Video Transcript: Spirit Gifted

And today we want to think about how the Spirit equips us, what it means to be spirit-gifted people as we see that in the book of Acts and then as we see how the Spirit works in our lives today. So we want to think about some of the areas where people were gifted by the Spirit in the book of Acts and in the rest of the New Testament and consider how the Spirit gifts you and me and all of us today. When you read the book of Acts, one of the really striking things is how amazing and miraculous some of the gifts are.

There are healings that go beyond natural or medical means of healing. There are tongues speaking in various languages. There is prophecy, messages from God that are given, and those are some of the miraculous gifts.

As we're going to see, there are also other gifts beside those which we might not call as miraculous but are just as much gifts of the Holy Spirit. But first let's just look at some of these miraculous gifts that we find in the book of Acts. We saw in the early part of Acts, if you've been following the Bible reading plan, a lot of this will be familiar to you, but we're going to look at some of these stories of healings.

A man in the temple has been lame from birth, and he's a beggar every day there. But when he meets Peter and John, they give him something better than a little more money. They tell him to rise up and walk in the name of Jesus Christ, and he's leaping and dancing and praising God.

He's been completely healed. And Peter is enabled by the Lord to do amazing healings. The Bible gives a few examples of those, but then it also just gives a general picture and says he did a lot of this.

People brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed. God's healing power was so mighty on Peter at this particular point in time that everybody that came to him was healed.

The Bible speaks of Peter going to other areas beyond Jerusalem as well, and in one of those he came upon a man named Aeneas, who for eight years had been bedridden, paralyzed, unable to use his legs. And Peter said to Aeneas, Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. And Aeneas is able to get up and walk as though he had never been lame or crippled or paralyzed at all.

Peter also goes to a person who has died. Her name is Dorcas or Tabitha. The name means gazelle, whatever language you say it in.

She was a person known for doing wonderful things, making clothes, helping people who were poor. And when she died, everybody was crying and showing each other what she had made for them. And Peter comes to her, and he's called to come to her bedside, and he goes there and prays for her.

And then he says, Tabitha, arise, and the dead woman gets up. So when we talk about healings, the apostles' healings aren't even limited to healing people who are still alive. Peter raises a dead woman back to life again.

Philip is someone who's not an apostle. He's a close associate of the apostles. He's one of the seven deacons.

Sometimes he's called Philip the evangelist, because he also had great gifts of evangelism and sharing the gospel. But God gives him powers of healing. Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there.

When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. For with shrieks, impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was great joy in that city.

In bringing the gospel to Samaria and the towns of that region, he also is empowered by God to do things that really get people's attention and that bring healing and restoration. The apostle Paul is another who had power from God. As a mighty apostle, God gave him the ability not only to preach the gospel with tremendous effect, but to heal people.

In the city of Lystra, Paul sees a man who has been lame from birth. And Paul speaks to him, and the man rises up, and he's completely healed. And like Peter, we get the idea from Luke, the author of Acts, that the miracles that he tells us about by name are not the only ones that they did.

God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured, and the evil spirits left them. This is an amazing and wonderful thing, and it's also, sad to say, the source of a rather bad practice today. Tell evangelists sending you hankies if you send donations.

We are not going to go that route. But God did do this thing through Peter, where his presence and the power of Jesus in him, and Paul as well, would bring healing to people. There's the humorous story of Paul preaching on and on because he hasn't seen the people for a while, so he launches into an all-nighter, and he's preaching throughout the night, and a young man who's sitting in the window, it's been a little bit stuffy in there, and he falls asleep while Paul speaks on and on, and Eutychus falls out the window several floors down and is dead.

And then Paul goes down and takes Eutychus and heals him and raises him up again. So there again, you had Peter raising Dorcas, Tabitha back to life, and here Paul is able to raise Eutychus back to life again in the power of Jesus. So you have these tremendous healings, that's just a sample from the book of Acts, and we want to think about what does that mean for us today? What were New Testament gifts of healings? You might think, oops, he maybe hit the, you know, had a typo there.

You might have thought it should say, what is the New Testament gift of healing? But actually, when it does speak of this in the epistles, it speaks of gifts of healings in the original language. So it sounds like there's multiple gifts and multiple healings. And maybe it is that there's not just this one gift that somebody either has or doesn't have and that always heals whenever they have it.

Gifts of healings may mean that somebody has power on a given occasion from the Lord or knowledge of the Lord, that healing is going to occur on that occasion. If you look at the apostles, you'll find that they didn't always have that power for everybody. God gave it to them in certain settings to heal in mighty ways.

But there were times Paul couldn't heal himself at one point. He had an affliction that he called a thorn in the flesh that he prayed about and was not healed of. He had close associates who worked with him who got so sick that he had to leave them behind and they wondered whether they were going to die and they were eventually recovered, but not by a miracle where Paul simply spoke or Peter simply spoke in the name of Jesus and brought them healing.

