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What would you think of a rich husband and wife who adopted a little baby from overseas at the cost of $35 ,000 and then upon return didn't give them a room to sleep in, didn't give them any food, didn't give them any resources?
What would you think of that person? Well, certainly if you do the greatest thing, adopt someone, a great thing, then you provide for all the other needs. And in a very similar fashion, we have a great savior who has not only purchased us and given himself to us the greater gift, but he gives us all the lesser gifts as well.
In other words, aren't you glad that when God saved you, he just didn't say, alright, you have forgiveness of sins, you don't have to pay for your debts anymore, and then figure it out as you go. Hope to see you soon.
Can you imagine, Christ Jesus loves his church enough not only to die for her, but also to equip her and build the church. What if it was left to us to build up one another without the Spirit of God's help?
Can you imagine, we already are a motley group here, led by a motley leader, but just think how much worse it could be. It could be a lot worse. Christ is building his church, and the way he builds his church, after he purchases her, his own life is the ransom.
Then he equips the church for ministry. He builds the church, and when Christ builds the church, nothing can stop it, not even death, not even Satan, not even ourselves. So when God gives us the greatest gift, salvation, he gives us everything else.
Let's turn our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 this morning and look at what else he gives us through his Spirit, and that is spiritual gifts. So not only does God save us and forgive us, then he gives us gifts to serve other people so we might build one another up, so we might edify each other, so we might all maintain the unity of the church.
It's a common argument that if God does something greatest, won't he give us the lesser gift as well, and that is absolutely true. What should we say to these things 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 with him graciously give us all things? He will give us those things, and one of the things he does is give us the Holy Spirit who equips us for the work of ministry, and we'll see that today in 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
Now when we come to spiritual gifts, here's what we do sometimes wrongly. We begin to study spiritual gifts and we say, what's my gift? I need to know what my gift is. That was big when I was a new Christian.
I've got to take my spiritual gifts questionnaire. How many people here have taken a spiritual gift questionnaire? Quite a few people. And see if you got saved here recently and you're part of Bethlehem Bible Church, you haven't taken one of those things because we haven't given you one.
And we're going to learn today why you don't need to have a spiritual gifts questionnaire filled out. It doesn't have to go through the computer database. Scott Brown's going to run it and it'll spit out some information and now you know what to do.
But for the Corinthians, Paul had taught them that they do have spiritual gifts, but they started having some kind of class warfare. Remember chapter 1? I follow Paul. No, I follow Jesus. Then in chapter 11, we're rich, you're poor.
Things started to be divided. And then now people are saying, I speak in tongues, you don't. And so Paul wants to correct that. And so we'll look today in chapter 12 verses 4 through 11 on spiritual gifts.
We're just calling it 101. But just to catch us up, let's go back to chapter 12 verse 1 and following as we look at some facts about spiritual gifts. Let me give you in review the first one found in verses 1 and 2.
Spiritual gifts 101. Truth or fact number one that Paul wanted the church to know. Of course, I want you to know. I think God wants you to know as well. Fact number one is, and this is more implied than explicitly given, but he says there in verse 1, do you notice, now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed.
You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Fact number one is, God wants you to know about spiritual gifts. And you can know. This is not something that's an unknown truth until you get to heaven.
You're not really sure. You're kind of on the edge. You're half a charismatic, half not a charismatic, half a cessationist, not a cessationist. You're not really sure where you lie. It's just all going to pan out.
But the Bible teaches you can really know. You can absolutely know. And Paul wanted the church to know. He wanted the Corinthians to know. The second fact is, our second truth is, found in verse 3, all spiritual gifts promote Christ Jesus.
At the end of the day, this is what they do. They promote the glory of Christ, his name, his person, and his work. Now, just think just for a second. The Corinthians were trying to promote themselves.
They're saying, I've got the spirit more than you do because I speak in tongues and you don't. Paul's going to say right here, if you are extolling Christ Jesus, the Lord, you know you're spirit filled.
And before I read the verse, just think of Paul for a second. Before Paul was saved when he was Saul, kill the Christians. Jesus is not the Messiah. He is not the anointed one. We hate his name. We have to rub him out.
We have to squash this rebellion. Kill Christ Jesus. And he was an affirmation of killing the Lord. Then on that Damascus road, God, if I could understate it a little bit, got his attention on that road.
And then what does Paul do? Paul the apostle saying, Jesus is no longer the cursed one. Jesus is the anointed one. Verse 3. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the spirit of God ever says, Jesus is accursed.
