Where Have All the Spiritual Gifts Gone?

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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All right, let's pray. Lord Jesus Christ, help us to grow in the knowledge of your dear

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Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to remain firm in our confession of His blessed

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Word. Give us the love to be of one mind, to serve one another in humility in Christ.

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Then we will not be afraid of that which is disagreeable, nor of the rage of the arsonist Satan, whose torch is almost extinguished.

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Dear Father, guard us so that his craftiness may not take the place of our pure faith. Grant that our cross and sufferings may lead to a blessed and sure hope of the coming of our

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Savior Jesus Christ, for whom we wait daily. Amen. So before we officially get into our one day little mini lesson on the gifts of the

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Spirit, were there any questions that cropped up as a result of the sermon? The gospel text is one of those ones where you can kind of turn it.

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It's like a diamond. It has many facets that you can kind of work with and themes that are being drawn upon from the

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Old Testament. Any thoughts, feelings, questions regarding that? No?

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So I thoroughly confused everyone. That's how I'll interpret that. Very good. All right, we are going to be in 1

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Corinthians 12, 13, and 14. We're going to take a look at this foundational text as it relates to the gifts of the

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Spirit. Have any of you ever had a friend who is in the Charismatic or the

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Pentecostal movements? Have any of you spent time in the Charismatic or Pentecostal movements?

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No, that's a little different. There may be Charismatics in the Baptist Church, but the Charismatic, the

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Baptists as a whole are not officially Charismatic. So you can be a

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Baptist and not be a Charismatic, and you can be a Charismatic and still be a Baptist. It's kind of a weird thing.

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The Charismatic theology transcends many denominations. In fact, within Lutheranism, there are so -called

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Lutheran renewal churches that are into the so -called gifts of the Spirit. I say so -called because they have a very bad doctrine in theology regarding the gifts of the

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Spirit. But if you know anybody in the Charismatic movement, according to them, what is the absolute evidence that you have been baptized in the

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Holy Spirit? According to them, what is necessary to be evident in your life that you're baptized in the

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Holy Spirit? Speaking in tongues. Right. It's speaking in tongues.

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So here's the idea then, is that they teach that there is a second baptism, and it's the baptism of the

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Holy Spirit. It doesn't involve water. And the evidence that you have been baptized in the

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Holy Spirit is that you speak in tongues. Now, I hate to say this. If you've ever spent time in the

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Charismatic churches, or you've watched TBN, or any Charismatic preacher, oftentimes if you hear them manifesting tongues, it sounds like complete gibberish.

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And the reason why it sounds like complete gibberish is because it's complete gibberish.

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And it kind of goes, you know, she drove a Hyundai, and I wish

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I bought a Honda. You know, what? It's just, these are not words in any sense of the word.

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So what we're going to do is, we're going to take a look at what Scripture reveals regarding the gifts of the

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Spirit, and we're going to note something here. And that is that this particular list, and these particular manifestations of the

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Spirit, only show up in one epistle. And this epistle happens to be the earliest one.

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Anyone know when 1 Corinthians was written? Yes. Long ago.

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July. I like this answer. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Paul wrote 1

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Corinthians. So 1 Corinthians is written between 50 and 52

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AD. We're talking roughly 20 years after Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension.

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That's the time frame. And during this time, the New Testament is not completed, especially if this is, many scholars will argue that this is one of the oldest books in the

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New Testament. I think Mark was written very, very early. Matthew, probably very early.

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Luke has not been written at this point. And Luke will be writing

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Luke and the book of Acts later than this. And so the

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New Testament is not finished. Now you're going to note here at Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, Oslo, Minnesota, that we follow a lectionary.

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And that in our lectionary, we are in the New Testament every single week.

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You get an Old Testament reading, you get an epistle text, you get a gospel text. But what happens if the

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Bible isn't done yet? How are you hearing

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God's word? Well, you're only hearing the

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Old Testament. As Christians, is the Old Testament sufficient as far as discipleship in Christ?

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It's not. It's not a complete work. It's pointing to Christ. He's come already. But at this point, the

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New Testament is being written. So how then, as a Christian, are you going to be discipled in the full doctrines of Christ if you don't have a completed

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New Testament? Well, you need the apostles. But the apostles, there's only 12 of these guys.

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And they write letters, but that's the New Testament. So what the apostles were able to do, and you can see this in the book of Acts, is that they would lay hands on people and impart to them a particular set of spiritual gifts, which then when you read in Scripture and piece it together with a little bit of data from something like the didache, that the people who operated in these gifts that are mentioned here in 1

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Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, and we'll note that chapter 13 anticipates the disappearance of these gifts, these particular ones, that these were the gifts then that God gave so that the church can be edified and built up in the intermediary period before the

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New Testament is finished. And once the New Testament finished, and it was done, the apostles ran their course, and they died or were martyred, then what ends up happening is that we see in church history these particular gifts drop off, disappear.

