Sermon
The Holy Spirit & The Church
November 15, 2003
Pastor Donald Sheley

Let's take our Bibles and let's take our notes. You'll notice that our notes are the same as they were last week, because we really only got about halfway through. So what I'd like for you to do is first of all, let's take our Bibles. In your personal Bible it's 1 Corinthians 12. And I want you hold your Bible because we're going to explore a subject this evening that I trust is of interest to you, it may not be.

Paul begins this 1 Corinthian passage in 12 where he says, Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. Now let's pause there for a moment. Paul realized that there's some information that simply is given to help us to understand, it may not be the kind of information that may interest us, or it may not be a kind of information that will help us in terms of spiritual growth, but Paul is saying this, there are some things that we need to know if we are going to understand the Christian faith. And here's a subject that Paul does not want us to be ignorant.

And folks, probably this subject of which we're discussing this evening, there is probably more ignorance in the Christian church on this subject than almost any other subject; and that's concerning the work of the Holy Spirit within the life of the church. Now in our study concerning the Holy Spirit we have considered Him as a person, the third person of the Trinity, we've talked about His work in bringing us into the family by bringing us under conviction, taking away the blindfolds from our eyes, helping us to understand spiritual truth, and we talked about the work of the Spirit bringing us from a life of sin into the family of God in the process or in the act of regeneration. Then we went to the next subject and talked about what the Holy Spirit does desire to do within us as individuals; how He seeks to make us more like Christ and to change us from glory to glory.

Now we want to take our subject just a step further and say, what does the Holy Spirit want to do within the life of the Church? How does He want to reveal His presence amongst us as a group of believers? And so we come to this passage in 1 Corinthians 12 when Paul says, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. And then you remember last week we took verses 2 and 3 and Paul says, you know that you were Gentiles, carried away to these dumb idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you, that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed: and no one can say that Jesus is Lord, except of the Holy Spirit.

Now Paul is addressing something very sensitive. He is saying, I know your past. You came from a very pagan background. You worshiped idols, I know that, but now that you've become a Christian there are some things you do not say as a Christian. We learned that in the pagan philosophies of their day, which of course was Gnosticism, the Gnostics believed that anything that was human or had substance was evil; so human body was evil. Anything that was spiritual or supernatural was good. The Gnostics rejected everything that exists as we see it today and so their position was this: In that the body is evil, God would not come down and take part, as we believe as Christians, in the incarnation where God comes and takes upon Himself the form of man in the person of Jesus Christ. They say that's an impossibility.

And so what they would say in their philosophy, because you say that Jesus took upon Himself a human body, He took upon Himself something that was evil, therefore He's accursed. That's what the Gnostics said. They accursed the human Jesus, they praised the spiritual Jesus. That was the difference.

Now here's Paul's comment: Now that you are Christians and you've left your pagan philosophy that is blasphemy to say that Jesus is accursed, but on the other hand, you can say Jesus is Lord and that gives evidence to the true spirituality that the Spirit of God lives within you. And this is what we learned last week that when a person came to a commitment of their faith in Christ the open confession that was given to the world was this declaration: Jesus is Lord! Now when you said that it cost you your life, because that was the days of Emperor worship and the Caesar off in Rome considered himself to be god. And once a year there was a festival where everyone had to go to some shrine within their city and say Caesar is Lord! And if you didn't, it cost you your life. And Christians would never say Caesar is Lord. They would say Jesus is Lord.

What Paul is saying, the way you can determine genuine Christian faith in the church are people who proclaim Jesus as Lord even at the possibility of losing their life. So he immediately confronts a problem within the church, and it seems that when the report has come to Paul that may have been being said in the church, and people were implying that it was being said under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Paul said, never, never! And so he attacks something so wrong in that Corinthian church to clarify true Christian faith.

Now the Corinthian church was a mess, folks. Go with me to 2 Corinthians and I want you just to picture what Paul was dealing with when he was dealing with these Corinthians. Look at what he says in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Go with me to verse 14. Now for the third time I am ready to come to you. And I will not be burdensome to you; for I do not seek yours, but you. For the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. I would very gladly spend and be spent for your souls; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved.

Dropping on down, verse 19, Again, do you think that we excuse ourselves to you? We speak before God in Christ. But we do all things, beloved, for your edification. For I fear lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I wish, and that I shall be found by you such as you do not wish; lest there be contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, backbitings, whisperings, conceits, tumults. Now that's quite a description of a church. Paul said I'm afraid when I get there this is what I'm going to find in the church. And so when we read this first passage in 1 Corinthians you can understand it all of that confusion, it all of that tumult, it all of those contentions they were terribly off spiritually and so Paul is going to address. And most likely, when they wrote him the letter, they said, Paul, talk to us about this matter of spiritual gifts.

