The Holy Spirit: God’s Gift to the Church
June 8, 2003
Bumble's Sermon for Pentecost Sunday
Vietnamese Alliance Church of Santa Ana, English Speaking Congregation
“The Holy Spirit: God’s Gift to the Church”
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
{Intro: Tailored for the majority of the audience, who are High School and College students}
How many have seen “Matrix: Reloaded”? Finally I will have a chance to go and see it myself (now that the three-weeks premier period is over and the theater will accept movie passes ;-) Hey, I admit it: I am a cheap guy! To prepare for the movie, my wife asked me to rent the original Matrix so she can get the plots down before jumping into the sequels. We watched it together last week. Man! I forgot how awesome the movie was with the slow-mo 360 “bullet-time” shots, with all the all the kung-fu fighting scenes where people runs on wall and shooting while doing cartwheel and stuffs. I read on the net that with this sequel “Matrix Reloaded”, you can go beyond just watching the movies, but interact with it as well: go out and buy the game “Enter the Matrix,” and you will get to play the role of Niebo or Ghost; you will get to master all 361 different types of kung-fu moves, including dodging bullets, running on wall and shooting cartwheel. Let’s say if someday technology advances enough to enable us to not just watch the movies, but we can also interact with it, immerse ourselves in it, experience what it’s like, and even dynamically alter the storylines, etc. Would anyone want to watch movies passively any more? Or wouldn’t everyone rather get those “interactive features” instead, especially if we can provide free “universal access” to those “features”?
{End “Enter the Matrix” intro, transition into the passage}
For me, the most interesting aspect of Christianity is the built-in “interactive features” of God. Christianity is not a passive activity that we just observe, but our God interacts with us in a vivid way through the Holy Spirit. And better yet, everyone have “universal access” to this “interactive features” of God, starting from the first Pentecost Sunday, and it is still available for us today. Today is the memorial of that Pentecost Sunday and since the last time, Pastor Truong was teaching us from the last half of 1 Corinthians 11 on “The Lord’s Super”, so I asked to teach on the next passage 1 Corinthians 12:1-12 with a message on “The Holy Spirit: God’s Gift to the Church.”
Let’s read the passage, 1 Cor. 12:1-11 (NIV)
Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I 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. There are different kinds of gifts, but the 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. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.
{Overview of message title and structure}
The first disclaimer I want to make is that in verse 1, the word “gifts” is not there in the Greek. Paul was simply (literally) said, “Concerning the spiritual, brothers, I don’t want you to be ignorant.” But concerning the spiritual what? Many bible rendered “spiritual gifts”, but it could be translated “spiritual things”[i], or in my case (since I didn’t do too well in my Greek study), I would translate it as “spiritual stuffs”. So, the message today is not just about “spiritual gifts”. If you take a look at your outline, you will see that I divided the message into two parts: “The Gift of the Holy Spirit” and “The gifts of the Holy Spirit”.
{Part 1: The Gift of the Holy Spirit}
The first description about the Holy Spirit in this passage can be found in verse 3: “Therefore I 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.” And the title we read here is “Spirit of God”; it’s more than just a title, it’s actually an identification: “Spirit of God”.
{Point 1a: His identification: “Spirit of God”, interacting agent from the Living God}
What’s so special about the identification “Spirit of God”? The reason Paul brought “God” in the text here is to contrast with the empty religious reality the readers were so used to. Notice the situation before the word “therefore” in verse 2: “You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.” In a way, Paul asked the Corinthians to remember back the old days, when they didn’t know Jesus yet. In those days, they worship the idols[ii]; these so called gods were mute, voiceless, and unable to interact with them.
In contrast, Paul presented the Spirit of God in verse 3 as one who speaks, who interacts with us. The Bible coined this “interactive feature” of God with a special term: “Living God!” Our faith is not a religion with a set of belief based on God; our faith based on a dynamic interaction with this Living God. Moses encountered the Living God, so does David, Peter and Paul[iii]. In fact, the whole bible is the just the accounts of God’s interaction with us through out the stages of history. And the “Spirit of God” was right along that line of interaction since the very beginning of creation. Remember Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created heavens and earth,” and what was said right there in the next verse? “And the-Spirit-of-God was hovering over the void.” (For those of you who are taking notes, the first blank on the outline there, point 1a is, The Spirit is the Spirit of the Living/Interactive God.)
{Sub-point 1.a.1: the plan was to have universal access to the Spirit of God}
But back then, not everyone could have the Spirit of God in them. In the Old Testament, we read of the Spirit of God “came upon” the prophets, leaders, and other individuals so that they could know God personally and interact with Him; but this was done selectively and it doesn’t mean that everyone would have the Holy Spirit. In fact, we see that God make promise for a day where universal access to the Holy Spirit would be available: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days” (Joel 2:28-29).
The Jews have been waiting for the fulfilling of that promise. But sadly, as they’ve sinned and was defeated, and sent to exile, it seems like the promise above would not be fulfilled. In fact, by the time between the end of the last book of the Old Testament (Malachi) and the birth of Jesus, there were 400 years of silence where God no longer interact with the Israelites. The Rabbinic tradition even commented at the end of Malachi very melancholically this way: “…and the Spirit of God departed from Israel…”[iv]
{Sub-point 1.a.2: Jesus implements the universal access plan for all men to have the Holy Spirit}
By the time Jesus came, John the Baptist pointed to Him as the person will fulfill that promise of universal access to the Spirit of God. He said “I baptize you by water, but He will baptize you by the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 1:8) Jesus Himself confirmed this promise again to His disciples, saying that “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).
{Sub-point 1.a.3: At the first Pentecost, the plan came to realization}
“On the day of Pentecost, seven weeks after Jesus’ resurrection, the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm in the skies above them, and it filled the house where they were meeting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.” (Acts 2:1-4, NLT) People around them heard the sound and came over to check it out, some were amazed when they heard the languages, but others simply dismissed them as being too stoned or drunk, and to that, Peter replied: “Listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.’” (Acts 2:13b-18, NIV)
Note that Peter started his sermon using the same promise God made in Joel 2 to explained the phenomenon. In a way, he was saying, “Look guys, this is exactly what God had promise, universal access to the Interactive God, all from Jesus, and it’s free!” He then concluded his sermon with an invitation to the hearers: “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off - for all whom the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2:38-39)
{Point 1b: Today all believers have the Holy Spirit}
What does this means to us personally? It means now each of us have universal access to the Holy Spirit. (Point 1b in the outline: Today, He is the Spirit of each individual who believe in Christ)! It means that the Living God will interact with every one of us via His Holy Spirit. All it is required is that you repent and believe Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, and then you will receive the Holy Spirit, the Gift of God (“gift” in singular sense).
{Sub-point 1.b.1: Why would we (each individual) need the Gift of the Spirit}
But why would we need this gift? Wouldn’t it be enough for us to have our sin forgiven and have eternal life with God when we die? Nope! Our guest speaker last week reminded us that Jesus came to give us life and life abundantly. No doubt that we shall have life in heaven, but the Holy Spirit is the mean for us to have life abundantly here, on earth.
