11. The Word of Wisdom

You're going to hear this often enough that, perhaps in another two or three messages, you'll be able to repeat it with me, and we can maybe say it all together.  You're going to hear that the three basic Biblical principles concerning the spiritual gifts are: 
1) they are given to unify and build the body of Christ; 
2) they are given in great variety; 
3) and they are given, not chosen.
1-2-3.

From I Corinthians 12, "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, there are varieties of service, but the same Lord, there are varieties of working, but it is the same God Who inspires them all in everyone."  Remember, that is not just a tumble of words.  The varieties of gifts is the word Charismatin, which means "gifts" specifically.  That is, the specific ability to function.  That gift, that specific ability to function, takes place within the second category, which is the varieties of service.  That is, the areas of ministry.  You may have the gift of evangelism, but you may work in a different area of ministry - it may have a different application.  It may be one on one, compared with a gift of evangelism of someone as well known as, for instance, Billy Graham.  Same gift, different areas of ministry.  And then the third area is there are varieties of workings.  And the "workings" there is energamaton, which is the same word we get our word "energy" from, which means it is God Who energizes that gift.  And there's a variety of that.  Sometimes the very same exercise of the very same gift in all matters equal as we can make it from previous exercises, produce different results.  And that is of God.  And that's to keep us from going around breaking our arms patting ourselves on the back at the tremendous effect that God gives to us in our ministry.  It's really up to Him.

Now, I made mention of the fact last week, that some people say that there are only nine gifts of the Holy Spirit.  And there are others that say there are fourteen.  Well, somebody in the congregation (I'm not going to name them), it doesn't surprise me, they picked up on this very quickly.  They're of a statistical frame of mind, because I added the fact that I don't believe that's an exhaustive list - I believe the scriptural lists are simply indicative of some of the ways the Holy Spirit gifts His people.  Because, if you say they're exhaustive lists, then you have to say that the church in Rome didn't have the same gifts of the Spirit that the church in Corinth did, and vice versa.  So I said that I think there are some hyphenated gifts - some gift mixes if you will - like Pastor-Teacher and that kind of thing.  And these friends of mine demonstrate that if there are only nine gifts of the Spirit, even then if they are held in combinations, that's a potential of 512.  And if there are fourteen gifts of the Spirit, that holds a potential of 16,384.  Now, I promise you I'm not going to preach one sermon on 16,384 gifts of the Spirit.  But I want to move on to the next section now.

"For to one is given by Spirit the word of Wisdom, and to another, the word of Knowledge by the same Spirit."  Which was our subject last Sunday.  Because wisdom is applied knowledge.  So we started with knowledge.  "To another, the faith by the same Spirit.  To another, the gifts of healings"  The King James translates it a little erroneously, and so do a couple of the other more modern translations.  Actually, that should say "gifts of healings by the same Spirit.  To another, the working of Miracles.  To another, prophecy.  To another, discerning of spirits.  To another, divers kinds of tongues", etc.  All these are "inspired by the One and the same Spirit, Who apportions to each one individually as He wills."  Now, before we get to those super-exciting kinds of gifts, we are dealing with some super-necessary gifts.  Last week, we talked about the gift of the word of knowledge.  Here it is the gift of the word of Wisdom.  And there's a strong connection between the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom, because knowledge without wisdom is dangerous.  You teach an illiterate person to write, you impart to them the knowledge of how to communicate in writing, without wisdom - and that illiterate, who is now literate, may write a stick-up note, or forge a check.  You teach someone how to handle a gun, how to load it and fire it, how to aim and how to discharge the bullet in the direction that he wants to, without teaching them the wisdom of where to aim and where not to aim, then he may blow a hole in you.  There's a connection between knowledge and wisdom.  Knowledge without wisdom is dangerous.  It is also useless.

They tell the story about an American student who had attended the Continental University over in Europe.  He had been there for four years, and as he's returning back to the United States, he's standing on the after-deck of the ship with four years of notes from his classes and all his education.  And he's going over them, you know, reminiscing about the marvelous time he had in his class and the ship hit a sudden swell and he was thrown against the railing and his notes went overboard and he was not hurt.  But he had to go back to Europe for four more years to get some more notes.  His education consisted entirely of knowledge, but not wisdom.  And the knowledge was on paper.

A computer stored with the vast array of information is of no use unless you know how to draw it from that computer and put it to application.  Well, the same thing is true of spiritual knowledge.  I believe that's one reason why the scripture says it is the logos (or the word) of Knowledge.  And the word of Wisdom.  Because it is a practical thing.  It is not just wisdom contained in a jar on the mantle and admired and looked at and wondered at.  But it is applied - it is the word of Wisdom.  That implies the practical nature of the gift.

