Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. The shepherd's tales were preposterous, improbable. and true. When God's miraculous grace breaks in, what is there to do? but to receive it, take it, hold it.
Feel it. As Mary treasured and pondered the goodness of God, May your soul find enough quiet. to sift through the evidences of his grace. and ponder yesterday's God moments today. You are a treasure hunter who has happened upon gold.
I bless you to see. Enjoy. and ponder. The riches of his grace. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright.
We're not really trained much spiritually, are we? I mean, even if you're in a good church. the training up and the familiarity and the ways of God moving in our midst. And what it is like to be in the presence of God, and how one releases their spirit into true worship and communion with God. And How in the world we have an experience with an invisible creator that we can't see or touch?
That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt. Excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Philed as presented at Renolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource today.
It can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries.
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More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Romans chapter 12 and then 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
So Both chapter 12s and books that are adjacent to each other in the New Testament. First one is Romans. Chapter twelve, and I'll read as we continue to hand out these. A little s Synopses. Uh Romans chapter 12 and verse 4.
Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace that is given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it's serving, let him serve. If it's teaching, let him teach.
If it's encouraging, let him encourage. If it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it's leadership, let him govern diligently. And if it's showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
So we're just learning right off the bat that everybody gets a gift, get a number of gifts, and they're different in the body, and we all need each other, and everybody should use their gifts because the strength of the body and the mission depends upon it. 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
Some of the gifts are repeated here, and others are listed here as well. In 1 Corinthians 12, verse 1.
Now, about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. Verse 4, 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's 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. Are the work of the one and same Spirit, and He gives them to each one just as He determines. Verse uh thirty.
Do All have gifts of healing. Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But eagerly desire the greater gifts, and then The first verse of chapter 14. Follow the way of love.
And eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. In C.S. Lewis's brilliant Chronicles of Nornia, once the children have. Been ushered into this new kingdom of Narnia through the wardrobe. They step into an adventure that is going to be beyond what they could have ever expected.
These children who are ordinary kids back in England now are princes and princesses, and they will slowly discover that this is who they really are, and that they have been authorized to rule in Narnia. And a fascinating adventure for any child to hear about because children see themselves as the one who don't have any authority or real power in the world. And this turns it upside down, and now the children are the ones in Narnia that are destined to reign. Early in the adventure, they hear the sound of the sleigh, and they are concerned that it may be the white witch. But instead They are Enraptured in an encounter With Father Christmas.
Who comes to give them gifts? Gifts that they will need in their adventure in Narnia. Gifts that will protect, gifts that will heal. And they don't even know how necessary the gifts are going to be. But I just think it's so brilliant of C.S.
Lewis that. He sends Father Christmas to give the gifts because this picture of the spiritual gifts by which God equips the body of Christ and the great work of the kingdom, it's like that, it's like Christmas. Christmas, where you get something that you couldn't get for yourself, that you didn't deserve, you couldn't have bought, and then the gift is just given and it's yours. Free, unmerited. Christmas.
And I think about the spiritual gifts like this: the gifts of God. The gifts of God for the upbuilding of the church, the healing of people. For miracles to be done, for people to be taught, for the whole watching world to be treated with kindness and mercy and hospitality by those who have gifts by which they serve with joy and diligence, by the prophetic words that get shared, the revelations that strike people's heart to know that God is in the room and that God is with us and will never leave us or forsake us. It is like this. If God had done nothing more for us, except for save us and send us Jesus so that we would not die in our sin and be separated from him.
If God had never done anything except for send Jesus to the cross so that if we trust in him we could live, it would be way more than enough. But he hasn't just done that. God so loves the church and he so loves each individual and he so wants the mission to be accomplished that he has given the body of Christ gifts to enable us, to empower us, to equip us to get the job done. Why wouldn't everybody want the gifts of the Holy Spirit? That's the question I asked a couple weeks ago.
I was thinking about why wouldn't everybody want to be filled with the Holy Spirit? And the more I think about it, why wouldn't everybody want the gifts of the Spirit? I've already started sketching out the next four or five messages. Why wouldn't everybody want to be convicted by the Spirit? Why wouldn't everybody want to be led by the Spirit?
