So don’t miss that part. Okay, so let’s pray and get started. Father, we thank you that throughout the ages, lord, your church has been gathering for the past 2,000 years, every week, to study your word, to love each other and to come to you to bring all our burdens, all our needs, directly to you. Bring all our burdens, all our needs, directly to you, father. We had so many things happen this week, and it’s been a long week, I think, for everybody, and it’s worth it to our souls to spend our time right now focused on you, because, jesus, you are life, you are the way, the truth and the life, and there is no other way except you, and we believe that. But, lord, our souls are thirsty for you, and you promised that anyone who thirsts can cry out to you, and you would pour out your rivers of living water. And you have a name for those rivers, jesus, and that name is your Holy Spirit. So, father, we cry out to you to bring healing, to bring peace, to bring all the wonderful gifts that you bring. But we cry out to you, jesus, we seek you first and we give our hearts fresh to you. We surrender everything to you In this place, jesus, in your name, we pray Amen.
What are spiritual gifts? Speaking of gifts, sometimes at Christmas I give my wife those lottery scratchers. You guys do that, do you guys do that? Like, in the stocking it’s loaded with scratchers. Alright, gamblers, no, just kidding Sinners. I always thought it was kind of funny. You know, here’s a 99% chance that you’re being disappointed. Hope you remember me, aww. Okay, so let’s dive in and read our text here.
In 1 Corinthians 12, it says Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. So Paul just dives right in and he says it’s really important that you understand spiritual gifts. But it’s really funny that that’s like one of the areas in the church that seems like there’s the most confusion. Like you have certain churches that don’t believe spiritual gifts exist at all. You have certain churches that all they do is talk about spiritual gifts and try to see spiritual gifts happen, and so it’s like either no emphasis at all or a complete overemphasis, and Paul’s like it’s really I don’t want you to be ignorant, it’s something that we should understand, because what are they about? God wants to lead us, he wants to be our leader and he wants to lead us by speaking to us. By speaking to us. He wants to speak to us through us. So he wants to speak to you, but he also wants to speak through you. It’s like we are his mouthpiece that he wants, but also his hands, and there’s going to be a lot of things that we learn about this.
But look at the next verse. Here it says now you know that you were Gentiles and you were carried away by these dumb idols. However, you were led. Now it doesn’t mean dumb like how we think of dumb, like stupid, right. It means incapable of speaking. So what he’s saying here is that the people before they knew Jesus, they worshipped these idols, and these idols were just statues, and the statues could not lead you. They couldn’t speak to you, they had nothing to say to you. They just said worship me and hopefully your life is better. And the people fell for it. That’s what idolatry is. Worship me, spend time with me, give me your time and attention. Maybe your life will be a little bit better. That’s what idols offer us.
But God says they’re stupid, they’re dumb, they can’t speak to you, they can’t truly speak to you. God wants to actually speak to you through His Holy Spirit. He loves to spend time with you. No other God can. They’re all dumb and it’s really hard to be led by something that’s dumb. You can hear his voice, you can hear God’s voice. Now, that sounds creepy, it sounds weird at the beginning and I agree with you. Okay, but God wants to communicate his heart and his love to you and he loves to speak through people and his word. Okay, he chooses to use his church, the people and his word. Okay, he chooses to use his church, the people, not the organization of the church, but the people in the church. That’s his chosen vessel to speak through. He wants to speak to you through the people of the church. He wants to communicate. What does he want to say to you? He wants to say here’s life, here’s my life and I want you to know it, I want you to feel it, I want you to know what I think about you.
Listen to this verse in Isaiah, chapter 31, verse 21. It says you shall hear a word behind you saying this is the way. Walk in it whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left. Now, is he saying that you’re going to actually hear a word behind you? Is that what this actually means? That’s a really good question, because I grew up thinking I hear people say all the time God spoke to me. This, god told me you need to give me $1,000. Sounds like something he’d say right, yeah, of course, right.
Ever wondered why some people say they hear God all the time? I mean, maybe they’re faking it and they’re really being deceived, or they’re just trying to deceive you. Well, that all sucks right. Or maybe they’re truly hearing what God has for them. How can we know? How can we know? Can we speak for God? What are the rules about this? Can a man just say something that disagrees with God’s Word and say thus says the Lord, and we listen to Him instead of God’s Word? Like this is really important that we understand how this whole speaking works.
And so Paul here. He says we’re supposed to test what’s being heard. We’re supposed to test it, we’re supposed to understand that not everyone speaks the word of God. And so what is the test? He says? Therefore, I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. So this is really interesting. He says the test is very, very simple. The test is Jesus. It’s like a scratch and sniff sticker. Just scratch it. If it smells like Jesus, you’re good. It’s like what do you mean? The test is Jesus.
