The Common Good

But uh we're gonna be diving into a lot of different content here, and so I want to get to work as quick as we can.

What we've been kind of going through is this gifts of the spirit, and we dive right into the kind of tail end of this letter that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth.

And so we have to really understand context.

When we're diving into the middle of something, it can be dangerous just to assume that at face value it means what it says.

See, when we're interpreting scripture, we have to understand one of the dominant rules of what we call hermeneutics or interpretation of scripture is that context is king.

We have to know what's going on.

We have to know who's being written to, what they're being written about.

All these different elements are a factor in understanding.

And so what's happening at Corinth is Corinth is a largely divided church.

They're divided in all kinds of different areas.

You have both Gentiles and Jews coming together to form a church that have a lot of socioeconomic division, they have race division, they have uh spirituality division.

And what Paul has been laboring in this letter, as we talked about, is to try and give answers and clarify thoughts and questions about what it means to be a Christian and how we pursue unity rather than this division.

And one of the things that they had division on was this topic of spiritual gifts.

You see, the Corinthians were hyper-spiritual people.

They were so spiritual that they felt that they didn't need the earthly common things of this world.

And so some of the topics that Paul actually talks about when it comes to marriage and sex was a reality of that.

They thought they were so spiritual they didn't need physical intimacy.

They thought they were so spiritual that they feel like they didn't need a physical body.

In fact, in the chapter 15, one that we're not going to go through in this sermon series, Paul labors about the difference between the body you will have in glory versus the body you have now.

And he says, don't get those two things mixed up.

You're not there yet, you're still here.

You still need the physical world.

And so the Corinthians have this pride about being very spiritual people.

And one of the ways that they kind of fleshed this out or practiced it in their common church was that they believed that if you had this gift, this gift of speaking in tongues, that you were the spiritual one of the congregation.

And anyone who did not have this gift was obviously not as spiritual as the others.

And so that's why Paul really, in these next few chapters, makes it such a huge point to talk about the gift of tongues specifically and then to kind of contrast it in the light of the other gifts and how they function and flourish within the body.

And so Paul is coming in here and he's trying to understand.

Look, you don't really know what spirituality is, right?

That's what he's coming off the bat.

Every time Paul addresses something, I love it because he just puts you in your place.

But he does it so eloquently and shepherdedly, right?

He does it in just such this great, caring way, but still at the same time, sometimes he's harsh, sometimes he's very uh uh uh just kind of attacking in the words that he's using.

But here he's saying, look, you think you're spiritual, but you're not.

And I don't want you to be misinformed about what it actually means to be spiritual.

And so we looked at last week when Pastor Jordan was preaching and we talked about the most basic fundamental evidence that a person is spiritual, and we're gonna define that as a person who has the Holy Spirit in their life, is the confession that Jesus is Lord.

That's the most fundamental evidence that we have that a person is spiritual, is that they confess Jesus is Lord.

Because Paul says you can't actually confess Jesus is Lord unless you have the Holy Spirit.

And so Paul's taking all these different gifts and these different these perceived realities of more spiritual than others or deeper spiritually than others, and he puts them all on the same playing field with this simple reality that it's only this confession that Jesus is Lord is what testifies or gives evidence that a person is spiritual, that they have the Holy Spirit within them.

And so now what he's doing is he's coming out of that and he's saying, Look, it's not just this gift, there's actually a variety of gifts, and they all serve certain distinct purposes within the body.

And so when we jump into verse four, he talks about that these there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit.

There are varieties of service, but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but it's the same God who empowers them all in all.

And so the way that I would summarize this first section of four through six would be this that the fullness of God is seen and known through diversity.

The fullness of God is seen and known through diversity.

And spiritual gifts isn't the only place that we wrestle with this as a church.

Right?

We we wrestle with this when it comes to uh uh ethnicity, we wrestle this when it comes to socioeconomic status, we wrestle with this when it comes to gender, right?

We we always kind of assume or we have this propensity to be bent toward that that homogeny is a beautiful picture of who God is, but it's not.

Actually, diversity is a beautiful picture of who God is.

You see, because God cannot be known alone in one certain thing.

Just like with gender, God cannot be known alone in the man, God cannot be known alone in the woman.

It's fact that's why Paul says that it's when the man and the woman come together, they become one flesh again because differently separated, they uniquely actually communicate an aspect of who God is in his person and nature.

And when the two become one flesh, is when now the fullness of God, in the midst of that diversity in unity, come together, not diversity in uniformity, they display the whole image of God.

Even when we look at the church, the church is made up of all people from every nation, tribe, and tongue.

It is to see the fullness of God, we have to see it in diversity, and that even correlates and communicates into spiritual gifts.

We have to be able to see the fullness of God, we have to see the diversity of spiritual gifts that he gives to his church.

It's not in just one gift, one position, one service, but it's in diversity.

And so what Paul's really working to communicate to the church at Corinth is that they need to open their eyes to see the beauty of the diversity of the gifts that God has given to them.

You see, the gifts can only be truly valued if they're seen and celebrated in their diversity.

