The Spirit’s Will

“The Spirit’s Will” 6- 9 2024

Today we continue with our series, We Are the Body, and we’re gonna kinda stick with this through most of the summer, because it’s summer and you can do things differently, I guess. Well really, today is the first day we’ve been talking about a lot of parameters leading up to spiritual gifts. He’s gonna go into spiritual gifts today.

And it reminds me of when we first started, when we were gathering in homes and then we first gathered here, we spent a lot of time and a lot of effort into healing and helping God to heal us, because a lot of people, I’m not gonna say everyone, but a lot of people who are here came out of very hurtful situations, where they were hurt by their past experience in a church. And I said many, many times, we cannot build a church where we have unity and being mad at other churches. We need to build it upon our mutual goal and purpose and where God is leading us, and how we know that Jesus Christ is the answer to every question we have in life, that Jesus provides the healing that we need and the hope and the restoration that we can have.

Now, we gotta remember that, and those are some of the conversations we’ve had recently, is as we see new faces coming in, others are carrying some of that hurt and that pain, and we have to remember they need healing. And others, we sometimes will say, well, why don’t they just leave? Well, it’s a big, difficult thing, and they might be waiting for God to nudge them. But as we’re talking about gifts, one of the huge gifts in here is the gift of healing, and one hope can offer that gift if we just keep praying for others, if we understand hurt and pain, and we can bring that healing to others, we can see that gift is something that we have as a church, because raise your hand if, listen to the whole question, if you were hurting when you left, but you found some healing at one hope.

Praise God. The gifts that God gives us are the whole point of we are the body. And the next several weeks, as we continue through this series, we’re gonna talk about more and more and more about being the body of Christ, about who we are in Jesus and who we are, not just as a church, as a denomination, but how we can be the hands and feet and the heart of Jesus in a world that really needs Jesus.

I mean, I need Jesus every day, so don’t you think everybody else does? The scripture today, we’re gonna begin with seven, verse seven, which we ended with last week, but it kinda ties it together if we just do seven through 11 today. I think that’ll be enough, because each of these weeks, I break it down, but I could talk for another hour or two, because there’s so much here about being the church of God and Jesus Christ. And we think of being a church with the building, and luckily, as we’re going through this, we don’t have our own building.

We have us. We have the church. We are the assembly.

We have Christ’s gifts working in us. Will you stand as you are able? To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good, for to one is given through the spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by one spirit, to another working of miracles, and to another prophecy, to another the ability distinguished between spirits, and to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one in the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

The word of God. For the people of God. Amen.

You may be seated. Now, as we are looking at the list that Paul gives here to the church in Corinth, it’s a pretty lofty gift. I mean, all spiritual gifts are spiritual, but these are like the spiritual gifts that you either think are really cool, or you think they’re really weird.

I mean, the church has been kind of divided over these gifts, and the gifting of spirits. There are denominations who are very scriptural, but they believe there was a cessation of gifts after the first century. Basically, after the apostles died, the gifts of the spirit died.

And there are others who have tried to revive this in certain ways, and they say certain gifts are proof that you know Jesus. And specifically, like the one that weirds out people, or they hide from, because it’s one of the, remember when the apostles were speaking in other languages, and what did the onlookers say? They look like they’re drunk. Raise your hand if you’ve been drunk at nine.

No, don’t. At nine in the morning. That’s what Peter would say.

Ha ha ha. Some of these gifts make you look like you’re drunk, because it’s like you’re losing control. But there are some people who would say, unless you speak in tongues, there’s no proof that you know Jesus.

And I would say to that, did you read the Bible? Because we’re gonna get into that more specifically, and specifically that gift, that if you’ve ever heard that or seen that. And to those who say the gifts have seceded or stopped, I’d say that’s not been my experience. I’ve seen and experienced and witnessed all of these nine that are mentioned.

But let’s just take a step in another direction. Let’s go to Romans 12, where Paul talks about the gifts there. And when Paul mentions gifts there, he talks about prophecy, service, teaching, exhorting, generosity, leadership, acts of mercy.

