1 Corinthians 12; Psalm 115
Please be seated. Turn in your copy of the scriptures to Psalm 115. Our first reading will be that Psalm in its entirety. There are 18 verses and then put a finger in Acts chapter two and also first Corinthians chapter 12. Today and probably for the next handful of Corinthians passages, we’ll be looking at Paul’s admonition to the Corinthian church to bring order to their church life, particularly their worship. And we have looked at head coverings or submission in church. We’ve looked at communion, the Lord’s Supper. Today we’ll be looking at spiritual gifts.
Then there’s the first Corinthians 13, how love trumps other gifts and then on from there. Psalm 115 is helpful to us because everything we do is not for our glory, but it’s for the glory of God and ultimately His glory, but also for the good of other people. And so Psalm 115 says, not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name, give glory for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. Why should the nation say, where is their God? Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak. Eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear. Noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel. Feet, but do not walk. And they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them.
Oh, Israel, trust in the Lord, for he is their help and their shield. Oh, house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord. He is their help and shield. The Lord has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord, both the small and the great.
May the Lord give you increase, you and your children. May you be blessed by the Lord who made heaven and earth. The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man. The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence, but we will bless the Lord from this time forth forevermore. Praise the Lord. And now to one of the sermons from the book of Acts. This is just a little snippet of Peter’s Pentecost sermon, Acts chapter two, verses 14 to 21.
Remember the disciples, the apostles were waiting in the upper room. They were told to wait at Jerusalem until the coming of the spirit. Jesus had ascended up to heaven, but he promised the spirit and spirit came. And what did the unbelievers say of their behavior, they’re drunk.
And so he gives now his response. So Acts chapter two, beginning at 14, Peter standing with the 11 lifted up his voice and he addressed them, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. For these men are not drunk as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel.
And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even on my male servants and female servants in those days, I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
And then turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We’ll look at verses one, two, Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed. And no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit. And there are varieties of service, but the same Lord.
And there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. To one is given through the spirit utterance of wisdom. and to another, the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit, and to another, faith by the same spirit, to another, gifts of healing by the one spirit, to another, the working of miracles, to another, prophecy, to another, the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another, various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and all the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills. For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.
For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? And as it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor. And our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty. which our more presentable parts do not require.
But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating in various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? but earnestly seek the higher gifts and I will show you a still more excellent way. Amen. This is God’s word.
Uh, if, uh, any of you are golfers, uh, you know that in your bag, it requires, I think about a dozen clubs. You’ve got some, what do they call them? Woods. Uh, those are clubs for driving the ball great distances, uh, from the T to the green is, you know, 300, 400 yards, I think. Then you have irons, like pitching wedges, sand wedges, depending on where your ball lands or lies, you need a different tool to get the ball to the green. And then, of course, you have putters to tap the ball into the hole. But every club has its use. Every club has its purpose. Some get used more than others, depending on the skills and the abilities of the golfer. But the driver cannot say to the sand wedge, I have no need of you.
Right? Now of course you see the joke coming. Unless says the wedge, you have terrible aim. Right? And so in that case, the wedge may be of great use. It’s an interesting way to think of this same illustration the Apostle Paul gives because there are times and there are places and situations in our regular everyday living where tools or golf clubs or something is necessary to get the job done right and well and we don’t put competition between hammers and screwdrivers and golf clubs and all the rest.
But for some reason in the church, I guess when you’re dealing with people, there comes times of disunity. And we want to remind ourselves today of the church of the living God, the people of God, and how when called by the gospel, born again from above by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are more and more made useful to God for other people’s good but also for his glory. And in the church, we have varieties of people. You look around our congregation, we have all kinds of people from all kinds of places, all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of experiences, different socioeconomic standings, different races, ethnicities, different backgrounds in education and all the rest. And it was the same at Corinth. Paul speaks in this passage of the unity of the people, the unity of the people with varied gifts, the unity of the people who are some Jews, some Gentiles, some bondsmen or slaves and others free.
But what you have is the communion, the fellowship of the saints, where we owe God our gifts and graces for others good, but his glory. So in this communion of saints, sometimes Perhaps in some cases it can be oftentimes we can become noisy, like, uh, loud gongs and clanging cymbals. The next chapter, chapter 13, Paul will say, doesn’t matter what gifts you have. If you don’t have love, they are just a bunch of, uh, noise. Well, think about all the noise we’ve met so far in the Corinthian church.