There's no gifting that alone can demonstrate the fullness of God in the church, and there's no gifting that alone can mature the church to her faithful fullness.

You don't just need preaching.

You don't just need prayer, you don't just need ex-gift or ex-service for the church to come to her faithful fullness, her maturity of which God has called her to be.

We need every aspect of the gifts that God has given to his church so that we can become who God has truly called us to.

Not one gift is unnecessary or unneeded.

He says, Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.

You see, it's the Spirit who has been sent to distribute the gifts for the church according to his will.

So the Spirit is the one who has this possession of this gifts.

He's the ability to distribute these gifts to the church as he sees fit.

And so Jesus sent the Spirit, right?

He says, I'm gonna go away so that I can send the helper.

This is gonna be better for you as a church, this is gonna be better for you as Christians, and with him is gonna come this, these gifts that he's gonna distribute to each person as he wills.

Then it says there's a variety of services, but the same Lord.

You see, these acts of service are worship unto the Lord Jesus.

And we're gonna get to this like, what are we culminating to?

Why are these gifts existing?

How do they function within us?

But we have to realize that this service, so we have gifts, and then gifts are empowered service.

Service are this acts of worship unto Jesus.

Look, look at Romans 12, 1.

Now, this is from the NASB.

If you're following along on the ESV, they use different language here a little bit, but I like how the NASB lays it out.

It says, Therefore I urge you, brethren, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies.

Oh, somebody put the ESV up there on me.

All right, here's what the NASB, you ready?

Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

And so it talks about this act of service unto Jesus that is actually worshipful in the way that we execute it, in the way that we live it out.

You see, worship is not just Sunday morning.

Worship is not a genre of music, right?

Worship is every aspect of our lives is worship.

How we eat is worship, how we live is worship, how we spend our money is worship, how we work is worship.

There's not one aspect of our lives that doesn't correlate to worship to Jesus.

And so these acts of service that you and I partake in are bound to the same Lord.

And so the gifts equip us to accomplish such service.

And it says varieties of activities, but the same God.

So each person, each gift, each service uniquely plays a part in the ultimate will of God.

And the word empowers here when it says he empowers them, all and everyone.

It actually refers to the effectual nature of the plan and will of God.

So we have gifts given to us by the Spirit, services unto the same Lord, and activities by God.

All empowers them.

It's about this effectual nature of his plan and method.

God's will shall ultimately be accomplished in and through his church, because he establishes the church, he gifts the church, and he sets forth the services of work she is to walk in.

Look at Ephesians 2 10.

For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus.

Why?

For good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Now look at the look look at that.

When we when we think about this thing called predestination, when we think about this thing of the sovereignty of God and our salvation, we limit it so much to simply just us, whether we love God or we don't love God.

It's way, way bigger than that.

It's way bigger than that.

It does include, do you love God or do you not love God?

But it also incorporates into that that the works of which God has established for you were known before the foundations of the earth.

That before he even sought to save you, he established the works of which you would walk in.

And then his spirit sovereignly, through his own will, gifts you to accomplish those works.

So there is nothing that can come against the sovereign will of God.

His will shall ultimately be accomplished again because he establishes the church, he gifts the church, and he sets forth the services of work that she is to walk in.

What a holy God.

What a powerful God.

And what should that do to us?

That should give us so much confidence.

That should give us so much assurance of what we're doing that God has ordained your very footsteps for this life.

It's not only that God loves you so much that he chose you, he loves you so much that he ordained your footsteps, and he loves you so much that he gifted you to accomplish those very works of which he called you to.

Man, what confidence should we have as believers?

And this is kind of the culmination of what I believe that Paul's trying to communicate here in this passage is that in the end, the gifts are working to see the spirit-powered confession that Jesus is Lord, be true and evident in every aspect of your life.

You see, this is the clearest and simplest evidence of a person of the spirit, that they confess that Jesus is Lord.

But it should be a confession, a confession that actualizes itself in every aspect of our lives.

One spirit initiates this confession, and one spirit, through diverse gifts, matures it into a living reality.

So it's not just that we declare Jesus as Lord, but it's with our finances we declare Jesus as Lord.

With the way that we disciple our families, we declare Jesus as Lord.

With the way that we rest, we declare Jesus as Lord.

With the way that we eat, we declare Jesus as Lord.

That what we need is the diversity of the gifts of the Spirit so where that confession, Jesus is Lord, becomes an actuality in every single aspect of our lives.

Think about it.

What parts of your life do you not declare Jesus is Lord?

What parts of our lives do we white knuckle and grip onto and declare, no, I'm Lord over this?

And then follow up.

How's that working for you?

My guess is not good.

I'll tell you an area of my life where I do not declare Jesus as Lord is in rest.

I just don't.

I work like everything depends on me.

So prideful, so arrogant to think that every aspect of this whole organization is going to stand upon my efforts.

No, this is Jesus' church.

I have to constantly remind myself of that.

And I have to work and labor.

And guess what?

There's gifted people within this congregation who I get so frustrated at the way you rest, I want to automatically say you're just lazy.

But then you're not?

You rest better than me.

You declare Jesus as Lord in your life better than I do in those areas.

I need you.