Does the message glorify Jesus? Does the message glorify Jesus? Does the message reinforce the sacrifice and love of Jesus for his people and for the world? Does the message say Jesus is Lord? Does the message submit to Jesus in every part of my life? That’s how you can know that it is the Word of God speaking through the Spirit, or it’s not. Is it submitted to everything Jesus already taught us, or am I disagreeing with something that Jesus has already said in the Bible? If I’m disagreeing with what the Bible says, I’m not speaking by the Spirit. That’s just something else, a different spirit. Maybe that’s the big one. Does it disagree with what’s already been said in the Bible? If it’s new, it’s not true. If it’s new, it’s not going to be true. Okay, if it’s not in the Bible, that’s a big problem. If it’s not in the book, don’t give it a second. Look that one I made up myself. Let’s look at John 15, 26 and see what Jesus says Jesus said. Let’s look at John 15, 26 and see what Jesus says Jesus said
but when the helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify of me. He will testify of me.
The Holy Spirit isn’t a gimmick. The Holy Spirit isn’t a force. The Holy Spirit isn’t a magic power, isn’t a gimmick. The Holy Spirit isn’t a force. The Holy Spirit isn’t a magic power. It’s a person. It’s the Spirit of Jesus. He’s a person and he has one main calling card. You could say he always points people towards Jesus, he’s always talking about Jesus. So if you see a gathering and it’s all focused on the Holy Spirit’s, all focused on the Holy Spirit, all focused on the Holy Spirit, overly focused on the Holy Spirit, what you can know is that the Holy Spirit probably isn’t involved much in that, because when the Holy Spirit is involved, you know who the focus is Jesus. Jesus is the focus. He is lifted up Because the Spirit will testify of Jesus. Jesus is the focus. He is lifted up because the Spirit will testify of Jesus and the Spirit will connect people to Jesus. It’s never about the person that he’s using, but God does love to use people. He loves it.
Every single believer has at least one spiritual gift, if not more. So you, every person in this room, every believer that believes in Jesus, has been given at least one spiritual gift, and you’re going to know yours. God is inviting us to be partners with Him in His kingdom work. That’s why he gives you a gift. He gives you a gift so you can be part of the family business. What is the family business of God? His kingdom is to make Jesus glorified, the center of attention, and then people would be saved. What does Jesus say? If I am lifted up, I can draw all men to me. So it doesn’t matter what your gift is. The only thing that matters is that you lift up Jesus with your gift. We’re going to see. There’s different kinds of gifts. There’s speaking gifts, there’s serving gifts. There’s different kinds of gifts, but all of them this is what we have to test them by Do they lift Jesus up? It’s Jesus’ kingdom, not our kingdom. We’re just part of His kingdom. So people can hear what Jesus is saying to them and what Jesus does for them, through us serving them and loving them and encouraging them in all the spiritual gifts that God has given us.
It’s important. This is an important thing. The Holy Spirit doesn’t possess you like a demon. Okay, he already lives inside you, but he does not force you to do anything. Why? Because the Holy Spirit’s a gentleman, he loves you and the invitation is that he says I want you to invite me to run your life. You have an invitation for Jesus to live through you and say Jesus says invite me.
Say Jesus, here I am, I present myself to you. You can live through me. What do we have to have to do that? A surrendered heart, the only part of your heart that Jesus can’t live through, is the part that you haven’t surrendered to him. That’s the only limitation in the power that God will give you to serve him and to do his will. How do you surrender to God?
Well, we’ve been talking about it a lot. It’s humility and faith. Humility says God, I need you. And faith says I’m going to trust in you. Your word, jesus, who you sent, I’m you. And faith says I’m going to trust in you, your word, jesus, who you sent. I’m going to trust in Jesus, I’m going to trust in you. So, humility and faith.
Now look at what Jesus says in the next chapter, john 16, verse 14. He says he, the Spirit, will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. So spiritual gifts come straight from Jesus. Jesus thought about you. He took a moment. He’s like, hey, bob, what should I do with Bob? And he thought about you. And he thought about how he would make you and what gift he would give you. That would be really special, or a combination of gifts that would be usable in your life, in your time for his kingdom. Jesus thinks about you that way and I think that’s really special.
These gifts that we’re going to talk about today, they’re a part of the grace that he gives his church, and so that means they’re always free. They’re a part of the grace that he gives his church, and so that means they’re always free. You can never earn or work for a spiritual gift. They’re all free. They’re just gifts. They’re never earned. You can’t convince God to give them to you, and you can’t lose them by doing something stupid. You don’t lose your gifts by doing something wrong. It’s a gift it is yours to use for Him. They are really free. You can’t go to school to learn them. There’s no seminary, no Bible school. If you think about the people in this church that he’s writing to. Most of them couldn’t even read. It was not part of the culture that they were just like reading all the time. So you can’t earn, you can’t figure out spiritual gifts.
