SERMON OF THE WEEK First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu February 27, 2011 The Spiritual Gifts Sermon (First Prez Core Values Sermon Series) The Rev. Dr. Dan Chun 1Cor. 12:1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. 1Cor. 12:4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 1Cor. 12:5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 1Cor. 12:6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 1Cor. 12:7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 1Cor. 12:8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 1Cor. 12:9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 1Cor. 12:10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 1Cor. 12:11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. 1Cor. 12:12 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. 1Cor. 12:13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body Jews or Greeks, slaves or free and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 1Cor. 12:14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 1Cor. 12:15 If the foot would 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. 1Cor. 12:16 And if the ear would 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. 1Cor. 12:17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 1Cor. 12:18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 1Cor. 12:19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 1Cor. 12:20 As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 1 1Cor. 12:21 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. 1Cor. 12:22 On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 1Cor. 12:23 and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 1Cor. 12:24 whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 1Cor. 12:25 that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 1Cor. 12:26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. 1Cor. 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 1Cor. 12:28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues.
1 Cor. 12:29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 1Cor. 12:30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 1Cor. 12:31 But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. We continue our series on the core values of First Prez, and we have come to the core value of spiritual gifts. We believe that God will give these supernatural spiritual gifts to all followers of Christ who have had the infilling of the Holy Spirit. This is by far the most controversial of all of the core values of our church. Spiritual gifts are hard for non-believers to understand, difficult for new believers to comprehend, and sometimes tough for the veteran believers to accept wholly in their heart and mind. But if we understand the role of spiritual gifts in our personal life and in our church, we will be amazed at how much supernatural power, joy and fun we will have in ministry and how even more alive our church can be. 1) God gives supernatural spiritual gifts to everyone who accepts Jesus. When we are born again in the Holy Spirit by accepting Christ in our hearts, and we say to God, Okay, from here on I will be totally 100%, 24/7 dedicated to you, something wonderful happens. God gives us a spiritual birthday gift. Some may have more than one gift, but we all have at least one. God likes to give good gifts. As it says, in Luke 11:13, If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! Sometimes one can receive an additional spiritual gift way long after the point of conversion. Sometimes you can pray for a gift and our Heavenly Father will give it to you. 1Cor. 14:1 Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy. So what is this gift stuff? The word gift in Greek (the original language of the New Testament) is charisma. It s where we get the English word charismatic. But unlike the normal birthday gift where we use the gift for our own use and enjoyment, a spiritual gift is given to us to use to build up God s church. 2) All gifts are to be used not for personal glory but to build up the church. 1Cor. 12:7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. It s like if God gives you a hammer. Don t use it on yourself; use it to build God s church. Same for a saw. Don t saw yourself; use the saw to build God s kingdom by helping others. Eph. 4:11 The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, Eph. 4:12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, What was the last line? For the building up the body of Christ. 2 So if God gives you a special gift of hearing His voice that tells the future (the gift of prophecy), sorry but you cannot use it for the stock market for your personal use. It is to be used to build up the body of Christ to help others and bring them closer to Jesus. 3) There are a lot of spiritual gifts. The lists of spiritual gifts can be mainly found in 3 places in the Bible:1 Corinthians 12:8-11, Ephesians 4:11-12 and Romans 12:6-8. When you combine the three lists, it is quite long. But may I also add the Apostle Paul does NOT say that this is a complete, exhaustive list. There may be others, but here is a list of the spiritual gifts God gives to people based on those three passages. Administration Teaching Service Apostleship Prophecy Works of miracles Exhortation Leadership Compassion Generosity Faith Mercy Hospitality Word of wisdom Word of knowledge Faith Healing Tongues Interpretation of Tongues These are supernatural gifts, and so when a person uses his/her gift, it is clear that the person is phenomenally really good at it. Watching person using their spiritual gift as opposed to their natural gifts is like seeing the difference between the power of a triple-a battery and a 9-volt battery, or a BB-gun and a bazooka.
