Part 2 - The Spiritual Gifts (Temporary vs Permanent) Lesson #10 Fundamentals of the Faith

So this is part 2 of lesson number 10 on the spiritual gifts.

So last week if you remember we covered the temporary gifts and the temporary gifts were miracles, healings, tongues and interpretation of tongues.

I said usually the subject of tongues dominates that discussion and we did spend a fair amount of time on it.

So I don't plan on bringing it up again because now we're moving into the permanent gifts.

So if you look on the second page, this is section C understanding the gifts, permanent gifts.

But again, if you want to bring something up from last week, feel free, but I'm just saying

I don't plan on bringing it up again, but that, you know, everything's subject to change too. So, all right.

Understanding the gifts. So these are the permanent gifts. It says the Holy Spirit gave gifts for the building up of the church.

These were prevalent in the early church and are still in the church today.

And what are they? Prophecy, teaching, faith, wisdom, knowledge, discernment, mercy, exhortation, giving administration and leadership helps and service.

So we believe, or at least this is what John MacArthur and the people from grace community church, master seminary, whoever put this out, uh, they believe these are the permanent gifts.

Chris, do you understand there's going to be some disagreement on this? This is one of those topics that, uh, good people can disagree on.

And, uh, well, I'm sure we'll run into that a little bit. Uh, Marcus, I just would like to make comment on the term permanent because like yesterday at men's breakfast, we were talking about eternal things, temporary things, and there is that verse that says, you know, if there's this, it will cease.

Um, so these spiritual gifts, uh, they will cease when, you know, at the end of the millennium, at least don't you agree?

Yeah. Well, what you're referring to is first Corinthians 13. It says prophecy will fail and tongues will cease.

So everybody agrees that at least some of the spiritual gifts at some point will cease.

The question is when I'm of the view that tongues and healing and miracles ceased at the end of the first century, most his historic evangelicalism.

That was the position up until 1901, 1905. And now the charismatic movement has really just swept through every denomination and really dominates publishing and Christian television today and radio.

So a lot of people now view, uh, the, the cessation of the gifts. They say, well, that's when

Jesus comes, you know, because it says when the perfect comes, that's when they'll cease.

Well, I think the perfect is the new Testament revelation of Jesus Christ. So the perfect came in the first century, the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

So I believe those things ceased by the end of the first century. And again, that was the historic Protestant evangelical position up until the 20th century.

But this is what people disagree on. You know, what's the perfect that has come.

It could, it could be a reference to the return of Christ. There's certainly, there will be no need for spiritual gifts in eternity and the new heaven and the new earth.

Um, Larry, well, I just wanted to say that there's one thing that's not listed here and it's not a gift, but it's used, uh, frequently it's criticism.

Yeah, that's a gift. It's a gift. Oh, that's just a different.

Yeah. As long as you're bringing it right. Well, I think a lot of people would view the gift of criticism as number six, the gift of discernment.

You know, you've heard of discernment ministries, right? If you're on, if you ever go on YouTube and watch any

Christian content, you're probably aware of discernment ministries. And these are men.

And I would include myself in that group that yeah, you, the scripture says to test all things and hold fast to that, which is good.

Uh, first Thessalonians five 21, uh, first John four, one test the spirits to see whether or not they are of God.

So when you know, you have someone preaching something that's wrong, it's incumbent upon a

Bible teacher to warn the flock and say, Hey, that's not right. Well, you're just being critical.

You're just criticized. You're just tearing. Uh, have you, have you read the Bible? That's my response.

Read the epistles. Uh, first Corinthians is a book where the apostle Paul, you know, you say, well,

Paul is spending 15 chapters criticizing the Corinthian church. Well, that's not, he's not criticizing the church.

He's trying to help the church. He's trying to correct the church. He's trying to protect the flock.

He's trying to teach sound doctrine, but yeah, he spends 15 chapters talking about what's wrong, sprinkling in there, and what's good and what's holy.

And then the last chapter of first Corinthians, he greets, that was typically Paul's method.

He would greet his friends and tell people what a good job they were doing at the very end. But, but yeah, that's the gift.