So there's something about these gifts of healings that are not a person has the gift and therefore wherever they go and whatever they do, somebody is always healed. But there were times when they would come to a city and whoever came to them would be healed and would be made well again. So there's kind of a mystery to these gifts of healings as to when God would choose to do it and when he would not.

It is very clear in the book of Acts though that the gifts of healings in Acts are very closely associated with the frontier edge of the gospel and with those who are the apostles or the close associates of the apostles and God giving them tremendous power to heal on certain occasions when he really wants to aid the preaching of the gospel. The question then arises, well, are gifts of doctorstoday the same as they were in Acts and in the New Testament churches? After all, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Does that mean therefore that wherever the gospel goes and where there are certain ambassadors of the gospel, they're going to have the same powers that Peter and Paul and others had? And I think the short answer to that is no.

The longer answer might be yes and no because gifts of healings are still meant for God's people today and I'm not an apostle and neither is anybody else today. There are no people who have that office and calling of apostle and there are no people who have that same authority. These people were receiving a sign from God that they were God's emissaries and these are the people who wrote down the truth of God in the New Testament.

Just as there is no Jesus but Jesus, there are no apostles but the apostles. So we do have to face the fact that something has changed since then. There aren't apostles anymore.

And so the nature of the healings that occur might shift if you don't have Peter and Paul and those who wrote the New Testament and were on that first frontier of the gospel. On the other hand, we have to say that when the Bible speaks of gifts of healings, it's not just talking to the apostles or about the apostles. When it talks about gifts of healings, it's talking to the ordinary people of the church in Corinth or in other letters of the New Testament.

So God was giving gifts of healings for different occasions in different people. It's possible that someone might receive a gift of healing just once where God gives a gift of faith to know that a healing is going to occur, to pray for that, to speak it and to see it happen. It has happened that way in the lives of quite a number of people where they didn't become healers who always had that power upon them, but God gave it on a particular occasion.

So gifts of healings today are not exactly the same necessarily as they were in Acts and in the New Testament churches. But that is not to say that God no longer heals and that God no longer answers prayers for healing. James chapter 4 says that we should pray, call the elders of the church to pray over a sick person in the name of the Lord and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

So it's not just you say, well, I'm not going to pray for healing or ask for healing if I didn't have that special gift of healing. We all who are leaders are called to pray for the healing and not because we have a greater gift necessarily than others, but because as leaders we're praying on behalf of all of God's people who are praying for that healing. Now there are some who say, well, if today's healing ministries don't match up to the apostles in every regard, they're probably bogus.

They're probably a bunch of phony baloney. Yeah, those faith healers, you know, the people who send out the hankies for a donation. Well there's no doubt that some who send out hankies for a donation are phonies.

That doesn't mean that everybody who has a gift and whom God may bless in special ways as they call on the Lord for healing for others, that there are no such people anymore. Their gift may differ significantly from the apostles. That doesn't mean there is no such gift.

It also means that we need to be cautious about always insisting that the gift of healing comes instantly and with supernatural certainty. That was how the apostles operated, okay? They didn't say, well, one leg is a little shorter than the other, I'm going to pray over you and we'll get a good leg adjustment. They took dead people and made them alive again.

Instantly. Completely. That's different than praying for somebody who's sick and you see a gradual turn in their condition.

Does that mean that seeing a gradual turn in somebody's condition was worthless or that God didn't do it? No. It's just saying that was not a miracle of the same kind and suddenness and completeness that God did through the apostles. But God is the healer of every disease.

And so whether it comes suddenly and miraculously or slowly and through medical means, there are people who have gifts of healings. And so when we think about, are there gifts similar to New Testament healings that serve some similar purposes? Well, anytime believers pray for the healing of another, that serves a purpose similar to those great and miraculous healings. Anytime someone with medical knowledge, with knowledge of nutrition, is able to help with your health and if they're a believer to pray with you for that health as they're applying that.

Wherever there is a doctor, a nurse, a midwife, somebody who's helping people towards greater bodily health, the Holy Spirit is at work and the Holy Spirit is bringing gifts of healings to bear in the life of his body, the church. So we should, as a body of believers, read the book of Acts with awe and astonishment at what God did to launch the church, realize that some things have changed since that foundation laying period of the church and those mighty apostles that God sent, and at the same time not dismissing the possibilities that lie open to us for God's healing gifts to be present among his people, for healers to be used in a mighty way among God's people. While there's gifts of healings, there are also those gifts of tongues in the book of Acts.

And on the day of Pentecost itself, when there was the sound of the great wind and the tongues of fire, then those who were gathered there, 120 people who were gathered there, began to praise God in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them to do so. Then when Peter was called to go to the household of Cornelius, a Roman army officer, he preached the gospel of Jesus to them. And while he was still talking, Cornelius and those with him began to speak in tongues.

These people who were non-Jewish were speaking in other languages. And Peter recognized that what was happening in Cornelius and the people with him was the very same thing that had happened when Pentecost happened. In fact, when others were kind of questioning why Peter ate with them and did things with them, he said, God gave them the same gift he gave us, and I'm not going to fight God.

