This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) This is day five together of our look at First Corinthians
chapter 12. We're going to look at verses 28 to 31 today. In fact, let me begin by
reading those verses.

First Corinthians 12, 28 to 31. And in the church, God has appointed first of
all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also
those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of
administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. Are all
apostles?

Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?

Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?

But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now, I will show you the most
excellent way. As we read through these verses, Paul adds to the list that he
gave us at the beginning of this chapter.

Earlier, he gave us a list of nine different gifts. Wisdom, knowledge, faith,
healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, interpretation. And now he
gives us a list of some other gifts.

First, he starts with some roles. He talks about apostles and prophets and
teachers. And then some more gifts.

He talks about miracles and helps and administration. And one of the questions
you might have is, why does he put an order to some of these? He says, first of
all, apostles, second prophets.

Is he saying that some gifts are more important than others? Well, he's just
told us that they're all equally important. And in fact, the least noticed are
the most important.

And apostles were very noticed. So obviously, he's not saying these are the most
important gifts. What he's giving us here is an order of ministry.

In the church, as a church is starting, first apostles, then prophets, then
teachers. You see, apostles, that's a gift to be a missionary. Apostles were the
ones who first went into a city and started the church.

So apostles get things started. And then prophets are those who tell the truth
about Jesus. Now, I know we've got this idea that Old Testament prophets told
the future.

And every once in a while, they did that. But most of the time, they just told
the truth even in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, prophets are all
about just telling the truth.

And they tell the truth about Jesus. They lead people to faith in Christ. They
win people to Christ.

So you got apostles, they start things out first. Then prophets, they win people
to Christ in the church. And then third, you've got teachers who teach those who
disciple those who've been one.

And that's the idea of first, second, and third here. Now, with that in mind,
there's this list that we have. We've talked about it at the beginning of the
week.

And now here we are at the end of the week. And in many ways, this is what most
interests us about this chapter. I'm glad we've talked first of all about the
reason for the gifts.

Because once you have that in mind, then the idea of which gift is mine and how
does it work, it becomes a little less important. You have a little bit more
freedom and discovery because you realize God's given me one. And I'm a part of
his church.

As long as I'm trying to use it in his church, he's going to show it to me
eventually 'cause he wants to glorify himself. So you don't have to worry about
it. You just work together in the church and you see what emerges, see what God
does.

But in light of that, I would like to walk through these gifts that we've seen
this week and see what kinds of gifts are out there. In the list earlier, in
this list, you really see three sort of general categories or areas of gifts.
And that might help you to think through what giftedness has God put into my
life.

As you look through these gifts, you see speaking gifts, you see serving gifts,
and you see what some call spectacular gifts. The speaking gifts, let's just
walk through these, what these gifts are. And as we walk through it, maybe one
of them, your heart warms to it.

If it does, then you try that gift out. You find a place to try it. For
instance, one of the speaking gifts is a word of wisdom.

That's the ability to apply God's truth to everyday life and to show people,
other people how to do that. You tell other people how to do that. You don't
have to preach a sermon to 10,000 people in order to do that.

You can do that to one person in your family or to a small group. In fact, you
might see this in your small group, that God has given you oftentimes a word of
wisdom. Oh, here's how this truth fits into this decision in my life.

That's a spiritual gift. Or another spiritual gift is a word of knowledge. A
word of knowledge is the ability to communicate God's truth for a situation in
life.

Knowledge is knowledge about who God is and how God acts, knowledge about God's
word, and somehow you're able to see as somebody's talking about a situation,
oh, here's what the Bible has to say about that. Or here's how the Bible fits
into that. Wisdom has to do with putting God's word into action in my life.

Knowledge has to do with understanding the truth of God's word as a foundation
oftentimes for my life. Oftentimes, knowledge has to do with the doctrine of
God's word and wisdom has to do with the practice of God's word. Not always, but
oftentimes.

And then there's another speaking gift, the gift of faith. That's the ability to
raise the vision of others. Now, all of us as Christians are to have faith.

So we're not talking about having faith here. We're not talking about you having
more faith than another person. The gift of faith is not just about how much
faith you have.

Remember, the gifts are given to minister to others. So the gift of faith is you
can raise the vision of others. You can help them to see with faith.

Then there's the gift of prophecy, the ability to preach God's word, to let
people know, to tell forth who God is so that people see how he can be at work
in their lives. And the gift of teaching. That's the ability to interpret God's
word, to communicate it clearly and specifically to help believers to be
discipled in their faith, to grow in their faith.

Those are some of the speaking gifts. A very brief description. Don't take that
description as whole.

There are other things I could have said, but it might just give you an idea of
what God is doing in your life, what gifts he's given you. There are the
speaking gifts. And then there are these serving gifts.

Serving gifts that we see here are helps, administration, and discernment. Helps
is the ability to give assistance or aid to other people. It's one of the most
important gifts in the church.

Things have to get done. People have to be served. It might be somebody who
needs to be served with food, or it might be somebody who needs to be served
with the way the church service is set up, or somebody who needs to be served by
finding out how to get from point A to point B.