Why wouldn't everybody.
So I want to address that. Sense of maybe some people in the room have some reservations about this. But probably more of us are just a little bit ignorant. We just haven't really experienced or learned much about the gifts of the Spirit. And so I hope to give some little overview.
And I want to also just briefly address some of the concerns.
So that's an ambitious amount. Sermon. Let me first say that there are a number of people who have uh grown up with a belief system that essentially says that the gifts Alike prophecy and healing and miracles and tongues all ceased. In the apostolic age or the first century. Maybe some of you have been brought up with that.
Interestingly, I kind of take a poll of people and say, were you taught this? Generally, what people tell me is: no, they weren't really taught from the scriptures this, but it was just sort of believed maybe in the church they were in or amongst the people that they were with. And so, maybe not that many people have actually really studied it for themselves, either from a theological system or from a. From just exegesis and interpretation of the scriptures. That's Alan Wright.
and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. This Giving Tuesday's featured resource from Pastor Alan is a special Good News for Your Family study bundle, including two DVD series with study guides, Good News for Your Marriage, and Good News for Parents. In these sessions, Pastor Alan and his wife, Anne, show how God's grace can strengthen communication, restore joy, empower forgiveness, and help raise children without pressure or shame. Their practical wisdom and Christ-centered encouragement will equip your marriage and your parenting with hope and confidence that only the gospel can give. Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastorallen.org.
Today's teaching now continues. Here once again. is Alan Wright. There are some people that will point to a verse in 1 Corinthians 13, which says, Where there are tongues they will cease, where there are prophecies, they will cease. And there are some people that will point and say, Well, doesn't that say that the gifts have ceased?
Well Most scholars, even those who don't believe in the gifts for today, don't point to that verse. Because that verse is in the context of Paul teaching about spiritual gifts, and it's in the chapter 13 about the preeminence of love. And what Paul is pretty clearly saying there is that now we see in part and we prophesy in part, but one day we'll see him face to face. And he's speaking about the return of Jesus and he's speaking about heaven. And it's pretty clear what he's saying is that when we're in heaven, we won't need prophecy and we won't need tongues and we won't need healing gifts anymore.
We won't need the gifts of the Spirit in heaven. And that's not actually the main argument that people who argue for the gifts having ceased, the more articulate scholars about this matter, who are referred to as cessationists from the word ceased, Point to a larger concern, and I want to just address this briefly. But if you want to learn more about this, see me and I can point you to some resources. This is the deeper concern that the most articulate cessationist theologians have. And that is that we believe that by the providence of God, And the grace of God, not only did He reveal Himself to us in the scriptures.
through many different authors at many different times. He inspired this word. Which Orthodox Christians believe that it is an infallible word, that it won't lead us into any error, and that it's trustworthy. And it's an astounding story of the compilation of the Bible, the sheer number of manuscripts that we have that corroborate what's in this book. But there was a time in which the Bible was closed, right?
At the end of the apostolic age, when Paul and Peter were writing letters to the churches. Those letters had from God an apostolic authority to them such that they were compiled in the canon of Scripture as part of the Bible. And The canon of Scripture, the Bible, is closed. God's not writing any more Bible. And this is very important, of course, because most cults end up taking the Bible and adding something to it.
There's some new revelation or some new prophecy that gets added to it.
So, what most scholars are concerned about is that very thing: that we need to guard against having extra-biblical revelation that in any way could be viewed alongside the Bible. And so, this is part of the argument about cessationism: is that therefore, especially prophecy must have ceased. In the apostolic age, or else we've got prophecies that are in addition to the Bible.
So that's the most articulate ones and most concerned about that.
Now, here is just a very, very short response to that. Biblically and practically. Biblically, In the study of how Paul instructs, especially the Corinthians, about the spiritual gifts. Everything about it reads as though he absolutely assumes that not just the apostles that are writing the Bible are speaking prophecies, but that there is a prophetic gift that's emerging all throughout the body of Christ. Thus, he gives different instructions about how there needs to be some order, and he doesn't let everybody just stand up and prophesy at one time.