Don’t those sound a little more normal-ish? So some would say, some look at 1 Corinthians 12 and say that’s all the gifts there are. And some would spread that out. Some try to categorize these gifts.

But the point of Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 is not to explain all these gifts in detail at one point. The point of it is my New Testament professor said something that always sticks with me, that he said, if it’s repeated, it must be important. But he said it with a New Zealand accent and I didn’t practice it, so I’m not gonna try it today.

In here, Paul repeated something over and over and over. And it is, there’s a couple of words you could say, but one of them is spirit and the other one is same. Same.

What happened to them was simple. In 1 Corinthians 1, five through seven, when he was first introducing the book and setting up, going through the, this is what you call the setting and the backdrop. Colin was just taking his comprehensive exam in English language arts and I had to learn all this stuff again.

The setting and the backdrop, Paul is telling him some of the reasons he needed to write this. He says in there that in every way you are enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge. Now, gifts of speech include prophecy, preaching, teaching, tongues, interpretation of tongues, wisdom, knowledge.

Oh, and knowledge, knowledge, wisdom, prophecy, all. So all of those, even as the testimony about Christ is confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he’s writing them, even in chapter one, he’s saying it’s important for you to work as the body of Christ through the gifts that God gave you.

Now, does God give everyone gifts or does he just give special people? Thank you. Everyone. It’s very clear and I keep bringing up how Peter says this too, that everyone has a gift.

And Paul mentions later that some have all the gifts, some have some of the gifts, but everybody has a gift and every gift is as important. And the point here is he is looking at these gifts and some of the Corinthian, the people in the Corinthian church are holding themselves to a higher regard. You know, when Paul says something like, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, because he’s seen it in the church.

He’s seen it so some people think they’re more spiritual than others because of their gifts. And Paul is saying, you have the gift of tongues, it comes from the spirit. You have the gift of prophecy, it comes from the same spirit.

You have the gift of wisdom or of knowledge, it comes from the same spirit. It’s the same God. And he gives those gifts as he wills.

Now that’s interesting in and of itself because it’s saying the spirit is the he and the spirit has the will. We normally think of the father’s will. In Ephesians 4, 4-5, this is always good to bring up because it is the help of the naming of our church.

Ephesians 4, 4. There is, why don’t we read this together? There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all. A lot of ones there and it all comes from God who gives us our one hope, our one faith.

It’s not a whole bunch of people getting together who agree to disagree. It’s a whole bunch of people getting together who agree to pour out everything to God and trust in God. It is one.

Now, the difficulty with gifts can be some people shy away from it because people twist it and turn it and some people take gifts and they say they have a gift and they abuse it. Some people don’t see the gifting in their lives so they don’t wanna say anybody has a gift. So they may shy away from it or a lot of us have some great abilities we’re born with and we use those for ministry, which can be good.

But Henry Blackaby says this, moderate success in ministry is a spiritual hazard. It can make us content to live without the manifest presence of God. It can be cool to use what we have but when we aren’t trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit, not just the power of the Holy Spirit in the pastors, not just the power of the Holy Spirit in the leaders, but the power of the Holy Spirit in the entire body, then we aren’t necessarily doing everything we can for the kingdom of God.

And in fact, that’s when a church starts becoming unhealthy is when people quit using what God has given them in the Holy Spirit. One thing that happened in the world that kind of broke my heart because I really loved the VeggieTales. Has anybody ever seen the VeggieTales? VeggieTales.

Broccoli. Anyway. All of a sudden they were making them more and more and more and more and these videos.

Then they were making movies at the movie theater and they just stopped. After losing $11 million lawsuit, Big Idea Productions Inc., creator of VeggieTales announced that it filed bankruptcy and sold its copyrights to Classic Media, LLC. To call this the last year is an understatement, said Big Idea founder and CEO, Phil Vischer.

In the midst of the VeggieTales success, including the release last November of the motion picture, Jonah, a VeggieTales movie, we made several key strategic errors that led to this point. Vischer told Christian Retailing Magazine, we got ourselves upside down financially when everything was working wonderfully. When things were going so well, I thought it was God wanting to expand, so we grew like crazy.

