The New Testament Church, Gifts of the Spirit Part B
Taped by John Greene, transcribed by Mary Kay Lynd
Bible quotes are from NKJV unless otherwise stated.
We're looking at the gifts of the Holy Spirit and most scholars will break them down into three areas. We have the revelational gifts, the power gifts, and the inspirational gifts. Now let me say this. Our example of the Spirit-filled life must come from our Example with a capital E, that's Jesus. Jesus is our Example. Now some would say, "Now wait a minute, it never says that Jesus talked in other tongues." The idea that Jesus didn't talk in other tongues is not a problem. The Holy Spirit baptism wasn't given until the day of Pentecost, yet we know Jesus Christ was baptized by the Holy Spirit and His whole ministry of 3 ½ years was evidenced as our example of walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. We have Acts Chapter 10 in verse 38.... Let me turn there for a second. Acts Chapter 10 verse 38. We have Peter talking and Peter is making a statement about Jesus. Notice that he says, "how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him." It's clear that even though this is the incarnate Christ, even though this is Christ, the Son of the living God, He chose to walk this earth in a tent like you and I. He was 100% man, that cannot be denied. And I know it's disputed by some that are trying to make Jesus something different than what He is, but Jesus has always been God, he was with God from the very beginning, but we have also the incarnation of Christ where God the Son put on flesh somewhere around 6 or 7 b.c. He lived on this earth for about 30 years before he was publicly baptized by John the Baptist, and Peter is making note that here is evidence that after He was filled with the Spirit at the baptism of John the Baptist, he walked around this earth preaching the Word of God and if there was ever evidence of anybody being who they were, the signs and wonders themselves confirm whom Jesus is clearly. So, in terms of being used by the Holy Spirit I'm going to take for most of my examples from Jesus, but I'm also going to use somebody like Paul and somebody like Peter, those also that we know who were apostles that are recorded in Scripture. The two things that we don't have recorded in Scripture that I have no examples for the kinds of tongues, the gift of tongues. There's no example because how do you record tongues? There's no recording in Scripture about tongues. There's talk of it. It's mentioned as other tongues or unknown tongues, but there's no specific location in the New Testament where it says such and such believer said..., and went on in tongues and they recorded those unique tongues somehow. I don't know how you would ever do that. And just so they can always holler from the perspective of being one of those unbelievers, you can say well where's the evidence in Scripture? Well, you can always believe whatever you want. I'd rather just believe what Scripture says, and Scripture says that one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is, kinds of tongues, and another gift of the Holy Spirit interpretation of tongues. Those two things I don't have an example for. But I've chosen some examples and understand that there are many many examples that you can pull out.
But let's look at the revelational gifts. Word of wisdom according to verse 8, the word of wisdom. If you want to go to Matthew Chapter 10 we'll stick in Matthew for a little bit for a couple of examples. Look at verse 16 in Matthew Chapter 10. "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you." This little passage of scripture shows a word of wisdom. A word of wisdom is going to address an upcoming situation with sound Biblical understanding. Careful application of Bible knowledge is wisdom. When you soundly interpret Scripture and apply it you're using godly wisdom. The word of wisdom goes a little bit further than that. Here the Spirit of God is using Jesus to offer some wise words to His disciples and in this situation He's telling them about what they're going to experience and how to handle it. Well someone will say this is prophecy. No, not really, not really. It doesn't quite get into the area of prophecy, because remember all prophecy is about Jesus. The spirit of prophecy is Jesus Christ. So this is the word of wisdom. It is a fine line, and you can try to split hairs if you want to. I won't go there.