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Yeah, you can find it online. The didache, which means the 12, is a document that some scholars actually argue was written by Matthew.

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I don't know if that's true or not, because we don't know who the author is. But in the didache, it gives instructions to Christian churches regarding practice, baptism, and other things.

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And it actually talks about those who had these gifts and how to spot the false ones.

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The false ones, you can always spot the false ones. According to the didache, they stay longer than three days, and they ask for money.

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You can tell they're false. It's like, okay. But so the idea then is that the didache actually gives us a picture of what the church looks like while we're operating.

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So then what happens then, in these churches without the New Testament, God has given gifts of the ability to speak prophetically, of words of knowledge and things like this, and everything is for the building up of the body of Christ.

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And then with the completion of the New Testament, these things start to drop off. And not only did they drop off, they totally disappeared out of the church.

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And then you have to put the word until, in air quotes, until the Azusa Street revival in the early part of the 20th century.

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And their claim was, with the Pentecostals, that the Pentecostal movement was a restoration.

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God was restoring these gifts to the church. But already we have a problem, and that is that the

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Pentecostals overtly claim that the evidence that you have received the baptism of the

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Holy Spirit is that you speak in tongues, which then creates the expectation that tongues is a gift that everybody should have.

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How are y 'all doing on that, by the way? Yeah. Now, according to Peter on the day of Pentecost, where do we as Christians receive the

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Holy Spirit? Baptism. Baptism. So Peter says, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the

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Spirit and the promises for you and for your children. Baptism is for our children.

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So is there such thing as a Christian who does not have the

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Holy Spirit if they're baptized? No. I mean, that's like saying, I believe in sharks with no teeth.

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You know, great white sharks with no teeth, they will gum their prey to death.

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This doesn't make any sense. Shark teeth and great white sharks go together.

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Baptism of the Holy Spirit goes together. This is one of the reasons why when we talked about Christ's baptism, I emphasized the fact that where did

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Jesus have the Holy Spirit descend upon Him? Water baptism. Plain and simple.

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So this is how Scripture works. So as we work our way through this, we're going to note what Scripture is saying and take a look at the thrust of Paul's arguments, because when you understand this text, this whole section, you'll see that the arguments that Charismatics make run against the grain of what these texts are actually saying.

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So if you know a little bit about how 1 Corinthians is organized, 1 Corinthians is one of these epistles, letters, that is, well, there's a lot of correctives in it.

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Corinth was a really messed up church. They had some strange things going on. You had people getting drunk on the communion wine and forbidding the poor from actually having the

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Lord's Supper, which was bizarre. You had a guy who was sleeping with his father's wife and they were thinking that was a good thing.

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That's really messed up. You had people who were hurting each other's consciences because they were eating food sacrificed to idols with no regard to how that might offend or create confusion with their

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Christian brothers and sisters. And we can tell then from this section that there was a misuse of the valid gifts that God had given.

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And so we're going to take a look at the corrective then that Paul gives and watch the thrust of the argument.

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And so this is the first part of our epistle text from today, 1 Corinthians 12, now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers,

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I don't want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.

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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

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Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. Now, a little bit of a note here. This is most certainly true.

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Nobody can confess that Christ is Lord. And by saying he's Lord, it's more than saying he's my master. Lord is a term referring to the deity of Christ, who he is, that he's the son of God.

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Think of the person who first confessed Christ to be the son of the living God and to be

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Lord. It was Peter in his great confession. And so on the one hand, as soon as Peter says you are the

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Christ, the son of the living God, Jesus says to Peter, blessed are you, Peter, for flesh and blood hasn't revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven and on this rock

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I'll build my church. And then in the next breath, Jesus says to Peter, get behind me,

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Satan. So you kind of get how this works. You know, you get the idea. Now there are varieties of gifts and watch how this argument works.

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There are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit. There are varieties of service, but the same

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Lord. There are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.

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To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.

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So when God gives gifts, it is for the common good of the church, not the common good of the world out there.

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It's for the building up of the body of Christ that people have gifts from the Holy Spirit.

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It is not for for you to build up the common good within the greater community of Oslo and Alvarado.

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Those are skill sets that you have in vocation. Those are not gifts of the spirit for to one is given through the spirit, the utterance of wisdom 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.

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And we're going to have to do a little bit of work here in just a second, but let me read this out to another the interpretation of tongues.

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So you notice in the list that that God can give you a miraculous ability to speak a language you don't know.

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But if he gives you that gift, he may not give you the gift of understanding and interpreting what you just said.

