Dive into a transformative discussion with Bob George on Classic Christianity Radio as we explore the complexities of spiritual gifts and doctrines. In this enlightening episode, Bob delves deeply into the teachings of Corinthians, offering clarity on the role and purpose of spiritual gifts in the modern church. Discover how false doctrines can mislead and learn the true essence of what it means to serve Christ with the gifts He’s bestowed upon us.
Welcome to Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George. Bob’s clear, timeless teachings on the complete forgiveness and unconditional love of Jesus Christ will transform your life as you learn about God’s amazing grace. Let’s join Bob as he teaches us from God’s Word.
SPEAKER 02 :
Every wind of doctrine, every kind of teaching, Teaching you can lose your salvation. Teaching you can’t lose your salvation. Teaching Jesus is God. Teaching he isn’t God. Teaching that the Holy Spirit is just kind of like I’ll be with you in spirit, sweetie, when you go. And others that teach, no, it’s a literal indwelling of God himself. All over the place. And he said teaching that is false, wherever that is, comes from people who are teaching, they’re cunning, and they’re crafty, And they’re deceitful in their scheming. So do we have people in our pulpits today who are scheming and deceitful? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. We have to recognize that. It’s not good news, is it? We don’t like to think that. That’s true. You say, why do they teach what they’re teaching? Because he says they’re scheming. They’re cunning. They’re crafty. Because they’re teaching for a goal and a bias that is not biblical. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is Christ. From him the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love. as each part does its work. Now, guys, he not only gave us a gift of the evangelist, pastor, teacher, and the apostle and prophet, but now he gives gifts to the body. You got the gift. The pastor teacher is a gift from God. And now he has given gifts to the body. Gifts of the spirit. So if you’ll turn over to 1 Corinthians 12. Now, again, I want to set the stage here. There was no more carnal church probably that’s ever been on the face of the earth than Corinth. There’s probably no more of a sinful city than Corinth. It was open everything. I like going over to Amsterdam today. Just everything is open. Anything goes. And it was there that the Apostle Paul had to go in and to preach the grace of God to these people. And people got a hold of it. They knew that their lives were a wreck. They knew that what they were doing was not bringing joy to their hearts. They knew that. And they were looking for answers. And Christ and Paul had an answer in the person of Christ Jesus. They came to the Lord, came to Christ, and began to hopefully grow, but slowly. They had a lot of baggage on a lot of barnacles that had to be knocked off. And the abuse of their spiritual gifts was one of those. They liked the idea that they had spiritual gifts given to them by God, but then they set out to abuse them. And so in Corinthians, what you have, and that’s why Paul had to address this issue, they had the abuse of these spiritual gifts. Now, if you’ll pick up in 1 Corinthians 12, he says now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I don’t want you to be ignorant. Now, this, my friends, is really a sarcastic statement, but it’s true. I know that when you were pagans, somehow you were influenced and led astray by mute idols. So let’s get rid of this idea that you’re brilliant. Let’s get rid of the idea that you know it all, which obviously was a problem in Corinth, was arrogance. The guy that was having intercourse with his mother, they were flaunting it, arrogant over it, arrogant. So that’s normally what you see in a highly sinful person. society or a highly sinful person, you see an arrogance that is there. An arrogance. And he’s just knocking them down. He’s saying, before we begin, let me remind you that you used to worship dumb idols before we get into this subject. And before you start trying to come back to me like you’re brilliant, I’m going to let you know that I know what you used to be and you haven’t really progressed too far since then. Therefore, I’ll tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus be cursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Now, he says there’s different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. You have gifts given to the body of Christ. Every person sitting in this room who is born again has been given a spiritual gift. but there’s one spirit that gave it. Not two, not three. Remember, one spirit, one God, one Lord over all for you all. Okay. One gift by the same spirit. Different gifts, same spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. And now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. So what is a spiritual gift? A manifestation of God’s Spirit living in you according to what He’s given you. Your spiritual gift is God manifesting Himself through you to the body of Christ. