I had a new
experience this past week, one that I don’t believe I have had in my 13 years
of pastoral ministry.
This week,
when preparing for my sermon and in preparing for Bible study it just so
happened that the Sermon text and the Bible Study text were one and the
same. In Bible study we have been going
through the book of 1 Corinthians, taking it a chapter at a time. Last week we made it through 1 Corinthians 11
and so that meant that this week we would walk through chapter 12. Chapter 12 talks about gifts of the Spirit, I was excited to get in to that, it thought it
was all pretty cool. Then, in preparing
for the sermon today, I noticed that the Epistle was also 1 Corinthians
12. This was just too great an
opportunity to pass up, so I decided to go for it. To preach and teach today both in Bible Study
and in the sermon from the same text.
This is a great privilege. And this is a great text. A great opportunity for teaching about the
work of the Holy Spirit.
The text is
about the work of the Holy Spirit. Now,
those 18-20 of you who attend Sunday Morning Bible Class already know the
context here, but the rest of you might not.
The book of 1 Corinthians is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to
respond to some questions that the church had.
You see, Paul planted that church there in Corinth. He was there for about a year and a half
teaching them and instructing them, evangelizing and sharing the Gospel so that
a new church was formed. After Paul
left, it happened that there were some issues, some problems that arose. They
had written a letter to Paul with some questions. Paul wrote back with the answers. One of the questions was about the work of
the Holy Spirit. In particular, it seems
from Paul’s writing, that there were a handful of the members who were behaving
as though they had more gifts of the Spirit or better gifts of the Spirit than
the others. This is a problem and Paul
sets them straight.
Paul writes:
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. (1
Corinthians 12:1-3 ESV)
The work of
the Holy Spirit encompasses a lot of different things, and he gives a lot of
different gifts. Paul makes a list of some
of those gifts in the latter part of our text, but there is one really, really
important thing that the Spirit of God does, one big thing that is more
important than any other thing. And the Apostle points it out right from the
start. The work of the Spirit is to
change you from an unbeliever who does not know Jesus and who curses Jesus in
his heart to a Christian who loves Jesus and follows Jesus and obeys Jesus as
his Lord. “No one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says, ‘Jesus is accursed!’
and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” The work of the Holy Spirit, the really big
thing that he does and the most important thing that he does is that he calls
unbelievers to faith, he turns non Christians into Christians. And so, if you are every wondering if you
have received the Holy Spirit, if you have the gifts of the Spirit, if the Holy
Spirit is active in your life and in your church then there is one question and
one question alone that you need ask: do I believe? Are there people in my
church who believe? If the answer to that question is “yes” then, absolutely!
You have the Holy Spirit! The Holy
Spirit is with you and in you and in your church!
The problem
is, sometimes we doubt. Sometimes we
wonder. Sometimes we question: do I have
the Spirit of God? And it is that very
question that prompts Paul to write down the words of our text. For our comfort and for our encouragement.
Now, you
might be saying to yourself, “I haven’t ever wondered if I do or do not have
the Spirit of God.” That’s not a
question that has ever run across my mind.
If not, that’s okay. This
question is often a question that comes up as you grow and mature in your
faith. When you first start out as a believer
or when you are younger or less mature in your understanding, then you have the
basics of Christianity. You know God,
you know who he is. You know what he has
done for you in Christ. You have faith. You have your baptism and things are good. But then, as you begin to grow in your faith
and understanding, as your love for God begins to deepen, you want to dig
further into his word and you want to learn more about him. You begin to ask deeper questions of
faith. You start to wonder how it is
that you came to believe. Or you go to
Bible study and you notice that there are some who have great insights and
understandings and you want that too. You
might wonder how two people can read the same text and that person comes up
with such marvelous insights but you seem to stay very basic. Or you might notice that there are some in
Church who just have such a desire to serve and do so many things and do them
so well and you might wonder how it is that she does so much and just loves to
do it and you don’t and you wonder what’s wrong with you. Or you might notice that there is a person
who always seems to have the right word of encouragement to say at just the
right time and you don’t and you wonder about that.
As you read
further into the text the answer becomes apparent. “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 working but it is the same God who inspires them in every one.”
And there
you see, we have the answer. Each of
these gifts are from the Spirit of God.
Each of these are gifts that God gives to various members of the Church,
of his Body, the Body of Christ in a give location and he gives those gifts for
the building up, for the benefit of the congregation. As you possess those gifts and as you
observe them in others, give thanks to God for them, that he is building up his
congregation through them and that he is present and active and at work. But, and this is the issue at Corinth and
often it is the issue with Christians today, don’t waste your time comparing,
don’t waste your time complaining, and be grateful to God for the gifts that he
has given to you.
There are
dangerous things that can happen in a Christian congregation. There are misunderstandings that can
arise. And those misunderstanding occur
when Christians misunderstand these gifts.
