Spiritual Gifts
Download MP3If you would open in your bibles to 1st Corinthians 12. 1st Corinthians 12. In our study of Acts, which is what we've been going through for the past few months, we've been looking at the the birth and the growth of the New Testament church. Along with this, we've seen how the spirit of god has been at work, how he has been moving in the midst of the church. And so I thought this would be a good time because this this topics come up a number of times.
Joel Brooks:I thought this would be a good time for us to to depart from Acts for just a week and to look at the topic of spiritual gifts. So tonight, you're in for a once in a lifetime event, and you're going to get to know everything there is to know about spiritual gifts before 6:15. Your every question will be answered. Actually, we will give time. I'm gonna pull back on the sermon just a little bit to give time for some questions.
Joel Brooks:So hopefully, we can interact. If you have a little question as we're going through the message, just write it down and then you can ask it, when we're done with the message. But we're gonna read tonight from 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Let's begin reading in verse 4. Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same spirit.
Joel Brooks:And there are varieties of service, but the same Lord. And there are a variety of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all and everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. For to 1 is given through the spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit. To another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
Joel Brooks:All these are empowered by 1 in the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills. For just as the body is 1 and has many members and all members of the body, though many are 1 body, so it is with Christ. For in 1 spirit, we were all baptized into 1 body. Jews are Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of 1 spirit. Go to verse 27.
Joel Brooks:Now you are the body of Christ and individual members of it. And God is appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, the miracles, the gifts of healing, helping, administrating in various kinds of tongues, are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, do all work miracles, do all possess gifts of healing, do all speak with tongues, do all interpret, but earnestly desire the higher gifts. Pray with me. God, we pray that through your spirit, you would come and you would bring clarity to, what has become a a confusing subject. I pray that we would not divorce somehow the the knowledge about the gifts with our relationship with you.
Joel Brooks:We would not think that just because we might understand the gifts or are operating in the gifts that we know you. Our goal is to know you more intimately and to worship you more deeply, and I pray that would happen first and foremost tonight. Also pray that your spirit would come and he would equip and enable us to minister to the church. We are thankful for the giftings that you give us. God, now I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Every Christian has been gifted by God in some unique way to serve the church. We've already seen this in Acts as we've been looking through it.
Joel Brooks:Some people have been given this incredible gift of evangelism, or this gift of preaching. Some have been given the gift to instantly speak in other tongues, other languages. Some have been given gifts of doing miracles. And you just see this as, as, as God has been equipping the church, some miraculous gifts and some with what we will call not miraculous Paul writes about these gifts in 1st Corinthians 12, in verse 7, which we just read. It says, to each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.
Joel Brooks:So every believer has been given this manifestation of the spirit for the common good. And this manifestation of the spirit is what we call a spiritual gift. That's what it's mentioned in verse 4 when it says, now there are a variety of gifts. That word gifts is charisma. It's where we get charismatic or the word charisma.
Joel Brooks:And it's just a combination of 2 things. The word charis, meaning mercy or grace, and the word, ma, which is it's just a suffix, meaning, the result of an action. So you have something that grace acts upon us. That's what spiritual gift, that's what that word gift is. It's something that is the result of mercy or that it is the result of grace.
Joel Brooks:So a spiritual gift we see is not something you achieve. It is not something you earn. It's not something that makes you superior over others. It is simply a gift, a free merciful, gracious gift from God to you. And every Christian has one of these, to each is given this manifestation.
Joel Brooks:Now you're going to find throughout the New Testament, there's several times we have lists of these gifts. First Corinthians 12 is the best known list, but you also have Romans 12 and you have Ephesians 4. If, if you want to count singleness as a gift, you could go to 1st Corinthians 7. Most people kind of like, you know, the gift that nobody wants is what a lot of people, so they, they don't include that. But your, your main list are 1st Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4.
Joel Brooks:And these include gifts like teaching, healing, administration, tongues, encouragement, giving, mercy, prophecy, word of knowledge. And you you kind of get the feel that when Paul lists these things, he's not giving you an exhaustive list. He's not saying that these, write them down, these are all the the spiritual gifts there are and there are no other. He's he's just naming some of the gifts here. For instance, there's there's gifts, like I would say leading worship is a gift and it's not included.