Remember Paul has written them a couple letters. Uh, we first Corinthians is the second letter they got. We don’t have that first one. Uh, Second Corinthians is the fourth letter they’re going to get from Paul. We don’t have the third one, but he writes to them about classism.
Remember in the Lord’s Supper, the rich who had food were eating and drinking. Some were getting drunk. And so there was classism. There were times when they were out of order. There was the lack of the sign of submission, which in that era was the matter of hair and head coverings. There were lawsuits among believers. They were taking one another to court, to the human law courts. There were divisions.
I follow Paul, I follow Apollos. I follow whoever the latest and greatest teacher in their midst was. There were those who loved worldly wisdom rather than biblical preaching. And so now he’s going to point out another issue, another noisy issue, and that’s the issue of spiritual gifts.
And he says to them, I don’t want you to be ignorant. Don’t want you to have disunity. I don’t want you to be a poor witness. I don’t want you to be ineffective in your ministry. And I don’t want you to be lording over one another because one has this gift. One has that one. But what he does want them to do is seek the gifts and serve one another for the Lord’s sake. So a couple of ways we’ll think through this passage.
First is every Christian. Every Christian who hears the gospel call, every Christian who hears that they’re a sinner in need of grace and that grace has been offered through Jesus. Every born again believer is justified by God. God declares him righteous, sees him as if he never sinned, sees him as if he always obeyed, adopts that person into his family and begins a lifelong process of sanctifying them, making them progressively more and more after the image of holiness in Christ, hating evil, putting away what is wicked. They’re baptized into that family of God. They are filled with the Spirit. And then in their experience of new life and new obedience, each is given some gift of grace whereby they can serve the glory of God, but serve the needs of others in the context of the church. And so every Christian has some sort of gift.
Now, I know we live in a very biblically confusing time. I grew up in the 80s era, more or less, where the whole charismatic business was a really big deal. You know, most used to be charismatic stuff was sort of in the Pentecostal world. But, you know, with the rise of liberalism in the mainline church, one of the ways conservatives thought we can help and heal the church is to bring in the charismatic movement. And so you find pockets of charismatic stuff in the Methodist, the Presbyterians. I think this church went through it maybe in the early 70s, if I’m not mistaken. But it passed through all the mainline denominations.
And so I’m aware of that whole business of You know, oh, you haven’t had the second blessing. Oh, you haven’t yet had the baptism of the Spirit. There’s all that crazy stuff. I want to keep it really simple and say to you, every Christian has some spiritual gift. And it’s not all the big hoorah that it’s made out to be in some of those circles.
We read Psalm 115 for a reason. If we have a gift and every Christian does, it’s not to us, but it’s to God’s glory and to his glory alone. And so every Christian has some gift by which they will serve others and serve the glory of God. And it could be a great gift, a small gift. It could be a gift that is noticed, one that is behind the scenes. It could be all sorts of things. We’re going to think in a few moments of the categories of gifts, but they are generally teaching, governing and serving. In the first church I served back in the Charlotte area, there was a fellow in our church who was retired from IBM, pretty brilliant guy.
And he came to us one day and had a paint scraper in hand. And he said, I want to get under the pews and get rid of all the chewing gum. And I hope we never have to hire him here, right, when we get next door. Y’all keep that chewing gum in your mouth. Why in the world does chewing gum get on the bottom of stuff?
It does. But that was his thing. And you go in the sanctuary and you would find, his name was Jim, you’d find Jim in there on his back under the pew, scraping the gum that people had left. Was that a spiritual gift? Well, he was serving. He saw a need and quietly met it.
There are others who are monumental gifts to the church. I think in my day, the teachers or the pastors who have influenced me. Let’s just throw R.C. Sproul out there, for example, or you could go back to Martin Luther. There are times and seasons when God extraordinarily gifts men and women for various needs in the church. And they don’t come very often, but when they do, they are a great blessing. They bring reformation.
And so somewhere in between or on either extreme, God will give every Christian some sort of gift to use. for the good of others and for the glory of his name. There’s a ton more that we could say about this, but simply put, I want us to understand that in every church, full of every Christian, full of every type of Christian, there are individuals that make up the church and each has a gift from the Holy Spirit. So we want to think about every Christian as a gift, but also every church. Every church is full of the saints of God who have gifts.