Now we come to verse 4. Paul begins his subject: there are diversities of gifts, but it's the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but it's the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it's the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all. To one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit; to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit. To another faith by the same Spirit; to another gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another working of miracles; to another prophecy; and to another discerning of spirits; to another different kinds of tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues:
But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to every one individually as He wills.

So Paul is saying we'll talk about spiritual gifts, there are varieties, there are various intensities, in other words, some gifts are far higher profile than others and there are different ways in which the Holy Spirit works, but it is the Holy Spirit. Then he lists these nine gifts, but, when you go through the Scriptures you'll find that there may be gifts that the Holy Spirit has given to the church.

Go with me to Romans, back just a few pages in your Bible, Romans chapter 12 and Paul gives us another list. And here we have another list of gifts that the Holy Spirit has given to the church. Look at verse 4 of Romans chapter 12: For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.

So now we've got some more gifts that he talks about, the gift of giving. He talks about the gift of exhortation. He talks about the gift of leading and he talks about showing mercy and cheerfulness. So now let's go to another list. Let's go to Ephesians chapter 4. Now the reason why I'm doing is because when you really add up all the various gifts that are listed in the New Testament, it's just not the nine in 1 Corinthians. There are probably 20 or 25 different gifts that are listed as the way the Holy Spirit wants to work within the life of the church. And you'll notice here's another list.

But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore He says: "When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And gave gifts to men." (Now this, "He ascended"--what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.) And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head--Christ-- from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

So he now speaks of God's gifts to the church come in persons who are prophets, who are teachers, who are pastors; so he considers those as gifts of God to the church. Now let's go back to our Corinthian passage. And Paul in verse 4 he says varieties, there are diversities of gifts or varieties as some Bibles have it, and it means allotments or distributions. Now let me stop here for a moment. When it speaks of spiritual gifts -- they are special capacities bestowed on believers to equip them to minister supernaturally to others in the church. And every one of us sitting here, everyone of us who are Christians, when we came to Christ and Christ's spirit the Holy Spirit came to live within us, we received a gift. We all are gifted spiritually.

You say, Pastor I never thought of it that way. Sometimes when you read all of this list you say, well which one of those gifts is mine? But the Bible is very, very clear all of those function as parts of the spiritual body. We all have a function. Sometimes that gift may be just simply the gift of intersection of prayer. Sometimes that gift may just be a gift of encouragement. There is a wide variety of ways in which we can be used by the Holy Spirit in strengthen and blessing in building of the church. All of our gifts are different. That's why he says there are diversities of gifts. We all have something that we can contribute through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives to the building up, the edifying, of the body of Christ. All of us do.

Some of us might have the gift of giving. God may have given to us great resources and we have that ability and very quietly and with generosity we give. That's a gift. Now he goes on to say there are differences, that is, there are different kinds of gifts. The person who is going to be encouraging or the person who's going to be teaching their gift may be different than mine. There is a variety and there are -- not prominence -- because every gift is important, but some gifts have a higher profile than others. I stand before you as you come to worship and the gift that God has given to me is the gift of prophecy.

Now you say, just a minute Pastor, what does prophecy mean? Well prophecy in the New Testament doesn't mean foretelling or as we think of the prophet of the Old Testament, but the New Testament prophet was the man of God who preached and declared the word of God under divine anointing. And that's my prayer as I come to you every time we gather together, Father, I just pray that You'll send Your Holy Spirit to anoint us this evening so that we can make the word of God clear that we can drive the truths home so they'll change lives. Now my gift is different, others have other gifts, but in the family of God they're all important. I just fill one role, you fill another role, but working together we make the body function with great spiritual health.

Then look at verse 6, he says, there are diversities of activities. And in this one in it's the effects. The Corinthians thought that the more dramatic gifts were the only gifts or at least the only ones that there were worth having. So what Paul is trying to say, I want you to know you've given emphasis to public tongues, but the body of Christ and all the gifts are equally important and you're giving too much credence, too much attention, to one gift to the neglect of others. And one of those neglected was this whole matter of loving one another. That's why he inserts chapter 13 concerning love. It was a church that was devoid of love. And Paul said in 13 he says, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a tingling symbol and a sounding brass.

