Edifying the Body Through the Holy Spirit

Well, good afternoon again, brethren. Always good to see you, and glad that you're able to be here for services today. And it seems like Pentecost being next weekend. Of course, it is early, as most everything else is, with the Holy Days this year. All of it is earlier than what we kind of normally think. But it seems like it's amazing that it's only one more week, and we're at the time of the Feast of Pentecost. As I mentioned earlier, we had a very, I think you could say, uplifting and encouraging ministerial conference here this past weekend. And much of what we could say about a get-together of this type is that some of the ministry is able to physically be there, and all of us are able to at least make connections and be able to be involved that way. And yet, the atmosphere or evidence of agreement and harmony and peace and a certain amount of brotherly love is what makes that type of conference really, really meaningful. And I think we could see that through the individuals involved, through what it was that was presented. Of course, the theme of the conference was edifying the body through spiritual gifts. That was the focus of the keynote addresses, and several of the workshops were all connected to the topic of spiritual gifts.

And during the conference, not only were the main keynote addresses and the follow-up addresses that were to the general group, but even a number of the workshops. They had workshops that owned a couple of different time settings where several workshops were going on at the same time.

A number of them also were dealing with the topic of spiritual gifts. One of them was entitled, Building Blocks for a Healthy Congregation. Are you nurturing spiritual gifts in yourself or others, creating an environment for growth? This was actually a matter of understanding not only more about spiritual gifts, but how it is that that should benefit our congregation. Because, as I'll mention to you, this is really what we want to study, what we want to consider as we look into this coming year.

Is this an area that we could grow? Is this an area that we could benefit from more than we have? And I know from just being forced to think about it, being forced to study it as we've had these presentations, I think that I understand a little better about how it's presented and what it means and how it's important for me, but more importantly, how it's important for you. How it's important for each of us. Because all of us want to be working together, or even as our themed topic, edifying the body through spiritual gifts. It points out how the entirety of the body should benefit from any spiritual gifts that individuals have.

Now, there was also a session on abuse of spiritual gifts. And I think in many ways, that's what I sometimes think about. Whenever I think of spiritual gifts, I often think of the topic of tongues or languages, or as some organizations, even some denominations, promote some type of unusual and really unrealistic.

Expression of just unintelligible things, that's what comes into my mind. And yet, whenever you read, I think in some ways it probably comes from what we read about the Day of Pentecost and about the miracle that clearly God did achieve on that particular day when He started the New Testament Church by sending the Holy Spirit.

That is the type of thing that we often either have seen, whether in person or heard about, or maybe you could even see on television at times. But that is clearly an abuse. That is not, and maybe that's not even a use of spiritual gifts. Maybe that's not a gift from God at all. That would be another way of perhaps viewing that. But I think we should think about, and this is something that I've really, I think, come to see a little more clearly, that spiritual gifts or gifts that come from the Spirit, gifts that come from the Holy Spirit, are clearly written about here in the Bible.

They clearly do exist. Now, I'd like to make a little differentiation between the fruits of the Spirit.

The fruits of the Spirit, which all of you can enumerate, you should be able to enumerate, or we should read Galatians 5, to be able to enumerate love and joy and peace and longsuffering and gentleness and goodness and faith and meekness and temperance. Now those, clearly, they're listed to be in opposition to the works of the flesh, the fruit of the Spirit. Now, how many of us need to exemplify some of the fruit of the Spirit? All of us. All of us should be desiring. I certainly desire, and I encourage you to desire to reflect what I see as described there as the divine nature. The nature of God is, in some ways, encapsulated. You can say it's encapsulated in the first one, in love. But this is an expansion of it. There's nine that are listed there, again, that we're familiar with. And yet we all should desire to produce that fruit. We all should desire to grow to understanding how that we request that God would cause us to grow in these very important areas of spiritual development, of spiritual growth. Now, in contrast to this, I think we can see, when we read through some of these verses that we will hear this afternoon, that spiritual gifts, or gifts that come from the Holy Spirit, they come from the Spirit of God for a purpose.