Now, I also grew up in the eighties, not just with the whole charismatic deal, but also the, here’s a book or a seminar or a cassette tape on how to make your church successful. And rarely did it have to do with worship and preaching and ministry, right?
But here is a simple ministry that Paul outlines in Ephesians chapter four for the church. Paul tells the Ephesian church, and remember he’s writing from Ephesus to the Corinthians. So when he’s at Ephesus, he’s dealing with their issues, but he is also dealing with the Corinthian issues. But he writes in chapter four of Ephesians that when the Lord Jesus Christ ascended up into heaven, He was the risen and exalted and conquering king.
And usually when a conquering king goes back to his palace, the nation lines the streets, long live the king, long live the king, yay, success. And in the scripture, Psalm 68, God says that, the people give gifts to the king. And so he goes back to his palace, not only with prisoners in tow and victory spoils in tow, but gifts of the people for the victory go back with them to his palace. And so his treasury and trophy room and prisons get full. Well, Paul takes in Ephesians four, Psalm 68 and says, when Christ ascended on high, instead of receiving gifts, he gave gifts to men.
And it begins with, he gave to the church, He gave them apostles. He gave them prophets. And then he gave them the pastor slash teacher or the shepherd teacher. Usually it’s one office. And he did so to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. So you want a church program that works. Gather saints and equip them to do ministry. It’s that simple. You don’t need smoke machines for that. You don’t need all the stuff that has been tried for that, you just simply gather saints and equip them to do the work of the ministry.
And here’s the purpose that Paul gives in Ephesians four. You want to build up the body of Christ. What did Paul say way back in the early chapters of Corinthians? I’m laying a foundation. Remember the foundation of the apostles is what the church is built on. I’m laying a foundation, others will come and build on it. And do you want to build with wood, hay and stubble that won’t pass the test? Or do you want to build with precious stones, chosen stones, a true household of faith?
And so the work of the ministry is to build up the body of Christ in the unity of truth and in the knowledge of the Son of God. so that there is maturity, so that there is fullness of Jesus, so that we are no longer children tossed to and fro and carried along by every wind of doctrine, but we want to withstand the craftiness of Satan.
We want to speak the truth in love, and we want to grow up in every way, Paul says, into Christ, who is the head of the body, and when that whole body is joined together in Jesus, it works properly. You see his logic of body and gifts and results. And it’s so that we are built up in love. And it’s so that we are useful for each other and the glory of God. So every Christian has gifts. Every church has a responsibility to build up the church in those gifts. And then Every gift is the third category we want to think of. Every gift ought to be employed.
Think of Martin Luther’s hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. He was at work in a pretty hard time in church history, the Protestant Reformation. Psalm 46 was a big comfort to him. He sang the 46th, I’m sure, German version of the Psalter, but he also gave us a mighty fortress is our God, sort of a paraphrase of the 46th.
And in the end, in the last stanza, it says of the world and darkness that the word of God will prevail because the church has the truth, the church has the spirit, and the church has the gifts. Isn’t that interesting? Martin Luther who was aware of the devil, darkness and the destruction, the attempts at destruction on the church. He said, we will prevail because of the spirit of God and the gifts of the people of God, but ultimately the word of God.
So don’t think too little of your gifts. Every person has gifts, every church developing gifts, but every gift is of use to fight darkness so that the church of God, the truth of God will prevail. Now, when you get into the list of spiritual gifts in the church, you’ve got all these words, what do they mean? You know, you ride down the highway and you see on the billboard, prophets so-and-so, right? Y’all seen it.
If we’re not careful, we start assigning titles to ourselves that God doesn’t intend for us to have. In fact, our sister denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, I think it was a couple summers ago at their general assembly, basically said to the church, quit assigning titles to people that God did not give and that should not be assigned to them. That’s a whole different story of why that came out.
But we need to be careful to understand what are the gifts, who possesses them, and how they should be employed. And if you take all the list of gifts that you’ll find in Romans, you’ll find a couple lists in Corinthians, some in Ephesians, and others in Peter, You’ll basically come up with three categories. Extraordinary gifts of the ministry of the word. That’d be the first category.
