Gifts of the Spirit Pt 1

1 Corinthians chapter 12. So, what a week, right? Like I told somebody the other day, I feel like I've aged 10 years this year. And two of those years was just this week, just with everything that's gone on. And so, listen, the only thing that really changed this week is we don't even really know yet. So, I mean, what really changed this week? I don't know.

But some things. Some things are the same, right? Like God's still in control. Like we can still rest in that. I have had to remind myself over and over again of the sermon I taught two weeks ago, right? Like I don't always teach sermons for you guys. I don't know if you're aware of that or not. Like you guys just get to hear whatever God's telling me. So, matter of fact, I remember J. Vernon McGee saying one time

that he's so glad he gets to teach the word so that he can learn. And so, I've had to remind myself over and over again that God is God and I am not throughout this entire week. Jesus is still the only way to salvation. And people still need to hear that. So, those are the things that are absolutely the same this week no matter what has changed in the world.

So, I do want to just remind you of those things that God is still in control and we can still rest in him. Hey, one announcement I forgot to make because I think it's the potential of me needing to send out important information is going to continue to increase given the current culture of life right now. So, the way I send out information to the body at large is I send it out through this thing called the Bible. It's called Flocknote.

So, if you are not signed up on there with your email, go to flocknote.com backslash CCAC because that's how I send out prayer requests so you can keep up with the people that need prayer within the church and then as well as important information about things that are going on. So, make sure that you're signed up for that. All right, sorry about the sidebar. Back to 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

So, God's still in control and we can rest in that. Now, we are going to start. We're going to start today into a series that is like a series within the series because we've been talking about order within the church and we covered headship within the church and then we also covered the Lord's Supper. But now from chapter 12 through the end of chapter 14, we will be dealing with another aspect of order within the church and it has to do with the spiritual gifts.

So, this is actually part one of our series on the gifts of the Spirit. And so, as we come to chapter 12, we come understanding that there is not only a great deal of controversy within the church over the gifts of the Spirit, but there's also a great deal of misunderstanding in the church about the gifts of the Spirit. So, as we get into chapter 12, hopefully we can begin to answer some of these questions. Start off in chapter 12, verse 1.

He says, Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I don't want you to be unaware. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the mute idols, however you were led. Therefore, I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed. And no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Now, the first thing he does

is he gives us a little bit of an introduction into the work of the Holy Spirit. And as usual, Paul uses a phrase that he enjoys a lot. He says, I don't want you to be unaware. Some of your translations may say, I don't want you to be ignorant. Now, we can always know that when he says, I don't want you to be unaware or I don't want you to be ignorant, that there's a potential there

for there to be ignorance on the part of the believer, for us to be aware of the Holy Spirit. For us to be unaware of exactly what we need to know. And one of the great areas that we have of this is the working of the Holy Spirit. It can often be an area of great confusion within the church. Typically, there's two different extremes that are taken within the church in general

when it comes to the gifts or the working of the Holy Spirit. On one end, you would have the ultra conservative wing of the church. And they just, they don't believe any of the, especially the sign gifts are for today. And the working of the Holy Spirit is very much underplayed. And oftentimes, as born out of a reaction to the fact that the gifts of the Spirit

have at times been abused within churches and we don't want to see it become a place of disorder. We don't want to see it become a place of confusion. We don't want to see it become some sort of a side or a freak show. And so we underplay the gifts of the Spirit and we almost don't even ever talk about them, let alone exercise them in our lives. To the other end of the spectrum,

you have what I would call the ultra Pentecostal churches. And that's all that's talked about. As a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit is who takes center stage every week because that's the focal point of the church. Every week, the gifts are on display. Every week, it becomes a show. And again, taken out of context of what Scripture has to say. But like with many things

that are controversial within Scripture, there is oftentimes a biblical balance. Now, I'm not going to tell you that I'm 100% always going to strike the biblical balance. That would be awfully arrogant on my part. But I will say that I do the best that I can to say what does Scripture have to say whether I agree with it or not, whether it's, fits into my hashtag or not, whether it fits into the way that I feel or not.

What does Scripture have to say that I can line myself up with? And anytime we come across controversial sections, we must retreat to what Scripture has to say. Now, listen, this is a little sidebar commentary on just this statement alone. One thing that I have learned about the United States of America in the year 2020 is we don't like the truth. We don't want to know the truth.

We don't want to be bothered by facts, especially if it doesn't fit our favorite hashtag, and especially if it doesn't fit our favorite pet doctrine or our favorite idea or the star that we like to follow. And I don't care which side of the political aisle you sit on. There doesn't seem to be a great love for the truth anymore. And we as believers in Jesus Christ must rise above the fray because we must hold truth, which we are told is found in Jesus Christ because he tells us, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

He, therefore, is our great filter of what is true. We must, as believers in Jesus Christ, pursue the truth, whether it fits the agenda we agree with or not. Because that lack of pursuing the truth is what has gotten us into the place that we're in right now in the United States of America. And so he says, I don't want you to be ignorant. I don't want you to be unaware.

I just want you to know the truth. Now, as I was thinking about this, I thought, so what is the biblical balance? And I thought, you know, the best thing we can do is go back to what Jesus, had to say about the work of the Holy Spirit. So the first part that I'm gonna tell you comes that there's about seven things I wanna tell you about that Jesus had to say to us.

The first part's out of John chapter 14. We won't turn there, but you can reference these. The second part is out of John chapter 16. And the last part is out of Acts chapter one. So these first three things come out of John chapter 14. We are told, first of all, that the Spirit is our helper. Jesus said, I will not leave you as orphans. He was speaking to his disciples.

