The Gift of the Spirit

SERMON: 2013-05-26--sg1304--the-gift-of-the-spirit-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:48:36.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The opening segment [0] begins the sermon exposition. The closing segments transition into a sustained acoustic music interval (starting around 00:45:29), making segment [413], which is the final spoken reflection before the music, the last part of the main sermon content. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:45:09.440-00:48:30.900 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Picking up this morning where we left off last week, we were looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 12 in the context of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and how the Holy Spirit works in your life and in my life when by faith we're joined to Jesus. Let's read again together the first 11 verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or another, you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus be cursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom. To another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit. To another faith by the same Spirit. To another gifts of healing by that one Spirit. To another miraculous powers. To another prophecy. To another distinguishing between spirits. To another speaking in different kinds of tongues and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit and He gives them to each one just as He determines. I'm tempted to ask you this morning how many of you did your homework this past week but I will resist the temptation and trust that you did. Let's pray together. Lord we bless you for your word and we acknowledge that there are riches in Christ mediated to us through the Holy Spirit that are far above and beyond what many of us have experienced. Sometimes that makes us feel insecure. Sometimes that makes us wonder if we're even Christians at all and sometimes surely that makes us very envious of others who seem to have more than what we have. Help us to understand Lord that in Christ there is an inheritance for each one of us and that you distribute your gifts according to your own sovereign pleasure. Help us therefore to own what it is that you've given. Help us never to bury our treasure but to step out in faith knowing that the body consists of many parts and that when all the parts work together in unity and in harmony led by the head who is Jesus, Jesus is made manifest to the world and His work is accomplished until that day when the whole world will again acknowledge that He is Lord of Lords and King of Kings. Bless us in these moments together, give me I pray this morning the words that I need and all of us Lord hearts to just lay hold of who you are and what you have given us. Grant us the gift of faith, courage, hope, love, boldness. May we accomplish your purposes in our generation and we'll be careful to give you the glory we pray in Jesus name, Amen. Well to just quickly review I pointed out last week that one of the main tasks of the Holy Spirit is to bear witness to the exalted Jesus. Paul puts it this way, 1 Corinthians 12 verse 3, "I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus be cursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." Jesus himself echoing a very similar thought in John 15 26, "When the counselor comes whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about me." The job of the Holy Spirit is to make real in your life and in my life all the benefits that we have in the person of Jesus. And I said last week just very quickly to review, he does that in three ways. He points out our sin and our misery. He shows us how we miss the mark and what the consequences of missing that mark are. And when you look at the disasters caused by tornadoes or the grief of funerals such as we talked about just a few moments ago, then you get just a taste of how much pain there is in a fallen world. But more than that the Holy Spirit goes on beyond that to point us to Jesus because the message of scripture is that there is no other name given among men under heaven whereby we can be saved but the name of Jesus when history ends. Jesus will be the great Redeemer and Deliverer who delivers a whole world regained back to the authority of God. And then the Holy Spirit comes to live in our hearts so that by faith in Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, our lives are renewed from the inside out. The job of the Holy Spirit is to make real in our lives, let me say it again, in our experience, to make real in our lives and in our experience the benefits that we have in Christ Jesus our Lord. And that brings us this morning then to the second observation that I want to make based on this passage before us. The second job of the Holy Spirit is to empower us for service in the kingdom of God. Listen to how Paul puts it in the verses 4, 5, and 6 of 1 Corinthians 12. He says there are different kinds of gifts but the same spirit. There are different kinds of service but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working but the same God works all of them in all men or in everybody. And we're going to take a few minutes and look at those three verses in some detail. There are three things about those three verses that I want to point out. The first is this, it is Trinitarian, that is to say it makes mention of the Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, makes mention of the Lord and that is almost without exception though there are some exceptions in the New Testament a reference to the Lord Jesus. And then it talks about God. And again there are exceptions but typically in scripture God refers to God the Father. Let's take a look at each of those terms in more detail because the second thing to note is that each of these is described as having a particular function and we're going to ask our technicians to keep those slides up a little bit longer because we're going to go through a whole bunch of them in rapid succession. Notice then, taking it backwards, that God the Father is said to provide workings and the Greek word for that, for working, is energemato and I thought I'd show off my Greek for a change. I'm a Greek major in college just for the record not that