← Prophecy Watchers
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Welcome to studies with Stearman. Join us as we look deeper into the Bible. Strengthen your faith with us, even as we see the day approaching. And now here's Gary. The Bible talks about hair because why? Because it wants you to be very conscious of the way you're projecting an image. Are you glorifying the Lord with your image? It's really that kind of a question. But, you know, the part that stuck with me from last week is First Corinthians 11:19. And I'll take the verse before as well, First Corinthians 11, 18, 19, where Paul says, for first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear there be divisions among you. The Greek word for divisions is schism. He says, I hear there are schisms. That means a split, a fragmentation. And I partly believe it. Actually, he's reluctant to believe it, but he believes it. And then verse 19, really, you know, this is an amazing verse, for there must also be heresies among you. Paul is acting as prophet here. He's prophesying about the church, and he says, there must also be heresies among you that they which are approved. And the Greek word here for approved is the Greek word dokimos, which means to be tested and found adequate. That they which are approved may be made manifest among you. In the church, there are going to be stinkers. That would be a great book, wouldn't it? Some stinkers I have met in church. I could write that book. I'm not sure whether I'd put in all the names, but you know what I mean. I've been in and around Christians for a long time now, and I have been astonished at the chicanery, backbiting, tooth, timing, four, flushing go on the list of names as long as Christians that I have seen in congregations, because I thought at church you'd find just the cream of the crop, the absolute good people, you know, the obedient ones and the. The very special people. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. Paul said a long, long time ago, he said, there must be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. The idea in a fellowship is that there will be heresies. The Greek word for heresy is very interesting. Hieresis. Now, when you think of a heresy, what do you think of? You think of a cult, maybe, or you think of some kind of a horrendous belief system that has nothing to do with the Bible. And, boy, there are a lot of those. But the word heresy really has a very simple meaning. It's the Greek hieresis. And it means to choose. It's the ordinary Greek word that means to choose something. Like, I choose this or I choose that. That's what a heresy is. A heresy is choosing something other than the word of God to make yourself comfortable. And how many people have you heard or read who said, in effect, you know, the Bible is fine in as far as it goes, but here's what I like to read, here's what I find interesting. And then they go on and develop a message of their own choosing that has nothing to do with the Bible. That's a heresy. And those are going to be in the church until Jesus comes. You can depend on it. It is written, First Corinthians 11, 19. There will be heresies among you. It was ordained to be. Now, think of me what you will, but I'm just telling you what's in the Bible. The church is not all sweetness and light. It's a place of great testing. It's a place. You know what it is. It's a place where sound doctrine should prevail. And if sound doctrine does not prevail for whatever reason, then those people who hold to sound doctrine are instantly put under the gun. Should I argue if I see somebody going against clear doctrine, should I confront that individual? Why, if I do that, man, I'm going to get in trouble. I'm going to cause a great big problem in church. Well, you may be called upon from time to time to confront on the basis of sound doctrine. And Paul says to do so is part of the approval system. You got to be tested. Well, all of this was in the context of fellowship. First Corinthians 11 is all about fellowship around the word. And as you end chapter 11, which we went through last week, you go through the part about the Lord's Supper, the Koinonia, where Paul reviews the idea of the Last Supper, the bread and the cup. And he says, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till he come. And when he deals with this subject, Paul is preparing us for what is to follow. Because what follows, First Corinthians 11 in 12, 13 and 14 is a discussion about the body of Christ and the functioning of the body. Now, remember, First Corinthians was written to answer a number of questions that the Corinthians had raised. They had asked him, since we live in Corinth, and this place is sinful and idolatrous and is built around money and society and social climbing and hairstyle and all kinds of dirty rotten stuff goes on here. How should we behave ourselves as Christians? And they sent him a number of questions which he's been answering one by one. And up till now, Paul has been talking about carnality. Moving up through chapter 11, Paul is addressing carnality and how it expresses itself. You come to eat the Lord's supper, some of you are getting full and fat and drunk, and others of you don't have enough to eat, he says. And he says, you're not showing that you understand the functioning of the body of Christ. And he addresses all these carnalities. But when he turns to chapter 12, suddenly the subject shifts from carnalities to spiritualities. I mean, there's just an instant shift. And that shift is seen or is indicated or red flag by verse 34 of chapter 11. If any man hunger, let him eat at home, that you come not together unto condemnation. So when you come together, it should be in communion and not condemnation. Then he says, and the rest will I set in order when I come. Well, by that sentence he is indicating that he's now ending a thought. He's ending the section of the letter that's aimed at answering their questions. He's addressed their questions one by one by one. And now he says, and the rest and what's understood there is the rest of your questions. The rest of your questions will I set in order when I come. He changes the subject. Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren. So he's turning to spiritualities. The word gift, by the way, is not in the Greek text. The word that's in the Greek text is spiritualities. Pneumaticos in the Greek, he says, now concerning spiritualities, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. The subject now turns to spiritualities. We've been talking about carnalities. You know that you were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as you were led. Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed anathema, and that no man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Ghost. Verses 2 and 3 set the topic. Verse 2. You were carried away by dumb idols. That term dumb comes from Greek phonos, meaning something that can sound. We have that word in our English language phonograph phonetics. The idea of speaking the Greek word is phone, and if you put the ah in front of it, aphonos, it means unspeaking or quiet, not a sound. That's the word for dumb in dumb idols. Dumb idols, you read Psalm 115. Psalm 115. 5. They have mouths, but they speak not. Eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not noses have they. Now, these are these idols that you see standing in buildings all over the world. You know, you see these wonderful carved idols. Some countries have literally hundreds or thousands of idols. Every little city you go to, you see these little buildings by the road with a little statue inside, you know, and you're supposed to stop and drop a little piece of fruit or say a word to this idol. But does the idol ever say anything to you? Hmm. Their idols have mouths, but they speak not. Eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not. Noses have they, but they smell not. They have hands, they handle not. Feet they have, but they walk not, neither speak they through their throat. Psalm 115 that tells you all about idols. And here's the next verse. They that make them are like unto them. The people that make the idols are like the idols they make. They're essentially speechless. That is, they have no way of addressing God. Habakkuk2 wouldn't be a complete study on idols unless you read that second chapter of Habakkuk. Habakkuk comes right after Nahum. You may wonder what Nahum comes after. Well, Micah Habakkuk 2:18 says, what profiteth the graven image? That the maker thereof hath graven it. The molten image. That's something like a bronze or a brass. And a teacher of lies that the maker of his work trusteth therein to make dumb idols. Those are idols that do not speak. Woe unto him that saith to the wood. Awake to the dumb stone. Arise, it shall teach. Wow. So you carve a stone idol and you say, arise, it shall teach. Not likely. Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver. There's no breath at all in the midst of it. Now, that's very interesting, because the breath is the emblem of the Spirit of God. And in particular, there's no spirit. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him, which is a turn. Let the earth keep silence before the Lord. It's a kind of a turn of events there, because it is the idols that are keeping silence to the idolatrous world. Now go back to First Corinthians 12. He says, you know that you were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols even as you were led. He's addressing the Gentiles in the Corinthian audience here. Wherefore I Give you to understand that no man speaking by the spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed. There were people going around calling Jesus accursed in that day, and we know what they were saying. Some of them were the Gnostics who denied that Jesus came in human flesh. Some, like the Romans, taunted the followers of Jesus, saying he was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier and a Jewish peasant girl. And we crucified him and he died like a dog. That was a common thing that was said about Jesus. You can read Tacitus, you can read the Roman historians and find out what they were saying about Jesus. Paul says, no man speaks by the spirit of God calling Jesus accursed. They're speaking and saying these things and that no man can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit. That's an odd way to express an idea. Why would he have written that verse three the way he did? What he's saying in unequivocal philosophical terms here is that it is the spirit that causes people to state what they state, for good or for ill. Man has a conceited way of looking at the world. A lot of men, secular men, think that the ideas that they get are their own ideas. Like, you know, I was driving and I came up with this idea the other day for a better egg beater, and I'm gonna develop this thing and sell it and make a million dollars. And the idea in that man's mind is that while he was driving, he came up with the idea for a better egg beater in the strictest terms. He didn't. Somewhere he was stimulated internally to synthesize some parts and pieces that he saw in his mind and bring together that egg beater, and he thought he did it. But I got news for you. The Bible is very clear about this, that ideologies, speeches, ideas come from the spirit realm, either for good or for ill. You're either listening to those spirits