Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 1, 2023 | 1 Corinthians - Gifts for All, All for Christ

Transcript

January 1, 2023 | 1 Corinthians - Gifts for All, All for Christ · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to see you.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a confession to make to you, which is that I am going to tease you this morning.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a confession because I don't like being teased that often.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: But also I'm somebody who likes to set likes to set expectations very clearly.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm going to tell you how I'm going to tease you.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, when we arrive there, you don't, you aren't as upset.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about 1 Corinthians 12.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're going through this morning.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the entire subject of 1 Corinthians 12 is spiritual gifts.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the tease part is that we are not going to walk through every single spiritual gift and talk about what it means.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you combine all of the different passages, um, and I'll explain more about this later, but when you combine all the different passages about spiritual gifts, our list is nearing 20, okay?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're not we're not gonna do that.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: What we are going to do is we're gonna spend a little bit more time talking about what I think Paul wants us to understand in this chapter, which is why?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we talk about spiritual gifts?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know what those are, we'll get to that too, no sweat.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the greater question here is what are they and what is the purpose behind them?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's really what we're endeavoring to figure out today.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you will, but that is the tease.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I've already let you know, so no tomatoes thrown later.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you will, let's go ahead and move to verse 1 in chapter 12.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul begins here and he says, Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other, you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, Jesus be cursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord, there are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in every one, it is the same God at work.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing we have to look at here is in that first verse, right, he says, I don't want you to be uninformed, right?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: We have to remember here that what we're about to get into in chapter twelve is basically a response to a response.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: First Corinthians is not the first letter that Paul sent to that church.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: He sent them a letter, they sent him something back, and what we have as 1 Corinthians is his response to their return letter.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is why sometimes in this uh this letter, we have Paul just sort of jumping into topics that don't always seem to have a preamble or an introduction.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's the case here, right?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's somehow they have asked him, or for some reason they have asked him, about spiritual gifts and what to do with it in their local church, and we're gonna see hints of that as we kind of keep going.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But as we walk into this whole chapter, though, we have to recognize that the themes that Paul is drawing out are relevant to Corinth, but also to us.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, You know that when you were pagans, meaning those who worshipped false gods, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, Jesus be cursed, or otherwise, Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So a problem in the Corinthian church that we talked about is they were very prideful.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: They were very gifted.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter one tells us that they had a lot of good things going for them, but they like to put a lot of praise on themselves for how well they were doing, right?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so the Corinthian church, they were boastful, they were prideful, they loved their own, and they basically loved to hear themselves talk.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: That would be a good summary of the Corinthian church.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we're talking about them, he's he's setting the stage for something that we're gonna look at in a second, which he says, listen, if you have the Holy Spirit in you, you can't say Jesus be cursed, right, pagans.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you say, if you are somebody who says Jesus is Lord, the only way you could be saying that, the most basic function of being a Christian, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Calling upon the name of the Lord is by the power of the Spirit.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's nothing that you're doing, dear Corinth, right, that is amazing, that is without the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so he kind of brings them in at ground level and he says, right, every single thing that you are doing that is good and glorifying and wonderful in your praising that is for Jesus, he says, it is the Holy Spirit who empowers you to do it.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And once we start at that level, then we can then we can talk about spiritual gifts here, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then he brings up the other theme that we're going to discuss this morning, which is diversity.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: There are different kinds of gifts, right?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are different kinds of service, and in each one it's the same spirit, it's the same Lord.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, we'll get to that in a moment, but suffice to say for now, the Corinthians also had a problem with favoring some of these spiritual gifts more than others.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So now let's take an aside here and say, if we don't know what spiritual gifts are, let's tackle that real quick.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Spiritual gifts, not to be crude, are like Christian superpowers, okay?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: They are things that the whole, if you have trusted in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, all right, the Holy Spirit, which is God Himself, dwells within you, and that Holy Spirit has given gifts, special kind of manifestations of skill and passions and abilities onto Christians for a specific purpose, which we'll also get to in a moment.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: But spiritual gifts, as we're talking about them here, right, this word gifts, the word in Greek is charismata, which is where we get our word for charisma.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Charis, C-H-A-R-I-S, is the word for grace in Greek.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we are talking about gifts that the Spirit gives to us, they can be literally translated as grace gifts.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't gotten the message so far, everything good that comes through us is from Jesus, it is from the Holy Spirit, okay?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And every single gift that the Corinthians have is a word that we might be a little unfamiliar with using, but all of them are charismatic.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now that describes sort of, you know, a denomination and activities of certain churches, but every gift of the Spirit is charismatic.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is something, it is a gift of grace by God, and people are gifted differently, but everyone is gifted.