The gifts of the Spirit

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

We have been talking about trying to understand the HS and His role is our lives.

We were also looking at verses and phrases in scripture that surround the HS.

Earlier this year, we talked about how the HS is the felt heart of God for us. He is how we physically experience the heart of God. He is the most interactive member of the trinity for us today. He indwells us, fills us with His fruit, we are instructed to walk with Him, with a mind set on the Spirit.

There are so many promises pertaining to our relationship with the HS.

The HS:

Bears witness about Jesus

Convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgement

He is our guide to all truth

He will teach us all things

The HS is very practical to our lives.

Galatians and Romans tell us that He has fruit that He wants to produce in our lives of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

We are told that the mind set of the Spirit is life and peace!

He is our guide, our Comforter, our Helper.

The doctrine and beliefs of the HS are essential to the life of a NT believer. However, it seems to be one of the least taught.

And I, as your pastor, desire that you know what is available to you from our triune God. I desire that you have every opportunity to experience all of the promises of God in your life.

So, that is why we have been attacking these strongholds in our lives that hinder us from walking by the Spirit or keeping our minds set on things of the Spirit.

That is why we are going to keep pushing forward to let you see that there is more that the HS desires to work in you and through you.

Back a few weeks ago, I talked about how Francis Chan said that the HS filled believer is God’s chosen method to reveal Himself to the world today. How we are the salt and light to the world. How they will see our good works and glorify God. How when we walk, talk and live like Christ, we now are the lights of the world. How God has chosen to manifest Himself to the world today.

Another way that He reveals Himself to the world today is through the HS filling His people and empowering them to exercise gifts of the Spirit in this world today.

So, today we are going to take an introductory view at the these gift and I want to ask you a crucial question at the end to before we keep pushing forward.

Let’s look at our main passage this morning.

1 Corinthians 12:1–11 ESV

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. 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 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 the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

The question we are going to to attempt to answer is “What can we learn about the gifts of the Spirit from this passage?”

I believe there is 5 things that we can learn about the gifts from this passage.

1. The gifts are spiritual in origin.

Vs. 1 starts off with an adjective to these gifts. Spiritual.

This word and root word is the common word for the Spirit in the NT.

The Greek word is pneumatikos. Meaning “from the Spirit, pertaining to the Spirit”

So, the origin of these gifts are from the HS in the spiritual dimension.

Remember, from our stronghold conversation. There is the flesh dimension and the spiritual dimension.

We are fighting battles and have divine power in the spiritual level to destroy strongholds.

We also have access to gifts from the Spirit. They are not of the flesh but they are from the Spirit.

By definition, there is the natural world and there is the supernatural world. No, not super heroes. But we are talking about the supernatural coming in to the natural.

2. The gifts are manifested in the physical dimension.

Vs 8 tells us that these are manifestations of the Spirit.

Now, let’s stop. What kind of reaction does this word have on you?

Do you know what it means?

Does it give you pause?

Do you immediately throw up a wall?

Or

Does it fill you with fear?

I ask because even in my flesh and in my life, this word is new to my spiritual vocabulary over the past 5 years of my life.

It was not used often in my church upraising. It was not really talked about. But it was clear, growing up, that there are these people over here that used that word all of the time and they did things that we just didn’t do in our church.

The word can even bring thoughts of demonic possession. Movies show people that are possessed as doing and saying things that they have no control and no choice over. We’ve seen these things and it gives this word manifestation a fearful taint.

We have seen the word abused and misused. So, its important that we take this word back and remove the fear in our minds when it comes to this word.

The Greek word is phanerosis. It means revelation, disclose. The root word means to make visible or to make clear.

So, essentially, it is saying that the gifts of the Spirit are used to make the things of the spiritual dimension visible or known to the physical dimension.

Its an opportunity for the Holy Spirit, who is God, to make Himself known to the things of the flesh.

That’s not a scary thing! That is what we should be desiring! We pray that every Sunday! Lord, make yourself known to us. Show us yourself. Help us to experience your presence. To walk in your goodness.

So that the things that you are in the spiritual dimension invades where we live in the physical dimension.

I do not believe that the gifts of the Spirit are the only way that God manifests Himself to the physical world today but it is one of the ways.

However, our Father desires that the world would know who He is through us. Through His church, through His people, walking in the gifts of the Spirit. To make Himself known to the world.

I want to go back quickly to an earlier teaching and say that the fruit of the Spirit being produced in our lives is also a way the He manifest Himself to the physical world.

We should have a love, a joy, a peace, that looks different than the rest of the world. Walking in the Spirit will produce fruit in your life that being things of the spiritual dimension and shines it in the physical.

See, not scary. Beautiful. We have the opportunity to make God known in this world. What a gift that is!

3. The gifts are for the common good.

Vs 7 continues to say that the gifts are for the common good.

To be honest, we are going to talk more about this point, over the next few weeks.

However, from this verse we can see that these gifts are not primary used for the benefit of the one using the gift. They are for the good of everyone. They are for the common good.