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom. So in other words, you would hear somebody that has been given a spatial ability to express the wisdom of God. Again, we talk about this in our Bible study that we can ask for wisdom, but the fact of the matter is that it tells us in the scripture that God is your wisdom. And so what you’re asking for is what is in you. The same thing is anything else. If God, Jesus Christ, lives in me and he is my wisdom, then I have to say, Lord, I need your wisdom. Well, he said, I already got it, but I’ll give it to you. And so it says that there is the spirit of the message of wisdom that’s given to certain people. I hope you have it. That’s to be the greatest gift God could give you is a gift of wisdom. To another, the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit. So it differentiates the difference between knowledge and wisdom. You can have knowledge but have no wisdom, but I don’t think you can have wisdom without having some knowledge. But he says, I’ll give you that. I think that Barnabas was probably an example of a person who certainly had been given the gift of knowledge. He was a brilliant man. To another faith, a gift of faith, extreme faith. How many have seen people that you thought maybe had the gift of faith? I remember when I was an early Christian and was in San Bernardino with Campus Crusade for Christ, and I had a friend of mine, a guy named Dave Hume. And we were riding in the car one day, and he said to me, Bob, he said, I think you’ve got the gift of faith. And I thought, that’s right. Dave, you’ve got the gift of discernment, man. You can really tell. I’m a man of big faith. And a little bit ago, a little after a while while we were in the office, I tried to call Amy and no answer. And that wasn’t like Amy not to answer the phone. And I knew that she wasn’t someplace else, so I tried again. And then I tried again. And then I tried again. And I finally went up and said, Dave, you’ve got to drive me home. Something’s wrong with Amy. And this man of faith was paralyzed with fear. I got home. She was in there smiling, taking the phone off the hook or something. Then I got mad. I had the gift of anger. Guys, we can think we’ve got gifts, but just give God a chance to exercise it a while before you start bragging on it. But at any rate, it says here that faith is a gift, a special type of faith. You’ll see some people that just have that. It’s just a natural, that they’re just trusting the Lord more than others. Well, what, again, guys, is the purpose of these gifts? Yes. What’s the purpose of the gift of wisdom? So I can sit around and be wise? So I can share that wisdom with the body of Christ. To do what? Build it up. People can learn from that. For the knowledge, just sit around and tell them, oh God, I’m smart. It’s to share it. It’s to share it for the benefit of the body. There is no gift that’s given for self-edification. None. None. God doesn’t give you a gift to get your jollies. He gives a gift to share with people. So it’s the same thing with the gift of faith. I see some people with that and say, man, that’s a great gift. I may not have that gift, but he can teach me how to exercise faith better than I’m doing. To another, the gift of healing by that one spirit. Well, Guys, I do not certainly have the gift of healing. As a matter of fact, our staff wouldn’t deal, wouldn’t dare call on me because I’ve got some examples to give you. Everybody I go see dies. So maybe I do have the gift of healing, the ultimate gift. They just go to be of the Lord. we had early again of a christian experience so we were down to first baptist with ed hecht and and uh one of our sisters in christ uh who was married to one of our guys on staff had cancer and so in utter desperation they said well you know bob it says there in the bible that you know put oil on them and get the elders and pray for the healing so you do that and I said, yeah, yeah, I guess we can. Never done that before. Don’t understand it, but yeah, we’ll do that. So I go in and found some oil, probably olive oil or something. I don’t know. But we went to the hospital and we put the oil on and we prayed and she died. So don’t call on me for healing. Unless you want the ultimate healing. That’s happened about three times. Not the oil, but just strangely. So I don’t have the gift of healing.