I'm thankful for you.

Verses 7 through 10.

This is kind of the way that I would summarize this lengthy passage here that we're gonna dive through.

It says this that each member of the church is gifted for the good of the church as a whole.

So each member of the church is gifted for the good of the church as a whole.

You see, we've been given these gifts so our brothers and sisters might come to the fullest of what God has for them.

No gift is given for the benefit of the individual.

Not one.

A gift should be exhausted in its purpose to build up others.

If a gift is being used to make oneself great, then that gift is being abused.

And it happens all the time in the church.

And the problem is that it only happens with certain gifts.

Like nobody is on a speaking tour right now because of how well they clean the church bathrooms.

They're like, can you come to our conference and just tell us like what your tricks are and your magic?

You know, no, no one does that, right?

It's really in these kind of like forward gifts, right?

Of music or of speaking or of these different gifts that certain individuals have that get elevated and worshipped, and then they get leveraged for that individual to make a name for themselves.

And so this temptation is real, this temptation is evident, and then we fall trap and victim into that very reality.

We were talking about this at our Missio community this week, and I said, Look, one thing that you can do this week, as much as I'm encouraged by the people who come up to me and say, Man, that was a great message.

Oh my goodness, that just spoke to me.

Man, I just love it when you preach.

Look, thank you.

I genuinely mean that.

But no one has ever gone to those sound booth people and said, Man, thank you.

I need your gift.

And it's so fruitful when I see it displayed within the church.

Who has gone to our kids workers and said, Thank you for discipling our children and for caring for them?

Who has gone to the facilities team?

And that's the beauty of it, you don't even know who was on facilities this morning.

Because there's such a serving from behind the scenes, but there's so many more people that need encouraged and built up and shown gratitude for the things that they do within the church.

You see, as we walk in humility with our gifts, then that's when we'll see one another flourish in their walk with Jesus.

No matter what gift you have, it's not for you.

That gift is not for you.

That gift is for others.

That gift is to be exhausted in its labor for the common good of the church.

And the reality is every single one of you has been gifted by the Spirit if you confess Jesus is Lord.

And we have to walk in humility in two different ways.

I think that we have to walk in humility that our gift is not for our own gain.

Right?

And there's only like a handful of people in any church organization that can really leverage that gift because it's those gifts that are out in front.

It's those gifts that are often celebrated the most, it's those gifts that people will want to kind of or wish they had in their life, but they don't, right?

It's those kind of gifts that will often have the highest temptation to be leveraged for self-gain.

And so, really, uh, pastors, worship leaders, all these people, they they need the most, you need to tell them how much they are not doing good at what they're doing, as much as you can, right?

I I said this one time to somebody, this brother who was sincere, complimented me every Sunday.

And there was a point where I had to say, brother, I don't trust you because you never tell me I did a bad job.

Even though I know I did.

It's okay to tell me, it's okay to knock me down a couple posts, is what I'm trying to tell you.

I love you, and I and I know that you love me when you come and do it in sincerity and care.

But there's only few gifts that are gonna have this possibility to really leverage for our own gain.

And so we need to walk in humility.

That whatever gift I have is not for myself, it's for you.

It's to equip you and encourage you and strengthen you in your faith.

But on the flip side of that, we also have to have humility in that God has actually given you a gift to use.

Every single butt person in this church has been given a gift by God to use.

And you have to be humble enough to accept that as reality.

Right?

It's just like false pride or this, or I'm sorry, false humiliation when you say, oh man, I just really don't think I have anything to give.

Of course, you don't.

Of course, in your own strength, in your own power, you do not.

But that's when you're saying, I am Lord of my life, and saying, instead of declaring Jesus is Lord and understanding that he has gifted you, walk in humility enough to know that this is not about you.

It's not about you, it's not about how much you think you are not good as a person, or you're not talented as a person, or you're not gifted as a person.

You're putting all the weight on yourself, and it's false humility, and it needs to be repented of in your life, and you need to seek out how has God gifted you for the common good of every other person sitting in this room.

Because He's gifted you.

You can't sit on the sidelines and watch any longer.

You gotta get up off the bench and start playing in the game.

And we need you.

The church needs you.

I can't come to the fullness of what God has called me to without your effort, without you participating in the work of God in this church.

This brother or this sister cannot get to the fullness of what God has called them to without your exhaustive effort to empty yourself of the gift of which God has given you.

And so we have to be humble on both extremes.

One with the one who has the possibility of leveraging their gift for self-gain, but also for the one who believes that they are not gifted and they still are declaring the same message.

I am Lord, not Jesus is Lord.

Now, as we walk through this passage of scripture, this is where Paul starts to just lay out a list of these spiritual gifts, right?

And so we're gonna walk through them, but there's some things that I want to clear up as we approach this list of spiritual gifts that Paul works through.

It's important to clear up that this.

There's an understanding that these gifts are known through their manifestation more so than through them being owned by an individual.

So here's what this means.

This means that gifts can ebb and flow in the life of a believer.

Some gifts can stay with an individual for extended periods of time, but some may come what seems to us sporadically.

