1 Corinthians 12:9-10 - Part B

We all are subject to deterioration.

We're all subject to disease, illness, denigration, and eventually death. And every now and then throughout the Bible, Old and New Testament, you see God punctuating history with healings, intruding into that human consequence of what sin brings, that deterioration, and he intercepts with works of healing. When God sends us out to be his messengers to the world, he outfits us with the tools we need to be the most effective. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shines much needed light on how God works through spiritual gifts of faith and healing. But first, did you know that Skip shares important updates and biblical encouragement on social media?

Just follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get the latest from him and this ministry. That's at Skip Heitzig, at Skip, H-E-I-T-Z-I-G. Now, we're in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 as we dive into today's teaching with Skip Heitzig. It's one thing to say you're healed or to say in the name of Jesus Christ.

I mean, you and I could say that, but we would probably then walk on. The faith comes when you take a person who's been lame from birth and you pick him up, and you have the faith that he's going to be able to stand. And you know the story, he was healed. And all the people marveled in Solomon's porch, and Peter had to say, men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why do you look at us as though we, through our own godliness or power, made this man walk?

And then he gives an explanation. This is through the name of Jesus, listen, and faith that comes by him. Faith that comes by him. It was a gift of faith given to Peter for that to happen in Acts chapter 3.

When we get to Acts chapter 6, we see there's a dispute in the early church over widows and the care of these women in the church. And the apostles say, look, we're going to give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. You choose seven men full of good reputation, filled with the Holy Spirit, whom we can set over this business.

So, seven are named. Among them is a man by the name of Stephen. It says, a man full of the Holy Spirit and full of faith. And then it continues a little bit, a few verses later, and says that Stephen is a man filled with power and the Holy Spirit, and he was able to do wonders and signs among the people. And Stephen was a man of faith. Now, Stephen had the kind of faith not only to do signs and wonders among the people, and we're not told what those are, but he was a man of faith. It's described as faith. And he has the faith, we read in the very next chapter, to give a testimony before the Jewish people that is a very powerful, historic testimony.

And we know what happened to Stephen. He became the first martyr in the church. Now, you're hearing about the gift of faith, and you're saying, okay, so this doesn't sound like it's very exciting if it means that you could get killed for your faith.

There's this man living boldly in faith and speaking out by faith and doing wonders and signs by faith. In the next chapter, by the end of it, he gets killed, and they take his clothes and lay it at the feet of a young man named Saul. You say, why would God give him the faith to be a martyr? Because of what it did to the church. You see, the church was in Jerusalem, and they were content to be in Jerusalem. They wanted to stay in Jerusalem.

You want to stay under the spout where the glory comes out. I mean, it's good in Jerusalem. There's lots of activity, 3,000 souls and 5,000.

It's just a great move. But Jesus said, you will be witness to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. But they weren't going anywhere until Stephen's martyrdom. After Stephen was martyred, it says a great persecution came to the church, and the disciples were scattered in Judea and Samaria.

So the Lord used the faith of Stephen for him to give not only a bold witness but to be martyred that caused persecution in the church that caused the church to be scattered so that by being scattered, the message could spread to the rest of the world. But the gift of faith was being exercised. Last week I mentioned Acts chapter 14, a man at Lystra. And Paul looked down at that man at Lystra and looked at him and saw that that man had the faith to be healed. Now in this case, it wasn't Paul's faith. But Paul looked intently at him and saw that that man at Lystra, who was in some kind of condition that was a diseased condition, he had faith for healing, to be healed, to be cured. So he was able to see that. He had the word of knowledge that that was going to happen, and that man received a work of God.

So once again, the gift of faith is the conviction that God wants to do a remarkable thing. There's a book, there's a lot of books about this guy, but an autobiography written by George Mueller about himself. George Mueller ran an orphanage in Bristol, England in the 1800s. And the kind of faith that this man lived with throughout his ministry is, well put it this way, it will incentivize you to pray for the gift of faith.

