God has given each one of us as believers spiritual gifts for a very specific purpose but what exactly are those gifts?
Today on Truth for Life weekend, Alistair Begg continues his message in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're examining the first three gifts on the Apostle Paul's list. The gift of wisdom, of knowledge, and of faith. How many of us are sitting around waiting to be ministered to when the thrust of Scripture is to minister? How many of us are disappointed with and disgruntled by the absence of ministry to us when the Scriptures are about ministering through us?
And neither a sense of spiritual defeatism nor elitism should prevent us from the kind of discovery that God wants us to make. So the gifts are given for the common good. When we think about this in relationship to manifestation, which is a word that is used here in verse 7, it becomes obvious that these gifts are used in a public way. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. So I don't know that there even exists any spiritual gift that has been given that is present in any individual's life so that it may be of impact and import to myself alone. So when we exercise our gifts, not only do we minister to others, but we in turn encourage them to be involved in ministry.
That's what I'm doing right now. I'm exercising a spiritual gift of teaching, of exhorting, of encouraging. It's Ephesians 4. God has given me the gift of bringing the Scriptures to bear with clarity, with relative clarity on the lives of people.
The result of which ought to be that you say, hey, I can do that. I can understand the Bible. I would like in turn to teach the Bible. Tremendous encouragement to me to have a young man come to me after I have had the opportunity to exercise my spiritual gift or a spiritual gift and come to me and say that is what I want to be able to do. I want your help to be able to minister in that way. Well, if God has gifted him in that way, then I'll sure be glad to help him.
If you have the gift of encouragement and you exercise encouragement to another person, it creates oftentimes a chain reaction. You received a note. You said that is a wonderful thing. What a Barnabas that fellow is.
What a Barnabas, what a Mrs. Barnabas that girl is. And then you said to yourself, you know, I had to write someone a note. And so you do. And so the exercise of the gift was for the common good. A simple word of encouragement, a simple note. So I didn't know that was a spiritual gift.
You bet your life is a spiritual gift. The gift of encouragement. By the same token, when we fail to minister our gifts, not only does it affect ourselves, but it affects the wider body of Christ, because the body of Christ is Ephesians 4, as I've referred to it points out. The only way that the body of Christ is built up is as a result of each part doing its work. You can find that in Ephesians chapter 4 and at the end of verse 16. From Jesus, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.
Not as a part burns itself out, not as six parts carry the can, but as each part does its work. I shared briefly at the prayer time this evening that the future of this church—and I may have said this to you before, because it's heavy on my heart at the moment— the future of this church is tied up in this phrase, as each part does its work. The future effectiveness, significance, development, growth, impact of the people of God in this place is grounded in this whole notion.
That's why it's so timely. Nothing much is going to change as far as Sundays are concerned in this church. What I mean by that is not that we don't want the Spirit of God to come upon us in a unique and fresh way, to give to his unction and anointing and enablement, to stir up our worship, to shake us up a little bit, because frankly, many of the time we're doing less than we might. But in terms of the framework of what we're doing, we're not going to change much. We're committed to teaching the Scriptures, we're committed to worshiping together, we're committed to the fellowship opportunities and the study, etc., that takes place in this building. We've got that pretty well set. But the church is not about the Lord's Day alone, is it?
We've also got Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and we've got myriad people in multiple places. You see, I saw a thing in the paper this week, did you, that you could become a pen pal of someone with AIDS? Even as I speak, I remember that I put the newspaper somewhere and I can't remember where I put it, because I said, I think I'd like to do that.
I mean, Sergey would probably say, yeah, just like you need another letter to write or someone else to write to, but that's a separate issue, that's none of our business. But the issue is, there was a response in my heart. Now, how about in your heart? You see, I wonder who'll write to those AIDS people at that number there in the plain dealer.
I bet there'll be a bunch of well-meaning social types, I bet there won't be hardly any conservative evangelical Christians. Did God give to you the gift of compassion? So what are you doing with it? And who knows you've got it, apart from Jesus and yourself? I want that every time you walk out of here, as we go through 1 Corinthians 12 particularly, that you go away completely dissatisfied until you settle in your mind between you and the Lord, your place, your part, your contribution in this body. We'll help you as best we can. I'm not sure we can do all that we need to.
I'm frightened even to make these statements for fear that we let you down, as it were, at the level of leadership. But I think if we're honest with one another and open with one another, we can enter into new dimensions of ministry that are vital to us and that we haven't even conceived of yet. Has God given you the gift of evangelism?
Well, where in the world are you using it? I spoke with somebody this week. We were driving down the street, and they pointed out as we came within about four or five hundred yards of Solon High School auditorium, they said, You know, I lived down this street for two and a half years. I said, Really? I said, Yeah. When was that?
In the last few years, and certainly in the last six in a period of time. I said, Well, you know, that's interesting. You could just have walked up to the auditorium and joined us in worship. The individual replied, I never knew you existed. Do you think this crummy little spire sticking up in the air is some kind of magnetic draw for Mr. and Mrs. America, who are right now tuned into their TV?
