Thank you for joining us on the Line of Fire.
Michael Brown, beyond delighted to spend this time with you. Class is now in session. We are finishing up our series on getting to know the Holy Spirit. Any classes that you missed, just go to the Courage in the Line of Fire Podcast. They're all archived there along with several thousand previous Line of Fire live broadcasts. Yeah, all there for you free. Or go to our YouTube channel, The Line of Fire.
You'll find more than, I think, 3500 videos there at present. And with each class, with each teaching, with each message, our goal is to infuse you with faith and truth and courage to help you stand strong on the front lines. All right, today we're going to talk about the gifts of the Spirit.
The gifts of the Spirit, listed in 1 Corinthians 12 and elsewhere in the New Testament. Now, I know that many of you identify as charismatic, Pentecostal continuationists. You believe in speaking in tongues today. You believe in prophecy today. You believe in gifts of healing for today. Others say, well, of course, God is sovereign.
He can heal if he wants or work a miracle if he wants. But these things are no longer normative. Prophecy in tongues ceased. Others are not really sure what to make of it. So, what we're going to do is just talk about what the Word says. Talk about what the Word says. I will illustrate things with things that I've seen in my own life or in the ministry of others. But, well, let's all agree on what the Word says, however you apply it for today. Is that fair enough?
We'll dig into this. I want to read a passage, though, from 1 Corinthians 2. And just raise a principle to you, all right? 1 Corinthians 2. This is the Apostle Paul. And he says, his only boast is in the Lord.
Right? We're not boasting in our own wisdom, our own pedigree, our own background, our own education, our own gifts, wisdom. Our only boast is in the Lord. He's our righteousness. He's our sanctification. He's our vindicator. He's our all in all. That's our only boast in him. Without him, we can do nothing.
That's a capital N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Nothing. Without him, we can do nothing. With him, in him, anything is possible. So, Paul writes this. And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. 1 Corinthians 2. By the way, if some of you have translations that just says brothers, you say where did brothers and sisters come from? Well, the Greek is Adelphoi, which technically means brothers. Adelphos is brother. The name Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, you got the Adelphos in there. And you say, well, we should just be translated with brothers. Well, actually, in Greek at that time, if you addressed a group as Adelphoi, you meant brothers and sisters. For example, I'm from New York.
Spent the first almost 33 years of my life in New York, Long Island area. Same with Nancy. And we say guys. Hey, guys. So you could have a room full of men and women and say, hey, guys.
I can be talking to a couple and say, hey, what's up, guys? We don't mean males only. We mean people.
Just like in the South, you say y'all. Y'all. That's how you're talking about everyone. Hey, guys.
That's how we're talking about everyone. So, really, it's perfectly legitimate to translate it brothers and sisters because that's what it would mean today. In Hebrew, if you're addressing a mixed group, you use a masculine pronoun for the group. You say you masculine.
The only time you would say you feminine is if you're addressing a woman or women only. And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, this is Paul. This is Paul. Pastors, preachers, teachers, leaders, hear this.
This is Paul. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. It doesn't mean that we're unprepared when we preach. It doesn't mean that we have to sound like idiots when we preach. It doesn't mean that we have to be incoherent in our speech.
Quite the contrary. We should be clear. We should be good communicators. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14, if the trumpet doesn't sound a clear sound, then how are people going to know how to respond? Is this a warning? Is it go back to sleep?
What is it? So, he's not saying our speech should not be clear, but we are not relying on our eloquence or human wisdom. He said, for I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus the Messiah and him crucified.
Can I stop and tell you a story? There is an evangelist with the Lord, our missionary evangelist, who talks about being in Thailand preaching for the first time. He got up to preach and wanted to explain to the people. He's an evangelist.
He's not a Bible teacher. He's an evangelist. He's a proclaimer of the message of salvation to the lost. He speaks a message and he explains the blood of Jesus. He explains the meaning of the cross. He explains all this in a way that he hoped would help them to rationally understand God's ways.
And there's absolutely a place for that. At the end of the message, the crowd mocked him and said, you have a bloody God. You have a bloody God. They mocked the message. So, he went back to his room, the little room where he was to pray, the little room where he was to pray, and he said, God, I didn't travel halfway around the world to have your name mocked. And the Spirit said to him, proclaim, don't explain. Let me say again, there's absolutely a time for teaching, for explaining, for saying this is why there's absolutely a place for apologetics. I've devoted decades of my life to apologetics, especially Jewish apologetics, the defense of the faith. Paul does that. He debates in the synagogue. He reasons with people.
It's absolutely part of what we do. But there's also a simple power in the proclamation. The power is in the proclamation. This is what this evangelist learned. The next night, he got up and he said virtually all he did was quote scripture. God so loved the world that he said his one and only son, whoever has the son has life, whoever repents has, he just quoted scripture.
