Ground Rules for Gifts

1 Corinthians 12 and the Problem of Spiritual Gifts

Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says, Jesus is accursed.

And no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. Pray with me. Father, we thank you so much for this passage today, what you have revealed to us that was intentioned for Corinth. Lord, we ask that your Spirit would convict this morning challenge, that you would teach us the beautiful oracles that you have.

Lord, that we would understand the different functions of the body, the spiritual gifts that you have blessed us with for edification, Lord, for support, for ushering in the Kingdom of God. Lord, we ask that you would help our hearts not disdain these gifts, but that we would understand them and that we would exercise them in proper order.

We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

So it has come about at last. We reach chapter 12, and I think today as you read these passages, if we're very honest with ourselves, if you've read and tried to figure out 1 Corinthians 12 and especially 14, I think sometimes that the reading can seem like trying to figure out Revelation disconnected from other pieces.

It is really the part where it gets very difficult to understand, and part of the reason for that is because we have skepticism, because we've seen tons and tons and tons of objectively horrible behavior regarding these topics in the church.

In many ways, I think that we would like to hear just what Paul says, that he doesn't want us to be ignorant or unknowing. He doesn't want us to be left in the dark on what's supposed to be going on in the church concerning spiritual gifts.

And so what has happened is, as is our custom, we have divided into, I think, two polar camps that like to shoot rockets off at each other and anathemize each other out of the kingdom. So we have camp number one that says everything that is a miraculous sign was wrapped up and it's hermetically sealed after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

The apostolic era ended and the miraculous gifts ceased on that day. And then we have another pole that says, are you even saved if you're not speaking in tongues? If you can't utter a prophecy, do you even know Jesus?

And so what abounds is a free-for-all where basically the charismatic craziness of our day, and if you ever want to look it up on YouTube, if you've not been in that environment before, it's a thing to behold.

But what you will see is a church that largely resembles probably what was going on on a Lord's Day in Corinth. And what they will say is you can't put God in a box, and what the cessationists will say is you guys are insane, we have the Word of God, and straw men, bad arguments abound in this space, and ignorance reigns.

And so our job as we go through these next two chapters is I'm going to grab the cessationists by their biblicism, okay, and I'm going to tell them, if you're going to hold to a doctrinal stance, you have to be able to reason it from Scripture, and the Scripture can't contradict you.

And to the charismatic crazies, I'm going to say, just read it. There's order. There is a way that we have to do things. And I think the place that we land in here is that we start to look with deep suspicion, and we don't look at the right thing.

Christ as the Ground Rule for the Gifts

And so Paul very helpfully gives us a focal point as we look at the ground rules for the gifts. It should be no surprise that the ground rule for the gifts is Jesus Christ. What do you do with Jesus Christ?

Do you have faith or not? Because if you do, then correction is going to come. He is going to discipline you as he disciplines a child. He's not going to abandon you. He's not going to give you to wrath.

He's not going to let you continue in grievous error without correction. But if you don't have faith in Christ, it's irrelevant what you believe about spiritual gifts because you don't have any, and you'll never get any.

And if you display seeming spiritual gifts, they came from another spiritual actor in the fray here, and he is constantly at war. See, the problem that we deal with today, and we are coming out of it, is that we are secular naturalists.

We think the communion is a mere remembrance. We think that the worship and the communion of the saints comes because, you know, I kind of like that guy. That's a cool guy to hang out with. And that there's not work of the Holy Spirit going on binding people together supernaturally.

We think that salvation, actually, we will confess with our mouths over and over again that Jesus did it all. He chose me. He elected me. But even among the Reformed, we will come back to, but I made a decision.

It was there. I was pretty good. I was born that way. And we functionally believe that because what we do is we take away the miraculous from that which should not be taken away. Communion is a miraculous binding of the saints.

It is the sinew of the Lord's gathering and how we are bound together in the body. It's through the Holy Spirit. It's not through your effort. It's not through your geniality. It's not through your kindness.

It's through the work of the Holy Spirit. Your salvation is not every result of your own works or your own ideas or your own beliefs. Your salvation was given to you through the grace of God. You did nothing to earn it.

