WWUTT 1586 Varieties of Gifts but the Same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:4-7)

There are many spiritual gifts, but one Spirit who grants those gifts. There are many kinds of ministries, but one

God who calls us to that ministry. So let us not be divided, but working together when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and we're going to pick up where we left off last week.

I'm going to begin by reading the first 11 verses here out of the Legacy Standard Bible the

Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers,

I do not 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.

Therefore, I make known to you that 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. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same

Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. And there are varieties of workings, but the same

God who works everything in everyone. But to each one is given the manifestation of the

Spirit for what is profitable. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the

Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit. To someone else, faith by the same

Spirit, and to another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit. And to another, the workings of miracles, and to another, prophecy.

And to another, the distinguishing of spirits. To someone else, various kinds of tongues, and to another, the translation of tongues.

But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually, just as he wills.

Last week we made it through verse 3, and we're going to pick up from there. But there's one more point that I want to make on verse 3 before we go on.

So again, Paul says, Therefore I make known to you that 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. When I was growing up, I didn't really have a lot of exposure to charismaticism.

The churches that we attended when I was a kid, they were very straight and narrow kind of churches, right?

It was just Bible teaching. The pastor would just open up the Bible and preach from the

Bible. There wasn't anyone speaking in tongues, no one was flopping in the aisle, nobody is claiming to receive some new revelation from God, except in the typical

American evangelical sort of a way. You know, the thing where everybody tries to justify their actions or their thoughts as having been given to them by God.

Well, God revealed to me, or God showed me, or He told me, or something like that. And they may not be saying that God spoke in an audible voice.

Some of them might, but it's just that common way that many Christians will say

God revealed something to them extra biblically, right? So that was about the extent of my exposure to charismaticism until I was 17 or 18 years old.

The last year of high school, my senior year, some friends of mine and I started attending another church in another town one

Sunday a month. There was one Sunday, Sunday evening, that they would have what they called a yes night.

It was this praise and worship evening, but it was at a very charismatic church. And so that exposed me to charismaticism.

Then when I started attending church on my own, I left home and I was in college and living by myself and things like that.

For a good 10 years there, from age 18 to 28, I was attending charismatic churches.

Now I bring this up because it was very, very common to hear in these churches, on top of hearing about speaking in tongues and miraculous healings and these new prophetic revelations and stuff like this, all these things that aren't real.

But in the midst of all of that, you would also hear stories about demonic possession and that somebody went to so -and -so's house and exorcised them of their demons.

They anointed them with oil, cast the demons out. I would even hear stories about my car was possessed and I anointed it with oil and said, be gone in Jesus name.

And then the demon that was afflicting my car went away. I mean, yeah, the stories went that out there.

But in the stories of demonic possession, when you would hear about somebody had a demon, we went and prayed over them and cast the demon out.

You would often hear this as a test of whether a person truly had a demon.

If you ask them to say that Jesus is Lord and they could not do it, the reason why they could not do it was because they had a demon in them.

And this passage, 1 Corinthians 12, 3, was the passage that I would hear get used to justify that test.

We're going to test to see if this person's really demonically possessed. We ask them to say that Jesus is

Lord and they can't say it. It's because they have a demon in them. Now, the funny thing about that is if you go to the

Gospels and you read about the occasions in which Jesus encounters a person with a demon, the demons use the loftiest language to describe

Christ as anyone else in the Gospels. Just consider the Gospel of Mark. So in Mark 1,

Jesus cast out an unclean spirit. In verse 23, immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out to Jesus, What have you to do with us,

Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the

Holy One of God. Later on in the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus encounters

Legion, Legion says to him, What have you to do with me, Jesus? Son of the

Most High God, I adjure you by God, do not torment me.

The demons even calling upon God that the Son of God would not torment the demon.

So the demons used very high language to address Jesus. They were in fear of Jesus.

So this whole idea of, hey, you can use this as a test to find out if a person really has a demon or not, that wouldn't work.

And that's not what Paul is saying here in 1 Corinthians 12 3. Therefore, I make known to you that 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. No one can say and mean and understand what they are saying when they say

Jesus is Lord, except that they have the Holy Spirit of God. There are many people who are not truly believers that might say

Jesus is Lord just because they're trying to impress somebody else or they're trying to fit in the Christian circles that they're a part of.

