Sermon 25
The Gifts of the Spirit
Sermon by James Cooke at Wonersh
on 2nd April 2006……
BibleGateway.com - Passage Lookup: 1 Corinthians 12;
BibleGateway.com - Passage Lookup: Ephesians 4;
I played a little game on the internet the other day, with the help of Google. I typed some words in to see how many hits I could get. I tried “Tony Blair” and I got 36m hits. Then I tried “Gordon Brown” and I only got 7.5m. Then I tried “spirituality” and got over 94m. There’s clearly something going on today that’s getting people who have no connection with Christianity or the church to start dabbling in spiritual things of one sort or another – many of them pretty weird to judge from the first few websites in the 94m. Here’s one of them:
Guided imagery, hypnosis, meditation, and (sometimes) the use of hallucinogenic drugs are useful to bring about a personal transformation. Believers hope to develop new potentials within themselves: the ability to heal oneself and others, psychic powers, a new understanding of the workings of the universe, etc. Later, when sufficient numbers of people have achieved these powers, a major spiritual, physical, psychological and cultural planet-wide transformation is expected.
Wow! Sounds exciting, but it also sounds dangerous - hallucinogenic drugs and all that. In fact, things weren’t all that different in the ancient world. It was universally accepted in those days that people who were specially close to whichever god they followed would behave in unusual and often unpredictable ways, throw themselves about, speak in a frenzied fashion, and so on. When the early Christians, following the day of Pentecost, started doing some strange things like speaking in a tongue that no-one could understand, many people would have thought this was just a normal part of being a spiritual person. But when Paul came along his ideas were very different. He made it clear in Romans that all Christians have the Holy Spirit, not just an exclusive elite. He went on to explain that the presence of the Spirit is to be seen most of all in what he called the fruit of the Spirit – qualities like love, joy, peace and so on. (Brenda Williams is going to be talking about them next Sunday). Its this fruit rather than ecstatic behaviour that’s the most important thing about a Christian’s actions. But, how then are we supposed to view the passages we had read this evening with their focus not on spiritual fruit, but on spiritual gifts?
To help us do that I want to focus on 3 questions this evening. What are spiritual gifts? Who gets to have them? And Why are they given?
So, first of
all what are spiritual gifts? 1 Corinthians 12 which we had read to us is a
response from Paul to a question that the church in
It’s
important at this point to realise that this isn’t the only passage on this
subject. Paul gives four lists of the
Spirit’s gifts, two in this chapter, one in Ephesians 4 which we had read just
now, and another in Romans 12. And all
the lists are different. Altogether,
Paul mentions 18 such gifts. Some of them
are related to natural abilities such as teaching, showing mercy or
administration, while others seem more miraculous (such as prophecy, healing or
working of miracles). Now, at this point
in my sermon I was going to ask you some questions and get a show of hands in
response, but I lost courage! The 1st
question was going to be, who’s got the gift of working miracles? What about the gift of healing? Evangelism? Teaching? Who here
regularly speaks in tongues? I guess it
might have been a bit embarrassing to have the attention drawn to you if you’d
said yes to any of these. In fact, a
survey was done in
29% of churchgoers have never even heard of spiritual gifts.
59% have heard of them, but have no idea what their gifts is.
1% claim they have the gift of evangelism, 5% teaching & 7% say they’ve spoken in tongues, while another 13% say they’ve heard about speaking in tongues, but say it’s not meant to be used today.
What then is
a spiritual gift? An American writer
called Wayne Grudem has come up with a useful
definition: “A spiritual gift is any ability
that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the
church.” And in fact it’s been suggested
that the 18 gifts mentioned
in Paul’s writings are not meant to be a complete list of those
gifts that can be used by God in building up his people, just as long as the
Spirit is the one inspiring their use and development. Natural gifts are given by our creator God,
anyway, but two things happen to these gifts when you become follower of the
Lord Jesus Christ. The first thing is
that the motivation for the use of these gifts changes. God gives them to us to build up fellow
believers, and not put them down in order to make us look superior. Sadly,
that’s what was happening in
And so, my second question: Who gets to have them? Look at verse 7. To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given. The message here is that all Christians have been given gifts by the Holy Spirit, not just a special elite. Verse 13 takes it a bit further. We were all baptised by one Spirit into one body. Notice, we have all been baptised by the Spirit and that means the Holy Spirit lives within us, and works through us using the gifts he has given us. Of course, not all Christians have all the gifts. This is clear in verse 11, just after Paul has given his first sample list of gifts. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines. God is the one who decides which gifts we have. We may want certain gifts but we cannot demand them, and that’s why it’s wrong when you come across a group that says unless you speak in tongues you are not a full or complete Christian. The diversity of God’s gifts is so amazing - he clearly loves variety. Have you noticed what God does when he freezes water? He makes snow flakes, and every single one of them is different. What do we do when we freeze water? We make ice-cubes, everyone exactly the same! There are two major consequences of all this, which I hope we will take on board. The first is pretty obvious. If we’re all part of God’s amazing diversity, how important it must be for us to discover what our gift or gifts may be. Are we hoping for a new vicar who will have all the important gifts so we don’t have to exercise any of them? We are a truly gifted church, I believe, which may be a source of envy to some churches nearby. But, it’s not all good news here at Wonersh. Did you get one of those watering can letters a week or two ago? I wonder if you know how many people have indicated that they might have a gift of helping in some way to meet the variety of needs it described. Only one, as far as I know. It’s not always easy knowing what gifts we have, but I believe that praying for God to show us what they are, and asking someone who knows us well, are two good ways of beginning to find out.
