Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Let me tell you a story about a dinner party we had one time.

This was when we were living in Nashville; we had just an outstanding small group community called Abide.

And, by the way, I’m not very good at hosting dinner parties, especially the planning stage.

Anyway, we’re going to have this dinner and we invite everyone over.

As the leader of the group, I take it upon myself to organize everything and I ask all the folks to bring something.

A wise person would give some direction as to what each person should bring.

I am not that person.

“Bring whatever you want, it’ll be fun to have a weird collection.”

Anyway, we make some sort of desserty thing.

I didn’t tell anyone to bring dessert, so we’ll take care of that.

Our friend Kathy arrives and she has made some delicious cookies.

You may see where this story is headed.

Alayna shows up at around the same time and has these brownies with peanut butter in them.

And when our friend Stephen showed up, his nickname was Moose, he shows up with a box of Double-Stuf Oreos it’s a this point Rachel looks at me and asks, “Did you tell anyone to bring actual food?”

PAUSE, HAND IN POCKETS

Over and over, guests arrived at our apartment and revealed their lovely dessert.

It turned out to be a very strange dinner party indeed.

And I am forever banned from organizing them at our house, now.

If you will, turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 12. 1 Corinthians is in the New Testament, it’s one of the apostle Paul’s letters to a New Testament church. 1 Corinthians 12 is on page 651 of the pew Bible.

We ended up ordering pizza, by the way.

We did get some actual food.

But what would have made the dinner party a lot better was if there had been someone giving direction on what each person was to bring, so that a variety of dishes was brought from various categories, all blending together into a cohesive meal.

And, not to stretch the analogy too much, that is essentially what the Holy Spirit does for us as a church when He manifests Himself in us in our various giftings.

Paul is going to tell us that there are different gifts, but the same Spirit who gives them.

Today and next week will almost serve as a single sermon in 2 parts.

Today we’re reading about the diversity of gifts and next week we will look at their intended purpose, to unify the body of the church.

Here’s the main idea: The one Holy Spirit gives different gifts to His people in the church with the intention that those gifts are used to build one another up in the faith.

The one Holy Spirit gives different gifts to His people in the church with the intention that those gifts are used to build one another up in the faith.

Let’s read how Paul begins his discussion of gifts in 1 Corinthians 12.

I trust you are there by now, let’s read the first 3 verses of the chapter to start:

PRAY

Now, we are jumping into the middle of a letter, so let me catch you up with what’s happened so far.

The people of the church at Corinth wrote Paul a letter, probably asking some questions, and this is one of his response letters to them.

His primary concern seems to be, through the letter, that they order their time of worship correctly.

God has called us to worship Him in specific ways.

We are not free to make up our own ways of doing so.

And it seems that the Corinthians were coming together to worship and things were getting unruly and it was causing divisions among the church.

So, Paul starts by acknowledging these divisions, then he gives them theological instruction about spiritual maturity.

He says spiritual maturity is showing concern for one another more than oneself.

That ought to be a familiar theme by now.

That’s the general theological principle of the letter.

Then starting with chapter 5, Paul starts giving them some specific instructions about things they were doing which was causing division in the church.

He tells them to start church discipline on a member who was living a blatantly immoral life.

He talks about how to handle disputes between believers.

He talks about the relationship between husbands and wives and then he instructs them about eating food that had been offered to idols.

He says it’s fine, but don’t do it around a believer who has a weaker conscience than you.

You are free to eat it, but it’s better to put aside that freedom in order to care for someone else in the church.

In chapter 11, he gives them instruction about the Lord’s Supper.

The rich members were getting together early, eating all the good food and getting drunk off of the communion wine.

By the time the poorer church members got off work, there was nothing but scraps left.

Don’t do that, Paul says, it’s not kind to the poorer members.

Save the food and the wine until everyone gets there, because you are all equal in the Lord.

And now we’re chapter 12, where he instructs them about the use of spiritual gifts in the church.