He was speaking to the ones who he had spent three years of his life with. Right before he went to the cross, he said, I won't leave you as orphans. I will send you the helper. The word helper literally means to come alongside and assist. And so in our walks with Jesus Christ, we know that this Holy Spirit is our helper. He's the one who's going to come alongside

and assist us and strengthen us to be who God has called for us to be. So we know, according to Jesus, that he is our helper. The second thing that we're told out of John chapter 14 is that he is a teacher. Jesus said, I have so many things that I want to tell you about, but you can't take them all in right now. But when the Holy Spirit comes, he will teach you all things

that you need to know. And so the second thing that we can know about the Holy Spirit is that he is a teacher. He is always teaching us things, which is why I tell you, if there's places in Scripture that you go, I don't understand what that means. I don't understand what that has to say. What better thing to do? Than to say, Holy Spirit, I need you to teach me.

Because that's what he loves to do. Number three out of John chapter 14, we learn that the Holy Spirit is the one who brings to mind all things that Christ had taught. In other words, he helps us to remember. I've brought this up before, but I hear lots of you say, I just can't remember things. I learn things and they're really great and I can't remember them.

And what am I going to do if I get in a situation where I can't remember what I'm supposed to say? Well, that's where you rely on the Holy Spirit. I think I shared with you before the first time I ever gave a Sunday morning message. I gave one actually two weeks in a row and I was in such a terrible place in my life. Depression and anxiety had sunk in and I couldn't hardly complete a thought.

I couldn't finish a sentence because my mind was just racing in 10,000 different places and I couldn't remember anything. And I got up in front of people and I spoke for 45 minutes and it was all coherent and it all made sense. And I remembered driving back home. My mom said, that was the Holy Spirit, Ryan, because I haven't seen you complete a sentence in six months.

But he brings to remembrance what we need to know. And so if you're finding yourself going, I read it and I can't remember it, trust that you've got a Holy Spirit that's able to do that for you. Now, we move into John chapter 16. So, you know, you can just write John 16 down as well. Number four, we learn that he is a convictor. And you know what I learned this morning?

That's not a word. He's the one that convicts us. Right, I wrote convictor on my little Apple thing on my computer this morning. I was typing out my outline and it kept underlining convictor. I'm like, but that's what I want to say. So I tried to spell it about three different ways. And finally, I clicked on the suggestions thing and it was like, son of a gun.

I can do convict dash or. I was like, huh, maybe it's not a word. So I've made up a new word today and I'm okay with that. Webster does this all the time. That's how, you know how we know? Selfies in the dictionary. So Webster's okay with this. Uh, he convicts us. What does he convict us of? Well, according to John chapter 16, he convicts us of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.

He convicts us of sin because we're sinners. He convicts us of righteousness because we don't really understand what that is. And he convicts us of judgment because my friends, God is coming to judge. And he is convicting the world of that right now, which is why what we're seeing in the world is a great amount of anger because the world is being convicted of the coming judgment and they don't want to hear.

That's why the anger and the wrath is getting greater and greater and greater because they don't want to know the truth. We know that he is the one who convicts us. Number five, it says that he guides us into all truth. Now that probably goes right along with the aspect of being a teacher, but you can know, Lord, how can I know what the truth is? We'll start relying on the Holy Spirit

to reveal those things to you. We're going to talk about some of these gifts of the spirit here in just a little bit. And you'll see how those will guide us into all truth. Lord, I don't know what the right thing to do is. I'm just going to trust you. And he's able to guide, guide us into what's right. Number six, he will glorify Christ and not himself. And I think this is where oftentimes

the far Pentecostal churches get it wrong is because they put all of the emphasis on the working of the Holy Spirit and not nearly enough on Christ. Because we know from scripture, what it says in John, that he will not bear witness of himself. He will not draw attention to himself. He will continually point people to Jesus. In every gift that he gives and in all of his work of ministry,

it is to bring people to the son, right? We, I just on Wednesday night, I just taught Genesis chapter 24, which is that beautiful chapter that I would normally teach to teenagers as the aspect of dating. Let the Holy Spirit bring your husband to you. But it's also the perfect picture of the working of the Holy Spirit. If you don't know what the chapter is, it's the chapter where Isaac needs a son,

needs a bride, not a son. Gotta have the bride first. Tell my daughters the exact same thing. Gotta get married first, then the kids come. So he needs a bride. And so Abraham, the father, sends out his most trusted servant, who's not even named, sends out his servant into the world to bring back a bride for the son. Bear in mind, the last time that the son had been seen

was when he was being sacrificed on top of the mountain and being delivered from death. God's like, they're gonna love this one. They're gonna love this little picture that I give them of the work of the Holy Spirit, because that's what the Holy Spirit does, is he brings people to Jesus. And he uses all of these wonderful gifts to teach us, to draw us, and to reveal to us the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And then number six, excuse me, number seven. I'm not a math student. Number seven, this one comes to us out of the book of Acts chapter one. Remember what that says. Remember what the disciples said, what do we do? Jesus, are you going to establish your kingdom now? And he said, no, not yet. This is what you need to do. You need to go and tarry in Jerusalem

until the promise of the Holy Spirit comes. He will empower you to be witnesses for me. And so number seven is that he is the one who empowers us to be witnesses for him. How can we reach this lost world? How can we take the truth of the gospel to the people that are around us and hopefully bring any kind of change into the world? It's not through our newest political candidate.