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone ever used to watch Oprah when she was on?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Vicky.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: My mom used to watch Oprah all the time.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when she gave everybody a car?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I remember this episode.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was a big deal.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oprah.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, none of you have watched Oprah.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: She was a talk show host for a long time.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Big deal.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And she used to give out gifts to people in her audience.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one day she gives everybody in her audience a car, okay?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a big thing because previously she had never given such a large gift to any one person who wasn't on stage, and then every single person who was sitting in the audience received a car.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so she has this famous line, you should look it up, where she's like, You get a car, and you get a car, and you get a car, and you get a car.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The only time I'll ever compare the Holy Spirit to Oprah, but all Christians have received gifts from the Holy Spirit.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh it's kind of an enveloping measure where we recognize that if you've trusted Jesus as your Savior, you're included in this conversation.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't know your spiritual gifts to the greatest extent, maybe you haven't exercised them, maybe this is new information, but if you know Jesus, you said, Hey, he died on the cross for my sins, I've trusted in him, he rose on the third day, we're good to go, then you have been given at least a gift, and probably gifts, grace gifts from the Holy Spirit.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: But as we keep going, though, we'll see that there's some nuance here.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 7.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: To one there is given, here's the tease part, to one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another, message of knowledge by the means of the same spirit, to another, faith by the same spirit, to another, gifts of healing by that one spirit, to another, miraculous powers, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of these tongues.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: All these are the work of one and the same spirit, and he distributes them to each one just as he determines.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing for us to notice here is verse 7, where Paul basically gives his thesis, his main idea, which is he says, now to each one, the Spirit has been given, and it has been given, as he says, for the common good.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I could implant into you, into your mind, one sort of seed or idea that can develop over time.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is that when we consider Topeka Bible church, right, and some of you Mulvaine crowd are in cab for, you know, only like the second or third time in your life, and we've got different services, we've got two different buildings, but if you can see everything that we do as one body, you are going to do well as we move forward and talk about how that one body works together, right?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to see this body, believe me, because Paul's going to talk about that body in a second, but it's not just individuals who are coming into a room to hear somebody talk.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: That we are sort of an institution ordained by God for the Great Commission, and that every single person plays a role in this mission.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: But also that the power that we have been given to be able to accomplish that mission, mission, was given by the Spirit, and the purpose of our spiritual gifts is then to benefit others.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there are some people who use their spiritual gifts, right, whatever they might be, for their own means and their own purposes.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps somebody, as an example, is gifted in speaking, and they've used that successfully in their career, whatever it is, but have neglected to use that for other people.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: There are many ways that this cuts across the whole thing, but the purpose of our spiritual gifts is to benefit others, and the context, like the area where we do that is within the local church.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So when we talk about all these gifts, right?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I know, this is the tease part.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you collect a whole bunch of them, not all of these are in 1 Corinthians.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's four main places in the New Testament where they're talked about, okay?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: You get a big list.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the reason why we're not going through them one by one.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, A, I have a short amount of time.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: B, probably more importantly, is the fact that in any of these four passages, um, it only a section of this list is presented, which tells us that the spiritual gifts are not constrained to this list, but rather that instead, Paul, as in 1 Corinthians, is like, these are the gifts that I see within your congregation.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are the ways that the Spirit has manifested himself in what you're doing, and this is what I recognize in you, right?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so he does it with the Romans and the Ephesians, and then Peter talks about this a little bit, and each one of them makes it relevant to their people.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So what does that tell us, right?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it tells us that when Paul then in verse 8 begins to talk about all of these things, it's things that he sees in the Corinthians.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's actually not particularly helpful for us to walk through every single one of these, because they were the gifts manifesting themselves in Corinth.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: But before we move past that, I do just want to acknowledge one more time how many times he says, Hey, where does this come from?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Where are we getting all these gifts?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Who is doing this?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is by the power of the Spirit.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in verse 11, now he's going to he's done telling them, right, that it is God that does all the amazing things.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is not them who are super special, but it is the Lord Himself.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're moving on to a different theme.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, new topic.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 11, he distributes them to each one just as he determines, right?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: There is diversity, and then it is all given by the same God.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: There is a multitude of gifts.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: We just looked at a list, and there are more than that, all coming from the same Spirit.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so in verse twelve, now he gets into this image of a body.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Just as a body, though one has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: For we were all baptized by one spirit so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, and we were all given the one spirit to drink.