Well, let's just skip to the gift of discernment. Look at number six. Discernment is the ability to tell which things are from the spirit and which are not distinguishing truth from error.

This gift gives, uh, as protection for the church or this gift serves, excuse me, as protection for the church.

So sometimes there's a fine line, it seems between, uh, criticizing and just, you know, rebuking, but, uh, you know, it's, it's depending on how it's perceived,

I suppose, Marcus. Well, all scripture is given for doctrine, which most people say is boring for correction, which nobody likes to have happen criticism and for instruction and righteousness is get up and get going and do something.

It's all, you know, a lot of people are resistant to it, right?

Yeah. Doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction, righteousness. Some people would argue three out of four are negative or doctrine divides, you know, uh, rebuke.

Nobody likes to be rebuked. Nobody likes to be corrected. The instruction is last that's after you do all the other stuff.

But again, that's, that's something that's, it's all about perception. Really. Uh, if you are part of a church where that never happens and then you listen to me for an hour, you're going to be like,

Whoa, what's this? But like, but if you read the Bible and you actually studied the epistles, like this is just what ministry is, that's just part of it.

So Larry, I think it's how you discern or how you, you know, like, you don't want to tear somebody down to lift yourself up.

You know, I remember Riddle used the illustration for a fellowship meals that they used to have that there was a couple of ladies that just love doing it.

But then there were some other folks that didn't like how they did it and they told them how they didn't, you know, they kept telling them.

And so then they quit. Yeah. They wouldn't do it anymore. And they just quit doing it.

Right. Because, you know, so that, I mean, either way, how, like you said, how you perceive what's being said, but you got to be careful.

Right. Yeah. I mean, that sounds more like criticism, but teaching sound doctrine, correcting error shouldn't be perceived as criticism.

Yeah. Yeah. No, the SBA, the speaker is pretty good.

There's this guy. Marcus is, what's his name? Yeah. But like, well,

I won't mention the name, but just one last comment on the discernment thing. Like, obviously if somebody is like just yelling and their, their veins and eyes are bulging out of their head and they just seem angry.

And I mean, that's not the best way to do it, obviously. And, but there's, there's one teacher that's one of the most famous female preachers in America.

Like a lot of people, when they critique her, they go after her looks, her voice, her hairstyle, that's criticism.

But if you look at what she teaches and says about the Bible and say, no, that's not right. The apostle Paul says this, or Jesus said that's ministry.

So there's a difference between just criticizing somebody and attacking them personally. And then talking about what they're teaching compared to what the

Bible is. I see a very big difference there, but some people don't see the difference.

So let's go through the temporary gifts. Number one is prophecy.

Okay. So prophecy is defined here to prophesy is to preach or to tell forth or declare the scriptures.

Prophecy does not necessarily mean to foretell the future. Okay. So in other words, the way prophecy is being defined, it's defined as preaching.

So if somebody is preaching the word of God, they are prophesying according to this definition.

I said, the reason why I would not, I, I don't call it prophesying because it gives people the wrong impression.

When most people hear the word prophecy, what do they think of fortune telling?

Yeah. You're, you're predicting the future. You're, you're, you're giving a prophecy that this thing will happen sometime.

And well, yeah, that's, that's one element of prophecy. That's true. Prophecy can also be receiving revelation from God that God gave me this word, you know, holy men of God were moved, uh, or men of God were moved by the holy spirit.

They, they received prophecy. This is a word from God. So it's foretelling the future.

Yeah. It can be divine revelation, but it can also be preaching, but that's not the way most people think of prophecy.

That's why I don't use the term. And I would say the gift of prophecy is as far as God giving us new revelation or God telling someone something that's going to predict the future.

I think that has ceased. Uh, and the proof is in the pudding because all the prophets that are out there, um, it's, it's just filled with false prophecies, uh, not to get into this subject, but, uh, during the 2020 election and the whole

COVID thing, remember all the false prophecies that were issued, uh, Kenneth Copeland, the, one of the biggest, uh, word of faith, charismatic

Pentecostal teachers in the nation, uh, in what March of 2020 said, he said,

I declare and decree standing in the office of the prophet of God. I, he declared an end to COVID -19 like three weeks and, or something like that.