It's not going to happen. If we were in any other context, if we were in Hong Kong, if we were in Nepal, if we were in Bolivia, and we had this number of people, or even a twentieth of this number of people, the all-consuming passion of our hearts would be, How may we get the good news of Christ into the minds and hearts of those who have never heard? And not everybody will immediately respond to that, but some will. And then the responsibility to whom gifts have been given is to discover the way in which those gifts might be expressed. Well, the fourth and final question to which we come is, What are these gifts?
First of all, we need to notice that the gifts are diverse. Paul says this in three different ways between verses four and six. The word which is used in verse four is the plural form of charisma, charismatic. There are different kinds of charisma, but the same kind of spirit.
This word simply means a free gift or a gift of grace. It's not a natural talent. It's not something that a man or a woman had before coming to faith in Jesus Christ. There are many talented people in the world who don't know Jesus and don't know the fullness of the Spirit in their lives.
They have tons of talents. You and I have talents, natural talents, that had nothing to do with our conversion. We had them before we were converted. The Spirit of God may have baptized them into usefulness since conversion, but they were there before. When the word is used here, it refers not simply to a natural talent but to a gift given by the Holy Spirit and given in a diverse way for a unique purpose. Different kinds of gifts.
If everyone in the orchestra played a tuba, the sound would be awesome but rather dull. In the same way, God has not given the same gift to everyone within the church because the sound would be incredible, for example, if everybody believed themselves to have the gift of teaching. The lists which are given are here in 1 Corinthians 12 and then in Romans 12 and also in 1 Peter 4. If you take the lists and add them all together, you will find that they're not identical. The fact that they're not identical probably helps us to assume that God didn't intend for us to have an exhaustive list, but rather to provide for us, if you like, some indications of—selective, descriptive indications, categories, if you like—of areas of giftedness that he gives to his people. The list, in other words, is not exhaustive. I don't think you have to choose from Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, or 1 Peter 4. It's selective, not exhaustive. The diversity of what he has given in these different kinds of gifts is emphasized in the next phrase there in verse 4.
There are different kinds of service, he says. Individuals may share the same gift, but they will often use it in ministry differently. Five of us may be gifted in teaching. Not all of us will be given a task such as this. Some of us will teach girls. Some of us may teach women. Some of us may teach children.
Some of us may teach in another context altogether. There are different gifts. There's a diversity there, and there's a diversity of the way in which those different gifts are used. And the third phrase is helpful as well, because there are not only different kinds of service from the same Lord, but there are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.
And what does that mean? I think it means this, that the way in which God chooses to work through certain gifts he has given will also differ. So God has given the gift of teaching to an individual, given to them the ability to do this. And in the same way he's given that to someone else here and someone else there. And over here, as a result of this guy teaching, and he doesn't even seem to be that great at teaching, all manner of stuff is going on.
Hundreds and thousands of people are coming. And when we grade him on our top five, he doesn't even get there. But God gifted him and made him a teacher. And we wonder why it is that if that is happening there, why it's not happening here. Because God sovereignly gives gifts. He chooses that the gifts would be used in a variety of services. And he is the one who determines what will happen as a result of the exercise of spiritual gifts. One can plant, another can water, but only God can make things grow.
So we don't have to sit around worrying about how good our gift is or how well it's being used. We just have to exercise it. Let us take care of the depth of the ministry that God has given us. And then allow the Lord Jesus to take care of the breadth of any ministry that he chooses to give us. The Corinthians were badly in need of this instruction because they were apparently paying more attention to dramatic things than they were to recognize the diversity which God intended. Well, first of all, he says, there is the gift of wisdom. To wonder is given through the spirit, the message of wisdom. This word of wisdom in the context in which Paul is using it would seem to have been particularly a gift granted to the unlearned in view of situations in which they were called to preach the word and to defend the gospel. That's a bit of a mouthful.
What do you mean? Well, turn to Acts chapter four, and I'll show you what I mean. You remember it was said that the people listened to Peter and John, and they were amazed at what came out of their mouths because they were unlearned and unschooled. They were untaught, as the King James Version says it, untaught and ignorant men. And yet there was an immense power in the proclamation that came from their lips. I believe that God gave to them this great gift of wisdom. You remember in the context of Acts chapter four, they have been seized. That is Peter and John. They've been put in jail. They are just there's just this amazing thing going on where 5000 people now are believers. The 3000 has almost doubled itself. The thing is how to control the religious people are going, goodness sake, we thought with the death of Jesus of Nazareth, we'd have this thing buttoned down.
We can't keep it under control at all. And in verse seven, they had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them, by what power or what name did you do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit said to them, and he runs out a sermon that would knock your socks off. If ever in a moment a man needed the gift of wisdom, he needed it in that moment.
And he got it. What about two chapters later in Acts chapter six, where you have Stephen called to give an account? Now Stephen, a man, this is verse eight, full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.