It's not through the newest policy that they're gonna come out with. It's through the empowering work of the Holy Spirit who takes the simple message of the gospel and applies it to the lives of people, makes it real. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. That's what Jesus told us he would do. So as we look at the gifts that God has given, those gifts need to be used in such a fashion

that they do the things that Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit was gonna do. Bear those things in mind as you see the working of the Holy Spirit, not only here in chapter 12, but hopefully within our church. So he says, I don't want you to be unaware. He then begins to compare the spirit of the world with the spirit of God. Notice what he says in verse two.

You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols however you were led. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the spirit of God says Jesus is accursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. So he gives us three interesting things to pay attention to. The first one is he reminds them of how they were led about at one point in time.

He said before you came to know Jesus, you were led by a spirit, but it was the spirit of the world. You were being led by mute idols that were dragging you all over the place and you were simply obeying them. You said, Ryan, before I came to know Jesus, I didn't worship any idols. Yes you did. You just didn't realize it. They just didn't have a name. We name them things like pleasure.

We name them things than things like money. We named them things like materialism. And you worshipped all of those things, self-reliance, self-righteousness. We worshipped all of those things before we came to know Jesus. Therefore, this spirit of the Lord is going to look completely different than all of those false things that you used to follow. The second thing we take note of is that the Holy

Spirit, how the Holy Spirit always refers to Jesus. Anyone who is being led by the Holy Spirit will never say that Jesus is a curse. In other words, the Holy Spirit is never going to do anything that's going to go against the character and the nature of Jesus. Because that's not who the Holy Spirit is. Why? Because Jesus told us. What's he going to do? He's going to bear witness

of me. So no one speaking by the Holy Spirit is going to call Jesus a curse. But then he tells us this third thing. He says, and no one speaking by the Holy Spirit, or no one, can call Jesus Lord unless it's by the Holy Spirit. You say, now wait a second, Ryan. Everybody claims that they're a Christian, right? Quick show of hands. Who here has come across somebody in

their life who says, I'm a Christian and their lives don't look at all like it? Yeah. Okay. Most everybody. I see some head nods. I see those in the back. Yeah, we all have. Because it's easy to say that I'm a Christian. And so I thought, I don't understand. If only by the Holy Spirit can I claim that Jesus is Lord, why is it so easy to call yourself a Christian? Because they're not really

referring to Jesus as their Lord. You see, what he's talking about here is actually making Jesus the Lord of your life. Where you say, I go only where he wants me to go. I do only what he wants me to do. And I follow him wholeheartedly. And the only way we can claim that in sincerity is by having the Holy Spirit at work in our hearts. Because you can claim it with your lips,

but eventually you'll deny it by your lifestyle if the Holy Spirit is not at work in society. So, he gives this introduction to the Holy Spirit. And then he begins to speak on the work of the Holy Spirit. Unity and diversity. I want you to notice what he says in verse four. Now, there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries

and the same Lord. And there are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. Now, he makes three very interesting statements that I want you to pay attention to. The first one that he says is there's varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are a bunch of different types of gifts in the world today at work through the power of the Holy Spirit. And they all look a

little bit different than the others. That's one of the beautiful things about the working of the Holy Spirit. It's one of the beautiful things about the body of Christ is we all perform a different function. I've been listening to Chuck Swindoll teach on this exact same thing out of the book of Ephesians this last week on the radio. If you have a chance, to check out Insight for Living. He has a great study on Ephesians right now. And he was talking

about this exact same thing. He said, it's such a beautiful way, the way that God has constituted our bodies, that each part performs a different function. But the function that each part performs is of vast importance and all makes up one entire body. That's what he's saying. There's a variety of different gifts, but they're all coming from the same Spirit. The same Spirit

who is giving them to each and every one of us. He makes a second statement. He says, there are a variety of ministries, but the same Lord. I hope you took note of the fact that those are two different words, gifts and ministries. Gifts are the idea of us being able to perform a function within the church. Ministries carries with it the idea of performing an office within

the church. You may remember that within the things that are listed of the work of the Holy Spirit, you have the fact that there's pastors, there's teachers, there's evangelists, there's elders, there's deacons. Those are offices within the church. Each of those offices uses a different aspect of the gifts, which are distributed each by the Spirit. But each of those offices is

under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. So there's a variety of gifts, but it's the same Spirit. There's a variety of ministries or offices or administrations, perhaps some of your translations say, but it's the same Lord. And then there's one last thing that's mentioned here. And there are a variety of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. The word effects carries with it the

idea that there's a different way that it's used in everybody's life. I love that you all picked up almost all of the Calvary Chapel magazines out there. By the way, has anyone found Waldo in there yet? Anybody found Lewis in the Calvary Chapel magazine yet? Keep looking. He's in there. It's a little picture. I noticed that everybody picked him up, and on the cover is this picture of Jack

