One of the interesting aspects of serving on the mission field is that when there are only a few English speaking Christians in the whole city, you end up rubbing shoulders with all kinds of Christians that you might otherwise avoid, or at least not actively seek out.
The English speaking fellowship that
Marilyn and I were involved with in
I remember one newcomer who joined the
worship team. At the end of the first practice that he attended he asked, “So,
when do we start to worship?” What he meant was, “When do we start singing in
the Spirit, or in tongues, or both?” His test of a good worship service was
whether people sang in the Spirit or not. For other people a good worship
service might be defined by how loudly everybody sang. For others it might be
defined by how quiet and reflective the service was. And trust me, we had all
of those people and more in the fellowship in
Each of us brings our own assumptions with us when we come into a worship service. Even if we have no previous church experience we bring with us our other experiences and opinions about music, or prayer, or any number of other aspects of a worship service.
The people at
Last week we were in Romans 12 and we talked about what I called “Motivational Gifts,” gifts that reflect the way that God has made each one of us. This week we’re in 1 Corinthians 12 and we’ll be talking about what have been broadly described as “Manifestation Gifts.”
Romans and 1 Corinthians are very different
letters to very different churches. When Paul wrote his letter to the Romans he
had never been to
1 Now
about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be
uninformed.
It’s clear from other places in the letter
that the Corinthians would have fitted in well in today’s culture. They were
obsessed with image; how did they appear, what did people think of them, were
they getting the appropriate amount of respect? We see the outcomes from that
kind of thing around us all the time. People split up into rival factions who
bad-mouth each other and even end up taking each other to court to get the
upper hand. All of that was happening in the church in
In the same way, some people were apparently showing off their spiritual gifts to gain some kind of status. Paul is concerned that they haven’t quite grasped the point behind the gifts of the Spirit.
So he points out that not everything
spiritual is good. 2You know that when you were
pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.
If you read the newspapers or watch TV these days you’ll find a general assumption that “spirituality” is good. It doesn’t really matter what kind of spirituality. If it’s spiritual, it must be good. It’s probably a bit of a reaction to the whole technological thing that has given us global warming. People tend to go to extremes; technology=bad, spirituality=good. But Paul warns the Corinthians, and us, not to be taken in by any old kind of spirituality. Before they became Christians the Corinthians were very spiritual. They were following all kinds of belief systems and going to all kinds of temples. Now that they’re Christians, how can they tell good spirituality from bad spirituality?
The test Paul gives us
has nothing to do with how spectacular or otherwise a particular “spiritual
activity” is. The test is really simple. “Does it glorify Jesus?” 3 Therefore I want you to know
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.
This test goes beyond
just the words that people say. You can apply it to all kinds of things that
are done in the name of religion or spirituality or Christianity. “Does this
lift Jesus up, or does it in some way put him down?” “Does it glorify Jesus or
does it glorify some other god (including our Western gods like affluence and
security)?” “Does it put the focus on Jesus or do I come away thinking how
great the person up front is?”
If the focus is on
glorifying Jesus then, even though there are all kinds of ways in which people
can serve him and serve others in his name, you can be pretty sure that the
source will be the same. 4 There
are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5
There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are
different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same
God at work.
Paul’s point isn’t to draw
lines between “gifts” and “service” and “workings.” It’s actually quite the
opposite. He’s using three different ways to talk about the same thing. The
miraculous things that we see people doing, whether prophesying, healing
or speaking in tongues, are gifts given by the Spirit. We use them in
ways that serve the Lord Jesus. And it is God that makes the whole thing
work.
In the process Paul
makes one of those statements that I was talking about a few weeks ago when I
preached on the Trinity. He is essentially saying that the Spirit, the Lord
(Jesus) and God are all the same. That’s the theological point. The practical
point is that God is at work in each one of us through his Spirit as we serve
Jesus as Lord. I think that’s pretty cool.
Dofasco’s slogan is
“Our Product is Steel, Our Strength is People, Our Home is
These gifts that Paul
is talking about here in 1 Cor 12 are sometimes called “manifestation gifts”
because of verse 7. 7Now to
each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given… Another translation renders
this as “the
Spirit’s presence is made clearly known in each one of us.”
The word “manifestation”
means “to make visible something that was hidden.”
[When we shipped our
belongings back from
The gifts of the
Spirit do the same for individuals and for a church community. You can’t see
the Spirit, he’s invisible, but the gifts, especially the kinds of gifts that Paul
is talking about here in 1 Cor 12, make his presence clearly known in the midst
of the congregation.
