According to the Scriptures

Damian Kyle: Today on According to the Scriptures, a study on the gifts of the Spirit. There are many gifts of the Holy Spirit. Not everyone will have the same gifts, and not any single gift will operate exactly the same way in every Christian.

Guest (Male): From Calvary Chapel Modesto comes According to the Scriptures. Pastor Damian Kyle has been leading us through the book of 1 Corinthians, and today we find ourselves in chapter 12. If you've ever had any questions concerning spiritual gifts from the Lord, well, you've picked the right day to join us because that is what we will be discussing today and in the days ahead. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 is one of the few spots in scripture where the gifts are laid out for us.

Damian Kyle: Now, Paul includes a kind of a second introduction in verses four through seven to all of this and making the point that every single Christian—yes, you and me—every single Christian in the whole wide world is supernaturally gifted by God. And so you notice in verse seven, he says there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. That is, there are many different spiritual gifts that operate—gifts of the Holy Spirit that operate in the body of Christ, but it's the same Holy Spirit who gives those gifts. And he is the source of all of them.

Paul's going to go on in verses eight through ten and speak of nine different holy gifts—gifts of the Holy Spirit here. But his listing here, as we look at it a little later, is not a complete list of spiritual gifts in the Bible. We'll see further lists of gifts of the Holy Spirit in Romans chapter 12 verses six through eight, Ephesians chapter 4 verses seven through eleven, in 1 Peter, and then at the end of the chapter here in 28 through 31.

And then in verse five, Paul instructs us that there are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And the important looking at that word ministries. So there are many different callings, many different offices and positions that God can call a person to in a local church at large, where there can be a pastor, it can be an elder, it can be a deacon, it can be an evangelist, it can be someone with the gift of administration, or an usher, a greeter, an intercessor, a mom, a dad, an employee, an employer.

And no matter what our ministry or position is within the body of Christ, each of us is in equal need of the gifts of the Holy Spirit for us to fulfill that calling that God has upon our lives in the way that God wants us to. And then you notice in verse six, he adds another word on top of the fact that there are gifts, difference of gifts, differences of ministries. He says there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.

That is, not only are there different gifts which are intended to make our spiritual service and our Christian life supernatural and supernaturally fruitful, but these gifts will operate in our lives differently. One person to the other, depending on God's purpose for our life, his calling that is upon our life, the situation that we find ourselves in, and the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

In the New King James, it says there are diversities of activities, and that's what I'm teaching from. The Old King James has differences of operations. And I like that better because the word there for activities means to effect. It means to effect. And so it's more than just activities; it is to effect by the Holy Spirit. So Paul tells us that God will use his spiritual gifts in our lives to make our Christian life supernaturally fruitful, but these gifts will operate differently from person to person.

The same gift, but it will operate differently in our lives. And it will have not only operate differently in our lives, but it will have diversities of effect. For example, if somebody calls—if God calls someone to teach in the body of Christ, and then God gives them the gift to teach. You look at how many Bible teachers exist in the world today. And what a blessing it is that we can listen with technology today to so many different Bible teachers in the world today.

But you look at how different every Bible teacher is from one another. The incredible diversity just within one area of gifting that exists in the world. Some are very technical, some of them are more devotional, but it's the same gift. And then you look at the diversities of effect of that gift. And God will then have some teach thousands at a time, and then someone else will use that gift all of their life to teach 25 people. And that's the Holy Spirit's doing. That's his design.

And then I think about the gift of an evangelist. And some of them you have of evangelists God will call. It's the same gift of evangelist. And one will operate best one-on-one with people in sharing the gospel with them, and then others will operate best when standing in front of 50,000 people. The gift of prophecy is another example of this.

God used Jonah to bring the entire city of Nineveh to repentance, operating in the gift of prophecy by the Holy Spirit. Jeremiah, operating in the same gift, prophesied for 40 years in the Old Testament, and we don't have one recorded convert related to his ministry. And very different people, by the way. And that's the diversity that Paul is talking about here.

And the point is that there are many gifts of the Holy Spirit. Not everyone will have the same gift, and not any single gift will operate exactly the same way in every Christian. You say, why didn't you say that to begin with? Because some people like to know how we get to those conclusions in looking at a passage.

Now additionally, I want you to notice that Paul makes mention of each member of the Godhead in those verses of four through seven—the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. And he does so here in the context of spiritual gifts. He doesn't do it, of course, by the Holy Spirit to wow us, or to say, I think I can shoehorn the Trinity into this introduction to God's teaching on spiritual gifts.