Ultimately, they're the Spirit's gifts, and he's able to see them manifested through the believer as he sees best for the church.

It's a grave misunderstanding to assume that a person possesses a gift and is able to use it as they will.

I.e., a person with the gift of healing, able to clear out a hospital, a person with the gift of prophecy to know what the future holds in every circumstance.

Right?

We kind of think of gifts like X-Men.

And so we think, oh, because they have this gift, they can just exercise it whenever they want.

So, like, right, you know, storm can just cause a hurricane to come in through this valley, or Professor X can just read your mind at any time, or Wolverine can just heal himself just whenever it happens.

Like we think of spiritual gifts as X-Men, and that's not the case.

It's not about the person who has or obtains the gift, it's about the giver of the gift and how he chooses, according to his will, to manifest that gift through the individual.

And so it's unfair to say, well, if you have the gift of healing, just walk into a hospital and clear it out.

No.

It's unfair, it's not biblical, it's not represented in the text, and there was never a person that demonstrated that reality.

Jesus Christ Himself could not perform miracles in the city because the absence of faith.

Wrestle with that.

Right?

Paul didn't walk in and just clear out places because of that.

Were there times when many were healed?

Were there times when masses of people were healed?

Absolutely.

Were there times when no, when people died?

Yeah.

Why?

Because it's not about Paul.

It's about the Spirit who gives the gifts and chooses to manifest those gifts through the individual as he wills.

And now we work through this list of gifts.

And we have to understand that the emphasis really is not on the gifts themselves.

When we have to work to work through this text faithfully and what Paul's trying to communicate, because that's another aspect of studying the scriptures.

What's the author actually trying to say?

Well, the author is really not trying to give us this manual on spiritual gifts.

It's not it at all.

In fact, maybe Paul brings more confusion than clarity on spiritual gifts in this section.

Maybe it really meant a lot, or there was a lot of clarity to the Corinthian church who was receiving this letter.

Maybe some of these gifts were very evident and clear.

They understood them properly because of other teaching.

But at the same time, for us, this might not bring clarity.

This might bring confusion if we dive too deep into an aspect or a focus that Paul's not trying to bring to us in this passage.

So it's not really about the lists, it's about the giver of the gifts and the diversity of which they are.

Because he's trying to humble the church at Corinth to understand that you can't just divide yourselves or you can't dismiss people or marginalize people because they don't have the same manifestation of the spirit that you have.

So the emphasis isn't really on the gifts, they're on the diversity of them.

We also have to understand this is not an exhaustive list of gifts.

Say that five times fast.

This is not an exhaustive list of gifts.

There's other lists within the scriptures of gifts.

They include some of these same things, they include different things.

Again, that's not Paul's purpose.

He's not trying to exhaust every single spiritual gift that there is.

He doesn't name some in this list.

He does name some here that he doesn't name in other lists, and other writers of New Testament scripture contribute as well.

This is not a detailed description of the gifts or their operation.

And there is a lot of varying thoughts on this list in how to approach it.

But here's what we do know.

Number one, these gifts are supernatural.

Fundamentally, they're gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit, and in their essence, they are supernatural.

These gifts are not commonly or equally distributed.

So that doesn't mean that everybody can have this gift.

It doesn't mean that everybody will have this gift.

So they're not commonly or equally distributed, and it's not up to the merits of the individual as to why the gift was given.

I.e., you didn't earn it.

You weren't cool enough, you weren't talented enough, you weren't whatever enough, so that God gave you this gift.

No, it's according to his will, according to what he desires for you to accomplish in his church, and he will gift you as he sees fit.

These gifts play vital yet distinct roles in the maturing of the church.

Every gift is vital, but they're distinct.

And all of them are working for the maturing of the church.

So here's the gifts, right?

We kind of start at the top with this wisdom and knowledge.

These gifts really seem to be harmonious to one another.

And they're rooted in a proclaimed word, or what is referred to as a revelatory gift.

So we'll talk about this.

Some gifts are revelatory in nature, meaning that there's a word, there's a proclamation, there's this knowledge or or insight of God that is being given to that person, and then they're communicating it to other people.

And so this is one of those revelatory gifts.

There are others, but this is where the list starts off.

And so it's really a supernatural proclamation of the mysteries of Christ.

That's where I'm going to submit to you.

And I I also could be wrong.

I could be wrong on what these actually are, but I would say that this is a supernatural proclamation of the mysteries of Christ.

We see that ability to proclaim the wisdom of the cross, to proclaim the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus.

Some people have that gift better than other people.

Some people come supernaturally to them, and others it doesn't.

We look at even uh Paul himself, the writer of this list.

He he was like in hiding for almost 15 years as he was just having the Spirit open his eyes to what the scriptures were actually talking about Jesus, the one of whom he persecuted and Jesus sovereignly saved him from.

And then he presents himself to the elders at Jerusalem and says, Hey, look, is this kosher, this all this stuff that I think I'm hearing and seeing that the Spirit's teaching me, is this work?

And they say, Yeah, go.

Right?

And so Paul seemed to have this gift.

In fact, it's weird, Paul seemed to have every one of these gifts.