George Mueller began with two shillings, a few bucks. Millions of dollars passed through his hands over the next 60 years as he cared for 10,000 plus orphans. And he made it his policy never to share his needs with anybody else.

He never announced, we have a need this week, we want you all to dig deep and give generously. Never did that, he said, I'm never going to make my needs known to humans, only to God. And then you read in his autobiography the stories of how he lived by faith. So one morning, George Mueller got up, got all the kids down to breakfast in their places at the breakfast table. There was no food to give them. But he got them all seated and, you know, he, I think, turned to his wife early in the morning said, look, we have no food, but they don't know that, so I think God's going to do something. So he got them all together at the breakfast table and they prayed and asked the Lord to bless the food that they didn't have. Moments later, a knock came on the door. A local baker had a truckload of bread or a wagon load of bread and he said, I don't know what it is, but I woke up at two in the morning and I just felt the need to bake bread for you and for the orphans. Could you use it today? And George Mueller said, well, yes, that'd be nice.

We could. So they brought in the bread. A few minutes later, another knock at the door. A milk truck in the area had broken down and the man said, look, this is highly unusual, but my milk truck is broken down. I have to bring it in for repairs, but first I have to unload all the milk. It's going to go sour.

I just thought I'd check. And Mueller said, bring it on in. We could use it. And just story after story about a man who lived his life with that kind of faith. And I think the Lord gave him a gift of faith. So, to one is given the word of wisdom by the Holy Spirit, to another the word of knowledge, to another the gift of faith. By the same Spirit. Look again at verse nine. To another gifts of healing.

Now, notice something about that. Notice that gifts is put in the plural. Gifts of healing. And it doesn't say gift of healing. It doesn't say gift of healers or healer. It's not like, I am the great healer with the gift of healing and I'm going to touch you. I believe that if you've been sick and the Lord has healed you, you have received a gift of healing.

I think it's that simple. A gift of healing. And sometimes there are miraculous gifts of healing.

Some of you can attest to that. Ever since Genesis, ever since the fall of man in the garden, when sin entered you, when sin entered into the human bloodstream, when sin entered into the world, the Bible says death came by sin. Degeneration immediately happened. And God's masterpiece was marred and mankind, from that point on, was in need of healing. Because we all are subject to deterioration. We're all subject to disease, illness, denigration, and eventually death. And every now and then, throughout the Bible, Old and New Testament, you see God punctuating history with healings. Intruding into that human consequence of what sin brings, that deterioration, and he intercepts with works of healing. Again, you find it in the Old and the New Testament. So a couple of people in the Old Testament that come to mind, Elijah the prophet.

Now I say that name that way because sometimes we get confused. Elijah versus Elisha, who came after Elijah. Elijah the prophet, in 1 Kings chapter 17, meets a woman from Zarephath, an area of non-Jewish heritage, Gentile area. And this woman's son dies and she's distraught. Elijah the prophet takes this child and puts the child on the prophet's own bed. He was staying in an upper chamber upon the roof of the house, laid the dead child out on the bed. Elijah the prophet, you might remember the story, prostrated himself over the dead child once, then a second time, and prayed. Then a third time, I don't know what he was going for, if he would keep going maybe to 10 times or 20 times, but the third time was a charm. The third time took and the boy was healed and raised up.

Raised up. It was not just a healing, it was like a resurrection healing. Then the protege of Elijah was Elisha the prophet in the book of 2 Kings. And in chapter 4, and I just made mention of it but in a different context last week, in 2 Kings chapter 4, Elisha the prophet was with a couple from Shunem.

We call her the Shunemite woman because she was from Shunem. And there was a couple, a man and a woman, they didn't have a child. Elijah the prophet predicted that a year from now you're going to have a baby.

She said, ah, you're full of hot air. And she says, no, trust me, you're going to hold the baby in your arms. And it came to pass that child at the word of the Lord had a baby, a baby boy. The boy grew up. And one day the boy was out in the field working with his dad and the boy grabbed his head and he said, oh, my head, my head hurts. And we don't know what it was. I don't know if he had a sunstroke or a subdural hematoma, maybe it his head like I did.