Think about Moses. Has anybody since Moses been able to walk into a crazy dictator’s palace and say, let my people go? Well, who sent you? Yahweh. Okay, that was a pretty special ministry that Moses had. Nobody else has had the burning bush. Nobody else has had God say go. But Moses had a very special, extraordinary ministry of the word. So did Elijah. And then after him, Elijah.
They could do many wonderful, mighty things, all speaking the word of God on his behalf. They did not eat. uh, bad Mexican food the night before and have a tummy ache and a bad dream and wake up the next day and say, I’m God’s spokesman. We got a lot of that today. Uh, we ought not to listen to it, but they had extraordinary ministries of God’s word.
Uh, that also came to Jesus. We said in our confession of sin earlier, uh, the assurance of pardon, you know, of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy spirit and with power. How he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. Sounds a little bit like spiritual gifts, doesn’t it? God anoints, God gives gifts, and it’s to do the extraordinary work of his kingdom. So there are extraordinary ministry of the word gifts that Moses had, Elijah had, Elisha had, Jesus had them, but they were also given to the apostolic era.
This is where we differ with some others in Christian history. We would be in the Reformed camp, and a lot of our other Protestant brothers and sisters of other faiths would be in the same camp, probably minus the Pentecostals. We would be what we call ourselves cessationists.
We believe the extraordinary gifts ceased with the apostles. Probably John was the oldest and last apostle to die. And so with John, we believe ended all the extraordinary ministry of the word gifts. There’s no more Moses. There’s no more prophets. There’s no more Elijahs and Elishas. There’s no more Jesus. I mean, there is Jesus, but you get what I’m saying, but there’s no more Pauls and Peters.
But during the apostolic era, there were apostles, prophets, and evangelists. And these apostles, sent ones, didn’t pastor churches, but they went around the world, the Roman world, and they established churches, and they wrote by the power of the Holy Spirit, the New Testament, which we have, but what did they do? They went about establishing the church of old promised to Adam and Eve and Abraham, and they established it all over that Roman world, preaching the Old Testament, but writing the New Testament and giving us the commandments and principles that we find today in the church. There were prophets who spoke the word of God and there were evangelists who could give the gospel in a special way. Now, the second Category after extraordinary ministry gifts would be gifts of signs and wonders. Particularly during the apostolic era, there were some who could do miracles.
Remember Peter? Was it Peter and John? They were walking in the temple one day and the beggar said, you know, how about a quarter? And we sing the little Sunday school song, what did Peter sing? He sang it, first writer, silver and gold have I none. but I can give you something better.
Rise up in the name of Jesus, rise up and walk. Uh, they could heal. They could perform miracles. Um, they could also in the apostolic era speak in tongues. Remember when everybody was at Pentecost, all the nations, how do you get the gospel out? Well, you got to speak multiple languages. Holy spirit gave the ability to give the gospel in languages. People heard the good news in their own tongue and in the early church. There were these tongues and interpretations and all the rest. And that’s the big issue at Corinth.
And so you got these signs and wonder gifts. But what about the gifts for today? We would call these ordinary ministry gifts. And most Bible scholars, theologians will categorize them into the three I gave you earlier, teaching gifts, governing gifts, and helping gifts.
These are big, broad categories. Teaching, governing, and helping. Everybody can help. Some can govern and some can teach. And some of these are informal settings, some of these are in office holding settings, and some of these are in very informal settings. Helping could be scraping the gum off the bottom of the pews.
That’s at other churches, of course, right? Not at this one. If any of you are convicted of your sin, there’s still time. We’ll give you the door code and a screwdriver, right? But there are helping gifts. You see needs and you meet them. It could be making the coffee. It could be picking up the trash. It could be helping someone who needs to get from their seat to their car safely. Those sorts of things. It’s diaconal work. There’s governing work, probably administration, but also eldering and deaconing, overseeing, those sorts of things. And then there’s teaching. Yes, there’s ministers. Yes, there’s Sunday school classes to be taught. But also we get together one-on-one and we speak the word of God to one another and help one another in various ways.
So every Christian has a gift, every church should be developing those gifts, but every gift, and of course, because I’m in the cessationist camp. Right? Every ordinary ministry gift of teaching, governing and helping should be employed for the good of others and the glory of God. It takes a handful of people with different gifts and graces to do the work of God. And so we want to be a church. We want to be a Christian. We want to be a people who do the work of the ministry God has entrusted. So how do we put this into practice. Um, this is, this is a very general picture of the spiritual gifts.