They come, and they could be, they're not going to be all the same. I mean, in a sense, like I mentioned about all of us, ought to be growing in the fruit of the Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit may vary quite widely. That, at least, is what I see in reading what it tells us. It could vary a good amount.

And some of them could even be temporary. See, now, I don't want the fruit of the Spirit to be temporary. I want that to become permanent.

I want, and I think God wants all of us, to have the fruit of the Spirit that becomes a part of our nature.

But see, the spiritual gifts that we see listed, they could vary. And there could be a limit on even the time frame as far as when it could be most exemplified. And I just point that out because there seems to be a difference there between growing in the fruit of the Spirit of God and how it is that spiritual gifts are described.

Here, mostly in Paul's writings. You don't see, actually, Peter mentions gifts that are given to you to serve or to help other people. And yet, primarily, the few verses that we have that list, spiritual gifts, are written about by the Apostle Paul. Now, you see a manifestation of a gift that God caused in Acts 2. But, primarily, you see Paul listing these to his instruction to the people in Romans and in Corinth and then over in Ephesians. You see, each of those letters, he lists, in some ways, different descriptions of spiritual gifts that he said God can make available. And yet, he points out clearly that they can vary. They can differ. They may differ from group to group as far as congregation, even. And so, I think it's important that we understand. If you'll turn to 1 Corinthians 12, Corinthians is actually a place, and this is something that I don't believe I've ever seen or understood, as I see today, something about this that can possibly be helpful. In 1 Corinthians 12, we're told, and we mentioned this last week in the sermon that we had that came through from Cincinnati, and this was even emphasized more in the meetings on Sunday and on Monday. But here in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 7, Paul says, to each is given the manifestation. Oh, actually, let me back up to verse 1 concerning spiritual gifts. So, here, obviously, Paul is talking about spiritual gifts. He's saying, I want to explain something to you.

You actually, you know, I've heard certain things about you. I've also understood you've had some questions, you've had some difficulties. There have even been some abuses, which is what he was telling them. But he says, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I don't want you to be uninformed or ignorant. I want you to understand. I want you to realize what it is that God is able to do. Realize how powerful he is. Realize, you know, he's able to gift people as he sees fit in order to cause those given people to feel boastful and arrogant. No. That isn't why he would do that. That's the misuse. That's the abuse. That's the wrong thought or concept, even, regarding spiritual gifts. He says, I don't want you to be uninformed, but he says in verse 7, he says, To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good, for the profit of all. You know, if anyone has any gift of the Spirit, it's not because of they being so wonderfully brilliant that God has blessed them with this great gift. But that that gift can be used to serve the entirety of the church. That's what spiritual gifts are about. That's what the purpose is. And so, in a sense, this is a, I think, a directive from God about how it is that spiritual, and of course, Paul was teaching the church members in Corinth, this is what you must understand. And he said, by what every member supplies, every member doing their own share. To each individual, all of us collectively, all of us working together, all of us with different abilities from God, can achieve much more than what individually we could ever achieve. And so, I think it's important for us to understand that. And I, in looking at this Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 and 14, I think it's very interesting to see how that these three chapters, they actually talk a good amount about spiritual gifts. Chapter 12 and chapter 14, if you haven't read those lately, it would be good to read them. I'm going to say, I assume you may have read chapter 13 at one time or another, maybe even recently, because we mentioned that as the love chapter of the Bible.

But see, chapter 13 is positioned, I guess, as Paul, and under God's inspiration, decided to put it between a discussion of spiritual gifts in chapter 12 and a continuation of a discussion of spiritual gifts and how there should be order in the church in chapter 14. But see, what does he put right in the middle? Well, he's put the more excellent way. He's put the way that all of us should want to be, and he actually says this fabulous blessing from God, called the love of God, is more important. It's more significant. It's more meaningful. It has more benefit than any of the spiritual gifts I'm talking to you about, actually, in both sides of that chapter, in chapter 12 and 14. I think it's fascinating to see how it is that God has even put that together. But it's very clear when you read through the book of Corinthians, especially 1 Corinthians, how they had received some spiritual gifts. Some of it had to do with tongues or languages. Some of it had to do with other spiritual gifts that they were misusing.