Again, he’s giving them instruction about things they are doing in an unloving way and pointing them to Christlikeness and love for their fellow church members.

It seems that some of the members were bragging about the fact that they had the gift of tongues, being able to speak in languages they had not studied by the power of the Spirit.

It’s a flashy gift, and one that the Corinthians had come to believe was a “better” gift.

The church members who were speaking in tongues, it seems, were putting down other church members who had what they considered to be lesser gifts.

Or, they believed that their salvation was more certain, because they had a highly visible gift, a powerful religious experience.

“I’m a better Christian than you because I can do this, but you can only do this.”

“I must have more of the Holy Spirit, because He has shown Himself in this way in my life, but only this way in yours.”

“I am sure that I am a Christian, because look at how powerful a religious experience I have.

Can you even be sure, since you don’t have those kinds of experiences?”

And Paul writes to say, No, none of that is true.

First of all, we all serve the same God, we have the same confession, and He gives gifts to each person as He sees fit.

Remember our main idea: The one Holy Spirit gives different gifts to His people in the church with the intention that those gifts are used to build one another up in the faith.

And so, Paul starts his discussion of spiritual gifts in an interesting a perhaps unexpected way: He starts by reminding them our spiritual gifts are rooted in the Lordship of Jesus and that not all religious experiences are of the Lord.

Verse 2, “when you were pagans, you used to be enticed and led astray by mute idols.”

Paul was reminding them that false gods can provide a “spiritual experience,” but those experiences do not lead to the one true God, they lead away from Him.

Not all spiritual experiences as self-validating.

Not all spirituality is of the Lord.

Taking a hit of LSD can give you a very powerful spiritual experience, but it does not lead to the Holy God.

There are things out there that feel spiritual, things that are spiritual, but lead to false gods.

Remember that Satan and his demons are spiritual beings, just like God is.

We need to be very careful about how we are led.

So how are we to know whether an spiritual experience we’ve had or a book we are reading or a teacher we are listening to is of God? How can we be sure?

Paul continues: True, godly spiritual experiences will *always* point to Jesus as the risen Savior and Lord.

That’s what Paul is getting at here; don’t get too caught up in the Jesus is cursed line.

He’s really just using that as an extreme opposite of the next, truthful line: Only by the Holy Spirit can someone say truthfully, in faith that Jesus is Lord.

And that is the marker of a true, valid, godly spiritual experience: It will always proclaim that Jesus is Lord.

And so we need to ask ourselves: Is what we are reading as spiritual literature declaring that Jesus is Lord?

Explicitly, with clarity, that Jesus is Lord.

I’ve seen in nearly every church that I’ve been in a tendency to be drawn to teachers and authors who claim that there is some sort of secret knowledge in the Bible that will take you to a higher level of Christianity.

Or, writers who use spiritual language but when you read closely it’s about achieving your own dreams and fulfilling your own desires.

They never actually talk about the risen Savior, Jesus.

They may speak of the forgiveness of sins and the repaired relationship with God, but Jesus is nowhere to be found.

We don’t need a cool, new thing.

We don’t need to look for hidden messages.

There are no secret codes in the Bible.

You don’t need to add numbers together or look at a page sideways to uncover some hidden truth.

Nothing needs to be unlocked in Scripture.

No mystery needs to be revealed and if what you are reading says otherwise, it is a spiritual experience that is leading you toward a mute idol.

God is fully revealed in Jesus.

Self-actualization or some idea that we need to plug in to God on a deeper level in order to achieve our highest sense of being, that is spiritual nonsense that is leading to a mute idol.

The secret of the Bible is that Jesus is Lord, which is not much of a secret in the Bible.

And the spiritual experiences, teachers, and writers who lead us toward the one true God will declare that Jesus is Lord.

Don’t be fooled by a spiritual experience that you may have had.

Walking down an aisle is a spiritual experience that I dare say many have had.

But, can you say, in truth and with faith, that Jesus is your Lord?

Anyone can say the words, of course.