Hibbs baptizing 1,000 people. And you're like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. And it was so cool that in the midst of this crazy year that we've had, 1,000 people from one church, 1,000 people being affected by one church wanted to go and get baptized. And I go, whoa, the effect of the working of God in that church is amazing. Now I look at our church. Our church here in Kansas,

we baptized nine people over the summer, and I was blown away by that. Oh my gosh, so amazing. Now those are two completely different effects of the working of the Holy Spirit. And it all is completely dependent on how God wants to do it. I think I've told you this story before that I heard one of my former teachers tell. His name's Ray Bentley. And when Ray Bentley

got saved, he got saved by going to a Billy Graham movie. Apparently back in the 70s, they would have these Billy Graham movies. Churches would rent out theaters, and they'd have some kind of a movie, and somebody gets saved in the very end, and then they have an altar call. And so our church rented out this theater, and he goes, I really had no desire to go to church, but my dad drug us to this movie because Saturday afternoon was movie day. And so

we went to this movie, and he goes, I'm sitting there. I think he said he was 12 or 13 years old. He goes, I'm sitting there, and while the movie's going on, I'm nearly in tears. It's almost like God saying, you need to come to know Jesus. You need to come to know the truth. And he goes, at the very end, the pastor gets up, and there was a stage, in front of where the screen was, and he says, if anybody wants to get saved,

please come forward. Ray said, I was the only guy in the entire theater that came forward. You see, out of a beautiful presentation of the gospel, only one person got saved, because at that point in time, that was the effect that God wanted. But then from Ray Bentley's ministry, he now not only has affected the area of Southern California, Rancho Bernardo in particular, but now he has an online ministry. And when he spoke to us at the pastor's conference last year,

he was talking about the fact that when he gives an altar call, he gets emails from people in Wyoming and Montana that are getting saved because of the ministry that God has given to him. You see, God brings the effect however he wants to, but it's completely up to him. There's different gifts, but it's the same spirit. There's different ministries, but it's the same Lord. And there's a different effect to each of those,

but it's the same God. And so, I think that's what we're going to talk about today. It's because of God. Now, I hope that you took notice of the subtle little way that Paul wove the Trinity into those three statements, because the gifts come about through the spirit of God. The ministries are overseen by the Lord Jesus Christ, but the effect is completely the work

of God the Father. Isn't that great? I don't care how smart you are. You can't do that without the Holy Spirit doing his work. And he brings all these things up. He brings up, the aspect of unity, because what was one of the greatest issues that the church in Corinth dealt with? Division. And he wants them to know that just because you have a particular gift doesn't

make you better than everybody else. Just because you don't have a particular gift doesn't make you less than anybody else. There is no one that is a part of the body of Christ that is greater or lesser than anyone else, because we all make up the body. There are certain parts of us that we don't let anybody see. As a matter of fact, they're hidden by our ribcage,

and they're hidden by our tummies and all that kind of stuff, but they play some of the most important parts in our entire body. I'm always amazed at how when one little part hurts, the entire thing is bothered, right? Like I've had issues with my teeth. I think it's just God's way of going, this will be funny. But I don't care how I go to the dentist. They say, this is the way

you need to brush. I brush that way. I go cavities. They say, you need to floss. I floss. I go cavities. You need to cut this out. I cut that out. I brush. I floss. I get cavities. I'm losing teeth in my head like nothing else, right? Like this is who I am. Teeth run out of my head all the time. But what's amazing is if you have an abscessed tooth, one little spot in your mouth, and that

thing gets infected, your entire body is shut down. There is nothing quite like an abscessed tooth that will just wipe you out, right? Like I've dealt with major injuries to my elbow and different things like that. I've dealt with major injuries to my elbow and different things like that. But none of them debilitate you as much as a tooth. And it's such a small little part of the

body that very few people see. And the more coffee I drink, the less I wish people would see my teeth. But it affects every part of your body. And that's the way it is within the body of Christ. There's no insignificant members. As a matter of fact, notice what it says in verse 7. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. You see, there is unity.

He says, In other words, each of you has a gift from the Holy Spirit that is apparent that it is only from the Holy Spirit. But the reason why he gave it to you was for the benefit of all. God doesn't bless us with these gifts and these ministries so that we can puff ourselves up. God doesn't bless us with these things to draw attention to. God doesn't bless us with these things to draw attention to.

God doesn't bless us with these things so that people will come up and tell us how thankful they are that we exist. God gives us these things so that we can benefit the entire body of Christ. And one of the things that I find is that usually if we're not willing to serve in the smallest way to benefit the entire body of Christ, God can never use us in the biggest way to benefit the entire body of Christ. Because my mentality has to always be, how can I serve the body?

He says, I read a wonderful post by John Cooper yesterday. John Cooper is the lead singer of Skillet. And the stuff that he, he is an incredibly wise. He's a great singer. He's a great singer. He's a great human being. And the tagline of his post was, it's time to make pastors not cool again. And he said, the biggest problem that we're having in churches right now is that pastors

have all of a sudden become trendsetters. They've taken over mega churches and they have multi-campuses and they all of a sudden have become the show. Now listen, I have friends that I graduated Bible college with that are pastors of multi-campus churches. I can't judge them because I don't know what God is telling them that they're supposed to do. But I am here to tell you right now, the problem that faces the pulpit is that we as pastors can

sometimes want to make ourselves the show. And that's not what God wants. You see, my job is not to benefit me. My job is not so that you'll come up and tell me how much you enjoyed the sermon later. That's my wife's job. And I expect her to be honest. I did a wedding last night and I said, one of the things that you are now is you're each other's most compassionate critic. And I expect

her to be that. Compassionate. And then a critic. No, my job is to serve the body, whether you all ever say anything about it or not, whether there was ever a pastor appreciation month or not. My job is to serve you. But you know what? Your job is to serve the body too. Your job is to serve within the body of Christ. And I am convinced that one of the issues we have in the church in general today is that people don't want

to serve. It doesn't fit our schedule any longer. It doesn't fit into the things that we need to do to serve. And quite frankly, if I step out and use the gift that God has given to me, I don't know what anybody's going to say about it. Well, my friends, that's why it's called a step of faith. That's why it's called a step of faith to step out and use that gift that God has given to us.