So whatever Cornelius and his household did, they received the same Holy Spirit and they spoke in the same kind of tongue that was spoken on Pentecost in the same way. And then there's another, a third story about speaking in tongues in Acts chapter 19. Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus.

There he found some disciples and asked them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They answered no. We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. So Paul asked them, what baptism did you receive? John's baptism, they replied, didn't baptize.

They'd heard of John the Baptist who talked about repentance. Paul said John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is in Jesus.

So they'd heard the message of John the Baptist, but the message of Jesus hadn't reached them yet. That was their current status. And on hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about 12 men in all. Those are the three incidents in the book of Acts that involved speaking in tongues.

That has been turned into a whole system by some believers who say that everybody who ever receives the Holy Spirit in his fullness will speak in tongues, because they say that's what happened in the New Testament. It's a little more correct to say it happened three times in the New Testament. And when it happened those three times, what actually was involved? Well, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

But what's going on? What was that New Testament gift of tongues? What was that gift of tongues in the book of Acts? Well, what happened on Pentecost? When they spoke in tongues, it says that people from a whole bunch of different nations were in Jerusalem at that time for the Passover festival, and they were hearing the Word of God, the praises of God, in their own languages. So when Peter and the others were speaking, they were speaking in other human languages that were understandable by those who spoke those languages. It was a reversal of what had happened at the Tower of Babel, where people who were all speaking one language were all of a sudden talking a bunch of different ones that all sounded like they were jabbering, and they didn't know what each other was saying.

Here, people who hadn't learned a language were able to speak God's praises in that language and be understood by those who spoke that language. So in the book of Acts, the gift of tongues is the ability to speak another language that somebody who knows that language can understand, and you speak that language without ever having learned it. Now, when did that happen in Acts? Well, it happened at great turning points.

It happened on Pentecost, when God first gave His Spirit to the church. It happened when a group of Gentiles came to the Lord Jesus Christ for the first time, and God gave them the exact same ability to show that they had received the exact same Spirit that had been given to the apostles and to the Jerusalem church. And then the third time it happened, it happened with disciples of John the Baptist.

And it happened each time to a group, not to an individual praying, Lord, I know that the gift of tongues is the sign of having received the Holy Spirit, so please give me that Spirit and give me that gift. You'll notice that is not what happened in the book of Acts. The whole group received the gift at once and without seeking it.

It happened on Pentecost, it happened. That group of Cornelius hadn't heard mention of tongues, and it just happened to them as the whole household. The twelve who were in Ephesus, who had been followers of John the Baptist, they weren't seeking anything, they were just baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And there it showed again that they needed to be in the New Covenant, and by God's grace through Jesus, you're brought into the New Covenant when you believe in Jesus and you're baptized into Jesus. Then they received the gift of the Spirit, and they received a sign that John's disciples, Gentiles and Jewish people alike, are altogether recipients of the Holy Spirit. That's how the book of Acts describes the gift of tongues.

There are other people who come to faith and believe and it doesn't say anything about them one way or the other, having received that gift, so it's a little risky to turn it into an entire system. Now are tongues today the same as tongues in Acts and in New Testament churches? You might break that question down a little bit because there are some who think that the tongues given in Acts are different from the tongues mentioned and described in more detail in 1 Corinthians. Many scholars, even those who might be what you'd call charismatic or Pentecostal and believe strongly in tongues and as one of the main signs of the Holy Spirit, might grant still that in Acts it wasn't necessarily the same kind of gift as in Corinthians.

Some would say, well, in Corinthians it is more speaking in a language that no human speaks, whereas clearly in Acts they're speaking in human languages that humans can grasp. Well, what about that? As I've already said, I think it's clear from the book of Acts that people who spoke in tongues were speaking in other human languages understandable to humans. And those who would say, well, speaking in tongues is kind of like free vocalization.

Some have compared it to a baby or a toddler beginning to make noises and syllables that in a sense don't mean anything, but in another sense they're kind of expressing themselves but not in any learned language yet. And there might be some who would say, well, if that's what it is, then I want nothing to do with it. And the gift of tongues as it's experienced by some people today comes to them as speaking in a language they don't really understand at all.

And they believe that if somebody else hears it, then somebody else might have a gift of interpretation to say what that means and then that will get a message. But even if it doesn't, then you have a private prayer language where from the depths of your spirit you're making certain kinds of noises. You don't know what they mean, but they're coming from the spirit, through your spirit, and that can really build you up in faith and in zeal and in joy for the Lord.

Well, the challenge of saying that tongues are something that are not in any human language and yet can be interpreted by humans does have some hazards at the very least that a church would need to be cautious about if it were to have tongues and interpretation. I'll take a few examples. When J.I. Packer is writing about this in his book Keeping in Step with the Spirit, he mentions somebody who was part of a service where a lot of people were speaking in tongues and he thought, well, this is a multilingual prayer service.

So he started praying in his own language. He happened to be from Ethiopia and so he prayed the Lord's Prayer in Ethiopian. And some people in the service promptly interpreted it for him and said it was a word about the second coming.