We also get some clue about why we need the Gift of the Holy Spirit from what Jesus described about him in John 14:16-17 (printed on your outline there, underneath part 1). The term “Counselor” in Jesus’ promise actually is the Greek word paracletos, a legal counselor who is by your side to assist you in court[v]. This is not your typical high school or college counselor, whom you may choose to ignore. This is “The Practice”[vi] type of counselor, whom you better listen to if you want to get anywhere. Jesus also said that this counselor “will live with us and be in us”. It is the same Spirit of God, who was in Jesus Christ, is now in you and me. The same Spirit who gave Jesus guidance will now guide us. The same Spirit who enables Jesus to obey the Father will now enable us to obey God.[vii] In fact, every time we read the words “in Christ” or “Christ in us”, we should relate to the Holy Spirit. This is so weird that Jesus even said that the world wouldn’t get it, “The world cannot accept [the Spirit], because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him!” Paul wrote about the God-dwell-in-us phenomenal as a mystery in this way: “[There is this] mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:26-27). Without the Holy Spirit indwelling in us, we will not be able to experience the new life is us [viii].
{Sub-point 1.b.2: OK, so how do I get started to “tap in” this Spirit of God who dwells in me?}
The question many of you may have is, “How do I suppose to know/experience the reality of the Holy Spirit in my life? OK, so I repented, baptized, and received the Gift of the Holy Spirit from God for me, how do I ‘unwrap’ it?” Here, the term Jesus used to describe the Holy Spirit in John 14 will help us a bit. The original paracletos legal-counselor back then was not the one who did all the talking for the client; the Greek verb here meant “called-in-to-help-along-side”. So if we think we will know the presence of the Holy Spirit because some how the Holy Spirit will “take over or lives,” turn us into a spiritual “Incredible Hulk” to live and die for God, we would be mistaken. If God did not “take over” Adam and Eve’s lives in the Garden of Eden, why would He want to do that now? The Spirit of God is now universally accessible and available to us, He is in our lives, but we must take an active role to call for help, to trust His guidance, and to obey and keep-in-step with His leading[ix].
{Illustration}
It’s like on-line-gaming experience: You came into contact with this character in an on-line world, you send a message to him/her asking for direction and you received some instructions back, at first you don’t know if you could trust these instructions or not, since those instruction could trap you in a dungeon or some other perils, but you take a leap of faith and follow it any way, as you carry out the instructions to accomplish your on-line-game objectives, you would know more about this character, you would know that he/she had been there before, that he/she is trustworthy, that he/she is not AI generated but a real person behind that character’s name. Similarly, we will take many incremental faith-filled action/reaction steps in our spiritual life to get to know the Holy Spirit, and with these faith-filled actions/reactions between us, and the Spirit of God; we would know, we would experience a new spiritual dimension of interaction with God, a dimension in which Jesus said that the world cannot accept, cannot see, and cannot know.
{Point 1c: The community aspect of the gift}
But there are more. The Holy Spirit is not only God Gift to us the individual Christians, but also the Gift to the community of believers, the church. The Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit came in power could have happened at 2am in the morning, to each individual and woke him or her out of bed too. But it didn’t happen that way. Why? It is because God wanted us to receive the Spirit as a community. As God formed the Body of Christ out of us, He gave us the Spirit of Christ to govern that body! All of the disciples were there, witnessing the power of the Holy Spirit on them, and later on, when they see the same Spirit working through the non-Jewish believers, they would be able to see, “Ah, they have the same Spirit just like us, so they must be of the same body like us!” (So, point 1c is that the Spirit is also the Spirit of the Community, the Body of Christ).
{Part 2: The gifts of the Holy Spirits}
Back in the old days, when God created for Himself the nation of Israel, He gave them the Gift of the Law from Mount Sinai. The Law is a social contract between the people and God, and more importantly, between the people and themselves, so it will govern the social interaction of people in that nation. Similarly, when God formed a new community, the Church, the Body of Christ, He gave us the Holy Spirit, to govern our interaction between us and God; as well as the interaction among ourselves[x]. Because of that purpose, the Holy Spirit also gives gifts for us, individuals in the body, to enhance our interaction with God and with one another. Generally speaking, the gifts of the Holy Spirit enhance the spiritual activities of the church.
{Point 2a: First principle on gifts: Everything the Spirit does would be based on Jesus, to make Him Lord}
However, things get rather messy when it came to community because we easily have clashes between many individuals. Especially in the present/postmodern culture of individualism, it is very easy for us to affirm our own individual spirituality and not hold true to the community standard. This is the problem of the Corinthians here. From verse 3, we read that someone would say, “Jesus be cursed” and someone else would think that they were speaking by the Holy Spirit and said “Amen, brothers”! They were mistaken spiritual-activities-of-the-individuals with the activities-of-the-True-Spirit-of-the-community. Here Paul jumped in and said, “No, no, guys! Just because you see some spiritual activities, you cannot say that it’s from our God, you have to evaluate everything on the foundation of our Jesus! Don’t focus so much about the spiritual activities, but rather, let’s focus on what the spiritual activities does!” (Here is the first principle for us in point 2a: Everything the Holy Spirit do, will lead to the ultimate result of making Jesus Lord! Since Jesus is the cornerstone of the community, He is the ultimate measurement of our spiritual activities. So, the way we know if someone is filled with the Holy Spirit is to see if they are also submit to the Lordship of Jesus or not. The way we know if a word is from the Spirit or not is to see if the teaching conform to the word of Jesus or not.
Therefore, if we are familiar with Jesus, we will be familiar with the Holy Spirit. Without that principle, the on-lookers saw the Pentecost and were confused and think they disciples were drunk. However operated with that principle, the disciples could saw the same phenomenon, but they were able to identify that this is the Spirit of God. Why, because they were so familiar with the Spirit of Jesus, they can recognize His Spirit on themselves now[xi].
In the summer of 1996, a few people from our youth group went to an interdenominational summer camp; (many of them are still sitting here this morning). In that camp, some unexplainable things happened, there were reports of demon casting, of speaking in tongue, of shaking and laughing, etc. How many of you have seen people speaking in tongue? To some of you who have not seen it, the observables are as followed: people seem to be praying, but the sounds they speak are unintelligible, you could not understand it, and sometimes the people who speak could not understand it either.
