At the heart of Restoration, our mission is to to prepare you for yours – We want to fully empower you to change the world by releasing you into your FULL POTENTIAL in the KINGDOM of GOD – You have an Ephesians 2:10 calling on your life, and we want to help you discover it and fully live it

With that as a backdrop, I want us to dig into gifts the Spirit of God gives to each believer to accomplish the calling placed on your life – while there is a unique calling or plan God has for each of you, there are some common gifts that God uses to accomplish that plan – Three thoughts as we dive into this:

1. Each of us has been given a gift. Some have multiple spiritual giftings, but we all have at least one. 1 Peter 4:10 tells us that we have all been given a gift. “Each one should use whatever gift he has received…” – YOU HAVE A GIFT.

2. Your gift has been given for the benefit of others. Look at the next part of that verse: “…to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” Your gift has been given to you to build up others. Your gift should always unite the body of Christ, not divide it. Let that sink in: this topic often is divisive in the church. Why do you think that is? Because the enemy know that when you begin living fully into the gift God has given you, it strengthens and solidifies the body of Christ. The reason it has become so divisive is because the enemy takes a God-given gift and convinces you that you are God’s gift to the world. Spiritual PRIDE is the enemy of your gifting. This brings up an important distinction, the fruit of the Spirit vs the gifts of the Spirit – which is more important? We will see this more in 1 Corinthians 13, but in short, character is ALWAYS more important than gifting. It doesn’t matter what your gifting is if its demonstration points to you and not God.

3. The GIFTS of the SPIRIT are an impartation of the POWER of GOD in your life. The gifts have been GIVEN by God through the SPIRIT to DEMONSTRATE HIS POWER to the WORLD. When Jesus was ascending in Luke 24:49, he said that the Spirit would “clothe you with POWER from on high.” Acts 1:8, “You will receive POWER when the HS comes…” – 1 Corinthians 4:20, “the KINGDOM of GOD is not a matter of talk but of POWER.” The gifts have been given to show the supernatural power of God in the life of every believer of Jesus. If you are not displaying your Spiritual giftedness, you are not living in the power God has imparted to you

Ok, with those thoughts in mind, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

V1 – Paul is speaking to the church at Corinth here, which was a train-wreck of a church – they were living in a very pagan city, and there was a ton of paganism infiltrating the church – so, Paul is telling them here, “you have bad information” – this is for the church today, where, depending on your background, you may have a predisposition toward a certain view of the gifts – Let’s commit that as we unpack this, we open our minds and hearts and allow the Spirit to inform us of the TRUTH about the gifts

V2 – In this pagan culture, there were many gods, a god for any particular need in your life, whether it be fertility, health, financial, but Paul was very clear that these idols, or gods, were MUTE – they didn’t speak, they didn’t answer, it was a fruitless pursuit

V3 – Paul is telling the church here that you can’t live by the Spirit and curse Jesus, meaning that the fruit of the Spirit in you will always point to Jesus – if the fruit of your life is pointing to anything other than the Lordship of Jesus, you’ve missed the mark

V4-6 - different gifts but same Spirit, different ways to serve but same Lord, different works but same God - he’s reinforcing the idea that God, singular, is the giver of gifts, but he does it in a very trinitarian way – SPIRIT, SON, FATHER – the triune God, three persons, ONE GOD – and you don’t have to look anywhere else to find your gift

V7 – now to EACH ONE – this supports our first thought: YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN A GIFT – The SPIRIT MANIFESTS himself to each of us. What does that mean? It means that the gift reveals that the Spirit lives in you – but why is the gift given? FOR THE COMMON GOOD – this reinforces our second point: It’s not about your agenda, but a KINGDOM AGENDA – your gift has been given to you to build up the church, and ultimately to accomplish GOD’S PURPOSE, not your own - we will see more about next week –

V8-10 - This not an exhaustive list – in fact, Paul has at least two other places in scripture where he lists gifts, and they are different from this list, so I think we could make a pretty strong case that we don’t fully understand the fullness of Spiritual giftedness – Look at Romans 12:6-8 - Paul lists 7 gifts here: Prophecy, serving, teaching, encouragement, giving, leadership, mercy – Ephesians 4:11-12, 5 more: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers – some argue that these are offices or appointments, but they are giftings for the purpose of equipping

Here in 1 Corinthians 12, the list is this: Word of Wisdom, Word of KNOWLEDGE, Faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing spirits, tongues and interpretation of tongues – so there are at least 21 gifts Paul references, and he doesn’t do it all in one letter – here is why I am pointing this out: WE CANNOT ELEVATE CERTAIN GIFTS OVER OTHERS – certain streams of faith have taken certain gifts and made them the centerpiece of ministry, but if that were the case, wouldn’t Paul have consistently talked about those gifts among all the churches and not piecemeal them over letters to three different churches?

Let me give light definition to the list here in vv8-9, knowing that we will learn more about prophecy and tongues in chapter 14

Word of Wisdom – interesting that he doesn’t explain any of these gifts, but we do have something to go on: the context of the letter – in 1 Corinthians 1:18-27 (I’ll let you read later for the sake of time), he mentions the word wisdom and its derivatives 12 times – 12 TIMES! And what is the context? Wisdom revealing the TRUTH about God, Jesus and the cross – so, in short, the Word of Wisdom is likely revealing God and exposing the foolishness of the culture – this could speak to instruction

Word of Knowledge – this one contextually is found in 1 Corinthians 8, 4 times – he speaks of knowledge as a potential stumbling block – Knowledge puffs up – so, a word of knowledge could mean here that it is the knowledge of God’s plan vs. the culture’s plan – this could speak to information - now, if we explore outside of this letter, we see that knowledge is often given to people outside of their human understanding, often about another person – Jesus set this precedent – Matthew 9:4, Matthew 12:25, Luke 6:8, Luke 9:47 - Woman at the Well in John 4, Acts 9, Ananias given knowledge about Paul, who he was, what he had done, and what to say to him, Acts 8, Spirit spoke to Phillip and told him where to go, who to meet and road to Gaza, Acts 16, Paul knew the slave girl was under influence of evil spirit – so, this gift could speak to knowledge about God through teaching, or knowledge about someone through personal interaction

Faith – we all need faith in order to please God – Hebrew 11:6- but some have a special gift of faith that goes beyond the faith to trust Jesus

Healing – Let’s be clear: only God can heal, but clearly, God gives some the ability to be a part of seeing people healed – of course we have seen abuses of this in the church at large, but the gift exists, so we have to believe if he gives the gift, then he desires for that gift to be used

Miraculous Powers – This supports our third point: the POWER of GOD flows through every believer – what does this gift encompass? Could it be that this is a catch all, because the Spirit can do whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it? It is SUPERNATURAL!

Want to stop here because want to talk about the other gifts in more detail later – but look at v11

V11 - These are the work of the Spirit, and HE DISTRIBUTES THEM – you don’t decide your gift, the SPIRIT determines – so, be grateful for your gift, and don’t covet someone else’s gift, because THEY ALL WORK TOGETHER, which we will see next week

1. You have a gift
2. It is to the benefit of others
3. It ultimately displays the power of God in your life.