For that reason these
gifts are a bit different from the ones we looked at last week. They had more
to do with the way that God has designed each one of us as individuals and then
how he works through that design. These gifts are more like things that God
drops on us from time to time as he sees fit. They are more direct evidence of
God at work than the more motivational gifts.
But, like the
motivational gifts, they aren’t given for the good of the person who uses them.
Verse 7 says, 7Now to each one
the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. Or as the
other translation puts it, “the Spirit’s
presence is made clearly known in each one of us, for the good of all.”
I know I may sound
like I’m harping on this but so much of our culture is about finding out what
is good for me, and if that helps others that’s nice too but not
essential. Nothing could be further from the spirit of the New Testament.
Christ gave up everything to come and serve us by dying on a cross, and that is
the model that we have for life; a model that serves others, not ourselves.
That’s not to say we won’t often benefit from serving others, but there is no
guarantee, and that’s not why we do it anyway.
And anyway, we don’t
get to choose which gift or gifts we would prefer to have. When Paul finally
gets to a list of gifts, which is at the end of the passage, just like it is in
Romans, he makes it clear that it is the Spirit who does the choosing.
7 Now to each one the
manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good… 11 All
these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each
one, just as he determines.
So, if these are gifts
given by the Spirit as he chooses, to show that he is present, what do they
look like? Since these gifts are a little stranger, and more obviously supernatural,
than the gifts in Romans 12 we’ll finish off by spending a little time looking
at how they operate. They’re all different, but basic to all of them is the
sense that when you operate in them, you’re very much aware that they come in
some way from outside of you. It isn’t that you lose control, but you are aware
that God is working through you.
8 To one there is given through the Spirit a message of
wisdom, James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, they should ask God, who
gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to them.” Wisdom is the ability to know what to do, in
a practical sense, with the knowledge you have. Sometimes we need God to speak
into a situation and let us know what to do. He can do that through a brother
or sister who brings a supernatural word of wisdom.
to another a message
of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, When Jason was only six years old we had been in Peshawar for about six
weeks and he got really sick with a bug that had killed another six-year-old
just weeks before. While we were struggling to get him to the hospital and on
an intravenous drip early in the morning another believer, in another part of
the city, woke up out of a sound sleep with the conviction that he should pray
for someone called “Jason.” He didn’t know anybody called Jason, but he got up
and prayed. It wasn’t until we met a few weeks later that he found out who he
had been praying for. That’s a message of knowledge; information that God
shares directly with you for the purpose of ministry. It may also be the most
common gift, as God often uses it to direct people to pray for specific things
in their prayer times.
9 to another faith by the same Spirit, This is a supernatural ability to believe that
God will do something even when all the evidence points otherwise.
to another gifts of
healing by that one Spirit, This
is pretty straightforward. God gives someone the ability to pray for a person
and they are healed, whether it’s physical, mental or emotional.
10 to another miraculous powers, The literal translation is “works of power” and
I suspect it refers to the kinds of power encounters that you run into when you
deal with evil demonic powers. You see that kind of thing when Paul has it out
with a sorcerer on
to another prophecy, Romans 12 has prophecy as a gift too.
Personally, I think there is a continuum here between a motivational gift of
prophecy, which I would suggest has to do primarily with speaking out God’s
message in general, and the manifestation gift, which is more of an immediate
speaking out of a direct message from God for a community or person.
to another
distinguishing between spirits, With
all this spiritual activity going on it’s important to have people who can tell
what’s really from God and what isn’t.
to another speaking
in different kinds of tongues, This
means to speak in a language that you haven’t learned so unbelievers can hear
God’s message in their own language or the church can be blessed. We can talk
more about that, or any of these, in talkback if you like.
and to still another
the interpretation of tongues, Paul
goes on to say that if someone speaks in tongues in a meeting, someone else
should interpret or the first person should be quiet.
When we come to faith
in Christ we should expect God to begin working through our lives. That’s what
it means when we call him “Lord,” that he’s in charge and we submit our lives
to him. Some of the ways that God works through us are part of who we are, he
just releases the things he has already built into us. We talked about that
last week.
Other times, if we
submit our lives to him, God will work directly through us in ways that have
nothing to do with who we are, and are clearly the direct work of the Spirit in
our lives. That’s what we’ve been talking about this week.
You may have been
scared off from spiritual gifts by their strangeness or because you’ve seen
them used unwisely, the same as was happening at
And I believe God
would say that to all of us this morning, to eagerly desire that God would work
miraculously through our lives to bless others.