But then a day comes in which Christianity is of no use to them.

They don't really believe what they claim that they believed years ago. And so they just abandoned it and walk away from their former faith.

It wasn't real. They didn't truly believe. Yet they said Jesus is Lord, just like everybody else around them was saying.

What Paul is saying here is nobody can say it and mean it unless you have the Holy Spirit of God.

No one can say it and truly know that Jesus is Lord, except that the

Holy Spirit has borne witness to the truth in us.

Now, if you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and everybody who is a follower of Jesus Christ, everybody whose heart has been transformed, you've been born again, you've been brought from death to life.

Everybody who is a follower of Jesus has the Holy Spirit. The moment you came to faith, it was not that you believed and then you were baptized and the

Holy Spirit came upon you or that you believed and then something else had to happen for a helping of the

Holy Spirit to come into your heart. Some sort of second baptism to take place. Nothing like that.

When you became a follower of Jesus Christ, you had the Holy Spirit. In fact, it was the Holy Spirit himself.

Who opened your heart to believing the truth, you would not have been able to know the gospel, the truth of the gospel, except by the transforming power of the

Holy Spirit in your heart. That's part of what Paul is saying here in in Chapter 12, verse three.

And we've had it from all the way back at the beginning of this letter to the Corinthians in First Corinthians, Chapter one, verse 30.

By his doing, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that just as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the

Lord. It's by his doing that you have become a follower of Jesus Christ.

So if you're a follower of Christ, if you have the Holy Spirit within your heart, you will be blessed with spiritual gifts.

Now, as Paul goes on here to say in verse four, there are varieties of gifts. But the same spirit.

Consider again who it is that Paul is talking to. He's addressing the church in Corinth. What have been the problems in the church in Corinth?

Well, they've been very factious. We just came out of that kind of rebuke in Chapter 11, where Paul rebuked them for being divided from one another.

In Christ, we're supposed to be unified, but the church seemed to continue to find ways that they would be divided from one another.

So still in this effort to call them to unity, not to be divided, but to be unified, he says there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit.

So different people in the church are going to be gifted with different things. But just because a person is gifted in a different way does not mean that they have a different spirit.

It does not mean that they are divided from the body in any way. For as Paul will go on to illustrate, a body is made up of many parts.

And so for a body to be working properly, it must have these individual parts working together to accomplish the same thing all to the glory of God.

So there's varieties of spiritual gifts that we're going to receive, but we still all have the same spirit within us.

Now, Paul encourages unity right at the offset here. Am I saying that right?

Right at the beginning of talking about spiritual gifts, Paul wants to ensure that these

Corinthians are unified in the spirit. So first of all, it comes down to understanding our unity in the spirit and may our giftings never be a cause for division, but for unity, for it is for the benefit of the church.

As we continue on verse five, there are varieties of ministries. But the same

Lord, they're going to be different ministerial opportunities for different people in the church, but we have the same

Lord over us all. Now, when we talk about different ministries, we're not necessarily talking about teaching.

You could be talking about deacons. So a qualification for an elder is that he must be able to teach.

A deacon does not have that same qualification, but he serves to help care for the physical needs of people in the church, especially those who are unable to care for themselves.

There are others that are going to be, you know, they might be in charge of the hospitality ministry or they might be making sure that food is getting taken to shut -ins or that everybody is aware that these people in the church are in the hospital right now, so somebody needs to go visit with them and pray.

You know, there's different kinds of ministries that are being attended to in the church, but we have the same

Lord whom we are serving, who is over us all. Verse six, there are varieties of workings, but the same

God who works everything in everyone. So there's different work that we are called to do.

There's different workings that happen in a person's life. Like, we're all going to come to a different level of maturity at different stages of our spiritual growth, but it is

God who is the one that is working all of this in us. Consider what the

Apostle Paul said in Romans 12, verse three, he says, For by the grace given to me,

I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, listen to this, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

So your growth and your maturity, the measure of faith that you have received, all of this is by the granting of God, and he gives to some greater responsibility than he gives to others in Philippians 2, 12.