Jesus said, I'm the bread of life. I don't know all the verses he quoted, but he said the message was virtually all proclaiming of scripture. And suddenly, people start weeping in repentance at the gospel message, the gospel message of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the gospel message of salvation only through him. They begin weeping and where his translator disappeared. And he said, where's the translator?
He said, well, it's a shame for a man to weep in public and he says, get him out here, get him out because the translator is weeping. And he finishes the message and they have this outbreak of salvation. So, that's what Paul was saying. I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus, the Messiah, and him crucified.
Again, this is so mind-boggling. This is the mighty apostle Paul speaking. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.
Wow! That is saying something. I like to feel strong. I like to feel confident. Who likes to feel weak with great fear and trembling? But he has just been whipped in previous cities, stoned and now he is coming into Corinth which is a very powerful city and full of worldliness and sin and all types of human pride and philosophy and rhetoric. And he says, I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. Some of you, that's how you feel every time you get up to preach. You feel completely dependent on God.
You feel completely helpless even though you've done it a hundred times or ten thousand times. And look at this, my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on God's power. So this is what Paul relied on. We can debate which the gifts are for today, how they manifest. We can debate that. We can agree that they're extremes on all sides. They're the crazy charismatics that justify anything they do in the name of the Spirit and they're the hyper critics that write off anything that's a little different than what they're used to.
That's part of the body and we've got to learn to appreciate and grow and learn from each other and mature absolutely. But this was Paul's method. Can we improve on his method? My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on God's power. Can we agree that the proclamation of the Gospel should be in the power of the Spirit and that the thing that should change lives is not our wisdom, our eloquence, not how well we know the Hebrew or the Greek, not how well we exegete it, but the power of the Gospel is the Gospel itself and the power of the Gospel is with the Spirit's demonstration and power. Whether that demonstration is deep conviction of sin, whether that demonstration is radically transformed lives, whether that demonstration is also gifts of healing and miracles and deliverance, can we all agree that what we need is a fresh demonstration of the Spirit's power in conjunction with the proclamation of the method of the cross.
Why? Paul says so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on God's power. So I want to ask a question. I know many of you listening and watching are not in vocational ministry. Many of you are not preachers and teachers but I want to speak to all of those whose vocation or main part of your life is devoted to proclaiming the Word of God, whether you're a pastor, teacher, evangelist, missionary, whoever you are, that a large part of your life is devoted to preaching, teaching the Word of God. Where is the evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life and ministry? Where is the evidence of the power of God in your life in your life and ministry? It's not an indictment.
This is an invitation to go deeper. What would happen if the Holy Spirit departed from our ministries today? Would it put a dent in anything we're doing? Would it stop anything we're doing? Would it change anything we're doing?
Or could we do what we do without his power? You say well I rely on his anointing. Where's the evidence of the anointing of the Spirit at work in you? Where are the lives that are being transformed by encounter with God?
I don't mean they have to jump and shake and fall and run around the building. I mean the evidence of transformed lives. The evidence of this has to be the Lord. When you hear someone's baptismal testimony you're in awe. That's Jesus. That's the Lord. As opposed to yeah I really like the teaching and I joined the church. Yeah I really like what they were saying and I joined the group. There must be supernatural evidence demonstrable evidence of the working of the Spirit according to who God is and his word. I say if this was good enough for Paul it's good enough for us.
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That's why we're here to help you stand strong on the front lines. All right so we're going to read now from 1 Corinthians chapter 12. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Now about the gifts of the Spirit. We talked last week about the Greek word for Spirit is pneuma.
So these are the pneumaticon. These are the spiritual manifestations, the spiritual giftings, the spiritual empowerings. Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. So Paul doesn't want us uninformed. He doesn't want us ignorant and I point out to you that nowhere in the Bible is this rescinded. Nowhere in the Bible does God say I'm taking this back. Nowhere in the Bible does it even hint it's only for the first century church. And in fact through church history you can find powerful examples of prophecy, of healing, deliverance from demons, of other miracles. And you've got it, you know, by the fourth century with Augustine, the most famous of the church fathers, he had said that the gifts, miraculous gifts, were no longer normative for his day until he recorded over 70 miraculous healings in a period of two years. He said, okay, I've got to change my theology. But the big thing is, because I'm a sola scriptura guy, the Word is my authority, the Word is my final guide, but the Word says six. Nowhere does the Word say these have ceased. Nowhere does the Word say this is not for today.
In fact, Paul urges us to earnestly seek the best spiritual gifts, especially prophecy, and follow the way of love. It's both that. He says, therefore, I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus be cursed.
It could be that, it could be that, I'm sorry, let me back up. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. So you were led in other ways that weren't God, into idolatry.
So now he wants to make a distinction. Therefore, I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus be cursed. Maybe people got worked up in some kind of frenzy and claimed it was God. He said, no, no, that's not the Spirit. And no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.
He doesn't mean that an unsafe person can't pronounce the words. Jesus himself said not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom. We know there are many false believers, counterfeit believers who say the words Jesus is Lord.