There was another who recited Psalm 23 in Coptic and one interpreter said that was a prayer for guidance and it was a prayer for guidance about a new job offer. Another said that it was thanks for a return to health after a serious illness. But it was simply Psalm 23.

And when informed of that fact, they weren't fazed. They said, well, both interpretations came from the Lord. This is a very hazardous procedure because a lot of people handle the Bible that way.

The Bible means whatever thoughts got triggered in my brain when I heard that passage. Well, the Bible has certain meanings and the passage doesn't mean what it doesn't mean. And so meaningful communication of God's Word does mean that whatever the interpretation is has to be true to the message that's being conveyed there, not whatever thoughts were triggered by hearing the sounds.

And so we need to be aware that sometimes where there is a tongue and an interpretation, there could be a great deal of risk of messages being given that have nothing to do with what was actually being said. But having said that, does that mean that today's tongues, and today's tongues, a lot of people would not claim to be speaking another language that they haven't learned unless they maybe would say it was the language of heaven. But they would still say it is a gift to be able to praise God from your spirit without full understanding of what you're saying, without putting it into syllables that anybody else could necessarily make sense of without a gift of interpretation.

There are some who would say, well, that just shows that tongues are from the devil. What some Christians today call tongues, they're just from the devil because they're not identical to that gift of tongues and acts. I would say not so fast.

Something that doesn't necessarily measure up to the gift of tongues and acts, and might even be mislabeled a little bit if you call it the gift of tongues, might still be something that is beneficial in the life of a person and be used by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes if the Lord does give people a sense of release and joy in praising Him in that way through their private prayers, it might not be an evil thing. It might even bring them much blessing.

But it would be misunderstanding and mislabeling to call it identical to the acts gift that was given. Are there some similar gifts to tongues that serve similar purposes? Well, I think so. One is translating Scripture, okay? Take William Carey, who was called to be a pioneer missionary.

He didn't have the gift of tongues. He had to work hard. But in another sense, you'd say he did have the gift of tongues.

He translated the Bible into 11 languages. He may have done more good than somebody who was able to jabber in their private devotions. I'm not trying to denigrate jabbering in your private devotions.

I am saying that translating the Bible into several or 11 different languages is a very great gift of the Holy Spirit to the church through William Carey and to the people of India. There's also nonverbal communication. Some of you might say, boy, he's really stretching if he says there's languages that aren't languages that could bless a person in praise.

You do it every Sunday. You sing. Music is a language without syllables or precise meanings and definitions.

And music has dangers too, by the way, but it has blessing because it stirs and speaks from a part of us that is not merely the rational and the intellectual. And so music itself has something in common with a language of praise and of prayer. And maybe some of you would have other thoughts where you say, boy, yeah, this is something that really stirs my spirit to praise the Lord without really giving me additional information in my mind, and yet it's stirring me to love him and take what I already know to bring to his feet in praise.

So I think that as we think about the gifts of the Spirit, we need to be very cautious about saying if it didn't rise to the level and doesn't match exactly the definition of the book of Acts, it is useless or even of the devil. We need to be open to whatever gifting God gives that would be similar to some of those gifts, and we need to think of that in the same way in relation to prophecy. On Pentecost, the apostle Peter quoted from the prophet Joel, and he said, in the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams.

Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. This is a great prediction of what's going to happen when the Holy Spirit is given. And Peter says, this is what's happening now.

God has sent his Holy Spirit on his people. And here's another story about prophecy. Actually, a couple of them together.

Leaving the next day, we reach Caesarea and stayed at the home of Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. So these four girls, or maybe they were grown women by that point, they had a gift of prophecy, and they were the daughters of this great evangelist, Philip.

After we'd been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Coming over to us, he took Paul's belt, tied his own hands and feet with it, and said, the Holy Spirit says, in this way, the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and hand him over to the Gentiles. So Agabus was a prophet.

Earlier in Acts, he had predicted a famine and helped the church prepare to deal with that famine. And now he ties himself with Paul's belt and says, this is what's going to happen to you, Paul. And when we heard this, we, it's saying we because by this time, Luke, the author of Acts, is traveling with Paul.

He's there seeing it and hearing it. So when you see we in the book of Acts, it's Luke, the writer, is right there on the scene. When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem.

Then Paul answered, why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I'm ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, the Lord's will be done. So you have prophecy at a number of points in the book of Acts.

You have the apostles themselves, and you have others who are called prophets, Agabus and some with him, Barnabas and Saul, and at least three other people in the church at Antioch were prophets. Judas and Silas who carried a letter from the Jerusalem council about including Gentile people. They were themselves prophets.

They weren't just letter carriers. They had a gift of prophecy, and that's one of the reasons they were chosen to bring that letter. Those converts we read about in Ephesus who spoke in tongues and prophesied after receiving the Holy Spirit.