And we see it today and we're going to look because there is a dividing line in here. But first we have to turn to Corinth. Confusion abounds. We know this for sure. We've seen it over and over. They are confused about everything.

They're confused about the law. They're confused about who's leading them. They're confused about what they're supposed to be doing. They're confused about communion. They're confused about how they're supposed to look or head covering.

They're confused about lawsuits. They're confused about idolatry. They are confused. And then they have written to Paul. We get this. Concerning, right? They have written him about spiritual gifts. They want to know what they're supposed to be doing here because what they're seeing is confusing.

People are speaking. Speaking over each other. People are speaking things that they don't understand. There is commotion going on. People are speaking in tongues and no one understands what they're saying.

There are prophecies that are being uttered. There are probably dozens and dozens of prophecies being uttered every time they gather together and nobody knows what's going on. And so they write the apostle and they say, what are we supposed to be doing here?

And Paul says, well, wait, I got more important. No, he doesn't do that. Paul says, I don't want you to be unknowing about this. This is important. And church, I hope that I gave a beginning to that this morning.

I think there are few things, there are few things in the life of the church that are more important than understanding how God is going to work through his people in the church. It's the whole reason we're here, is it not?

We worship God and through our worship, we want to do what he says. That is the guiding light for us. We want to do what he says. And so Corinth has to ask these questions. What's going on? See, Corinth is confused about what they're seeing, but they're also confused about who they're seeing.

See, they don't really know who spiritual people are because they're seeing a lot of lost people. They're seeing a lot of ideologies of the world coming in. Paul is talking to them. I have to talk to you as though in the flesh, not as spiritual people.

And it's important. It's a rebuke that we have to be able to be talked to as though we're spiritual people. Because spiritual people, as we're going to see today, have to behave a certain way and they will behave a certain way.

And we in the church today have made some things confusing that should not be confusing. There are some things that are quite simple. And one of those is actually determining over time who a spiritual person is.

Because you can't fake it for long. And as we start, ground rule number one is what Paul gives us in the absence is he wants you to be knowing, not unknowing. And so confusion is not the place where we are supposed to be concerning spiritual gifts.

We are not supposed to be confused. But let me ask, are we? Are we confused? If you look at our betters and thought leaders, you're going to see that not only are we confused about what position we stand on, then when we decide a position, we get dogmatic and we start throwing people out of the kingdom over minor differences in this arena.

And you'll see on Wednesday night, some of these differences are differences in the explanation of the same thing that we believe. Okay? There's a lot of room in between those polls and it's interesting.

But what we do know is that we are not supposed to be confused. The teaching of scripture is quite clear on what the Lord's day is supposed to be like. What's supposed to be going on here. The scripture is clear about hierarchy because hierarchy is not only natural, it's also prescribed.

We do not have an egalitarian free-for-all on the Lord's day because that betrays the order that God has made the world to work in. There is hierarchy. Fathers head their homes. Elders head the church.

Civil magistrates head the civil sphere. There are hierarchies in place. And so order is prescribed and it is desired. So the apostle is going to bring us clarity. And it's going to be difficult for us because just like the head coverings section, there's a couple of things going on.

Problem number one that's quite obvious is we are not in Corinth. We don't see exactly what's going on there. We can look and we're trying to see with clarity. There's archaeology involved. But really we're trying to listen to a conversation and we're seeing one side of it.

And what we do know about Corinth that's a little bit different from the other churches that Paul writes to is that the breadth of the error is very wide. It's not a specific thing like Judaizing. It's not a specific thing like Gnosticism.

It is all over the place. And so that makes it a little bit more difficult to piece together exactly what's going on. Now understand this. The church at Corinth knew exactly what Paul was talking about in these chapters.

Precisely what he was talking about. Because Paul writes to them clearly. And any difficulty we have is not the difficulty of scripture. It's the difficulty on us in interpreting its general equity and making sense of it.

Understand first that this passage as we get into 12 through 14 is not in isolation from the rest of the letter, but actually flows sequentially. And really it just makes sense that it would be here because we've made this move.