or you're listening to the spirit of God. And you come up with what you come up with because you're stimulated in a particular way, not because you yourself are anything great. The Bible always says that. Does the Bible say to man, be proud, O man, for those wonderful things you have invented? No, it does not say that at all. It says, be humble. Everything that you have, everything that you are, you were or you will be, comes from either the good spirits or the evil spirits. Either comes either from God or from the devil. But secular man likes to fantasize that he's invented this better World with all these better things in it. IPods, HDTV, you know what I'm saying? That's why Paul wrote verse three. I want you to understand one thing. No man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed. And no man can say that Jesus is Lord by the Holy Ghost. The Spirit is the one that gives ideas. Now we're looking at words here and developing ideas. This is what we are urged to do. The Bible urges you not to give up studying Scripture. Study, study, study to show yourself approved. Satan would like to stop you from studying. How could he do that? Well, he could convince you that Bible study is a waste of time, or he could take away the tools that enable you to study. And you know what? He's doing a marvelous job of that. Because in the 21st century right now, we're becoming a non verbal world. Back in the ages of the readers, the McGuffey readers and all the school readers, there was a thought that was expressed in school and that is that the reason you learn to read and to write and to cipher is so that you will become literate and thereby able to read and interpret the word of God. Whereas if you couldn't read, there's no way you could ever read and interpret the word of God. There was that expressed idea in public schools. And if you look at the old readers, they've got all those ideas built into them. And if you look at what kids used to study in the sixth grade concerning reading, they were more literate in the sixth grade than we are in the 12th grade today. Literally true. Because they had a goal. And their goal was to teach spiritual literacy. And the only way you can teach that is to teach the ability to decode complex literary passages. Remember what Peter said about Paul? He says, our brother Paul has written many things difficult to understand. Well, they are difficult to understand. And you have to have a fundamental understanding of sentence structure, subject, verb and object, prepositions, tenses, the perfect tenses, which by the way, no one uses anymore. Nobody says, I would have enjoyed seeing. I don't like to sing. Nobody says, I shall have. He shall have. Nobody uses perfect tenses anymore. Listen to people, the way they talk. In fact, it's worse than that. I went man. He went whoa. And I went man. And so he goes whoa. And I go wow. Well, that's English. If you talk that way for very long and if you don't study the language, you'll lose your ability to read scripture. You will lose your ability to read and understand the word of God. I Go. Hey. Whoa. This is why I stand up here. I'm not trying to make the complex simple at all. That's not my goal. I'm trying to make the complex even more complex because in that way, you are pulled up to the level of God. I don't want to make the complex simple. God didn't make the complex simple. He just spoke the Word and he said, it's all here, if you choose to understand it. Well, that's what I get out of verse three. Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed. And no man can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Ghost, it's the Spirit. Now we get into an interesting part of the Bible, verse 4. Now, there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. There are diversities of operation, but it's the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same spirit to another faith, by the same spirit to another, the gifts of healing by the same spirit to another, the working of miracles to another prophecy to another discerning of spirits to another, diverse kinds of tongues to another interpretation, the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one and the selfsame spirit dividing to every man severally as he will. We have here the spiritual gifts, and we have to read this partly in the context of what was going on when Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Remember, it's A.D. 56, the time when Nero is coming to power and the great persecutions of the church are going to begin. It's a time when. When the spiritual power in the Roman Empire is manifested in idols. Artemisa, Diana of the Ephesians, Zeus, Apollo, Hera. All of the gods and goddesses, the God of interpretation, Hermes. All the gods and goddesses that came from the Periclean era of Greece back in the 7th century BC and were picked up and enhanced by the Romans. And if the man on the street wanted to get in touch with the gods, he would go through an idol. He'd go to some idol shrine or another, and he would honor that idol. Then he would receive some sort of spiritual gift. And there were gifted spiritists in these temples. For example, the hieratical temple virgins, the Olympian priestesses, the seers, the soothsayers, the magicians. You were literally Swimming in false spirituality in the ancient Roman Empire. And you were required by state law to worship Caesar as God. And so when Caesar spoke or wrote something down on parchment, it was considered to be a statement from God. This was the spirituality that you were living in in the Roman Empire. Along comes Christianity now with its gifts of the Spirit, which the Lord used to forge a new era. The miracle of the early church