{Point 2b: Second principle on gifts: In the Spirit, Diversity will be in Unity}
There was a great diversity of views regarding this whole thing. Unfortunately, the more diversity we have the less unity we will tend to be. In regard to the phenomenon at summer camp, there were great controversies regarding it. In general you can take one of the following options: (a) these are NOT spiritual activities, people made it up themselves; perhaps we could even provide some sort of scientific and psychological explanations for the experience. (b) These are spiritual activities, from GOD; or (c) these are spiritual activities, but from the DEVIL. And there are other variations as well, for example with the subject of speaking in tongue, the last option (c) changed to (c*) Speaking in tongue is one of the spiritual activities, from GOD, but it no longer exists today. And so you could take various positions and be divided over the whole thing. In fact, we had people left our church over this 1996 summer camp incident. The division among the Corinthians back then was also so great that Paul appealed to them in the next three verses (notice his repetition of the words “different” and “same”):
There are different kinds of gifts, but the 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. (1Cor.12:4-6)
Here Paul reference the Trinity - (One-God-in-three-persons) - to make a main principle clear: Since God Himself is a diversity of three persons (the Spirit, Lord Jesus the Son, and the Father), yet united in One Triune God; there also should be the same reflection of Unity-in-Diversity in the people of God. (So, the second principle in point 2b is that “In the Spirit, diversity will be in unity”). Yet, when we hold on so much to our own distinctive differences, we tend to look down on our brothers and sisters. One group could say, “We are better, because we experience God power in this special way!” The other group can argue back, “No, we are better, because our faith is not based on emotional experience!” And then we fight each other, forgetting that we have the same Spirit within, serve the same Lord, and worship the same God.
Until today I still regret that we didn’t handle the 1996 situation better. We could be more attentive in evaluating the whole experience based on how people commit themselves to the Lordship of Christ; we could take the opportunity to help people to understand the purpose of spiritual gifts better. That was what Paul did. He seized the opportunity despite the chaos happened in Corinthians to lay out the third and most important principle about spiritual gifts in verse 7:
“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”
{Point 2c: Third principle on gifts: the Spirit gives everyone the manifestations (and gifts) for the common good}
The first blank in point 2c (on the handout) is each one of us is given the manifestation of the Spirit. But don’t write down the word “each one” in that blank yet. Do you really believe that each one of us is given the manifestation of the Spirit? How about trying to write your name in that blank and see how it sounds. Yes, each of us, Bumble, Kelly, Pastor Son, Katryna… you can write your name in that blank.
Also note that the second blank is for the word “manifestation” (phanerōsis) and not the word “gifts” (charismatōn), which was what Paul used in only a few verses before in v.6. That’s strange[xii]. Are these the same or different meanings of what came from the Holy Spirit? The interesting thing is that if I searched my Bible software for the word “gifts” (charismatōn), I will come across not only the list of 9 spiritual gifts here in verses 8-10, and verses 28-31 at the end of this chapter, but also a list of gifts in Romans 12:6-9 as well; and the funny thing is these lists are NOT identical. So gifts are a variety and non-exhaustive of spiritual abilities given by the Spirit.
On the other hand, a search on the word “manifestation” (phanerōsis) yielded only two results, one here, and another in 1 Co. 4:2, which translated "prove". The original Greek word meant “to make known, to make plain, to reveal, to bring to the light, to disclose, revelation”[xiii]. So the idea here is “the Holy Spirit’s presence in our life will be made clearly known in each one of us”. Which is rather make sense to me, because not all of you has words of wisdom, words of knowledge, speaks in tongues, or has miraculous powers as the nine specific manifestations listed here, but each one of us will clearly have an external and visible evidence of the invisible Spirit indwelling within us[xiv]. In Galatians 5:22 Paul has another way to describe this “visible evidences of the invisible Spirit”, he called it “fruits of the Spirit”, built on Jesus’ statement about we would know a tree by its fruits.
This is exactly how I evaluated the people from our groups who were experiencing the 1996 summer camp experience. Remember I gave a couple of multiple-choice options about whether it’s the genuine work of God or not? All I need to do is to watch for the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of the people came back from that camp. It’s the same thing we should do today, watching for the long-term fruits, regardless of the short-term claims.
The last blank of point 2c (on the handout) indicates the purpose of any spiritual gifts and manifestation: it’s for the benefits of all of us. The problem of the Corinthians here is they didn’t understand the purpose of the spiritual gifts. If you receive a present and have no ideas what is it for, then the only way you could use it is: to misuse it (use not according to its intended purpose). At best, the gift is a mere toy, not tool at all. Here, Paul explained the operating guideline for spiritual gifts: they are to be used for ministry, to build-up the body of Christ; and not as my cool spiritual toy, for personal enjoyment or personal glorification.
{Point 2d: The risks of spiritual gifts}
Anything has a lot of power for construction will also has a lot of potential for destruction. If I misused a saw, my finger may get nicked, but if I misused an electric-powered saw, I could cut off the whole hand. Similarly, you need to know the potential dangers of spiritual gifts as well.
{First risk: Prideful for having gifts}
The first risk is that you could think that you are better than somebody else because you had certain gifts, just like the Corinthians here. Apparently some of them were boasting about their tongue speaking ability, looking down on the rest, and causing division in the church. This is why Paul went over the basis of gifts here with them, exhorted them to unite in one body in the next passage, reminded them that love is the most important thing in the next chapter, and focused on the gift of tongues specifically in chapter 14. Verse 11 stated that: “All these [spiritual gifts] are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as He determines.” So, if I have the gift of speaking in tongues, or better yet, the gift of miraculous healing, am I “better” than Pastor Son here? Certainly not! Why? Because Jesus said that on the last day…
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Mat. 7:21-23)
Notice that people can exercise spiritual gifts, and NOT doing the will of God and miss out eternal life here.
{Second risk: measure spirituality based on results of gifts/ministry}
This may shock many of you, for we often thought “Wait a minute, I thought that you can only exercise spiritual gifts when you are closed to God!” Not really! This is the second risk: that you would measure how close you are with God by the results of your gifts. You go on thinking, “if I am really far from God, he wouldn’t use me, so if I see no results from my gifts or ministry, that’s a sign for me to repent and seek God!” Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily true because many times God is just way generous and he is not taking back His gift. The Bible said that, “For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29).[xv] Note that the gifted people Jesus mentioned in Matthew 7: they didn’t know where they really are with God; they were expected to enter heaven! I constantly have to keep this in mind to guard measuring myself against a wrong benchmark. Only obedience counts as the true benchmark for us.[xvi]
{Third risk: shallow spirituality based on experience}
Many others among you are breathing sighs of relief: “That’s not me, I have no spiritual gifts, don’t have to worry about pride, or about measure myself based on it.” The third risk here is for you: it may lead you to shallow faith based on spiritual high experience. Remember the word “manifestation” we talked about earlier: a deep visible experiential evidence of the invisible Spirit? To many of you, the defining manifestation may be camp experience, to others, it happened during worship. We feel so closed to God, as if we could touch him, see his face, sense his presence. It was great! And what else we do? We seek to repeat the experience! We drifted from camp to camp, from worship gathering to worship gathering (like a bunch of worship addicts). We end up seeking more gifts and forget the Giver, the main Gift. We missed out the main purpose of the gifts is to building up the Body of Christ, to expand the Kingdom of God, to make disciples of all nations!
{The great advantage}
These are just three typical risks. However, just because of something is risky doesn’t mean that we should avoid it altogether. It just means that we need to learn about the risk and do it the right way. Games like “Enter the Matrix” obviously has lot of risks, but then how about the reward of interact with your own Matrix Reloaded movie? A voiceless idol is much safer to worship, but how can it be compare with the dynamic worship experience of interacting with the God of all Creations?