I don't know why that is, but hey, that's cool.

That's all right.

So this wisdom and knowledge, I would submit it's a supernatural proclamation of the mysteries of Christ.

Then we go to faith.

We have to understand that this is distinct from saving faith.

This is not what we would call pervenient faith or saving faith.

This is distinct.

And it's a faith that's bold and founded on the infinite power and sovereignty of God.

This is that kind of I'm gonna call mountains to pick themselves up and move into the ocean type of faith.

And this is something that I miss so much from my charismatic brothers and sisters.

They had faith that God could do anything.

We don't.

We don't have faith God can heal a cold often.

Right?

Because we have so many resources, we have so much education, we have so much whatever you want to put in that bucket.

Why do we really need to rely on God?

But these brothers and sisters, no matter what it is, they believe God can do it.

And that's something that's stirred up in them.

There's others who have that gift supernaturally that others don't, but they they kind of stir up that in others.

They kind of fan that flame of belief in one another.

And I want, I love this bold faith that's not founded on yourself, your knowledge, your ability to understand the scriptures.

It's founded that God is infinitely powerful and he is sovereign over every aspect of creation.

That kind of faith believes God can do anything.

And what beauty do we get?

I mean, we we get to see tastes of this.

We get to see God working through that faith, even in the even in the reality that a person becomes a believer.

I mean, what kind of faith is that?

To believe that this person could love God.

And how do you pray for them?

You say, God, this person doesn't love you.

Will you please make them love you?

That's how you pray for unbelieving people, right?

Anybody not pray for unbelievers that way?

What are you saying?

God, supernaturally, I have faith that you can cause this person to love you, to serve you, to obey you.

I have that kind of faith.

Now imagine faith even greater.

This is the type of faith that Paul's referring to here.

Then we have gifts of healing.

This is the introduction of the first plural form of a gifting.

I would say that this is supernatural healing of the physical, emotional, and psychological.

There's no reason to assume Paul's not referring to healings on the same level as the ones performed by Jesus Himself.

Supernatural and miraculous healings of people.

The pearl here, as we see it in this gifts of healing, as it will be in the next gift, denotes that these gifts were not institutionalized to the individual, but given and manifested in unique times and for unique purposes.

So what I'm getting what I'm saying is that this person didn't just have a gift.

It wasn't institutionalized or owned by the individual, and they were able to exercise it whenever they wanted to.

We have no evidence that that's the way that this works.

We only have evidence through the person and work and life of Jesus and through the rest of the New Testament scriptures that this is synergistic.

That we have to be willing and obedient, that the Spirit would lead us and use us and manifest his presence through us, and that the Holy Spirit desires for that gift to be manifested in and through you.

But we have to have the belief, we have to have the willingness, we have to have the pursuit that God can heal someone.

We believe that this gifts, this plural, doesn't limit it to one specific type, but we could see this as the healing of the physical, the healing of the emotional, the psychological.

And then we look at working of miracles.

This is the next gift that Paul goes through.

Again, this one's plural like the one before it.

And while great demonstrations of faith and healing are miracles being worked, this is to be held as a unique gift.

We have to understand that there's a certain level of overlap as we walk through all of these gifts.

So you can't look at these in like silos, completely compartmentalized from one another.

You have to look at them more as overlapping realities.

And there's a majority in one and majority in the other, but that doesn't mean that they're absent of each other fully either.

That's why it's like I said, this might bring more confusion than clarity as we try to, and that's not what I'm trying to do here because that's not what Paul's trying to do, but I felt like we had to at least address what we presumed these gifts to be.

This could include exorcisms, uh, nature miracles.

We see like water to wine, multiplication of feud, manipulation of weather.

Sure, could be, and other manifestations of divine power.

As above, this has an inherent understanding of being manifested in unique unique times and four unique purposes.

Then we get to prophecy.

This is another revelatory gift rooted in a proclaimed word.

So speaking the word of God.

And at Missio, at least, we hold to this kind of spectrum of prophecy, of forth telling versus foretelling.

So every weekend somebody gets up here and preaches, we believe that they are prophesying.

What does that mean?

We are speaking the word of God, and that's in a forth telling nature.

To preach is to prophesy, and it's in a forth telling that of which has already been written.

But we do believe that there's a broad spectrum of prophecy that can reach to the foretelling, that which has not been revealed yet, but will be revealed through the person who has this gift, or who the Spirit chooses to manifest this gift through.

So we work from that spectrum.

So not all prophecy is foretelling, but we would also agree that not all prophecy is strictly forth telling.

Now, this is one thing that I want to try and make clear that we believe universal, authoritative revelation has ceased.

This is what I mean by that.

The canon is closed, no one's adding to the scriptures.

There is not a prophetic utterance as an authoritative head of the global church of Jesus Christ who gets to add or who gets to uh uh interpret or gets to authoritatively proclaim this is what God is calling us to do.

And there are sectors of Christianity and false Christian cults that believe that type of thing, right?

Mormons have a prophetic head at the top.

I would even put uh the office of pope kind of functions in that way, where he gets to say that this is actually what the scriptures mean and that he holds himself more authoritative than the word of God.