Philip's four daughters, and you read in the letters to Rome, to Corinth, the Thessalonica of people with gifts of prophecy. So it's a very much a part of this New Testament church, and it's a foundational gift. There are people who were not apostles who were still prophets.

Take Luke for instance, or Mark. They wrote inspired scriptures and they were not among the apostles appointed by the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Well, they were close associates of the apostles.

They had the gift of prophecy and they had the gift of writing exactly what God wanted them to write. And so you read about a foundation, a foundation made of apostles who are eyewitnesses of Jesus and write exactly as the Holy Spirit directs them to, and prophets. The foundation of the apostles and prophets.

Here it's not talking about the Old Testament prophets. There are other passages that do. But here it puts apostles before prophets and it's clearly referring to New Testament era prophets.

It speaks of being revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people. Now there's only one foundation.

That's why there are no more apostles. But there, are there other prophets? There are some who think so. But they don't think there are prophets at the same level as the totally inspired prophets of the Old Testament who spoke with absolute authority and were never wrong or the inspired prophets of the New Testament who wrote down old, who wrote down scriptures, Luke and Mark.

They think there was also what you might call congregational prophets who would spontaneously receive a sense of what God was saying or a revelation from God and then would speak it in human words which could be off somewhat but nonetheless were an attempt to express something divinely given. But that kind of prophecy would be very different than foundation level prophecy, scripture level prophecy and would not be absolutely perfect and infallible. Here again let me remind you of the question, the main one that runs through all this.

What is Acts? It's a history of the church's foundational period. That was a unique time that ended after the apostles died and the New Testament was finished. The foundation can't be relayed.

But it would be a mistake to say that's all there is to say because Acts is also a portrait of the living church and mission in the new covenant age of the Holy Spirit which continues until Jesus returns. So it's not correct to say well that was way back when and things are totally different now and at the same time it's not correct to say things today should be exactly as they were in the New Testament era under the leadership of the New Testament apostles and we're going to count on God to restore this century to be exactly like the first. The first was the foundation century and so there are going to be some differences.

We kind of have to live in the tension of both of those facts that the period was foundational and at the same time that it was laying the foundation for the work of the Holy Spirit to continue in wonderful ways in the rest of the life of the church. So some FAQ frequently asked questions about prophecy. What was the New Testament gift of prophecy? Well sometimes when we hear the word prophecy we equate it with prediction.

Actually most prophecy wasn't prediction. There is some prophecy that predicts the future but most prophecy is simply having God's insight into the present situation, seeing what's going on, speaking what God wants said in that situation. Sometimes that includes a statement of truth about the future and advanced knowledge of what God is going to do but a lot of the time a prophet is someone who is speaking a word from God and that word is insight from God into a particular situation.

Now another thing to be said about that is God promised that in the new covenant He would write His law on the hearts of all His people and He would make people young and old, male and female, His prophets. So there is something universal meant to be very broad about this gift where you have the Holy Spirit of God living in you and He gives an understanding of His word and of how that word applies to our situations today. There is one way of looking at it, Wayne Grudem for instance says that prophecy is telling in human words something that God has spontaneously brought to mind, that's what he calls congregation level prophecy.

God brings something to mind and you say it and you don't necessarily say it in perfect infallible error free words but it's nonetheless prompted by God. J.I. Packer would say that spirit given prophecy today isn't adding to God's truth, I think Grudem would agree with that, you're not adding to God's truth, the canon is finished, the Bible is written, all that God wants us to know of Christ, all that He wants us to know of the principles for Christian living have all been given. So we're not adding to God's truth but we're applying it to a particular situation.

The insight of how the scripture applies, how God's truth applies to a particular situation is one of the main elements of the gift of prophecy today. And that means if you want to flourish and grow in the gift of prophecy, part of it is simply know your Bible, read it a lot, learn it, memorize more and more of it because something in common with a prophetic gift of the ancient time will be having the Lord call to mind a scripture that applies to this situation or person. Or seeing into a situation and then having God bring to mind the scripture that goes with it, that's kind of a slightly different, but that's different in some ways than Isaiah receiving direct visions and messages from God.

Or Paul writing letters where every word is a word directly from God. Now, if today's prophecy is different, does that mean it's bad? I don't think it's bad at all. You might want to be very cautious about using the word prophecy.

Where do you use the word prophecy and where do you use, say, teaching or exhortation or applying of the scriptures? But to say, well, there is no more prophecy, end of discussion, would be to underestimate what the Holy Spirit still does today. He illuminates the Bible when you read it to give you understanding. He applies the Bible to your own life.

Sometimes he helps you to see how it applies in the life of your church. Sometimes when you're in conversation with somebody, a thought may come to you and it might not necessarily be infallible, but it might be the exact message that God wants shared with that person. You may think it's, ah, that's no big deal.

Everybody already knows that. There's a lot of things that everybody already knows that they need to hear at this point in time. That is to a great degree how the gift of prophecy works today, is knowing the word that needs to be heard by this person right now.