Now, let me give you two definitions.  The first definition of the gift of the word of Wisdom is a long one (so don't try to write it down unless you really take good shorthand).  The gift of the word of Wisdom is the special ability that God gives to certain members of the body of Christ to know the mind of the Holy Spirit in such a way as to receive insight into how given knowledge may best be applied to specific needs that arise within the body of Christ.  I told you it was long.  So, I'm going to repeat that one.  Its a marvelous definition - it's not mine - it's C. Peter Wagner's.  The gift of the word of Wisdom is the special ability that God gives to certain members of the body of Christ to know the mind of the Holy Spirit in such a way as to receive insight into how given knowledge may best be applied to specific needs arising in the body of Christ.  Here's a simple one: The word of Wisdom is the ability to apply God's truth to specific - and often complex - circumstances and situations.  The ability to apply God's truth to often complex circumstances and situations.

Let me illustrate.  I was sitting in a national board meeting in Chicago - the board of home mission - a number of years ago.  And I can remember there were fourteen people on the board, counting the executive secretary.  An issue came up. It was hotly debated back and forth and back and forth and came to a vote and the vote was seven to seven.  We spent another hour and half examining different approaches with different possibilities.  We changed the issue and we voted on it again and we got seven to seven.  We tried it again.  This time we changed the question we were voting on and we got seven to seven.  And I said, "I'm ready to go home.  This is nonsense.  We're not going to come to some kind of conclusion."  There was a man who was a farmer from Wisconsin who was on that board, and he never said anything on that board, up to that point.  And he'd only been on it for maybe two or three months, but he had never said anything except "aye" for a vote.  And all of a sudden, this man spoke up.  And he said in a very quiet voice, "I wonder if I could share some thinking I have.  I'm not sure why I feel this way, but I think we're dealing with the wrong issue here."  And in about four or five statements, the whole thing was clarified so crystal clear that the rest of the thirteen of us looked at each other like "You dummy!  Why didn't you think of that?"  And we voted on it, and it was fourteen to zip!  And we went to lunch.  Now, did that mean that this man had an intelligence and an IQ far surpassing everybody else on that board?  Well, I won't ask you what you think about me, but I'll tell you this much: that he couldn't have topped Dr. Bob Larsen, who is a former Pastor of this congregation who is now executive secretary of home mission.  Bob Larson's got a brain that just doesn't quit.  It's kind of disgusting to be around him very long.  And yet this simple, very modestly-educated farmer from Wisconsin was able, I believe, to apply the truth to receive the insight from the Holy Spirit to apply revealed truth and knowledge (which is the word of God) to a very complex and confusing situation in such a way that clarity results.  That, I believe, is the scriptural gift of the word of Wisdom.  It is the application of knowledge to that which is complex.

Here's another illustration.  Have you ever had the experience of being in a conversation with somebody and you knew you were way over your head.  They are looking for counsel and guidance and insight and understanding, and you're sitting there just trying to keep the nose out of the water.  And then, it doesn't happen suddenly with the sense of "Oh wow, I've got it".  But you are speaking with this person and you begin to listen to what you are saying, and you are surprised - no more than that - you're stunned by the insight and the wisdom that is proceeding from your own mouth that you know is not the result of acquired experience producing natural intelligence.  In fact, it's so good you want to stop and take notes on what you're saying yourself.  I believe that is the word of Wisdom.

Now, listen.  Don't get the crazy idea that with the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom, and any of the other gifts of the Holy Spirit, as a prelude to its being given, there's kind of a "oooooooooooooh" sound in the background, and your flesh starts to crawl and you say, "Oh here it comes!"  You know, we have that impression and that's wrong!  The gifts of the Spirit are tools.  I never hear "oooooooooooh" when I go to True Value Hardware.  What makes you think when God gifts His body for the ministry that He has called us to do (and that He knows is beyond our capability to do, therefore He gives us the gifts to do the job) that there's got to be something spooky about it?  It's very logical.