And no one can say, of course, with saving faith, anybody could just utter those words, but nobody from their hearts can say, Jesus is Yahweh, except in the Holy Spirit. By the way, you don't even have to know what your spiritual gifts are, but if you knew you were a rotten, filthy sinner, and God has made you born again by his Spirit's power, and you believe the resurrected Christ, and you say, Jesus is Lord, you are spiritual.
Aren't you glad for that? You're not lacking anything. You've got everything that God can give you. Everything that the Lord could give you, the God who says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and he just populates it with all his creative, majestic wisdom.
God has equipped you. God has put his Spirit in you, and you have it all. I'm glad for that. So, by the way, don't be on the path of, I just need more of God. I just need to be more spiritual. I just need to have more gifts.
I just need to have a greater experience. There's no greater experience than saying, I used to think Jesus was a good teacher, but now he's God. I used to think Jesus was pretty smart, sermon on the mount, but now you think he's God.
Now in your deathbed, and you think, what's coming on the other side? I wonder what's going to happen when I close my eyes. Now for you, if you're a Christian, now you already know, the second I close my eyes, it's going to be gain, because of what Christ Jesus, the God-man, has promised.
Number three, found in verses four through six. Marvel at God's creativity in granting a variety of spiritual gifts. God grants a variety of spiritual gifts, because he's creative, and so you should just say to yourself, Lord, give the pastor the gift of language right now.
That's what I need. But I have everything I need from God. He's even provided the water. Jehovah-Jireh. What Paul is going to do here now in chapter 12, verses four to six, is saying, in a Trinitarian fashion, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are just generous.
He's not stingy. He's not, well, maybe I'll just give BBC just a couple things to kind of tie him over. He just gives just with waves. For those of you who are going to go to the beach later today, I hope some ten-foot breakers just come slamming down close to you.
One after another after another. That's who God is. He just gives and gives and gives. I think of James 1. Just the generous God who gives wisdom. Here is the generous God, our triune God, who gives all kinds of spiritual gifts.
Corinth. God doesn't just give tongues. God doesn't just give healings. God doesn't just give miracles. He gives all kinds of things, because he's just this wise God that knows exactly what to do. Go to some botanical gardens and see all the different kinds of flowers and the sights and the smells, and you just think, God is creative.
God is good. And so Paul is going to say in verses four to six that there are all kinds of spiritual gifts. Don't get caught up into, I've got this one, and you've got that one, or I don't have this one.
God is giving these gifts not for you anyway. Sometimes I have to say to myself, note to self. I put yellow Post-its all over. They're all over my life. And sometimes I need to be reminded that what I have as a spiritual gift given by God, it isn't for me.
It's for you. What you have is for someone else. It's not for the Corinthians who would say, I've got the speaking in tongues, therefore I've got the badge of spiritual honor. I'm at the top, you're down here.
If only you could speak in tongues. So Paul says they're all from God. And in this particular case, variety is in fact the spice of the local church. Let's read the verses in verses four through six. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit.
You can just feel this kind of parallel language focusing on just a difference between four and five and five and six, but highlighting the same essential truth in a Trinitarian way. See if you notice it.
But the same spirit, verse four. Verse five, there are varieties of service, but the same Lord. Many times Paul will use the word Lord for Christ Jesus, and it's obvious that he does that here. Verse six, and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.
Corinth, God gives all kinds of gifts, Trinitarianly given, and it's not all super duper tongues, miracles, and healings. It's all kinds of things. Now if you go to verse four, it says varieties. It just means an allotment.
It means a distribution. God just distributes his spiritual gifts to people in a variety of different ways. It doesn't take you very long in a local church to figure out some people can teach and some people can't.
Some people really have a gift of mercy, some people don't. Some people can really help, some people they can't help very well. They're not gifted in that area. These gifts are given directly by God. Go back to chapter four, verse seven, just for a moment.
It's close by. You don't come up with these gifts on your own. You don't say, well, you know what, I don't get to speak in tongues, I'll try to speak in tongues. I don't have the gift of healings, but I'd really like to get it.
No, these are gifts given to you. You don't come up with these, you receive these. In chapter four, verse seven, he's already said something like this to the Corinthians. For who sees anything different in you?
What do you have that you did not receive? By the way, that is a great truth that just should reverberate through our minds when we get in our cars, we go to our homes, when we look at our spouse, when we see our kids, when you think about what intellectual capacity you might have.