is phenomenal. It could not have been formed the way it was but for two the resurrection of Jesus first and foremost, and the gifts of the Spirit, the sign gifts that were present in the first century that caused the church to. To literally spread like wildfire across the Roman Empire. The sign gifts and the miracles. Now, there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. These gifts are called charismata in the Greek, and from that comes the name of the charismatic movement. Charismata does not mean speaking. It has nothing to do with speaking. Charismata is simply the Greek word for all gifts. Whatever the gift may be, it's not just tongues. So get that straight right now. There are diversities of charismata, and these diversities are differences. In plain English, there are differences or variations of gifts, but the same spirit is driving all of these gifts. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. These administrations, by the way, we touched upon in Romans chapter 12. Back in Romans chapter 12, you have a list of seven spiritual gifts. Prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, ruling or administration, and mercy or charity. Here in first Corinthians, you have a list of nine gifts. The seven in Romans that we speak of often are gifts of administration that have to do with sanctification. Specifically, they're bound up with the idea of sanctification. Here. The nine gifts are gifts of the body. They are gifts to cause profit within the body of Christ. And remember, the topic now has been communion, commonness, fellowship, interaction, loving someone else within the congregation more than you love yourself. Remember, we've just come out of 8, 9, 10, and 11 Christian liberty. The idea of liberty being used as a foundation upon which to express the love of God, to draw the congregation together and not pry it apart. There are differences of gifts, but the same spirit. There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. These administrations, by the way, are interesting. There are differences of administrations. What do you suppose that Greek word is? The Greek word is diakonia. Deacons. It's the same word you used for a deacon. And what's a deacon? A deacon is somebody who helps serves within the body of Christ. Deacon. Well, what do you have to do. To be a deacon. How many years do you have to go to school? And where do you get your deacon's license? I'd like to be one of those deacons. What do I have to do to get to be a deacon? It's interesting because I don't know whether you've noticed or not, but the interior walls of this entire church have been repainted recently, just as if by magic Notice they're a nice light color, different color than they were, and they've been patched and all the smudges and scrapes and everything are gone. That was done by a deacon. And you're going to have to ask him where he got his deacon's license. But that's the term right here in verse 5. There are differences of administrations. Service would be a really good word here. There are differences in deaconship. In other words, service to the body. Okay, what do you have to do to be of service to the body of Christ? What do you have to do? What is it that you have to do? Where do you sign up? Or where do you get your document? Where do you get the right to be a deacon? How do you get to be one of those? You know very well. I mean, I'm just asking a rhetorical question. Everybody here knows the answer to that question. The answer is there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. Differences of administration, but same Lord. It is the Lord who ordains these administrations, these gifts. They are not doled out by some human agency upon human authority. That's the point Paul makes here. You don't have some board somewhere of the wealthiest guys in the community, the auto dealers, bankers, etc. Who sit at a board and meet once a week and decide who's going to be a deacon? No, that's not the way the Bible has it put together. The Bible says that's between you and the Lord. And if the Spirit of the Lord ordains you in a particular way, so be it. Being moved by the Spirit is very much a central idea to Christianity. We kind of joke about it. When are you going to do that? Well, when the Spirit moves me, I reckon I'll get around to that. You know, the Spirit really does move people. You know, he really does. It's no joke. And there are diversities of operations. Verse 6, these diversities of operations. Energizings would be the best way to put this. It's a Greek word that means to energize differences of energizing fields, if you will. But it's the same God which worketh all in all, you know, God is doing a lot of amazing things all the time. And they don't necessarily get announced. They don't. They happen. They move according to the will of God and they don't get announced. It's a one I've never heard before. Now with that as a preface, let's go through and look at the gifts of the spirit. The manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit with all. To profit with all. That's kind of a Middle English expression which means the manifestation of the spirit is given generally to profit each man. For to one is given a spirit of the word of wisdom. Number one, what is the spirit of the word of wisdom? Who in here has the spirit of the word of wisdom? There may be more than one, maybe several, that have the spirit of the word of wisdom. What is the word of wisdom? Well, in the Old Testament, wisdom, Chokhmah, in the Hebrew, Chokhmah, remember, doesn't just mean knowing something, it means having done something. It means doing something with what you know. That's the way the Hebrew views wisdom. Wisdom is