That's what we're getting away from.

There's nobody in all of existence that is above this written word.

No one.

So there's no universal, authoritative revelation any longer.

But that does not dismiss that there are personal or even corporate revelation to yet be heard.

Here's where I'm getting that.

I do believe that there could be a prophetic word of revelation given to an individual or given to a corporate body.

And it's God speaking through a person authoritatively, revealing his will and plans for them.

Maybe it's calling out sin.

In fact, a lot of times when we look at the prophets of the Old Testament, that's what they were doing.

They were calling out sin, they were saying God's judgment was coming, you better repent before you face his wrath, right?

That was kind of, there was no like prophecy of, guess what?

You're getting ready to get rich and you're about to get blessed.

That wasn't what the Old Testament prophets did declare.

It was like, you're in sin and wickedness, and if you don't change, God's gonna destroy you.

But I do believe that the scriptures are sufficient for faith and practice on how we know God, how we relate to God through the finished work of Jesus, for salvation.

The scriptures are sufficient.

But as we've talked about before, the scriptures don't speak into very specific decisions that you're gonna make with your life.

Where are you gonna live?

Where are you gonna work?

How are you gonna do this?

How are you gonna do that?

Especially in freedom that the scriptures provide freedom for, we need to still be hearing and listening for the voice of God.

And sometimes God might use an individual to declare that truth to you.

And you need to be open to receiving it.

As long as it doesn't contradict the authoritative scriptures, then maybe it is God.

Right?

I mean, here's what I'm looking at.

We want to say, if God says you better get out your pen and add it to the back of your Bible, and I think that's garbage.

Whoever says that, I'll tell it's a garbage position.

Here's where I'm getting that from.

Number one, 1 Timothy 118.

Paul says this to Timothy, this young pastor, this charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare.

We don't have these prophetic utterances written in the scripture.

Nowhere do we know what prophecies were made about Timothy specifically as an individual, yet Paul is telling Timothy to trust in them, to rely on them, to leverage them in an understanding of what God has called you to be.

There is men who have uttered prophecies over your life, Timothy, and they mean something for the work that He's called you to do.

Now we don't have those in the scriptures.

Why?

Because you and I aren't supposed to submit to those words.

They're not universally authoritative to the entire church.

They were, though, authoritative over Timothy.

Then we would look at 1 Corinthians 14, 29, which we'll dive deeper into in the following weeks, but it says this let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.

If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent.

Here's what I want to point out.

For Paul, prophetic utterance was a normal activity of the church.

It was just supposed to happen.

Now he put structure and order around that gift being used, but it wasn't not supposed to happen amongst the corporate body.

And we don't have those.

How many times did they gather and pro and prophetic utterances were given at the church in Corinth?

And guess what?

We have none of them recorded.

Does that diminish the value to that church in that time and in that space for the manifestation of the Spirit to work in a prophetic utterance?

No.

Not by any means.

In fact, when we say all we need is the scripture, we're saying fully that we don't think that God's plan and purposes for our lives are best.

Because He's declaring, I'm gonna gift you with people who can prophesy, and it will be for you or for the congregation, and it will be weighty, it'll be purposeful, it'll mean something to the way that you live your life.

So it's a perceived common practice in the church without any recorded knowledge of what was ever prophesied.

I would make a strong argument that prophecy should exist within the church for the individual or for the congregation, though it has ceased as being universally authoritative for the Capital C Church of Jesus.

And then the next gift, this distinguishing between spirits.

This could be strongly connected to the gift preceding it.

Right?

Paul says, judge prophetic utterance.

And anyone who comes before the congregation and gives a word of prophecy, it should be judged.

We would be poor uh uh uh Christians, or we would not faithfully obey the text if we allowed for prophetic utterances to rule our lives without judging them according to the revealed authoritative word of God.

We would be foolish and we would not be faithfully obeying what God has revealed to us already.

And so maybe that this gift does correlate to the one preceding it.

But also, I think that we have to look at a broader perspective that it could also be tethered to a need to discern all demonstrations of the supernatural.

Because these manifestations are not always from the Holy Spirit.

We see in the book of Acts where there were people who were not of the faith, who were not under the saving grace of Jesus Christ, who were able to practice supernatural demonstrations.

And they had to be discerned.

Is this the Spirit or is this some other spirit?

And so I don't think it's directly tethered to prophecy, even though it's a very good and healthy practice.

I think it's a broader sense that all demonstrations of the supernatural need to be judged on whether they are authentically a manifestation of the Holy Spirit or of some other spirit.

And one of the fundamental ways that we understand that is is this pointing to Jesus?

Right?

I want to equip you to be able to discern in the most simplest form, does this point to the truth that Jesus is Lord?

Because that's what the Lord Himself, Jesus our Savior, declared that when he comes, he will point to, acknowledge, affirm my finished work.

That's one of the primary reasons that the Holy Spirit has come to us is to affirm within his church, Jesus Christ is Lord.

And any display of the supernatural that does not point to that truth, but points to the fact that you are Lord, you are awesome, you are whatever, is not the Holy Spirit.

That's discernment 101.