Trust me, I did not want to go online. You know why I didn't want to go online? I didn't want to go online for two reasons. Number one, because I want you here, not sitting in your living room in your pajamas. It is what it is. I'm fine. No worries there. But number two, I now invite an incredible criticism because I am out there for everybody to be seen. And I say a lot of things that are

mildly controversial at times that are probably going to get me in trouble. And I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. As a matter of fact, if you stick around the next few weeks, I'll probably get myself in a lot of trouble because I've got a lot of strong statements and stances I need to be making. And given what just took place and what I feel like is going to continue to take place, you may have to start a bailout fund for me.

Because I don't know what that's going to mean. But no matter how scary it is, I have to take steps of faith and do what God's called me to do. But so do you. Because the body of Christ needs you and the gift that you have in the ministry that God has given you. Not because it's going to be so good for you, but because the body of Christ needs it. So he says there's a manifestation of the Spirit for each one of us, but it's for the

common good. Now he begins to list out the gifts and there's going to be nine of them. I'm going to read through it and then we'll talk through each of these nine gifts that he mentions. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit. To another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing

by the one Spirit. And to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues. And to another the interpretation of tongues. But the one and the same Spirit works all these things distributing to each one individually just as he wills. Nine things that he mentions. The first one

is the word of wisdom. Now before I get into these, I want you to know I believe all of these are for today. I don't think any of them ceased with the apostles. If they ceased with the apostles, why would the Holy Spirit instruct Paul for three chapters of a book? Give us instructions on how these gifts are used. If these ceased with the apostles, why in multiple

letters that Paul gives to us, does he give us instructions on each of these things if they were just going to end with the apostles? I believe that each of these is for today, but I believe that verse 11 is going to give us the key to how each of these is used today. So know that going into it. So number one, the word of wisdom. The idea of the word of wisdom, it is supernatural

situations. Let me give you an example from the book of Acts. Remember in the book of Acts when there arose a dissension or a division within the church, some of the widows were feeling like they were getting left out of the daily distribution and the apostles had a decision that they had to make because God had been doing an amazing work and the potential was there that that whole thing was going to get shut down by this division. And so the apostles stepped up and with all of the wisdom of God said, then what we need to do is set people over this particular world and set people over the work of the ministry so that we as apostles can step ourselves back from it and do

what God has called us to do, which is the giving out of the word and praying and fasting and ministering to the people. That was the use of the word of wisdom because they knew it was a difficult situation. It was beyond their understanding and ability. And yet God gave them supernatural wisdom to handle it in such a way that all of the people were pleased. That's

how you know it was directly from God. Because I don't know if I've yet done anything in the church where all of the people are pleased because it's a hard thing to do. But that was that word of wisdom. And may I say, I have been praying for this word of wisdom since the middle of March. And hopefully we've done things the way that we're supposed to as the board, because we have prayed that God would give us that word of wisdom in each of those

situations. But the beautiful thing about the Holy Spirit is you can approach a situation, you can approach a meeting and think, I don't know how to handle this. And God will give it to you. And as long as you don't get all arrogant and go, that's right, I'm a pretty wise human being. Then God will continue to bless you with that wisdom. And you'll go, there's no way I came up with that on my own. That was directly from the Lord.

So the first thing he tells us, there's that some receive the word of wisdom, to others, a word of knowledge. This is literally supernatural knowledge in particular situations. Let me give you another example. Do you remember when Simon Peter was, I can't remember the name of the city, it was in the book of Acts. And Simon the sorcerer came up to him and asked that he would be able to pay for the ability to give out the gift of the Holy

Spirit. And Simon Peter looked at him and said, I see that you are full of envy and greed. He used a word of knowledge because God revealed to him exactly what was going on on the inside of that guy. God revealed to him exactly what was happening on the inside of him. And he gave him that word of knowledge. It's an amazing thing to see when someone can come to you and say, I know you haven't told anybody

this, but I know what's going on. And I want you to know I'm praying for you. And you go, I haven't told a soul what's happening right now. That was the exercise of the word of knowledge. Because God gives supernatural knowledge at points in time to be able to see things and to be able to know things. And it's not mystical. You won't have this like the lights begin to dim and all

of a sudden the, you know, the dove comes floating down on you and lands and you go, I have the knowledge. No, you'll just go, oh, I don't know how I know that, but something's not right with you. Right? Sometimes it goes into that aspect of discernment too. Right? Like sometimes I feel really bad when I see people and I'm like, something's off with you. And then I feel bad

later. And then down the road I go, it's because I was right. Because God showed me something that I needed to see inside of them. Because God gave me a word of knowledge. There was a guy living at the retirement community that I used to go to. And he was like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And he was just kind of a gross old man. And I don't say that very easily. That's just who

he was. There was a way about him. And the Lord told me he has a pornography addiction. I don't know how I knew it. I just knew it. And lo and behold, he ended up being asked to leave. This is terrible, but mildly funny too. He was old, so he was deaf. And all of his neighbors were complaining about the fact that he was playing pornography too loud in his house. And so he had

to be asked to leave the facility. And when somebody was like, oh, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And he said, I heard that one of the residents was asked to leave because of this. I said, it was them. And they said, how'd you know that? And I said, I don't know. I just knew. It was like God just gave me that knowledge. There was nothing mystical about it. God just gave it to me. Because

that's what the Holy Spirit does. God works very supernaturally, naturally. Now, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith. Now listen, we all have faith, right? It takes faith to believe that Jesus is real. And we have to have faith in order to come to Jesus to be saved. That's what we're told in the book of Hebrews. You can't please God apart from faith. However, it does seem like there are

