In this enlightening episode, Bob examines the intricacies of spiritual gifts and their impact on the Christian community. Explore the profound insights into the biblical teachings on unity, wisdom, and faith, as Bob discusses the importance of understanding the scriptures through the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Find out how these gifts can be used to strengthen the Church and foster a community rooted in love and knowledge of Christ.
00:00:04 Introduction to Classic Christianity Radio
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 :
I mean, do we celebrate Christmas because we like Christmas or are we celebrating the birth of Jesus? Or are we celebrating the coming of Santa Claus? Well, it depends on where you are. But I mean, if you what Paul, if he was writing that today, he’d say you only got one celebration. But don’t worship at the foot of the celebration. Worship at the foot of who you’re celebrating. And that’s Christ. And we would rather worship at the celebration than we would to worship the Son of God. Now, he says here that to each one of us, now he’s going to show us how the church has been put together. first of all, Jews and Gentiles. So let’s just say this whole congregation is made up of both Jews and Gentiles who are born again believers. And I have to emphasize, guys, his church is born again believers. So if you’re here today and you’re not born again, you’re not in Christ’s church. That’s why we don’t have a membership, because I don’t want you a member here if you’re not a member there. And if you’re a member there, what do you need to be a member here for? And so you’ve been, you’re probably a member of a pretty, probably a little better church than this one. It’s called Jesus Church. So he’s saying to us, here’s what happened. First of all, Jews and Gentiles. Now, and we’ll read this in a moment. I’m going to give to the church gifts. And those gifts are men. And so you’re going to see that it was him who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastor teachers. Now, guys, that is not a spiritual gift. Those men are spiritual gifts. Billy Graham is a gift from God to the body of Christ as an evangelist. I don’t think there’s any question about that. And there are numerous people like that. There are gifts. It’s not that I have the spiritual gift of evangelism. I hear some people say, well, I’d like to share, but I don’t have the spiritual gift of evangelism. Nobody does. Nobody does. If you’re an evangelist, you are the gift. You’re the gift to the body. If you are a prophet, you are a gift to the body. God named you, trained you, and made you a gift to the body. A pastor teacher is supposed to be a gift to the body of Christ if he has literally been sent by God. Unfortunately, we have pastor teachers who are career. They went to cemetery and got a degree. And so, therefore, they’re a pastor teacher. because they went to school and got a degree instead of being a pastor teacher that God trained and sent to be a pastor teacher. People will say, well, do you have to go to seminary to be a pastor teacher? No, you’d probably be better off if you didn’t. It’s like Chuck Swindoll said, took him four years to get through seminary and 30 years to get over it. The issue is it depends on what seminary you go to, first of all. Because you’re going to go to the Baptist seminary or you’re going to go to the Methodist seminary. You’re going to go to the Presbyterian seminary. You’re going to go to the Catholic seminary. You’re going to go to Jehovah’s Witness. You’re going to go to the Mormon. Because wherever you go, that’s what they’re going to teach you. And I got news for you guys. They all can’t be right. But they’re all in disagreement with each other. And so it gets down to the point of how are you going to know what’s truth. We talked about that last week. You are going to have to know what’s truth by being born again. and allowing the Spirit of God who lives in you to reveal the meaning of the Word of God to you, not to the masses, to you individually. If you’re truly born again, and you have approached this Word of God with an attitude of Lord Jesus, if you don’t reveal what this means, I’m not going to know. Oh, I can come up with my own theories, but I am not going to know what it means, what you wrote it to mean, unless you reveal it to me. You’re the one who wrote it. You’re the one who has to reveal to me what it means. Now, guys, that shouldn’t be much of a complex thing to us. Have you ever noticed how on television the president or somebody will get up and speak and then after they speak, commentators will come in and tell you what he meant? We say, do I not have the ability to understand what he means? Probably not. We’re being lied to about nine times out of ten. But even the commentary, even the people doing the comments don’t know what it means. They’re just telling you what they think it means. So it’s the same thing here. You can read this book, and if you’re reading it lost or from a perspective, as an example, that I don’t believe this word of God is true. I believe there is truth in it, but it’s kind of fairy tales. I don’t think there was an Adam and Eve. And I think those are just fairy tales. And I’m not sure Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. Well, then you’re going to approach the Word of God and interpret the Word of God totally different, are you not, than someone who knows this Bible is 100% true, not the translation, not translated, don’t have to be a King Jameser, not the translation, but the original manuscripts. Those original manuscripts that were copied, tenaciously copied, we have hundreds of copies of those original manuscripts. In comparison to any other history of antiquity, any other historical event at all, compared to the Bible, is nil. And so that’s what is inerrant. Translations are made off of that. They’re not inerrant, but they are translations. Some are good, maybe some are not so good. But the issue is that you’ve got the word of God in your hands. Now, if I have the word of God in my hands and I approach that with this is the word of God, this is true. I even believe the maps are inerrant. If it is true, then I’m going to interpret the word of God totally different than someone who is approaching with the idea that may be true