Well, obviously, uh, that wasn't true, right? That was a false prophecy clear and it's on video and you can go and check that out.

Uh, people made, God told me Donald Trump is going to win the election.

Of course, then they say, well, he really did. And it just, you know, but you understand that people are making all sorts of claims and predictions that don't come true.

So the prophecy that's out there is false prop. There's, there's tons of false prophecy, but I don't see anyone predicting the future.

And if, if I'm wrong, please show me the person and we'll look at their prophecy and when they say it's going to come to pass and we'll test it.

Right. I used to stone them at their prophecy. Yeah. Well, that's the thing, you know, in Israel, Moses had, the

Lord gave Moses some pretty strict guidelines for how to test these things and how to deal with it.

Today. It's just a free for all. So that's, that's the problem. Uh, Ray, I thought there was a penalty for false prophets.

Right? Well, there, there was in Israel. Uh, there is today in sound

Bible churches. We do not recognize those men, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn.

They are not recognized. I do not recognize them as evangelists and true teachers of God's word.

They would not be welcomed. Their teaching would not be welcomed in any sound church that I know of.

So there is a penalty, but I mean, we live in a country where people are free religiously to say and do whatever they want.

And there's a good, that's good to a certain degree. There's an upside to that because we're not being persecuted or at least barely, you know, other than a little bit of censorship maybe.

So that's good. But the downside is, yeah, you have to deal with all this other nonsense. So anyways, that's the gift of prophecy as it's being defined here as a permanent gift, that prophecy would simply be preaching.

All right. Any comments on that before we move on? All right.

Number two, teaching. So you can already see it's preaching and teaching. That's the way it's starting out.

The gift of teaching. This gift is the ability to teach the word of God and help the hearers to understand the scriptures as the author intended.

So the gift is the ability to teach the word of God. And if someone's gifted in teaching, they teach in such a way where people can understand what's being said, it's easy to learn.

Uh, have you ever been in a class where somebody's teaching and you know, might be in school, you think back to geometry or some, there are just some people, the way they teach, the method they teach, you just don't get it.

You don't understand. They're not making it simple. And that's, that's something that can happen in the church, either the way we're describing it, or just maybe being so high minded.

It just goes over. Everyone said people need to be able to understand what's being said. And let me just say this.

If you don't understand if like, if I'm not being clear or for whatever reason, you don't understand, ask, right?

Raise your hand, ask, ask questions. Uh, but that's the gift of teaching that you can, uh, teach the word of God and people understand and they learn what, what the word of God says.

Now that requires here, here's something that might slip through that requires that you actually open the scripture and read the scripture and teach the scripture.

Cause that, to me, this is the biggest problem or one of the biggest problems within the church today is that people are preaching their opinion a lot.

Um, but there's some, there's some sermons that just, you're not even talking about the Bible.

You're not even talking about doctrine or anything like that. Larry also depends on the soil of the hearer's heart.

You know, are you paying attention? Are you really into it?

Or are you thinking about something else? There are times, uh,

I'll admit when I'm reading the scriptures in the morning, I'm reading out loud, but I'm thinking of something else.

I'm actually reading the word, but I'm not thinking about what I'm reading.

I'm thinking about something else. And, uh, right. You know, and same with when

I'm hearing, you know, I'm not always perceiving what I'm hearing. Right.

Let's turn to second Timothy chapter four. I mean, that can, that can be true for anyone.

Someone could be a great teacher, but you know, if people are daydreaming and in the pew,

I guess it won't do much good, but that's something we all struggle with. You know, uh, we all, our mind wanders and sometimes pastors and teachers can make the word of God boring.

You know, they never want to say anything that'll ruffle feathers or be controversial or, you know, like the monotone voice or something, or to just repeat the same things.

However it's done. Um, the word of God is not boring.

So if someone finds it boring, either the teacher's making it boring, or there's something wrong with you because the word of God is not dull.

