7. Gifts of the Spirit, Part 6

As you note in the bulletin - those of you who may be visiting with us for the first or second time, this is part of a series on Spiritual gifts.  In fact, it says "Spiritual Gifts number 5", but it doesn't quite say "Spiritual gifts".  I don't know exactly what kind of gifts those are that are listed in the bulletin.  Typographical error.  But just to remind you that today I want to finish up just a little bit of what has been said concerning the first eleven verses of I Corinthians 12.  We said that beginning in the seventh verse there is a description of the fact that the gifts unify.  That they are given to every man for the purpose of profiting withal.  And we're talking of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  The second principle that we see given is not only that the gifts unify, but the second major theme is described in verses 8-10 of chapter 12 is that the gifts are widely varied.  The third major principle is laid down in the eleventh verse: "all these worketh that one and the self-same spirit, dividing to every man severally as He wills."  And that is that the Holy Spirit's gifts are given, they are not selected.  They are given.

Now today I need to touch on just one other aspect - and that is that gifts can be terribly abused.  I think that's necessary because Satan has managed to take the experience of gifts that the church has experienced in the last few years, and what he cannot destroy, he always seeks to distort.  The fact that the gifts can be terribly abused is what led the Holy Spirit to direct the apostle Paul to write the letter of Corinthians anyway.  Where ever Satan fears the power of the Holy Spirit - which is every time it is manifested - and when he recognizes the Holy Spirit gifts the members of the body of Christ for ministry, and for the building up of the body of Christ, what Satan cannot destroy, he will always try to distort.  And he's been very busy in this area of spiritual gifts.  He's been busy by counterfeiting them, by distorting their purpose, and by dividing the body of Christ through ignorance and through confusion.  Part of the paranoia that many in the body of Christ are experiencing whenever the subject of gifts comes up is the result of the discrediting and destroying work that Satan has been busy doing.  Because the word for "gift" in scripture is the word "charisma" - and we've referred to that before - and the tongues movement has frequently referred to itself as the "charismatic movement" so that the popular American public and popular church public hearing the term "charismatic" assumes that it is a kind of far out fringies.  Those that talk in tongues.  That's their interpretation: far out fringies.  Not mine, please understand.  They therefore back off in fear from the "charismatic".  And the result is a very popular term is "charismania" or "charisphobia" to describe the abuses that can take place.

But I want to be very specific today, because time is limited and because I think this is very critical that we understand this in our whole context of the spiritual gifts.  The first major contemporary abuse of the spiritual gifts: C. Peter Wagner of the Fuller Evangelistic Association, who is primarily in charge of the church growth ministries - describes as "gift exaltation".  That is the exalting of one gift over any other gift - no matter what gift you're exalting.  The person that has a certain gift, or another, begins to assume - or project to others - that he constitutes a status symbol of spirituality.  Now hear me.  The scripture makes abundantly clear that the possession of any gift, or combination of gifts, is not to be equated with spirituality.  Paul writes in I Corinthians 1, "You in Corinth are lacking in no spiritual gift."  And yet in chapter 3 he says, "I want to write to you as spiritual, but I cannot.  I have to write to you as those who are behaving carnally."  That is, unspiritually.  In the wordly sense.  In other words, they had all the gifts but they were not acting spiritually.  They do not equate.  Now it would be desired that those who have spiritual gifts would demonstrate true spiritual life.  But it is not necessarily an axiom that they follow.  The result is, Satan is able to take those who have gifts and put a slight warp in the interpretation on that, so that gift exaltation takes place.  We always like to do that - we like to pigeon-hole people.  We like to categorize them.  "These are doctors, these are lawyers, these are merchants, these are chiefs, and those guys are ministers."  We like to put people in boxes.  We like to find out how much a person makes, or where they were educated, or where they live, or what kind of a car they drive, in order that we might categorize - and the same thing happens spiritually.

"Do you have this gift?"

"Yeah, I've got that gift."

And right away, we're part of the "elite" if we share that gift.  Whatever gift.  And the result happens to be that those who have it are easily able to distinguish themselves from those who don't.  And that's not Biblical body life. Its a fragmenting of the body life.  And those that "got it", flaunt it.  At least it sure looks like flaunting to those who haven't got it.  To those that have it, its just celebration, but to those who don't have it, it looks like put downs.  That's not Biblical.  Gifts are not ends or status symbols.  They are for the service and the building up of the entire body.  Otherwise, if they are exalted beyond where they belong, they glorify the receiver.  That's the warp that Satan puts on it.  Not the Giver - they benefit the person; the individual in isolation and not the whole body.