They are given to you as free gifts from God and he’s given them to you so that you can serve him. So what do we know about them? They will always be in line with his will, okay, with his heart. In other words, when we serve God, we serve in his name. That means with his heart, for his purposes, not for us, right? There’s no selfishness involved in serving the Lord. They will always be to help people receive the grace of Jesus. They’re not there for us to serve ourselves or to make our lives more comfortable or better, but to see Jesus and connect with Jesus. His death and his resurrection are freely offered to all men right, and so all the gifts he gives us are to be to exalt that idea. The purpose of the gifts is to help people believe that and to receive it. So we’ll talk about all the specific gifts next week.
We’re not going to get into what all the specific gifts are this week, but I want you to take a test. Do you know they actually make? There’s like lots of tests out there. Did I send you? Did you get that QR code, isaac? You go and throw it up on the screen. So if you want to, here’s a test. You can just scan it and you can just take it. It will ask for your name and email address. You can just push unsubscribe when they send you an email.
Okay, it’s a cool organization, but I want you guys to take your spiritual gifts test and then I want you to tell me what it says Like. What are your top three? It’ll give you like a top three. You can read about them if you want. It’ll be cool, because next week we’ll talk about all the individual ones and then you can learn more about your specific ones. I encourage you to do this or find your own test. If you don’t like this test, do a different test. There’s ones. You can download the piece of paper and actually fill it all by hand and then add up all the scores and it’ll tell you how to do it. But this one’s easy. It does it all for you right online. So that’s your homework for this week.
You come to church, you get homework. How about that? You love that? All right, but we’re only halfway through. We’re still learning, but go ahead and we’ll put this back up at the end of church.
All right, in John 14, 26,. John 14, 26, it says but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
he will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all the things I said to you. So again, the Holy Spirit and his gifts. They have a purpose of connecting you to Jesus and his word. That’s the connection. Jesus promises us that his word is life. So believing his word and taking his word inside us and believing it, that is life. So believing His Word and taking His Word inside us and believing it, that is life.
So our job coming to church and being Christians is to believe the Word, believe His Words. That fills us with the Spirit. Believing His Words is being filled with the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is only. He’s working now to assist every single one of us to believe the words of Jesus. So he’s helping you all the time to believe and understand and remember the truth of who Jesus is, what Jesus did for you and what that means about you, your identity. Jesus died for you on the cross. That means your sin can be completely eliminated and paid for by simply believing in Jesus. Jesus rose again from the dead, meaning his new life is now shareable with you so he can fill you with his spirit, so that you live a new life that is not a slave to sin, but a slave to righteousness. You want to do God’s will. You’re not a slave to do selfishness, you’re a slave to love. You want to love people. That’s what a Christian is, and when we believe those things, we have life. Our job is always the believing part. His job is doing everything for us and empowering us to serve him.
All right back in our text it says there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. There are diversities of activities but the same God who works. All in all. The word diversities, differences, diversities. It’s all the same word in Greek. So he says but it’s cool, did you see that Paul snuck in the Trinity right there? He says the Spirit, the Lord which is the Lord, jesus, and God who’s the Father. He just snuck it in that one verse, which is pretty cool. They’re all the same person, but they all have one heart to lift up Jesus and what he did for you so you can be connected to your Heavenly Father through the work of the Holy Spirit.
God is involved in this entire process of the gospel. The big picture is that God gives his Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit to each person in his family to benefit the whole family. Your purpose is to benefit the family. It’s pretty special. There are no two people that are alike, just like snowflakes. There’s no two that are alike, and God is directly responsible for creating us with such awesome diversity of gifts and he wants to lead people through these gifts. He wants to speak to his church through you, using your gifts. He wants to encourage all the people in the church to trust in Jesus more, so that they can use their gifts to encourage the whole church again to trust in Jesus more, so that they can use their gifts. Maybe they spread out to other churches and all the church is being used to help people to trust in Jesus.
You are going to have a main gift that God has given you. You might even have more than one main gift, but you’ll have at least one main gift and no gift is more important or less important than any other gift. If I die tomorrow, this church will go on just fine. The Lord will raise up somebody to take care of his people. The church will be fine without me, but while I’m on earth, I’m going to spend every moment walking in the Spirit to serve God’s people. With the gift I know that he’s given me, and we can all do the exact same thing.