Amen. We get it. All right. Second Timothy chapter four, uh, just on this subject of, uh, teaching second

Timothy four, starting in verse one, Paul telling Timothy, he says, I charge you therefore before God and the

Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and at his kingdom.

What does Paul tell Timothy to do? Preach the word and notice he's charging him like Timothy, you must do this.

This isn't, you know, if you feel like it, I charge you preach the word, be ready in season and out of season.

You know, whether it's popular or not, whether people want it or not, you preach the word and you need to convince rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up to themselves teachers and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.

So I think we're living in one of those time periods that's out of season and people generally speaking, uh, in the

United States, they don't really want sound doctrine. What do they want? Yeah.

They want someone to tell them what they want to hear. Something that's going to make them feel good. You know, they, they want to be inspired.

They want, they want to be told something that, you know, I mean, I guess different people want to hear different things, but there's all sorts of fables in the, in the church today.

What are some fables being taught in, in churches today? I think of what critical race theory, that's a fable that's being taught in churches today.

The prosperity gospel, that's another fable. I mean, it's not true, but that's being taught in churches today.

Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, and that's fine. You want to preach this, this is your best life now.

That's fine. Open up to a book in the Bible and show me, show me, but that's not what he does.

As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever seen him open a Bible, but now I'm, now I'm just being critical.

Well, it's true though. This is discernment. Okay. Marcus, I'd like for you to give me, you don't have to do it in 25 words or less, use as many words as you want to define critical race theory and woke.

What on earth, what is, what are those things? Well, critical race theory or critical theories, a tenant of Marxism.

The whole point is to kind of inject this philosophy that divides people, you know, create chaos, divide people.

Then you can kind of swoop in and with the solution and gain more power. But their whole argument today is that, you know, white people are the problem in the

United States. White people have been in power, which I mean, I, it's true. I, you know, but that, that's the issue whiteness.

And it's, it's something that basically anything that happens, it's, it's the fault of the people who have held power, which is white people.

Therefore we need to kind of break down the system and bring in a new system.

Of course, most of those people are white too. So I don't really understand it, but you know, it's a way of causing division.

Okay. What about woke? Um, woke means you have a way it's similar.

Uh, it originally comes from the idea that you have, uh, awaken to the struggles of minorities and African Americans, basically in the

United States, which I don't know. I think most people are aware of slavery and segregated.

I think most people are aware of the things that have happened, uh, in history and recognize them as bad.

Um, but the whole idea is you need, you can't just be against racism.

You have to be actively involved. It's just a way of getting you on their political side.

You know, they have a political agenda and this is all propaganda to get you to vote a certain way and to be on their side politically.

I mean, that's what it boils down to. So yes. You mentioned

Marxism. Well, I don't want to get too off topic, but I would just say Marxism is what's driving all this.

I mean, they have some valid points. Yes. People have been oppressed, of course. Uh, but what's driving it is the ideology of Marxism.

Yeah. You know, Karl Marx is his whole philosophy of, you know, if you want to take over, you need to pit, pit one group against the other, create chaos, and then you come in and, and take over.

So you see that in the culture, you were pitting men against women, blacks against white, gay versus straight.

I'm just all the way down the line. So it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's a whole political agenda, but is that what we should be teaching in the new

Testament church? No, it's only worth bringing up to this degree that it will cause division.

If you allow that type of stuff to come into the church, it will cause division. If I start preaching critical race theory and all that stuff,

I mean, it's going to cause division. That's the whole point though. So it's just one of those things we need to warn against.

Now, can we preach against racism? I've done that. Um, there, there are things that are wrong that we will address, but yeah.

Anyway. Okay. Let's yes. Just quickly. There is, there is only one race.

It's the human race, right? There were ethnicities. Yes. That's Goldie.

I like him a lot. Right. Justin Peters. Voddie. Bachem is good.

And, but that's part of what a teacher has to do. Look at some of the things that are being talked about some of the potential dangers and explain to people what it is and why, you know, what the, what the scripture says, why we're either going to accept or reject that and how we approach it.

