more of God.
The woman’s name was Agnes Ozman and she was attending Charles Parham’s Bible School in Topeka.
Charles Parham was a former Methodist preacher who taught that the Spirit of God was going to be poured out in these last days, bringing about a worldwide revival before Jesus’ return.
Now the way he thought the worldwide revival would come would be that the Holy Spirit would give the gift of speaking in other languages that would create instant missionaries.
In other words, Parham taught that the gift of tongues that we read about in the Bible was a gift that would instantly give people the ability to speak Mandarin Chinese or Hindi, or Filipino, (or even Kentucky).
So they could become instant missionaries.
Now we know that that’s not really what the bible teaches about tongues,
but that’s what Parham thought.
So he started this little Bible College in Topeka with about 40 students,
to prepare future missionaries for the outpouring of the Spirit.
He assigned students to especially study the book of Acts, and Acts 2
where it talks about the Holy Spirit being poured out.
During the Christmas break of 1900, a few students decided to fast (go without food)
and to pray and seek God for the filling of the Spirit.
One of those students was Agnes Ozman,
a 31 year old single woman, who simply wanted to be used by God more,
and felt called to be a missionary.
And God responded to their prayers, as the 20th century began, God gave Agnes Ozman the gift of tongues.
While people all over the world were celebrating the new century, at exactly 12:01 a.m. January 1, 1901 Agnes Ozman became filled with the Holy Spirit and received the biblical gift of tongues.
Now this was not a known foreign language like Chinese or Japanese or Hindi, but a prayer language that helped her to pray better, worship more fervently, connect more intimately with God.
Now some of us would say,
whats the big deal about that?
You have to realize that for about 1,600 years
at least in western Christianity,
this hadn’t happened,
This was unheard of.
The news about this amazing event
spread like wildfire through the Bible College and then many other students began to receive the gift of tongues.
They then went out to the churches around Kansas and other people began experiencing the Holy Spirit in a new and fresh way and they also spoke in tongues.
Charles Parham started traveling around the country,
with this message of the coming of the Spirit and the gift of tongues and a few years later he started a little Bible College in Houston.
Now Charles Parham was a terrible racist. and there was a black preacher named William Seymour who wanted to attend his school. So some days Parham made him sit outside the window if he wanted to listen, and other days Parham allowed him inside, but he had to sit in the very back of the auditorium, separated from the class.
But despite this, God apparently made a big impact on Seymour’s life during this time.
A year later Seymour got an invitation to come to Los Angeles
to preach in a black Nazarene church there.
But when the church heard him teach about the Holy Spirit, and speaking in tongues,
they literally locked him out of the church.
So he started meeting and teaching in homes,
in a rundown section of LA.
and that grew and grew,
till he had to start holding the meetings on the street, there was no room inside,
finally they bought an old 2 story warehouse on Azusa Street.
Now the people in this church were very poor,
a mixture of blacks and whites, from this rundown neighborhood.
so they put together a little pulpit made of two wooden crates in the center of the room with a prayer altar in front of it.
The pews were formed by redwood planks laid across nail kegs and old boxes.
The upstairs part of the room was called “the upper room” where people went to pray, silently waiting for the Holy Spirit.
And the revival there grew for 3 ½ years.
services were held three times a day-
morning, afternoon, and night.
All the gifts of the spirit were used there,
including not only tongues, and prophecy,
and words of knowledge,
but also miraculous healings.
Soon the walls were covered with the crutches and canes of those who were miraculously healed.
People came from all over the world over the next three years to that old building on Azusa Street –
whites, blacks, men, women, the poor, the rich, from all over the world
They could only fit about 800 worshippers inside the building so usually about 500 would be standing outside
during services.
Men and women, were filled with the Spirit and went out from that place as evangelists and Bible preachers, and missionaries
all over the world.
And that revival on Azusa Street under the leadership of William Seymour gave birth to modern Pentecostalism and all the modern Pentecostal churches that we have around today.
For example, the Assembly of God
which is one of the largest,
and probably the fastest growing denomination in the world with about 250,000 churches all over the world,
started in 1914 as a result of Azusa Street.
The Church of God (Cleveland) denomination started in 1907,
as a result of Azusa St.
and it now has over 6,000 churches in the US.
Princeton Pike Church of God,
which built this building, was one of those,
Princeton Pike started in the 1920’s, about 15 years after Azusa St.
Other denominations that started out of this include,
the Pentecostal Holiness Church
The Church of God in Christ,
The Foursquare Church,
and many others.
Now, not everybody was crazy about Azusa Street,
and the gifts of the spirit,
and prophecy, and healing and tongues.
A lot of denominations completed rejected this.