What do we have that we have not received? At the end of verse seven it says, if then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? That could really apply to the Corinthians with spiritual gifts.
We've got the spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit, how about you? You don't have the speaking in tongues gifts, you're over here, you're relegated to second class citizenship. This rugged individualism that Corinth has, we can have too.
Just me, myself, and I. No, we have these gifts given by God for other people. He gives them in a very wonderfully creative way. If God has shared gifts with you, you should then be stingy with others.
Yeah, that's it. No, God has been, I was going to say uber generous, and I'll just say it, He's been effusively generous, and so then when you see other people, you do the same thing to them, you are generous.
Verse 5, there are varieties of service, but the same Lord, all for mutual benefit. Verse 6, and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them in everyone. Every single person has a spiritual gift.
You might not know what it is, but you've got one if you're a Christian. If God Trinitarianly gives all these gifts for the unity of the body, why should we go around saying, I've got this one, it's the best, which causes factions?
That's what Paul is after. No division among the Trinity in giving gifts. Why should there be division in the local church? All gifts are supposed to extol Christ, so let's extol Christ with our gifts.
In Greek mythology, there's the Hydra. Remember the many-headed reptilian beast? And you cut off one head, and if you don't cauterize the head, what happens? It grows back. And it's like Paul is getting his Athenian sword out, just lopping off of one selfish Hydra beast at Corinth, and then another one, and then another one.
And so this next verse, he's going to get his sword out to lop off another Hydra-like misconception that the Corinthians have, which leads us to spiritual gifts. Fact number four, found in verses 7 through 10.
Already implied in other verses, but what is implied I'll make explicit with our point. That you are to serve others with your gift, because your gifts are not for you. Gifts are for other people, so serve other people with your gifts, verses 7 through 10.
This is really the basic premise of Paul's argument, serve others with your gifts, verses 7 to 10. That would have caused a ripple effect in Corinth if they just would have done that. Now let me read you the verses, found in verses 7 through 10, and see if you can pick up any themes, any repetitions, what are the key verbs.
To each, 1 Corinthians 12, 7, is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. Oh, I have to stop here just for a second for effect. When apostles are listed, there's an order to the listing.
At least at the very beginning it's always Peter, James, and John. And who's at the very end of every list of the apostles? Judas. Why? Because he wasn't really an apostle, and he is to be minimized. Judas, the one who betrayed him.
You look at a list of the apostles, Peter, James, and John up front, Judas at the end, to show how he is minimized. To show least importance. So now if the Corinthians are all talking about, we've got tongues and you don't, and now Paul is talking about these gifts, what gift do you think is going to be at the end?
Tongues and the interpretation of tongues. Because he's going to try to minimize it. They're trying to maximize it. Back in the day, this gift of languages, we'll talk about this in a minute, was good.
God-given. They could speak languages they never learned, but they were trying to push them up to the top. By the way, think about it. If you could speak a language you never learned, you might do the same thing.
It's pretty impressive. But just watch how this list goes and where tongues is. To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for common good. For to one is given, through the Spirit, the utterance of wisdom.
And to another, the utterance of knowledge, according to the same Spirit. To another, faith by the same Spirit. To another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit. To another, working of miracles. To another, prophecy.
To another, the ability to distinguish between spirits. To another, various kinds of tongues. To another, the interpretation of tongues. Back up to verse 7. To each is given. Not everyone is given tongues.
Not everyone is given healings. Not everyone is given the interpretation of tongues. But everyone gets something. To each one. And verse 7, for the common good. Each believer making unique contributions for the common good of the church as she exalts Christ Jesus.
Then what Paul does here in verses 8 through 10, he gives kind of a potpourri of gifts. Now there are four places in the New Testament spiritual gifts are listed. Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12. Ephesians 4, 1 Peter 4.
None of the lists are the same. Lots of people try to put them all together and figure them out. What Paul is doing is not giving every gift here. He's giving a sampling of gifts that were miraculous gifts.
Heavy duty gifts. Revealing the truth gifts. Confirming the truth gifts. And he's going to explain to us that it's just the variety of God who gives them. Our problem is, we don't know what all these gifts are.
Some are very simple. Tongues we'll talk about in a minute. Just means speaking another language. But they knew what these were. So before I try to explain to you what these gifts were. Some are easy, some are more hard.