We have to, we have to deal with modern issues. That's the reality of it. Okay.

So teaching is the gift, uh, the ability to teach the word of God and to help hearers to understand the scriptures as the author intended.

And I do agree with that, that there, according to the Bible, there is only one race that is the human race, you know, black, white, yellow, red, black, and white.

They're PR they're all precious in his sight. What's the song that we used to sing. And, you know, that's true.

All right, let's move on to number three faith. So this is the gift of faith.

This gift is a consistent enabling faith that truly believes

God in the face of overwhelming obstacles and human impossibilities and for great things.

So you're believing God for great things. John MacArthur calls this, the gift of prayer, because the gift is primarily expressed toward God through prayer.

And I've never heard that before. I'd have to take a little while to think about it, but obviously there are some people who have the gift of faith and wait, are there

Christians who don't have the gift of faith? What do you think? Right.

So this can be a little confusing. Every Christian has faith. Like in order to be a

Christian, you must have faith in God, faith in Christ, obviously. Right. But the spiritual gift of faith is different.

I think it's in Romans. God has given to each one. Romans 12. God has given to each one a measure of faith.

So we all believe every true Christian believes and has faith. But the gift of faith, some people have that and others don't.

So people who have the gift of faith, I mean, they really believe God that he's he's going to do this.

He's the other person might have what doubts that they know it's true, but they're just a little shaky or they're troubled.

They're always worried. Well, I know God says he's going to do that, but, you know, I mean, they believe it, but they just don't have that rock solid faith that this guy has or that that woman has.

So some people have the gift of faith. Some people don't. It doesn't mean that you don't have any faith. So you see the difference between the spiritual gift and just having saving faith.

Yes, he is going to do. He is going to do all those things that problem that humans seem to have is when.

Right. I mean, there is a time coming when any any problem you can imagine is it's going to be over.

We're going to be in heaven where everything is perfect, a new heavens and new earth and all all this stuff is going to be behind us.

So he's going to do it. Right. I have a gift of faith. I know he can do anything.

I know he can still do miracles. Yeah. Sometimes, though, when when people talk about, hey, you need to believe you need to have faith.

Sometimes I've noticed that people will encourage someone to have faith in something that God doesn't actually promise or guarantee.

Let's say somebody is ill or somebody has a terminal illness. Well, you need to have faith that God is going to.

But let's face it. There's a lot of things that God hasn't given you a guarantee in this life or in this world.

So don't let someone say that, you know, your faith is dependent on whether or not

God does this in your life or that in your life or heals this or fixes that. There are guarantees things that God has said he's going to do, like what forgive us of our sin.

If we believe in Jesus, he'll forgive us of our sin. He will give us eternal life. Jesus is coming again.

Right. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. There's I believe in there's promises regarding Israel and the future for the

Jewish people. I think there are things in the Bible that are guaranteed. God has said so.

But that's no guarantee that, hey, this problem in my life is going to be resolved. I mean,

I hope it does. I have faith that God can do. But you understand, like sometimes people talk about faith.

You need to really believe God for this. Or maybe I don't have the gift of faith.

And that's why I'm saying this. I guess that's what the other side would say. But I think you have to look at what the scripture says as far as what

God has stated explicitly as his promises. It will be persecution. There will be troubles.

Right. Right. Yeah. Right. If we were going through persecution, whether individually or as a church, someone might.

Well, you need to have faith that God is going to deliver you out of it. I believe he will. I just don't know when or how.

But the scripture says, yeah, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. So the idea that you're the

Christian life is just a life where you just kind of coast through and don't have any problems. And God just blesses your socks off health and wealth.

And like that is a that's a false message. Okay. Faith.

Now we're moving on to wisdom. Number four, wisdom, the spiritual gift of wisdom.

This is the ability to apply wisdom gained from spiritual insight to believers, knowing what is right and what is wrong.

Wisdom is also applied knowledge. Okay. I think that's the best definition of knowledge or excuse me, wisdom applied knowledge, right?

You can know what's true and what's right, but applying it, putting it into practice is, is wisdom.