For example, the Nazarene church used to be named
the Pentecostal Nazarene church.
but in 1919 they changed their name,
dropped the word Pentecostal from their name,
because they didn’t want to be associated with Pentecostals
and this idea of being filled with the Spirit and using the gifts of the spirit.
So for the most part,
this experience of being filled with the Spirit
and using gifts of the spirit
remained primarily within poor Pentecostal churches that met in tents on the fringes of town and in storefronts in the inner city.
And these churches were very much looked down on
by the Christian establishment.
As a matter of fact,
a couple days ago I was talking with Jim Saylor from our church,
and he mentioned he grew up in a Pentecostal church
and said that back then
you almost had to apologize for going to a Pentecostal church,
because people would wonder about you.
Any respectable church would have nothing to do with all this gifts of the Holy Spirit stuff.
Until April 3, 1960 when an Episcopal priest, named Dennis Bennett
shook the entire church world.
Dennis Bennett was the rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California This church was a prestigious, large congregation of good Episcopals.
And Dennis Bennett announced to his very proper and upscale parishioners that he spoke in tongues.
This was not received as good news. People were not cheering,
and applauding and congratulating him on this.
He spoke of his experience at each of the three morning services. After the second service, his associate pastor resigned then quickly called a board meeting, and they voted to ask for Bennett’s resignation, which he gave at the third service.
I’m sure you heard last year
about the tremendous upheaval in the church world
caused by the Episcopal churches appointment of an openly gay bishop.
Well, that was nothing, compared to the shock that greeted this announcement
that this Episcopal priest spoke in tongues.
The story was reported in Time Magazine and in Newsweek and in various newspapers across America
in 1960.
It shocked the church world but it was just the start.
Because within a few years,
this movement of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the spirit,
had impacted virtually every denomination.
It came to be called the Charismatic renewal,
because the word Charisma
is the Greek word in the Bible for gifts.
And this renewal in the church
was a renewal of the use of the gifts of the Spirit.
For the first time since about 300 AD,
the gifts of the spirit were being used throughout God’s church in this world.
There were charismatic groups that sprang up,
not just in the Episcopal Church, but also the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church,
and the Roman Catholic Church,
and virtually every other.
In fact,
The Roman Catholic Church was one of the groups most impacted by this renewal.
It really started for them in 1967,
when a group of Faculty and Students from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh (a Catholic University)
were filled with the Spirit while on a retreat.
When I was researching this message
I went Duquesne Univ. web site,
and thought it was really interesting that it was at Duquesne Univ. where the Catholic Church,
first saw this renewal of the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
because Duquesne was actually started in 1878 under the name,
Pittsburgh Catholic College of the Holy Ghost
and 90 years later,
they got a real dose of the Holy Ghost.
But the renewal at Duquesne
quickly spread to Notre Dame, and then all around the Catholic Church. Its estimated that at its peak there were several hundred thousand Catholics in this renewal,
and its still continuing today.
Now I grew up in a Baptist church, in the 60’s and 70’s
right in the middle of this Charismatic renewal,
and the Baptists managed to pretty much avoid this,
basically because if you were in a Baptist church,
and you admitted that you spoke in tongues,
you were instantly kicked out.
I remember hearing my parents talk about this as a kid.
Did you hear so and so got kicked out of the church?
In fact, there were only about 2 things that could get you kicked out of a Baptist church. Speaking in tongues, or raising your hands in worship.
And by the way, there are a bunch of Charismatic Baptist churches around today.
Even they couldn’t resist forever.
Now I’ve told the story before
of how the Vineyard churches started and grew
in the middle of all this, starting in about 1980.
The people who started Vineyard churches
back in the 1980s
didn’t come out of Pentecostal churches.
If they had any church background at all,
it was primarily Baptist or Presbyterian
or Catholic or another traditional church.
but they wanted something more.
they wanted the power of the Holy Spirit
working in their lives.
And there were so many people like that,
that the Vineyards exploded in growth.
But its certainly not just Vineyards growing.
In fact, I want you to think a minute
about the significance of this move of the Holy Spirit around the world.
Now remember, this has only really been going for 100 years,
which compared to the total life of the church since Jesus Christ,
is a very short time.
Yet right now, there are about 500 million Charismatic Christians around the world. who are not only committed to following Christ as their Lord but who also believe in and practice to some degree the gifts of the Holy Spirit that I read to you in 1 Corinthians 12.
In other words they are Charismatic Christians,
they believe in the gifts of the Spirit, or the Charisma.
500 million, out of a total 6 billion people in the world.
that is one out of 12, right now,
who are charismatic Christians.
This is by far the fastest growing part of the church.
Most of that growth is obviously in other parts of the world,
not the United States.
There are huge waves of evangelism going on in places like South America,
Africa, Korea, China.
And most of it is Pentecostal or Charismatic in nature.
In fact, the trend lines show
that by the year 2020 about 1 out of every 7 people in the entire world will be a charismatic Christian.