I don't know what it was. But he grabbed his head and Elisha the prophet prayed and the boy was healed. Again, God interrupted human history with the healing. King Hezekiah of Judah was on the throne when Isaiah the prophet was one of the prophets in Jerusalem. And Isaiah the prophet came to him one day because the Lord told him to do that and he said, Hezekiah, get your affairs in order because you're going to die and not live. Thus saith the Lord, you're going to kick the bucket.

God's given you fair warning so get all your household affairs, get all your will drawn up, get everything in place because the Lord said you're going to die and you're not going to live. So Hezekiah started crying, oh, I'm going to die, and he freaked out and prayed to God. And the Lord, for some reason known only to God, granted King Hezekiah 15 years extra, even gave him a sign, but the Lord told Isaiah to prepare a poultice, a medicine, poultice out of figs to apply it to King Hezekiah. So the Lord healed him, but the Lord healed him using some kind of medicinal application. So using medicine, it was still a healing from the Lord.

King Hezekiah was given another 15 years of life at the word of the Lord. By the time we get to the New Testament, we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, and of course Jesus was one who performed miracle after miracle, proving that He was the Messiah, the unique Son of God. By the way, if I'm not mistaken, there are 41 in the life of Christ, 41 gifts of healing that Jesus performed or miracles of healing that Jesus performed in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. About one-fifth of the entire real estate, written real estate of the Gospel of Jesus is devoted to the healing miracles of Jesus.

Now the reason Jesus performed miracles was, like I just mentioned, number one, to authenticate that He was the Messiah, the chosen one of God, the one the Old Testament predicted. That's why when John the Baptist was in prison and had said, look at this, this is the one who's coming after me, this is the Messiah, John believed that, but now he's in prison, you remember, and he's doubting. And he said, go to Jesus, sent one of his disciples, go to Jesus and ask him, are you really the coming one or should we look for another? Remember what Jesus said to go tell John? Go tell John this, go tell him what you hear and what you see, the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the poor have the Gospel preached unto them, the dead are raised.

You name all the things that you have seen because that authenticates who I am. John is wondering, am I the coming one or should we look for another? Tell him what you see, tell him about these miraculous signs. So Jesus performed miracles of healing to authenticate that He was the Messiah, number one. Number two, it was a preview of coming attractions because I believe in a literal millennium at the end of the age, so a thousand year reign of Christ on the earth where there will be an incredible an incredible time of health and healing and I believe that Jesus' ministry and life was like a preview of those coming attractions, so for those two reasons. But beyond the Old Testament, beyond Jesus being authenticated as the Messiah, Jesus promised that miracles of healing would follow as signs the ministry of the disciples, right? He said go into all the world, preach the Gospel to every creature and these signs will follow those who believe they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover. So Jesus promised that signs and wonders and signs of healing, miracles of healing would follow the disciples and they did. We go through the book of Acts, there's about 30 miracles in the book of Acts. Again, Acts chapter 6, I mentioned Stephen, signs and wonders were done among the people by Stephen. In Acts chapter 9, Peter the apostle preaches the Gospel.

A woman named Tabitha Dorcas dies, Peter goes to her bedside, prays for her, she gets raised up, so it's a resurrection but a healing miracle you could say. Then Paul the apostle, another one. There are several instances but let me just tell you about Ephesus in Acts chapter 19. It says while Paul was in Ephesus that unusual miracles happened through the life of Paul the apostle. So that they could take handkerchiefs or sweat bands or cloaks that he had that touched his body and they could be taken from him and laid on sick people and they would recover and evil spirits would leave them. So signs and wonders were following the believers.

Gifts of healing. In Acts chapter 1, I know I'm kind of bouncing all over the place but this might help. The book of Acts begins by saying, the former account which I wrote to you, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up.