I spoke with many of our people who came out from the 1996 summer camp experience. And being their shepherd, knowing their background and their lives well, I know that they didn’t manufacture the experience themselves. For each one of them, it was a defining manifestation moment, God become real. Despite some unfortunate misunderstanding and fall out, I watched most of them grow (mostly by the way of mentor/discipleship). However, I also watched a few of them fell (despite the manifestation of gifts). Then in 1999, our group had the privilege to have a demon-casting experience, which taught many of us about the invisible reality.
As Paul pointed out later on in 1 Corinthians 13, all of these things are the fuzzy ways we see the spiritual reality through the primitive hand-made metal mirror. Of course there are the risks of distortion and misunderstanding, but the main hope is to catch a glimpse of what reality would look like. Similarly, with the spiritual gifts and manifestations, our main hope is to know the spiritual reality of the Gift of the Holy Spirit in our temporal reality now on earth, while waiting for the establishment of the new reality in eternity.
{Conclusion}
There is a technical term I learned in seminary[xvii]: Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing)! Remember Scene 1, Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created heavens and earth,” and what was said right there in the next verse? “And the-Spirit-of-God was hovering over the void.” Out of that hovering, overshadowing, when the Word-of-God came, “Let there be light,” BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing) came the creation of the universe. Then Scene 2, Luke 1:35 “Gabriel answered Mary, ‘the Spirit will come up on you… overshadow you… the holy one be born will be called the Son of God’,” out of the virgin womb, BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing-in-the-womb) came the creation of God the Son incarnated in Jesus. Then Scene 3, Acts 1:8 “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘the Spirit will come up on you… you will be my witness,’” out of Pentecost Sunday, BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-a-bunch-of-nobody) came the creation of the church. Today, the Spirit of God continues this type of “BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing)” creation. Many of you here were nothing, and then you found Christ, and by His Holy Spirit, BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing), you became a new creation; “the old has gone, the new has come!”
The work from the Spirit of God always defiled explanations. We look back in our lives, and we don’t really know for sure how God transformed our lives, we just know like the blind man in John, that we were blind, and now we see.
This is the kind of ministry I desired, a ministry through the work of the Spirit of the Living God, a ministry where we cannot fully account for how the “BANG” happened in people lives, and in the community here. I pray that the transformation power of the Spirit of God, the evidence of the Spirit of Jesus will continue to work in us and through us so that we can be the manifestation of Him to the world.
_____________________________________
[i] Young’s Literal Translation
[ii] Probably Paul had Psalm 115 in mind, “[These] idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but they cannot smell; they have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk; nor can they utter a sound with their throats.”
[iii] For some, like Moses and Paul, the experience precede faith; bit for others, like David and Daniel, had always have the faith in “the Living God” before encounter the experience (1 Sam. 17). Understand this dual development help me not to insist on the requirement of burning-bush experience as the basis to build faith on.
[iv] According to Michael L. Rodkinson, Tractate “Sanhedrin,” The Babylonian Talmud, VII-VIII, 24; as quoted in Geisler, N. L., & Nix, W. E. 1996, c1986. “A general introduction to the Bible”; (Rev. and expanded.). Moody Press: Chicago; p. 243.
[v] “Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 5.1.10 mentions an Epagathos who is the paráklētos of the persecuted brethren before the governor. In general, then, paráklētos means a helper in court who might speak on behalf of those who are accused.” Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. 1995, c1985. Theological dictionary of the New Testament. Translation of: Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament. W.B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Mich.
[vi] “The Practice” is the name of a popular TV legal show on NBC.
[vii] Thank you Dr. Ray Anderson, for this introduction to the concept of “the Spirit of Jesus”.
[viii] A.B. Simpson, the C&MA founder wrote concerning this: “The Holy Spirit is with all Christians, but there is a far deeper sense in which He resides in those who have yielded themselves to Him in full surrender and consecration and given Him the right of way. The Holy Spirit may convert one hundred souls, but only become the indwelling Guest of the ones who give Him the right of way.” (As his critic Miles J. Stanford quoted from http:/ /withchrist.org/MJS/cma.htm)
[ix] A.B. Simpson, the C&MA founder outline this in his sermon titled “Walking In The Spirit” as documented in http://www.revivalpreaching.com/sermons/simpsonab004.html - More interestingly, if we were to trace the historical commonality between the Christians and Missionary Alliance with the Assembly of God, we can see more similarities rather than differences as we come to believe today. See John Sawin article “The Response and Attitude of Dr. A.B. Simpson and the Christian and Missionary Alliance to the Tongues Movement og 1906-1920” in Papers of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting, Society for Pentecostal Studies, November 13-15, 1986, Costa Mesa, CA.
[x] This was discussed at length in the opening chapters of Norman Krauss’ “The Community of the Spirit: How the Church Is in the World.” I appreciated the connection he made between the Gift of the Spirit and the Gift of the Law. It helped explaining why the “universal access” to the Holy Spirit should happen after the incarnation of Christ and not before. However, since the rest of the sermon focus on the spiritual gifts among the body, I chose not to expound further on the community aspect of the Gift of Spirit.
[xi] This is the same familiarity which helped the church in Samaria to acknowledge its root from Jerusalem in Acts 8, as well as helped Peter to recognize the openness of the Gospel to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius in Acts 10.
[xii] Most commentaries I look at from a Christian bookstore would treat “manifestation” as synonym with “gifts”. However, I think “manifestation” is inclusive of “gifts”: “gifts” are “manifestation”, but “manifestation” is not just “gifts”.
[xiii] Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. 1996, c1989. “Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: Based on semantic domains.” United Bible societies: New York
[xiv] “Manifestation (phanerosis) has the basic idea of making known, clear, or evident. That is what spiritual gifts do: they make the Holy Spirit known, clear and evident in the church and the world. They manifest the Spirit. The meaning is the opposite of hidden or private. Spiritual gifts are never given to be hidden or to be used privately. They are given to manifest the Holy Spirit, to put Him on display!” MacArthur, John, 1984, “1 Corithians – The MacArthur New Testament Commentary,” Moody Press: Chicago. However, one could argue that the private “prayer language/gift of tongue” is manifestation of the Spirit to the individual, and build up the Body by edifying the individual.
[xv] Is this a quote out of context? I certainly don’t think so, the word “gifts” here is the same “charismata” often associates with spiritual gifts. Beside, in the greater context of Romans 9-11, Paul was appealing to the unchanging grace and mercy of God on the wayward Jewish who have “killed His prophets and torn-down His altars”. So this it’s not stretching the text to provide a reasonable explanation for Mathew 7:21-23, especially with other biblical antecedents like king Saul’s prophesies and Solomon’s words of wisdom.