And if you remember at the end of chapter 11, there is a very mystical thing that's stated. I want to read it for you. A man must test himself and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For he who eats and drinks eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep. Now real question. Do we believe today that some are sick or even die because of blaspheming God by being like Judas at the Lord's Supper?

Or is this hermetically sealed for a time in Corinth? We give the warning. Is our warning giving lip service to scripture? Do we really think that God will kill you for taking communion in the wrong way?

Will we test God? Will we put him to the test to see if it's true? Do we really believe it? Because I think we do. I think even if we don't functionally believe it, we confessionally believe it. And we guard this table week by week by giving you warnings but also blessings.

And the warning is if you come with violence and hatred towards God in your heart that you know about, you know if you're of him or you're not, stop lying to yourself. You know. You know if you serve Christ.

And if you don't, you're coming up here to cloak yourself in a religious ritual and what you're doing is testing God just like Judas and you're saying, I dare you. I dare you. Do we believe that he will really strike people down sick and dying today?

Because understand there is nothing naturalistic about that. That is a covenantal curse that gets put on. And so we move into a section here where we're going to talk about things that are not explainable by human intellect and by human reason.

Human beings cannot definitionally conjure up spiritual gifts because they're spiritual. They are given by God. They are not your talents. They are not your personality traits. They are not things that you get to hocus pocus and pull up on a whim.

They are given for the edification of the church by his discretion. And so what we have done oftentimes in our stream is we have made spiritual gifts into one spiritual gift which is knowing doctrine.

And that's the truth. You know it's true. You feel it. There's nothing mystical about it. And our forefathers would look at us and they would not be happy. John Knox prophesied. Charles Spurgeon healed.

There is a history in our fathers that they didn't do that. God did that through them. If we believe that God still guards his table today, then we also have to believe that the gift of encouragement is not your talent.

It's not the way you're wired. It's a spiritual gift to make you love a brother and to want to give him words. And sometimes those words come from a feeling in your heart that you need to call or text and tell that person, hey I'm thinking of you today and I know that you're hurting and I want to give you encouragement to keep going on.

Friends, do you hear when I explain it? You didn't do that. That's the Holy Spirit giving insight to build up his people. And that's what he does. And every Christian in this room can tell me a story like that.

I know you can. We've all lived it. We all see it. And the fact of the matter is is that we have no reason and I think by the end of this we'll have no excuse to be ignorant about the gifts. So here we go.

Idols, Discernment, and the Old Testament Witness

You know that when you were pagans, you were being led astray to the mute idols, however you were led. This verse actually gives scholars fits. There's some grammatical stuff going on in it and there is, not surprisingly, camps between cessationists and continuationists.

Look, I don't get into much of the reading of charismatics. It's pretty hard to find it. They actually don't write a whole lot. So the thing gets into cessationists and continuationists. I'll define that later.

I don't want to do it right now. But here's the thing. There is a lot of argument about this word, however you were led. And one side wants to say you were led into this idolatry by the signs and wonders you saw.

But then I think the better reading of it is that however you were led to those idols, you should not go back to them. That's the obvious clear meaning of this text, is that everything that you used to have is worthless compared to what you have in Christ.

So this mute idols, we know it from the Old Testament. It's not saying that the idols didn't give people anything. It's always in comparison. See what he does in verse 3. He's talking about the dividing line is people who say Jesus is Lord versus people who say Jesus is cursed.

And there's really nowhere in between. Because if Jesus is Lord, you confess him with your mouth and you do what he says. But if he's cursed, then you don't listen to him even if you say you do. You're even worse when you say you do and you disobey him because you're doing the work of division and the work of the enemy.

So remember this. When we are dividing, it seems weird, doesn't it? Now concerning spiritual gifts, I don't want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were pagans, you were being led astray to the mute idols however you were led.

There is a theme of wisdom that Paul is going to give. And wisdom is crucial for us in chapters 12 through 14. It's absolutely essential. If you don't have wisdom, we'll be able to make no sense of what's going on.

We will miss it. And so we must pray for wisdom. And friends, if you pray for wisdom, he's going to give it to you. He's going to give you wisdom. He wants us to pray for wisdom. And so what's going on?