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So if the Holy Spirit gave you the ability to proclaim the wonders of Christ in Swahili, you may be speaking perfect Swahili in telling people about Jesus, but your mind does not know what your lips are speaking unless you have the gift of interpretation.

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And the gift of interpretation could be a spiritual gift or if you just naturally know Swahili. So somebody knowing

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Swahili would know this. Now how do I know this? Because one of the things that the Charismatics and the Pentecostals do is they try to make the claim that the reason why everybody can have the gift of tongues is because they say that there are different kinds of tongues.

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There's the natural ability to speak a different language and then there's an ability to speak the language of heaven or the angels.

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And so they'll say that there's different types and so that's why everybody can have the gift of tongues. But that's not what scripture says and I'm going to show you this in our cross reference.

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In the book of Acts chapter... hang on a second here... I'm going to duplicate this tab.

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Acts chapter 2 which is the day of Pentecost where the gift of tongues first shows up.

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Here's what it says. When the day of Pentecost arrived, chapter 2, 1, they were all together in one place.

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I love the other translations that say that they were in one accord which means they were driving a Honda not a

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Toyota. But anyway don't look at me like that Becky. Okay I'll just focus on the text back now.

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Okay so suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind. It filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues as a fire appeared on them and rested on each one of them and they were all filled with the spirit and began to speak in other.

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And here's our word. I'll show it to you on the screen. Glossos is the word and this is if you've ever heard of the word glossolea and it literally just means tongues.

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But have any of you ever written a letter or a term paper or some you've written some prose and you note that it's good form to use different words for the same things.

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So you pull out that dinosaur book called a thesaurus, right, and you start looking for phenonyms.

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And so you find different words that mean the same thing because the idea here is if you keep using the same word over and over and over and over and over again that kind of creates redundancy.

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Well God the Holy Spirit uses the same technique where he uses different words to describe the same thing.

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So tongues. They began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance.

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Now they were dwelling in Jerusalem. Jews devout men from every nation under heaven and at this sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak and watch how this works.

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In his own and this is the word for language and it's dialectos.

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Dialectos. And notice it's a synonym for tongues. So dialect if you've ever heard the word dialect that's a greek word that we've pulled into english and so they heard people speaking in other languages, other dialectos.

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So tongues and human languages are synonymous. They're one in the same. That's what the gift is.

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In fact we'll see then as we're working our way through this text that God prophesied in the book of Isaiah chapter 28 about the gift of tongues and it was a sign, a particular sign of judgment for those who wouldn't believe who were

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Jews. That's kind of a fascinating thing. So they were bewildered. They were hearing people speak in their own language.

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They were amazed and astonished saying are not these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we're hearing each of us in his own native language

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Parthenians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phyria, Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya.

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You know now we know all the different languages that were being spoken where they were from. So if you have any doubt tongues is a supernatural ability to speak a human language you ain't ever been taught.

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And like I said you may not know what you're saying though. All right so we've worked that out and there's an interpretation verse 11.

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So all of these gifts are empowered by one in the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

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So God gives various gifts. He decides who gets what and now comes like the big metaphor.

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For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body though many are one so it is with Christ.

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For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves are free.

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All were made to drink of the one spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

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If the foot should say because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body that would not make it any less a part of the body.

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And if the ear should say because I'm not an eye I don't belong to the body that would not make it any less a part of the body.

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If the whole body were an eye where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear where would the sense of smell be?

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All right and you kind of get the idea. I mean those of us who have children when they were tiny little babies when they were first born they come out and mom's being tended to and they put the baby under the french fry lights and the first thing they do is they run an

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Apgar test on the baby right? And so we're checking to see that there's 10 fingers and 10 toes to make sure the feet the joints and the ankles are working properly.

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They move their legs their arms and they clean the nose out with that bulb sucker thing and it's just all kind of fascinating and if a baby came out and the baby was all ears it would be like an episode of the twilight zone right?

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The hospital staff would go like this and everyone's like yeah and you see the terror and everyone said this is this is not a healthy child it's only ears.

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Shh it's listening to us right? Yeah you know this is the stuff that horror movies are made of.

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So that's you'll note then the whole thrust of Paul's argument is varieties of gifts are necessary for us to be a body and the gifts are given for the building up of the body.

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We should not expect that everybody has the same gift that doesn't make any sense.

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So if the whole body were an eye where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear where would the sense of smell be?

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But as it is God arranged the members in the body each one of them as he chose.

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If all were a single member where would the body be? So as it is there are many parts yet one body.

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The eye cannot say to the hand I have no need of you nor the head to the feet well I have no need of you.

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On the contrary the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. On those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty which our more presentable parts do not require.

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But God has so composed the body giving greater honor to the part that lacked it that there may be no division in the body but that the members may have the same care for one another.

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If one member suffers all suffer together. If one member is honored all rejoice together.