They even say the words Jesus is my Lord. What Paul means is, in terms of a supernatural utterance, if you proclaim Jesus is Lord, Satan won't proclaim that. That will be proclaimed by the Holy Spirit. Now he says this, there are different kinds of gifts but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service but the same Lord.
There are different kinds of working but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. So you have Spirit, Lord, God, reference to God's triunity. You have Spirit, Son, Father, Spirit, Lord, God. If you have Lord distinguished from God in the New Testament verse it is only speaking of the Lord Jesus and God the Father. In Romans 12 he lists some other aspects of spiritual gifting, gifts of mercy, gifts of giving, etc.
Here he is going to go through a particular list of nine. Now he says this in verse 7, Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. There is the Holy Spirit working through the body. Jesus had the fullness of deity dwelling in him in bodily form.
Colossians 2 9. He was the divine Word made flesh and never ceased being God and he had the Holy Spirit without measure. We all have the Holy Spirit in measure and through the entire body now the Holy Spirit is distributed through the entire body. Hence the Church, the ecclesia, the messianic congregation according to Ephesians 1 represents the fullness of God because it is the Holy Spirit working through the entire body collectively. But individually God works through each of us in different ways.
We each have a small piece of the big puzzle. He says and the Spirit is given for the common good. The gifts are not for us they're for others. Yes speaking in tongues edifies ourselves but then the reason we want to edify ourselves is so we can serve others. The purpose of the gifts is not to make us look big.
There are no superstars only servants. The more you exalt people the more you put people on a platform and just don't recognize hey they're fellow servants the more we set ourselves up for disappointment. To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom or a word of wisdom. To another message of knowledge or word of knowledge by means of the same Spirit. To another faith by the same Spirit not saving faith which we all have but some type of supernatural faith beyond that. To another gifts of healing by that one Spirit the Greek is plural in both cases gifts of healings so some would say it's different types of gifts different given to different people. To another miraculous powers so somehow that's different than healings.
To another prophecy which can speak of a direct word of truth for now or something for the future so forth-telling as well as foretelling. To another distinguishing between spirits so is this demonic spirit is this the Holy Spirit is this a human manifestation. To another speaking in different kinds of tongues and to still another the interpretation of tongues all of these are the work of one and the same Spirit he distributes them to each one just as he determines. Now some say that there's no such thing as having the gift in other words God always uses me in this particular gift and and rather it's just as the Holy Spirit wills he moves through this one this one this one this one but it seems that he characteristically moves through different people in different ways he characteristically moves through different people in pronounced ways so I have friends that have seen great success over the years on the mission field praying for deaf people but no success praying for people. I have one colleague when he'd be ministering especially in Latin America he's American but he spoke he spoke Spanish fluently that he had great faith for cancer but was terrified to pray for someone to be baptized in the spirit and speak in tongues so he had faith for one thing and not for another. Either way we want to understand what these different gifts manifestations are so the message of wisdom or word of wisdom to me the best example of that is Joseph or Daniel in the Bible. Joseph when Pharaoh has his dreams not only interprets them says but and now here's what you do here's the plan and I've seen people operate like that you're in a crisis you know what to do and the Lord gives someone okay here's what's happening here's the plan it's a supernatural plan of wisdom. Others just say it's a wise teaching but I've understood it as this this supernatural revelation of wisdom as to what to do and then word of knowledge or message of knowledge some just say it's an inspired teaching understanding scripture I've understood it other Pentecostal Charismatics have understood it where the Holy Spirit gives information needed information that is of supernatural value or that brings great confirmation great encouragement to another it's all by the same spirit faith so the gift of faith operating the manifestation of faith where you're in an absolutely impossible situation and God gives you supernatural faith above and beyond the norm to get through it and you tend to operate that in terms of a crisis you're leading a ministry you're leading a church you're leading a work you're leading your family and you just have this supernatural faith and everything's going to be all right and it is to another to another gifts of healing by that one spirit we talked about that different ways that God heals supernaturally and more regularly than others to another miraculous powers that could be perhaps holding back some natural disaster I don't mean we just decide what we're going to hold back but God moving on someone supernaturally or some impossible situation turning around to another prophecy as we said forth telling speaking directly to a situation or for telling then to another distinguishing between spirits is this the Holy Spirit is it demonic is it the human spirit to another speaking in different kinds of tongues be it a heavenly language directly to God or supernatural utterance in an earthly language and still to another the interpretation of tongues because this is a language you don't understand God's giving it supernaturally all of this is done by the spirit none of it is in our power or intellect to make happen it is his supernatural work and he wants to work through you and through me this is dr. Michael Brown thanks so much for tuning in just a reminder that we are listener supported if we have been a blessing to you if you're being enriched in the word and prayer in your own walk with God through this broadcast and stand with us so that we can reach many many more and bless many many more together friends we're making a difference so go to the line of fire org the line of fire org and click donate