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even so the body is not made up of one part, but of many.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the diversity of gifts is what makes the body strong.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just as a body, though one has many parts, all its many parts form the one body.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we see here is that the differences in background, race, gender, hobbies, interests, skills, financial status, age, uh auditorium that you go to, right?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, all of these things come together.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: We are all different parts of the body, and yet we come together as one.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's going to be really important here in a second because Paul is going to list some problems that come about when we are trying to accomplish that mission.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: When the disparate, when the diverse comes together under Christ.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about he gives two groups, Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free people.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Those are very different groups of people.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, he says, under Jesus Christ, they can come together.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps nowhere else in the culture can those four groups of people intermingle with one another.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, when they're under Jesus, when they're in the house of worship, when they're focused on their God, he says, well, then they are one body.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Staggering statement.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing is true for us today.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: We can find this unity in the body, and we celebrate the diversity of it.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: But as Paul said is going to say, there are a couple problems that we run into that the Corinthians ran into, and chances are we do as well here in Topeka.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So as we move on, he says in verse 15, now if the foot should say, he's going to list different body parts, okay?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to sound like some weird fable.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if the foot should say, Because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: It would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: If the whole body were an eye, what a weird image, where would the sense of hearing be?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: If the whole body were an ear, even weirder, where would the sense of smell be?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: If they were all one part, where would the body be?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there are two general problems that come up here with the diverse becoming one.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is in verses 15 through 16, there, right?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he's he's sort of I don't know how he determined it, but the idea is he is listing a part of the body that is not as important, i.e.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: the hand in this case, and he is giving it a voice as it is comparing itself to one who is more important.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is the problem we've we talked about a little bit in Corinth, is that they were lifting themselves up higher.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: They were saying that some of them were more important than others because of the spiritual gifts that they had.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, in Corinth, it was that they were speaking in tongues.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that he's going to talk about throughout 12, 13, and 14.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, they were lifting up some of them higher than others.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we have this problem that was going on, and he's using an analogy, is that some people who, in this case, apparently couldn't speak in tongues were looking at the ones who did, and they were saying, Well, if I can't do that, then I must not be a part of the church.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I can't do that, then what's the point in me even trying?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem there is that the diversity is not appreciated.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Something that we're going to hit on in just a moment, but that God placed them just as he wanted them to be.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, it is a work of the Spirit that gives every single one of you your spiritual gifts.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that you're deserving of praise for, nor is it something that we get fussy about because God, in his sovereignty, has decided, he said, okay, hey, this church to work together, to be a full, complete body that is healthy, needs to have a lot of different parts to it.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm going to distribute them how I will.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no need for the lesser to look to the greater.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was working down in Fort Worth, there was a guy named Arch who I think in my life I've encountered two people where very, very obviously they had the spiritual gift of evangelism.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this guy, I would, I worked with him, and I we would, I remember one time we got together, there's a, they have one in Lawrence now, Torchies Taco Shop.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're everywhere down in Texas.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he was like, Yeah, you know, I was I was meeting some people at Torchies and I was ordering my food, and I could just tell that the guy who was taking my order needed to hear about Jesus, and I led him to Christ.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, goodness sakes.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there was absolutely a level of comparison that was going on there selfishly, where I was like, that would never be me, right?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness, you know, I when I go to Torchies, my last thought is, is this person need to know the gift of the cross?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: So here would be the problem though, is then if I said one of two things, either A, then my gift of evangelism, which I'm not entirely sure that I possess, but then that gift that I shouldn't use it, okay?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: That I that I shouldn't, because it's not as good as the person who is so obviously gifted in that way, that I should remove myself from the body, that I should not attempt to still use the gift that God had given, even though it is perhaps, if we want to use this word, slightly lesser.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: God has manifested gifts in different amounts and different abilities.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be one problem, is if I said, well, because I'm not as talented as that person by the gift of the Spirit, then I should disengage.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: The other problem, though, that I would have is if I said, Well, because they are so talented, I'm going to leave the entire job of evangelism up to them.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to engage in it, right?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: See, there are things that we've been called to do as Christians that we are supposed to do regardless of our abilities.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to share the gospel with people, you're supposed to give, you are supposed to be a good neighbor, you are supposed to live with mercy, you were supposed to live like Jesus Christ.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And no amount of spiritual gift or lack thereof sort of removes that responsibility from us.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so, even though I am certainly not as gifted as Arch, well, that doesn't mean that I still have not been called to share the gospel with people and to evangelize.