I want you to think through this for a second. If you're not awake, this is the key part right here that I want to try to get into your mind. Very, very important. When I was taught this particular truth that I'm going to teach you.
When I was taught this 20 years ago. Everything made sense when it came to spiritual gifts. When it came to tongues, healings, miracles, exorcisms. People going to the DCU center saying they have a healing ministry.
Turning on the TV and the radio and watching people heal bad backs. All that stuff was just taken care of like that. Once I understood that. In particular, God gives miraculous gifts to people in the church.
To confirm them and to confirm what they say. Let me say that again and then we're going to look at about four verses to prove that. Why were miraculous gifts given to someone? If you could speak a language you never learned, why?
Because then what you said, people would say, you know what? That's true. Because God's at work in him. We didn't have the Bible together back in those days. Is that guy teaching the Bible? How do you know if I'm teaching the Bible today?
Well, most of you have your iPads open, scrolling around. And you can confirm what I say. Yes, that's true. But what if I got up here, we had no Bibles. And I said, this is what God's telling me to tell you.
Increase giving. You just look at me and you go, yeah, easy for you to say. But what if someone is born blind over here and I go and I heal them and say, God is telling me to tell you to increase giving.
So when you have a miraculous gift, it's to confirm the man and it's to confirm the message. Now, let's think about it this way. Healings, unique miracles in the Bible are rare or are they found regularly?
They are not very often to be found. You know, there's only three times in the Bible, general clumps of time, clusters, where there are these fantastic miracles. Only three time periods. Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and Jesus and the apostles.
Some other ones might be sprinkled in there, here, there, but there's only three main times. If you push all this time together, you're looking at about 100 years. If you think the world is 6 ,000 years old or 1 ,000 years old or 10 ,000 years old or lots of thousands of years old or a million years old, you compress everything down and you've got 100 years of miracle gifts, signed gifts to authenticate the messenger and message.
And every one of those has to do with the time where Scripture is being inscripturated. Moses and Joshua, a lot of Bible writing in those days. Elijah and Elisha, a lot of Bible writing in those days.
And Jesus and the apostles, the New Testament. Let me show you four verses that will unlock this code for you if you don't already know it. Let's go to chapter 4 of Exodus 4. Chapter 4 of Exodus 4, that seems to make sense, doesn't it?
The fourth chapter of Exodus. Genesis, Exodus, and I'll read this here in the ESV instead of the NAS. Once in a while, if you hear NAS come out of me, you'll know why. It's because for 20-some years, it was NAS.
Here's the point again. God gives miraculous signed gifts to point to something. The sign, when you see the sign Sacramento, 300 miles, and you're planning on going to Sacramento, I hope you don't have the kids get out of the car and then run up to the sign and hug the sign.
We've arrived, Dad. Sacramento, 300. The sign is pointing. Sacramento's that way. Miracles, signs, gifts, these wild and true miraculous healing gifts were meant to point to something. It's pointing to them and what they say is from the Bible, from God himself.
They didn't have the Bible yet. Exodus 4, verse 1 -8. I want to show you that gifts are given to confirm the messenger and his message. Then Moses answered, But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, Yahweh did not appear to you.
The Lord said to him, What is that in your hand? Staff? Throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground and it became a serpent and Moses ran from it. And the Lord said to Moses, Put out your hand.
Catch it by the tail. So he put out his hand, caught it, became a staff in his hand. That they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you to confirm you and to confirm your message.
Put your hand inside the cloak. Took it out. Behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, verse 7, Put your hand back inside your cloak. So he put his hand back inside his cloak. And when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of the flesh.
If they will not believe you, God said, Or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. Wild, miraculous gifts of healing signs and wonders were to point to the message and the messenger.
Second passage, let's go to 1 Kings 17. The first time we had a lot of Bible being written was Moses and Joshua's day. Second time period was around the prophets, Elijah and Elisha. So let's go to 1 Kings 17 and I want you to see the same refrain.
And the refrain is, God gives extraordinary miracles. And I'm not talking about, you know, I've got a bad back and now all of a sudden it's better. We're going to talk about what real miracles are in a second.
But he gives extraordinary, miraculous signs to affirm the message and the messenger. 1 Kings 17. Now when I'm talking, it's hard to look up verses and talk at the same time. So let's just go to 1 Kings 17, verse 19.
This is the passage where Elijah is raising the widow's son. Let's pick it up in verse... Yeah, 19 is fine. And he said to her, Give me your son. And he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged and laid him on his own bed.