[xvi] John 14:15, 21, 23, 24; 15:10; 1 John 5:3
[xvii] Specifically from Dr. Ray Anderson ST 516 and the reading from Norman Kraus
Bumble's Sermon for Pentecost Sunday
Vietnamese Alliance Church of Santa Ana, English Speaking Congregation
“The Holy Spirit: God’s Gift to the Church”
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
{Intro: Tailored for the majority of the audience, who are High School and College students}
How many have seen “Matrix: Reloaded”? Finally I will have a chance to go and see it myself (now that the three-weeks premier period is over and the theater will accept movie passes ;-) Hey, I admit it: I am a cheap guy! To prepare for the movie, my wife asked me to rent the original Matrix so she can get the plots down before jumping into the sequels. We watched it together last week. Man! I forgot how awesome the movie was with the slow-mo 360 “bullet-time” shots, with all the all the kung-fu fighting scenes where people runs on wall and shooting while doing cartwheel and stuffs. I read on the net that with this sequel “Matrix Reloaded”, you can go beyond just watching the movies, but interact with it as well: go out and buy the game “Enter the Matrix,” and you will get to play the role of Niebo or Ghost; you will get to master all 361 different types of kung-fu moves, including dodging bullets, running on wall and shooting cartwheel. Let’s say if someday technology advances enough to enable us to not just watch the movies, but we can also interact with it, immerse ourselves in it, experience what it’s like, and even dynamically alter the storylines, etc. Would anyone want to watch movies passively any more? Or wouldn’t everyone rather get those “interactive features” instead, especially if we can provide free “universal access” to those “features”?
{End “Enter the Matrix” intro, transition into the passage}
For me, the most interesting aspect of Christianity is the built-in “interactive features” of God. Christianity is not a passive activity that we just observe, but our God interacts with us in a vivid way through the Holy Spirit. And better yet, everyone have “universal access” to this “interactive features” of God, starting from the first Pentecost Sunday, and it is still available for us today. Today is the memorial of that Pentecost Sunday and since the last time, Pastor Truong was teaching us from the last half of 1 Corinthians 11 on “The Lord’s Super”, so I asked to teach on the next passage 1 Corinthians 12:1-12 with a message on “The Holy Spirit: God’s Gift to the Church.”
Let’s read the passage, 1 Cor. 12:1-11 (NIV)
Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I 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. There are different kinds of gifts, but the 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. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.
{Overview of message title and structure}
The first disclaimer I want to make is that in verse 1, the word “gifts” is not there in the Greek. Paul was simply (literally) said, “Concerning the spiritual, brothers, I don’t want you to be ignorant.” But concerning the spiritual what? Many bible rendered “spiritual gifts”, but it could be translated “spiritual things”[i], or in my case (since I didn’t do too well in my Greek study), I would translate it as “spiritual stuffs”. So, the message today is not just about “spiritual gifts”. If you take a look at your outline, you will see that I divided the message into two parts: “The Gift of the Holy Spirit” and “The gifts of the Holy Spirit”.
{Part 1: The Gift of the Holy Spirit}
The first description about the Holy Spirit in this passage can be found in verse 3: “Therefore I 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.” And the title we read here is “Spirit of God”; it’s more than just a title, it’s actually an identification: “Spirit of God”.
{Point 1a: His identification: “Spirit of God”, interacting agent from the Living God}
What’s so special about the identification “Spirit of God”? The reason Paul brought “God” in the text here is to contrast with the empty religious reality the readers were so used to. Notice the situation before the word “therefore” in verse 2: “You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.” In a way, Paul asked the Corinthians to remember back the old days, when they didn’t know Jesus yet. In those days, they worship the idols[ii]; these so called gods were mute, voiceless, and unable to interact with them.
In contrast, Paul presented the Spirit of God in verse 3 as one who speaks, who interacts with us. The Bible coined this “interactive feature” of God with a special term: “Living God!” Our faith is not a religion with a set of belief based on God; our faith based on a dynamic interaction with this Living God. Moses encountered the Living God, so does David, Peter and Paul[iii]. In fact, the whole bible is the just the accounts of God’s interaction with us through out the stages of history. And the “Spirit of God” was right along that line of interaction since the very beginning of creation. Remember Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created heavens and earth,” and what was said right there in the next verse? “And the-Spirit-of-God was hovering over the void.” (For those of you who are taking notes, the first blank on the outline there, point 1a is, The Spirit is the Spirit of the Living/Interactive God.)
{Sub-point 1.a.1: the plan was to have universal access to the Spirit of God}
But back then, not everyone could have the Spirit of God in them. In the Old Testament, we read of the Spirit of God “came upon” the prophets, leaders, and other individuals so that they could know God personally and interact with Him; but this was done selectively and it doesn’t mean that everyone would have the Holy Spirit. In fact, we see that God make promise for a day where universal access to the Holy Spirit would be available: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days” (Joel 2:28-29).
The Jews have been waiting for the fulfilling of that promise. But sadly, as they’ve sinned and was defeated, and sent to exile, it seems like the promise above would not be fulfilled. In fact, by the time between the end of the last book of the Old Testament (Malachi) and the birth of Jesus, there were 400 years of silence where God no longer interact with the Israelites. The Rabbinic tradition even commented at the end of Malachi very melancholically this way: “…and the Spirit of God departed from Israel…”[iv]
{Sub-point 1.a.2: Jesus implements the universal access plan for all men to have the Holy Spirit}
By the time Jesus came, John the Baptist pointed to Him as the person will fulfill that promise of universal access to the Spirit of God. He said “I baptize you by water, but He will baptize you by the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 1:8) Jesus Himself confirmed this promise again to His disciples, saying that “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).
{Sub-point 1.a.3: At the first Pentecost, the plan came to realization}
“On the day of Pentecost, seven weeks after Jesus’ resurrection, the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm in the skies above them, and it filled the house where they were meeting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.” (Acts 2:1-4, NLT) People around them heard the sound and came over to check it out, some were amazed when they heard the languages, but others simply dismissed them as being too stoned or drunk, and to that, Peter replied: “Listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.’” (Acts 2:13b-18, NIV)
Note that Peter started his sermon using the same promise God made in Joel 2 to explained the phenomenon. In a way, he was saying, “Look guys, this is exactly what God had promise, universal access to the Interactive God, all from Jesus, and it’s free!” He then concluded his sermon with an invitation to the hearers: “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off - for all whom the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2:38-39)
{Point 1b: Today all believers have the Holy Spirit}
What does this means to us personally? It means now each of us have universal access to the Holy Spirit. (Point 1b in the outline: Today, He is the Spirit of each individual who believe in Christ)! It means that the Living God will interact with every one of us via His Holy Spirit. All it is required is that you repent and believe Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, and then you will receive the Holy Spirit, the Gift of God (“gift” in singular sense).
{Sub-point 1.b.1: Why would we (each individual) need the Gift of the Spirit}
But why would we need this gift? Wouldn’t it be enough for us to have our sin forgiven and have eternal life with God when we die? Nope! Our guest speaker last week reminded us that Jesus came to give us life and life abundantly. No doubt that we shall have life in heaven, but the Holy Spirit is the mean for us to have life abundantly here, on earth.