Sometimes preaching has an element of that gift of prophecy. Preaching is largely teaching, careful study of the Bible, then trying to explain it as clearly as you can. But during the course of preaching, sometimes the Holy Spirit will come with a special power and anointing on that preaching.

And sometimes he will give a word or something to be said that hits you right between the eyes and the preacher might not even have planned it. But it had a particular prophetic relevance to your situation. It's not general teaching, and that's what my main gift probably is, general teaching.

But preaching sometimes includes a message from the Lord that goes beyond just the general principles and facts about our Lord Jesus Christ. Are there gifts similar to prophecy that serve some similar purposes? Well, we'll look at some of those. I think scripture recitation is.

If God lays it on your heart to learn a particular passage of scripture, that may be how he's speaking to you in a very particular way right now. When you share that, he may be conveying something for the blessing of the entire congregation. When you have a testimony, you say, I'm so scared to get up front.

If God puts something on your heart and you have opportunity to testify in conversation after church or during testimony time in church on the first Sunday of the month, that's part of using the spirit prompted words that are meant to be shared publicly. We need to be cautious, you know, I mean, it works out nicely for me, you know, I'm a professional preacher, I get paid to preach. And churches have too much gone to one man shows.

That's not what the church is designed to be. God gives a variety of people and a variety of gifts, and sometimes gifts of teaching and of prophecy or communicating exhortation, encouragement. He gives those gifts to a wide variety of people, and so we as churches need to find ways to encourage and cultivate the sharing of those.

When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. That was Paul's word for the Corinthians.

To the Colossians, he wrote, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another with all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. So there are word gifts, prophecy or tongues, but simply teaching, admonishing, encouraging, singing.

These are all ways that Christ's body is built up through these gifts of the spirit. So follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues.

First Corinthians 12-14 is the most extensive description of spiritual gifts in the Bible and discussion especially of prophecy in tongues if you want to read more about it. But you notice that eagerly desire these spiritual gifts as an outflow of a life of love, not as your opportunity to show off or be some kind of big shot. The call to love is what drives all the gifts.

So there are some who would say, well, we should just scratch, you know, scratch tongues, scratch prophecy, scratch miracles and get on with the business of sound teaching and ordinary medical care and the like. I'm all for sound teaching and ordinary medical care. But some who are cessationist and say gifts just complete, some gifts completely stopped would say those gifts were given only to attest the apostles, to validate their authority.

And so they have no further function. But that was never true of the gifts back then. They did more than they did that.

And that was a very important thing they did. But it wasn't the only thing they did. And it's not the only thing they can do now.

The miraculous gifts, should God be pleased to give them, will be doing the same thing as back then. Glorify God. They stirred up awe and joy in people.

Don't we need a little bit of awe and joy in glorifying God now? Back then, when they did those things, those towns they did them in, they perked up. They took notice. They knew something was going on.

They knew God was mighty and God was present. And so it drew attention to the gospel. And it proved to be a spark for many people to believe and come to faith.

Don't we need a few people believing today? Coming to faith? They were able, sometimes very short on resources, Peter said, I don't have any silver or gold to give you. All I can do is, well, rise up and walk. Well, that's pretty good.

We've got a lot of cash nowadays in the churches, but maybe we've lost some of that power. And so we need to, whatever God chooses to give, we need to keep on seeking to meet the needs of the sick, of the poor, of the desperate. And if we aren't able to do that with the natural resources that God gives, let's call on him for supernatural resources and keep on calling him to meet needs through us.

They were used to build the church, to build up the body, to strengthen the church. All those spiritual gifts, including the supernatural ones, were meant to make the body of Christ stronger and healthier. And so we still need those functions of God's gifts today.

Now when we think about it, does that mean that every church in every era should have the same array of gifts? Go back to a really previous question, should every person have all the gifts? The answer to that is clearly no. God gives some gifts to one, some to another. Should every church have all the same gifts? I'm not sure about that.

I don't think that every church necessarily would have to have all the same gifts to the same degree. The Holy Spirit will determine which gifts are needed in what setting. Do all churches in all eras have to have the same gifts? Again, that's, the Bible doesn't say one way or the other.

whether God is always going to give all the same gifts to every era of the church. I can tell you this, during times of tremendous revival and reformation, there have been tremendous things done by the Holy Spirit that were not accompanied by some of the supernatural gifts. That doesn't mean the supernatural gifts are bad.

It does mean that God is not limited in His power to reform and to save by accompanying it always with the same signs. One thing you'll learn about the Holy Spirit is He's kind of hard to put in a box. It's very hard to make the 10-point list of what He always does and the 12-point list of what He never does.

There are some things, of course, that He never does. He never leads you into sin. He always leads you to Jesus.

There are some excellent lists you can make of what He always does and never does. But there are also just different situations where He does different things according to His own sovereignty. And so when we think about the gifts, we just got to pray for whatever is going to build up the body of Christ and advance the kingdom of Christ and lead people to faith in Christ and then be open to that and also be content with what God brings.