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, let’s go on. To another miraculous powers. Well, that may have been mine. I had the power to kill people. To another prophecy. Do we need prophecy today? New prophecy? I mean, or is the gift of prophecy to be able to interpret prophecy of the Bible? You see, if I needed new prophecy, why then the Bible isn’t completed? You got these people that say, hey, I know when the Lord’s coming back. Forget it. Forget it. We had a call the other day about the that people that one of the early Indian calendars, that they had their own calendar, and it had stopped like in 2012. So they thought, well, that means that they think it’s the end of the world. I said, well, according to your faith, be it unto you. But to me, I think God says don’t pay an ounce of attention to those things. He doesn’t want us to know the hour. And so why don’t you just listen to what he says and quit trying to do what he says you can’t do. Now he says another to distinguish between the spirits. To have distinguishing spirits. What is that? To be able to see when something is spiritual or whether it’s fleshly. And to be able to discern that. And that is one important gift that hopefully is given to all people. Discernment. I don’t think God would leave you a born again person without discernment. And he wants you to learn from that. Discernment. I’ve had people, guys, you cannot imagine being in Christian world as long as I’ve been that we’ve experienced everything under the sun and every Tom, Dick, and Harry coming along with a new philosophy. And we still get letters on it, still get letters with their little philosophies. I’ve had a person come up to me at the end of a message and say, can I put my hand on your head? And I feel like saying, yeah, if you want your teeth knocked out, you can. God told me, I said, look, before you get started, forget it. If God wanted me to know something, he would tell me, I certainly don’t need you to come up and put your hand on my head like you’re going to transfer something through your hands into my head to tell me what God wants me to know. Guys or some people would say, oh yeah, tell me, tell me, tell me. I mean, people will go to a fortune teller, will they not? And I say, if these fortune tellers are so smart, why are they always in these little couple houses? Seems to me like you could get a big one. But we’ll believe anything except truth. And guys, with deceiving spirits, as it says, people deceiving in this world, you’ve got to learn to discern. I don’t think you have to be a genius to figure out that God doesn’t… Me, and I walk around and with, you know, if I had a white suit on, it would be nice to get my hair do. I walk around and blow on you and you fall over unless you got halitosis. Go over and Always into someone with the gift of catching. That is nonsense. There isn’t anything in the Bible about slaying people in the spirit. The spirit came to give you life, not knock you down. Why would we believe that? Because it’s spectacular. It looks like it’s superhuman. I could just go around. And they do that. Make a lot of money because people are dumb enough. to give to that kind of stuff. You go tell a person about the grace of God, oh, it’s too good to be true. But slow me in the spirit. Knock me over. Say, I really had a spiritual occasion that I got knocked down. People gobble that up and believe it. You got on television, you want your prayers answered, send me your money, I’ll send you my hanky that’s been dunked in the Jordan. And people said, leave me to the post office. What’s wrong with us? Where’s the discernment? Where’s the discernment? That’s what Paul is trying to get across here. These gifts are for the benefit of the body. They’re to be used to strengthen the body. And the gift of discernment, distinguishing between false spirits and true spirit, is a great gift to have. To another speaking in different types, and it’s too bad to use the word tongues because it’s languages. The word is languages, but… If you lived in Europe, you would say, what tongue do you speak? I speak French. What tongue do you speak? I speak German. It’s a terminology for what language do you speak? Different kinds of tongues or languages. And to still another interpretation of the tongues. All of these are the work of one spirit. And he gives them to each one just as he determines. Now, guys, let me ask you a question, because the biggest offender in here is his tongues. If it says that these gifts are given as he determines. Then what are people doing teaching you to speak in tongues? If God’s supposed to give it to you, I can tell you right now. And some of you maybe have been through this. You may want to argue. It’s fine with me. I have never heard a person speak in biblical tongues. I’ve certainly heard a lot of people jabbering. But I’ve never heard someone speaking in biblical tongues. Folks, biblical tongues was a language. If you want to know what something is, go back to its origin. The day of Pentecost. was a day where the apostles, not 120, the apostles, remember what he said? These men are drunk. Who were the men? The 11 apostles. the apostles got up and spoke the word of God to a congregation that had assembled in Jerusalem of hundreds of languages. And these fishermen, later identified as dumb in essence, dumb fishermen, what are they doing? They are all speaking in