We also get some clue about why we need the Gift of the Holy Spirit from what Jesus described about him in John 14:16-17 (printed on your outline there, underneath part 1). The term “Counselor” in Jesus’ promise actually is the Greek word paracletos, a legal counselor who is by your side to assist you in court[v]. This is not your typical high school or college counselor, whom you may choose to ignore. This is “The Practice”[vi] type of counselor, whom you better listen to if you want to get anywhere. Jesus also said that this counselor “will live with us and be in us”. It is the same Spirit of God, who was in Jesus Christ, is now in you and me. The same Spirit who gave Jesus guidance will now guide us. The same Spirit who enables Jesus to obey the Father will now enable us to obey God.[vii] In fact, every time we read the words “in Christ” or “Christ in us”, we should relate to the Holy Spirit. This is so weird that Jesus even said that the world wouldn’t get it, “The world cannot accept [the Spirit], because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him!” Paul wrote about the God-dwell-in-us phenomenal as a mystery in this way: “[There is this] mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:26-27). Without the Holy Spirit indwelling in us, we will not be able to experience the new life is us [viii].
{Sub-point 1.b.2: OK, so how do I get started to “tap in” this Spirit of God who dwells in me?}
The question many of you may have is, “How do I suppose to know/experience the reality of the Holy Spirit in my life? OK, so I repented, baptized, and received the Gift of the Holy Spirit from God for me, how do I ‘unwrap’ it?” Here, the term Jesus used to describe the Holy Spirit in John 14 will help us a bit. The original paracletos legal-counselor back then was not the one who did all the talking for the client; the Greek verb here meant “called-in-to-help-along-side”. So if we think we will know the presence of the Holy Spirit because some how the Holy Spirit will “take over or lives,” turn us into a spiritual “Incredible Hulk” to live and die for God, we would be mistaken. If God did not “take over” Adam and Eve’s lives in the Garden of Eden, why would He want to do that now? The Spirit of God is now universally accessible and available to us, He is in our lives, but we must take an active role to call for help, to trust His guidance, and to obey and keep-in-step with His leading[ix].
{Illustration}
It’s like on-line-gaming experience: You came into contact with this character in an on-line world, you send a message to him/her asking for direction and you received some instructions back, at first you don’t know if you could trust these instructions or not, since those instruction could trap you in a dungeon or some other perils, but you take a leap of faith and follow it any way, as you carry out the instructions to accomplish your on-line-game objectives, you would know more about this character, you would know that he/she had been there before, that he/she is trustworthy, that he/she is not AI generated but a real person behind that character’s name. Similarly, we will take many incremental faith-filled action/reaction steps in our spiritual life to get to know the Holy Spirit, and with these faith-filled actions/reactions between us, and the Spirit of God; we would know, we would experience a new spiritual dimension of interaction with God, a dimension in which Jesus said that the world cannot accept, cannot see, and cannot know.
{Point 1c: The community aspect of the gift}
But there are more. The Holy Spirit is not only God Gift to us the individual Christians, but also the Gift to the community of believers, the church. The Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit came in power could have happened at 2am in the morning, to each individual and woke him or her out of bed too. But it didn’t happen that way. Why? It is because God wanted us to receive the Spirit as a community. As God formed the Body of Christ out of us, He gave us the Spirit of Christ to govern that body! All of the disciples were there, witnessing the power of the Holy Spirit on them, and later on, when they see the same Spirit working through the non-Jewish believers, they would be able to see, “Ah, they have the same Spirit just like us, so they must be of the same body like us!” (So, point 1c is that the Spirit is also the Spirit of the Community, the Body of Christ).
{Part 2: The gifts of the Holy Spirits}
Back in the old days, when God created for Himself the nation of Israel, He gave them the Gift of the Law from Mount Sinai. The Law is a social contract between the people and God, and more importantly, between the people and themselves, so it will govern the social interaction of people in that nation. Similarly, when God formed a new community, the Church, the Body of Christ, He gave us the Holy Spirit, to govern our interaction between us and God; as well as the interaction among ourselves[x]. Because of that purpose, the Holy Spirit also gives gifts for us, individuals in the body, to enhance our interaction with God and with one another. Generally speaking, the gifts of the Holy Spirit enhance the spiritual activities of the church.
{Point 2a: First principle on gifts: Everything the Spirit does would be based on Jesus, to make Him Lord}
However, things get rather messy when it came to community because we easily have clashes between many individuals. Especially in the present/postmodern culture of individualism, it is very easy for us to affirm our own individual spirituality and not hold true to the community standard. This is the problem of the Corinthians here. From verse 3, we read that someone would say, “Jesus be cursed” and someone else would think that they were speaking by the Holy Spirit and said “Amen, brothers”! They were mistaken spiritual-activities-of-the-individuals with the activities-of-the-True-Spirit-of-the-community. Here Paul jumped in and said, “No, no, guys! Just because you see some spiritual activities, you cannot say that it’s from our God, you have to evaluate everything on the foundation of our Jesus! Don’t focus so much about the spiritual activities, but rather, let’s focus on what the spiritual activities does!” (Here is the first principle for us in point 2a: Everything the Holy Spirit do, will lead to the ultimate result of making Jesus Lord! Since Jesus is the cornerstone of the community, He is the ultimate measurement of our spiritual activities. So, the way we know if someone is filled with the Holy Spirit is to see if they are also submit to the Lordship of Jesus or not. The way we know if a word is from the Spirit or not is to see if the teaching conform to the word of Jesus or not.
Therefore, if we are familiar with Jesus, we will be familiar with the Holy Spirit. Without that principle, the on-lookers saw the Pentecost and were confused and think they disciples were drunk. However operated with that principle, the disciples could saw the same phenomenon, but they were able to identify that this is the Spirit of God. Why, because they were so familiar with the Spirit of Jesus, they can recognize His Spirit on themselves now[xi].
In the summer of 1996, a few people from our youth group went to an interdenominational summer camp; (many of them are still sitting here this morning). In that camp, some unexplainable things happened, there were reports of demon casting, of speaking in tongue, of shaking and laughing, etc. How many of you have seen people speaking in tongue? To some of you who have not seen it, the observables are as followed: people seem to be praying, but the sounds they speak are unintelligible, you could not understand it, and sometimes the people who speak could not understand it either.