And he cried to Yahweh, Oh Yahweh my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourned by killing her son? Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, Oh Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again.
And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah and the life of the child came into him again and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother and Elijah said, See, your son lives.
And the woman said to Elijah, Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth. Anybody that can raise a dead child and make them alive again, you should listen to that person.
How much more should you listen if he's a prophet ordained by God and he does something so you believe him and you believe what he has said. We don't have all the Bible, so can you imagine, are there hucksters in the world today?
God told me this, God told me that. God gave me a word of knowledge for this, that and the other. And you just think, all the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise. But are you left stranded? You don't know what to do.
I guess I should probably follow him. It's like my old pastor used to say, Just go down to Venice Beach, put on a robe and have a staff and act like you're Moses and within an hour you'll have a hundred people follow you.
It's walking around. Do you have to just walk around and follow every wild, fanatical, false teacher on TBN? You just go, Yeah, that's right. No, how do you know? Well, you know it's not true because you have the Bible.
But if you don't have the Bible, how do you know if this prophet is true? Because his word and his person is authenticated by miraculous healings. A hundred years, put them all together, that's what you've got.
But you've got three times. Dan and I have talked about this before. You remember those stereogram pictures? It looks like it's all just a mumbo-jumbo picture of colors. And if you stare through it, you pick a spot on the other side of the book and you imagine that you're looking at that spot, all of a sudden something starts developing.
You're like, Wow. It's not called a stereogram. Yes, it is. I looked it up. You will see three mountains. If you saw all the statistical bar graph code of data, of healings, you'll see a bunch right here with Moses and Joshua, a bunch right here around the time of the prophets, and a bunch right here around Joshua and...
Well, Jesus is Joshua. Get out of that one. Jesus and the apostles. You start looking at Scripture and you go, Wow. And we've got people telling us, Yeah, God is the same today, yesterday, and forever.
Well, it's true, but that has nothing to do with anything. Regarding healings, He's not going to be healing people in heaven. That verse doesn't apply to that. How do you know if they're true? By what they say.
In this particular case, in the Bible, by what God does through them. Third case, go to Acts chapter 14, verse 3. Moses, Elijah, and now Jesus in the apostles' time. Acts chapter 14, verse 3. Just so you can see it again.
It's very, very important that you understand the sign gifts, revelatory sign gifts. I believe in the Bible we're absolutely true. And they affirmed the messenger and they confirmed his message. Of course, now you're probably making a deduction.
If you already have the Bible and the way we confirm it now is through the Bible, why do we need those gifts? That's a very good question. We'll talk about that in a minute. Acts chapter 14, verse 3. Sign gifts confirm the message and the messenger.
You say we got it. I know you've got it, but we're going to make sure. So they remained for a long time. Talking about Paul and Barnabas there, speaking boldly for the Lord. Who bore witness to the word of His grace.
How do you bear witness to the word of His grace? Granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. Paul, Barnabas, we know you are apostles of God. Why? Because I have the epistles of Romans? No.
But because I see what you do and no one can do that. Anyone can lengthen a leg, but no one can take somebody who can't see because they don't have eyeballs and grant them sight. I have to just give you one little bit of information and then we'll get back to the text in 1 Corinthians.
Four places in the Bible we have spiritual gifts. Now if I were to describe spiritual gifts to you, I'd describe them in these three categories. It's a Baptistic church, so we'll take care of alliteration now.
Sign gifts, believe Him, He's a preacher, and believe what He says. Sign gifts. Tongues, miracles, healings. There's another kind of gift and that's called a speaking gift. It's a gift of teaching. And the last gift is a gift of serving.
Serve other people. Three generic gifts. Sign gifts, speaking gifts, serving gifts. In what book only do you see the sign gifts? Do you know they're not in Ephesians? They're not in Romans? They're not in any book including 1 Peter.
They're not there. Why aren't they there? Why only in 1 Corinthians? I have another question for you. Put your thinking caps on. Out of the four books written, Romans, 1 Peter, Ephesians, and 1 Corinthians, which one's written the earliest and which one's written the latest?
And does it matter to this particular context? If sign gifts point to the message and the messenger, but then all of a sudden we start getting the Bible put together because God is writing the Scriptures, that's a better way to say it, pretty soon there's no need for someone pointing to Sacramento when you're already in Sacramento.