Now, I am not talking about natural wisdom.  The word of wisdom is not natural wisdom.  You see, natural wisdom is a natural intelligence that an astute and smart and shrewd Christian can have.  But that's not the word of Wisdom.  Natural wisdom can be accumulated through experience.  I remember when I grew up in a church in Nebraska, I looked around me on Sunday mornings and - good night - everybody in the place was grey.  I mean, grey hair.  I mean really grey hair.  In fact, when I was a young fellow, I remember my dad's 40th birthday and I remember how impressed I was with the fact that I wasn't going to have my dad around much longer.  My dad was one of the younger men in the church.  And I used to think, "Oh, wow, what a bunch of old guys these are!"  And then I started to serve a church in western Illinois, and I had an awful lot of older people.  Man, my deacon board must have had an average age of about 75.  And I thought, "boy, you can't move these old guys.  You know, they're just like a bunch of rocks."  I always thought that old Christians are the strongest people in the world, because they can throw a wet blanket farther than anybody I've ever seen in my life.  And then I came to this congregation, where the average age was almost what I was.  Well, actually, the average age was younger than I am.  It didn't take me very long before I began to ask God, "Please, give us some of the old saints, who have walked with God.  Who have been through the fire.  Who have been tempered.  Who have undergone suffering.  Who know the word.  The accumulated intelligence of experience in walking with God."  How I praise God for the grey heads.  Mine will never turn grey, but yours are.  If you don't understand, ask your neighbor after church.  Because I find now, that this natural wisdom which, as a young person, I impugned, the scripture says, "Hey listen!  Give high regard and high respect to the hoary head.  That head which is crowned with the glory of grey."  That is a Biblical principle.  And why?  Now I understand, because there is a natural wisdom that comes from God that's just simply infills these people.  Oh let me sit at the feet of Pastor Paul Theorell or at the feet of Pastor Gilbert Otteson, and just drink in the wisdom of experience and of walking with God.  Let me sit at the feet of Doc Hansen.  I have sometimes unwillingly, sit at Doc Hansen's feet (because he had some wisdom he wanted to give me and I didn't want to receive it).  That's one of the problems of youth too.  But thank God for that kind of natural intelligence.  But that's not what I'm talking about.  Natural intelligence is the fruit of the intellectual reasoning process.  That is not the gift of the word of Wisdom.

Nor are we talking about worldly wisdom, because worldly wisdom is antithetical to God.  Remember what we read from I Corinthians 1: "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.  Where is the wise man?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the debater of this age?  Has God not made foolish the wisdom of this world?"  Do you know that we are in such a knowledge explosion today that those who tried to describe, graphically, the accumulation of the explosion of knowledge in our generation almost boggle the illustration in the mind?  And yet, with all of the knowledge that we have, and with all of the information that we have, when has an age such as ours ever demonstrated such a lack of wisdom?  Such a hunger for meaning and purpose.  Jean-Paul Sartre just died.  If you haven't the essay on him in Time Magazine or in some of the other weekly periodicals, do so.  Better yet, read his books.  Read "No Exit", for instance.  If you want your heart to just be shredded with a man of enormous knowledge - enormous intellect - whose conclusion of the whole thing is that the world is a bad joke.  Man is totally void of meaning and purpose.  The whole thing is a freak that is based on an accident.  And so he finds himself, in his old age, with all of the knowledge that he has; given a Nobel prize, which he refused; and yet a man who was able to say at the end of his life, "I have searched all my life for meaning and a place to stand - for that which would qualify as true wisdom - and have found it exists not."  Now, that's the kind of worldly wisdom that scripture says is antithetical to God.  I'm not talking about natural intelligence, but I am saying that natural intelligence, devoid of Godly understanding and wisdom, leads eventually to "No Exit".  What Malcolm Muggeridge calls "one of the culdesacs of life".

I'm not even talking about that general wisdom which is available to every Christian that James describes in James 1:5 when he says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God Who gives generously to all men who ask without making them feel foolish or guilty for having asked."  We are talking about a supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit.  Not one accompanied by ghostly sounds and crawling flesh, but one that meets a need at the point of that need.  The gift of wisdom is a supernatural gift beyond the natural - God's word applied to a specific situation.  It offers the application of knowledge to the spiritual life.  And it is always, therefore, always consistent with the revealed and written word of God.  If somebody comes up to you and says, "I have a word knowledge" or somebody says, "I have a word of wisdom," I always start to get a little bit spooked right there.  I think its self-evident - they don't have to run around with banner headlines.  But if they come along and there is, seemingly, a word of wisdom or a word of knowledge, but it does not square with the word of God, it is not of God.

Let me illustrate it from two different situations.  In Genesis 41, Pharaoh had a dream.  Now Pharaoh is not some kind of a mossy old Biblical character, you know, who runs around in a robe and was a character in the escape of the Jews from Egypt.  Pharaoh was the most powerful governmental leader of his whole civilized world at that time.  This is no small potatoes!  And Pharaoh had a dream.  And he called in all of his counselors and his cabinet members and he laid the dream on them and said, "What in the world does this mean?  it's some sort of an omen or forecast or something and I've got to know what it means."  None of them could answer.  Well, its kind of a weird dream.  I mean, he dreams there are seven big fat cows grazing by the Nile river.  And out of the Nile river comes seven emaciated, starving, skinny cows.  And those seven cows ate up the fat cows and never got any fatter.  Now, my interpretation would be: you'd better check what you ate before you wend to bed.  But nobody could give him the answer.