Remember in Corinth, what's going on and where this comes about is there is a problem. And all of these sins that we've talked about give rise to what's going on on the Lord's day. And that is this. The climax of chapters 12 through 14 is chapter 13 that gets read out of context at weddings all the time.

But the reality of the situation is it doesn't matter how gifted you are if you don't love your brother. If the church is not characterized, defined by love for one another, then what we're doing here is just banging gongs and making noise.

All of my preaching is a hot garbage if we don't love one another. It doesn't matter. If the words don't lead to actions, if what you believe doesn't lead to practice, it doesn't matter. You're not a Christian in the confines of your brain.

God does not merely save your intellect. God saves you. He saves you. Your thoughts will be different. Your words will be different and your actions will be different. Now what was going on is that there is a lot of showboating going on and you would see it, right?

It's like if somebody gives a prophecy and it's specific and then a week later that thing comes to pass, what's going to happen with that person that gave the prophecy? Aren't you going to be coming and asking them about the difficult things in your life?

Of course you are. And what happens is in typical broken human church fashion is when someone is seeming to get a gift that rises them above, they become super Christians. And in our day in the reform camp, the super Christians are without a doubt doctrinally sound preachers.

I am the superest Christian in this room in the reformed world, and that is hogwash. We don't need a lot of that. We need a lot of everything. It's a stupid way to do business, but that's what Corinth is doing.

And so these two types of gifts start being elevated and they obviously become elevated because when someone is able to speak in tongues, it looks like spiritual. Look at that. I don't even understand how they're doing that.

Whoa. Did you hear that prophecy that she just fired off and it happened? She must be doing something right. She's the godliest one in here. And what Paul is going to tell them is you guys have no discernment.

You don't love each other and you are using the spiritual gifts to blaspheme God because you don't love one another. Much like when you take communion and you don't love the brothers and you don't love the one who's the founder of the feast.

Hey, will you come over to my dinner? And you do me dishonor if you hate me when you come and eat bread with me. It's not right. It shouldn't be done. So see the comparison here. It's not that the idols didn't give anything.

And what Paul is going to tell them is, remember you went into this temple and you saw some stuff. Just like the ancient Hebrews, it wasn't that like we think of this, guys, we miss it. And we think, well, why were they worshiping these rocks and these idols, like these statues?

It's because the statues were doing stuff. There were supernatural things. The prophets of Baal were not retards who were standing there going, well, I've never seen it before, but maybe God's going to catch this altar on fire.

No, that's not what happened. They had seen stuff before and they thought that Baal was going to light the altar on fire, but he was restrained by God. And that's what's going on in this passage. It's not that there's not other gods, lowercase g.

It is that God has the power to bind them and mute them and they can't do anything unless he lets them off the leash. See the prophets of Baal were very concerned when the altar didn't catch on fire. They were surprised and they thought maybe we've been disobedient.

And so they started bloodletting and cutting themselves and crying out harder. What they did was they worshiped harder, but they were worshiping a mute idol. And then remember what Elijah did, dump water on it, douse it with water because Elijah knew that he served the God of gods, the one true God.

And so there is a reminder, hey, Corinth, you saw things. You've been in that temple. You've seen the incense and the smoke. You've seen this pantheon of gods that are the gods of the people who are the powerful empire in this world.

It seems like Rome has the favor of the gods, does it not? As they march across the world and with an iron fist hold every province in their wealth and their splendor and their terror. Every man's thought about Rome this week, right?

We know the statistics. If you hadn't thought about Rome, you will now. And here's the deal with Rome. We think about it a lot because it was glorious. Our civilization owes much to Rome. It was a glorious thing.

There was stuff happening, but it was nothing compared, nothing compared to what God would do. So there's need for discernment. Idols and spirits give off signs and wonders. They can do that. And so there needs to be discernment.

When you see things that are not able to be explained by nature, we have to have wisdom. We have to be able to test the spirits. In fact, that is a spiritual gift. And we in the cessationist church do not scoff at that gift very much.