Paul says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Verse 13, for it is

God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

So look or consider right there versus back to back Philippians 2, 12 and 13.

We are called to work, but ultimately the work that is done in us is

God's working. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is

God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. If you hear the imperative, the call to work, to serve, to obey, to do unto the

Lord, and you obey it, you do it. You have heard the call to obey and you do it.

Ultimately, we come to understand that this work is being done because of the work of God that is done in us.

You made that decision to obey God and follow this call upon your life because of the work that God has done in your heart.

Now, do not be mistaken here. That doesn't mean that God is the one who believes for us, right?

Like we would not have any faith. We would not have any belief if God did not believe for us.

Like he works the belief in us. That way we may believe. No, there is something that happens indeed in the human will that turns us from the rebellion that we were in, separated from God, away from God, and we are reoriented to be for God and toward God, believing in God, trusting in God.

There is definitely something that happens in the human will there. That is very mysterious. What divine action has taken place?

How much did God really work in our hearts to transform us in the way that we have gone?

Who knows? A lot of that is going to become so mysterious that we will not fully know the way in which

God works in us until we get to heaven. And in fact, Paul talks about this later on in 1

Corinthians. He says in chapter 13 that for now we see in a mirror dimly.

This is 1 Corinthians 13, 12. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

God knows our fully sanctified selves. We don't know that. So the way that God works in us, we don't fully understand this concept and we won't see the mysterious ways in which

God has worked in our hearts until we get to heaven. You have been told to believe and you believe, but you could not have believed if not for the working of God in your heart to make you unto belief.

He doesn't believe for you, but he has changed the human will from a person who was in rebellion against God or no one seeks for God.

As it says in Romans three, there is no one who does good. Not even one person. He's changed the human will from a person who was resistant to God to a person who now desires to be with God.

And as, as far as you're concerned, as far as your own personal experience is concerned, you made a decision.

I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. Amen. There's nothing wrong with singing that hymn.

It's a beautiful song. As far as your experience is concerned, you were told to repent and believe and you did.

But when we get to the scripture and we read the theology of it, it's here that we find that it really was not by our will that we came to faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ, but by the will of God. There are varieties of workings, but the same

God who works everything in everyone, there is nothing happening in your heart and in your life that God has not worked out.

And ultimately for his glory and for his good pleasure again, as it says in Philippians two 13.

Okay, so we go on here in first Corinthians 12, seven, but to each one is given the manifestation of the spirit for what is profitable and what is profitable for whom profitable for you.

Certainly you have a gifting of the Holy spirit that has been given to you. Do you profit from that?

Most certainly you do. But what Paul is calling attention to here is the profit of the church.

P R O F I T, not profit, not prophetically speaking, right?

But this is for the profit of the church. You profit from it. You benefit from it. You grow in sanctification and righteousness as we had read about in first Corinthians one 30.

But in this particular case, Paul is making sure that the Corinthians understand that the spiritual gift that you have is to benefit the church, that the church is going to be built up together in love to each one is given a manifestation of the spirit for what is profitable, whether you have a great spiritual gift or you have one of the lesser spiritual gifts, it is ultimately for the benefit of God's church unto his glory.

And when you exercise that gift to serve others in the church, the church benefits and everybody is growing together.

You benefit and the church benefits as the church grows. You who are part of the church grow with it, do you not?

So as you're helping to build each other up in the church, you are also being built up in love.

And we'll be talking about this further as we continue to consider spiritual gifts, what these are, what they mean, what you might have and how we are to exercise these gifts in the church to benefit one another, building each other up in love, as it says in Ephesians chapter four and all to the praise of his glorious grace.

Heavenly Father, we are grateful to you for the gift of the spirit that you have given to us, your

Holy Spirit living within our hearts, God dwelling with us by faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ. And so guide us in your truth as we consider the varieties of gifts, but the same spirit, the varieties of ministries, but the same

Lord and the workings that have been done in our hearts by the same

God who works everything in everyone. We give you the praise for all of this and may your name be praised in all the earth as your church continues to work and serve for your kingdom.

It is in the name of Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

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