Joel Brooks:Intercessory prayer is a gift and it's, it's not included. I think that he is just giving a representation of the many gifts of the spirit of God that he gives. And so instead of trying to make a very detailed list of all the gifts, you find the Apostle Peter breaks down gifts into 2 main areas, speaking gifts and serving gifts. So those are the headings. We have your speaking gifts, and we have your serving gifts.
Joel Brooks:Let me read to you 1st Peter 4. He says, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's very grace. Whoever speaks is one who speaks oracles of God. Whoever serves is one who serves by the strength that God supplies. In order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.
Joel Brooks:And so he said there's gifts of speaking and we know those gifts. That's that's preaching, that's prophecy, that's teaching, that's evangelism, that's tongues, that's interpretation of tongues. And then you have gifts that involve serving, which is administration, encouragement, giving, hospitality, mercy. And these these aren't just natural talents that you have. These are something that when you put your your faith in Jesus, when He changes your heart and your spirit comes in you to dwell, with that Spirit filling comes with it a gift.
Joel Brooks:Every believer has some gift from the Spirit. And the purpose of these gifts, and you will find this in every place the gifts are listed, the purpose is to serve. It's not about you. It's not about me. The purpose is to serve actually, and and when I was kind of going through this, 3 of the places also talk about maturity and thinking hard, or growing up.
Joel Brooks:You're no longer children. Think hard about these things. Because I think a lot of people have that view of gifts, like like a child. You know, I have 3 children, and they all think the world revolves around them. They they all think everything's about them, and they they also think everybody is there to serve them.
Joel Brooks:You know, dad, dad, what? I spilled something on the floor. It's like, well, clean it up. It's like, no, You're supposed to clean it up dad. That's why you're here for.
Joel Brooks:That's why you exist. That's why God made you my dad. That's what they think. And so you find, I think, no coincidence that Paul is always talking about being mature, thinking about these things grow up when it comes to the gifts, because a lot of us bring in that mentality. Like the gifts are about us.
Joel Brooks:The world revolves around us. How are other people gonna serve us? And he says, God equips you in order that you might be outward, in order that you might serve others. It is not about you. Perhaps the best way to think of these gifts is to think of them as tools.
Joel Brooks:We each have been given a tool by the Holy Spirit or tools. Chrysostom said that labor and sweat are implied in all of the gifts. You're given a gift in order to to work. There is an implied task given with every gift given. So if I come home and my wife gives me a vacuum cleaner, when when I walk in and she she gives me a vacuum cleaner, I know exactly what I'm supposed to do.
Joel Brooks:I'm not supposed to, you know, just sit there and talk about my gift, journal about my gift, or you know, study my gift. I'm not supposed to, you know, exhaustively read the manual before I start practicing my gift. I'm not to just talk to all others about the this gift or anything like that. I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to vacuum.
Joel Brooks:I'm not supposed to think, okay, I wish you'd given me another gift. You know, I bet when when Brian got home, his wife gave him a beer. You know, something like that. Why why don't I get those gifts? You know, vacuum cleaner.
Joel Brooks:But, you know, with with every gift that comes with it, there's an implied task. Peter said that each one of us has received this tool or this gift in order to serve one another. Paul said that these gifts are for the common good. And so if you are not somehow serving the church, you are neglecting your gift if you are not serving the church. And when you are not using your gift, I would say all of the church suffers.
Joel Brooks:Paul uses the image of the body when describing the church and and saying that, you know, individual giftings, you know, you have like arms, and you have eyes, and you have ears, and we all need one another. And if you are not operating in your gifting, the entire body lacks, suffers. We cannot do the mission God has called us to do. Well, how do we know what the spiritual gifts are? This is probably probably the most common question I get or what what are my spiritual gifts?
Joel Brooks:That's probably the most common question I get concerning the gifts, is how do we know what our gifts are? That's a fairly modern question, actually. You won't find that addressed much throughout church history. There was this assumption that people knew what their gifts were. You can read all throughout church history and there was this basic underlying assumption that everybody knew their gifts, and so you can read people like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, Spurgeon, and they all merely kind of mention spiritual gifts, almost in passing, and they do not really address how do you know what your gift is.
Joel Brooks:Because they assume people know what their gifts are. And I think Paul and Peter assume this as well. You're not gonna you can read through the whole Bible, read through the New Testament, and you're never going to find any teaching on this is how you identify what your spiritual gift is. You're not gonna find that. There's there's no teaching.