So you have these miraculous gifts and Paul wants us not to be ignorant. The whole Bible, our Lord God doesn't want us to be ignorant about spiritual gifts. A spiritual gift is a significant ability given to each believer by the Holy Spirit who thus equips and moves members of the church to serve in special ways for Christ and His kingdom.

You don't have to necessarily memorize that definition. Something I'm good at that glorifies God and helps others. Try that one.

Something I'm good at that glorifies God and helps others. And those may be very striking and supernatural at times, but very often they're an ordinary part of the way that God creates you. And then in a sense, He energizes or electrifies something that He already gave you a talent for and makes it mighty to build other people up.

What I don't want is somebody saying, I don't have any. We asked earlier, does anybody have all the gifts? The answer is no, except Jesus. Does anybody have zero gifts? No! There is nobody with zero.

So if you've never thought about spiritual gifts and what God has given you a talent for that can bring blessing to others and glory to Him, think about it and think about it hard about the range of things that God has given to you that you can leverage for His glory and for others' good. Here's a sample. This is more of a supernaturally sample in 1 Corinthians.

Word of wisdom, word of knowledge, although those might not be supernatural, they may just be God helping you to say the right thing or the wise thing at the right time. Faith, and that's not just faith in Jesus, that's special faith that something's going to happen on a particular occasion. Gifts of healings, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, various kinds of tongues, interpretation of tongues, apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of miracles, healing, helping, administration, tongues.

And then you move into Romans and the apostle says we have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve.

If it's teaching, let him teach. If it's encouraging, let him encourage. If it's contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously.

If it's leadership, let him govern diligently. If it's showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. You notice that list is not quite as supernatural sounding for the most part as the other one, and it's neither a better or worse list, it's just a different list.

And I think all of the lists, don't think that if you take all the lists of gifts in the Bible and then added them all up, now I know all the spiritual gifts that God gives. Those are all samples. They're samples.

God may give even a wider variety than the ones described and listed specifically in the Bible. They're samples just to get you thinking about it. Peter gives a lot shorter sample.

He speaks of speaking gifts and of serving gifts, and that kind of divides it up nicely. There's a whole bunch of ways that you can speak in the power of the Holy Spirit, and a whole bunch of ways that you can serve and do things in the power of the Holy Spirit. Giving.

God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there was no needy person among them, for from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. There's some business people, people who are good with money, good at doing things that are profitable, and they may say, boy, I wish I had some spiritual gift. I sure wish I had a super-duper spiritual gift.

And meanwhile, the people who are speaking and using those gifts of speaking are funded by the people who know how to make money and who know how to run a successful business. And it's kind of sad if people who've been given that gift always feel like, well, yeah, I'm just kind of plugging along in business while the really super-spiritual people are doing what really needs to be done in the kingdom of God. No, you've got to see giving as a gift.

The ability to make money and then the generosity to give it is a gift from God. Barnabas had that gift. He brought the proceeds from a sale and brought it to the apostles' feet, and that wasn't the only gift.

He had the gift of prophecy. He had the gift of encouragement. When Antioch came to the Lord, they sent Barnabas there, and when he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.

He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. When you hear about speaking in tongues or prophesying and so on or preaching, you say, boy, all I can do is say a little something now and then, keep going, buddy, or whatever. Well, the gift of encouragement is so important.

Those who have gifts of leadership, say, and of preaching. If that's all the gifts you have, I have a one-word summary of what they will accomplish. Burnout.

When you have the gung-ho leader who's always the visionary and always telling you what the Lord is up to and where he's leading next, you get really roused up and fired up, and that's all wonderful. That is a great spiritual gift, but if you don't have those encouragers who put their arm around you and tell you, hey, you can do it and speak a word of God into your situation and help lift those who are running low on energy, encouragement is a tremendous gift from the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit.

He's the pericle, the encourager, the exhorter. We read about Peter's healing of Tabitha and say, wow, what a gift that apostle had. In reading that story, you might want to reread it for a moment and say, oh, what a gift Tabitha had.

Tabitha was always doing good and helping the poor. She had a gift of mercy and of helping. About that time she became sick and died.

All the widows stood around crying and showing Peter the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. Live in such a way so that when you die, people will cry. Maybe that's, even if you say, boy, that sermon on spiritual gifts kind of got me confused.

There was a lot of stuff I didn't quite get figured out. Well, try this one on. Live in such a way so that when you die, people will cry.

That's a real good start on using some gifts to bring blessing to the lives of others. When Tabitha died, people cried because she had meant so much and had done so much for them. They're showing Peter all these clothes she'd made and all those wonderful things she had done as a helper.

So when you think about being spirit gifted, use whatever gift you've received to serve others. Sometimes if anyone speaks, there's a lot of different speech gifts. Do it as one speaking the very words of God that the Holy Spirit of God is working through to speak words of challenge, of comfort, of encouragement, of direction.

If anyone serves mercy or giving or leadership or whatever other gift, if anyone serves, do it with the strength that God provides so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. And do it all in love. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy, it can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge. And if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. Where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled.

Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know imperfectly. We know in part.