So Paul is saying here every gift is important. And as your pastor I sense that because if I don't have you, and if I don't have the folks working together in blending our efforts and our gifts, this church would never function because I can't do it alone. But if we all function together we find that area within the life of the church where the Holy Spirit can use me to bring blessing and strength and encouragement, that's my position. Now Paul says in verse 7, But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one -- there it is. It's given to each one. What for?

So that by my sharing my gift and you sharing your gift and all of us working together, the body of Christ will be profited and it will be built up. And if any of us neglect our gift we are diminishing the effectiveness of the church within our community. One cannot say, like Paul says in chapter 12, the foot cannot say I am not the eye therefore I am not important. You cannot say because I'm not the preacher I'm not important; yes you are. Paul said we are all important and we need each one to function within the body of Christ.

Now he comes to verse 8, and let's pick up our notes and let's go to page 6, because here we'll find the description of these various gifts. The work of the Spirit is Christocentric...maybe we better go just back to page 5 at the bottom of the page. I have a sentence here I'd like to start with. The presence of the Holy Spirit in power and gifts makes it easy for God's people to think of the power and the gifts as the real evidence of the Spirit's presence. Not so with Paul. The ultimate criterion of the Spirit's activity is the exaltation of Jesus Christ. Whatever takes away from that, even if they be legitimate expressions of the Spirit, begins to move away from Christ to a more pagan fascination with spiritual activity as an end in itself.

Now here's Paul's warning. Paul is saying that we within the work of the Spirit of God the attention must always bring people to Christ. If it draws attention to the activity itself, it starts on a downward trend because the Spirit of God...when, Jesus says in John, the Spirit of God is sent He will never speak of Himself but He will lift Christ up. Now here is the caution that we must recognize. Oft times in the Charismatic or Pentecostal settings the attention is drawn to what they consider the gift, and the emphasis is on the gift. And Paul is saying that is wrong because the gifts of the Holy Spirit are to draw men to Christ not to the activity itself.

I was raised in a church where so much attention was given to the experience or the event and it brought attention to the person who did it to or to the moment, but Christ did not receive much honor from it. So folks when you're ever exposed to a setting where they call themselves Charismatic or Pentecostal, and I don't mean that derogatory because my background is Pentecostal, but I realize the pitfalls and I realize the problems that are associated with that, because when the attention is given to the result of whatever the gift causes to happens, when the attention is drawn to the results and not to Christ, then it's wrong. No matter how spiritual it may look, and that's why Paul starts this whole chapter. It may look spiritual by someone supposedly there under the spirit saying Jesus is accursed, but it's not spiritual.

And I think many of us, and I say this again with great caution because I have a deep respect for the work of the Holy Spirit, but I often grieve I think the Holy Spirit got charged with too much He never had anything to do with and it brought shame to the cause of Christ. Let's go on in our notes. Verse 4 of 1 Corinthians 12 starts the commentary on the differences, administrations and operations of the gifts of the Spirit in the Church.

Paul's idea in this section is to stress the essential unity of the Church. Paul begins by saying that all special gifts come from God and it is his belief that they must, therefore, be used in God's service. Paul writes, "For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge." Now these two gifts are mentioned nowhere else in the Scripture, and no other early Christian literature outside the Bible has been found to use these phrases of any spiritual gift either. And the words that Paul uses for "word", "wisdom", and "knowledge" are not specialized or technical terms, but are extremely common words in the Greek New Testament.

Most Bible scholars believe that Paul is simply referring to the ability to speak a wise word in a given situation that adds clarity and direction in a matter. It could have been the element of the miraculous in that the word spoken exceeded human knowledge and wisdom and gave evidence that the Spirit of God had revealed the information to the believer. The 'word of knowledge' is the ability to speak with knowledge about a situation wherein the speaker did not have previous knowledge or information. The word that Paul used was the word SOPHIA which is the highest kind of wisdom which comes not so much from thought as from communion with God.

So there's one explanation, and again, the reason why it's hard to know exactly what Paul meant when he said the gift of the 'word of wisdom' and the 'word of knowledge', because we don't have any resources or any other source to make any comparisons or to draw from. He could have been saying simply that in a given situation the Spirit of God could make very clear in the mind of a believer what needed to be said at that moment to clarify something. Now I have watched that on times within the life of the church. Sometimes as I'm dealing with groups of people and in just a moment of time when we're trying to find direction someone will say something and you'll realize this is the answer; this is what God really wants us to do. I have found that to be true many times in dealing with our eldership. We bring up something over the years and we're trying to find consensus, we're trying to find clarity, and oft times just the voice of a man speaking something that he feels in his heart becomes the word of wisdom for the moment.