Joel Brooks:They assume you know this. You know, thank goodness we live in a modern culture and now we can take, you know, spiritual gift exams. So we can we can figure out what our gifts are. Any of y'all ever taken spiritual gift exam? Raise your hands.
Joel Brooks:You don't have to. Okay. All right. I have 2. I've taken some.
Joel Brooks:Can you imagine going to a birthday party and getting gifts, and then having to take an exam? Like what were your spiritual gifts, you know, and you have to figure it out. Well, I got a toy, you know, according to this chart. I I I got some shirts, you know, according to this chart. We know what we receive.
Joel Brooks:We should know what we receive. So so why in spiritual gifts is there so much uncertainty? Why why does the Bible not teach us how to identify our gifts? I've taken a spiritual gifts inventory test, I think 5 times, and every time my spiritual gifts have been different. Some of you have heard me say this, but the last, the last time I took an exam, my spiritual gift was martyrdom.
Joel Brooks:I had the spiritual gift of martyrdom, which which isn't even listed in the Bible, and it's the gift you can use once. I I haven't I haven't used it yet, but I was like, martyrdom, where did that come from? And and those tests, kinda like Myers Briggs test, you know, are helpful in determining your personality, but they're not very helpful in determining your gifts. I found that when people finish these tests, the end result is not so much what your gifting is, but it's describing the Christian that you want to be. That's what it is.
Joel Brooks:This is, now I have on paper the Christian I want to be, because you're gonna have questions like this. When I am with someone who is difficult to work with, I, a, show Christ's love to them. I, b, yell at them. Show them the door. So which do you pick?
Joel Brooks:I mean, everybody's gonna pick a because nobody wants a spiritual gift of hatred, and you're like you're like, okay, you know, obviously I'm gonna do this. It'd be so embarrassing if you finish taking one of these tests. You're like, I have the spiritual gift of discouragement. It's like, I just discourage people. You know, we we we write down and we check what we want to be, what we hope to be, not actually what our giftedness might be.
Joel Brooks:And so that's not how we discover our gifts. And it's not through some other mysterious way either. I was I was at a prayer meeting one time, and, it's a very charismatic prayer meeting. I'll say very that's an understatement. And, during the prayer time, a woman came up to me and she just she was just looking at me and she said, here.
Joel Brooks:There was nothing in her hand. She said, here. And I said, what what do you mean here? She goes, take it. I said, take what?
Joel Brooks:She goes, your gift. And so I I was like, okay. I'm looking at her, she goes, we'll open it. I'm like, so I I was like, I'm gonna draw the line here. I was like, I'm I'm sorry.
Joel Brooks:But but she she thought that's that's how that's how you received a spiritual gift. And somehow I was gonna open it and and figure out what what this gift was. And sometimes we think that's how it's supposed to work. There's a problem with a lot of these ways we try to discover gifts. You know, one of the, besides really just being a personality exam, one of the basic flaws of going through some spiritual gifts inventory exam is how do you define some of those gifts?
Joel Brooks:Like knowledge. There's a gift of knowledge. You go throughout church history, and knowledge has been defined differently almost every century as to what it means. You know, you go through Augustine and the gift of knowledge meant you were a scientific man. You were a scientist.
Joel Brooks:You had the gift of knowledge. And now some of the the more recent, I guess, definitions of knowledge is all of a sudden you spontaneously get this word that you know something insightful about somebody. It was 2 completely different things. And so a lot of us, we really don't even know exactly what is meant by knowledge or wisdom. We can we can take a guess, but these tests seem to pigeonhole it into some corner.
Joel Brooks:I think the best way in order, the best way for you to identify what your spiritual gift is is this. Look around, see what needs to be done, do it. Perhaps you will find you're good at it, And God will show you, there's your gifting. Find a need and see if you can meet that need, and perhaps God will show you, yes, you know I have made you. I've given you the tools in order to do this better than anybody else.
Joel Brooks:Now so if you see that, you know, as you're leaving the church and you look over and you see, hey, nobody has signed up to serve at the hospitality house this week. There's a need. I've never done that before. Sign up. You might just find that you're really good at mercy ministry.
Joel Brooks:Or maybe you're really good at even administration because you sign up and assigning different people, different things to bring and organizing everybody so that we can serve right. God might show you as you were serving and meeting a need that he has equipped you for that. You know, if you are part of a home group and you see that there is a need for intercessory prayer, pray. You might find that God has equipped you for that. If there is a need for teaching in your home group, you know, say, I I really believe scripture is teaching this here.