Turn over to Matthew 17 and we'll take a look at a word of knowledge. Matthew 17, and let's look at verse 27. "Nevertheless, lest we offend them, go to the sea, cast in a hook, and take the fish that comes up first. And when you have opened its mouth, you will find a piece of money; take that and give it to them for Me and you." Here Jesus is telling Peter go catch a fish. But He tells him why He's going to send him up to catch a fish, because they want to pay the tax, and so Jesus because the Spirit of God tells Him about a specific location, and a specific time that there's going to be available one special blessing of God, and in this case God's going to miraculously provide the tax in a fish. Peter is going to catch the fish, open it's mouth, and find the money, and then he's going to go pay the tax. That is a word of knowledge because it's acted upon immediately. A word of knowledge, when it's used in the context of the Holy Spirit, needs a vessel to be used, and it needs another vessel to accept it by faith. Generally speaking in the church, the word of knowledge will come forth at an altar call when it's one-on-one at the altar between whoever is ministering and somebody at the altar with a need. Sometimes it can be the area, that the individual ministering is then told about something in that individual such as, they have a headache that is a migraine, and stopping them from thinking about God. Now I know that sounds really weird and most people say, "Well wait a minute, God just disappears any headaches anyway. And anyone can say their headache is gone, when they never really had one." I don't have any perfect example for whoever may be listening to this. I'm using this just as an example. If the person who has this migraine, and if God through the Spirit tells an individual, this word of knowledge that He wants to heal that migraine, if that person believes it, God will immediately administer healing to that migraine. The person will no longer have the migraine. God ministers that way, so that person can now think on spiritual things and get some other things with God that they need. God sometimes wants to remove whatever is blocking the flow of His spirit and a word of knowledge many times will do exactly that.
Peter, if you go back to the example that I just read, all of a sudden had a problem because he wasn't sure about taxes and whether to pay them, or if Yashua were going to pay the tax. He was feeling uncomfortable. And because Peter wasn't looking at Jesus, he was looking at tax and what the people who were collecting the tax would think, Peter wasn't in a position to receive from God. Peter was now in a position where he was looking at temporal things. God doesn't want us looking at temporal things. God wants us looking at Him. Temporal things are going to pass away but faith, hope, and charity they abide forever. The relationship with God, if it's a right relationship with God, will abide forever. It goes on into eternity. But a temporal thing, even a healing, will disappear at the moment somebody dies the healing's gone. They may have been healed of something in their life and when they die their tent is gone and so the evidence that they were healed is gone, but faith in Christ, hope in Christ, love in Christ, those things abide forever.
Another and a third revelational gift is found in verse 10. That's discerning of spirits. Turn to Matthew Chapter 9. Discerning of spirits is where God reveals by His Spirit using the gift of discerning of spirits something that is happening. In Matthew Chapter 9 if we look at verse 4 it says, "But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts?" Jesus is able to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart by the power of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God using Him in the gift of discerning of spirits because He now knows what those evil Pharisees were thinking. This isn't mind reading. This isn't anything to do with psychic reading. This happens to deal with the Spirit of God looking at the need and giving Jesus the information that He needs to complete what is going on here in this passage. Obviously we're looking at the paralytic who had been paralyzed from a long, long time. He goes away blessing the Lord and praising the Lord and glorifying the Lord, but the Pharisees go away with hard hearts blaspheming God. Why? Because they were looking at evil and they were thinking evil and they were interpreting the things taking place through all of their prejudice and bias through their hard evil hearts. So discerning of spirits revealed that to Jesus.
The next section is the power gifts. The power gifts: the gifts of faith, the gifts of healings, the working of miracles, that's verses 9 and 10. Now understand that the gift of faith, the gifts of healings, and the working of miracles, some of these are so fine-lined that you could probably say they overlap each other. When you've been used in the gift of faith then you would understand where that difference is between that and the gifts of healings or the working of miracles. But we're going to look at some examples. For the gift of faith let's take a look a look at Acts Chapter 4. And we're going to see a specific move of God based on the rise of faith in the vessel He chooses, and in this case in Acts Chapter 4, we're talking about the man Peter. It says "Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit", this is verse 8, "filled with the Holy Spirit", said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders of Israel: If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole. This is the "stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.' Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."" Here we have before the Sanhedrin some apostles, Peter being one of them, John being the other, and they were taken just for the whole sake of intimidating and trying to put down this new thing that is taking place in Jerusalem. And Peter is used by God at that moment. He's an open vessel; he's been used before to preach. Now he's going to be used to take a firm, strong stand of trust in Jesus. God is going to miraculously by His Spirit raise the faith of Peter, that before the Sanhedrin those that can say, "Off with his head", the same people that crucified Jesus, before the Sanhedrin he is going to rise up, and tell them the truth. Now that takes a level of faith. Yes, you can say Peter was bold, but he's only bold because the word of God, because the Holy Spirit used him bringing his level of faith up. This was a divine allotment of special extra faith. This is a unique area of power, faith that goes above what he normally would. He might have normally allowed somebody else to say something, he might have said something to them that was far less than what needed to be said, but he boldly proclaims the truth of Jesus.
