The New Testament Church, Gifts of the Spirit Part A

Taped by John Greene, transcribed by Mary Kay Lynd

Bible quotes are from NKJV unless otherwise stated.

We're going to be looking at the gifts of the Holy Spirit because right now where we're at in Chapter 2 of Acts it's the appropriate time I believe to take a look at it so that we can bring some things into more balance and focus. I'm going to make some statements, and then we're going to look into some things. I want you to think about the statements that I'm going to make. The gift of the Holy Spirit will be evidenced by tongues at the baptism. The gifts of the Holy Spirit will be by the Spirit's decision through His own assessment and manifested through His choice of vessel or vessels. The spirit-filled life without control as described by Paul will allow God's will for the church the lost in his character to be blasphemed and judged outside of the truth. God's will is all to know Him through genuine repentance. Yet immaturity and sin will bring the believer to the pigpen. I want you to think about that statement and you're going to see some thing realized as we go through here.

We begin in Acts Chapter 2:4 talking about other tongues and I believe we can categorize that according to the context as evidential tongues. This is not the gift of tongues! This, in Acts Chapter 2 verse 4, is the evidence of somebody receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit as we've already looked at. We have in Romans 8:26 the Holy Spirit making intercession. There are at times groanings through the Holy Spirit that cannot be uttered. We cannot speak of those things because we're just too involved in the groaning part, the agonizing part over an issue. We're so concerned about something, as we're speaking in other tongues in our prayer, that it's the Holy Spirit then making that intercession for us. That can also be found in Ephesians Chapter 6 verse 18 and Jude 20. And Paul again makes reference to it in 1 Corinthians 13:1 where he talks about the tongues of angels. These are not able to be interpreted. You can understand them if you are Spirit filled to the point that you know for a fact that it's the Holy Spirit praying through you and interceding through you. You know for a fact that you're praying God's will because the Holy Spirit never prays against His own will. We know those things for a fact. We also know according to 1 Corinthians Chapter 14 Verse 14 that in that particular case that Paul says, "For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful." So we see that the spirit of the man, the person, the vessel that God chooses to use, that spirit person can cooperate and pray in other tongues. The person praying does not understand what he's praying for, but based on other Scripture, we know what we're praying for, the will of God to be done. It's perfect prayer if you will. So therefore, another type of tongues is prayerful tongues. There's also according to verse 15, singing tongues , because Paul says that he sings in the spirit and he'll sing with the understanding. They do not need to be interpreted. Paul doesn't say to interpret those. And we know from again 1 Corinthians 13:1 and 1 Corinthians 14:2 that you can worship in the spirit. When you're worshipping the Lord, and tongues come forth those are worship tongues.

So in these cases we have evidential tongues, we have prayerful tongues, we have singing tongues, we have worshipful tongues. These are not the gift of tongues in 1 Corinthians 12. These are different, although all four of these types of tongues that I just mentioned are related. They are related, but it's very important that we make the distinction and show the difference because one of the most ignorant responses out there to the issue of tongues is that you can't do that because it's got to be interpreted. No it doesn't always have to be interpreted. Paul said that they have to have order in a service! Things have to be done decently, no chaos. Because God is a God of order, therefore, if you go to a service and all they're doing is charismatic babbling for the entire service, that is not of God because that doesn't have order of the service. Now if it's an open service then it needs to be complied with according to what Paul set for guidelines in 1 Corinthians 14 because Paul makes it clear how to conduct a service. However, if you're in your house and you have a few people gathered together for a little Bible study and all people are Spirit filled people, it is not uncommon to have a prayer time that is just only in tongues. It doesn't upset anybody. It doesn't harm anybody. As a matter of fact what it does is it edifies the individual and it prays the will of God. That's perfectly all right. When you're in a service, and you come forth in the worship with some tongues intermittent around your own language that you speak, that is perfectly acceptable. And again those tongues do not have to be interpreted. The only tongue that must be interpreted is the gift of tongues. That's it! And we're going to take a look at the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so if you want to do that with all of this that we set in Acts 1 and 2, and what I just basically went over as a preliminary about the types of tongues, let's now turn to 1 Corinthians Chapter 12. We're going to look at the gifts of the Spirit, and it's very important that we see what we have written. I need something to drink.

1 Corinthians Chapter 12. Paul lays this out to a church that is running amuck in the wild. They sit in the church, and he's taking care of those issues from Chapter 1 through what Chapter 11? A great deal of sin in some of the areas in the church that needed to be addressed by Paul, and Paul addresses them! Everything from charismatic witchcraft to sexual immorality, very, very evil. Sectarianism, there's just, I mean Paul deals with all of it. Now he comes to the obuse that's in the church about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And what he does, I find so amazing as he always is in the way he lays things out. Of course he's writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So let's take a look at it.