The Holy Spirit is mentioned in verse four, the Lord Jesus in verse five, God the Father in verse six. And he is communicating, I think, there's nothing to be hesitant about a biblical handling of spiritual gifts. The entire Godhead is in on this. The entire Godhead is comfortable with spiritual gifts and is on the same page in terms of their importance in our life as Christians.

And then finally, in terms of introductions here in verse seven, you notice that Paul's introduction here also includes and communicates three vital things. First of all, every Christian is supernaturally gifted by God with at least one spiritual gift. Everyone of us that's a Christian here, you have one spiritual gift at least that God has imparted into your life.

I want you to read these with me as I read them. Notice again in chapter 12 verse seven, "But the manifestation of the Spirit is given"—and then notice—"to each one for the profit of all." Then notice in verse 11, "But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as he wills." And then in verse six, "There are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all."

The second thing that's important here is to realize that we do not choose these gifts for ourselves. We do not choose these gifts for other Christians or others in the body of Christ. These gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to the body of Christ and given to you personally by the Holy Spirit, not indiscriminately.

But they are given to us as the Holy Spirit chooses because he knows the service that he's called you to. He knows the place that he has put you in the body of Christ, your place in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. And he knows which gifts of the Holy Spirit you are going to need in order for you to fulfill your calling in that Great Commission, wherever it might be.

And then third, he's communicating that the purpose for the spiritual gifts is to profit others, to profit the whole body of Christ. That's to be our motive behind the spiritual gifts. Not pride, not showing off, not self-exaltation. All of these things were part of the motivation of some that were in the church at Corinth.

And it had turned the operation of this beautiful area of the Christian life, spiritual gifts, into kind of a dog and pony show in the church. And instead, Paul says, no, the exercise of spiritual gifts are to be marked by a servant attitude toward others in the body of Christ and to be marked by great humility. The humility of a person recognizing that the supernatural in our life as Christians, it is a gift. We can take no credit for a gift from God in our lives.

Now that then brings us to Paul's list of some of these spiritual gifts here in verses eight through ten. And I want to begin in verse eight with the word of knowledge ahead of the word of wisdom. And a word of knowledge is where God reveals a fact or a piece of knowledge to you that you or I could not otherwise know except by divine revelation.

Jesus exhibited it when he talked with the woman at the well in John chapter four. Jesus said to her, "You have said well, I have no husband, for you've had five husbands and the one you now have is not your husband, and in that you spoke truly." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet."

And then in terms of our lives as Christians in the New Testament, we remember concerning Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter five, and Peter speaking to Ananias there. And he says, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back a part of the price of the land for yourself?"

Well, there's no way that Peter could know that except by divine revelation. And so what Ananias had done secretly, God had seen it openly, and he revealed it to Peter in order that Peter could confront it to protect the purity and the innocence of that early church from hypocrisy and from deceit.

I remember—and I tell this story again, I could tell lots of stories on it, but it was my first experience with this kind of thing in a word of knowledge—I was street witnessing in Napa as a new Christian. And we ended up in the North End on Jefferson Street where the McDonald's was. And it was the big hangout at that time. And so all kinds of people there parking their cars, and all these cars are beautiful and everything, people just hanging out.

And so the guy that I was with, we got to McDonald's, headed straight into a group of guys, young guys that were standing around their cars and talking with one another. And he began to share the gospel with them. And then his attention went to one guy in particular, and he began to speak to him about something about his relationship with his girlfriend and right down to details.

And I'm thinking to myself, just to tell you where I was coming from on that, I was thinking to myself, "Listen, Jim, we're doing okay to share the gospel. It seems to me we're taking an awful risk in front of all these people to say nothing of the person that you're telling him things about his life that you can't know anything about, and maybe we should play it a little safer than what you're doing here." And the guy acknowledged exactly what it was that was happening in his life as Jim had shared with him. And he received the Lord right there at McDonald's. And just that word of knowledge that was operating there.

And sometimes I think a pastor for sure will be told ahead of time by the Holy Spirit to use a particular application in a sermon that they're going to deliver, or a verse to use in a sermon, because somebody in the audience as they listen to it, they're going to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit behind that thing, think that you're reading their mail, and the message has been directed to them personally. And a word of knowledge accomplishes that kind of thing.

For instance, this morning when I was sharing that message in that section of it on perfectionism, and I made the comment of the fact that maybe somebody needs to apply this to their marriage this morning and to their spouse. And that's a word of knowledge that I felt the Lord gave me in preparation to say, that he would then bear witness to that in somebody's heart and they would recognize the danger in their marriage is not their spouse, but the perfection that they're expecting of their spouse. All of this kind of thing works together this way.

And understand that these nine gifts listed here in 1 Corinthians 12, except for the gift of tongues, every one of them is initiated by the Holy Spirit. You and I cannot initiate not one of these gifts except the gift of tongues, if you have the gift of tongues. Every one of these gifts, we have to wait for God to initiate that gift.