And then his cup-bearer (kind of his butler) said, "you know, when I was in jail a while back, I had a cellmate by the name of Joseph and this guy... Hey, he could maybe answer."  And so Pharaoh sends to the prison and they bring Joseph from prison and Joseph listens carefully as Pharaoh explains the dream.  And then there's an expectant hush, and then Joseph interprets it.  I'm not even going to tell you the interpretation - if you're not familiar with the story, go home this afternoon (after the last quarter of the Sonics game) and read it yourself: Genesis 41.  Now, the point is, after he had interpreted the dream, he spoke with such wisdom that Pharaoh realized the wisdom couldn't have been his own.  And Pharaoh, this man who was not honoring the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph - Pharaoh himself, this heathen - said, "Since God has informed you of all this, there's no one so discerning and wise as you are."  That's the gift of wisdom, you see.  The gift of the word of wisdom.  Even witnessed to by those who are non-believers.

In II Chronicles, David has died.  He's the greatest king the Israelis ever have had.  Solomon's about to take over and God comes to him in a dream the night before his inauguration, and He says, "Solomon, you know you've got a big job ahead of you, and I'll give you carte blanc what do you need?"  

And Solomon says, "Give me now wisdom and knowledge that I may go out and come in before this people, for who can rule this great people of Thine?"  And God gave him that gift of Wisdom.  He received it to such a degree that his fame spread throughout his world at that time, until the Queen of Sheba came all the way to Israel to sit at his feet to check it out. And after she had been there, she says in her witness in I Kings 10, "It is a true report which I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom.  Nevertheless I did not believe the reports until I came and my eyes had seen it and behold, the half has not been told to me."

In the new testament, in Acts 6, they set aside deacons, because they've got a super problem in the church.  They're ready to have a major split.  This church, which is now made up for the first time in Israeli history, the idea of including Jews and gentiles in the same body, is in the point of almost fracturing over such a thing as who gets the best distribution of food.  And so they are led by the Holy Spirit to appoint seven men.  And of these seven men that are appointed, they are required they be full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.  And they solved the problem.  One of them, by the way, was Stephen, he was the first Christian martyr.  The more he talked about Jesus, the more his opposers opposed him, until finally, they stoned him.  But the significant thing about this is: we have the word of wisdom, which was obvious because of the statement in scripture that he qualified to be one of the deacons.  And finally they are ready to execute him, but speaking of his opposition, the quote is, in Acts 6, "And yet they were unable to cope with the wisdom and the spirit with which Stephen was speaking."  This is the witness of the non-believer.  They didn't like what he said, but they knew he made sense.

Well, there are several instances of when believers spoke with wisdom beyond themselves.  Peter and John are hauled in before the same bunch that interrogated and caused Christ's execution.  And Peter and John are challenged and they are examined and cross-examined, and when Peter replies to their charges and questions, the text says at the very beginning, "Now Peter, being filled with the Holy Spirit..." and then it says at the end of the defense in Acts 4, "Now as they" (that is, as the council - the opposition) "observed the confidence of Peter and John, and understood they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus."  Now listen, that's the whole point of the word of Wisdom - is that it authenticates the reality of the fact that we have been with Jesus.  It's not for some sort of special buzz.  It's not to impress somebody else with "My goodness, how smart you are!"  It is to equip the body that we might more adequately reflect Him Whom we are called to conform to - that is, Jesus Christ.

Now, the person who is gifted by the Holy Spirit with the word of Wisdom becomes evident from time to time because that person will consistently make wise decisions.  They will consistently give Godly insight into problem situations.  The results of his exercising his gift is consistent with the standards laid down in James 3: "The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be pled with, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy."  It rings true all the way through.  And a person with the gift of the word of Wisdom is also looked to by the body of Christ.  He or she is a person that others have come to look to.  They're shapers of opinion.  Whether they hold a position in the church is irrelevant.  They just weigh a great deal.  They are recognized as persons whose speech and counsel is wise, and their opinion is sought and highly respected.

But there's one other thing.  One of the major evidences, according to my understanding and study of the scripture of this gift, is those who have been given this gift have an accompanying humility.  An accompanying humility.  This is one of those gifts that if you don't have that humility, it can carry you away.  And so God, in His mercy, has given humility to go with it.  And the result is: the glory goes to Christ, and the building up of the body of Christ.  The Wisconsin farmer that I referred to earlier, when we said to him during a lunch break, "That was phenomenal!  How did you..."

The poor man was just absolutely overcome with embarrassment.  And finally he said, "Please don't talk about it anymore.  I just somehow feel like God wanted to use even me.  That's all."  That is one of the evidences of this gift.

Next week, we'll take a look at gift of Faith and begin on the gifts of Healing.  Go to a world that, in their knowledge, will evaluate you as a man of faith as being simple-minded.  And go, willing to bear the reproach of the cross, because therein is eternal life.  And God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit will be with you in your ministry and be with me in mine, until by His grace and mercy, He privileges us to be together again.