my language. Where did they get this education? Where did they learn this? These are fishermen. It was for the purpose of speaking the gospel in a language that you did not know to someone that did not know your language. There’s no exception to that in the scripture. Paul says in Corinthians, I suppose there’s hundreds of languages in the world, but if you don’t understand what they mean, what good are they? What good would it be for you, for me to ask Amy to get up And to say something in Russian. Would you know what she was talking about? He said, you may as well be speaking to air. You may be talking to God, but you certainly aren’t talking to me. I understand what you’re saying. God knows what she’s saying when she’s talking in Russian. But I don’t. And why would she come into this congregation and speak in Russian when she can speak English? And I can understand English. What benefit would it be for her to start speaking in ration? Is there any benefit to the body for that? No. And what are gifts for? To edify yourself? Or to build the body? So the whole issue there is the abuse. This whole Corinthian is to show the abuse of this tongue. Because what was going on back then, same thing is going on today. People wanting to have something… that you don’t have to do, just jabber. It’s kind of like when you don’t know your content, just talk more. Just big talkers. I won’t go any further on that one. Just talk. Don’t say anything, just talk. What good is that going to do for the body of Christ? And so, it’s a divisive subject, isn’t it? But does it need to be covered? I think it sure does. Why? Because it’s deceiving people. And then people take that into, well, you’re not filled with the Spirit unless you’re speaking in tongues. That is even more nonsensical. So it goes down to say this. Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. Each one of you is a part of the body of Christ. And in the church, God has appointed, first of all, apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, and then those have the gift of healing. Those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of languages. Now, this is what eliminates the idea that everybody is supposed to have the same gift. Or that if you don’t have this gift, you’re not a Christian. Or at the most, you’re not filled with the Spirit. Why do I want to grab a hold of the fact that it’s a sign of my being filled with the Spirit? Well, because the Bible says the sign of being filled with the Spirit is loving one another. And it can’t do that for sure. It means a hornet. So I’ll just grab a hold of jabbering. Because I can do that. Now, here’s what annihilates all that talk. Are all apostles? Verse 29. What’s the answer to that? No. Are all prophets? What? No, right? Are all teachers? Come on, guys. We’re together. No. No. Do all work miracles? No. Do all have the gift of healing? No. Do all speak in tongues? No. Do all interpret? No. But eagerly desire the greater gifts. Eagerly desire the greater gifts. So in all of these things, he’s saying, if you have a gift… It’s a special gift that I gave you for the edification of the body. And if it didn’t edify the body, it’s not a gift. And not everybody has the same gift. That’s what he’s trying to say. There’s no unity if I gave everything to one person. There’s a diversity in this body here of gifts. And yet he says there can be a unity in the midst of that. That’s good news, isn’t it? But he said desire the greater gifts. Now, very quickly, I want to go to Romans 12 because Romans 12, Romans was written after Corinthians. And I believe that the reason that same writer, he eliminates. Many of these sign gifts in the book of Romans that he had in Corinthians because the Corinthians was abusing these. And he’s saying that eagerly desire the greater gifts. And I think he’s going to give us now a list of the greater gifts in the book of Romans. Romans 12. 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’s 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. Those are the gifts of the Spirit listed in the book of Romans. The gifts, prophesying, serving, the gift of serving, the gift of teaching, the gift of encouraging one another, a great gift, encouraging, a great gift. The gift of contributing, the gift of giving, the gift of leadership, the gift of governing, And the gift of mercy. Those are what God’s looking for. Now, how do we know that? Because of what he said back in 1 Corinthians 13. And now let me show you a more excellent way. Let me show you a more excellent way. Remember what he said? The only thing that counts is what? Faith expressing itself through what? Love. That’s all I’m looking for. Faith expressing itself the way. Let me show you a more excellent way.
SPEAKER 01 :
Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another, and praise the Lord. Amen.
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Put Jesus first in your life and turn your life around.