The gifts of healings. Go back to Chapter 9 of Matthew. The gifts of healings! We could use for an example in Chapter 9 of Matthew, verse 27. "When Jesus departed from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out and saying, "Son of David, have mercy on us!" And when He had come into the house, the blind men came to Him. And Jesus said to them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?" They said to Him, "Yes, Lord." Then He touched their eyes, saying, "According to your faith let it be to you." And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them, saying, "See that no one knows it." But when they had departed, they spread the news about Him in all that country." Jesus is used here to heal a couple of blind men. The gift of the Holy Spirit which, in this case, the gifts of healings. Healings is plural.
The other power gift is the working of miracles. The working of miracles. Let's go over to Acts Chapter 9. In Acts Chapter 9 we will begin in verse 36. Here in Acts Chapter 9, we are going to see Peter again. He's at Joppa. "At Joppa there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and charitable deeds which she did. But it happened in those days that she became sick and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. And since Lydda was near Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to him, imploring him not to delay in coming to them. Then Peter arose and went with them. When he had come, they brought him to the upper room. And all the widows stood by him weeping, showing the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them. But Peter put them all out, and knelt down and prayed. And turning to the body he said, "Tabitha, arise." And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. Then he gave her his hand and lifted her up; and when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive." This is a working of a miracle. This is the gift working of miracles by the Holy Spirit. Peter could never have done this. And God doesn't just go around sitting on his throne up in heaven and say, "Rise, rise, rise." He uses His Spirit in a vessel that is available. Peter could have said, "No, I'm not going to go", But he didn't. He chose to go. Peter could have said, "Well, I need faith." You see here's that fine line where he could have been given the gift of faith, but I think in this case, because of the scenario that's here, that it's probably classified better by the working of miracles.
The third category, inspirational gifts: again it's kinds of tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophecy. As I said before there is no example in the New Testament about kinds of tongues. There is no recording that we can go to and say, "Here's an example of somebody speaking in other tongues." We can go back to Chapter 2 and verse 4 where we have evidential tongues, but that is not the gift of tongues. And because we don't have the gift of tongues in operation to the point that we have an example recorded in Scripture, we therefore don't have an example of the interpretation of tongues. Can you imagine having a paragraph of unknown syllables and letters of some alphabet put together in print in our Bible and said, "This is tongue" ? And then right after that comes the interpretation of those unintelligible letters and communication. Interesting, it would be very interesting! That would be such a wonderful thing for those unbelievers out there in the church world who say, "Man I told you that was heresy. I told you that was demon talking." You know it's amazing. But let's keep on topic here. There are kinds of tongues. This according to Paul happens two or three in a service in a period of time in that service. And if the gift of tongues comes forth and it is distinctly different and if you were in a Pentecostal church for any period of time, a good one, you would see in operation and notice the distinct difference between prayerful tongues, between worship tongues, between singing tongues. You would notice the difference between those and the gift of tongues. The gift of tongues when it comes forth it must have an interpretation. If the individual used to bring forth the tongues does so and doesn't have it interpreted, that individual themselves better start praying because that tongue must be interpreted and the originator of that tongue will be given the interpretation if nobody else has the interpretation. God doesn't bring forth those tongues except that there is going to be an interpretation. Now if the originator of those tongues doesn't bring forth the interpretation then those were not tongues of God, but they were tongues of the individual and therefore the person in leadership should then challenge the individual in private and tell them in private that those tongues were not of God and that they need to make some kind of an open statement about it as an individual, repent, apologize to the congregation, whatever the case may be, but it needs to be taken up firmly according to Paul. I've stopped a service before until interpretation would come forth. The tongues must have an interpretation. If the tongues come forth