So any comments on the spiritual gift of wisdom? You know, there are some people that have great wisdom.

These are the people that you go to and you ask their advice, right?

There's, you know, there's some people that are good believers, you know, they mean well, they're doing their best, but you know, you might not necessarily go to them first to get advice because there's just some people that have great wisdom and you recognize that, well, that's given by God.

This is a spiritual gift. I saw a hand. You can read a book about right.

Good. I like that. Everyone hear that? Okay. Now, closely associated with the gift of wisdom is the spiritual gift of knowledge.

So knowledge, this is the understanding of the facts of scripture from the human perspective.

It is scholarship or the ability to know the truths of scripture, both broadly and deeply.

Okay. So some people have the gift of wisdom. Some people have the gift of knowledge.

Anyone given an example of somebody who has the gift of knowledge or what that might look like you?

Well, I, I appreciate that you have the gift of encouragement. All right.

But right. There are some believers and it comes, it takes work and all of these gifts probably take work.

Right. Nobody's just born with a gift that they don't ever have to put any effort into, but the gift of knowledge.

Yeah. There are just some people that they're, they're understanding their, their knowledge of just all these different subjects.

It's really, really amazing. Now, the one thing about the gift of knowledge, this, and I only bring this up because this is a pretty common viewpoint that people believe that the gift of knowledge should be in the cat in a different category under the sign gifts or what is listed here, the temporary gifts you've heard of someone receiving a word of knowledge, right?

I've heard about this. And again, I, whether it's happening today, I actually think this probably does happen that somebody could receive.

Sometimes they just know something that God gives them knowledge about a situation.

God gives them something they need to be able to fix a problem council.

So that God can just tell you, give you this piece of information. So that would kind of be more in the sign gifts.

See, some people think that I don't believe they've called me a cessationist that I don't believe that these gifts are operational.

That's, that's not true. I just don't think it's as common as some people say, but the way it's being defined here anyways, is to from a human perspective, this knowledge of scholarship, the ability to know the truths of scripture, both broadly and deeply.

All right. Any questions on the gift of knowledge? All right.

If there's nothing on that, let's move on. Okay. We touched on this briefly. Number six, the gift of discernment.

So I'll just read it again. Discernment is the ability to tell which things are from the spirit and which are not distinguishing truth from error.

This gift serves as protection for the church. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, I think defined discernment this way.

It's not being able to tell truth from error. It's being able to tell what's true and from what's almost true.

Is that right? Or did I mess that up? What's true, what's right from what's almost right.

Put it this way. You can, you can tell the difference between right and wrong, right?

Most people have the ability to do that, but sometimes something can be presented as right or true.

And yeah, it really does sound right, but there's just, there's just something about,

I don't can't quite put my finger on it. Discernment is when you can spot that. It sounds right.

It sounds really close to the truth, but it's not the truth. That takes a discerning ear or a discerning eye.

Marcus. Another verse I just memorized with Giles is

John 14, 26. And this has to do with that. Your comment on the word of knowledge.

And he says, but the comforter, which is the Holy ghost, which the father will send in my name, this is

Jesus speaking. He will teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever

I have said unto you. And what I took away from that is that he certainly can bring thoughts into your mind.

If he can teach, if the Lord himself can teach us through the Holy spirit and bring things to our remembrance.

Now I know it's specified whatsoever. I have said unto you, well, of course those are the letters in red, but if he can bring those

Bible verses to your mind at just the right time that answer exactly what you're asking him, it's like a conversation.

And if he can do that, I don't see why he couldn't bring those thoughts to what troubles me is it seems that the enemy can bring thoughts into your mind too.

And he's so subtle and can, you know, we know he can masquerade as an angel in a, what is it in a red dress or a blue dress.

Larry. I was just thinking that along with the gift of discernment, I think that there's an alliteration.

Is it think when, when we are discerning something, is it true?

What's the H stand for? Helpful. Is it helpful? Is it inspiring? Is it inspiring?

Is it necessary? And then the last one, is it kind of, you know, uh, so there are times where, you know, we couldn't say something, but it may not be kind or necessary.