Now the sad, sinful, and fractured church at Corinth had, as a root cause of that miserable condition, the abuse of gifts that I'm referring to as "gift exaltation".  Way back in the very beginning, the first of all of those nine problems Paul deals with when he writes to the church at Corinth, is one of party spirit.  That really was a form of gift exaltation.  There were those who said, "Now, Paul is our man.  Paul!  Oh what a marvelous man.  He has, among other things, the gift of tongues, he has the gift of prophecy, he has the gift of apostleship!  That's our man!"  And then there were other people who said, "We're of Apollos.  He has the gift of knowledge.  He has the gift of wisdom.  He's our man!"  And then there were those who said, "I follow Peter."  Peter had the common, ordinary gifts - he had the gift of helps.  And they were exalting their gifts and as a result they were clustering around people who represented the particular gift, or combination of gifts, that they were exalting.  And the result is, instead of the body being built up together, it was being fragmented.  Now, it was not abuse of the leaders, it was the abuse of the followers.  Paul writes to them and says, "Hey, who is Paul?  Who is Apollos?  Who is Peter?  They're nobody but ministers used by God.  One plants, one waters, God gives the increase.  So then, the man is not important.  The seed and the God who gives the increase is what's important."  And yet the followers of these men were in the process of gift exaltation.  And it divided the body.

Now, this is contemporary.  It happens today.  The division that we see concerning the gifts and the ministries of the Holy Spirit across the whole church is the result of two things. Number one: It is the result of bad doctrine.  And by bad doctrine, I would define that as doctrine that is experientially-based rather than Biblically-based.  People come up to me and say, "Now Pastor, I think you're offline here."

And I'll say, "Why do you think I'm offline?"

"Well, I had this experience, and I read this book about this guy that had this experience."

And frankly, I don't care about your experience.  Where is it written?  We can have all kinds of experiences, and Satan can counterfeit every experience right down the line.  But he cannot counterfeit the reality.  And the reality always is testified to by the sure and certain word of God.  And so it is: my experience must always come under the review and the affirmation of scripture.  I had a person say to me, just two weeks ago (a beautiful young person - I know what the scripture means when it says Jesus looking on that young man and loved him, it says) - I just felt that way about this young person instantly.  And yet the young person chose to follow a lifestyle in direct opposite of some clear teaching of scripture has to say, and they said, "but I feel so close to Christ."

And I said, "That's too bad.  Because you aren't."  There is no way in which your experience will conform to Christ.  It will not conform to reality unless it is built in obedience to scripture.  Now that's one reason why gift exaltation takes place - it is bad doctrine which bases itself on experience rather than the word of God.

And the other is because people - all of us - are followers of men so much more easily than we are of God.  We just gravitate to men.  Please listen very carefully: division in the body of Christ comes about in the contemporary church scene, as it did in the early church scene, when people who have certain gifts follow teachers who have essentially the same gifts, and the rallying point are those gifts.  The result is division and fragmentation of the body, rather than the building of the body.  Christ, through the Holy Spirit, gives gifts severally across a broad spectrum because He wants them severally across a broad spectrum.  Not because he wants a pocket of this and a pocket of that and a pocket of the other thing. And the result is the gatherings of those who have cluster around these teachers who share the same mutual gifts and the rallying point is the gift, is that the result is that the gift becomes a commodity that they push or the meeting becomes like a club with only those on the inside really able to relate.  And that is not the body of Christ.  You see, the result is to become specialists in specifics.  We become tempted to glorify the gifts and those who are so gifted, rather than the Giver.  And the body becomes divided between those who've got it and those who don't.  Until finally: "I want that gift more than I want the Giver of all gifts."

Discontent with what the Holy Spirit has given you is, in fact, criticism of the way He decides to run Christ's church.  And I don't want to get into the business of criticizing the way He runs Christ's church.  There is not gift exaltation in the word of God.  I say that absolutely.  There is no gift exalted, in the word of God, above another.  If you take a look at I Corinthians 12 or Romans 12, Ephesians 4, the passages in I Peter, and some of the other scattered references to the gifts, you will discover the same thing I have: there is no uniform list.  The lists vary in length.  They vary in detail.  They vary in the order of the listing.  Sometimes they seem to be talking about ministries, and sometimes they seem to be talking about an energizing or power in the ministry.  Some lists have this thing, but they don't have the other thing.  And this list over here omits some things and adds something else.  Why is the Bible so inconsistent in that?  Well, I believe there is only one possible solution.  The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the scripture consistently selects and orders the gifts in random orders in various passages because we are having demonstrated for us how diverse and varied, like the human body, the gifts really are.  And we are foolish if we try to make, as some writers have, only a certain number of gifts.  I have a briefcase just jammed full of books on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  One of the writers who says right on the cover: "Discovering the 19 Gifts of the Spirit".  I read another book, before I got to that one, that said there were only nine, and I was anxious to find out where this guy found ten more.  And then I read another book that said there are 25 gifts of the Holy Spirit.  And so we have all kinds of people ranking and dividing and making lists and all the rest.  Let me tell you something.  I believe that the Holy Spirit is unlimited.  And I believe He can give His gifts as He wills.  I think that's what the scripture teaches.  I think the gift lists that are found in scripture are indicative, not exhaustive.  I think they're kind of a idea of some of the amazing things He is able to do.  The emphasis is always upon the Giver and the reason for the gift.  Not on the attention to the gift itself.  So we must guard against the first abuse, which is gift exaltation.