and there's no interpretation, stop the service and wait for the interpretation. If they really are from God, and the Spirit of God will bear witness with you, if they are from God then there's going to be somebody that will be given the interpretation. I remember a couple of times where the interpretation took a little while, five minutes or so. Now in a prayerful situation waiting for the interpretation to come forth, five minutes is a long time, just waiting for the interpretation. As God sees fit. Now a lot of times you are going to find out that the individual who has been gifted by the Holy Spirit is an immature believer being brought forth and comforted and exhorted by the Holy Spirit to step out in faith to allow God to use them, and so sometimes in the case where the interpretation doesn't come forth it's because the individual is afraid to bring forth the interpretation. Why do I know that? Because for years I would not allow the Holy Spirit to use me. And it took a while, but as I began to allow God to do something then God began to do something. I don't know how many times I would go back forth after tongues came forth and I would say to somebody, "I got the interpretation of that", and they'd say, "Well why didn't you give it?" "Well, I wasn't sure it was from God." See this goes back to what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 12 at the very beginning, the first 3 verses, about who is going to be used by God and the Holy Spirit was going to use the vessel that is a vessel of His and He's not going to contradict himself, and He's not going to blaspheme. You can't say Jesus is Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit. So I can't have the interpretation in my heart, except it was the Holy Spirit. But anyway, it took a while to get over some fear of being used by God but once you get into that you can be able to do.
Another case is the issue of prophecy. This is the last inspirational gift, and it can be found in Acts Chapter 21. A very simple passage, Acts Chapter 21, and this is going to rap this up. In verse 10 it says, "And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. When he had come to us, he took Paul's belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, "Thus says the Holy Spirit, "So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles."'" Agabus, being used by the Holy Spirit, tells them in the gift of prophecy about what's going to happen. Now notice there's no tongues involved, there's no interpretation of it, its just prophecy. Simple prophecy. Now somebody will say, "Now wait a minute, he's a prophet." Ahh, but here's where we catch some of those unbelieving people who say that there are no more prophets today, but here they have Agabus. And yet Agabus, according to this, is speaking by the gift of the Holy Spirit because he says, "Thus says the Holy Spirit." So again these gifts, whether they're revelational gifts or power gifts or inspirational gifts, they're distributed at such time as the Spirit decides. To be used in these gifts of the Holy Spirit, one must have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidential tongues. God's not going to use a vessel He hasn't already baptized.
Now let me quickly, quickly go through some characteristics of a baptized person. This is based on the book of Acts. This is based on the book of Acts. The Holy Spirit baptism will be overwhelming presence of God in a person receiving the Holy Spirit. 2. There will be a noticeable and distinct change in the person immediate and progressively, in their life and witness of Jesus. The desire for growth in Jesus through the Word, and the Spirit revealing Himself, and Jesus is a desire for maturity. That desire will be there, because the promise is in the great commission connected. The desire to be a witnessing vessel of honor bearing the Father's fruit both in holiness and other lives committed will be manifested. Let me read that again just so that you can understand. Because of the promise which is in the commission it's connected together. The desire to be a witnessing vessel of honor bearing the Father's fruit both in holiness and in other lives, that commitment, that heart will be in the individual that is Spirit baptized because it's baptism with fire, zeal, the very heart of God. And God's heart is for His people, whether they have a relationship with Him or He wants them to have a relationship with Him because it's not His wish that any should perish, and a grateful and thankful heart knowing God's grace and mercy in action will be manifested in his love that the gift of the Holy Spirit and the ensuing gifts of the Holy Spirit are nothing to brag about! State that they're true, believe that they're true, but it's for the purpose of glorifying God, for fulfilling the commission. I think we've got no time left on this particular tape so we'll just wrap it up there. Understand that a person who is Spirit baptized is going to begin to desire the things of God in a way that they've never desired it before, and there's going to be the heart of God involved, and one of the things in God's heart is His holiness. Amen? Amen!