not static. It is something that actually accomplishes things. So the word of wisdom is being able to speak that which is productive spiritually within the body, moving the body in a particular way. How is it different from the word of knowledge? How would that be different? The word of knowledge? Well, wisdom is developed around insight. Wisdom says, you know what, if you do this, then such and such a thing will happen. Knowledge is different. Knowledge doesn't do that. Knowledge is investigation. Knowledge develops knowledge developers adds line upon line and precept upon precept to produce a body from which to draw wisdom. Wisdom says, you know, if you do that, that will be good, but don't do that because that'll be bad. Knowledge is just the general basis of God's word without application necessarily. And you know, you stop and think about it. There are a lot of people who are very gifted on the of knowledge in the word of God. But their calling spiritually is not to go out and move people, but simply to be there. We would call them academics, people who study and write and make knowledge available for other people. There are people of wisdom who actually apply knowledge and go out and move people with it to another. The word of knowledge by the same spirit, the word of knowledge. Wow. What are we talking about? Are we talking about something kind of spooky and supernatural here? Word of knowledge? I know something you don't know, or are we talking about like remote viewing Word of knowledge. You know what remote viewing is? That's the ability to kind of grab your forehead and say, aha. I see on Greentree Boulevard in Columbus, Ohio, there's a car that's having engine trouble right now, and there's a poor Christian lady on her way to church and she needs help. The Lord is going to send her help. True or false? Well, what is the word of knowledge? True or false? What is the word of knowledge? Do you know? What's the Greek word for knowledge? Well, the Greek word for knowledge, and we talk about it all the time, is gnosis. And gnosis in the Bible in the New Testament, always refers to knowledge of the Lord and the things of the Lord, specifically the risen Christ and the things of redemption. That's the word of knowledge. There are people who know more than other people. Some people know a whole lot more about the redemptive things of Christ. They've lived in it, they've studied it, they have experienced it. The word of knowledge. There is a knowledge base of the redemption of Christ that's known very deeply by some and in a shallow way by others. I think that the word of knowledge is spiritually given to a very, very great degree. The word of knowledge, I believe, has to do with your perception of the deep, interactive things of the Lord as seen in the Word. Somebody asks you about type and symbol and how this applies to something that's going on right now in the congregation or in your life, and says, what does that mean? The Spirit can illumine you from Scripture based upon what you know, based upon a particular kind of reading, to be able to give to somebody else an interpretation that will help them to then progress in their own spiritual life. This is the way I look at the gift of the word of knowledge. There are some people you would go and ask a question, a spiritual question, knowing that you'll get an answer. There are other people you wouldn't go and ask because you sense that that person would be able to give to you a word of knowledge. That's what I really and truly believe this means. Now, in the first century, they did not have a New Testament. Got to remember 56 A.D. paul's writing this. There's no such thing as a New Testament at all. What are you going to do? What scripture are you going to look up in the New Testament when there's no New Testament, you're going to go to someone who's spiritually gifted in that era to be able to interpret the redemptive things of Christ. The word of Knowledge. Later on, when the New Testament was canonized, the word of knowledge, I think, became transferred over to a kind of experiential understanding of the things of God that's transmitted from one person to another to another. Faith. The third gift of the spirit mentioned here is faith, the gift of faith. What is the gift of faith? One of the odd things about Christianity in particular, as opposed to every other, I'll call it a religion, even though I don't believe Christianity is a religion. But every other religion on earth has an interactive experiential quality to it. Judaism, for example, has an experiential quality. It has the trappings of the festival calendar. It has prayer shawls, it has candles, it has the menorah. It has all kinds of things that you can touch and feel and do. It has lots of doing things, and it makes you do things or not do things on a particular day. Every religion has these things you do. Christianity doesn't have anything to do. You don't have a spirit stick in your living room that you kiss every time you walk past it. There's no Christian spirit stick that I know of, or a spirit knob for that matter. There's no thing you do in Christianity. Right. Well, then in the absence of that, God talks to you every night before you go to bed, right? No, God doesn't talk to me every night before I go to bed. Well, then what is it that makes you know you're a Christian? You don't have a calendar, you don't have a globe or anything that lights up. What do you do to assure yourself that you are a Christian? You have faith. Yeah. But you don't have anything to see. There's nothing you can keep in your pocket. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Wow. Can you see it? No. I can't stand here and tell you that. I talked to Jesus the other day and he talked with me and we had a conversation, and here's what Jesus said to me. I'm passing it along to you because here's what he told me to tell you people. I can't do that. I could really fill this church if I could do that, but then again, I wouldn't be filling it necessarily with the right kind of people. I'm trying to tell you is what Paul is trying to tell people about the moving of the spirit. There are a lot of people who try to bottle it up like lightning in a bottle or like little fireflies on a summer night and sell it. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. What are you hoping for? Well, the Lord's going to come with a shout and he's going to say, come up hither one of these days in whatever language you speak, if you speak Greek, come on up. Well, do you really believe that? You have no reason to believe it other than that somebody's told you that. Actually, you do have a reason to believe that, other than somebody's told you that. You have spiritual affirmation internally. Right? The Spirit affirms your belief. You know that. You know that you know. And you say to yourself, I know what I know not because it's me knowing it, but because the Spirit has affirmed it in me. Oh, really? Well, try to prove that to somebody else. Well, I can't. It's there. I know it. See, that's the thing about faith. It's a spiritual gift. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen for by it. The elders obtain to good report. And you go back and look at all the elders, Abel and Enoch, Noah and Abraham, and all of the patriarchs who believed God, it was counted to them for righteousness. And a lot of times they didn't see anything at all. They just believed. That's a gift that is given by the Spirit. It's gift number three in this list of gifts of the Spirit. The gift of faith. It comes not because you know what you believe, but because the Spirit confirms inside of you what you believe. How many here just know that the Spirit has confirmed things inside of them? I know that. Yeah. See hands going up. It's true. This is a gift of the Spirit. Do some people have more of it than others? I would guess yes, of course. Do you have more of it sometimes than at other times? Yes. The Spirit moves in you sometimes very powerfully. And then sometimes you say, are you there, spiritual? Oh, spirit, are you there? Please be there. Oh, he's there. It's all about a relationship and interaction. The next gift is the gift of healing. Again, people try to bottle it up and sell it. If I could, in the name of Jesus, just touch everybody and heal them. If they just came right down here, I touched them, heal them of all of their maladies, I could fill this church. It wouldn't be very many weeks before we'd have to have a traffic cop out here directing traffic. And I'd have to take up residence in a little cabin outside Oklahoma City somewhere, hide out, because everybody wants to experience that gift of healing. We've had spectacular healing miracles in this fellowship over the years. We've seen absolute Healing, miracles. I could name them. A lot of you know what they are. You remember what they are. On the other hand, we've had a lot of illness and a lot of difficulty and we've prayed for those people and they did not get better. Who's to blame? Well, the only person to blame there is the one who fails to understand the way the spirit moves. In the Old Testament, for example, a moving of the spirit is associated with general health. Solomon said, the Spirit brings health to your bones, brings health to your entire body, the spirit of God. So in one sense, if you are in close fellowship with the Lord, you have health. It will bring health to your bones. He is health. He is healing. Proximity to God is healing. I know that for a fact, and many of you do too. Keeping in close relationship with God will bring you health. Being at odds with God will bring you ill health. There are many examples of this in the Bible. Many, many examples of people who disobeyed God and fell into various kinds of maladies. We're talking about health here. We're talking about the gift of healing by the spirit of God. I think that the Bible encourages the laying on of hands for healing. I really do. And in fact, we have long practiced the ministry of laying on of hands and praying for people who are in ill health. We still do this anytime we. We feel the Spirit moves us or anytime someone requests that by faith, we pray for that healing and turn that over to the Lord. How about miracles in the next line here we have number five, spiritual gift. Number five, the gift of the working of miracles. The gift of the working of miracles. The Greek word here is powers, du numes powers, translated in English as miracles. We're talking about supernatural powers here. There are dozens of examples in the New Testament text of supernatural miracles. And you know what they are? Peter breaking out of jail with the help of an angel. Paul having supernatural power to resist large groups of people. Paul being stoned to death and raised from the dead. All kinds of miracles in the Bible. Peter raising Dorcas and Joppa. Just all sorts of powerful miracles. But again, you can't catch this in a bottle and sell it. But on the other hand, you do know that if you're in close relationship with God, you have wonder working power. For example, if you're the father of a household and you act as spiritual leader to your household, God will give you wonder working power within your family and he'll pull off miracles in your household. I promise you this is true. He'll give you gifts. He'll give you miraculous ways to do things. I've seen miracles. I'm not going to name