Spiritual gifts part 3: The Spirit uses the Cross and the Rapture to confront our flesh.

Pastor-Teacher
John Farley
Sunday,
July 18, 2010

Spiritual gifts part 3:  The Spirit uses the Cross and the Rapture to confront our flesh.

The emphasis is on UNITY.

Each and every born again believer gets one spiritual gift.

Your spiritual gift is not for private gain or enjoyment, but for the good of the team: the local assembly, the church.

The phrase is
pros to sumpheron

The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians can be seen as an appeal to unity in the face of some shocking examples of disunity.

WHENEVER God’s people start doing something new to His glory, the kingdom of darkness will do whatever it can to try to stop it, or at least cause havoc and confusion to mess things up.

The Doctrine of Spiritual Gifts

Point 1: Setting the scene for Paul’s teaching on the Spiritual Gifts.

The most extensive treatment of the subject of spiritual gifts is found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapters 12 through 14.

1. Paul had received an oral report from a woman by the name of Chloe with some alarming information, 1CO 1:11; 5:1.

2. He received a disturbing letter directly from the church at Corinth, a letter displayed an appalling lack of understanding about what Paul was teaching them, 1CO 7:1.

This problem was festering in the church of Corinth, and Paul addressed the problem head on with his teaching on the spiritual gifts.
 

This problem was disunity.

The problem is that various factions were making an issue of who was better and who was worse and who belonged to this faction versus that faction. There was bickering and arguing and dissension in the ranks.

This will help you be honest with yourself about the problems you have and the problems the rest of us have and realize that without the grace of God we’re nothing.

Grace is free, limitless, unmerited blessing to helpless, undeserving sinners from the loving God who is completely satisfied by the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace means that man has received from God that which he cannot earn or deserve.

Grace means that God has done the work, and God receives the credit, the glory.
Man receives the free benefits of God’s work.

A powerful outpouring of the grace of God occurred when He decided to give us our spiritual gift.

Grace means God does all the work and man receives the benefit.

God the Father has already blessed us with everything we will ever need for time and eternity.

One of those blessings is our subject of the spiritual gifts.

We will NEVER experience any of this freedom until we let go of the idea that self will ever cast out self.

God does all the work, we benefit...
now believe that, and rest.

The word of God is a mirror, and, as we examine the ugly reality of the sin nature rearing its ugly head in Corinth, we will be looking at ourselves in our “flesh”.

Unless we understand that there is a solution to the problem, who the heck wants to just keep staring at the problem?

GAL 5:16

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

Or in a single word ....grace.

God is at work in you!

How do we allow the power of the cross, of grace, of the Spirit, to work so we experience what God has done?

By setting our minds on God’s word and believing it and obeying it!

We discover, for example, that it really is true that we get more freed up the more we love and serve others, GAL 5:13.