Joel Brooks:People might be blessed by that. They might hear that, wow, you know what, you're right. I've never noticed that in scripture. You might find out you have the gift of teaching. Or if somebody's discouraged, try encouraging them.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you could go on. If you have neighbors who aren't saved, there's a need. Share the gospel with them. Perhaps you will find you're a really good evangelist. I think Home Groups are perhaps one of the best ways that you can grow in your gifts, where you can find out really any kind of very close community.
Joel Brooks:It's how to find out what your giftedness is. J. I. Packer said, every home group ordains its own ministers. What what he meant by that is when you're when you're in a home group, in this close community, you can say to someone, you know what?
Joel Brooks:Every time you speak, I really benefit from it. I mean, you just there's always wisdom every time you speak. And other people are like, yes. Yes. You know what?
Joel Brooks:I think you have the gift of wisdom. You're, in a sense, ordaining that person. Affirming in them the gift. A lot of it is how I find out the gifts I don't have. You know, some people a lot of people are like, I think I have the gift of teaching, just nobody has the gift of listening.
Joel Brooks:You know. And then, so, like, no, you you probably don't have the gift of teaching. I know I don't have the gift of counseling. People a lot of times they assume, you know, head pastor, you have to have all the gifts, you know, is one of the assumptions. And I'm really not good at counseling people maybe through some sin issues.
Joel Brooks:People will come to my office, and they'll be like, you know, I'm struggling with, you know, adultery or something like that. I'm struggling with adultery. I'm like, well, do you know this wrong? Like, well, yeah. It's like, well, you you should stop.
Joel Brooks:It's like, we've got 59 more minutes. It's just it's not my it's not my gift. I'm not I'm not good at it. I'm not, like, good at like, getting at all those underlying issues there. I'm just like, it's, you should stop and, or here's here's a referral to a good counselor.
Joel Brooks:But we need that community to where we get that feedback to where they can ordain us as yes, this is your gifting. Every passage of scripture that you read that deals with spiritual gifts, anchors it to love, every one of them, and anchors it to love and and 3 of them anchor it to humble service. And that implies that you're in this body, in this group in which you are lovingly in community doing these things. So I think that's how you discover your gifts. You find places to serve and you serve.
Joel Brooks:You find needs that need to be met and you try to meet those needs. And when you do this, you will discover what God has supernaturally equipped you to do. You don't just sit around and wait for a feeling. I'm waiting for the gift. God give me the gift, and once I get this gift, I'm gonna get out there and do something because that's not how it works.
Joel Brooks:It's actually pretty much a a cop out. It keeps the church from serving when you when you respond that way to the gifts. There's this strange phenomenon that's happened in the church really over the last 30 to 40 years, in which more has been written on spiritual gifts than all of church history before it. Last 30 or 40 years, you've had more written on spiritual gifts than 1900 something years before it, yet less people are serving. So more is written about the gifts, yet less people are serving.
Joel Brooks:And I think people are trying now to so much focus on exactly what can it be that they're using it as an excuse. And so if they have a lost neighbor, they're saying, I don't have the gift of evangelism. I don't have to get so so somebody please with the gift of evangelism, will you come and talk to my neighbor who's dying? Somebody please. And they don't realize, well, you know what?
Joel Brooks:All of scripture says we are to share our faith. There's a command. We all do it. We don't just bring in a professional. We don't just bring in somebody with a gift.
Joel Brooks:We all do it and sometimes we discover we're really good at it. That God's gifted us. But we don't back away from the clear commands of Christ. That we are to do these things, that we are to be generous. That doesn't mean you have the gift of generosity, but we're all commanded to be generous.
Joel Brooks:And so we need to start serving instead of just waiting for a feeling or trying to just so clearly identifying our gift.
Collin Hansen:So find a
Joel Brooks:need, meet it. Find a place to serve and serve. The church needs you to start using your gift. Paul says in Ephesians 4:16 that when each part of the body is working properly, the body will grow. And so we need everyone to start working properly.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna end it here and let you guys ask some questions. I didn't address a whole lot because I thought I would just trust you guys would ask some good questions. I didn't talk about some miraculous gifts, or I really didn't talk about any of the specific gifts. I didn't talk about tongues or about prophecy or, anyway, we're gonna open this up here now. So if you have a question, just raise your hand so I could look at you and then just ask a question loud.