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there are problems when we develop this level of envy by comparison, and we start to make determinations about ourselves based upon other people, which is not where our focus should be, right?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: You might this works generally with any single team event.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can talk about ballet, you can talk about doing a Shakespearean play, you can talk about an orchestra, playing a piece by Bach, you can talk about a football team, you can talk about, but when we are talking about a play or a musical, okay, we think about the fact that we all have a part to play, but not everybody plays the same part.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if everybody played the same part, it would not be a very good musical.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Having said that, I think that particular musical is slightly overrated, and with that, I will move on.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the other thing that I want you to look at here, though, is there's right, Paul gives two problems.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: One is when we basically with envy compare ourselves to the greater, and we say, okay, I'm gonna make a decision about what I do based upon that other person.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that that's not good.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing, it's what we just talked about, is now when we get this really weird image of the whole body becomes an eye, whole body becomes an ear.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, How sad is that?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: If we were to, and again, what he's digging at here is the Corinthians' desire basically that the best of us are the ones that can speak in tongues.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so everybody was desiring that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, How lame would that be if the entire church only people spoke in tongues?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: He said, it would not accomplish any of the goals that God had set out for the church to do.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in seeking similarity and constantly looking to be homogenous in the way that we express our gifts, he says the church becomes weaker.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not as impactful as if we embrace that diversity.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: So before we move on from this passage, I just want to direct your attention to that underlined portion one more time, where it says, but in fact, as a response to all of these things, God has placed the parts in the body.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of them just as he wanted them to be.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would offer that to you as a bit of encouragement.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you have ever felt like your spiritual gifts, or you yourself, without recognizing your gifts, have not been a part of the body, or you have felt excluded from the body, you should find encouragement in the fact that God has given you giftings according with his will and his grace for your own good and according to his purpose.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not a single one of you who should have a measure of shame or guilt about that, even if you perhaps struggle with comparison at times.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: God has placed you exactly where he wants you to be.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: But now, 21, we shift our focus.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we are looking at the lesser to the greater.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're changing perspective, we're going from the greater to the lesser.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: The eye cannot say to the hand, I don't need you.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the head cannot say to the feet, I don't need you.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the parts that we think are less honorable, we treat with special honor, and the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment, but God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I said, previously our focus was on the less popular parts.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, though, we are directing ourselves towards, if you will, like the final correction of the Corinthian church, which was the pride that Paul perceived in the way that they were treating certain people within the church.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about this already, so I won't labor that point, but basically they were prioritizing certain spiritual gifts above others.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't recognizing, A, that it all came from God, and B, that every single spiritual gift is necessary for the church to function well.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: So they were taking these things, and apparently that attitude moved all the way to this level where those who had these more appreciated spiritual gifts were looking at those, you know, hey, I have the gift of mercy, I have the gift of helps, I have the gift of administration, so on and so forth, less obvious gifts, and saying, you're not needed here.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to be a part of what's going on, you're not a part of the church.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what you have needs to stay to the sidelines.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then Paul brings in this beautiful counter-cultural message, which I won't read all of it again, but it begins with, on the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You are going to uh sort of hamstring yourself if you remove them from the church and if you act like they aren't important.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, where else but in the kingdom of God are the weak lifted up and made strong, and are said that they will inherit the earth.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is only a kingdom mandate in God's world is that those who think they are high will be brought low, and those who are low will be brought high.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is something that exists solely within God's power dynamic.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Something that we often fail to bring about in our own world.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: But here we're now bringing it into the church with how we relate to these things.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, now those people who we again recognize there's only really a few ways to discuss it, but have spiritual gifts that are seen as lesser or maybe more um quiet roles within the church.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably a better way to say it.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Those people are the ones that should be lifted up on a pedestal.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And those people who think they're so wonderful, they should perhaps be taken down a notch.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's some language that Paul uses here about parts of the body that we continue to recognize as unpresentable, and those are treated with special modesty.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, so that there is no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I think of when I read this passage is I think of like Ken Maynor and his maintenance staff, or I think of Tom Green and his housekeeping staff here, who are either keeping this hundred-year-old building running or cleaning this hundred-year-old building.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think of all of the things that are often attributed to those who have more front-facing roles, and how little is off how little credit is often given, you know, during the Christmas Eve services, where in between them Tom was mopping the bathrooms as hundreds of people were flowing through.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: That does not happen, right?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our church does not succeed if we don't have not only people in those roles, but people who are desirous to serve in the way that God has given them giftings to do so, which both of those two very much and their teams would fall into that category.