A phrase often used here is for the edification of the church.

That is taken from Ephesians 4:11-12

Ephesians 4:11–12 ESV

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,

KJV is where we get the word edification. ESV and the original Greek talk about building up or construction.

So, the gifts are used to build up and encourage the church. But there are also verses that we will cover that will show us that the gifts can be used to convince unbelievers. We will cover those in greater detail when we get to chapter 14.

4. The gifts are empowered by the Holy Spirit and God.

Vs 6 tells us that the same God empowers them all.

Vs 11 tells us that all of these are empowered by one and the same Spirit.

We must first recognize that all power comes from the Father. Jesus, Himself, said that He could do nothing on His own. All that He did and all that He said was because of the Father.

Vs 6 tells us that the same applies to the Spirit and to us.

It is the power of the Holy Spirit that produces these gifts in our lives but its the Father’s will and power that empowers them all.

These gifts are not of our strength or power. They are all empowered by God. This is vital to those walking in these gifts to remember this fact, because it will keep us from taking the credit for something God did through us.

5. The gifts are apportioned by the Spirit to everyone.

Vs 11 tells us that these are empowered by one Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as He wills.

Vs 6 tells us that God empowers the gifts in everyone.

Vs 7 says to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit.

I think that we can clearly see in these verses that each and everyone of us who are believers have access to these spiritual gifts that are empowered by God and the HS for the common good. This is not just for those who are in full time ministry or on staff of a church.

Our Lord desires to empower everyone of us to manifest the spiritual dimension to the physical world.

We also need to understand that we do not get to decide which gifts we want or even which gifts we do NOT want.

That is for the Spirit to decide. He apportions these gifts however He sees fit, in whoever He desires.

This passages tells us that there are gifts of:

wisdom

knowledge

faith

healing

miracles

prophecy

distinguishing between the spirits

tongues

interpretation of tongues

The Ephesians passage that I referenced earlier mentioned:

apostles

prophets

evangelist

shepherds or pastors

teachers

Romans 12 tells us about

Prophecy

service

teaching

encouragement

giving

leadership

mercy

These are not the complete lists of the gifts. But I read those to let you see and know that the Holy Spirit can at any point decide He wants to use one of these gifts through you for the greater good. To build up the church. To reach the lost for God.

I believe, that each of these gifts are available to all believers. We have been lead to believe over the years in the church that you might have 3 or so primary gifts that the Spirit might want to use in you. I disagree. I believe that there might be some that He uses more often in you, but I do not believe that just because a test tells me that I am not very giving means that the Spirit might not want to use the gift of giving in me.

I personally, walk in the gift of pastoring and teaching often in my life. The Spirit exercises these gifts through me weekly.

Does that mean that He can’t move in me to heal, to encourage, to show mercy, to evangelize? Absolutely not. I believe that all gifts are available to used by the Spirit through anyone who is walking by the Spirit and open to allowing Him to use you.

I think this is a key point. Our God is a gentleman. He does not force His way to use these gifts in us. He does not just over take you and give you no choice and no say in the matter.

Every time in my life that He has lead me to use these gifts of the Spirit, He has given me the choice to be obedient or not. The times that I have shared the gospel to someone, the Spirit wells us in me and I have to surrender to His prompting to say what He wants me to say.

The times that we have felt led to give something away or give to a stranger. The Holy Spirit prompts us and we have the choice to either allow Him to do that through us or not.

I have missed opportunities in my life to be submit and allow the HS to do something through me.

Look, our 1 Corinthians 12 passage goes on to talk about how each of us are gifted in different ways to join up and become one body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:12 ESV

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.

This goes back to what we talked about before. I believe that God desires that His church be an assembling of believers exercising the gifts of the Spirit to build something that one person can not do alone. Not just a gathering of people. An assembling of the body. Like Legos.

Last night and each week, I get to watch some of you in this church be used by the Spirit to exercise gifts of the Spirit for the common good and for God to make Himself known to our community. And it is a beautiful thing to see someone flourish in the gifts of the Spirit.

My question to you this week is

do you desire the gifts in your life?

If the answer to that is “no”, would you ask the question “Why?”?

Would you go home and pray for the Spirit to reveal anything in you that might hindering you from desiring them?

Honestly, and I say this because some of you might be thinking this, I used to pray for some of the gifts and not for others…

Some of you hear words like manifestation, prophecy and tongues and your shut down...

Some of you introverts hear the words teaching, prophecy and evangelism and you have shut down!

Is it possible, that there is another stronghold to address here?

A stronghold of fear?

Would you ask the Lord to reveal any fear or strongholds you may have concerning the gifts of the Spirit?

Maybe you hear these gifts and these verses and you already know that you desire these gifts in your life and know that you want them.

I will you to ask the same question, “Why?”. Why do you desire these gifts?

Do you desire the stage? Do you desire the attention? Do you desire the power?

My challenge to you this week is to ask the Lord to reveal in you, any improper motives to desiring the gifts.

Let’s pray