Actually, when you think about it, if people were being puffed up, if people, and of course it is one of the areas that's mentioned in chapter 5, that people were puffed up over accepting sin and not even trying to address it, if they were puffed up over having this gift or having that gift, that's why they had the problems of division that they had. See, that's the primary thing that you read about if you read the first three chapters in 1 Corinthians, what Paul is trying to address, and it says, you know, I see that you're divided.

You're following different people. You're not focused on the head of the church. You are divided, and you all need to come to have the same mind and the same spirit and direction. You shouldn't be divided in that way. You need to be united. You need to be pulling together. I would say that because of misuse and perhaps misunderstanding of the spiritual gifts that they've been given, that they were, in a sense, dividing instead of pulling together and serving one another. And so it had caused much of the division that was very apparent in Corinth.

And of course, you want to avoid that. You want to avoid division. You know, division doesn't allow you to achieve the objective that God brought you into the church to be able to achieve. And actually, what Paul is helping the Corinthians to understand is that learning that you have received a gift from God and learning to use that for the good of the church, that enables you, and you have to seek that, in a type of humility and gentleness and patience in submission to Jesus Christ and, in essence, in submission to one another.

See, that's what he was really telling them. Instead of puffing you up, instead of dividing you, instead of, in a sense, corrupting you, you need to realize that the gift that you've been given has come to you in order to serve the church. And so it involves a yieldedness to the lead of the Holy Spirit in our lives, enabling harmony and unity to actually grow. It talks about the church building itself up in love.

Well, it's a part of using the gifts that were given to share with one another what God has provided for the good of all. And actually, a statement that was made, I believe, on the second day, maybe it was the first day of our conference, that what's really important, what is most important as we think about the topics of gifts from God and gifts from the Spirit, it's not the gift that's important.

It's not the gift that's important, but the one who gives the gift that is important. God's the one who's important. He's the one who would provide gifts. He says even the receipt of the Holy Spirit is a gift from Him. And yet Paul defines and points out how different individuals have been given gifts in order to edify the church, in order to serve the church. I'd like for us to look at this here in 1 Corinthians 12.

We go over toward the latter part of it. I'd actually like for us to see the connection between chapter 12. I'm going to at least give you some references. I may not be able to cover all of the information that you can read yourself as you think about your own self. And think about others that you know in the church and others that how we are to work together to build up the body.

It's not just the ministry that's supposed to work together. We're supposed to and sometimes we have. Sometimes we haven't. We have not always achieved that objective. But all of us are supposed to be working together to edify the body, to build up the body. But here in 1 Corinthians 12, it lists actually some of the gifts in verse 28 where it talks about some of the roles and responsibilities that you find within the framework of the church of God.

Those are actually gifts that God gives the church. And yet it starts in verse 29. And Paul points out after discussing different gifts that people have been given, different responsibilities or roles that they may be given to benefit the church. He says in verse 29, is everyone an apostle? Well, obviously the answer to that was no. And he says, are all prophets? And the answer obviously was no. Are all teachers? No. Do all work miracles? No. Do all possess the gift of healing? No. Do all speak in tongues or do all interpret? And of course the answer to every one of those questions that he posed was no.

Some may be gifted, may have been given certain responsibilities in some of these areas for the benefit of the church, but not all have the same office or the same responsibility.

But he says in verse 31, I want you to strive. But strive for the greater gifts, and yet I'm going to show you still a more excellent way.

So here we see in verse 31 that it's not wrong to strive to understand or to use gifts from God as we come to see that we either have received those in order to serve the church or that we are wanting to figure out how we can work together with others to do that.

But he says strive for the greater gifts. Actually, if you go up to verse 1 of chapter 14, he says, I want you to pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy, again, prophesy not meaning entirely predicting the future, but often, most importantly, just inspired teaching or inspired preaching.

And actually, whenever you read our articles in the Good News magazine, we often focus on some form of prophecy. We often focus on some form of writing about what's going to happen.

Well, where did we get that? Well, that's come from the pages of the Bible. It's come from what we understand, either from the Old or primarily from the New Testament, and primarily from what the Apostles were saying.