I think Paul’s intention in this passage is he’s dealing with, I think, and most scholars think this, there’s a bunch of people in the church that say, I can speak in tongues and you can’t nanny nanny boo boo, right? I’m more spiritual than you. And I don’t know if you noticed, but speaking in tongues is always at the end of the list. And then when you get to chapter 13, he’s going to say, you might be a really good tongue speaker, but if you don’t have love, it doesn’t do any good. And so the point of this passage comes, I think, to fruition in these couple of things I want to say to you.
First of all, every Christian has gifts. Every church ought to be developing them. and every gift that is there ought to be employed. And so that leads to this fourth category, every effort ought to be made by all of us to seek and use our gifts. First little thing to think about under this every effort, the final verse of our passage says, earnestly desire gifts.
How does Paul speak in 1 Timothy 3 about elders and deacons? He says, if anyone aspires to the office, there ought to be holy aspirations in us that we will be men and women of the church to serve the church in various ways for the good of others and for the glory of God. And so we’ve got to earnestly desire it.
I think a lot of us, a lot of us are very, not, I’m not saying y’all, but a lot of us in today’s culture are very passive. Uh, we find churches today that are staff driven. You show up, you sit back, you drink coffee. The worship team does the worshiping, right? You get a, you get a Ted talk. Uh, somebody is watching the kids. Somebody is refilling the coffee and you go away inspired because you got to sit back, relax and have some kind of ministry wash over you. That’s very passive, I think. And you don’t end up earnestly desiring the gifts.
The second thing is we ought to be sober-minded, self-examining people to see every single day, Lord, what is going to be in front of me that I can do for your glory and for another’s good? So earnestly desire gifts, be sober-minded and self-examining to seek what the Lord will have you do. Third thing is do it in the context of the church.
We are individual believers, but part of a communion of saints. And what did we say from our confession of faith? God has given us gifts and graces and we owe them to one another. We can’t not serve one another is the point of the gospel, the point of spiritual gifts. And so we do so in the context of the church, as a member of the church, among the communion of saints. Fourth thing, and this is important, I think, from this passage, we should submit to one another and their gifts and graces, but also rejoice in them.
I have been in Christian ministry long enough to see Twitter pop up and these other things where people are building platforms. And it’s amazing to see how so many people are trying to climb the ladder and sort of get glory for themselves and not be grateful with their small gifts, their small abilities, their small church, their small stewardship.
Everybody seems to say, I need a big crowd, I need to have a platform. I think a generation ago, a minister who didn’t have crowds like Billy Graham felt, well, okay, I’m subpar. He was one of those giants, wasn’t he? In my era, if you’re not in one of those 4,000 member churches, you don’t have 6,000 Twitter feed followers, however all that works, you might think you’re not doing a great job.
But we need to submit to others. They might have bigger, better gifts of grace, but we also need to be thankful for them and give glory to God. And in the local church, there will be people that can do things that you cannot do. Give glory to God, thanks to God, submit to them, and let them serve you. A fifth thing, your gifts are for others, not for you.
If you go through the church parking lot, you might see different bumper stickers. My kid’s an honor student. Maybe you got one of those Clemson stickers, the IPTAs, which I think stands for I pay 30 a year. You pay 30 a year for the possibility to get tickets. Iron Dukes, Rams Club. You just go through the list. And we put on the back of our car our status. And sometimes in the church, you know, we get a little peacocky. I’m more spiritual than others. Maybe in the Corinthian context, I speak the tongues and you don’t.
We need to remember our gifts are for others. That’s why Psalm 115 is really important. Not to us, O Lord, but to you be the glory. And that’s the last thing. We need to make every effort that our gifts are for the the glory of the Lord. So I encourage you, think through where God has you, what you are able to do, and how that might help others, and how it might bring glory to the name of God. If you are a believer, you have the Holy Spirit’s endowment of a gift, and you need to seek it, pursue it, and fan it into flame for the good of others and the glory of God.
Let’s pray together. Our God, we thank you for the many and varied gifts that are in this room, the many and varied people who are in this room, and how they make up the body of Christ, the communion of saints. May we be a people who serve each other and serve your glory so that the light of the gospel in each of us emanates to the ends of the earth so that people who seek the Lord will find him because we are your kingdom servants. Hear us and help us as we make our prayer now in the name of Christ, our great Savior. Amen.