We prophesy in part. When perfection comes, then the imperfect disappears. So all of these gifts are really, we're still in the baby phase of walking with God.

When we see Him face to face, prophecy, tongues, all of that, that will pass away completely. All of those gifts of knowledge are going to pass away in one sense when we see God face to face. Three things remain.

Faith, hope, love. And the greatest of these is love. Pursue the way of love and eagerly desire the gifts.

We pray, Father, that you will do your work in us. Help us, Lord, not to be resistant to your Holy Spirit and at the same time to be discerning of what really is of your Holy Spirit. Help each one of us, Lord, to examine ourselves and maybe with the help of others too to find out what it is that you are calling us to do.

Open our eyes to the opportunities and to the abilities we have. And Lord, give us that greatest of all abilities, availability, readiness to do your bidding, readiness to build up your body, readiness to spread your gospel. Help this group of people, Lord, to more fully exercise our gifts together, to bless one another, to glorify you.

For Jesus' sake, amen.

-Slides: Spirit Gifted

Spirit Gifted
By David Feddes 

Miraculous gifts

• Healings

• Tongues

• Prophecy

Healings by Peter
Peter and John healed a man who had been lame from birth. (Acts 3:1-10)
People brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed. (5:15-16)
Aeneas had been bedridden and paralyzed for eight years. Peter healed him in Jesus' name. (Acts 9:32-35)
Peter raised Tabitha from death by Jesus' power. (Acts 9:36-42) 

Healings by Philip
Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there. When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. For with shrieks, impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was great joy in that city. (Acts 8:5-8)

Healings by Paul
In Lystra Paul healed a man who had been lame from birth and had never walked before. (Acts 14:8-10)
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. (19:11-12)
After Eutychus was killed in a fall, Paul raised him from the dead. (Acts 20:9-10)

Healings FAQ

• What were NT gifts of healings?

• Are gifts of healings today the same as in Acts and NT churches?

• If today’s healing ministry differs, is it always bad?

• Are there gifts similar to NT healing that serve some similar purposes?

Miraculous gifts

• Healings

• Tongues

• Prophecy

 
Tongues

• Disciples on Pentecost (2:1-11) All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

• Roman household of Cornelius (10:46)

• Disciples of John the Baptist (19:6)

Tongues FAQ

• What was the NT gift of tongues?

• Are “tongues” today the same as tongues in Acts and NT churches?

• If today’s “tongues” are different, are such “tongues” always bad?

• Are there gifts similar to tongues that serve some similar purposes?

Miraculous gifts

• Healings

• Tongues

• Prophecy

Prophecy

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18)

21:8 Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. 9 He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. 10 After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11 Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’” 12 When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. 13 Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” 14 When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”

Prophecy

• Apostles and prophets

• Agabus, others (11:27; 21:10)

• Barnabas, Saul, others (13:1)

• Judas and Silas (15:32)

• Ephesus converts (19:6)

• Philip’s daughters (21:9)

• Rome, Corinth, Thessalonica

Foundation
… the foundation of the apostles and prophets… revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets… Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people. (Ephesians 2:20: 3:5; 4:11)

What is Acts?

• History of church’s foundational period, a unique time that ended after apostles died and New Testament was finished.

• Portrait of lively church and mission in the new covenant age of the Spirit, which continues until Jesus returns.

Prophecy FAQ

• What was the NT gift of prophecy?

• Is prophecy today the same as it was in Acts and NT churches?

• If today’s “prophecy” is different, is such “prophecy” always bad?

• Are there gifts similar to prophecy that serve some similar purposes?

Word gifts
When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. (1 Corinthians 14:26)
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. (Colossians 3:16)

Eagerly desire
Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy… Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. (1 Cor 12:28; 14:1, 39)

Miraculous gifts

• Attest apostles: validate authority

• Glorify God: stir awe and joy

• Spread gospel: attract attention

• Meet needs: help the desperate

• Build body: strengthen church

Miraculous gifts

• Healings

• Tongues

• Prophecy

Spirit gifted
Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. (1 Cor 12:1)
A spiritual gift is a significant ability given to each believer by the Holy Spirit, who thus equips and moves members of the church to serve in special ways for Christ and his kingdom.

Sample of gifts
… word of wisdom… word of knowledge… faith… gifts of healings … miracles… prophecy… distinguishing between spirits… various kinds of tongues… interpretation of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:7-10)
… apostles… prophets… teachers… workers of miracles… healing… helping… administration… tongues. (1 Corinthians 12:28)
…prophesying… serving… teaching… encouraging… contributing… leading… showing mercy (Romans 12:6-8)
apostles… prophets… evangelists… pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service (Ephesians 4:11-12)
…speaking… serving (1 Peter 4:10-11)

Giving
God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (4:33-35)

Encouraging
They sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. (11:22-24)

Helping/mercy
Tabitha was always doing good and helping the poor. About that time she became sick and died… All the widows stood around him, crying and showing Peter the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. (9:36-39)

Spirit gifted
Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others... If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 4:10-11)