Now let's read on. Dr. Fee is one of my favorite theologians. I'm down at the bottom of page 6. He has a different approach. He says the phrase means either a message or an utterance full of wisdom. In either case its content is probably to be understood in light of Paul's own argument in 2:6-16. There the 'message of wisdom' revealed by the Spirit, is not some special understanding of the deeper things or mysteries of God. Rather, it is the recognition that the message of Christ crucified is God's true wisdom, a recognition that comes only to those who have received the Spirit. Thus in the present case the utterance of wisdom comes through the Spirit, and in Corinth it is almost certainly to be found among those who give spiritual utterances that proclaim Christ the crucified in a highly wisdom-conscious community. It is of some interest, therefore, that this particular gift does not appear again in any further list or discussion.

Remember when Paul said in chapter 2, when I come to you I come not in wisdom or in speech, but I come to you in the power of Jesus Christ. I'm using my own words. His point was that wisdom as the Corinthian thought of, wisdom was God's wisdom given through Jesus Christ. It was a revelation of who Christ was, and so he thinks of the 'word of wisdom' and the 'word of knowledge' as the proclamation in Corinth of the wisdom of God in the person of Jesus Christ. So it would be the proclamation of the glorious gospel of Christ. That's wisdom.

Now let me give you an illustration with this has really been used wrong. I haven't seen it so much in recent years, in the last couple of years, but about 10 years ago we had people running around the country and on television and religious television, and they would stand up in front of a congregation and say, "There is a person over here in row 3 and that persons' name is..." And what they found out was those evangelists had rigged up little radios that they placed in their ears and the wife would be sitting in the narthex writing down the information as people came to church. She would then tell her husband -- Sophia is sitting in row 3 and this is her name, this is her doctor's name, this is her address. And here's this preacher standing there -- your name is Sophia and you live at 116 and your telephone number is... Did I ever say anything to you? No, you never said anything to me Pastor. And that was supposedly to be the word of wisdom or the word of knowledge, but they found them, as you remember, they exposed them on 60 minutes and found that that kind of spiritual activity was nonsense.

The devil always wants to duplicate or to shame something that is genuine, and when that came in the church...my God, how can people believe that nonsense? But there can be occasions within the life of the church where clarity and direction is needed, and sometimes in a moment of prayer God by His Spirit will impress someone to give us an answer; that my heart is wide open to, and I've experienced that many times in the life of the church. I find that sometimes when, you know, I've had couples come in for counseling and I've prayed, dear God, give me wisdom what to say. And you know, in the course of conversation I have asked them a question that came to my heart and mind that immediately opened up the gangplank and they poured out their hearts. And that would be a question I wouldn't normally have asked but the Holy Spirit prompted my heart to ask that question, and that brought the whole problem to a head.

So what Paul is saying is that in the life of the church the Holy Spirit wants to reveal His presence at moments when we need clarity and direction He'll give it to us through one of the believers in the congregation. That may be the only moment in your life or in your spiritual existence were God uses you for that purpose.

You know, I think back, I remember as a little boy a man by the name of Mr. Warwick. He was an interesting person because this was back in the '30s and this was when they were bringing in the Social Security numbers. He believed that the Social Security was the mark on the beast, so he wouldn't go sign up for his Social Security number. So as a result he couldn't work and so he lost his job, and he spent the rest of this life just mowing lawns, picking up garbage, whenever he could do, but he was a lovely, lovely man but it was just one of those idiosyncrasies; I mean, he just felt that the devil was taking over with the Social Security number and he wasn't going to have one.

But many, many times in the life of the church - I said many, many, but I can remember 3 or 4 times - when he just quietly...he would sit way, way over in the corner and just always had his head bowed...not showing that because he was just a very humble godly man. And sometimes in the quietness of a service he'd just quietly stand and he would...sometimes it was in the form of poetry and sometimes it was just in gentle admonition then he'd sit down. Everybody appreciated him. He was never looked upon as somebody as a disruptive. He was never considered one to show off. He just very graciously...and I still remember those moments when Brother Warwick would stand and very graciously and very lovingly give admonition to the church; wisdom and knowledge.