Don Cousins has the supernatural gift of teaching. How do I know that? He just did a pastors conference put together by Hawaiian Islands Ministries (HIM) here on Oahu with about 80 people from many different denominations and churches who have different views of the Bible and how to do ministry. HIM always does evaluations for our speakers. Conference delegates are asked to rate speakers they ve heard as excellent, very good, good, fair or poor. When Don Cousins evaluations came in, we found out that he got a 100% excellent rating. 100%!!! Not a single very good or good or fair or poor. Now that is someone working in his gifting from God. Now to be fair, Don has had that gift a long time and so he has worked and trained himself on honing it. Sometimes we are given a gift that takes time to harness so we can use it well just as a Little League pitcher may be good at 12 years old but may even be better at 22 after more years of training. If you are using your spiritual gift, there should be good results. There should be fruit. And that is why First Prez aims to operate its various ministries based on people s spiritual gifts. There is nothing more beautiful then people serving God in the local church right in the sweet spot of their spiritual gifting. They re happy and fulfilled. Imagine, if you were sick in a hospital, would you want a deacon to visit you who does NOT have the gift of compassion or mercy? How scary is that? How would you like that deacon to walk into your hospital room and say, So you re sick. Well, everyone gets sick someday, and then they die. Sometimes painfully and slowly. So if you are sick, get over it. Don t be a wimp! And that s what happens when we place people in positions without the gifts they require. As Nordstrom says, It is easier to hire friendly people and teach them to sell, than to hire salespeople and teach them to be friendly. We want to place people who have evidence of having that gift that the position requires. Can you imagine ushers who don t have the gift of hospitality, helps or service? Say you are cold and need a shawl and the usher tells you, Well, aren t we lazy today? Go get it yourself! That is not the gift of hospitality! Most churches don t teach on the spiritual gifts resulting in volunteers running ministries who are ineffective, unhappy and unfulfilled. Here s what normally happens. A church needs a middle school Sunday School teacher. They advertise for weeks in the bulletin, the church newspaper and on the website, but no one volunteers. So the next Sunday morning the pastor says in front of the church, We really need a junior high teacher. We have been asking for months to no avail. So if no one volunteers today, at the end of the service we are going to close down the class. No more Middle School Ministry! Do you want that on your conscience? Think of those poor kids walking aimlessly in life now without that Sunday School class, probably 3 heading to the pool halls to smoke some illegal substance. There s trouble in River City! And then the pastor pulls out a book called Foxe s Book of Martyrs, which lists all of the martyr stories. And he says, Look at the Christians of old! They were dedicated and died for their faith! They were run through by spears, eaten by lions, boiled in oil, but oh no, not one of you will volunteer to teach our middle schoolers! And a guy in the congregation named Joe hears that and even though he is not gifted in teaching, he goes up to the pastor after the service because he feels a truckload of guilt and says, Okay already, I ll volunteer! The pastor thanks Joe and gives him a big, fat teaching manual and zero training, and off Joe goes. What happens is that Joe discovers he doesn t know how to teach others. He doesn t know the Bible that well, and he hates kids!!! Three strikes! A year later Joe goes up to the pastor and hands back the teaching manual and says, I quit! Joe s broken, full of despair, and never ever again volunteers for anything for the church. And it s all because he tried out for a role that he was not gifted in, and his church does not have a core value of doing ministry based on spiritual gifts. Our church tries to help people discover their spiritual gift in a helpful, practical way. We have a regular class called BodyWorks taught by Kraig and Pam Kennedy.