How often have you heard it said, you must test the spirits? Well, why if they're not ever doing anything that we should test? You see how these things work together. So there is a group here, the Gentiles, and they are being led around and we can see it, that there's lofty arguments being made for how we can eat the meat of the idols because the idol is really nothing.

And it seems like Paul's echoing that here, except he's not. What he's really saying is, Jesus is not mute and you have to follow him. And these arguments were made all over the Old Testament. See, the softest arguments of the people who wanted to lead their brother astray in their freedom by eating the meat offered to idols in the temple, they go contra what the church had decided, but also contra the Old Testament.

Psalm 115 .5, speaking of idols, they have mouths, but they do not speak. They have eyes, but they do not see. Does that mean that they never said anything or never saw anything? Do you not think that there was demonic possession where words were being spoken?

I mean, we see it with which vendor, right? We see examples of how spirits do talk to people in the Old Testament. So is it true that they can't say anything, that they can't see? Yeah, it is true because they are on the leash.

Isaiah 46 .7, they carry it upon the shoulder and bear it. They set it in its place and it stands there. It does not move from its place. Though when they cry to it, it cannot answer. It cannot save him from his distress.

Do you realize that that is God making fun of the idols? He is exposing them to derision and scoffing. Look at that thing everybody's worshiping that you had to carry and put on its place. What happens if you carry the living God?

No, you can't carry him, right? God is not to be carried around. Jeremiah writes, like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they, and they cannot speak. They must be carried because they cannot take a step.

Do not fear them, for they can do no harm, nor can they do any good. And probably the passage that Paul was quoting, Habakkuk 2 .18, what prophet is the graven image when its maker has engraved it? Or a molten image, a teacher of lies.

So if it teaches lies, but it can't speak. Do you see what's going on here? It's about the restraining power of God over these other spirits that indwell in these idols. And they led the nations astray.

The people in Canaan were not worshiping rocks, they were worshiping demons. But the demons would focal point on these statues. But they can only speak if the Lord allowed them to speak. Habakkuk goes on, for its maker trusts in his own making when he fashions speechless idols.

And yet over and over and over and over again, the people of God are led astray to idols. Are we led astray to idols today? I mean to ask the questions to answer it. Is it not? And we have to identify.

And we have people who in their blasphemy will tell you the greatest idol of the day, I heard it this week, your family. I heard it from a disgraced gay pastor this week. Literally gay. He fooled thousands and thousands of Christians while saying that he's a homosexual that doesn't practice.

And we sit here and we're the smartest people of all time. No, it's crazy. But the idols that we have are the idols where we set ourselves up and we don't listen to God. And we don't care about what our father said, because hey, there's a commandment about that, right?

But that only really applies to not disobeying when you're a child. But no, we dishonor our fathers. We don't listen to the forefathers. We think we're the smartest people ever. We think everything has an empirical explanation, including communion.

And so we set up an idol of God being what we believe he is in our mind. And he's confined there. And so why are we surprised when our Christianity, where we're worshiping God who only exists in our mind, doesn't result in any action?

He can't result in any action. He's a figment of your imagination when you worship idols. But see, God is not the God merely of your mind. He's not in a prison cell. God is ordering and using the world right now to his purposes.

And he is raising up and knocking down people. And he is raising up and knocking down nations, just like he always did. And he is the power. When your kids come to faith in him, that's not because of your awesome work.

That's because of his awesome spirit. And he uses the means of you being obedient. And so you should. See, idols are seductive. We wouldn't have to be warned about it if we didn't want to follow them in the first place.

They offer us something that we understand. And you guys understand this, right? We like things that we know about. If you just take a check, take an audit of your conversations, you feel uncomfortable when the conversation turns to something you don't know very much about.

And you feel very comfortable when conversations turn to things that you know a lot about. We don't like being out of control. We do not like being pushed into areas where we really don't know the answer.

And so idols are seductive because idols are usually quite simplistic. If you will do this for me, I will give you this. And God doesn't work that way. God says, I own you. And everything you do, whether good or bad, is being used for my purpose.