Let's go on our notes, shall we? Let's talk about the gift of faith. While it's true that Paul considers faith that leads to salvation to be the work of the Spirit in the believer's life, what he has in mind here is a special gift of supernatural faith that can move mountains. It probably refers to a supernatural conviction that God will reveal His power and His mercy in a special way in a special instance. It is faith which really produces results. It is not just intellectual conviction that a thing is true; it is the passionate belief in a thing which makes a man spend all that he is and has on it. It's faith which steels the will and nerves and the sinew of a man into action; the gift of faith.

And again, I go back to my childhood days and I remember a little boy, he was the Baker boy, and he was born with clubfeet. His little feet were turned in. And his mother would bring him and even when he got two or three years old he could hardly walk because those clubfeet just kind of stepped over each other. And one night his mother wanting so much to have a perfect baby, we had a special guest speaker that night and he was going to pray for the sick, and so Mrs. Baker brings up her little pigeon toed child and she presents him to the preacher. I can still see him there. Would you pray for my little boy's healing? And that minister was honest enough to say I don't have faith for that kind of healing. Now that surprised me because I always thought preachers had all kinds of faith. And I was just a little guy, but we had a person in the back of the room of the sanctuary, and she stood and said, Pastor, excuse me, but I'd like to pray for that little baby. I have faith. And that little mother...probably the only prayer she ever prayed in a public service. She walked forward and with the tenderness of a mother's love she took those little feet in her hand and she said, Jesus, would You straighten out these feet for this little boy? Just a simple prayer and she turned around and went back to her seat. But the amazing thing started to happen. Over a period of the next four or five weeks those feet came back to normal. And that man to this day is a contractor in the city of Chico, totally healed, but it was a little mother who had such a burden for that little child that God gave her the faith for the miracle. Amazing.

Now, when we come to this building here. Most of you folks don't know the background, but this was an old supermarket and it was on the market. It had gone bankrupt. And we had a little congregation about hundred and ten people, and this here, all of this, was a supermarket...and we walked in here. I didn't -- with 110 people -- have faith to buy this great big old building. It was beyond me, but I had folks in the congregation who believed. Peter Farley was one of them. He found the building. And my wife, quiet as she is, she said, honey, God will give us that building.

Month after month we negotiated for this building. It was 1,460,000 they wanted for it. And for a little congregation of a hundred people, I mean, I didn't have the faith for it, but my wife did and others in the congregation did. And I kept going back week after week, month after month, and in the seventh month we had spent time praying; I walked into Mr. Gordon Hanson's office in Redwood City and he said, Pastor, you can have the place. What do you mean? He said, I've come to the conclusion you really need it and furthermore were going to cross off one billion and you can just have it for the 460,000. You talk about faith and miracles, this building was bought and this property for $460,000. It was a gift from God, because people had faith.

And I can show you over and over again that faith has blessed is church and that's why the church is today. I get little disturbed when people say, you know, that church up there they don't believe in the work of the Spirit of God, and they make that criticism because we don't encourage public tongues, and that's their criteria for being a spiritual church. Listen folks, when we get to chapter 14 next week you're going to realize that speaking in tongues in public is an evidence of immaturity and childishness as far as Paul is concerned. There's nothing spiritual about it. And yet we're often judged by the more spiritual people that we don't have the Spirit of God working here because we don't have public tongues. That's not true. We see miracle after miracle. Let's go to the next one.

Gifts of healing -- now this is interesting. There's not the slightest doubt that the gifts of healing did exist in the early Church; Paul would never have cited them unless they were real. Surely the gifts of healing not only refers to physical, but spiritual healing. We must realize that physical sickness came as a result of the fall of Adam, and illness and disease are simply part of the outworking of the curse after the fall, and will eventually lead toward physical death. However, Christ redeemed us from that curse when He died on the cross; "Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows...and by His wounds we are healed."

Now you'll notice the gifts of healing. I want to emphasize that because it seems to be that Paul is implying that each healing is a gift in itself and that the gift of healing is not resident as other gifts would be. In other words, every healing is a sovereign act of the work of the Holy Spirit, and He chooses who He will heal and who He will not heal. So that's the reason why Paul pluralized gifts. He calls it gifts of healing.

Again, we see that take place. I was thinking as I was preparing, maybe if I had somebody stand up when I got to this point in the sermon, but we've had people healed over and over again. It happens constantly in the life of our church. We had a healing service, you remember, some weeks, some months ago and a little lady had gone to the doctor. She had a tumor that was the size of a baseball in her stomach. It was obvious from the examination and they felt that it was cancerous. So she was going in on Wednesday to be operated on. She came here and just stood and just quietly -- we didn't push anybody over, nobody fell down -- we just simply anointed people and prayed, and she went back to her seat. When she went into the doctor, the doctor said we're going to take one more examination before we put you on the table for an operation because we want a final check. When they took the x-ray that lump was gone -- gone. The doctor said, what happened? And he took the x-ray of time before and this one: lump, no lump.