Right? That's how it begins. Those are Luke's words. So I wrote, he's saying, the gospel of Luke to show you what Jesus began both to do and to teach. Then he begins Acts, the former account that I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up through which he promised the Holy Spirit to his disciples. Then, now that Jesus is ascended into heaven, the disciples take on that mantle of sharing the truth and when they share the truth validating that with certain miraculous signs and especially healing. So Jesus began to do it.

He continued to do it in the book of Acts and I would say this, he continues to do it today because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Several years ago when I was doing radiology and I was looking at things very critically, I was in an accident. That wasn't a car accident. It was, I'll confess it, it was a skateboard accident. There weren't skate parks in those days so we looked for swimming pools and swimming pools can be treacherous, can be dangerous.

I discovered that. I wasn't a great skateboarder so that only proved that I wasn't a great skateboarder and I remember dropping down into the pool and taking a bad slip and I hurt my shoulder. I didn't know what it was. I went into my friends in the x-ray department, had a doctor look at it and he said, you have an acromioclavicular separation. He showed me my shoulder on one side which was closed and the one on the bad side which was subluxed. It was pulled apart and he goes, you see the difference? You have an acromioclavicular problem.

You just have to put a sling on and let it heal. I went home that day and I was living in a garage. I know this sounds really weird but I was at that time living in a garage for five bucks a month in Orange County, California and saving money so I could get a real house.

The guy that I was renting from, he and his wife lived in the apartment. His name was Jack, Jack Stevens. He's now in heaven but I remember Jack sitting back and I'm telling him the story and I'm in my sling and he goes, hey, let's pray for you. I go, okay, you know, whatever. You know, I said you can pray for me but I know what I have.

I have a acromioclavicular separation. Pray for me but God can do anything but I'm thinking he probably won't do it. So I didn't have any faith, trust me, but I did receive a gift of healing and when Jack prayed for me, it wasn't, he didn't hyperventilate. He didn't raise his voice.

He'd go, now God, we come before you and none of that. Just real quietly and just said, Lord, we just pray that you touch Skip's shoulder and heal him and I got to tell you, I had never experienced anything like this. I felt instant relief instant relief and I took my, took the sling off, I moved my shoulder around and I thought, well, it could just be a fluke. Maybe, I don't know, maybe it's just I'm feeling really good right now and my emotions were heightened, you know, I kind of bought into this and, you know, I'm not, again, I'm not living with a whole lot of faith even though I feel relief. I went in to get it x-rayed again.

This is, again, my scientific background. I got it, I got to compare before and after pictures. If it's a true healing, it will have gone back down and I got it x-rayed again and it had narrowed from previously and I got to tell you, it was an incredible healing. I experienced a gift of healing. That's Skip Heitzig with a message from the series Expound First Corinthians. Now, we want to share about a resource that shares how you can grab hold of a critical opportunity to represent Jesus even better to the world. The United States fought the devastating civil war to overcome a deeply dividing issue. As followers of Jesus and people who represent his love, we can help one another deal with this topic today.

Here's Skip Heitzig and Tony Clark. Speak to white evangelical pastors about how in churches we can create spaces for black and brown voices to be heard in a loving atmosphere, in a concerned atmosphere. This is the church's finest moment because, see, racism is a sin.

It's a sin in the heart. So now it's our job to begin to guide them and to have a biblical mindset and also having sympathy and empathy for those who are trying to live out this Christianity and their skin may be a little bit darker than yours. Cultivate the empathy that comes from gaining a biblical perspective on racism. Get your copy of this conversation between pastors Skip and Tony when you give $20 or more today. We'll also send you pastor Skip's booklet, The Church and Racism.

Call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig examines how God works through miracles, encouraging you to trust the Holy Spirit with the spiritual gifts he gives you. So when God enacts a miracle, that's all he's doing is taking and superseding his laws by his power with another law known only to him. It's humanly impossible, but it's divinely simple. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.