it's done me a lot of good but there you see what it looks like and the word works is enerion. Both of those are derived from the Greek word energeia and I mention that because what English word do you think comes from that, energy, the word energy is used by the apostle Paul very typically to describe the surpassing power of God at work in the life of the believing community. Ephesians 3.7, I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working energeion, energy, of his power. And Colossians 1.26, to this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, again energeion, which so powerfully works, energumenane, which is a passive form of the verb, which so powerfully works in me. And so what Paul is saying here is that God the father works in the lives of believers and I want to expand on that for just a little bit because the working that he does and that Paul describes here is all the work of God's redemptive power and the best way to describe that is to again just look very briefly at our circles because the working that God does is he takes us out of this domain of Satan and he places us in the kingdom of God. Remember we are by nature slaves of Satan, we are by nature alienated from God, we are selfish to the core, we live in conflict and confusion, the world spirals down into what the Bible calls death. And God from the very beginning has destined us for salvation, which means being restored in relationship with God, restored in relationship with each other, and the working of which Paul speaks here is the work that God does both individually and corporately and across the world to bring a fallen world back to himself. So it involves setting us free from Satan's power, it involves reconciling us to God through faith in the Lord Jesus, it involves getting rid of our self-centeredness, replacing it with the heart of God, it means getting rid of the pain and the conflict and the confusion that lives in our lives, it is God's power at work to take a fallen human race filled with selfishness, filled with selfish ambition and to restore them fully into God's purposes in his kingdom. It is God, he says, who is at work in you. Now keep that in mind because we'll have occasion to come back to it and see how the person of Jesus and the person of the Holy Spirit are all part and parcel of that process. So Paul says the Father works, but then he says that Jesus calls us to service. The word for service is the word diaconion, from which we get one English word, deacon, the diaconate, all means serving, and it's a word Paul uses to describe his own ministry when he says in 1 Timothy 1 verse 12, "I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service," or diacodion. Why does God save us? Why does God work his purposes of redemption in the world, in your heart and in my heart, because he wants us to join him in his work? God is so filled with love for his children, he doesn't need you and me. In fact, we're a bit of a liability when it comes to accomplishing the purposes of God. We're much more like a paralyzed body than we are, a body that is fluid and free and ready to obey and to honor God. But God wants to share the joy of his work in redemption in your life and in my life. And so what the Lord Jesus does is he brings us to himself but then calls us into his service so that we can be his hands and be his feet and be a vehicle through which the purposes of God get accomplished in the world. And if you think that only applies to the clergy or to people like the apostle Paul, you're quite mistaken because listen again to this scripture, Ephesians 4, 11 and 12. It was he, that is the exalted Christ, who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers for what purpose? To prepare or to equip, cut our tits so, God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up. If you're in Christ and you've been joined to him by faith and God has given you the Holy Spirit, there is a job that he has for you that only you can do. And when the day of eternity dawns and we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, we're going to receive our reward to a large degree based on our faithfulness or the lack thereof to his calling upon our lives. God doesn't have to use us. He could readily do it with his angels. He has chosen to take us into his confidence so that we may share in his joy. Some of you've heard me tell the story, father was working in his garden with his young children and the neighbor was watching this of what a mess the kids were making and how they were actually hindering more than they were helping the father. They weren't watching where they were going and they stepped on the plants and the father looked up at the neighbor with a scowl on the neighbor's face and he said, "I know what you're thinking." But he says, "You're wrong. It's not a garden that I'm growing. It is a family that I'm raising." That's how God approaches you and me as he calls us to participate with him in the work of leading people to faith and in the work of bringing people to maturity in Christ. So God the Father, Paul says, is at work in this whole process of redemption. Jesus who made a redemption possible now calls us into service and then to equip us further, the Holy Spirit gives us gifts. There are different kinds of gifts but the same spirit and it's spiritual gifts as we call them that are the subject of Paul's message here in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed or I don't want you to be ignorant. Now spiritual gifts are divine enablings given by the Holy Spirit so that we can do the work of Jesus, setting captives free, helping people see the bondage of sin, helping people understand how they can overcome the gravity of a fallen human condition. I tell you it doesn't matter how smart you are, it doesn't matter how clever you are, it is impossible simply in human strength and human wisdom. Bill Heibos tells a story years ago. His church was invited to do a presentation at the Harvard School of Business and he was explaining how their motto as a church was to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Jesus and one of the kids in the class raised a hand and said something to the effect that that had to be the most difficult calling in the world to take people from a