Well, clearly he's not talking about the apostolic authority that is going to be inscripturated. And we who embrace the gifts of the Spirit have this important distinction about what the prophetic really is. We don't view the gift of prophecy in the body of Christ as it was in Old Covenant, where there were a few appointed prophets, and if they missed it, they were subject to being stoned to death. We don't believe in an infallible gift, in any of the gifts. All of the gifts, Paul just finished saying, we prophesy in part.
We don't get it all. And sometimes we don't get it right. And so, what we're speaking of is not at all the kind of apostolic revelation that becomes Scripture. We're talking about the body of Christ that receives by revelation of the Holy Spirit at work prophetic encouragement that we're not saying is infallible, but in fact, we say it should be weighed and tested and borne witness to. And I'll say a little bit more about that.
The second thing to say to this, just biblically, by the most basic principle of interpreting Scripture. Is that there's no real way that I've heard any scholar point this out, how you can take these two passages in Romans chapter 12 and 1 Corinthians chapter 12, where there's a listing of all this diversity of gifts. And somehow, by an interpretive meth method, Read the ecstatic gifts like prophecy and healing and miracles, and then draw a line and say, These ceased, but the other ones haven't ceased. That's just not an interpretive step that I understand how we could make that. And I don't know of people that believe that there are not still gifts of teaching or generosity or administration that go.
Instead, it's the more miraculous gifts that are singled out. Practically speaking, my response to this is that in addition, while I've had many conversations with many dear friends and others and scholars throughout who believe the gifts have ceased, but I don't know personally, and I haven't read of people who disagree with what Paul says, that as many as are the children of God are led by the Spirit of God. I don't know of people that disagree with Jesus when he says, my sheep hear my voice and they know how to follow me. I don't know of people who disagree with James, who says, if you lack wisdom, ask God and he'll share wisdom with you generously without finding fault. In other words, it seems that all Christians believe that we are to be led by God like a shepherd leads his sheep.
But here's the practical problem. If you say that the only revelation that God has given us is the Bible and he leads us only by the Bible, Well That is, in my understanding of what the Scripture really is, is a misuse of what the Scripture really is all about. Yes, we're led through God's Word. But this is not an instruction manual like the instruction manual in the glove compartment of your car that is there to tell you each little step of each little thing you're supposed to do. This is a meta-narrative, one great, incredible story.
Of the saving and redeeming and delivering and empowering of God's people. And this story is so captivating that those who will open its pages and look will see that Christ is lifted up on every page. And so, what really the Bible is is a revelation of God's grace and redemptive power for our lives. Yes, absolutely full of incredible principles by which we live our lives. But generally, what we do when we get our word in us is it's something that's life-giving within us.
It's not a set of rules, and it certainly doesn't have for us all of the things that are necessary for being led in daily life. God spoke to me. I say this with confidence. There are only maybe a few moments in my life where I would say, I know that God spoke to me. And one of the things He spoke to me about before I ever talked to a search committee here, five months before I ever taught a search committee, was that I was going to come and be the pastor at Rinalda.
He didn't say it's because you're the best. He just said, that's what you're going to be doing, that's what I want you to be doing. And I just had a knowing that I knew that was going to come to pass.
Now, why did God let me know that?
Well, probably because on the days that you feel like quitting, you can't quit because, you know, He told you you're supposed to be there. And isn't it good to be doing something that you know you're supposed to be doing? And you have a good day, great. You have a bad day?
Well, you're still supposed to be doing it. And so I'm so thankful that He let me know that.
Now I'd love My Bible, I mean, I love Jesus, but I can say I loved it. I feel like eating this book up. I mean, I just want to keep my nose in this book. I get mad at all the other things I have to do that keeps me out of this book. I love this book.
But but this Bible did not tell me to come to Rinolda. How was I going to know that? How do you know who you're supposed to marry? How do you know which house to buy? How do you know if you're supposed to quit your job?
How do you know if you're supposed to take a job? How are you supposed to know whether you're supposed to pray for somebody or you're supposed to. I talked to a woman at birth last night. She was telling me a great story. She had a coworker she barely knew who was going to have to have a cancer surgery, and she just was overwhelmed.