{Point 2b: Second principle on gifts: In the Spirit, Diversity will be in Unity}
There was a great diversity of views regarding this whole thing. Unfortunately, the more diversity we have the less unity we will tend to be. In regard to the phenomenon at summer camp, there were great controversies regarding it. In general you can take one of the following options: (a) these are NOT spiritual activities, people made it up themselves; perhaps we could even provide some sort of scientific and psychological explanations for the experience. (b) These are spiritual activities, from GOD; or (c) these are spiritual activities, but from the DEVIL. And there are other variations as well, for example with the subject of speaking in tongue, the last option (c) changed to (c*) Speaking in tongue is one of the spiritual activities, from GOD, but it no longer exists today. And so you could take various positions and be divided over the whole thing. In fact, we had people left our church over this 1996 summer camp incident. The division among the Corinthians back then was also so great that Paul appealed to them in the next three verses (notice his repetition of the words “different” and “same”):
There are different kinds of gifts, but the 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. (1Cor.12:4-6)
Here Paul reference the Trinity - (One-God-in-three-persons) - to make a main principle clear: Since God Himself is a diversity of three persons (the Spirit, Lord Jesus the Son, and the Father), yet united in One Triune God; there also should be the same reflection of Unity-in-Diversity in the people of God. (So, the second principle in point 2b is that “In the Spirit, diversity will be in unity”). Yet, when we hold on so much to our own distinctive differences, we tend to look down on our brothers and sisters. One group could say, “We are better, because we experience God power in this special way!” The other group can argue back, “No, we are better, because our faith is not based on emotional experience!” And then we fight each other, forgetting that we have the same Spirit within, serve the same Lord, and worship the same God.
Until today I still regret that we didn’t handle the 1996 situation better. We could be more attentive in evaluating the whole experience based on how people commit themselves to the Lordship of Christ; we could take the opportunity to help people to understand the purpose of spiritual gifts better. That was what Paul did. He seized the opportunity despite the chaos happened in Corinthians to lay out the third and most important principle about spiritual gifts in verse 7:
“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”
{Point 2c: Third principle on gifts: the Spirit gives everyone the manifestations (and gifts) for the common good}
The first blank in point 2c (on the handout) is each one of us is given the manifestation of the Spirit. But don’t write down the word “each one” in that blank yet. Do you really believe that each one of us is given the manifestation of the Spirit? How about trying to write your name in that blank and see how it sounds. Yes, each of us, Bumble, Kelly, Pastor Son, Katryna… you can write your name in that blank.
Also note that the second blank is for the word “manifestation” (phanerōsis) and not the word “gifts” (charismatōn), which was what Paul used in only a few verses before in v.6. That’s strange[xii]. Are these the same or different meanings of what came from the Holy Spirit? The interesting thing is that if I searched my Bible software for the word “gifts” (charismatōn), I will come across not only the list of 9 spiritual gifts here in verses 8-10, and verses 28-31 at the end of this chapter, but also a list of gifts in Romans 12:6-9 as well; and the funny thing is these lists are NOT identical. So gifts are a variety and non-exhaustive of spiritual abilities given by the Spirit.
On the other hand, a search on the word “manifestation” (phanerōsis) yielded only two results, one here, and another in 1 Co. 4:2, which translated "prove". The original Greek word meant “to make known, to make plain, to reveal, to bring to the light, to disclose, revelation”[xiii]. So the idea here is “the Holy Spirit’s presence in our life will be made clearly known in each one of us”. Which is rather make sense to me, because not all of you has words of wisdom, words of knowledge, speaks in tongues, or has miraculous powers as the nine specific manifestations listed here, but each one of us will clearly have an external and visible evidence of the invisible Spirit indwelling within us[xiv]. In Galatians 5:22 Paul has another way to describe this “visible evidences of the invisible Spirit”, he called it “fruits of the Spirit”, built on Jesus’ statement about we would know a tree by its fruits.
This is exactly how I evaluated the people from our groups who were experiencing the 1996 summer camp experience. Remember I gave a couple of multiple-choice options about whether it’s the genuine work of God or not? All I need to do is to watch for the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of the people came back from that camp. It’s the same thing we should do today, watching for the long-term fruits, regardless of the short-term claims.
The last blank of point 2c (on the handout) indicates the purpose of any spiritual gifts and manifestation: it’s for the benefits of all of us. The problem of the Corinthians here is they didn’t understand the purpose of the spiritual gifts. If you receive a present and have no ideas what is it for, then the only way you could use it is: to misuse it (use not according to its intended purpose). At best, the gift is a mere toy, not tool at all. Here, Paul explained the operating guideline for spiritual gifts: they are to be used for ministry, to build-up the body of Christ; and not as my cool spiritual toy, for personal enjoyment or personal glorification.
{Point 2d: The risks of spiritual gifts}
Anything has a lot of power for construction will also has a lot of potential for destruction. If I misused a saw, my finger may get nicked, but if I misused an electric-powered saw, I could cut off the whole hand. Similarly, you need to know the potential dangers of spiritual gifts as well.
{First risk: Prideful for having gifts}
The first risk is that you could think that you are better than somebody else because you had certain gifts, just like the Corinthians here. Apparently some of them were boasting about their tongue speaking ability, looking down on the rest, and causing division in the church. This is why Paul went over the basis of gifts here with them, exhorted them to unite in one body in the next passage, reminded them that love is the most important thing in the next chapter, and focused on the gift of tongues specifically in chapter 14. Verse 11 stated that: “All these [spiritual gifts] are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as He determines.” So, if I have the gift of speaking in tongues, or better yet, the gift of miraculous healing, am I “better” than Pastor Son here? Certainly not! Why? Because Jesus said that on the last day…
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Mat. 7:21-23)
Notice that people can exercise spiritual gifts, and NOT doing the will of God and miss out eternal life here.
{Second risk: measure spirituality based on results of gifts/ministry}
This may shock many of you, for we often thought “Wait a minute, I thought that you can only exercise spiritual gifts when you are closed to God!” Not really! This is the second risk: that you would measure how close you are with God by the results of your gifts. You go on thinking, “if I am really far from God, he wouldn’t use me, so if I see no results from my gifts or ministry, that’s a sign for me to repent and seek God!” Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily true because many times God is just way generous and he is not taking back His gift. The Bible said that, “For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29).[xv] Note that the gifted people Jesus mentioned in Matthew 7: they didn’t know where they really are with God; they were expected to enter heaven! I constantly have to keep this in mind to guard measuring myself against a wrong benchmark. Only obedience counts as the true benchmark for us.[xvi]
{Third risk: shallow spirituality based on experience}
Many others among you are breathing sighs of relief: “That’s not me, I have no spiritual gifts, don’t have to worry about pride, or about measure myself based on it.” The third risk here is for you: it may lead you to shallow faith based on spiritual high experience. Remember the word “manifestation” we talked about earlier: a deep visible experiential evidence of the invisible Spirit? To many of you, the defining manifestation may be camp experience, to others, it happened during worship. We feel so closed to God, as if we could touch him, see his face, sense his presence. It was great! And what else we do? We seek to repeat the experience! We drifted from camp to camp, from worship gathering to worship gathering (like a bunch of worship addicts). We end up seeking more gifts and forget the Giver, the main Gift. We missed out the main purpose of the gifts is to building up the Body of Christ, to expand the Kingdom of God, to make disciples of all nations!
{The great advantage}
These are just three typical risks. However, just because of something is risky doesn’t mean that we should avoid it altogether. It just means that we need to learn about the risk and do it the right way. Games like “Enter the Matrix” obviously has lot of risks, but then how about the reward of interact with your own Matrix Reloaded movie? A voiceless idol is much safer to worship, but how can it be compare with the dynamic worship experience of interacting with the God of all Creations?