Joel Brooks:I'll repeat it, try to make sure we're on the same page, and, and we'll go from there. So any of y'all have any questions or did I address at all? All right. What's the difference between being talented and being gifted? I'll use music as an example, and that there's really a lot of talented musicians, and then they get in front of a church and are horrible.
Joel Brooks:They do nothing but distract from worship instead of add to worship. And so I would see that there you can have a talent that does not necessarily translate over to a gift, that there is a gifting which can incorporate a talent, certainly, but a gifting is something unique given by, by God for this, for that purpose. And so, I would say everything we have is ultimately a gift from God, every talent. But there is some gift that is given upon the receiving of the spirit that uniquely qualifies you to do something. Yeah.
Joel Brooks:The question is, is there a difference between miraculous gifts and non miraculous gifts and how they're supposed to be used in the body? Paul never makes a distinction. Actually, the Bible doesn't make a distinction between the 2. We make a distinction. We tend to think of the non miraculous boring gifts like serving, hospitality, you know, generosity, and the miraculous, the spectacular gifts is prophecy, healing, the the working of miracles, the speaking in tongues, the interpretation of tongues.
Joel Brooks:But there is no distinction in scripture. I think one of the reasons there is a distinction is because you can fake some, but then others it seems like you can't fake. But actually, many of the miraculous gifts you can fake as well, and it's it's gone on for a long time. I believe in the miraculous gifts. I do believe that as we're going through Acts, it was an extraordinary time.
Joel Brooks:The book of Acts uses the word extraordinary, which means it's not ordinary. So we shouldn't look at Acts and be like the New Testament church, the church now supposed to look just like Acts. That was extraordinary. You have this amazing, you know, you have Pentecost, the initial giving of the spirit. You have revival preached, thousands are saved.
Joel Brooks:You have this outpouring of the gifts is a very unique time, but that doesn't mean the gifts are done away with. So I do believe they're still still miraculous gifts. I think you need to be careful for how you seek them and why you seek them. When I was in college, I desperately wanted the gift of tongues, desperately. I think God had given me many other gifts, but I could fake those.
Joel Brooks:You know, I grew up learning from the Bible, so I could fake teaching. I thought fake knowledge, But man, if I spoke in tongues, that meant God was really with me. And so I wanted that gift so much. I'd be like, God, if you're there, give me these this. And I found out that I was actually praying more like how Satan tempted Jesus than anything.
Joel Brooks:If you're God, prove yourself. If you're God, do the miraculous. If you're God and and so much of us, we actually seek miraculous gifts like Satan tried to tempt Jesus, and and the reality is, you know, a lot of my friends got those gifts, but it wasn't anchored, and I don't even know where they are spiritually now. So you give the advice to with, I guess, the non miraculous gifts. Look Yeah, like when do you pray for healing and when do you not pray for healing?
Joel Brooks:And that could be a, and that's a great question there. You know, we'll take healing. It actually is gifts of healings. It's not singular, in the Greek. And so apparently, you have multiple gifts, you know, different kind of healings and you see this in Paul's life where Paul healed a lot of people, but he couldn't heal himself with a thorn in the flesh.
Joel Brooks:He couldn't heal Epaphroditus. He, he couldn't heal some people, but he could heal other people. And so you kind of get this picture that there were times that God pressed it on Paul and said, pray for healing, and it happened. And there were other times he prayed and it didn't happen. And so I think praying for healing is good because I know ultimately in heaven there will be no pain, there will be no sorrow, and so we pray for God's kingdom to come on earth.
Joel Brooks:We want to see those things happen. And sometimes I think God gives us extraordinary faith to pray with confidence, and sometimes he doesn't. I think when Peter and John saw the the crippled man, they were given extraordinary faith. And Peter even says that when he talks about that faith coming through Jesus. Jesus was giving him the faith to heal that man.
Joel Brooks:But I do think we we pray for all the gifts. I think Paul, when he talks about the gifts, he says, pursue love, desire, then he talks about other gifts you can desire, but he only tells you to pursue one thing and that's love. And so you find a way that you can love your community, find a need, try to meet it. Good question. Right.