But again, it's not a natural thing to be grasped.

There are supernaturally gifted realities of an individual able to discern.

Then we get into various kinds of tongues.

Again, plural, not held solely to be a tongue known by man, could be used in various ways.

We would see this in prayer or proclamation.

This could be used as a private prayer language.

We'll see that in the coming chapters as we move forward.

This also could be used as a proclamation or something that is given vocally to the congregation, even though we'll discover that that language is always from man.

To God.

It is never from God to man.

It works this way, not this way.

You guys getting this?

Okay.

So various kinds of tongues, and then the need for this to be the interpretation of tongues.

This is tightly connected to the previous gift.

It could be from the individual speaking the tongue or from another within the congregation.

So, i.e., Paul says, when you pray in tongues, pray for the interpretation.

So the individual could receive the interpretation and be built up in their own faith.

Or the interpretation could come through the gift or manifestation of the Spirit of another, where they are able to discern or declare or interpret what was being spoken.

Creates order.

This gift specifically creates order and provides benefit of the tongue to the hearer.

Because without the interpretation, as we'll see in the coming passages, there's no benefit to the hearer.

And so these gifts, again, Paul's not working to write a manual on these gifts, why they exist, how to function within them perfectly.

He's not doing that.

It's not what he's laboring around.

What he's laboring around is that there are diversity of gifts within the church to bring her to the maturity that declares Jesus is Lord in all of life.

Verse 11.

All these are empowered by one and same Spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

Here's how I would summarize this.

You have been gifted by the Spirit according to his will.

You have.

Every single one of you.

You have been gifted by the Spirit.

Think about the supernatural reality of that statement.

You've been gifted by the Holy Spirit according to his will.

No one is giftless.

No one.

Each of you have been supernaturally empowered to serve and build up the church for her ultimate good.

Understanding that these gifts are his really focus to have us a deep-seated trust in how he has chosen to use them in us.

It forces us.

So these gifts, right?

We didn't earn them, we didn't obtain them.

The reality of this truth is that it forces us to have a deep-seated trust in God.

That he knows what gifts we need.

This is not dependent on us.

This reality, this truth should force us and cause us to have even more trust in him.

They're not for us individually, they're for us corporately.

And they can cause us to see Jesus as Lord declared in every aspect of our lives.

And so our main idea this morning is this.

In diverse ways, we should reflect the giving nature of God through our gifts.

In diverse ways, so no one's gonna do it the same, no one's gonna do it equally as far as like identical or uniformity, but we should reflect the giving nature of God through our gifts.

Our God is a giving God.

Man, look how radically generous God is.

Right?

Even if you tried to take out the reality that he gave his only son for us, look at the rest of the beauty of creation of which he's given us.

Look at your families, look at your health, your life, look at anything that you have and realize the giving nature of God.

You have earned nothing.

You're entitled to nothing.

Everything that has been given to us is a gift from God.

And then to top it all off, God says, I'll give you the very thing you could never earn yourself: relationship with me.

I'm gonna give it to you by giving you my son.

What a generous, radically generous God that we serve.

How dare we, how dare we keep the gifts God has given us to ourselves?

How dare we leverage them for our own gain?

And how dare we think that we're useless in His kingdom?

But here's the beauty, here's the the thing that we struggle with.

Our story is this some of us are self-serving with our gifts.

It's just fundamentally true.

We can get to this place so easily where we're self-serving with our gifts.

We leverage them for our own gain.

We try to make a platform for ourselves, and we start to think that everything is about us.

And I said, there's not, this doesn't affect every gift, right?

The facilities team is not trying to build a platform for themselves and leveraging, like, look at us.

Y'all wish you were us, right?

No one makes a green room for the facilities team.

Anybody ever realize that?

Or gives them like special coffee pourovers because they did so well on cleaning the toilets.

No one does that.

And churches all throughout the world will make their gifts self-serving.

They'll leverage them for their own gain and act like everything is about their gift, getting the most spotlight and biggest platform, and I hate it.

Our gifts should never be about us.

And I want you to hold me to this church.

I'm never above taking out the trash.

I'm never above cleaning a toilet.

I'm never above getting my hands grimy in the work of ministry.

If I ever posture myself in a way that that is true, then call me out on the carpet on the spot.

None of us, according to our gift, is above doing the work of ministry.

We should be co-laborers in this gospel.

Getting in the grittiness of ministry together to see the kingdom be pushed forward.

And then as we're pushing and pushing together, certain gifts will start to manifest itself so that we can advance past this obstacle and past that obstacle and keep moving forward as we push back the darkness.

This is a co-laboring.

This is a gift given to you for the good of others, not for the good of yourself.

But then some of us are also dismissive of the gift of others.

Some of us are dismissive of the gift of others.

And this is something that I'm I'm guilty of.

We're all guilty of to some regard, where we just dismiss people.

Like they have nothing to add to what God is doing here.

That's the biggest lie that I can believe about you is that God doesn't love you so much that he's uniquely gifted you so much that you play or can play or should play a major role in what he's doing in and through us here at Missio.

But we can be so dismissive, and oftentimes it's because the gifts aren't standing out in front.