And he may use that gift in and through our lives seven times in one week, and then we wait six months before he does it again. But we have that gift, but only he can initiate it. He manifests them individually as he wills, again verse 11. Then there's the gift of the word of wisdom. And this isn't natural wisdom, but supernatural wisdom that God gives for a given situation.

And so let's say the Lord gives you a word of knowledge. And the word of knowledge is you're going to wake up tomorrow and somebody is going to walk up to you and give you a million dollars. Well, that's a wonderful word of knowledge. The word of wisdom is then what you should do then with that million dollars when it's handed to you. The word of knowledge is that you're going to receive it, but now what do we do with it? Do we take it or do we give it back? Oh come on, we take it.

Pastor Chuck Smith, very early years of the Calvary Chapel movement as they were building the church down in Southern California, somebody came up and offered a million dollars toward the construction. And a million dollars went a lot further 50 years ago than it does today. And the Lord spoke to him in what was a word of wisdom and said, "Don't accept that because this man will be tempted then to take credit for what I'm going to do through Calvary Chapel and I don't want this to be in the mix." And so the word of wisdom that came into that situation, and Pastor Chuck, he declined that.

You cannot produce a word of wisdom any more than a word of knowledge. And a word of wisdom is what you should do in the light of that knowledge where God tells you what you should do. And the word of wisdom is a supernatural wisdom for a given situation. In the early church, the Holy Spirit used the word of wisdom in dealing with the dispute that occurred in the first Jerusalem council where there was this great debate on how the Law of Moses and circumcision applied to Gentile believers.

In chapter 15, it details all of it. False teachers were saying that Gentile Christians had now to be circumcised and they needed to come under the Law of Moses. This council comes together. Paul and Barnabas spoke of all of these Gentiles getting saved in the early church and spoke to them of this false teaching of these false teachers. The apostles and the elders came together to discuss the situation.

Big discussion ensued. Finally Peter spoke, and then Paul and Barnabas got up and spoke about all of the miracles that God was doing not only among the Jewish Christians, but among the Gentile Christians as a confirmation of his work of salvation in their lives, that they were a part of the body, he was using them. And then after Paul and Barnabas shared, there was silence.

And then James spoke. And he said, "Known to God from eternity are all his works. Therefore, I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, sexual immorality, and from things strangled, and from blood." And when he said that, everybody knew that this was God's wisdom on the situation, that God had given him a word of wisdom for that need. That's why James said, "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us."

I can't tell you how many meetings I have been in as a pastor where you're meeting with a group of people, or meeting with a group of pastors or leaders or whatever it might be, and you're addressing some kind of a situation that's very complicated, a situation where there is planning for a future event. And this prayerful discussion is going on back and forth for some time.

And then someone will say something like, "I think this might be the way to look at this" or "What we should do here is this" or "This is at the bottom of all of this." And as they speak concerning it, as the words come out of their mouth, the realization falls upon everybody at that table and in that room that that is the mind of the Lord on this situation.

All of this other discussion went on, all of it was valuable in its own way, and then boom, when a word of wisdom shows up on the scene, everybody recognizes it for what it is. It happens all of the time in private conversations, in that fellowship hall, or even in this room as we're talking afterwards and we're talking about some kind of a situation with the scriptures and what does it mean, or some difficult to understand passage, or how does it apply to this situation, or somebody talking about a problem in their life and how does the scriptures apply to that.

And the conversation goes on back and forth, back and forth and all, and then someone in that conversation will say such and such, and the group goes silent. Everybody recognizes there is nothing to add to what just got said because what just got said is a word of wisdom from God related to this issue. And then you move on to another subject to discuss.

Guest (Male): The word of wisdom. One of the many gifts God has graciously given to his children and listed here for us in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We'll take a look at the many other gifts described here next time on According to the Scriptures. Pastor Damian Kyle is developing his series in 1 Corinthians. Well, for resource requests like today's message on CD, reach out to us by phone. The number is 209-545-5530. That's 209-545-5530.

Pastor Damian Kyle's studies can also be heard online at AccordingToTheScriptures.com, OnePlace.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we also have a church app where you can listen to Damian as well. Search for Calvary Chapel Modesto in the App Store or Google Play. If you would like to partner with us financially with a financial gift, you can do that through our website at AccordingToTheScriptures.com. And thank you very much.

Well, let me also give you our mailing address. According to the Scriptures, 4300 American Avenue, Modesto, California, the zip code is 95356. Don't miss our next study in 1 Corinthians when Pastor Damian Kyle will again open the word, helping us live our lives according to the scriptures. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Modesto.