names, but somebody who's a prominent member of this congregation was once run over by a car or run through by a car and was unhurt, totally unhurt. It was as though the car was just suddenly invisible or transubstantial and just passed through that person. Those things happen. I tell the story of a man who was driving out to help a sick friend on a rainy night. I know this man and he tells a story about how he drove out here northwest of Oklahoma City in the country. Very, very stormy rainy night and northeast of Oklahoma City, I should say. And he drove to his friend's house, farmhouse, stayed with him all night, prayed for him. The next morning the man was very much improved. He got in his car to leave to drive back to Oklahoma City. The man says, well, remember now, don't drive south out of here because the bridge is out. And this man said, well, that's the way I came last night. I came up from the south when I drove here. And the guy, you couldn't have, you couldn't have. That's like a 40, 50 foot span. You couldn't have come across that. Well, yes, I did. That was a miracle. There are miracles that happen with the Spirit of God when he needs those miracles to happen. What we're talking about here is the unity of the body in a diversity of gifts. It's always Paul's deep seated desire to bring unity to the body in a diversity of gifts to another. Prophecy here that's a gift. Number six. It is. Prophecy is the ability to speak the Word of God. It is not a hocus pocus deal where you can again put your hand up to your forehead and say, going to prophesy over you that God is going to cause you to do this, that and the other thing. It is not that sort of a thing at all. Prophetais simply means to proclaim the Word of God. The proclamation can be an exposition of the Word of God. It can be knowing when, how and where to utter the Word of God for maximum effect. And that's all. Spirit driven. The Spirit can tell you when, what, when and how to prophesy. And it can be just an internal spirit that wells up in you and causes you to say something to somebody that you would never under ordinary circumstances say. And later on you'll say, I don't know what made me say that, but I told so and so this and boy, it made an effect in his life that's prophecy, in a sense. And the Lord, I think, can move you to. To speak. Discerning of spirits. Gift number seven, spiritual discernment. No, we started out by saying a minute ago that it is ordained by God that there will be heresies in the body of Christ. Paul said it back here in 1119, for there must also be heresies among you. Now, do you have the ability to discern a heresy if somebody comes up to you and says, you know, I read the Bible and here's what I take out of it, and me and a group of people, you know, I believe the same as so and so over here, and I've been reading his stuff on the Internet, and boy, it sure looks like the thing to believe. And you're standing there saying, heresy. Heresy. That's the ability to discern spirits. Do you have that ability? A lot of people have that ability. Some people don't. They're as dull as a stone when it comes to discerning of spirits, really. To another diverse kinds of tongues. We could talk about this for a whole hour. But in essence, the sign gift of tongues was given to spread the early church in the first century. It's a matter of historical fact that glossolalia largely disappeared after the death of the last apostle. By the second century, glossolalia was so rare that when one Christian sect took it up as a central issue, that sect was deemed to be heretical and banned from fellowship because the general belief in the second century was that tongues had ceased? We'll get into that when we get over to 1 Corinthians 13. It's not quite that simple. However, there's much more to the teaching about glossolalia than simply saying it has ceased. Diverse kinds of tongues and the interpretation of tongue. Do you have the ability to interpret tongues? And later on, Paul gets into the details of what that means. And a little bit later, we're going to go into more depth, but I want to bring this to an end at verse 11. But all these worketh that one and self, same spirit, dividing to every man severally or individually as he will. What's the subject here? The subject is the unity of the body of Christ. It's interesting that after naming these spiritual gifts, Paul launches into what seems like a very homely illustration of the body. You know, are you an ear, an eye, or a foot or a hand? What are you? Are you an inferior or a superior part of the body? And he says, every part of the body is required. In other words, he's not talking about, hey, I've got a hot spiritual gift that so and so doesn't have. Or you people don't know what it's like to be able to lay on hands and achieve healing, but I do, because I've got. It's not like that at all. The gifts of the spirit are the same as the finger's ability to touch and the heart's ability to pump blood and the eye's ability to see and the ear to hear. They all should function smoothly together and not in a divisive way and not in a controversial way. And that's what Paul is urging here. He's urging people not to run around saying, hey, I got this. I got that. I've got the power. Do you have the power? You don't? Well, I can get you the power. What do I have to do? Well, you come Wednesday night, I'll give you the power. No, no, no, no, no, please. It's the exact opposite of that. It is. We're a body. We're functioning together. The spirit moves through us in mysterious ways. Of course, according to his will, not ours. Well, I'm going to have to stop right there. I'm just warmed up. I could go for another hour, but I'll spare you.