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: So those who serve the church with encouragement, who remind us of true faith, the kind of people who make meals for funerals and such things like this, they are the ones that should be lifted up far more often.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of people at our church who do things without getting any sort of credit, not that we do it for credit.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: They run the parking at the light show.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, the parking at the light show, when you have, I don't know, close to 5,000 people coming in over a couple days, it takes a lot of smart people to be able to run that.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: A couple police officers, a couple engineers.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: It takes some serious thinking to be able to run these things through.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: What I would love to elevate is the idea that service in some of these more mundane tasks, right?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Moving cars, doesn't require spiritual gifts.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: It absolutely does.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about people, this is uh people working on the light show, people volunteering at harvesters.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: This was a backpack campaign for uh schools where we gave gifts to uh backpacks filled with school goods.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we have somebody in our church who uh runs a restaurant, and so when we did the fall festival, cooked hundreds of potatoes, uh baked potatoes, so that everybody could, and again, a level of skill required to that, that me, I would A, burn them all, and B, make sure that half the people didn't get fed.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: That would be what happened if I did that.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And all these things, those who often go unseen are worthy of special honor.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: So as we move now into our final passage this morning, Paul is going to basically summarize the things that he has said and give one final sort of message.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And God has placed in the church, first of all, apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Are all apostles?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Are all prophets?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Are all teachers?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do all work miracles, right?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: The implicit answer there is no.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do all have gifts of healing?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do all speak in tongues?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do all interpret?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Moreover, I will show you a better way.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: So he's concluding his thought here.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Themes that we've already talked about.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are a body, each one of you is a part of it.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: But here he's going to do something.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: He has endeavored to establish two ideas.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: One is that spiritual gifts are given by God, and through his grace, there is charismatic, there is charismata.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they are something that is from his grace, and the individual of them are important, and the individuals who have these gifts, right, are not deserving of any special praise unto themselves because of what they can do.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: But now he is going to sort of lay these two on top of each other and kind of take it one step further, and he's like, okay, if you're if you've been with me for what we've talked about so far, there's kind of one more lesson that we need to tackle, which is that despite the level of diversity that is present, there are certain spiritual gifts which in any church, I mean, all of them are necessary, but some of them are more important to the function of the church than others.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where he gets his.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why that.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's what should have been up the entire time I was talking.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: My bad.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Forget that you saw that.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see it in a second.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: So there is one more level, though, that he needs to go to, right?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so here's what he's saying.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is where he gets to uh the first, second, third, fourth kind of thing.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll see that he puts um different kinds of tongues at the very end because that is what the Corinthian church had been highlighting, and so he's like, let me list them all.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, four, seven.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's at the very bottom, the thing that they had been lifting up.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: All of it goes back to how he has defined it according to verse 8, 7 or 8, where he says, What is for the common good?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what that looks like is um, let's take teaching, for example.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Across the whole church, we need somebody to do what I'm doing.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: We need somebody to teach in the children's ministry, we need people who are teaching Sunday school.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Teaching uh absolutely of the word of God needs to be a function of any church.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, what, right?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, let me take that.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: So then that function of teaching needs to be held as something that is important within a church.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, whomever is doing that is not supposed to be prioritized over and above other people.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do you get the difference there, right?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you get what I'm saying?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: That some of these spiritual gifts that they are very important in the carrying out of the Great Commission, right?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: How can people hear about Jesus if they don't hear?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yet the individuals who are carrying forth those gifts aren't worth any special honor.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so to be very plain, I am not worthy of any special honor because of what I do over and above people who have other spiritual gifts.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yet the role that I do, and whomever stands up here, the role that they do, is important for the function and growth of our church.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's like the level two lesson that he's presenting there, okay?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of where we draw some of these things to a close.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the picture that I showed you.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: So this is uh last year at the Academy Awards, uh the there was a movie called The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and it won two Oscars.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: The Jessica Chastain won the Best Actress Oscar, she's the woman on the right, and the hair and makeup department won the other Oscar.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: My eyes might be deceiving me, but the size of the Oscar is the same for both people.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, when you look at the poster for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which nobody did, nobody went and saw the movie, but just envision it.