The Apostle John was inspired to write down. See, I don't know that I had thought about that in this way, but see, the Apostle John may have had a spirit of prophecy in that being able to foretell the future.

He was simply writing down what Jesus Christ gave him an understanding of. He says, I want you to write down what you see in this vision. And what he saw, to him, I'm sure, was just unimaginable. It was inexplicable in many cases. It was very hard to be able to even describe what he was seeing.

And yet he wrote down, and we read that today, and we understand certain parts of it. Some of it seems very clear. Some of it seems not so clear.

You read certain sections of Revelation, and perhaps there's yet more to be revealed or to be understood about what that book is even telling us.

But he says, I want you to strive for spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy.

And so, it's not a matter of not having, and then misusing. It's a matter of asking for God to help us have the gifts that he wants us to have in order to serve the church and to do the work that the church has been commissioned to do. All of us collectively, all of us in mutual care, mutual respect, can achieve that with God's help. And we can achieve that on our own. We need to achieve that with the help of God.

But what you find here, actually, if you drop on down in chapter 14, it says in verse 12, So with yourselves, since you are eager for spiritual gifts, I want you to strive to excel in them, again, why? For building up the church.

See, that's what he was telling them. He's actually going to give them some instruction on doing things in an orderly way and actually pleasing God with the peace and the harmony that they didn't have.

He was telling them, this is what you need. He wasn't saying, this is what you do and what you have. You are misunderstanding and misusing this.

I want you to realize that you strive to excel in the spiritual gifts that God can give, that you do that for the building up of the church.

And see, different individuals here in this congregation have different spiritual gifts, have different abilities, and we can try to learn about those.

We can try to strive to improve those. We can ask God to give those to us, actually.

And yet, I think they have a proper understanding of why they would be even given.

If we drop on down to verse 18, you see something interesting about Paul. He says, I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.

See, what was he saying? Well, he was saying, apparently, that he was able to either understand or speak in different languages.

I know he was an educated person, and perhaps he had several languages that he was relatively schooled in, but maybe he understood other languages just from the help that God gave him.

But he says, I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you, but nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind. Five words that would be clear and make sense, as far as for most of us, in English.

I'd rather speak five words in English with clarity in order to instruct others than 10,000 words in some other language.

He said, it wouldn't make any difference if I were able to speak to all of you in Italian.

There may be a few of you who could understand Italian. I know I've been to the feast site in Italy and at church. About half the time, the sermon is given in Italian.

Thankfully, we hear it in our headphones in English. Somebody's having to do the interpreting. Does that person have a gift at interpreting? I don't know.

They probably are schooled, but maybe they have special ability in that schooling. I absolutely know that I've studied German for two years.

Don't know one lick of German. Absolutely not.

I can barely remember even a few words and then can't remember what they mean.

I'm sure some people are gifted in certain linguistic areas.

Yet, what Paul said is that if I speak to the church in an area or language that they can't understand, then I'm just killing time.

I'm just wasting time. That has no benefit. That's not instructing the church. I would rather give five words in English.

I'd rather give three words in English. Love, one, another. See, that got to everybody. That's what all of us should do.

That would make sense, but to continue in German or Italian or something wouldn't make sense.

Certainly, it's interesting to see Paul's balance. He was a very able individual.

He was not only highly schooled, but in many ways he'd been given a lot of authority, a lot of responsibility.

Yet, he also had been caused to be blind for several days in order for God to get his attention.

For him to see, I need to be obeying Jesus Christ.

I need to be yielded to the one who is able and who is calling me and who is able to work through me in service to the church.

I frame this with the last few verses that we read in 1 Corinthians 12, with several verses that you read here in chapter 14, to simply point out that what he says in the very last statement in chapter 12, in verse 31, he says, Strive for greater gifts, but I'm going to show you a still, more excellent way.

He says, having a gift from God and using that gift in serving others and in building up the church is great.