Joel Brooks:Yeah. Later, he'll talk about, he sees higher gifts like prophecy. 1st Corinthians is so strange. It's basically a reaction against tongues gone crazy. And he has to write 3 chapters, lengthy discussion in order just to say tongues are the least of all gifts.
Joel Brooks:I mean, it's really, he's he's being very, he's like, first I gotta lay the groundwork. You know, we read it. How redundant is this? Like over and over, it's like variety of gifts, the same spirit, varieties of service, the same Lord. And he keeps saying, by the spirit this, the same spirit, the same spirit, the same spirit.
Joel Brooks:As he's going through all these gifts, he's building an argument saying like all of these gifts from God, he gives as he pleases. You know, and then he talks about these higher gifts of teaching, these higher gifts of prophecy. It's like, in tongues, so that's the least of all the gifts. But he's laying all this groundwork for that. I actually think, and I do believe in tongues, but I think the reason he said I wish all of you were to speak in tongues is because then it would be a non issue.
Joel Brooks:If all of you could speak in tongues, we wouldn't be arguing about who's superior over the other. But then Paul makes it very clear, he'd rather speak 5 words with his mind than 10,000 with tongues. Good. Go ahead, Kristen. Yeah.
Joel Brooks:Good question. There's it's a huge debate with, we'll say like in the reform tradition or Presbyterian. I would say we stand in the reform tradition, but we're also we're we're open to those gifts. Some of it's because I was define prophecy different than many in reform churches define prophecy. For instance, if you did go to a Presbyterian or a Lutheran or Anglican church, something like that, they would they would say, if you believe in modern day prophecy, might as well have blank pages in your Bible.
Joel Brooks:And so when God gives a prophetic word, you better write it down because it's on par with scripture. It is a thus saith the Lord. And I do not believe that is New Testament prophecy, in which you're gonna have in first Thessalonians 5, you're gonna have in first Corinthians 14. It says, when prophecies are said, weigh what is said. You wouldn't you wouldn't do that if it was a thus saith the Lord.
Joel Brooks:You don't have to congregate together and be like, now what was right? What was wrong? Let's weigh what is said. One of the best places I see this is acts 21. If you want to go there, I think it's acts 21:4.
Joel Brooks:If it's not, then I'm going to be dead because I shouldn't have any point there, go there without it. Yeah. Here we have Paul given a prophecy. Says, and having sought out the disciples, we stayed there for 7 days and through the spirit, they were telling Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. Agabus, in chapter 20, had just prophesied saying, if you go to Jerusalem, chains await you.
Joel Brooks:Then these people go a step further, and it says, through the spirit, they were telling Paul not to go to Jerusalem. Do you know what Paul did after he received that? He went to Jerusalem. They're like, through the spirit, don't go to Jerusalem. Paul listens, he goes, he weighs what is said.
Joel Brooks:He discerns, he's like, you're wrong. And so, I think in that you get this little insight into what prophecy is in which there's a spontaneous revelation from the Lord given to us, but in our communication of that there's error. There can be error. And so the best way I like to, kind of define prophecy is this an experience has probably happened to a lot of us. You're driving down the road, all of a sudden you feel like, man, I'm really supposed to pray for somebody.
Joel Brooks:I'm really supposed to pray for, you know, somebody pops in your head. So you pray for them. You run into them 2 weeks later, and you're like, how are things going? Like, things are going well. No.
Joel Brooks:But 2 weeks ago at this time, I was having a horrible day, all this stuff, and like, wow. God put it on my heart to pray for you at that time. That somewhat of prophecy in which you have the spontaneous revelation given by God, but in order for it to be prophecy, what happened in a setting like this, and somebody would stand up and say, I really believe that the Lord is telling us to pray for this person or telling us to give to this person. But with that, there might be error, and so we judge or we weigh what is said. And so when I was doing college ministry, all the time I'd have people come up after the surface and say, I have a prophetic word from the Lord.
Joel Brooks:It's like, well, tell me your prophetic word before I let you get up there. This isn't the time for you to like, you know, I think I've never had this gift. I'm just going to try it, you know, and, you know, in front of 100 and 100 of people, and usually with some whacked out interpretation of Ezekiel or something, but you grow in a small group in that setting. You don't just stand up in front of a huge group. We grow in these gifts.
Joel Brooks:Good question. There's right here. Specifically oriented towards serving the church, like, internally versus ones that are to go out? Like, I'm specifically thinking of like, gifts of like wings, wings, or Like distinguishing between spirits, which I don't even know really what it means. That's another translated or interpreted different over the years.