And I think that the misunderstanding that Christians have is often that
they believe the gifts of the Spirit to be things that they acquire, super spiritual
powers that they possess because of their prowess and skill at being a
Christian. Along those lines, I think
that Christians often think of their Christian life a lot like playing a video
game. Now this illustration might be
lost on many of you, but our younger listeners should understand pretty
well. When you play a video game, you
start out as a novice. You don’t have
any special abilities or power to play the game and defeat the enemy. But, as you make your way through the game,
at each level you pick up different tools or different strengths or powers and
your character increases in his ability to fight and win the game. Parents, by the way, this is why your kids
are so depressed when their console breaks and they lose all their achievements
and have to start over. They have to
play without all those cool powers and abilities they had earned throughout
their game play. But that is often how
we think of our life as believers – that we go through life picking up
different powers and abilities and if we go to the right Bible study or attend
the right conference or even the right congregation then we will pick up the
right powers and we will have the ability to do all those really cool Jesus
things that we see everyone else doing.
This was the
problem at Corinth. Sometimes this is a
problem that we have. We look
around. We compare. We see the gifts that other people have and
we wish we could have them too. Or, we
look at the gifts we have been given and we become prideful and we think that
our gifts are better and that everyone else should have the gifts that we
have.
This is a
horrible problem in the Church. And it
can create a confusing mess of the Christian faith. Churches that call themselves charismatic
make this error all the time. The spend
so much time worrying about these gifst that the Spirit gives and they rate
them according to their spiritual power and then they assume that if you don’t
have them there is something wrong with you.
And so they pretend to have them.
Have you ever seen a charismatic church service where Christian people
are speaking in tongues? And rather than
speaking in an intelligible language they utter gibberish? This is what is going on. It is a horrible deception and a horrible
misunderstanding. Christian trying to
prove their spiritual power by making a show of their spiritual gifts or even
pretending that they have gifts that they really do not possess.
Friends,
there is a better way. There is a better
understanding. “I do not want you to be
ignorant.” Says Paul. I do not want you
to lose sight of the thing that is truly important.
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. (1
Corinthians 12:1-3 ESV)
The first
and foremost, the best and brightest and most amazing gift that the Spirit of
God comes to bring is faith. We lose sight
of what a wonderful miracle that very simple little thing is. We take it for granted, don’t we? “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the
Holy Spirit.” Confessing Jesus to be
your Lord. That is a miracle. That simple little thing has moved time and
space. That little confession is the
main event.
Just think
of all the things that had to happen in order for that small little confession
to come out of your mouth. It’s
marvelous. It’s absolutely
glorious. Before anything could happen
with you and in you and in your heart and in your mind there had to be Jesus. There had to be a God who loved you and who
saw you and who understood you and where you were at in your relationship to
him and who cared enough to do something about it. It all has to start with him.
And then
you, consider where you started. We so
often lose sight of where we begin in this whole process. Enemies of God. Hateful and spiteful and suspicious of
God. Suspicious of his plans and
intentions. Assuming he’s evil, assuming
he doesn’t care. Assuming he’s out to
get us and hating him because of it. But
the Lord softens our hard hearts, he overcomes our hate and our suspicion and
he shows us that he is love. And he
turns our hearts toward him. And when
that has happened, when we have changed our point of view or perhaps more
accurately, when he has changed out point of view within us, then we begin to see
him for who he is. We begin to see him
and all that he has done for us. We
begin to understand Jesus and his birth, his incarnation and the miracle of God
becoming a man. And then we start to
understand more about his death, that God could actually die and that God
actually would die and the reason he did it all was to rescue us not even from
some horrible end or some horrible thing that would have happened to us; no he
came to save us from ourselves, from our own hate and our own opinions of him
and each other, he came to save us from that punishment that real and literal
hell that we were running to. That’s so
sad when you stop to think about: we were so suspicious of God that we thought
hell was a better option than faith. But
God changed all of that. He changed our
hate into love. He changed our
selfishness into service. He changed our
foolish pride into grateful humility.
And then he
gave us his spirit.
When I was I
middle school we had a science lab, you probably did too, where we made electro
magnets. I always thought it was great
fun and would spend lots of time just playing around with the magnets. We would take a piece of iron, wrap it in
wire, connect it to an electrical current and all the electrons would line up
and specific way so that the iron became magnetic. And once that iron was magnetic you could do
all kinds of neat things with it. You
could pick things up, move things around, we had little iron filings that we
played with and the magnetic field would catch these particles of magnetic dust
and make them stand up in all sorts of interesting patterns. The electricity came and did its work on the
iron and when it did, the magnetized iron was useful for all kinds of
work.
You see, the
Spirit of God is like that. The Spirit
of God is like a kid with a magnet. The
Spirit of God works through his Word. He
turn on the current, and that is to say he turns the Word of God – the Spirit
of God is always and only found in his word – don’t look for him anywhere else,
in premonitions or some direct word whispered in your ear. The Spirit of God is found in the Bible and
he is at work in the sacraments. And he
comes to you like a useless and lifeless piece of steel. And he magnetizes you. He brings you to life to do all kinds of
amazing work for him. Sometimes it is
great insight and knowledge. Sometimes it
is great service. Sometimes it is
profound wisdom. Sometimes is an infectious
joy. Sometimes it is the restoration of
peace. Sometimes it is discernment and
understanding. Always it is the Spirit
and always it is love. Love for God and
love for the neighbor.
The work of
the Spirit begins with faith. Faith
comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The Spirit of God takes that faith, the
wonderful and amazing faith and through it he creates an army of Christians
ready and equipped for good works.
Amen.