But he says there's even something that's more important than that. There is some quality, there is some understanding, and this is what we read in 1 Corinthians 13. Again, we often extract that and we read it and we can study it, and that's certainly good to do, and we need to do probably that even more. But see, he's using this as an instruction, and he even says in chapter 13, verse 1, if I speak with the tongues of men and if I speak with the tongues of angels, whatever that is, I don't know what kind of language do angels use, how do they communicate? I don't know.

And yet he says, if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and yet if I do not have love of God, then I'm just making noise. I am simply making noise. He goes on to say, if I have all knowledge and if I can predict the future, see, in essence, he was in essence saying some of the spiritual gifts that the Corinthians were misusing, he said, if I had these, if I had all faith enough to remove mountains, if I don't have the love of God, if I don't have love for others and respect for others and appreciation for others, as we see described here, he says, I'm simply nothing. And he says, if I give everything I have to the poor and if I give my body to be burned, if I don't have love, I'm nothing. And so he goes ahead and describes what love is, and we won't take time to read all of that, but he does conclude, starting in about verse 8 on down to the end of that chapter, what he does point out is love, which is what all of the Corinthians and all of the Kansas City Christians here, and the Fulton Christians back there, in the back row, all of us need to be growing in this type of love, and we need to have what it's described as the most important thing in that it describes the love of God as absolutely permanent.

It says it will not fail. It is absolutely complete. It says we see stuff in part, but ultimately we will see all things with the love of God and it is absolutely supreme. He says it's above love or above faith. It's above hope.

He says faith, hope, and love abide with the greatest of these, the one that is supreme, the one that rules over everything, and of course describes the Father and the Son and their relationship with one another, his love.

And so Paul puts this chapter in here in the middle of a discussion about spiritual gifts to help people realize that while spiritual gifts, in a sense, can't even come and go, they may be somewhat temporary at times, and yet the love of God will always be the right way to go.

It will always be the right description that we should have for our lives, for our relationships, for our relationship with our husband or our wife or our children or one another or others.

We are to have love for one another.

And so I think this makes more sense as far as chapter 13 to me as I study before and behind 12 and 14, and see what they're talking about and see why Paul would insert that right here, and why God inspired it to be written in that way to say, this is the most important area that you need to grow in.

But he was pointing out that spiritual gifts, and let's back up to chapter 12, and I'll read through a few of these.

Because actually, and at the conference, we had several different discussions or seminars and speakers who pointed out different kind of groupings or how you could kind of group together different of the spiritual gifts that God may make available to us.

And then we can ask that God would help us have some of these gifts, and maybe we should ask that God would provide whatever gifts He wants for the building up of the body, for the building up of the church.

And yet, there are three different categories here that I'll just mention briefly.

Now, the first one is gifts that seem to just be signs and wonders.

Actually, you find back when you read through the first part of the book of Acts, and of course Acts 2 is when the Holy Spirit came to Peter and others of the disciples, and to many a little wider group there who were keeping the day of Pentecost.

And yet, you see in verse 43, and we'll just read this one verse here in Acts 2, verse 43, this is talking about after the individuals who initially were added to the church by receiving the Holy Spirit, it says in verse 43, all came upon everyone because many signs and wonders were being done by the apostles.

Well, what were they doing? Some of that had to do with healing.

Some of that had to do with a certain level of discernment of spirit.

Some of it had to do, perhaps, with some of the languages. It doesn't directly say, it just says that people were in awe. They were in awe of what the Spirit of God was able to do in the newly formed Church of God.

They were in awe of that. I'm not going to read all of this because we'll probably read it next week.

And yet, this is one kind of grouping. If we look back here to 1 Corinthians 12, starting in about, and Paul is enumerating different gifts that come from the Spirit, he says in verse 9, talking about to one is given a certain gift, and to another, another.

Verse 9, to another faith by the same Spirit.

Verse 9, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit.

Verse 10, to another the working of miracles.

To another prophecy or inspired preaching.

To another the discernment of spirits.

To another various kinds of tongues.

To another the interpretation of tongues.