Let me say that again. By the year 2020, with the present trend lines, taking account of population growth and everything else, about 1 out of every 7 people in the entire world, will be a charismatic Christian.
As a comparison, by 2020
The number of Charismatic Christians in the world,
will be 30% larger than all non-Charismatic Christians.
The momentum has been building for 100 years from a single 31 year old woman who desired to be a missionary to a half billion people today, and well over a billion by the year 2020.
This is one of the most amazing stories, in the whole history of the church,
this outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
What does this have to do with us, today, in the United States.
There is a deep hunger among people today
for spiritual experience.
George Gallup, the pollster, says this surge in desire for spiritual experience, is one of the most dramatic and measurable movements of the last century.
People around us are spiritually hungry.
All you need to do is look at the huge selection of alternative worship experiences
that people have invented.
Aura’s
Astrology
Psychics
Crystals
Tarot Cards
Angel Worship
Eastern Religions
and on and on.
These are all thriving today.
We live in a very religious society.
People want to experience God,
only many of them don’t know how.
The problem is that there has been a massive failure on the part of the Christian church to respond to that real spiritual hunger, and particularly the spiritual hunger of young people today.
When people come to church, looking for God, they need more than church rituals and church rules.
We need more than stained glass and familiar hymns. We need more than potlucks in the Fellowship Hall and church fundraisers, bake sales, and dry sermons.
We need an encounter with God. People are hungry for genuine spiritual encounters.
And if the church won’t feed people’s hunger, if the church won’t meet our thirst for God and spirituality, or if the church doesn’t believe in spiritual experience but just believes in a head knowledge,
(just study your bible and everything will be okie-dokie) You don’t actually have to experience anything spiritually
If we take that approach, well then naturally there will come into that vacuum these new and false forms of spirituality.
Some of you might say,
well Ken, I believe that God can give someone else
a prophecy, or a word of knowledge,
or God could use someone else to pray for healing,
or use their faith powerfully,
or do a miracle through them.
But I just don’t think God would do that through me.
God wouldn’t give me that kind of gift.
And our reasoning seems very humble.
We might say,
well I haven’t been a Christian very long,
I have to get some things in my life fixed first,
before God could use me,
or I’m just not a very spiritual person,
I don’t deserve for God to do something like that in me.
you know, I’m an engineer,
or I’m a accountant,
and God doesn’t do those things through accountants.
Romans 8;31, the apostle Paul writes, What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
In other words, If you are a Christian, then God has already given you the greatest possible gift that he could ever give, which is eternal life through the death of Jesus on the cross for you.
Now if God has already given you the greatest possible gift he could ever give, why would God withhold the lesser gifts?
Having given us his Son, why would he withhold something as small as the gift of prophecy, or tongues, or faith?
Paul’s argument is sort of like this. Say someone gives you a really expensive mountain bike, but you just really struggle in believing that they want to also give you the bell on the bike.
Or you go out and buy a Mercedes S600 Sedan which retails for $125,000. Its got every possible option on it,
not to mention the 5.5L, 36-valve, V-12 engine and then you ask the car dealer, “Now, are you sure, that comes with the floor mats, too?” Well duhhh, of course does.
That’s what Paul is saying.
Well duhhh.
The gift of salvation, forgiveness, and eternal life,
through Christ’s death on the cross,
is so huge a gift,
that in comparison,
these gifts of the Spirit are very small and minor,
so of course God will be happy to throw those in with the deal.
He’s not going to be miserly with these gifts,
when he’s just given you the most precious thing he’s got.
So these gifts are not dependent on you being a spiritual giant,
or deserving them,
or rooting all the sin out of your life first,
or being the perfect Christian first,
and then God might consider giving them to you,
NO.
Honestly, the greatest factor in getting spiritual gifts is,
do you really want them?
do you really desire them?
Paul tells us we should
earnestly desire spiritual gifts.
Do you?
Do you earnestly desire them?
Not just an attitude of,
oh yeah, that would be cool if God healed somebody through me,
or gave me a prophecy, or tongues,
yeah that’d be pretty good.
No, not that,
but an intense desire for those gifts.
God wants us to earnestly desire his gifts.
Have you ever eaten so much that you couldn’t bear to look at more food?
Most Americans can tell stories of times when you have just pigged out. For some of you, it was just last night.
I meet with a few guys for lunch every couple weeks,
and we meet at Golden Corral.
Now, if you’ve been there,
you know how dangerous that is.
I leave there every time feeling stuffed,
and I don’t want to eat for the rest of the day.
But I don’t even come close to putting away the amounts of food that a couple of the other guys do.
They come back with these heaping platefuls that really put my little amount to shame.