When you drive up and over and you see the river there, you see the stadium for the River Cats, you're in Sacramento. It's 120 degrees. You go, I've arrived. Oh yeah, you know what, I've got to go back to that sign again because I just long for that sign.
You probably do, but the sign's in Bakersfield, so then that's even 130 degrees, that's hotter. Did you know, let's make it easy, did you know 1 Corinthians is the only place that sign gifts occur? And it was written early, 54 AD-ish.
As the canons put together, I have the dates if you want to know, Romans, 58 AD, Ephesians, 63 AD, 1 Peter, 64 AD. We've got the spiritual gifts of signs way up front, and as the canon is being put together, no more talk of sign gifts through people.
How can that be? The exact same time the canon is getting put together, the sign gifts diminish. That can be because that's the way God wants it. Don't have to point anymore to this man speaks the truth of God when you have the truth of God here.
Now let's go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and look at some of these sign gifts. And these sign gifts are miraculous. These sign gifts are true. Do I believe in the speaking of tongues? Yes, I do. First it has to be a biblical definition, and then I have to ask, is it for today?
But we'll get there in a bit. Nobody's sleeping. It's exciting. One of the reasons you know you're a Christian is because you're here to hear Bible exposition. I would hate that if I wasn't a Christian.
You know what I would want if I was not a Christian? I would like a nice little short service, and I would like to have the pastor just pat me on the forehead and say, gee, what a good boy are you. You're bad, but you're not as bad as other people.
And just sit through the service, have a little piece of bread and some juice, and go on your way. Good to go. But God has saved us. We want to know. God wants you to know what this is. And by the way, this is a practical truth, because you're not going to get caught up with all the shenanigans that are running around now.
You can say to yourself, why are these gifts given? Let me just telegraph something. If there's a healing crusade at the DCU Center, and they don't preach the Bible faithfully, what are the healing supposed to point to?
And I'll tell you what they point to. They point to the guy up in the pulpit. Isn't Benny Hinn great? Sorry. Healing points to the Word of God, and we say God is great and His Word is great, and Christ Jesus is the Lord.
He gives nine of these gifts in 1 Corinthians. Not because these are all the spiritual gifts, but because this is what they were really into, these high-powered miraculous gifts. And so Paul just says, of course these were given to you.
Now I want to explain what they are a little bit, because I think it's helpful. But don't forget the main point. Everybody gets a gift. Signed gifts aren't the most important thing. And you're spiritual, not if you speak in tongues, you're spiritual if you say, you know, Jesus Christ is Lord.
You tell other Christians that. Christ is my Lord. You tell unbelievers, Jesus is Lord. The first one is the utterance of wisdom. What is the utterance of wisdom? Chrysostom was asked that question. He said, I have no idea what it was.
The reason why it's so hard to figure out what some of these things are is they don't exist anymore. If the gift of teaching didn't exist today, you go, well, what's the gift of teaching? I don't know.
Maybe I'd know it if I saw it. Maybe I'd get it if I heard it. But if there's some miracles that were going on back in the old days in the Bible to confirm the message, and then they vanish, well, what is it?
You say, Pastor, that's just, you're just trying to get out of telling us what it is. I'll quote an expert, Robert Thomas, John MacArthur's theology teacher. This is, don't write this down, just listen.
A special ability to receive and pass on to others a disclosure of God's mysteries during the time period when he was granting direct revelations to members of the body of Christ. Some kind of wisdom divinely imparted.
It's a revelation from God through the person to other people. Thus saith the Lord. Has something to do with speaking because it's the utterance of wisdom. The next one is in the verse as well. Not just wisdom, but maybe just more knowledge.
Not how did this apply to a situation, but some knowledge from God. This isn't, you know, you're going to be healed of a particular kind of cancer. This is something different. Look at this word of knowledge found in verse 8.
Dr. Thomas said it is the special ability to grasp objective data that results from special revelation connected with the word of wisdom to systematize it. So here's what Thomas is saying. Again, it's all conjecture.
Every commentator has a conjecture. Something to do with a speaking gift. It's something for other people. Something given to you by God. And one person has divine wisdom and then he can apply that to a situation.
Another person has divine utterance who knows something from the person who's giving wisdom that he might help the church. And you say, how does that help me? Well, let's just keep going. Number 3, you'll get this one.
Number 3 found in verse 9. To another, different word there for another, faith by the same spirit. The gift of faith. How can this be a miraculous gift? Don't you have to have faith to go to heaven? Well, of course.
