How the Holy Spirit Gives Spiritual Gifts — 1 Corinthians 12 Explained

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, Dan, we're going to pick right up where we left off. And I'll have to apologize to our television audience. That half hour got away from me. And I looked at that cue card and I thought it was 15 minutes and it was 15 seconds. So we had to end kind of abruptly. But anyhow, we're going to pick right up where we left off. But in the meantime, we want to always let folk know that all these programs are available on videotape and printed page, and now shortly we'll have them available in the audio cassettes. So if you're interested in any of those things, you just call us or write to us. There are the books on the screen. And the little books are really taking off. Folk are enjoying them so much. And we would have never dreamed, of course, it would come to that. And the other thing I'd like to point out to people who just may be listening for the first time, we are non-denominational. We don't hold any particular line of doctrine. We just teach the Book. And we have no one underwriting us. Naturally we have to depend on the gifts of God's people. But we've never asked for a dime yet, and we hope we never have to. Because He keeps providing, and we keep reaching out to more and more stations. Alright, now then I guess that's enough for introductory. Let's get right back to where we left off. First Corinthians chapter 12, and we were just ready to turn to Romans, so we'll pick that up. Alright, First Corinthians chapter 12, we're in verse 3. And we're in the last half of the verse where it says that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit. In other words, an unbeliever may say it, but it doesn't amount to anything. Because there's no truth in it. The only person that can genuinely claim Christ as Lord, is the believer. Alright, come back then to Romans chapter 10, where we were going to in our last program, and didn't make it. Romans chapter 10, verse 9. In fact, I suppose we should read verse 8 to feed into it. "...but what saith it, the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that is, the word of faith which we preach." Now here it comes in verse 9. "...that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the..." What? "...Lord Jesus." Now that�s where the term comes into its full meaning, that as a believer now we know that Jesus is Lord. He�s in control of our life, He is the One in whom we eat and sleep and move, and without Him we are nothing. And so that�s what he�s referring to then of course. Now come back with me again to I Corinthians. Only a true, born again, saved individual, a believer, can make the statement with all sincerity of the heart, because the Holy Spirit is the one that is the evidence that indeed Jesus is Lord. Now let�s move on down quickly through this chapter. Verse 4. Now there are diversities of gifts. Now you want to remember that later on in chapter 4, Paul is going to introduce now, I think for the first time in his writings, this concept of the Body of Christ. That invisible from the human element, that invisible make up of all the believers who have been baptized into that Body of Christ, and we�ll see it laid out in more graphic terms at the beginning of verse 12. But here he is just saying that in the Body of Christ every individual has a particular role. Every one of us have been saved for a particular place of service. As we were talking at break time, it may be some dear lady who never is able to get out of her house. She is very seldom seen by the public at large. She�s a busy housewife and a busy mother. She just doesn�t have the time and the wherewithal to get out in public view. But what can she be? A prayer warrior. She can accomplish more for God without ever being seen than many evangelists who go from pulpit to pulpit. So we have to remember that every believer has that unique capability of serving God as He intended. Now I�m going to make a point here in a minute, and that�s why I just emphasized it. We are not to beg for a particular gift. We are not to ask for it. That has to be discerned and given as the Holy Spirit wills it, not as we determine it. I�m coming down to it in a couple of verses. So verse 5. Ephesians 1. There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. God is the same overall. In fact I�ve broken it down this way time after time on this program. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden, they were under a certain set of circumstances. The only thing they had to concern themselves with was, �Don�t eat of that tree.