some people that have a supernatural measure of faith. One of the greatest examples I can think of is George Mueller. George Mueller was a guy that ran an orphanage. And I think in the years that he ministered, housed over 10,000 kids and never once asked for money. He just prayed. Because God told him, don't ever ask for money. You just seek me. And he had the faith to believe that that's exactly what God would do. And there are points

in time where you have to ask yourself, Lord, the only way this can happen is if you do it. And so I'm just going to believe. And you find yourself not stressed, not worried. You're just believing, believing that God's going to do what he said he's going to do. God has just blessed you with the gift of faith. Most of you probably don't know this, but the gift of faith is what got us this

building. This building was going to be auctioned off by the school district. It's an old school building, the old Washington school building. And they wanted to get rid of it. They wanted to build a new building. And so they were going to auction it off. And so we knew about it. It was going to be a closed bid auction where you put it in an envelope and turn it in. So we brought in an

engineer to make sure that it was structurally sound. Sure enough, structurally sound. And my number may be off here. Some of you old timers can correct me on this. But I believe we put in a bid of $2,000. Did I get that right to the people in the building? I don't know. I don't know. I don't back. $2,150. $2,200. But she's doing sign language. It wasn't very much money at all. It

was under $3,000 that we gave. And we were the only ones that bid. That was all the money that we had. And we said, Lord, if you want it, that's all we've got. And we're just going to believe that you're able to do what you're able to do. And God gave the board members here at Calvary Chapel supernatural faith to believe that that's what God would do. And he did. That gift of faith

is a beautiful thing. And I love seeing people that have that gift. Because man, God does crazy things with them, right? And so we see this gift of faith. The next one is where it starts. Everybody's happy until you get to this one. Number four, healing. Oh, Ryan, God doesn't heal anymore. Now listen, J. Vernon McGee was one of the greatest cessationists as far as the gifts were concerned,

period. And he was willing to admit that there is no healing apart from God. But I believe wholeheartedly that God has the ability to heal. Sometimes God uses doctors to do it. And sometimes God uses prayer to do it, right? I remember sitting in a time of waiting on the Lord and a time of prayer. And as we were waiting, somebody gave the Lord, first of all, a word of knowledge,

but then they also gave them the gift of healing. And they stood up and they said, someone over here on the right is having, I can't remember what the health issue was, you're having this kind of health issue. And God wants you to know that you just need to pray and ask him to heal you and he'll heal you. And come to find out about two weeks later, that person said, that was me. I was the one that had that health issue exactly as he said. And I prayed that God

would heal me and he healed me. Now listen, you can believe that or not, but that is the truth. I also know for me in particular, one time I was standing beside the bed of somebody and they were in the ICU and I thought they were circling the drain. I just thought, sure, they were done. But the Lord told me this. He said, pray for them. And I said, Lord, it's time for them to go home. I don't think that they're going to make it. And he said,

pray for them. So I said, okay. So I grabbed their hand and I prayed and they jumped out of the bed. That's not true. They didn't jump out of the bed. Y'all were just right there at the edge. I had to say it. I grabbed their hand and I prayed and the Lord said, that's all I need you to do. And I left and that person is now walking around. Very healthy. I don't know. Now, does that mean every person I've ever prayed for gets healed?

Absolutely not. Not in the way I went for them to, because I prayed for some people that they would get healed. And God said, not that way. I'll heal them by bringing them home because we don't get to decide those kinds of things because it's the work of the Holy Spirit, not the work of Ryan. If it were the work of Ryan, I'd be going around healing people right and left, right? I'd be

straight Benny Hinn on that business. I'd be healing everybody, but I can't do that. All I can do is what God calls for me to do. But I absolutely believe that God is going to heal me. I believe that this gift exists. And if you start going into other countries where they don't have the medicine that we have, and the only thing they have is faith, those people tell some amazing

stories about healing because it's the same Holy Spirit at work today that was at work back then. He just chooses how he wants to do it. He says, gifts of healing. So when God calls you to say, hey, go pray for that person. Just go do it. Be obedient to what God, what God calls you to do and let God do what he's going to do with it. Number five, he says the working of miracles. And the idea of the working of miracles is literally

the release of power to do something impossible. That's the idea of a miracle, right? And we see it throughout scripture. And again, if you read some of the magazines from the churches around the world, they're seeing miracles. They're seeing miracles take place. And he said, some people are given that gift, the ability to perform miracles. Number six, we see the gift of prophecy.

This is another one that because of its abuse, and the others as well, the abuse that's taken, listen, there's a reason we can make jokes about gifts of healing, right? It's because they've been abused at points in time. And people have put all of their, their faith in a faith healer, and they've not put all of their faith in God. Because sometimes, listen close, sometimes when you put your faith in God, he says, go to a doctor. Sometimes when you put your faith in God,

he says, do what the doctors told you to do, because that's how I want to heal you. So we can't, buy into this idea that, oh, I can't go to a doctor because I've got to trust in Jesus. I've got to trust him to heal me. Well, you know what? I know some very wonderful doctors that love Jesus with all of their hearts, and they are doing the work of God. So we have to be careful about that

kind of thing. And so, but, but because of its abuse, sometimes we fall away from this idea that God can still do these things. Number six is the word, is the gift of prophecy. Now the idea of prophecy is both foretelling and forth telling a message of God. Now, because there are people who claim to be prophets today that are constantly trying to tell us what's going to happen in the