Didn't know if the person was a Christian or not or anything, just overwhelmed, needed to go pray for her. Pray for the woman, just began to weep, began to weep. And then she just said, God just wants you to know He didn't give you this cancer. And the woman just wept and wept and wept because that was the big thing she'd feared. And now she's all healed of the cancer, and she's come back and she said, You don't know how much that meant to me.
How do you know when you're you can't stop and pray for every person like that? How are you going to know?
Well, see, my point is that every Christian I know believes that we need to be led by God. What we're talking about when we talk about all the revelation prophetic gifting is not an addition to the Bible. We're talking about the Spirit of God leading us for the effective, empowered life.
Okay. There's a lot more I can say about that, but I want to give you a little overview of the spiritual gifts. And I'm just going to say a few things about the gifts. The first one I've listed here that comes in Romans, of course, also mentioned in 1 Corinthians, is the gift of prophecy. One of the most misunderstood of all the spiritual gifts.
It's not. Prophecy is not fortune-telling. And that's one of the biggest misconceptions that people have because they think of Old Testament prophets that we're just going to predict the doom of somebody, you know.
Now I'm not saying that God can't predict somebody's doom in a prophecy. It's just that that's not generally encouraging. And Paul explicitly says that the purpose of prophecy is to encourage, to edify, and to strengthen. Two of those words are related to the very word parakletos that Jesus uses of the Holy Spirit. To speak of how the Holy Spirit comes alongside us to encourage us.
What prophecy is not telling somebody about the judgment of God that's coming. and it's not telling the future, and it's not telling somebody what to do. Instead, it is God Revealing himself, his love, and his commitment to bless and empower his people so that they can do what he's called them to do. Alan Wright. In today's teaching, why wouldn't everyone want the gifts of the spirit?
It's in our series on Filled, and Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life. And today's takeaway, our final words. This Giving Tuesday's featured resource from Pastor Alan is a special Good News for Your Family study bundle, including two DVD series with study guides, Good News for Your Marriage, and Good News for Parents. In these sessions, Pastor Alan and his wife, Anne, show how God's grace can strengthen communication, restore joy, empower forgiveness, and help raise children without pressure or shame. Their practical wisdom and Christ-centered encouragement will equip your marriage and your parenting with hope and confidence that only the gospel can give.
Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastoralen.org. Alan, for the person that's listening right now and they're asking the same question, it's probably not coming from a spirit of saying, I just want my ticket to heaven and that's it. It really is a legitimate question. Maybe there's been some fear or just that fear of the unknown, what to expect, right?
Well, I think that when it comes to especially the more ecstatic or supernatural type of gifts, people can become uncomfortable. worried that something is going to be in excess or something's going to be an error. And I just want to say, you know, the gifts of God are for the people of God. In their edification and for the edification of others. And I always looked on it this way, Daniel.
You know, despite the fact that. Once you are embracing of the gifts of the Spirit, yes, there could be some things that might make you uncomfortable or even some things that could be a little bit controversial in the body of Christ. It's more than worth it because people need help, right? People need healing. People need hope.
People need a word from the Lord. And so it always made me want to press in and say, Lord, I eagerly desire every good gift that you have. That's my encouragement for listeners today. Alan, what do you say to the person who feels like they haven't served Jesus long enough or walked with Jesus long enough to be in a position to ask for the gifts? Maybe they feel like a rookie.
Well, I think that it's first and most important to realize that God doesn't put conditions of your own righteousness or honestly, in many ways, your own maturity before he does give gifts. Every Christian has gifts. Even baby Christians, you have gifts.
Now, what happens is... As you grow, those gifts grow. Right.
So someone may have a gift of teaching, and it might start out that it just feels like a seed. They have some interest and some passion, but that gift will get cultivated over the years. It might start out that you're going to provide leadership in a small group of three or four people. And it may be one day the Lord has you in a much bigger platform for teaching. But if you would eagerly desire the gifts of the Lord, even as a young Christian, even if you say, well, I don't feel like I'm spiritual enough or I know the Bible well enough, ask him for these gifts because you'll grow and the gifts will grow in you.
Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