position of unbelief to bring them to a position of being a devoted follower of the Lord Jesus and of course that's true and no amount of human persuasion or human wisdom can make that happen. That's why we need the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit gives us spiritual giftings that break through the spiritual powers that enable sinners to repent of their sin, come to faith in Jesus and to grow up to maturity in Christ. And so the emphasis here is on spiritual gifts that are the equipment, they are as I said before the power tools of the kingdom and if you read on in the passage as we did earlier then you get some examples of what the spiritual gifts are. The one he says is given through the spirit the message of wisdom that refers to an ability to discern what is happening in a certain person's life and to speak into it in such a way that it really helps. All of us have been the beneficiaries of being in difficult situations, we share our need perhaps with somebody else and somebody knows just what we need to know and hear in order for us to get beyond where we are. Another gift that is mentioned there is the gift of faith. Now the gift of faith here is different from the generic gift of faith that all of God's people have. You can't come to salvation without faith that God is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. But there is a special anointing with the gift of faith, the kind of faith that comes upon you in a given situation and says I will not accept this present situation, I will not accept this illness, I will not accept this brokenness, I will not accept this tragedy in the name of Jesus be restored and healed. Faith can move mountains but you can't make it happen yourself and God assigns according to scripture a measure of faith to each of his people, some people have much more faith for very specific things than other people do and you will have in your life a measure of faith. He goes on to talk about gifts of healing, that is to say he gives some people the ability to pray in faith, to minister in faith so that the lame walk, the blind see and the deaf hear and as I said before the greater the oppression of the enemy, the greater is the outpouring of God's grace and God's power. I shared last time I've been reading this book, The Insanity of God, how the persecuted church in Russia, in China and in Middle Eastern countries continues to thrive despite decades of oppression and it's because the miracle power of God is there. There are stories not only of miraculous healings, miraculous dreams, miraculous visions, I described one of those to you last time, but even stories of people literally being raised from the dead and at the end of the day it is the power of God that equips God's people for works of service and as I said before if that sort of thing doesn't happen in our lives or in North America the way that it does in the mission field or in persecuted countries it's partly because when the enemy comes in like a flood God raises up a banner and demonstrates that at the end of the day Jesus is Lord and that of his kingdom there will be no end. I mean isn't it amazing that in countries like China, you know China when the communists took over had a limited number of Christians after decades and decades of Christian ministry and yet after the communist government took over and did everything they possibly could to suppress faith, the number of believers in China today is estimated at numbering close to a hundred million people doesn't matter where you go, God's people are turning to faith in Jesus and many of those because they encounter the living Christ. So not to belabor the point, God the Father is working, Jesus calls us to his service, the Holy Spirit equips us and then the third thing in this set of verses that I want us to notice and that which is really the focal point of all of this, the emphasis lies on the diversity of God's working. Listen again carefully now, note the parallel structure in this verse, there are different kinds of gifts but the same spirit, different kinds of service but the same Lord, different kinds of working but the same God works all of them in every one. The whole focus of what Paul is talking about here is God's diversity within unity, it's the same spirit, it's the same Lord, it is the same God and Father but they work in different ways in different people and just as there are no two snowflakes alike in the world and just as the fingerprints of even identical twins I understand are not identical and just as there is an incredible variety in the created order so God's working among his people varies immensely from one person to another. It is the same spirit but different gifts, it is the same Lord but different service, it is the same God but different workings. Now why do I make a point of that and why do I belabor it the way that I'm belaboring it this morning, I'll tell you why. Because depending on our maturity in Christ and because the work of the Holy Spirit is so experiential we have a tendency to use our experience of God or the lack of our experience of God as the measuring stick by which we measure everybody else and so let's suppose that I'm the kind of individual who has never really in a personal way experienced the Holy Spirit in my life and now I run into somebody maybe a new convert, maybe somebody who has been recently baptized in the Holy Spirit, somebody who is filled with zeal and enthusiasm for God and every other word is God told me this and God told me that and I look at myself and what do I do? Well the first thing I will probably do is look at the other person and judge them to be slightly insane because I have no reference for the experiences that they're talking about, isn't that true? Come on, be real. Then when that doesn't wear off and they continue that kind of insanity, especially if it starts to spread, then I start to look at myself and I begin to question well what about me? Am I even a Christian? Now that's not a bad thing, by the way, to do because the Bible says test yourself to see if you are in the faith and it's perfectly well possible that if we don't experience the reality of God ever in our own lives, we may never have come to the cross, we may never have bent the knee before the