See, now that seems to describe, you know, maybe some of the signs and wonders that were taking place there on the first day or days after the coming of the Holy Spirit as the apostles were starting to do their work and as people were being added, as we know the first day, 3000, and then later it seems, you know, a couple thousand more had to be added because there were 5000 there then. And yet a lot of people were being drawn to be a part of the Church of God.

Apparently something was happening to get their attention.

And you also find this with Jesus because clearly he had, you could say, all of these gifts and he was able to heal the sick.

He was able to know exactly who it was that was talking to him if it was some type of spirit. He was able to perform all kinds of miracles as we are well aware that he can change loaves and fish.

I mean, he was able to do those things.

And the disciples may have been enabled to do at least certain of those things.

It doesn't always clearly describe, but, you know, they're in a category that you could just describe as signs and wonders. They seem, you know, to appear there in New Testament times. I don't know, we could always say that all of those gifts are always going to be available.

And you don't always see that even, you know, when you read through the book of Acts.

The second section that I'll focus on is actually here in chapter 12, verse 28.

He says in talking about the body, you are the body of Christ in verse 27 and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church. And here He starts enumerating what seems to be different roles or responsibilities that we could say are gifts that help perfect the church.

It lists them here as apostles. Verse 28, God has appointed in the church some to be apostles, some to be prophets, teachers.

Some to have deeds of power and gifts of healing and forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues.

Again, He mentions all of these. He says not everyone has all of these. And yet, He says these are gifts that are given for the perfecting.

If we look back to Ephesians 4, even more specifically, in Ephesians 4, you see a similar group of listings here.

And it says in verse 11, the gifts that He gave were that some would be apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.

And those appear to be, again, even in our own knowledge of the church of God over the last 60 or 70 years.

We probably have thought that certain individuals had certain of those gifts. And certainly we all need teachers. We all need pastors. We all need individuals who can lead and assist us, serve us in that way.

But He says the reason for those gifts in verse 12 is to equip the saints. To equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body, until we all come to the unity, the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God.

See, until we all come to a measure of the full stature of Jesus Christ. See, those gifts, as He describes these roles and offices, He says, I can raise up people to fulfill these roles if I need to.

If I need to equip the saints in that way, and of course He goes on to describe even how the body is to be building itself up in love down in verse 16.

He says the whole body has got to be working together to achieve that. But He says I give some gifts in order to equip the saints.

The last area that I want to focus on is another listing that Paul gives here in chapter 12 of Romans. He lists in chapter 12 what you might say were gifts.

Some of these that we've already read, gifts of wisdom or knowledge.

Do we know people who have those gifts? I think I do. I don't know that I have any of those, but I know that certain people who have gifts of knowledge and gifts of wisdom that I would very much trust with being able to help others wisely, be able to serve them that way.

But here in Romans 12, he says in verse 3, See, that was a problem in Corinth. That was a problem in Rome. It's a problem that people have struggled with as far as just human nature.

But he said in verse 3, I want everyone to think about it. Not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with a sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as in one body we have many members, and yet not all the members have the same function.

He says there are variations within every congregation, within every grouping of Christians.

And he says, so in verse 5, We who are many are one body, and individually we are members one of another, each of us.

And he actually describes this in greater detail in Corinthians. He talks about how every member needs to supply something to the body. Every member has an opportunity and responsibility to do that.

But then they all need to be working together in order to build everyone up.

And yet here, he says we're all working together. And in verse 6, he says we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

And so even though, as I mentioned earlier, we all might seek and want the fruit of the Spirit of God, gifts of this type are gifts of service, gifts of, in a sense, they are gifts of love that we can extend to others. That's what we're going to see enumerated here in verse 6. We have gifts that differ according to the grace that is given to us. He mentions prophecy or inspired preaching. You know, that is something that we certainly ask that God will inspire and instruct and direct the teaching and preaching that is done in our congregations, not only here, but around the world.

He says in proportion, we've been given gifts in proportion to faith.

See, faith is listed here as another gift.

He says ministry, in ministering, and that ministry there doesn't simply just mean, you know, ordained ministry, but in service to other people.

And so that clearly is a gift, and we may even ask God to give us a gift of service. And that's going to enable us then to, you know, desire to serve, maybe desire to help and desire to put ourselves out at the service of others.