You see, I believe this as your pastor, we have healings happen, wonderful gifts and miracles happen, but we don't get up here and yell and scream about it. I think it just should be something, these gifts flowing within the life of the church and these beautiful things happen. That's what makes our church, I believe, what it is. We're not here to exalt the results, other than to give honor to Christ when it happens. That lady gave her testimony a couple of weeks later, and to this day she's in church every Sunday and no further problem.

We had a man who had fallen and he was in the service. He broke his back in so many places that he laid on ice for 18 months. They had to freeze his back. And he walked with canes when he walked in here, and when he walked in one day we had a prayer time, and he walked forward with his canes. And I didn't know what the background to his problem was. We just prayed for him and asked God to heal him. When he got home he put his canes away and he only has to use them on very seldom occasions, but God touched that back and healed him.

I believe in healing, but I believe God is sovereign. You can't stand up here and say, God, You heal this person. God is sovereign and He's going to heal who He wants to, and He's not going to heal others. So that's why gifts is pluralized; each incident is a sovereign act of the work of the Spirit of God in that moment. Amen?

Let's go to page 8. The working of miracles. We must realize that the English word for MIRACLES may not give a very clear approximation to what Paul intended, since the Greek word simply is a plural of DYNAMIS, or POWER. This means that the term may refer to any kind of activity where God's mighty power is evident. It may include answers to prayer for deliverance from physical danger (as in the deliverance of the apostles from prison), or powerful works of judgment on the enemies of the gospel and those that require discipline, or miraculous deliverance from injury. But such acts of spiritual power may also include power to triumph over demonic opposition. And since Paul does not define "works of miracles" any more specifically than this, we can say that the gift of miracles may include the working of divine power in deliverance in danger, in intervention to meet special needs in the physical world.

And you know folks, I think if I allowed an open time where people could say, you know, I know that God intervened in a moment in a working of a miracle in my life in my situation, and only God could have done that.

I come here for prayer each morning at 5:00, so when I leave here I go down to usually have a little breakfast. And I'm going down the other morning down San Bruno Avenue and I'm clipping along at 40 miles an hour, the speed limit, and right in front of me a car darts out. It didn't see me. And folks, I put on my brakes and my car stopped (snaps fingers) that quick. I just missed that car by about this much (a short distance). And I said, thank you God, thank you God. God does protect us and He demonstrates His miraculous power in the life of believers. He may do it in the life of the church. He may do it in the life of the individual.

You see...are you getting the point? What Paul is saying is the Spirit of God works in so many different ways amongst us. We must recognize that it's the power of His spirit at work within our lives. I think of miracles -- when I see lives changed by the power of the gospel, that to me, when I see people come and give their lives to Jesus and watch the miraculous change from a sinner to a saint, and watch the whole life values change. That to me is the most glorious miracle, the miracle of the new birth. And a few weeks ago we had our altar service and over 30 people raised their hands and made a commitment of their lives to Christ. That is miraculous! That's the miraculous taking place within the life of the church because the Spirit of God is at work within hearts.

To me it's a fascinating subject. Because when you see how the Spirit of God works amongst us in so many different ways we can be very, very grateful. And our prayer is...when we come to church your prayer should be, Spirit of the living God just make however You want to demonstrator Your glory and Your power and Your majesty and Your wonder amongst us, we want that as a church. I don't want anything fanatical. I'm not interested in that all. I've been through that. But I love the genuine work of the Spirit of God, and you folks do too. So when something that happens is not of the Holy Spirit (snaps fingers), we'll know it that quick. We'll be very sensitive to it.

Holy Spirit of God, I thank you for this passage that Paul wrote for us. Not for us, but for a church terribly confused, but to us so that we can have a biblical understanding. Knowing that You, Holy Spirit, want to work within the life of our church, within our individual lives. You want to demonstrate Your presence and Your glory through our life and through the life of this church. And I pray that that is always so. May we never grieve You or quench Your working, O Holy Spirit of God. May our hearts reach out and allow You to work through us in any dimension You so choose. This is our prayer and we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

It's an interesting subject, isn't it? Next week I want to take chapter 14, and this to me is one of the most fascinating chapters in the whole book of Corinthians. I want to share it with you. God bless you.