They're not shining in the light, right?

They don't have the right platform.

Or we look at somebody and we say, Well, this brother's more work than he is good.

Right?

You ever met a dude like that?

Like, I've been that dude.

Like, I don't know if it's worth even just putting the time and energy into you because you're a lot of work.

But every single one of us has to exhaust our efforts to see and celebrate the gifts of one another.

And some of us need help identifying what those gifts are so that we're not dismissive about them, right?

Some of us just need some help to understand, man, where, how has God gifted you?

Where has God gifted you?

How has he called you to service within his kingdom?

Where is it that we can help identify and then put you out there to be able to leverage the gifts that God has given you for the common good of the church?

How do we do that?

But the beauty of the gospel is this that we get the gift reception Jesus deserves because he got the gift rejection that we deserved.

You see, Jesus is the one who's earned every treasure of God.

Jesus is the one who, in his perfect life of obedience, of a life fully committed to the glory of the Father, has inherited and obtained every treasure of heaven.

And you know what he does?

Freely lavishes it upon you and I.

But what did he have to suffer to do that?

He had to get what we deserved.

Because what we brought to the table were gifts rusted, gifts tarnished, gifts perverted, and we tried to hold them up before God and say, take this.

And he says, You don't even know how far that fails to accomplish what you need.

God, in every aspect of his being rejected the gifts that we put forward to try and earn relationship with him.

Because we can never do it in our own.

We can never do it in our own striving.

And so, what does Christ do?

He perfectly obtains the gifts necessary that he can present to the Father.

Look, here, I stood in their place.

And so allow me to lavish the gifts that I've inherited, that I've earned through my perfect life in obedience.

Let me lavish them upon your children and equip them, not just for salvation, but for the advancing and demonstration and reflection of your kingdom on this earth.

And so we get this glorious gift reception that's not about us, it's not about our accomplishments, it's all about His.

And this is how I see us living this out in three ways as we start to close here.

Number one, we will be grateful and confident in the gifts God has given to us.

If you're just sitting there taking space, you're not grateful for the gifts that God's given you.

And I would argue, you're probably not confident that you even have a gift.

And I want us as a community to change that reality.

I want us as a community to stir one another up, to encourage one another, to build up each other, to be able to say, be grateful for the way God has gifted you.

It's different, it's unique, but it doesn't mean that it's less important to the end goal of what he has for his church.

And then not only be grateful so that you use it and celebrate it, but be confident as you walk it out.

We as people need to stop doing the exact same thing that the Corinthian church was doing.

We just do it in a different way.

Their thing was if you don't have the gift of tongues, you're not really spiritual.

We might say if you don't really have the gift of preaching, you're not really that spiritual or important or needed.

If you don't have the gift of A, B, C, fill in the blank.

But we do the exact same thing.

It just looks different than what they did.

And we don't really build a culture of gratitude and confidence in the gifts that God has given to each and every single one of us.

Number two is that we would exhaust our gifts for the common good of the church.

Exhaust our gifts for the common good of the church.

Possibly, possibly, we would all have more energy and strength to be able to use our gifts in healthier ways if we were all working together.

But the reality of any given church is 10% of the people do 90% of the work.

And look, guys, we've got people in Mystio Kids who are gifted for that and who are gonna burn out because other people don't step up to the plate and help.

I would hate to see a place where gifted people who have been supernaturally gifted by the Spirit burn out and don't want to use their gifts anymore because we weren't picking them up underneath their arms and helping carrying them through in their tiredness.

No matter how good of a leader, no matter how gifted you are, you are gonna need people to come alongside you and carry you through hard seasons of life so that you don't give up.

I need it.

You need it, we need this together, and we should be a community who exhaust ourselves in the gifts that God has given us for the common good of the church.

And when we get to that point to where we're exhausted, we've got energized brothers and sisters who just got done being carried for that last stretch of life.

Now they're ready to pick you up underneath your arms and help walk you along in this season.

That's the way that this should work.

Not I can't get anybody to help me and I'm done.

What a lost gift.

What a wasted gift.

Thirdly, we would see culture be transformed by the manifestation of the Spirit through us.

We would see culture be transformed by the manifestation of the Spirit through us.

This is a reality of us as the church.

These shouldn't just stay within these four walls.

But the manifestation of the Spirit through us and the giftings that He has given us should begin to transform the culture around us.

Look through all out the New Testament, where these faithful brothers and sisters were demonstrating the gifts of the Spirit in their lives in public arenas and in public spaces, and it was transforming the culture around them.

I don't know if you know this, but we're called to make earth look more like heaven rather than the church look less like this world.

And we get that flip-flop so many times.

We bunker down and we hide out in these four walls because we're afraid that we'll be tainted or marred or stained by the culture around us instead of being like Christ, who went in headfirst into the culture with the demonstration of the Spirit, with the gospel in his mouth, with a commitment to holy obedience, and culture started to be transformed all around him.

The kingdom of God should be developed, the kingdom of God should be seen, the kingdom of God should be experienced in every aspect of our culture.

We are not called to hide and wait, we are called to go and make.