� That was it. Everything else was there for them to enjoy. There was nothing that would be disobedient to them. They knew nothing of sin, but they were not to eat of the tree. Well you know what happened. They disobeyed, and they ate. Now the point I�m trying to make when they came out of the Garden, was everything still the same? No, it couldn�t be. Sin had entered, and death had entered. They had been separated from that daily walk with God. So it was a whole different set of circumstances. They were now under the curse, and they had to work by the sweat of the brow. They were no longer under the easy existence of paradise and Eden. So it was all different. Had God changed? No, God didn�t change, Adam and Eve did. Now that feeds all the way up to the Flood, and Noah and his family go into the Ark. Now when they come out of the Ark after the Flood, again is it like it was when Adam and Eve came out of the Garden? No way! Everything was different again. God laid other responsibilities upon them. Now they could kill animals and eat the meat, before they didn�t have that. So it was a different administration. Well then along comes the Tower of Babel, and you know what happened there? All the people around Babel were scattered by virtue of their languages now, and they all went to different parts of the then known world. Different than before? Absolutely! Had God changed? No! And then God raised up Abraham and does something totally different. Now He promises this one man a nation of people. A different set of circumstances? Absolutely! The same God? Absolutely! And then He brought in Law, and He says to the nation of Israel, �Keep the Law.� Never had anything like that on the planet before, but now Israel was under the Law. And then along comes the Age of Grace. This great Gospel that you and I proclaim, that anybody, black or white, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, can now enter into God�s salvation by just simply believing the Gospel. This has never been on the planet before, and it�s all a different administration. Has God changed? Not a bit. The same God. So this is what He�s referring to. A change of operations? Absolutely! But the same God who worketh all in all. Now here�s the verse I was just referring to a moment ago, that it is not our prerogative to ask for a particular gift. You take the gift that God has given you, and you be content with it. Look what He says, �The Manifestation of the Spirit is given.� It�s not asked for. The Manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. Now then jump across to verse 11, and you�ll see the same thought repeated. But all these things work, one and the selfsame Spirit dividing to every man severally or differently, as He, the Holy Spirit, wills. So it�s not for you and me to go and say, �Oh, I want this gift, or I want that gift.� No, you take the gift that God has given you. Now I think the greatest thing we can do is just simply say, �Lord, here I am. I�m available. Use me,� and let Him direct you where He�s going to use you. I guess I�ve told people this for years. I don�t wait for God to say something out loud. He�s never talked to me out loud. I don�t know, maybe I�ve never gotten to that kind of ground, but He has never talked to me out loud. But I�ll tell you how He talks to me with open and closed doors, and exactly where He wants us. If something doesn�t fly and the door closes, don�t push against it. You just take it as God doesn�t want you in that direction, and there�s another open door over there. You take that one. And then from the Word, the Word can just impress you by prayer, and that�s the way we find the things that God wants. But to just simply go to God and say, �I want the gift of such and such.� No, I don�t think this is what the Bible permits. We are to leave that up to the Holy Spirit. Now I want to skip a few verses, or somebody will call and say, �Well, you�re copped out.� No, I�m not going to cop out. I�m going to take them all as they come. Now verse 8. Ephesians 2. is to one believer in the congregation, for one is given by the Spirit, the Word of Wisdom, to another the Word of Knowledge, but it�s going to come by that same Holy Spirit. These are things that the Church needed, and God is providing men with these particular abilities. Verse 9. Ephesians 2. To another faith by the same Holy Spirit. Now whether you know it or not, if you�re a believer here today, or if you�re a believer out there in television, where did you get the wherewithal to believe the Gospel? From the Holy Spirit. It�s a gift. And so as we exercise that gift of faith, we respond of course by believing. And so some have greater faith than others, and there�s nothing wrong with that. To another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit, and no doubt they did have these gifts in the early church. I maintain that even Paul himself probably exercised these gifts. We know he did. In the book of Acts he performed miracles, but by the time again you get to his later letters, not a bit, not a word about these kinds of miracles. And he doesn�t perform them himself. He can�t heal the sick. One of his best friends and fellow laborer in the work was sick on the island of Miletus, nigh on the death. Could Paul heal him? No. So what did he admonish the believers to do? The same way we do today. Pray for him. And we know that Timothy evidently had a stomach ailment, and Paul didn�t heal him. He gave him a remedy for it, but he didn�t heal him. The same way with many of his own catastrophes in his life experience. Did he get healed? No. The Lord brought him through them, but no sign of any miraculous healing. I guess while I�m on the area, you want to remember that it�s only in the letter to this Morph�s carnal of all his churches, this is the only place that he deals