WHY SHOULD I DESIRE THE GIFTS?
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 5 viewsNotes
Transcript
1 Corinthians 13
1 Corinthians 13
We are working our way through a study of the HS and the gifts of the Spirit.
As well as 1 Corinthians 12-14 concerning the spiritual gifts.
Last week, we covered 1 Corinthians 12:1-12.
And we end with the question, Do you desire the gifts of the Spirit?
I ask you to go home and think about that question and try to come up with an honest answer about yourself.
Do you desire to have the Holy Spirit give you gifts for Him to use through you?
I asked you also, if your answer to that question is “yes”, I asked you to ask the question why? Why do you desire the gifts?
And if your answer is “no”, why do you not desire the gifts? Or is it that you desire some of the gifts but not others?
I hope you spent some time praying and processing that question this week.
Were you able to come up with an answer?
Could you come up with the honest answer to why or why not?
This morning, we are going to look at a few different passages of scripture that will address both of those answers.
I believe that we all should desire the gifts of the Spirit in our lives but a proper motive in essential to this conversation.
And that motive, I believe, is love.
This morning, I want to read 1 Corinthians 13 and then look at two different passages to respond to the two ways that you could have answered the challenge question last week.
1 Corinthians 13 is called what?
The Love Chapter.
We often hear this chapter read at weddings and anniversaries as the guide to how to have proper love in a relationship.
However, if you look at the context of the 1 Corinthians 13, you will see that its is surrounded by passages and chapters that all of to do with the spiritual gifts. Before and after, even in the chapter.
The more accurate name for this chapter could be called the gifts of the Spirit in love.
How to use the gifts of the Spirit with the proper motive is the main theme of the chapter.
So, lets look at the chapter and then we will look at the two answers to our question.
Back up and read 12:27-31
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
Verse 1 in chapter 14 is a key verse to this discussion.
We are to pursue love and earnestly desire to have the gifts of the Spirit.
So, if your answer is “yes” to our question, that you desire the have the spiritual gifts, make sure to not get this verse backwards.
Do not pursue the gifts while desiring love.
Pursue love and desire the gifts.
To pursue the gifts would imply that you are trying to get them and take them from the Spirit. But we established last week
All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
To pursue the gifts says to attempt to take or get something that is not your to take. It is the Spirit’s job to choice who and what gift. Who are we to try to take a gift from the hands of the giver?
Pursuing the gifts is taking desire to the next level and attempting to make it happen how you want it to happen for your own reasons.
Turn with me to Act 8:9-24
But there was a man named Simon, who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is the power of God that is called Great.” And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed.
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.” And Simon answered, “Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.”
I few things to notice here.
Notice the pride and recognition that Simon had in the community. They called him Great like as a name. He had the people’s love and attention.
Then Phillip comes along and shows them people that they had never seen. Everyone was amazed and awestruck. But more importantly, they were receiving the truth of Jesus Christ. Even Simon heard the good news and received Jesus. He was baptized in the name of Jesus. He was now a believer!
Then Peter and John come to visit and lay on hands so that people could receive the baptism of the Spirit.
Now, when Simon saw this, he saw a way to be recognized again in the community. A way to have status in the community. A way to be know and possibly be called Great again.
So, he offered money to receive the power that Peter and John had.
Was he pursuing love or was he pursuing the gifts?
He was driving and trying to take the gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit as opposed to pursuing love and desiring the gifts.
The Spirit decides who gets what gifts.
Peter’s rebuke shows him that his drive to have power, his motives for wanting the gifts and his trust in money was improper motives for pursuing the gifts of the Spirit.
Peter tells him, “your heart is not right before God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven.”
It is improper motives to pursue the gifts to achieve any kind of recognition, notoriety, or to be called Great by others.
You ought to devote yourself to the two greatest commands of Christ. Love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart, soul, and mind. And to love your neighbor.
Love is the proper motive to desire the gifts.
Our main passage confirms that.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Pursue love. Earnestly desire the gifts. Don’t get that backwards.
Ask the Lord to reveal improper motives for pursuing the gifts of the Spirit.
Now, for those of us that answered the challenge question of “Do you desire the gift?” and your answer was “No”.
Turn with me to 2 Timothy 3:1-5
Now, don’t shoot the messenger. Remember, I love you and God loves you!
I have come under the conviction this week that I fall under this passage. It speaks of me.
The Lord wants us to be a spiritually alive church. A church filled with people walking by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, and exercising the gifts of the Spirit.
We are to be a spiritually alive church.
However, this passage in 2 Timothy, I believe describes a spiritually dead church and a spiritually dead person.
Now, if you asked yourself the challenge question this week and you thought “No” and I pray that the Lord revealed to you the why. Because for me, the why was in this description of the Spiritually dead church.
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
To desire the gifts and the Spirit to lead will often lead to questions like this.
Am I going to have to give up something that I enjoy?
Am I going to have to quit my job?
Am I going to have to change my standard of living?
Is my comfort level going to change?
And the most famous one, what if He asks me to move to China?
You can simply go down that list and see how those questions are based off of many of those qualities.
Lover of self, lover of money, ungrateful, lover of pleasure rather than lover of God.
In doing this, In living like this, in just going to church and having this mindset, does this not sound like vs 5, desiring to have the appearance of godliness but denying its power?
After looking at this list of attributes in 2 Timothy, let’s go back to our main passage in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
1 Corinthians 13:4–8 (ESV)
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 14:1 still applies.
Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
Pursue love. Pursue a selfless love that looks like these verses. Do not insist on your own way. Pursuing loving the Lord with all of your heart, soul and mind. Pursue loving others.
Because remember, that is who these gifts are for. Not for you, they are for the church, for others. They are for the edification of the body. So, do you love others enough to allow to Spirit to use these gifts in you, so that those around you, those in your church, those you are going through life with will be built up?
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.
If you pursue abiding in Him and His love, His perfect love will cast out fear. Fear of the what ifs. Fear of the unknown. It will drive it away.
Pursue love! Pursue love for God in your heart, soul and mind and love for others.
Pursue loving God and abiding in His love and these fears of the gifts or what you might have to give up will be cast out.
How can you have this kind of love in your life? Can you produce it? Can you buy it?
We go back to the first teaching on this topic.
Galatians 5 talks about walking by the Spirit and not the flesh and He will produce in you what? Love. Love is a fruit of the Spirit that He produces in your life. You can not produce, but He can.
If you what? Romans 8, set your mind on things of the Spirit and not things of the flesh.
A mindset on the flesh is death, but a mindset of the Spirit is life and peace.
Set your mind on things of the Spirit, that includes trusting Him to lead you and guide you and ask you to do things that might take you our of your comfort zone. You might be stretched. But He is leading down a life of abundant life and peace.
He will also lead you to a life that is being sanctified like Simon. So that the motives of your heart might be brought into alignment with Him. Might be brought into a love centered relationship with God and with others.
A mindset on the Spirit produces selfless love of God and love of others. And His perfect love cast out all fear.
Pray.