He says, administering the teacher in teaching, you know, different teachers. Many of us learn different ways, and sometimes we hear one person say something. We maybe don't clearly understand him. We hear somebody else say it. Same similar thing. We have a better understanding of it. And so in teaching, that so clearly can be another form of a gift. He says the exhorter, in exhortation. And so who's an exhorter?

You know, do you know any exhorters? Actually, usually you'd find that you want to be around the exhorters. You want to be around people who are able to lift you up. And in many ways, I think we want to lift one. And I want to lift you up if I can. I want to lift myself up. I want to encourage others if that's possible. And yet it says that's a gift that we could ask for.

Another gift that's listed here. The exhorter, in exhortation. The giver, in generosity. Now, there are different individuals, part of every congregation, who are more able to give than others. And that all varies. And yet if we are able to do that, if we have that gift, if we are able to do that, it tells us to do that with generosity. The leader. To do leading in diligence. And again, you don't have to say that, well, the leader has got to be designated to some specific role or responsibility. We have a lot of leading that goes on here in the congregation. There's a certain level of organization that has to take place in order for us to get the chair set up every day.

And then take them back down. Somebody's got to be organizing that or coordinating that. Whenever we have every feast site we go to, we've got to have somebody who organizes that in some way and leads. We wouldn't have much of a choir if we didn't have a conductor. We didn't have someone to use a certain level of talent and maybe gift from God to help us. I know you think about an orchestra and the conductor is pointing at different sections of the orchestra in order to bring out the greatest benefit from the group. See, that's what this talks about when it talks about a leader doing that diligently and serving other people and doing that out of a sense of love and concern for them and a desire, really, to praise God.

We have people who have those gifts. The last one that's listed here, the leader in diligence, the compassionate, the merciful in cheerfulness. See, there may be people who have gifts of extreme ability to empathize and to sympathize with others and even to listen to others. That's a gift, feeling that type of sympathy and assisting in cheering others up. That's what this is referring to.

Do we know people? Do we have people here in this congregation that God has gifted some of these gifts? I think we should think about that because God wants us to use those gifts in service to one another and in building up. I want to be able to point these out. I know I've had to do this currently today.

You can go back and read each of those sections. Again, I don't know that we fully understand totally what every one of those words might be describing, but you can get the drift of it. You can see, particularly there in 1 Corinthians, that Paul was correcting a misuse of gifts that had been given. Yet he was not saying, avoid them like the plague. He didn't say that. He said, seek to understand them. Seek to use them. Seek to help one another draw together in building up the body.

I would say, as we understand the reason why God would give spiritual gifts, that we can maybe pursue those in our study or in our prayer. We can come to know what that means and how it is that God may have given me a gift, you a gift, someone else here in the congregation a gift. If we are praying to understand what God has given us, we are encouraging one another.

If I know or feel that you have a gift in a certain way, I would hope I would try to encourage that. I think we should try to encourage that in one another, as we may even see gifts that God has given us exhibited.

I would say I have been lax in that. I may think something about different individuals. I usually don't say anything. And yet that can be even a form of encouragement. I would encourage all of us, not only to perhaps study this area more, those are the primary verses that we have that we use that describe spiritual gifts.

But I would hope that we would seek to understand and then use those spiritual gifts that God gives us in order to serve one another. And we can think of service in a narrow way, we can think of it in a wider way. I hope that all of us could be thinking about that as we pray about it, as we encourage each other, as we understand or see in someone else. You know, God's love being exemplified through certain gifts, then we ought to encourage with that. And so I would hope that we could seek to edify and to build up the body. That's what our calling involves. We understand that it has other aspects, but it does involve the power of God.

I don't guess we really... that may be an understatement. It involves the power of God. If we're going to be successful, it will be because of the power of God. It is not by our might. It is not by our strength that we'll ever achieve the work that God gives us to do. But it is by the power of God, by the Spirit of God working in us. So we want to yield to that Spirit. We want to be guided by that Spirit. And we want to be thankful that God is the one who deserves the credit for any spiritual gift He might bless us with.