BodyWorks attendees learn about spiritual gifts. They take a battery of tests to discover their gifts. Then consultants sit down with them to give their results and suggest where they might fit based on their gifts to volunteer. Our next BodyWorks class is in May. Wait for bulletin announcements on when to sign up for that. This is important because sometimes we volunteer for something that we may NOT be gifted in but we never have had someone lovingly suggest that it might be best if we served in another area instead. 4) All spiritual gifts are important, none are unimportant. 1Cor. 12:20 As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 1Cor. 12:21 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. 1Cor. 12:22 On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, The little toe is small and seemingly unimportant. But if you were to lose your little toe, you would have a hard time keeping your balance. The foot does not say to the toe, I do not need you. Nor does the hand say to the foot, Who needs you? You are so far down from me. All the gifts are needed in a church. We can t have all administrators or all teachers. We also need those with the gifts of compassion, mercy and generosity, to name a few. Now just because you don t have a certain gift doesn t mean you shouldn t be active in using it. Just know that it is not your strongest gift. For example, we are ALL called to share our faith whether or not we have the gift of evangelism. We can t opt out saying, I don t have the gift so I don t need to witness. We ALL need to witness but it may mean you bringing your non-christian friends to talk to those who are gifted in presenting in the gospel in an engaging, clear and articulate way. You can invite them to the Alpha Conference in September, for example. Or invite them to our Easter service or to our regular Sunday worship services. Just because we don t have the gift of generosity doesn t mean we don t tithe and give to our local church. Just because we don t have the gift of compassion doesn t mean we don t have to be loving and compassionate. It s just that those who are gifted in a certain area should have a prominent role in it. By the way, a teacher who teaches by profession, does not mean he or she can teach spiritual things. A gifted chemistry teacher, for example, may or may not be a good teacher of the Bible depending on one s gifting and spiritual maturity. Historically many churches think the miraculous gifts on the spiritual gift list do not exist today but only Jesus time. The miraculous gifts are healing, prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues, words of wisdom and discerning of spirits, to name a few. So here s the question: Do miracles still occur today and where is First Prez in all of this? There are a variety of schools of thought on this: 4 School of thought #1 is the Liberal School that would say, Not then, not now, meaning miracles didn t happen back then during biblical times and, therefore, they don t happen now. Rudolf Bultmann was a proponent of this belief who said we have to demythologize the miracles in the Bible. They never happened, he said. Not then, not now. School of thought #2 belongs to conservatives who say, Yes then, but not now! Yes they did happen in the time of Jesus, Peter and Paul but they don t happen now. And school of thought #3 says, Yes then, yes now! Miracles happened in Jesus time and they still happen today. And that is where First Prez is. The miraculous gifts were effectively used and resulted in miracles during the time of Jesus, and those gifts are still operable today. We have prayed for and have seen way so many miraculously answered requests that we can only conclude that these miraculous gifts are active and can be used for today. Does it mean we are Pentecostal? No, we are Presbycostal! We are not holy rollers but we do believe in and pray for miracles. Does this mean we don t trust medicine? No, of course, we do. In fact, what is unique about First Prez is that the majority of the Prayer Leadership Team are in the medical field doctors, a nurse, spouses married to doctors, plus a lawyer with an analytical mind and a woman married to an FBI agent, which shows you that we don t mess around. We ll handcuff demons any day and throw them into a herd of Ko olau wild pigs!
We trust medicine and technology, but we also realize there are things prayer can do that medicine and science cannot explain. Think of it. With so many medical people in our prayer team leadership we know when to say, No, that is not a demon pushing on your head; you just have a head ache! (But whether demon or note, we ll pray for you.) Our Prayer Team is trained in medicine and in healing prayer. Whether or not they have a medical background, they have a lot of faith, experience and training in prayer and that is what counts the most. So do we believe that people can be healed miraculously and we should pray for it? Yes. Do we believe that at times God actually whispers in our ear and He can counsel us as we help others? Yes. Do we believe there is a heavenly language both for public guidance and for private prayer, which is called tongues? Yes. Does that make us Pentecostal? No, because Pentecostals technically believe all Christians must speak in tongues and we do not believe that. We believe that, as the Bible says, not everyone gets the same gifts. After a full chapter on Spiritual Gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, the apostle Paul ends the chapter saying, But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. (1 Cor 12:31) 5) Spiritual gifts must always be used in the context of love. Love must be THE guideline in using the gifts. This is the more excellent way Paul speaks of. 1Cor. 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 1Cor. 13:2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 1Cor. 13:3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 1Cor. 13:4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 1Cor. 13:5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 1Cor. 13:6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 1Cor. 13:7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1Cor. 13:13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. And that my friends, is how the spiritual gifts are to be used. Always, always in love. We don t use our gifts to impress others, but to help others. We don t use our gifts for our own sake, but for the sake of others. We use our gifts to build up the body of believers. So discover your gift, and use it. It is one of the most loving thing we can do. And we will feel so fulfilled, and so full of love for others when we do it. 5 For we follow our Lord Jesus who did everything using all the gifts that God gave Him. He went all out and gave it His all and emptied Himself to be a servant of us. He came to serve and not be served. So to borrow and modify a phrase from President John Kennedy: Ask not what your church can do for you, but ask what you can do for your church by using your spiritual gifts. And all of God s people said Amen!