What does it mean if I have a gift? Well, god has pre-planned you. He has designed you, he has put forethought into your life where you would be born, who you would be born to, how they would form you, how you would grow up, the things you would go through, the things you’d struggle with, the things that would hurt you and all those things, and then how his gift would be brought forth in your life through going through those things. He thought all of this through and the wisdom of it is incalculable. What’s that word? Incalculable? I failed that word. It’s not because he doesn’t value your freedom and to choose what you want, or your free will. He loves. He’s given you freedom. He’s given you free will. It’s because he super values you and he desires to partner with you in His perfect plan for redeeming the world. That’s why he’s given you the specific gift he’s given you. It’s because he looked through all time and eternity and he said this is how I’m going to make this child.
And when you think of your kids, do you think, man, I wish they were, you know, a little bit taller. I wish they were better at basketball so they could take care of me. No, you, little bit taller, I wish they were better at basketball so they could take care of me. No, you just love them. You love how special and unique each one is, and that’s how God thinks about us. And God wants to communicate his love, his heart, his plan, through your gift. So it’s pretty amazing to discover your gift and to walk in it with faith and humility.
So I’m going to give you just a little insight into the types of gifts that there are.
First, there’s miraculous gifts. Okay, do we have this slide, the miraculous gifts Slide. Gifts Okay, do we have this slide, the miraculous gifts Slide, the three that I made Okay, anyway, there’s for next week. We’ll have this because we’re going to focus on it more. But basically, there’s miraculous gifts, there’s enabling gifts and there’s team gifts. There’s enabling gifts and there’s team gifts, teamwork gifts. So the miraculous gifts are gift of tongues, miracles, healings, interpretation of tongues and apostles. Those are the miraculous gifts, and they’re wild and crazy when they happen. Okay, can they happen? Sure, they can happen. I don’t think any one of those is probably going to be your main gift, so they’re not included in the test usually.
Then there’s enabling gifts, and these are gifts like faith, discernment, wisdom and knowledge, and so these are gifts that can be given to you at various times in your life when you need a special amount of faith or you need some discernment or you need some knowledge. God will just give you some insight into something that’s going to happen or something that’s going on. There you go, and then you have the group of team gifts, and these are evangelism, prophecy, teaching, exhortation, shepherding, serving, mercy, showing, giving and administrating, and all those are team gifts. That’s how God puts together His church through those. So you’re definitely going to have at least one, if not two or three, of those things, and those should give you some guidance into, maybe, how you can serve the church in general. So I’m not going to dive into all these things right now. We’re going to do that more deeply next week.
But the purpose of all these gifts is to build up the body of Jesus, which is his church. God wants to speak his life-giving word into his family and he wants you to do it. So John 6, 63 says it’s the spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life, so we can speak life with our gifts. You guys heard that song by Toby Mac Speak life, speak life to the deadest. Dark is night. It’s awesome, right, it’s a good song.
When you serve God through your gift, you’re speaking his life into the people that are impacted by how you serve. Someone comes early and takes out the trash. Did you guys know that here? Someone comes early and does that and never wants to be thanked and never wants to. You know he doesn’t want any attention for it or she doesn’t want any attention for it. But you guys have a little bit more life in you because of that little thing that happens that someone does. That’s thinking about you and loving you. Before you. You know, while you’re still in your jammy jams in the morning, people are thinking about you and loving you. You communicate how valuable people are.
When you use your gift, like when I’m shepherding you, I’m thinking about you. That’s my gift to shepherd, teacher, and I’m thinking about you and what’s best for you. And so what’s best for the church is to study the Word of God and to know the Bible. And so every week we study through the Bible, verse by verse, and I really believe that what’s best for the church is to learn the entire Bible, not just parts here or there. And sometimes I have to teach things that I don’t understand, that I’m like, wow, what is the purpose of this, what’s the point of this? And I promise you I will do my best to teach it the way I believe it’s supposed to be taught. But I also want to have humility and say I could get it wrong. But I pray that the spirit I teach with is lifting Jesus up. Right, I’m not perfect, but I do want to lift Jesus up in everything that I do. Got it, got it.
How do I live in the spirit and use my gift?
It’s simple. First, you just believe that you died with Christ and that you’ve been raised with Him. This is called becoming a Christian, being born again. And if anyone in here has never become a Christian been born again, all you do is you believe that Jesus was God, he died on the cross for your sins and that he rose from the dead with the new life of resurrection so that he could share that
new life with you. He died for you, he rose for you, he’s in heaven and he says I can live through you, and that’s the Holy Spirit. So we invite Him to live through us. So if you haven’t done that, that’s the first way to serve God with your gift. Secondly, just ask Jesus to live through you. So believe and then ask Jesus to live through you and then just live your life. Step forward to love people how you have specifically been created and designed by God. You are special and I hope that taking the spiritual gifts test will encourage you that you have a role to play in building God’s kingdom, in building this church. I was having a conversation with someone right before church and they were talking about how much they cared about this church and the building of this church and they were a part of it, and I was like that is such a beautiful, beautiful thing, and so that’s the purpose of