Lord Jesus and that will then be an opportunity for us to reevaluate life and repentance and submission to God. My experience is that how much you experience of the Holy Spirit in your life is not unrelated to the degree to which we have learned to bend the knee to the Lordship of Jesus and it's not uncommon that it's not until we deal with particular sins or particular strongholds or particular areas of life that we're just holding on to so dearly that we experience the presence and the power of God in an unprecedented way. But all of those caveats aside, the same God works in different ways, the same Lord calls to different service, the same Holy Spirit gives different gifts. Your life will not parallel somebody else's life. Your life may be unique because you are unique and God gives you what you need and not what somebody else needs. Very important to understand that so that we can bloom where we're planted. Let me give you another example of it. Let's suppose that you're the kind of person you pray and your prayer sort of bounce off the ceiling but then there are other people they pray and all heaven moves. Then again it's very easy on the one hand to become judgmental, on the other hand it's very easy to become introverted and to say well what's wrong with me and again it's always a good question to ask but if all you do is ask that question without getting answers to that question you'll just spiral down into hopelessness, confusion and well what's the use anyway, God may love everybody else but he doesn't love me. No, no, different gifts, same Spirit, different service, same Lord, different workings but the same God who works them all in everyone. Still one more example. Let's suppose you're the kind of person and you have caught the vision of some Christian activity that you really think just really matters. Currently you know a lot of young people across North America they're really incensed about the sex trade. Let's suppose you're that kind of individual or you've gone on a short term mission, you've seen what happens in third world countries and you just think everybody want to get on board and you can figure out why would you are so excited about leave somebody else cold. You know what I'm talking about? Or you're really burning for a cause like Christian education and you can't figure out why other people keep sending their kids to public school. Or you're really caught up in evangelism and you can't understand why everybody isn't inviting their neighbors over to their house into your church. Then different kinds of gifts, different same spirit, different kinds of service, same Lord, different kinds of workings, same God. And I'll tell you another reason why I elaborate upon this because one of the things that God does among Christians and in Christian community when a Christian community comes to life he brings to life the gifts among God's people and years ago I would have thought that would be an exciting thing in Christian community and I never imagined the kind of problems it would create. Because as I said the more immature we are the more we measure one another by ourselves, by our experience or the lack of it and the hardest thing that I have discovered over the years for God's people to accept is ministry for one another. You know that? Like who do you think you are that you might have something to contribute to me particularly if you're going to speak truth into my life. See it's hard enough for us to accept this from trained people or from educated clergy or from people who have a proven track record it's much harder to believe that Saul is also among the prophets isn't it? I'll tell you something if God can speak through Balaam through a donkey's voice he can speak to any one of us through anybody and part of coming to maturity is to learn to recognize that God is at work in his own way in different people's lives. That's what occasions this whole letter here to the Corinthians you may remember. The Corinthians were a people who were incredibly gifted spiritually earlier Paul says that God has blessed them with amazing gifts of speech and knowledge. These people were just a bubbling over with gifts of the spirit but they were incredibly immature and their immaturity was causing strife and confusion. Listen to how he puts it in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 the first three verses brothers I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly mere infants in Christ I gave you milk not solid food for you were not yet ready for it indeed you are still not ready you are still worldly for since there is jealousy and quarrel among you are you not worldly are you not acting like mere men are you not acting like mere men and his implication obviously is that if you're in Christ you ought to be different from the kind of jealousy the kind of envy the kind of immaturity that characterize those who are not yet grown up in Christ. So let me ask you this morning what kinds of gifts of the Holy Spirit has the Holy Spirit loosed in your life and when you see in somebody else's life what you don't have what does that do to you on the inside because the biblical antidote is to recognize as I said so many times now it's the same God different workings it's the same Lord but different service it's the same spirit but different gifts and Paul nails it at the conclusion of this passage in verse 11 when he says all these referring to all the things that have gone before are all these are the work of one and the same spirit and he gives them to each one just as he determines he gives them to each one just as he determines. I believe with all my heart the Lord is calling us to move forward into releasing and setting free the gifts that God has given to his people and that brings along with it plenty of challenges but also plenty of opportunity because as each part of the body does its work Jesus manifests himself in ways that we cannot imagine and he brings life and light in healing in ways that we generally cannot imagine and just to put some flesh on those bones I've invited Karen Al-Rafi to come up this morning and share some of her thoughts. Karen sent me an email a couple of days before Mother's Day last week telling of something that was birthing in her that she felt that