future, and then it doesn't happen, we go, oh, the gift of prophecy is not real anymore. I believe that it is. But here's what we have to understand about the gift of prophecy. Now I'll get ahead of myself. I'll get to that in just a second. God very much can tell people what's going to be coming. Now, I don't want to discount anything that the Lord wants to do. And I think that you

need to hold everything up against what scripture has to say, and hold everything up against what has actually taken place. But God can do anything that he wants to do. He can tell us what's going to be taking place in the future through a word of prophecy. He can also speak directly to you when nobody else can through an individual. I'll never forget. I've seen this

gift of prophecy used two different times in my life, probably more than that, but two that stick out to me. One was when I was in high school and wasn't walking with Jesus. And we went up to, and this, I had completely forgotten about this until about 10 years ago. We went up to Calvary of Wichita, and my dad had done the service up there. And a guy comes up to me

afterwards, and I was walking in rebellion at this point in time. This guy comes up to me and he says, God has a great plan for your life. God's going to use you in a powerful way. You just need to let him. And I remember thinking, probably not. And just kind of walked away and didn't think anything about it. But I thought, whoa. Later down the road, I thought,

I'm back on that. I thought, man, that's amazing. And then the other one, which I think I've shared with you all before, a good friend of mine that was sitting next to me, and I believe it was first Corinthians class. It might've been John class. I can't remember which one. She was sitting next to me in class, and they gave each of us as students, if we wanted to, the opportunity to get

up and give a devotion in front of the whole school. And so I got up and I did that. And afterwards, we're sitting in class, and she's sitting next to me, and she writes me a little note. A note I have to this day, Bob. By the way, she writes me this little note, and she said, God used you today, and I want you to remember it. Because there's coming a time when you're going to question everything about your

faith and everything about whether or not God can use you. And you need to remember today that you belong to him, and he's going to use you in whatever way he sees fit. And I got the note, and I thought, oh, what an encouraging note. And I kind of folded it up, stuck it in my Bible, and held on to it. And when I was questioning whether God could ever love me or use me again, I came across that note. And I was like, oh my gosh,

that was a prophetic word for me from the Lord. Now, I want you to take note of something. There was nothing mystical about that. There was nothing crazy about that. She didn't lay on her side and say, this is what God says. No, she just wrote me a note, and God used it in a very powerful way in my life. You see, sometimes we over-spiritualize all of these gifts and make them way more mystical

than they are. When meantime, God is doing something powerful in a very natural sort of way. But when we look back on it, we go, that was the Holy Spirit. And sometimes God uses that word of prophecy to speak directly to your heart. Sometimes some of you come up to me afterwards, and you say things like, that was for me. Or you come up to me afterwards and say, don't ever say that again.

Because God nailed you on something. Now, it's not because I was in your life, or in your notebook, or even saw all your text messages that you had. Or all your search history you had on Google throughout the week. It's because God used that word of prophecy through the word to speak directly to you. Because he had a message just for you. It's the word of prophecy. But here's the balance to it all. Number seven is the discerning of

spirits. In other words, discerning what is of God and what is of man. And it's important that we have this gift too. Because there have been points in time, where I see people get up, and they say that they're speaking for God, and they speak a prophetic word. And God said, I don't know what he's talking about. I didn't say that. I don't know what he's saying. I'll never forget going to a conference one time, and something was just a little off.

And I was like, what is going on right now? And the guy started speaking. I'm like, what's off? What's off? What's off? And then he said one thing, and I was like, oh, found it. I found the off part. Ooh, ooh, me here in the back. I know what's off. But I just had this feeling, and I couldn't explain it. I just knew that something about everything that he was saying was off, because my spirit was not bearing witness with the Holy

Spirit inside of him, because it wasn't the Holy Spirit at work. It was something else at work. And I knew something wasn't right. And the Holy Spirit was giving me that discernment. My mom has this kind of discernment, and she's used it on me before, right? Like the last time I ever went and did things Jesus didn't want me to do as a teenager, I will never forget the

penetrating light of the Holy Spirit. I will never forget the penetrating light of the Holy Spirit. That's the look that she gave me when she said, you know what's right. Because she knew there was something off about my spirit. I wasn't walking with Jesus. The Holy Spirit had nothing to do with anything that was going on in my life. And she could discern that. And you know who else I've

seen it in? My youngest daughter. She told us a concern she had about somebody, and we have recently found out that that concern is validated. Listen to what your kids have to say. If your kid is concerned about something, you need to pay attention to it. You need to pay attention to it. Because I believe that God gives kids discernment. Because they haven't been clouded yet by all of the

doubt and cynicism that we have been. And sometimes God will reveal things to them. And I'm saying this. This is just a public service announcement. If your kid is nervous around someone, don't just force them to be around them. Find out why. Find out why they're nervous. Now, sometimes it's because they're freaks, right? Like kids just do weird things sometimes. Like,

they wouldn't let me have chewing gum one time, so I don't ever want to be around them again, because they wouldn't let me have the chewing gum, right? Find out the source of it. But then sometimes you just got to pay attention and see what God is doing there. That ability to discern spirits. Oh man, and then number eight. This is where things really get divided in the church.