Opposition arose, however, from the members of the synagogue. These men began to argue with Stephen, but they could not stand up against his wisdom or the spirit by whom he spoke. So Paul says there has been given the gift of wisdom to some. I think the difference between the kind of special endowment of power that we find in Acts four and Acts six and amongst the apostles and what we find today is simply a matter of degree. I do not believe that a message of wisdom is some esoteric little kind of ex cathedra, a red telephone ditty that comes through from who knows where, but I believe that the gift of wisdom is the ability to be able to understand and apply God's word to the express circumstances of God's people and those who do not know God. In the same way, I believe knowledge to be much along the same lines in the time of the apostles. It's there can be little doubt that there was a revelatory dimension to this message or this gift of knowledge to one that is given the spirit of wisdom to another the message of knowledge by means of the same spirit. For example, was it not a gift of knowledge that allowed Peter to address Ananias and Sapphira in the way that he did? How else would he have known that Ananias and Sapphira were monkeying around with their with their finances?
Were pretending in their hearts that what they were doing was reality when in point of fact what they were saying what they were doing there was a big gap and Peter is able to look them in the eye and say to Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received from the land and then when his wife comes in, he hits her with the same information. It was, if you like, that he was granted a gift of knowledge. Now, I do not believe and I might as well just tell you this upfront so that there's no confusion in your minds.
The fact that I do not believe it does not make it infallible, but I want you to know where I stand. I'm neither impressed by nor do I believe that so-called charismatic words of knowledge have any relationship whatsoever to this spiritual gift defined here in 1 Corinthians 12, i.e. that I would stand up and say to a group like this, there is a lady out here who has a stiff neck and I believe God wants to heal her. Loved ones, that's a long way from Ananias who has moved in your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit. That was an apostle putting himself on the line, was it not?
For after all, if Ananias had not lied to the Holy Spirit, it would have become apparent not only to the apostle but to everyone, including Ananias and Sapphira, who would have written letters for a long time to the apostle, accusing him of really bad behavior in front of the larger group. What then is this knowledge? The gift of knowledge as it exists today in whatever capacity seems to me the gift of being able to grasp the meaning of God's present revelation in the Scripture, which is a mystery to the natural mind. And it is a gift which is basic to all Christian preaching and teaching.
I don't believe it's possible for you to have the gift of being a pastor and teacher without that God has granted to you the gift of wisdom and of knowledge. Faith is clearly not the faith of justifying faith or saving faith. It's a special enjoyment, a special something from God. It's a peculiar confidence, a peculiar boldness, an assurance in advance of the gospel. It has been seen not only in apostolic times, but it is seen down through history. For example, do you not think that Hudson Taylor either was the most presumptuous of men or was granted such a gift of faith? To believe that the unreached nation of China could be touched with the cause of the gospel? Do you not think that Mueller, in the founding of his orphanages, was granted a unique gift of faith to trust God for resources that were apparently beyond the human imaginations of men? And what then of the issue of healing?
Well, in fairness, we do have to stop. And so I must. I'll be glad and I'm looking forward to coming back to this. And I value your prayers as we come to the issue of healing and then to the question of prophecy, certainly to the question of tongues. But loved ones, don't get stuck on all that stuff because irrespective of what people believe and sincere people believe differently concerning the dramatic and the apparently spectacular, the ultimate purpose of God in giving gifts to his people is in order that God's world might be drawn to God's Son.
For our friends and our neighbors, they've never read 1 Corinthians 12. They would be confused and bemused by such apparently persnickety attention to detail. But they will understand the compassionate heart. They will respond to the spirit of care. They will be open to the word of concern. And they are probably far more open to the claims of the gospel than we are actually open to be brave enough to go and tell them.
Life is short. The worst thing that would come from a study of spiritual gifts would be a dreadful inward self-defeating focus that fell foul of the idea that God gave us these gifts so that we could all sit around and show them to each other. Rather than that we were all granted them in order that we could go out and show Jesus to those who've never met him. God has given us spiritual gifts that are meant to point others to Jesus.
Are we using our gifts for his glory? You're listening to Alistair Begg and this is Truth for Life Weekend. If you're a regular listener, then you know that you can count on hearing clear and relevant Bible teaching on this program. That's because we believe scripture is the very word of God.
Truth is unchanging and without error. And when God's word is taught, churches are strengthened. Pastors and members begin to understand more about their spiritual gifts and as a result they serve the local body of believers. One of our passions at Truth for Life is to provide you with books that help you deepen your relationship with God. Right now we're recommending a book by Alistair that can help revive your prayer life. The book is titled Pray Big, Learn to Pray Like an Apostle and it comes bundled with a corresponding study guide. The book Pray Big examines the prayers of the apostle Paul for the Ephesian church in order to show ordinary Christians like you and me how we can pray. Alistair shares five key characteristics of prayer that will energize your prayer life. You can find out more about the book Pray Big when you visit our website truthforlife.org. I'm Bob Lapine. I hope you'll join us next weekend as Alistair examines what the Bible teaches about the gifts of healing, miraculous powers and prophecy. Are these gifts still present in the church today? Find out as you listen next weekend. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
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