Now I think it was more me having all these great ideas in my head and being so excited that I wanted to do them all at once. A lot of what we need to do with our faith is not just take every idea and try to make it happen, but you see here what it has to do is we need to spend more time discerning the will of God and trusting what God has in store and trusting that God will sustain and help and that’s where growth comes from. C.S. Lewis put it like this, there are two kinds of people, those who say to God, thy will be done, and those whom God says, all right then, have it your way.

That sounds kind of scary. I mean, it sounds kind of scary when you actually hear God’s will and you go, what? But to have God say, have it your way. Cassie Basile was telling the story about a woman who in her 30s was walking near the Kenegawaka River in Tokyo.

Stepping onto a pedestrian bridge that spans the river, she climbed over the chest high railing and threw herself in the water in an apparent attempt at suicide. Now the time was just after 5.30 on a Wednesday morning, so the assumption is no one would be around and the bridge isn’t located in a very busy part of the neighborhood. However, through a 70-something local, the 70-something local residents say the women fell into the water, yelled, don’t die.

He shouted while wiping, whipping out his phone to call the paramedics and then turned out that help was even closer by. The closest building to the bridge just happened to be a dormitory or a training facility for sumo wrestlers. With the sumo wrestlers following an early-to-rise regiment, there were large men present, emphasis on the large, and ready to spring into action.

In total, approximately 20 wrestlers jumped in to save the woman who appeared to be drowning and they were able to pull her out of the water and onto the land that was dry and safe. They weren’t done yet, though, because when the ambulance arrived, there was a six-foot, five-inch barricade between the bank of the river and where the street level was. But there was no shortage of muscular strength there.

A number of the sumo wrestlers combined their might to lift the stretcher up onto the road, after which it was loaded into an ambulance and the woman was taken to the hospital. Doctors said the woman suffered no serious injuries. But however the wrestlers’ careers in the ring turned out, the author says they’ve all proven themselves champions of outstanding kindness and quick thinking.

Sometimes knowing God’s will has a lot to do with being available. We make all kinds of plans, but do we make room for God to work in everything we write in our calendars, in everything we do? I mean, the sumo wrestlers were up at 5.30 for a purpose, but they were willing to switch that purpose to help somebody out, to use their strength. And to combine their abilities with their willingness to serve with God putting them in the right place at the right time.

In verse 11, Paul says it, he wraps this up by saying, all these are empowered by one and the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills. Are we willing to submit to God’s will? To how the spirit is going to use us in a particular way at a particular time? Are we gonna push through with what we want? Are we gonna trust and make ourselves ready and available for God to use us? As people call and come in, and they need healing, and they need hope and restoration. Do we say, I’ll pray for you? Or do we say, I will be there for you? Do we say both? Do we say, do we forget what we’ve been through? Or do we open ourselves up to be the healing that they need to let God work through us so God can shine, so God can be glorified, so people who come in can find that peace? We have that gift if we’re willing to share it.

Warren W. Weirsbe, who is an author and a Christian scholar, says it like this. If life is to have meaning, and if God’s will is to be done, all of us have to accept who we are and what we are. Give it back to God and thank him for the way he made us.

What I am is God’s gift to me. What I do with it is my gift to him. Let’s pray.

Almighty God, thank you for blessing and healing and working through us. Take our minds, take our mouths, take our hands, take our feet. May we use them for your glory.

May we not make ourselves too small for you to do great things through us. You are so awesome. Thank you for making us the body of Christ.

Thank you for gifting us. Thank you for the presence and the power of your Holy Spirit who wills for us to serve and to love and to give and to develop those gifts that you’ve already given us in Jesus. We pray this in your Holy name.

Amen. In response, before we sing, I invite you to stand. Let us join our voices and our hearts and our minds in one accord as we pray the Wesleyan covenant prayer, number 710.

I am no longer my own but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, oh glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I am mine and I am thine, so be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven, amen.