Have you ever gone out for dinner at a fancy restaurant,
but when you get there
you’re regretting that you ate so much for lunch
or for a snack that afternoon, because you’re not really hungry.
And here’s all this great food,
but you have very little appetite for it?
If you’re a parent you’ve probably said to your kids, “No, you can’t have cookies now. It’s going to ruin your appetite for dinner.”
We tell them that because,
we all know that hunger for good and healthy things can be blunted by filling up on junk food – potato chips, and French fries and caramel corn.
Every parent knows that.
All of us have experienced the feeling of being so stuffed with junk,
that there’s no appreciation or appetite for things that are really good.
Have you ever come to church and just felt spiritually dull,
because your whole week has been filled up
with a bunch of other stuff,
that has nothing to do with God.
Maybe you have been spending all week in front of the TV. You are so filled with media, TV and videos that there’s not a lot of hunger inside for God.
You don’t feel hungry for worship. or for God’s Word or God’s presence.
Maybe you feel this way today. You feel like spiritually,
you have a belly full of caramel corn? And you’re not very hungry for God.
What do you fill yourself on, to the point that you’ve lost your appetite for God and for the things of God?
The apostle John, in book of Revelation, talks about the problem of being overly stuffed, overly full, and losing what is most valuable.
Here’s God says to the church at Laodicea: You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
Here’s a church so full, so wealthy, so prosperous, so stuffed that they’ve lost sight of their spiritual poverty.
Have you ever felt so stuffed
that you lost your hunger for God?
Have you ever felt so stuffed that you lost your hunger to worship God? or to read God’s Word or to pray?
Have you ever felt so stuffed that you lost your hunger to ask God for spiritual gifts?
How do you regain hunger for God? How do you regain hunger for God’s gifts of the Holy Spirit?
Dallas Willard is one of the most respected Christian authors today.
He says that for 21st century Americans perhaps the most important action we can take,
to regain a hunger for God,
is to find time for solitude – basically just getting alone in a quiet place and allowing God to speak to us.
We spend all day answering phones, dealing with dozens of people, handling stacks of paper, answering tons of email.
or we spend all day caring for kids – cooking and cleaning
running them around to all their events.
Dallas Willard says that probably the most important thing we can do for our spiritual health,
is to just be alone for a few hours without the TV on, without the radio on, without more stimulation, just being alone and being quiet.
Maybe its taking a walk in the park, not a shopping mall.
Just pulling away so that you can develop an appetite again for God.
Obviously, there are some of you who are single, divorced, or widowed who may spend evenings alone in quiet.
Your needs are different. Maybe you need connection and relationships and fellowship.
But the majority of people, singles included, have this need for time alone.
I know that many of you have a Roman Catholic background.
The reason why Lent is so spiritually meaningful for many Roman Catholics is not because every Roman Catholic is trying to earn God’s favor before Easter by giving up chocolate.
No, It’s because Roman Catholics have found that something good happens in their soul when they abstain from something that’s good, (whether its food or chocolate or TV or whatever)
but they do it so they can draw near to something better – namely God.
If you’re not hungry for God,
if you’re not hungry for his gifts,
maybe you simply need to create some space in your life for God,
by getting some time alone.
You know I think one of the reason we don’t see God’s power in our lives on a regular basis, and don’t see him doing great things in our lives,
is that we expect that those kinds of things are supposed to happen on Sunday morning.
No way.
That’s not what we see in the Bible.
God gives us these gifts for every day.
Wouldn’t it be great if, when you’ve got a problem with your kids,
and you just don’t know how to handle it,
and you’re at your wits end,
that you pray,
and God gives you a word of wisdom,
and all the sudden you know what to do?
I’ve done that many times before,
and God will show me that I need to do something
that would have never occurred to me,
and it works out unbelievably well.
Or wouldn’t it be better
when your wife comes home with a migraine,
to be able to pray in faith and see it healed,
rather than just trying to deal with it?
Or how about when you’ve got a friend who’s dealing with some issues in her life,
and its causing her a lot of pain,
and she asks you to pray for her,
but you don’t know what to even pray,
wouldn’t it be great if you could ask God,
and prophetically, he shows you how to pray,
or gives you a word of knowledge about that situation?
That’s the way these supernatural gifts are supposed to work,
in the everyday stuff of life.
God wants to enter into every part of our lives,
and bring his power to help us every day.
God is doing an awesome thing on the earth today. He is pouring out his Spirit in a way that’s unprecedented in the history of the church.
So let me ask you,
Will you allow God to use you in ways that go beyond what God has done with you in the past?
Will you receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit that God wants to give to you?
Paul says, Eagerly desire spiritual gifts. Do you desire them?
Are you hungry for his gifts?
And if you’re not, are you at least willing to pray,
God make me hungry.
Give me a hunger for more of you.
I want to be hungry, God.
Lets pray.