The second consequence of the great variety of gifts is that we cannot say that one gift displays the Spirit’s presence more than any other. The Corinthians reckoned the more spectacular the gift the more spiritual you must be - that’s why speaking in tongues was so valued. Some gifts are more noticeable than others but it’s a slippery slope if that leads to boasting, so don’t let’s look down on those who have tremendously valuable but unspectacular gifts.
A famous conductor was holding a rehearsal one night with a full symphony orchestra and a 100-voice choir. Right at the back of the orchestra the piccolo player thought, “In all this noise it doesn’t matter what I do”, so he stopped playing. Suddenly the conductor flung his arms in the air and stopped everyone playing. “I can’t hear the piccolo” he said. God’s like that; he’s called us into his orchestra and he wants to hear us. Are we inaudible, or are we so loud that we drown out the others?
And so to my third question, Why are the gifts given - what are they for? I don’t need to spend too long on this, because the answer to this question has probably become clear in my answers to the others. I’d like to read verse 7 again, but this time in full - you may have noticed that I left out a bit last time. To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. Down in verse 27 Paul says that we - the church - are the body of Christ, and if you’ve never read the bit in this chapter we had to miss out in our first reading, can I encourage you to do so? It’s a lovely picture of how all the parts of the body depend on each other, and how the ordinary parts are just as important as the more obviously important parts. Peter wrote this in his first letter, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its many forms.” God’s grace is his undeserved love, and it’s often been said that the gifts of the Spirit are God’s love gift to the church, poured out on us simply because he loves us. Chapter 13 emphasises this - Paul wants the Corinthians to see that far more important than showing off their gifts to inflate their own egos they should be pursuing love in all that they do, including in the way they exercise their spiritual gifts. If our motive is to encourage our fellow Christians and build up the church, then we can’t go far wrong.
I feel I should say a few words about speaking in tongues before I close, though inevitably what I have to say may seem inadequate - after all hundreds of books have been written about this subject! You may feel that in the course of this sermon I have been a bit negative about this gift. After all, it is still in the list of gifts here in Corinthians, even if it’s at the end of the list. Of course that’s true, but these chapters were written, it would seem, mainly because this gift was being misused and causing chaos in the church, as in the middle of the services all kinds of people would suddenly start speaking in a way that no one else could understand. There would seem to be two places where speaking in tongues is appropriate and does lead to the church being built up. One is in private devotions. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself Paul writes in chapter 14. That sounds as though it’s not actually of any use in encouraging and building up the church, but my experience in a previous church was that often it was those who practised this gift who were the ones most on fire for the Lord, because they had seen the Holy Spirit working in their own lives. The other place might occasionally be in a service or larger gathering of Christians when not only does someone speak in tongues but there is someone else present who has the spiritual gift of interpreting the meaning of what is said. I remember one occasion at a big Christian festival I went to, a lady sang in a tongue from one side of the tent, a beautiful song, and then from the other side came the interpretation in English, sung to the identical tune by someone we discovered later was tone deaf. For many, speaking in tongues is a special gift, but if the Corinthian experience is anything to go by it is open to abuse.
I would like to finish with some words written by a man called Samuel Chadwick who wrote about what happened in his life when he discovered the gifts of the Spirit. “Every part of my being is being wakened up. I did not get a new set of brains, but I got a new mentality. I did not get a new faculty of speech, but I got a new effectiveness of speech. Immediately I was a new creature, with the same basic natural qualities, energised and reinforced into a bigger vitality and effectiveness that nobody would have dreamed possible. That is what happens to those upon whom the Spirit comes.”
May the same Holy Spirit fill our lives, give us the gifts he wants us to have and use us in strengthening the church, for his glory AMEN.
James Cooke