This isn't that kind of faith. This isn't saving faith. This isn't I have a knowledge and a sin and a trust in Christ Jesus my Lord. This is a different kind of faith. This is kind of George Mueller-like faith.
This is I can believe God in the face of a horrible obstacle. Jesus talked about a faith that can move mountains. Maybe that's related. Extraordinary belief. So much so, all these are related. Is that guy telling me what the Bible says?
Well, I think he must be. Because he's been believing that this ship isn't going to be wrecked. And it should have been wrecked. But it wasn't wrecked. Therefore, I believe what he says. See Acts 27. Okay, number 4, healing.
This one we do know about. Let me say this up front after I read the verse, verse 9. To another, gifts of healing by the one spirit. All right, listen up. Does God heal today? Absolutely, God heals today.
God heals today. And God heals through providence. God heals through medicine. God heals through a direct healing that he would do. And God heals through graduation. God heals through the atonement. Does God heal today?
Yes. If you have a child who's sick with an inoperable brain tumor. And you pray for that child. And they go in for surgery. And they say, do you know what? There's no longer a tumor there in the brain.
What do you say? Must have been the echinacea. Well, I hope you don't say that. I hope you say, God healed. We believe that God heals today. You should pray for healing. But this particular gift is something a person had.
Given by God so that everyone they went to was healed. To confirm what they said about God was true. And to prove they weren't some kind of snake oil salesman. Don't let people say, well you don't believe in the gift of healing.
Mean you don't believe in healing. You believe in healing if you believe in the Bible. If you believe in a God who can do anything he wants at any time. I just don't believe that anyone alive today. For the last 2 ,000 years almost.
Has had the gift of healing. Because if you have the gift of healing. You will be at children's hospital. Or you're the most uncaring, unloving, hateful person I've ever met in my life. I don't know why.
I do know why. Because they're greedy people. Why people go to the DCU Center for a healing service. And they don't stop by St. Vincent's first. And I'll tell you why they don't. Is because they're a fraud.
They want your money. And they're appealing to your general knowledge of the Bible. I believe in healings today. And if I am sick, I pray for healing. If you are sick, we pray that God might heal you.
I've met with people here. I won't say who it is, but years ago, 10 years ago. Pastor Mike, we come from kind of a charismatic background. Do you believe God can heal? Absolutely, I believe He can heal.
Well, our son had a particular tumor. We're going to go in for surgery. They checked just before they brought him into surgery. The tumor was gone. Do you believe that God did that? Absolutely, I believe He did that.
But I don't believe someone can be given a gift by the Spirit of God for healing and then go around lengthening legs. The gift of healing was to prove to you that I'm preaching the Bible. How do I prove to you that I'm preaching the Bible now?
Go to the DCU Center and have some people come walking up to the front? What a sham. I have to be very careful now because I can feel just the emotion in me. I've worked at children's hospitals before in Los Angeles when I sold operating room lasers and I would have the gown on and they would all call me doctor.
I kind of like that part. I usually wore a little Batman watch when I worked in children's hospital because they all thought I was a doctor and I was trying to comfort them. Without trying to play on your emotions, I just remember seeing kids going in for brain surgery and their parents and there's the red line and they can't come across and wheeling their child in and I think, anybody that has the gall to say, I've got the gift of healing and who isn't there right then is worse than a fraud.
They're a wolf. They're a wolf. And then people send their money to them. People try to defend them. When God gave the gift of healing, the first thing I can tell you is that the miracles that God did, the healings were spectacular.
Turn to chapter 3 of Acts. Let's take a look at this. People might say they can heal but nobody today can heal like this. God can directly do it without the secondary cause of a person but nobody can do this because if you could, you'd be at the hospital.
And by the way, you wouldn't be bald and eating glasses. If you're a false teacher, I can never figure that out. Physician, heal thyself. You can't even stop from overeating and I'm supposed to believe you.
Spectacular, Acts chapter 3. I'm going to read from the NAS. Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer. A certain man who had been lame from his mother's womb was being carried along, whom they used to set down every day at the gate of the temple, which is called Beautiful, in order to beg alms of those who were entering the temple.
And when he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he began asking to receive alms. Peter, along with John, fixed his gaze upon him and said, Look at us. He began to give them his attention, expecting to receive something from them.
Peter said, I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, walk. And seizing him by the right hand, he raised him up, and immediately his feet and his ankles were strengthened.
And with a leap he stood upright and began to walk. And he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. Right, kids? And he went walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God.