with these particular gifts. Now let me show you what I�m talking about. Let�s finish verses 9 and 10, and then I�ll show you what I mean. To another verse 9, faith by the same Spirit, the Holy Spirit, to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning to determine whether it�s true or whether it�s false, and to another various kinds of tongues, and I�ve got on the board that would mean languages, to another the interpretation of those languages. Now let�s go over to Ephesians, which of course is one of his prison epistles which is written several years later, and he now has that revelation that I think he was referring to in I Corinthians 13. Now the enigma has been removed, the steam has been wiped off the mirror, and he now has the complete revelation. He is teaching here in Ephesians the position of the believer in the Body of Christ. Come over with me to Ephesians chapter 4, and oh if only people would just look at it this way. This is where we are today. This is just like coming out of the third and fourth grade arithmetic, and ending up here in high mathematics. The electrical engineering that puts all our computers and everything together, my man that takes a lot of smarts. But they didn�t forget about their simple mathematics, but they have now put it all behind them. This is where I put Ephesians. Ephesians is like somebody with a Ph.D. in mathematics or physics, and here it is. Ephesians 4. There is one Body, one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope. Remember I told you back in chapter 13, you�ll see faith, hope, and love. Well here�s hope. Ephesians 4. Even called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, not three, that�s what a lot of people depend on, or three of them. That�s not what the Book says now, there�s one. Ephesians 4. One baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through you all, and in you all. Now verse 7. Ephesians 4. But unto every one of us, from the greatest to the least, every member of the Body of Christ hath been given these gifts of the Spirit that he lists here. Every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ, wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, gave gifts unto men. Verse 9. Now that he ascended, but that he also descended first in the lower parts of the earth. And he that descended, that of course was in his three days and three nights that he was in the tomb. He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fulfill all things. Now look at the gifted men that he gives to the Church. He gave some apostles, and they even faded off the scene after the Apostolic Age ended. We don�t have apostles in the Church today, and so they faded away. But they were a part, even when he was writing Ephesians, some prophets. They faded away because we now have the printed Word, and I explained that in a previous program. That once the Word came into print, there was no longer a need for gifted men to speak forth the Word. But even so, he still lists them in Ephesians. And then here�s where we are today, and for some evangelists, and some pastors, and teachers. Those are the three basic gifts that the Church needs today. Men who are evangelists and can preach salvation, and probably going from place to place. We all understand the role of an evangelist. And then there�s the man who is a gifted person to be a pastor. Not all of God�s men can be pastors, and not all can be teachers. But these are the three basic gifts that are explained here in Ephesians. Then we go into verse 12. Why did God give the Church these three categories of people? For the perfecting, the maturing, to bring the saints from infancy, from carnality and being fed on the milk bottle, up to meat eating believers. And so all of these evangelists, pastors, and teachers are for the maturing of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying, not of the pastors and teachers and evangelists, but who? The Body of Christ. Now I�ve maintained for years and years, and I think almost since I first started teaching, that the primary purpose of the Church, your church, I don�t care what denomination it is, the primary purpose of the Church is to so feed its members that those members can go out and become soul winners amongst the world in which they move. That�s the way they did it in the early church. They didn�t have great evangelistic campaigns, they didn�t have great coliseums full of people, but they turned the Roman Empire inside out or upside down. And how did they do it? By just simply every believer being taught from the Word that he could go out and be a living testimony to the world around him. And this is the criteria for us today. Oh to be so taught in the Word that you can be a testimony wherever you go, whoever you are. I don�t care how little education you have, you can be a gifted person in God�s program for today. Now let�s come back. We don�t want to skip any of I Corinthians 12. So we did have these gifts in Corinthians that Paul doesn�t mention again in Ephesians, and just come to your own logical conclusion. For the same reason that you don�t go back and use a 3rd and 4th grade arithmetic book when you�re up in higher mathematics, the same way