By The Spirit of God

Sunday, May 15th, 2005
Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 12:3-13, Romans 12:6b-8

3Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Let Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit. 4Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

What is your gift? What is your spiritual gift? Is it one of those that Paul listed in this letter to the church in Corinth, or perhaps in his letter to the church at Rome (Chapter 12), where we read:

6We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7 ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8 the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Does the question alone make you uncomfortable? Does the topic set you on edge, wondering if you actually HAVE a gift to share, wondering if there is anything of value you could bring to the table?

Or are you at the other extreme of that particular spectrum, sure of your gift, or perhaps talents … whether you believe it is on loan from God or not, you are aware of your worth, and confidently and proudly stand forth, chest out, head held high.

How many of us have seriously taken the time to do a Spiritual gift inventory? Though I’ve not asked outright, my suspicion is that, if you’ve been involved in church at all over the last, say twenty to twenty-five years, if you’ve lived through what some have called the Charismatic Renewal, the chances are pretty good that at some point you’ve gone through some study of some kind where you’ve answered a series of questions and worked out some sort of formula or diagram that gave you an indication of what your spiritual gift most likely is.

The questions in your mind today may be ones that fundamentally trump the whole issue: What’s the big deal? Why should I need to know? And what difference does it make?

So let’s go with the first question: What is the big deal with spiritual gifts? We need to step back and consider the basic assumption first: that of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

IF you agree with the assumption that the Holy Spirit comes to live in you when you become a follower of Christ, then you go to the next step. If you don’t, then there’s not a lot of ground we might be able to call ‘common’ between us on the issue. So let’s stipulate, let’s agree on that as a basic assumption, for the sake of argument … or for the sake of getting through the next few minutes. J

What’s the big deal with Spiritual Gifts? The big deal is this: it is by the gift that we identify the presence of the Holy Spirit. There are arguments on whether or not these lists are exhaustive. They do slightly overlap, with the gift of prophecy being mentioned in both passages, but besides that, they seem to list different gifts. To be completely honest with you, I don’t know if they are exhaustive. My inclination is to believe that they are not, simply because I don’t like to put limits on how, when or where God will manifest God’s self. I speak here simply as an individual, not as one who has studied the topic in depth to any degree but the slightest. In other words, I believe there are gifts of the Spirit that are not mentioned here that do exist. It may in fact be a question of semantics – it might be that the words that I would choose to describe a particular gift would fall under one of those terms listed here as a subheading, and I’m simply not in a frame of mind to think that way. That can sometimes happen with words.

What’s the big deal? The big deal is that these are gifts God wants us to have – to use, not for our personal benefit, not for our personal gain, but for the uplifting and the strengthening – the common good – of the body of Christ – that is, the church – THIS church, Jerusalem Baptist, and through it, the Church … universal … the Church around the world, in all it’s glorious diversity of languages, and cultures, and forms and methods and colors.

Pentecost is symbolized by the color red, and the yellow and gold of the flame of the Spirit, but it might just as well be symbolized by the rainbow – it is, after all, the day we remember that the Spirit of God descended on ALL those who were gathered, and they began to speak in the languages of ALL the people who were visiting Jerusalem at the time of the feast of Pentecost, and they came from ALL over the known world. And God sends us into ALL the world to bear witness to him.

So I guess it is a pretty big deal.

Second question: Why should I need to know? That’s actually kind of tough to answer. There’s a part of me that wants to say “who wouldn’t want to know?” Maybe it WOULD be better that you not know your gift, that you go on about your business, living your life for Christ, and letting your gift show itself … naturally … in the normal course of events. As the need arises, the Spirit prompts you to move forward, say, into a situation that you’re really not sure why you are there, but to which for some reason you’ve been drawn. And then something happens and you say or do something that triggers a cascade of events that results in … everyone involved catching a glimpse of the Kingdom, unexpectedly, serendipitously, and coming away all the richer for it. Why should we at least try to have an idea of what our spiritual gift might be? I think maybe because we are called to be intentional in our living. We are called to be prepared to testify, whether by word or in deed, in that, I think we’re called to reflect God’s intentional movement in humanity to draw us to God’s self.

Last question: what difference does it make?

This is the one that you get to answer. What difference has this church made in YOUR life? What difference has being a part of THE church, wherever you attend, or if you attend occasionally or regularly, made to YOU?

Understand that what I am asking goes deeper than simply what difference has it made to your schedule of activities in any given week to walk into a building, meet with a group of people, hear a few songs and read from a passage of scripture and listened to someone speak on it on any given Sunday or weeknight.

What I am asking is this: assuming that you believe that following Christ involves some openness to the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life, can you honestly say that you have spoken, thought, or acted differently than you might have had you NOT at some point chosen to allow Christ to be Lord of your life?

The second part of verse 3, chapter 12 of 1st Corinthians:

No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.

So it seems that there is one gift before all the others: the gift of faith. Faith the make that statement: “Jesus is Lord.” There’s a reason we have the candidate for baptism give their confession of faith before being baptized. It is a proclamation of the Gospel in three words. No qualifiers. Simply the full story: Jesus is Lord. And according to Paul, that cannot be said – and believed – except by or through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

For Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, that means this: We rely ONLY on the Holy Spirit, not only as a person of the trinity, but just as significantly, through the Spirit’s presence in each other to serve as the SOLE provider of our strength, to be the encourager of our OWN spirits, to affirm us when we are unsure of ourselves, to surround us when we feel overwhelmed, and to comfort us when we are heartbroken.

Let’s pray.