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jessica Chastain's face is on there, right?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: So here is where we sort of draw to a close is that we say that the reward comes from faithfulness, not from popularity.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: The the hair and makeup people were the best in their entire industry that year in what they did on that movie that nobody saw.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yet they got an Oscar.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so what was championed there is the fact that by faithfulness they carried out their task that added to the success of this movie, which also needs actors and actresses and a director, but everybody was working together to bring these things.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end, when God, I believe, will look at all of the work that we have done in this life, I think he is going to be far, far more concerned about the faithfulness that we showed in exercising the gifts that he gave us rather than the popularity or the supposed impact as we might determine it.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are some people, I think there are some out in western Kansas who are at a church of like 15 people and have done it their whole lives, some pastor who has spent 40 years there pouring into that community who nobody knows the name of, that is going to be lifted up far more in heaven for his exercising of spiritual gifts than other examples.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: The reward comes from faithfulness, not popularity.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, where does that leave us?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as we head, we're now in 2023, we talk a lot about sort of goals that we're setting.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so here would be my challenge to you is that you would endeavor to figure out what your spiritual gifts are.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you can take online tests, there's a whole lot of them.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what I would do, because I I honestly don't think that those online tests, they're gonna ask you a lot of questions.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they're exhaustive.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that you should rely on a random test in order to help you unless you would like to do that.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: What I would encourage you to do is go to somebody that you love and say, What gifts do you think I have?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think that God has gifted me?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a prideful question because if you're a Christian, God has gifted every single person.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so we say, How do you think that God has gifted me?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then follow-up question, now, how can I use that to benefit the church?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't, I'm not trying to shill anything.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, though, that your renewed diet and exercise plan and desire to read more and what you know, change your bank account, whatever goals that you have for 2023, they're never going to be as fulfilling as exercising the purpose that God has given you by his spirit in the context that he intended.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a really confusing way of to say that we use the spiritual gifts that God gave us in the place where he intended to give them.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: So my encouragement to you, right, would be that you figure out your spiritual gifts.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can look back at the list that we had, but I really I think the question is, where has God gifted me?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I need to ask somebody else that question, and how can I apply that to the Great Commission and to his church?
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is going to be the most fulfilling thing that you do this whole year.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: And though, as a last sort of reminder, I would draw to Paul's message to 1 Timothy, when he said, Don't neglect the gift that is in you.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when Paul said that to Timothy, his disciple, basically, it wasn't, it wasn't a discouragement, right?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a correction to Timothy.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Hey, Timothy, I know you have.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: He says that the laying on of the hands of elders upon Timothy gave him special spiritual gifts.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Timothy, I want you to use those.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: God gave it to you.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to use it.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to use it for his glory and his purposes, and I want you to do great things there at the church where God has planted you according to his will, and I want you to use it.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Don't neglect it.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to use it.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I think that should rest deeply within us.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are some of us who have sort of skirted the side here.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Though we've been given spiritual gifts, we haven't always used them the way that God has intended for us.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: So as we move now into a time of communion together, um, we're gonna take just like one or two minutes here, and I would love for you to just kind of consider these things.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Man, how has God gifted me right with the charisma, with spiritual gifts?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: How can I use that for his church and doing all of those things reflecting on the body and blood of Jesus Christ that compels us forward in all these things?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: So think about that.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'll come back up in just a few moments, and then we'll take the elements together.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, This is my body which is for you.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for your body and your blood.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: We do these things as a remembrance of your sacrifice for us.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: And Father, if we believe in that, if we believe in that sacrifice, not only are we saved, not only can we live in freedom, but Lord, you have gifted us in special ways to be able to carry out your will.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray that you would help us to do that to the best of our abilities.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, that with faithfulness, with discernment, we might figure out how you have gifted us by your the power of your spirit.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, that we would not compare ourselves to one another, but rather with faithfulness we would say, Lord, how can I serve you?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Father, please help us to do that.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I also pray for, it might seem odd, but Lord, I pray for just the small details.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that then we would be able to find ways to get connected and to make that impact, Father, that we can make the connection between what you've done for us and Lord, now what we can do for you.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I thank you for all these things.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Most of all, we thank you for Jesus Christ, and we pray that 2023 would be a year, Lord, of great blessing for everybody as we walk in the steps that you have set before us, Lord, as we desire to carry out your will to the best of our abilities.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, everybody.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.