The gift of tongues. How much time do we have? Not enough. First of all, what does he mean? By the gift of tongues. We're even divided over this. We're divided over whether this is a gift for today or not. And if you disagree with me on these things, I'm okay with that. I can still love you. As long as we can keep Jesus at the center, I can still love you. But I believe that

the gift of tongues is for today. What's it for? Some people say the gift of tongues is only the ability to learn languages you've never known before so that you can give out the gospel to people that you've never been around. Yes, I agree. Some people say the gift of tongues is a private prayer language between you and the Lord and it's a language that's not known. And I say,

yes, I agree. I think it's both of those things. You say, Ryan, it's got to be one or the other. Does it? Isn't God big enough that he could come up with a whole prayer language where you can communicate in the spirit with him? Right? Isn't that kind of why Paul said, I would rather prophesy than speak in tongues? Because if I pray in tongues, I'm the only one that is blessed by it

exercising my prayer language with the Lord. But if I speak a word of prophecy, if I speak in words that people can understand, everyone is blessed by it. Now, the gift of tongues is something I don't have. I've prayed for it a few times, but God said no up to now. Maybe it's because I don't wait on the Lord long enough, but up to now he said no. But there's some men that I respect immensely

that have this gift and I've never ever seen them exercise it in public because it's a prayer language between them and the Lord. I also believe that people show up as missionaries in other countries and they can't figure out why they can just know the language. Why am I just able to know what these people are saying? Because that's what the Holy Spirit does. Because in all of these things, remember who's being glorified?

Jesus. Remember what we're building up? The body. That's why each of these is being used, right? And that's what tongues should be. It should be something that should draw us to Jesus and something that will eventually build up the body. And so this gift is controversial, still as it is, I do believe that it's for today. I do believe that it should be used decently and

in order because I want you to notice what comes next. The last one is the interpretation of various tongues. Now, if this gift is to be used in a public setting, we're going to find out in 1 Corinthians 14 because, oh, don't think we're just going to let these things run rampant and let the church become crazy because that's what God does not want. God does not want the church to just be going crazy. That's why some people do this whole, let's just, you know, everybody just start praying

out loud right now. Wherever you are, just pray out loud because God can hear it all. I go, I call that confusion and it just doesn't seem to make sense to me. You should at least be in a circle where somebody's understanding what's being said. I don't care if there's five circles within the room, but for each person just to be shouting out their prayer out loud is confusion

and God is not the author of confusion, right? And so he says there's the interpretation of tongues. In other words, the ability to say, this is what the individual that spoke in tongues said. I, again, have sat in a time of waiting on the Lord where somebody spoke out in tongues and I thought, oh, here we go. Is there going to be an interpretation? And then someone got up and gave

the interpretation and it was praising God. That's all it was doing. It was praising the Lord for who he is, praising God for his character and his nature. It was pointing people to Jesus. Now, in all of my time of walking with Jesus and sitting in times of waiting on the Lord, that's the only time I've ever heard the gift used in public. I don't think it should happen real often because I personally believe

it's more for an individual to be able to pray to the Lord. But if it is going to be, you need the person telling you what's going on so that things can be understood. Now, in verse 11, I feel like he puts a nice little bow on this section and ties it all together because I want you to notice what verse 11 has to say. But one in the same spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually, just as he does.

Three wills. Three statements. First of all, the same spirit works all these things. There should be no division when it comes to the use of the gifts because it's the same Holy Spirit at work. That's why I believe that God is not going to interrupt himself, right? Like, that's why I don't think everybody should be speaking out at the same time within a church service

because if the Holy Spirit is at work through the person giving out the message, then the Holy Spirit is not also going to be at work speaking in a tongue over here, talking over the guy giving out the message because it's the same spirit at work. And if it's the same spirit at work, he's not going to interrupt himself. He's just going to keep flowing in the way that seems fit. And so it's the same spirit. So not only is there no division, but there is actually distinct unity

in the body. And one of the things you'll find is when the Holy Spirit is truly at work, there is harmony in the midst of all of these gifts. There is harmony in the midst of all of these ministries because they're all doing the same thing, because they're all pointing people to Jesus. Same spirit who is at work. Then the second thing that he says is this, and he distributes

to each one individually. He distributes to each one individually. That means that though there is unity within the body, there is also individuality within the body. We don't all have to look the same. We don't all have to have the same gift because there is an individuality within the unity that we have because he is giving to each one individually. And it's a beautiful way that God does it. And then the third thing that he says is this,

he distributes them as he wills. As he wills. That means I don't get to decide when and how those gifts are used. Because if I did, there's a few choices I would have made that the Holy Spirit didn't make. But it's not up for me to decide. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. And he distributes them as he wills. It means it's not up for me to decide. It's the work of the Holy Spirit.

It's completely up to him. It also means that we see God's sovereignty at work and not mine. God is the one who is sovereign over all of these things and we can rest in that sovereignty. It also means that it's to point people to Jesus and not to me. And as we see the working of the Holy Spirit within the church, and one of the things Paul's trying to correct

is that they had stopped pointing people to Jesus and they had started pointing people to themselves. And so in each of the gifts that's being used, if he distributes them as he wills, it's going to be to point people to Jesus. And so if he distributes them as he wills, it's going to be to point people to Jesus. And then the third thing is it's going to be to build up the body of Christ, not my own ego. I won't be building up my own ego. I won't be bolstering my own reputation. I will be building

up the body of Christ. Amen? Let's all stand. I do pray that if there's any of you that are not experiencing that fullness of the Spirit, that you would just allow yourself to be surrendered to whatever it is that God wants for you. Open yourself up to allow him to move through you. As he sees fit. Father, we come before you and just thank you for the time that we've had in your

word this morning. Lord, thank you that you are so good to us and that you bless us in the way that you see fit. And Lord, I just ask that as your word went out this morning, Lord, that it would be completely your word and nothing of my own. And so Lord, apply to our lives what you see that we need. And may your Holy Spirit just continue to be at work in our lives. In Jesus' name. Amen.