she needed to share and Mother's Day would have been the perfect opportunity for that except by that time we already had so many elements in the service we couldn't add it but I've asked her to share that with you today just as a testimony to God's faithfulness and a model of what it is that we're talking about. Here she be. Give her a hand she's pretty nervous about this. God had given me this story a long time ago as you'll hear but finally he was impressing on me to write it down and that's when I finally wrote it down and sent it to Pastor John. See I'm listening I get it eventually. So anyhow it's about a time in my life from 96 to 2002 that I was really powerfully learning some truths of God and and they were really difficult years spiritually but it started my husband and I Muhammad my husband Muhammad and I wanted to have a baby and for almost seven years we we tried to have a baby and it just wasn't happening. At times I was really full of faith and I was so you know sure that God had told me that I'd have a child and I was I even you know had some dreams and scriptures and I felt that God was confirming this truth to me and I was even went as far as to share this with some of my close friends and a few relatives and I think that kind of made them nervous actually but then by about the fourth fifth year I was getting a little discouraged obviously and by the sixth year I was just at one of the lowest points I've been spiritually. I was confused I didn't know what was going on or why had God told me that or I felt God had told me that and why wasn't it happening and I really didn't I didn't know which way was up to be quite honest and but the whole time God was really radically changing my view of him and it started with Bible study that I want that I just started and to be quite honest I don't even know why I started it it was about the attributes and character of God and I really knew I had certain assumptions of who God was and then I realized he really wanted to tell me who he was so the discoveries over the course of those years were just so life-changing for me and I know I'm still getting some of it but I really did you know he brought me to the verse Psalm 103 and I really finally got that God was not my accuser and he wasn't keeping records of wrongs and my sins were as far as east is from the west and that he's my rock through these struggles that he was my comforter in this suffering and he's sovereign and that his timing would be perfect and he is faithful so the last that last one took me a while to figure out and in April of 2002 we found out we are expecting our son Eamon so we were overjoyed you just can't imagine how excited we were and but the whole time that we that I knew that I was pregnant I kept saying to God you know why did you choose this time you know it would have been so great had you have if we'd had the baby or we had gotten pregnant when I was so full of faith when I was telling everybody and I was so excited you would look so great God if you had done it then and you know it brought you so much glory and you know I'm saying all these things and for two years I could not figure it out I was just like why didn't you do it then so finally one day really quite out of the blue I just felt like the spirit whispered to me you know I am faithful even if you are not and it that just hit me I mean I had read that those verses I knew that that was his character and that was his attribute but I just couldn't I didn't really figure it out and I just felt like he was saying I am who I say I am and it was really one of the milestone lessons for me in my life and you know I understand the actions have consequences but that really doesn't change the character of God he is still faithful and he gave me this beautiful verse 2nd Timothy 2 13 if we are unfaithful he remains faithful for he cannot deny who he is and I think I had read that and never really truly got it and in the back of my mind I think I always doubted you know his goodness his redeeming power and his grace in my life and I'd sing the songs and read the scriptures but I think I really didn't get the concept of the faithfulness of God until that point that I cannot change his character he is who he says he is and no matter what I do or what I think it doesn't change who God is he is faithful and I think I can really sing those words now I trust your heart and I trust your name because I know he is he's really faithful and by the way we we in 2003 welcomed a second son Kenan so not only do I know he's great faithful but his blessing blessings are abundant. Thank you Karen. I want to end this morning with a quotation that I heard on the word for you today with Bob Gass on UCB this morning it's a quotation from the poem from the poet William Arthur Ward who is one of the most quoted inspirational writers in our contemporary time and here is what he says I will do more than belong I will participate I will do more than care I will help I will do more than believe, I will practice. I will do more than be fair, I will be kind. I will do more than forgive, I will forget. I will do more than dream, I will work. I will do more than teach, I will inspire. I will do more than learn, I will enrich. I will do more than give, I will serve. I will do more than live, I will grow. And I will do more than suffer, I will triumph. That's God's call on the Church through faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:45:09.440; remove through 00:48:36.000] Consecrated Lord, take my moments and my days, let them flow with endless praise, let them flow with endless praise. Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of thy love, take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee, for thee. Take my voice and let me sing, always only for my gift, take my lips and let them be filled with messages from thee, filled with messages from thee. Take my will and make it thine, it shall be no longer mine. Take my heart, it is thine own, it shall be thy royal throne, it shall be thy royal throne. Take my love, my Lord, I pour, have thy feet in its treasure store, take myself and I will be thee, ever only for thee, ever only for thee. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:48:36.000; resume after this marked segment]