There's a thousand, there's a million ways to serve people. Do you love doing
that? There's just something about you that, oh, there's fulfillment when I do
that.

And also people feel loved when I do that. That's the gift of helps. There's
also the gift of administration mentioned here.

That's the ability to lead others, to manage the affairs of the church. To help
is to set up a chair. To have the gift of administration is to figure out, hey,
we gotta get some chairs set up around here.

So we need 15 people to show up four hours before this in order to do this. We
need to do it on a weekly basis. So here's the chart, here's how we're going to set
it up.

You set it up so that that gift of helps is actually amplified, is strengthened.
If you got one person trying to set up a thousand chairs, they may have the
gift, but they're going to get worn out. But if somebody with the gift of
administration gets 10 people there or 100 people there, all of a sudden the
gift is better used.

So it takes both of them working together. And then there's also the gift of
discernment that's talked about here. That's the ability to discern between
truth and error.

To see as people are serving, whether they're serving out of a heart for God or
out of a heart of selfishness. Now part of this is just human wisdom. Over time
you learn to figure out what people's motivations are.

But there's more to this than that. There's also a spiritual gift. The consents
that can see, hmm, this is not the right thing to do at this moment, or this is
the right thing to do at this moment.

This is a serving gift, but it also goes a little beyond that. It's also a
leadership gift. So you might call these, actually in the church serving is
leading.

So when I talk about serving gifts, I'm also talking about leading gifts. And
knowing the right thing to do at the right time, or understanding the right
person to put in the right place at the right time, or understanding that's the
wrong person to put in that place at this time, those are discernment gifts that
have to do with leading in the kingdom. Speaking gifts, serving gifts, and then
there's this list of spectacular gifts, which we love to talk about a lot.

Miracles, that's the ability to perform maybe a healing miracle particularly,
but any miracle is an act contrary to natural laws. A healing miracle
particularly is either emotionally or physically or spiritually, you're seeing
somebody being healed. It might be a one-on-one situation, or it might be
praying for a number of people in a situation.

The gift of tongues, that's the ability to speak in a language unknown by the
speaker. And the gift of interpretation of tongues is the ability to interpret
the meaning of a tongue. Now, as I said at the beginning of this week, there is
some argument about which of these gifts should be used in which church and how.

And what I say is don't use a gift to glorify yourself. And sometimes these
spectacular gifts, they can tend towards that. So you have to be careful.

Sometimes the speaking gifts can tend towards that as well. I'm using the gift
to glorify myself. And don't use a gift in opposition to the leadership of the
church.

God's put those leaders there for a reason. God, if you say God's given me a
gift that I can't use in this church, well, maybe you need to be in a different
body. Maybe he has a different church for you to be in.

That doesn't say anything bad about the church you're in or anything great about
the church you go to. It's just saying what family God wants you in. What gift
has God given you?

Now, as we look through these gifts, are we somehow to have all the gifts? Is
the goal somehow to gain another gift and another gift so that as a Christian
eventually I have them all? Absolutely not.

We need each other in the body. That means we've all been given different gifts.
So we're not to have all the gifts and neither are any of us to have one of
these gifts.

Like, okay, all of us should have the gift of faith or all of us should have the
gift of helps or all of us should have the gift of tongues or all of us should
have the gift of preaching. No, God has given the gifts so that we are different
in the body. Sometimes we allow our own human nature to take away the glory of
what God wants to do at this point.

This was happening in Corinth. They had allowed what was supposed to be a mark
of strength through their unity to become a weakness of the church. By comparing
and competing, they were desiring only the gifts that were getting the most
notice in that church.

Well, that's happened again and again and again. It's happening still today.
You're going to be tempted towards that in your own life.

I certainly am. So Paul, knowing that, says, what gifts should you desire? And
he says, here's what you should desire.

You should desire the greater gifts. He says, in fact, I'm going to show you the
greater gifts. I'm going to show you the most excellent way.

And that's for next week. That's chapter 13. Paul shows us the greater gifts.

He shows us the most excellent way. As we end this week, looking forward to next
week and what he's going to show us, we end a week of looking at God's giftedness
in your life, how he wants to use you to make a difference. And as we end, I
want to pray for you.

Lord, I pray for each person here in this right now. I pray that you would
glorify yourself through your gifts in their life. In this man's life, in this
woman's life, I pray that you'd show yourself who you are, whether others notice
the gift or not.

Help them to see what gift you've given. Help them to use that gift in your
body. And through that, Jesus, glorify yourself now and all the way into
eternity.

Lord, instead of getting stuck on our human way of looking at things, comparing,
jealousy, competing, help us instead, Lord, to become enamored with the fact
that you have gifted us and that we get to live out those gifts the rest of our
lives. Show us how, show us how today we pray. In your name, amen.

Join us next week. We look at one of the most loved chapters in all of the
Bible, the love chapter, 1 Corinthians chapter 13.