Joel Brooks:The question is, are there different gifts just from within or without? I would say all the spiritual gifts are for within, but then you understand what is the church's mission. The church's mission is outward, and so you can't think of I'm gonna just use gifts apart from a local body, apart from a local church. You don't do that. You operate them within the context of a church, and so you just remember the church's mission that you're outward.
Joel Brooks:And yeah, there's definitely, you know, like, evangelism I would say is outward. I I don't know about distinguishing of the spirits. I'd say most miracles probably are for outward. In acts, they they act mostly as signs giving authority to the speaker, to the word of God. I think in areas where the word of God is established as authoritative, like America, there's less of a need for miracles.
Joel Brooks:You you usually see those signs and wonders on frontiers. Very similar to an act. I'm not saying always, but it tends to be the case. Go ahead. There was a question over here.
Joel Brooks:Go ahead. Yeah. It's no, I I can't. There's there's not much in there. There really is not much because a lot of it was this underlying assumption that people are gonna serve.
Joel Brooks:And the early church did, you know, if somebody was in need, they gave. If they could give a whole lot, well, they had to give the generosity. And so you do get some really crazy stuff when you get to the medieval mystics. One of my favorite spiritual gifts is the spirit of bilocation. Anybody here have the spirit of bilocation being able to be at 2 places at once?
Joel Brooks:Read the medieval mystics and you're like, wow, bilocation, want that gift. It's very Harry Potterish. And so, and then you get to the reformers and they kind of rejected a lot of those gifts. And, you read Calvin and it's amazing, like he just, like gifts of healing, you just kind of jumped over it, doesn't really address it. And you can read that in institutes, but it'd be hard to give a huge timeline.
Joel Brooks:And I think when you have the charismatic awakening that happened a lot during the seventies, it was good. It brought needed attention back to some of those gifts, but then it was abused. And then once again, now you have the church reacting against it, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah. I can do that.
Joel Brooks:We might have to end with this one and then we'll, we'll, pray and close the song. Tongues, the word is glossalia. It simply means languages. What we saw first in acts 2 is different than how tongues is now. Acts 2 was clearly speaking in other languages.
Joel Brooks:What you find in 1st Corinthians is something different. Paul talks about when you speak with a tongue, you're speaking to God. So you're speaking to God, not to others. Prophecy is to others, tongues is to God. And so there's, you would see like almost angelic language in which there is a needed interpretation.
Joel Brooks:And so it could be prayer. But Paul ties in, I'm trying to think. Now there's this this confusion and more recent thing too has come up as prayer language in tongues. You know, you you pray in tongues, And it's defined differently than how Paul would define it. Because Paul would see praying in tongues as almost a weakness.
Joel Brooks:It's like almost when you don't know how to pray, then the spirit of God's praying there. But he would rather do 5 intelligible words and 10,000 in tongues. It's like, it's almost acknowledging I'm insufficient, I don't know what to pray here, and so there's gonna be these prayers in tongues. Where now this prayer language is like, that's prayer on steroids. That's like the real prayers.
Joel Brooks:But the reality is if you're a believer and you pray, know that scripture already tells you the Holy Spirit intercedes for you, and Jesus is in heaven interceding for you if you're a Christian praying. I don't know what can trump that. Like, I I don't I don't know I don't know how you can get better than that. And so, I do think there is you have to distinguish between that kind of recent phenomenon of tongues versus scriptural one, which seems to be somebody getting up, praying or speaking in a tongue, and and then somebody interpreting. And then Paul says it could be for all of our edification when we hear that interpretation.
Joel Brooks:Good question. Let me pray for us and then we'll close in song. How about? Lord, we thank you for the one spirit that unites us. And I thank you for how through your spirit you have gifted us.
Joel Brooks:I pray that we would find these opportunities in which we can use those gifts, those mercy gifts, those grace gifts that you've given us. Lord, I pray we would not confuse those with fruit. We wouldn't, we wouldn't think just because we're gifted in something, we're growing as a Christian. No, God, I pray that we would just seek you, we would grow in all of the fruits, we would grow in our relationship with you, and at the same time we would seek the gifts and we would use them. Our church here needs us as a body to function properly.
Joel Brooks:And so I pray that we become aware of our gifts, aware of the needs around us, and we would serve. And I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