Starting in verse 1 it says, "Now concerning spiritual…" And notice that your Bible has this next word in italics. That means it's not there. This is a word spiritual, it's a word that is an adjective but used as a noun. It would be more perfectly translated spiritual things not spiritual gifts, spiritual things, but the idea that the translators, and I'm reading again in the New King James and in all of the King James does the same thing. The translators wanted to put the word gifts in there and they felt because the entire context was about gifts that perhaps that would be better. Well I can't fault them for that but I think it would be more accurately done if it said spiritual things because this is the pneumatikos/pneumatikoV, you know the pneumatic drive or driven. Well that's the word here for pneuma/pneuma. The pneumatika, the spiritual things. And notice what he says. "I do not want you to be ignorant." He's talking to the church, because he called them brethren, and he doesn't want them to be ignorant. Now look at the principle that he lays out. Verse 2 he says, "You know that you were Gentiles, carried away to these dumb idols, however you were led." He deals with the issue of where they came from. In their ignorance in the world, they did every manner of following and especially as Gentiles they followed idols, those that said this is our god or this is the god or this is a god, and they would put some emphasis on those idols. And Paul uses the word dumb which has to do with the fact that they just can't speak, they're silent, they're dead. You know you take a piece of wood and you burn it, you shape it, you put some gold around it, you set it up on a mantle and say, "This is my god." They can't speak. They can't do any of those things. Paul says as gentiles they should understand this, that coming from the world perspective they followed worldly things and an idol is a worldly thing. Then he says, "Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed." You cannot have Jesus wrong when you're walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit will not contradict who Jesus Christ is. You can't curse him, you can't blaspheme him. To do those things you have to go back to the old man. You have to go back as a Gentile as Paul talks to these Corinthians, go back to before, so that you can understand the principle here, that God is God and He will never contradict, He will never put into a position any part of the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit. And no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. You can't genuinely call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and call Him Lord and Savior. You can't do that except the Spirit is already taking it to your heart and changed you and regenerated you and caused that recognition in you to recognize His Lordship. There's no way. Only by the Spirit! This is one of the spiritual principles to understand. And it's so important to understand that. Therefore, the Corinthians are starting to understand something based on what Paul is saying. You can't stand up and say I'm following Peter or I'm following Paul or I'm following Apollos and say that you're doing it because that's God's will. We follow Jesus, Jesus, not anybody else! Because the Holy Spirit would never lead you to follow a man. You can respect what a man teaches as long as he's teaching the Word of God, but you're never following a man you're only following the Lord, and you can't do that except the Holy Spirit has already regenerated you.

One of the issues that we know Paul is dealing with is the unruliness in the church where somebody would stand up and basically say, "Hey, God uses me in the interpretation of tongues so I'm better than you are." A great deal of pride came in as they were exercised in the gifts, but here's something to understand, they may have begun in the gifts exercised by the Holy Spirit, but when sin began to creep in like pride, they no longer were being exercised in the gifts of the Spirit, because God doesn't contradict himself. However, in their backsliding God didn't leave them, God didn't forsake them. That's why Paul is still calling them brethren. They may be in some sin, but their sin needs to be pointed out, needs to be corrected, needs to be repented of, but they haven't left God as so many people want to say about the Corinthians that they're an ungodly group, and that they're not even Christians because they don't want to believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. They don't want to hear all those things. It's amazing to me that Paul lays this principle out. It's just amazing that Paul separates this understanding because somebody could be backsliding, and still be used by the Holy Spirit because they're still in that particular area the choice of the Holy Spirit as a vessel to be used. And we're going to see that, and I want you to see that because it's important. Because some people in the Pentecostal realm have a hard time, like I did myself for a number of years, with a number of people that were obviously used in several gifts of the Spirit of God because the Spirit would witness with my spirit when they were used, that that was of God, yet I knew what was happening in their lives. And it bugged the daylights out of me that I knew that they were backsliding bad, but God still used them as a vessel! They can't be used as a vessel unless God is in them. Now it doesn't … Let me put this differently! God uses people in the church who are in the church, who are available vessels, who are vessels that are opened to be used and sometimes those vessels are in sin. The use of somebody as a vessel by the Holy Spirit does not sanction the sin, and as a matter of fact soon after, there's going to be a visible judgment based on that sin and there's going to be a lot of bewilderment, there's going to be a lot of concern about why. I remember just a few years ago when somebody by the name of Jimmy Swaggard had his serious problems in sin, yet because he was preaching under the anointing of God and the messages that he would preach, the Holy Spirit brought those messages to unbelieving hearts and changed those hearts to believing hearts, he thought that God was sanctioning him and saying, he's okay in his sin. But we know what happened to him! He fell and he fell hard. He was disbarred from the Assemblies of God. A lot of things took place, and now his so-called ministry isn't even a ministry anymore per say. It has become a total non-entity, it's not even close to the level of achievement that God had it in at one time. It's not even close. It's not 1/1000 of the size that it originally was, because of his sin. So understanding verse 3 is the layout for the gifts, understanding that the Spirit of God is the One that allows us to call Jesus Lord, and if we're speaking by the Spirit of God, we can't call Jesus anathema/anaqema or accursed.