and may not be. So you wonder why you’ve got 800 and some denominations going around the world, thousands through the world, and 800 and some here in this country? Because of interpretation of the Word of God. Where do all those interpretations come? Leaning on your own understanding, not depending on Him to reveal the meaning of the Word of God to you, and it’s all over the place. So, it said that to each one of these people, in verse 7, the grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. And this is why it says, when he ascended on high, he led captives to his train, and he gave gifts to men. Now, what does he ascended mean, except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions? And he who descended is the very one who ascended higher up. Then all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe. Now there again, it was he who gave some to be apostles. We just talked about this. He gave some to be prophets. These are all men who are gifts, not a gift to the man. The man is the gift. Are we together on these? And then some to be evangelists and some to be pastor teachers. What is the purpose of all of these men? To prepare God’s people for works of service. Now, what did Jesus say was the work of the Lord? When they ask you, what’s the work of the Lord, Lord? Believe in me. What’s the job of the evangelist? To convince people to what? Believe in Jesus for salvation. What was the work of the prophet? Same thing. What should it be the work of a pastor teacher? Teaching the congregation to walk by faith in Christ Jesus. Teaching them what God said is what works is, is believing in him. teaching people to quit being mass followers and recognize that Jesus lives in you and he wants to lead you. And he doesn’t care where he leads him. I’m leading you. And the same thing that he told to Peter, what does it matter to you what I do with John if he lives forever? I’m telling you to follow me. So it isn’t what are we doing? The issue is, is what are you doing with the gift that God gave you? It’s individual. You know, many times in a sermon you see somebody. Did you hear that, honey? You know what? The Lord probably said, hey, I’m not talking to her. I’m talking to you. Talking to you. This is a personal relationship, guys. It’s a vital personal relationship between you and Jesus Christ. Now, between you and Jesus Christ, between you and Jesus Christ, between you and Jesus Christ, and we all come together, and it’s the ecclesia meeting, the church meeting. You don’t come to church. You are the church. Are we together? Okay. So the reason there is to prepare God’s people for the works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach a unity of In the faith. A unity in the faith. And in the knowledge. Of the son of God. So he wants there to be a unity in the faith. As a result of our knowledge of the son of God. Unity. That means Jew and Gentile alike are both believing the same thing. There’s not a Jew gospel. There’s not a Gentile gospel. Now guys, I want to just emphasize this. There are people who believe that you could never understand the New Testament apart from the Old Testament. Do you think that’s true? Or do you think that you will never understand the Old Testament apart from the New Testament? Who came to explain what the Old Testament meant? Jesus. Jesus. You think the Old Testament people knew when they were saying, I believe in the coming Messiah? Obviously, they didn’t know who it was. When he got here, they killed him. But they knew somebody was coming. They still do to this day. In Orthodox Judaism, there still is a belief that the Messiah is coming. But they believe that when he comes, he’s going to free Israel. And until I see somebody do that, don’t tell me about this Messiah. I don’t want to hear about the suffering Messiah. I’m interested in the reigning Messiah. To this very day, that’s exactly what they’ll tell you. He wants a unity. That’s not truth. The truth is the Messiah came. His name was Jesus. And there’ll be no man who will ever walk on the earth that can duplicate the works of Jesus. How much more loving is the Messiah that they think is going to come, is going to have to be than Jesus? How many more miracles is he going to have to do than Jesus did? How many more truths is he going to have to tell than Jesus did? This, Jesus, is the Messiah. Get a unity in that. When do you have a unity? When the Jew believes that, when the Gentile believes that. It’s not a Jew message, not a Gentile message. It’s a church message. The true church. Now, he says that we reach this unity and then become mature. He does not want us to remain a babe. Hebrews says by this time you ought to be teaching, but you’re still immature. You’re still a babe, still sucking on milk instead of going to solid food. And we ought to be reaching out. We’ve absorbed enough. It’s time to start reaching out to someone else. That’s what he’s going to be talking about. I’ve given you these gifts. Now I want you to use them. He wants you to become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, the whole measure. When that occurs, he says, we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves blown here and there by every wind of teaching. and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Does that make sense? What is he saying that we’re going to have? And what is he saying we do have? Well, you got every wind of doctrine. You got every, it said some 800 of them right here in this country that we know of.
SPEAKER 01 :
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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. But it’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? 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, a Christian experience. We were down at First Baptist with Ed Hecht, and one of our sisters in Christ, 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 will 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 ahead 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 :
Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity with Bob George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord. Find more information online at bobgeorge.net. There you’ll also find available CDs, DVDs and Bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another and praise the Lord. Amen.