And so what you're to do is to believe in a God that you can't see and to follow his commands. And his commands, while simple, are also expounded in scripture. And we can study scripture for years and years and years and years and years and get nowhere closer to the bottom.

It's an infinite well, as are the mysteries of God. So now we round it into the close. There is a dividing line here. And this is where I really want to challenge us. As we're going to look at the manifestations of these spiritual gifts, particularly prophecy and tongues in the church at Corinth, there is a dividing line.

There is a thing that Paul tells them. And this works for us today when it's properly understood. Very critical that we get this right. He says, Therefore, I make known to you. Therefore, why? What is he saying?

I want you to not be ignorant and I don't want you to be led astray to idols, however you used to be. And so because of that, because I don't want you to be ignorant and because I don't want you to be led astray.

Therefore, remember this. Remember this. 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. This is discernment in action. When we get to defining, describing and interpreting spiritual gifts, the dividing line is this.

Who is this building up? Who is this building up? See, not everyone is going to make it easy for us and come in and say Jesus is cursed. It doesn't take very much discernment for us, does it? Jesus is cursed and we're like, well, you're not a Christian.

But a lot of not Christians like to use the Bible to beat us over the head with. I don't believe anything it says. It's a meme, right? I don't believe anything it says, but now I'm going to hold you to everything it says.

In the church, we're going to have people who come in. We are promised this in every New Testament book. It's constantly the case that wolves and bad men are going to come into the church and they're going to try to lead astray people with their lies.

We have to have discernment because they usually don't come in denying the Trinity. They usually come in with their divisive spirit and their endless quarrels and genealogies and they try to break up the love and they try to make us question what God said.

But in the church at Corinth and today, there are some that literally say Jesus is cursed and we still think we have to promote them. The Judaizers literally say that Christ is cursed. They say he's a wizard who's burning in hell in excrement.

Christ be cursed. That is Judaism. It was in Corinth. So, step one, don't listen to the people who literally say Jesus is cursed, okay? Can we get there? Are we doing that okay in the church today? The answer is no.

We're not doing okay with that, okay? We're so simple-minded in our modern intellect that we can't take this verse when someone is actually saying with their mouth Jesus is cursed and we're pretty much the same faith.

And I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, okay? It's the way it is. But some people are much more subtle than that and that's why we're giving, we're getting a teaching here that that which does not proceed from faith is lawless, okay?

So, Jesus is cursed. If they literally say it, don't listen to them. If they are more subtle than that, then we have to use some diagnostics. The forces of darkness, friends, can dress as angels of light.

That's why Paul says that even if a spirit that looks like it's an angel of light gives you a doctrine other than this, they are anathema, cursed. Just like someone who says Jesus is anathema. So, if you twist scripture, you're cursed and you shouldn't be listened to.

The dividing line is a simple declaration that you can say with your mouth, but you have to act out. And that declaration is, Jesus is Lord. You didn't say that. You didn't come to that knowledge on your own because the human heart thinks you are Lord.

And Lord is the one who's in charge. You obey the Lord. He is in complete control of his people. And so, if he is Lord, then you will definitionally do what he says. And if you don't do what he says, it doesn't matter what you say you are, you're not that.

Make sense? Romans 10, 9. If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Why does he link those two things? The reason why is because if Jesus raised from the dead, he is a very fearsome being indeed, is he not?

He is God. Can you raise yourself from the dead? Do you have any idea of how you might go about doing that? We can't prevent ourselves from getting the flu, okay? It hits us, we're down for a week, it's awful.

Jesus raised from the dead and he's Lord. So if you confess that he's Lord and you believe that he raised from the dead because these two things are linked together, then you are on the right side. So how do we root out enemies by this statement?

Jesus gives us diagnostics and we're going to look through 1 John. First, John 13, when he had washed their feet and taken his garments and reclined at the table again, he said to them, do you know what I have done to you?

You call me teacher and Lord and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the teacher, wash your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet, for I gave you an example that you should also do as I did to you.

Very simply put, if you claim Jesus is Lord, you serve his people. You love his people and you serve them because he gave it as an example. He is our teacher and he is our Lord and if you claim for him to be your Lord, then you follow in his example.