Now verse 4 says, "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." There are different gifts but it's the same Spirit behind all those gifts. The Holy Spirit in that gift and the Holy Spirit behind that gift is the same Spirit. "There are differences of ministries" but the Holy Spirit is behind the ministry. Even though the ministry is different. Some people are ministering to native Americans, some people are sent to India, some people are sent as missionaries to South America. There are different ministries. Some people are called in the ministry to be a pastor. There are different ministries, and as a part of the Kingdom activity so that the Kingdom of God is an ever-increasing kingdom. Yet the Holy Spirit is behind the ministries when they are of Him. I'm not saying that everybody that has a ministry is really in there in the ministry they're supposed to be, and we're going to see that too. Because again we go back to verse 3 looking at where the Spirit of God is behind.

Now we look a little and further and it says, "And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all." So the activities may be different, but the Father is behind them. So if somebody has got a soup kitchen feeding the hungry and somebody else has an education ministry where they're working in Christian education, God's behind both of them, and the person in the soup kitchen can't demean or bring down the person that's behind the Christian education and vice versa. And that's one of the things that was happening in the Corinthian church. They were trying to compare and say, "Well my ministry is more important than your ministry", and later on in 1 Corinthians 12 he talks about we're all members. You know, "Can the hand say to the eye or the foot" to the you know, "Are you going to cut your nose off to spite your face"? I mean the issue is that if the Holy Spirit's behind it, then it's of God. If the Holy Spirit's behind it it's of God. "But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all:" Notice that in verse 7 again we're talking about the manifestation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit here because, he's going to go on starting in verse 8 talking about each individual gift. The manifestation of that gift, whether we're talking about the word of wisdom or the gifts of healing or prophecy, any one of those nine gifts of the Holy Spirit that are listed here, the manifestation of that gift is given to each one for the profit of all.

Now we're going to describe each one, as we get along here because I want us to understand that he's not saying that everybody has all these gifts all the time. And I want you to understand that not everybody who is Spirit filled is exercised in the gifts, but everybody who is a Christian, who is a believer, who's been washed in the blood can have the gift of the Holy Spirit as Peter already told us, and if you can have the gift of the Holy Spirit, then we need to be seeking the Lord and desiring the best gifts of the Holy Spirit, for one purpose to glorify God, and be a blessing where we're at in the church, to be a blessing in the body of believers that we are a part of. That is God's purpose! And the second part of that purpose is to be involved in the great commission because it's two fold. You can't just minister inside the church and forget outside the church. And you can't just minister at home. It has to be a blessing to the whole body of Christ. And verse 11 we're going to read that now to put this into proper context. "But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills." Now notice that! It is the Holy Spirit who brings forth to the vessel that He has chosen. We cannot manifest these gifts on our own power. That's the flesh! It is the Spirit of God that manifests these gifts as He chooses. He works through vessels. If we are an open vessel who has already been gifted with the gift of the Holy Spirit, then we are then a vessel who should be seeking the best gifts and desiring God's will done wherever we go. Therefore, that type of a vessel can be used by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will choose as He will, as He decides, as He has already gone over the people that we are knowing what those needs are. And we're going to get into that in the next tape.

The Holy Spirit manifests the gift that He chooses in the vessel he chooses based on what He believes by His own ability to recognize the needs of the individuals. Sometimes a word of wisdom is needed; therefore He'll manifest it, sometimes the word of knowledge, sometimes the discerning of spirits. The gifts are divided into three parts and we'll get on that in the next tape. Keep in mind that God's love for His creation in the great commission is the main focal point behind the gifts of the Holy Spi