And they were taking note of him as being the one who used to sit at the gate Beautiful in the temple to beg alms. Not only were healings spectacular, turn to Acts chapter 4, they were undeniable. They were undeniable.
Where are those faith teachers today, the healers, at the DCU Center and any other venue? Why don't they call in the Mike Wallace people of the world? Why don't they call in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Boston Globe, and Channel 3?
Do we have a Channel 3 here? Well, of course we have Channel 3 because we have Channel 1 ,000 and everything in between, 1 to 1 ,000. Spectacular, undeniable. Show me a person that doesn't do things like this, I'll show you a false teacher.
Because they're trying to confirm their false message, Acts chapter 4. And when they had ordered them to go aside out of the council, they began to confer with one another, saying, what shall we do with these men?
For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem, and we can't deny it. The Bible miracles could have CNN there, and they all would have said, you know what?
It's true. The guy was paralyzed from birth, now he can walk. The guy was blind from birth, now he can walk. The guy had no arms, and now he has two arms. We're going to have to do something else if we want to get around this.
Maybe Satan made him do it. Maybe it's Beelzebub who did that. It's not the Holy Spirit. But they knew for sure that it was not just spectacular, but it was undeniable. Where are the cameras in the DCU Center?
Well, they're there now, but they're there in the back showing the piles of money these people take from the others. That's where they are. But they know the healings aren't true. Number three, and I've got to close.
We're not getting close enough today. I thought I was going to get through verse 11. That's okay. It's important. Healings from the Bible through a man were spectacular, they were undeniable, and they were not selectively done.
In other words, Bible healing was you could heal anyone and everyone. Go to chapter 5, please. We're going to have to wrap up with this. When I went to see Benny Hinn in Los Angeles 20-some years ago, we stood outside, and I watched the handlers come out picking certain people to bring them in.
I wasn't picked in because I was standing up, and I was in my right mind, and I had a functional body. But they would pick people, especially in wheelchairs, that could get up if they had to, especially with crutches who could throw them away if they had to.
They were nothing like this at all. Should have brought them all in. What a wolf. And all the more, Acts 5 .14, Believers in the Lord, multitudes of the men and women, were constantly added to their number to such an extent that they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on the cots and the pallets.
So when Peter came by, at least a shadow might fall on any one of them. And also the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with crutches only, with unclean spirits, and they were all being healed.
Friends, Bible miracles, healings are spectacular, undeniable, and without discrimination. Every single person. So I ask you, if that is the Bible mandate for healings, and you watch somebody today that can't do that, what should that tell you?
They don't have the gift of healings. The healings in the apostolic age never failed. All right. Well, how do we stop there? Be warm, be filled. All right, let's do this. The point of the passage is, everybody has a spiritual gift, and it's to extol Christ Jesus.
And here's what I'll say to end, I think this will be better. You say, well, you know what, I'm just not very smart. I'm just not well educated. I just don't talk very well. I just don't know what I can offer.
Don't forget that it's the God of the universe using weak people like us. And when you say, well, you know what, I just don't really think I can speak well, you know, Moses in chapter 4 of Exodus. Be careful.
God can use us. I read a little article about people that God used for his glory, and if God can use these people, he can use you. Don't have an excuse for not serving. Moses stuttered. David's armor didn't fit.
John Mark was rejected by Paul. Timothy had ulcers. This next one's a big one. Hosea's wife was a prostitute. David had an affair. Solomon was too rich. Abraham was too old. David was too young. Peter was afraid.
John was self-righteous. Naomi was a widow. Paul was a murderer. Jonah ran from God. Miriam was a gossip. Thomas doubted. Jeremiah was downcast. Elijah was burnt out. John the Baptist, I don't know about this one, was a loud mouth.
Martha was a worrywart. Mary was lazy. This is a funny one. You can tell when this was written. Samson had long hair. Noah got drunk. And the last one is maybe the best one where you say, I don't know what I have to offer God.
A, he saved you. B, he's given you a spiritual gift to serve other people and extol him. For all that he's done for you, that's the response. And God can use anyone because Lazarus was dead. Let's pray.
Thank you, Father, for our time. We just extol your holy name. Father, I do pray for those in the congregation who need to be healed. I pray that you would grant them that. And, Father, I pray that you would expose false healers as well.
And that we might be men and women of the book. That we might understand what you do and how you do it so we can extol Christ Jesus all the more in Jesus' name. Amen.