here. These things are now left in the background, and we move on to the greater gifts that Paul brings out in Ephesians and his other present epistles. Now let�s look at verse 12. Even though the Body of Christ as a doctrine is brought to its fullest forte in the present epistles, it doesn�t mean that Paul knew nothing of it, because here he introduces it to us. Here we have the description of the Body of Christ. Now I know there are a lot of people who do not understand this concept, that every true believer is a member of the Body of Christ. As I�ve said before in this program, and I�ll say it again, Jesus never once mentioned the Body of Christ. It�s a term you cannot find in the Gospels. You cannot find Peter using the term, the Body of Christ. It�s a Pauline term, and it�s a Pauline revelation. Now here it comes, verse 12. Ephesians 2. This human body is one, and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body. So also is Christ, and of course he�s referring to the Body of Christ. Now what�s he saying? Here we are with a human body of ten fingers, ten toes, and our ears, and our eyes, and all the functions of this physical body. But where is the control of all of these fingers and toes? Up here at the head. So also the Body of Christ. We are now members of the Head, who is of course in Heaven, and that�s why that�s where our citizenship is. That�s where the head is, and that�s where the nerve center is. So now he says we are members of that one body, and how did we get there? Verse 13. Ephesians 2. For by one Spirit, there�s the Holy Spirit again, so by the Holy Spirit are we all, not just the most spiritual, not just the ones who have had some kind of an emotional upheaval. Every true believer, regardless of where he is, or regardless of how great an experience he�s had, we are all members of the Body of Christ, because the Holy Spirit has baptized us into the Body of Christ. Now you see there�s not a word about tongues here. Not a word! And yet I maintain this is the only time that Paul teaches a baptism by the Holy Spirit. And that is when we were saved, the Holy Spirit immediately placed us into the Body of Christ. It�s a baptism, and there�s no water involved. But the Holy Spirit did it, and that of course is our guarantee that we are Christ�s, and He is ours. Reading on in verse 13. So by that one Holy Spirit are we all baptized into the one Body, the Body of Christ, whether we be Jew or Gentile. A saved Jew is a member of the Body of Christ just as surely as a saved Gentile. Several years ago we were having a seminar at Minneapolis, and a Jewish lady came up during one of the breaks, and she said, �If the Rapture takes place tomorrow, will I be left behind because I�m not a Gentile ?� Heavens no! No! A believing Jew is a member of the Body of Christ, and they�ll go out at the Rapture along with everybody else. And that�s what�s so unique about it. Whether we be Jew or Gentile, whether we be bond, or whether they were slaves, or whether they were free people, everyone who has become a believer of the Gospel has been made to partake of, or to drink into that one Holy Spirit. Now the Body is not one member, but many. We are a compilation of the many into the one whole, and that�s the whole picture of the Body of Christ. That�s why I don�t care if you go from here to Timbuktu, or you go to Haiti, or you go to China, if you get into a little fellowship of believers, you�re never a stranger. I don�t care wherever Iris and I have gone, we go into the home of believers and you don�t feel strange for a moment, because there�s that oneness that we have in Christ. And I don�t care where you go, it�s always the same. We are one in Christ. Then he goes through and uses all the bodily members to show the example, and he�s belaboring the fact that if the foot shall say, �I�m not of the hand, and I�m not of the body� is it therefore not of the body? Of course not! Just because the foot isn�t a hand doesn�t take it away from the body, it is where it belongs. It�s a place of function. But what if the ear should say, �Because I�m not the eye, I�m not of the body, is it therefore not of the body ?� Now I know he�s taking it to the edge of being ridiculous, and I sometimes teach the same way because that�s what gets people�s attention. If you can get ridiculous enough, it�ll make them think. And that�s what he�s saying. Would the eye dare to say, �Well I�m not an ear, so I�m not of the body?� Well of course not! The whole thing functions together for the purpose of using and energizing the body. Now I�ve only got a minute left, so let�s come on down to verse 20. Ephesians 2, verse 20, �And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, nor again can the head say to the feet, I have no need of you bet you if you�d ask someone who had one amputated, they�ll miss that little toe almost as much as they would a complete hand. Why? Because that which is the most feeble is sometimes the most ridiculous. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Pinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That�s Route 1, Box 760, Pinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time, for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.