And so we probably shouldn't or Philippians four, eight, what sort of things are true, honest, just pure, lovely, not just because they're true.

There's some things that are true that are not sure. The other things fit all that criteria on those things.

Yeah. And just one last comment on discernment. It's also called discerning of spirits.

So part of this is being able to see, okay, this is from God. This is from the devil, or this is just a person who's in the flesh.

So being able to determine what is what, so you can't just say,

Hey, that's a white building with a steeple on it has church on the sign. It must be, they have a

Bible in there. It's of God. Well, you got no discernment if that's what you think, but you, you know, some of these things again, uh, they're spiritual gifts, they're given by God, but you still have to sort of hone.

You can't just sit on the couch and expect God to zap you. And now all of a sudden, now

I have the gift of wisdom. Now the gift of knowledge, now the gift of prophecy, and now I can just do it like naturally.

You know, it all takes study, work, exercising, or gift growing. Right. Okay. But some people are more inclined obviously, because they have the gift.

All right. So we're good with discernment. We'll move on. All right.

Time's flying by. So I guess we'll at least get a part three out of this, if not a part four.

So some of you will get your wish number seven, the gift of mercy, the gift of mercy.

This is the ability to show deep compassion to those who have spiritual, physical, or emotional needs.

Okay. So the ability to show deep compassion to those who have spiritual, physical, and emotional needs.

Now, just because a person doesn't have the gift of mercy doesn't mean you should, well,

I don't need to show mercy because I don't have that gift. Right. But there are some people, yeah, this is not their gift.

And you can sort of tell, maybe there are some people that are just very compassionate.

They can come alongside someone and really be a comfort. And other people, their bedside manner is not, this is not as good.

You know, they're trying, and we should all try and show mercy. But yeah, some people definitely have the gift and others don't.

Marcus. Maybe it would be better covered in a summation next week, I guess. But there is that verse that says, earnestly desire the greater gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

So obviously that's up there. But it says, earnestly desire the greater gifts, right?

So some apparently are, you know. Right. And if you don't have them,

I see no reason why it's wrong to ask for them. Right.

If you don't have the gift of mercy. But be careful with some of these because you might end up quite burdened every time you hear people suffering from some other part of the world or someone else in your life or in your family.

Right. So not everybody has the gift of preaching. Not everybody has the gift of teaching.

That's fine. You don't need everybody in the church to preach and teach, obviously. But there are some people who have the gift of faith.

There are some people who have the gift of mercy. You know, as as a pastor, if let's say there's a church member who's sick, they're in the hospital, they're in a nursing home.

If I, if I know someone's in the hospital from this church, I just automatically go. I just automatically visit them.

Or if a church member is in the nursing home, I go and I visit them. But, you know,

I don't know that I have the gift of mercy. But I still go and try to be a comfort to them.

Well, that's why I've been saying the past month, you know, if there's anyone in the church who might be inclined, you feel the

Lord's laying it on your heart to go visit someone who's in the nursing home or a shut -in, because I know there has to be several people, at least one or two who have the gift of mercy.

And that's where it would be so beneficial for you to exercise it and go be a comfort to these people.

Well, the pastor's doing that. That's his job. Well, I don't know. It might be part of my job, but I don't know that it's my gift.

And that's where you come in. So once everybody in the church recognizes their spiritual gift, and everybody in the church is exercising their spiritual gift, that's when a church really starts to make progress, make an impact, growth numerically and spiritually.

So that's why this subject is so important, because we need to recognize our gift and then put it into practice.

Larry. Ephesians 4 .11. So I kind of disagree with your statement that it's your job.

Your job, according to Ephesians 4 .11, is to train and to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.

That's your job. Did I say it was my job? Well, here's what, in my mind, this is what

I was thinking. It's part of my job to go in and visit people. But yeah, or I was thinking, you know, oh, well, that's the pastor's job.

Well, like that's the mindset that people have. Oh, that's what he does. I don't have to do that. That's what the pastor does.

That's his job. But like you're pointing out, that's not actually true.

Right. It's the ministry is your work, right? It's our work, not just mine.