I spoke with many of our people who came out from the 1996 summer camp experience. And being their shepherd, knowing their background and their lives well, I know that they didn’t manufacture the experience themselves. For each one of them, it was a defining manifestation moment, God become real. Despite some unfortunate misunderstanding and fall out, I watched most of them grow (mostly by the way of mentor/discipleship). However, I also watched a few of them fell (despite the manifestation of gifts). Then in 1999, our group had the privilege to have a demon-casting experience, which taught many of us about the invisible reality.
As Paul pointed out later on in 1 Corinthians 13, all of these things are the fuzzy ways we see the spiritual reality through the primitive hand-made metal mirror. Of course there are the risks of distortion and misunderstanding, but the main hope is to catch a glimpse of what reality would look like. Similarly, with the spiritual gifts and manifestations, our main hope is to know the spiritual reality of the Gift of the Holy Spirit in our temporal reality now on earth, while waiting for the establishment of the new reality in eternity.
{Conclusion}
There is a technical term I learned in seminary[xvii]: Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing)! Remember Scene 1, Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created heavens and earth,” and what was said right there in the next verse? “And the-Spirit-of-God was hovering over the void.” Out of that hovering, overshadowing, when the Word-of-God came, “Let there be light,” BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing) came the creation of the universe. Then Scene 2, Luke 1:35 “Gabriel answered Mary, ‘the Spirit will come up on you… overshadow you… the holy one be born will be called the Son of God’,” out of the virgin womb, BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing-in-the-womb) came the creation of God the Son incarnated in Jesus. Then Scene 3, Acts 1:8 “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘the Spirit will come up on you… you will be my witness,’” out of Pentecost Sunday, BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-a-bunch-of-nobody) came the creation of the church. Today, the Spirit of God continues this type of “BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing)” creation. Many of you here were nothing, and then you found Christ, and by His Holy Spirit, BANG! Ex-nihilo (out-of-nothing), you became a new creation; “the old has gone, the new has come!”
The work from the Spirit of God always defiled explanations. We look back in our lives, and we don’t really know for sure how God transformed our lives, we just know like the blind man in John, that we were blind, and now we see.
This is the kind of ministry I desired, a ministry through the work of the Spirit of the Living God, a ministry where we cannot fully account for how the “BANG” happened in people lives, and in the community here. I pray that the transformation power of the Spirit of God, the evidence of the Spirit of Jesus will continue to work in us and through us so that we can be the manifestation of Him to the world.
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[i] Young’s Literal Translation
[ii] Probably Paul had Psalm 115 in mind, “[These] idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but they cannot smell; they have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk; nor can they utter a sound with their throats.”
[iii] For some, like Moses and Paul, the experience precede faith; bit for others, like David and Daniel, had always have the faith in “the Living God” before encounter the experience (1 Sam. 17). Understand this dual development help me not to insist on the requirement of burning-bush experience as the basis to build faith on.
[iv] According to Michael L. Rodkinson, Tractate “Sanhedrin,” The Babylonian Talmud, VII-VIII, 24; as quoted in Geisler, N. L., & Nix, W. E. 1996, c1986. “A general introduction to the Bible”; (Rev. and expanded.). Moody Press: Chicago; p. 243.
[v] “Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 5.1.10 mentions an Epagathos who is the paráklētos of the persecuted brethren before the governor. In general, then, paráklētos means a helper in court who might speak on behalf of those who are accused.” Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. 1995, c1985. Theological dictionary of the New Testament. Translation of: Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament. W.B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Mich.
[vi] “The Practice” is the name of a popular TV legal show on NBC.
[vii] Thank you Dr. Ray Anderson, for this introduction to the concept of “the Spirit of Jesus”.
[viii] A.B. Simpson, the C&MA founder wrote concerning this: “The Holy Spirit is with all Christians, but there is a far deeper sense in which He resides in those who have yielded themselves to Him in full surrender and consecration and given Him the right of way. The Holy Spirit may convert one hundred souls, but only become the indwelling Guest of the ones who give Him the right of way.” (As his critic Miles J. Stanford quoted from http:/ /withchrist.org/MJS/cma.htm)
[ix] A.B. Simpson, the C&MA founder outline this in his sermon titled “Walking In The Spirit” as documented in http://www.revivalpreaching.com/sermons/simpsonab004.html - More interestingly, if we were to trace the historical commonality between the Christians and Missionary Alliance with the Assembly of God, we can see more similarities rather than differences as we come to believe today. See John Sawin article “The Response and Attitude of Dr. A.B. Simpson and the Christian and Missionary Alliance to the Tongues Movement og 1906-1920” in Papers of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting, Society for Pentecostal Studies, November 13-15, 1986, Costa Mesa, CA.
[x] This was discussed at length in the opening chapters of Norman Krauss’ “The Community of the Spirit: How the Church Is in the World.” I appreciated the connection he made between the Gift of the Spirit and the Gift of the Law. It helped explaining why the “universal access” to the Holy Spirit should happen after the incarnation of Christ and not before. However, since the rest of the sermon focus on the spiritual gifts among the body, I chose not to expound further on the community aspect of the Gift of Spirit.
[xi] This is the same familiarity which helped the church in Samaria to acknowledge its root from Jerusalem in Acts 8, as well as helped Peter to recognize the openness of the Gospel to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius in Acts 10.
[xii] Most commentaries I look at from a Christian bookstore would treat “manifestation” as synonym with “gifts”. However, I think “manifestation” is inclusive of “gifts”: “gifts” are “manifestation”, but “manifestation” is not just “gifts”.
[xiii] Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. 1996, c1989. “Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: Based on semantic domains.” United Bible societies: New York
[xiv] “Manifestation (phanerosis) has the basic idea of making known, clear, or evident. That is what spiritual gifts do: they make the Holy Spirit known, clear and evident in the church and the world. They manifest the Spirit. The meaning is the opposite of hidden or private. Spiritual gifts are never given to be hidden or to be used privately. They are given to manifest the Holy Spirit, to put Him on display!” MacArthur, John, 1984, “1 Corithians – The MacArthur New Testament Commentary,” Moody Press: Chicago. However, one could argue that the private “prayer language/gift of tongue” is manifestation of the Spirit to the individual, and build up the Body by edifying the individual.
[xv] Is this a quote out of context? I certainly don’t think so, the word “gifts” here is the same “charismata” often associates with spiritual gifts. Beside, in the greater context of Romans 9-11, Paul was appealing to the unchanging grace and mercy of God on the wayward Jewish who have “killed His prophets and torn-down His altars”. So this it’s not stretching the text to provide a reasonable explanation for Mathew 7:21-23, especially with other biblical antecedents like king Saul’s prophesies and Solomon’s words of wisdom.
[xvi] John 14:15, 21, 23, 24; 15:10; 1 John 5:3
[xvii] Specifically from Dr. Ray Anderson ST 516 and the reading from Norman Kraus
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