The second abuse that we see today, Wagner refers to as "gift projection".  You'll recognize this abuse too, because its probably touched you as its touched me.  Most Christians who have biographies written about them are what we could only call spiritual super achievers.  I really don't anticipate anybody will take the time to write a biography of Bud Palmberg.  And I am really quite sure, if anyone really took the time, nobody would publish it.  You know, you really got to have made a mark, and I was handed, by a very good friend of mine, a little poem.  In fact it came out of a Teamster's publication.  And it described how you can see what kind of a mark you leave, by putting your fist in a bucket of water and pulling it out and then looking for the mark.  And I kind of feel like this.  That's alright.  I don't mind.  I wouldn't buy the book either.  But, there are some people around that we know are spiritual super-achievers who would - absolutely guaranteed - make the "Guinness Book of Spiritual Records", if there were one.  I love hero stories, and I love biographies.  But I've discovered when I read these hero stories or these biographies, they always leave me with just kind of a low grade depression for a few days.  And I couldn't figure that out.  Why?  Why do I feel kind of meh?  And I think I have the answer.  I think I understand.  You see, the biographers, whether it was the autobiography or written by someone else, the message that comes through is sort of like this: "this person we're writing about did so much because he loved God so much.  Therefore, if you - Bud Palmberg - loved God this much, you could do the same things."  Now, that's gift projection.  The result is frustration and guilt and defeat.  

Why, my goodness, if I don't love God that much and something's missing in my relationship because the signs are not the same.  And the person who writes the book in all honest humility seems to say, "I'm just an ordinary Christian.  I'm no different from anybody else.  This is what I do, God blesses it.  If you do what I do, God will bless it just the same."  And I say, "Oh boy, what's wrong with me?"  They don't seem to realize they're projecting gifts.  They can do what they can do because God, in His infinite mercy, has gifted them to do that. And they are busy since they are an eye, trying to get the whole body to be an eye - and I'm a foot.  They don't see they're projecting guilt and shame.  In Matthew 25, the parable is told of the stewardship of talents.  And its almost as though the man who had received five talents and came back with the ten, were to say to the guy who received two and came back with four, "Now this is what I did, and if you love God as much as I did, you'd bring ten talents too."  Without recognizing that, to start with, he and five and the other guy only had two.  And some of these ten-talent-people are busy saying, "I did this; you can do this.  If you love God like I do and if you have the same kind of devotional life and the same kind of whatever...  You kneel down in the right way, or say the right words, or raise this hand or this hand, or both or something, you'll have the same thing."  That's gift projection.  Without mentioning that the Master gave him five or ten talents and gave me two and the reason he has five or ten and I have two is because the Holy Spirit has "divided severally to every man as He" (that is, the Spirit) "wills."

Now, an illustration.  Most of you have heard of George Mueller.  Lots of biographies were written about George Mueller.  The one I read most recently was called "George Mueller: the Man of Faith".  By the way, I am not saying not to read biographies.  I think you ought to.  I think every Christian ought to read at least three biographies a year.  And I don't mean biographies of some of the current, contemporary flashes.  I mean, people like Solomon Goforth of China.  Or the Stans.  Or William Carey.  Or some of the giants of the faith.  Not some of the pops.  But George Mueller's one of those giants of the faith.  In fact, the book I read, published by Zondervan, is called "George Mueller: the Man of Faith" and he was a giant with an incredible gift of faith and these are some facts.  Now listen - get ready to be dazzled.  In 1835, George Mueller opened his first orphanage.  He had 26 girls.  He did not own the home.  He did not have any money to run it.  He didn't even know where the girls came from.  But he opened the first orphanage: Walked in sat down and got permission to stay there a few days.  Had no rent.  Had no food.  Had no nothing.  Started with 26 girls.  35 years later he had five homes; he was sheltering and feeding 2,100 orphans every day.  He still didn't have any money.  He never, ever, solicited financial help.  What a contrast with some of the stuff today!  You know, they send you a little chip of a rock they picked up at the Dead Sea - "It will bless you.  Send me ten dollars."  He never, ever, solicited financial help.  He only told the Lord of his daily needs.  In his lifetime of ministry, George Mueller educated - mind you, he paid to have educated - 121,000 orphan children.  He distributed 300,000 Bibles in different languages.  He distributed 1,500,000 New Testaments in different languages.  He sent out 163 missionaries and over 111,000,000 tracts.  And all without financial aid.  He would sit down at an orphanage with 150 children that he had rung the dinner bell and they'd all come and sit down and George Mueller, and the cook in the kitchen knew there wasn't anything in the house except water.  And the children were expecting a meal and they'd sit down and hold hands around the table and he would pray a prayer of such enormous faith it just staggers me to read it in the book.  And right smack in the middle of the prayer, there'd be a knock on the door and here's a milkman whose rig broke down outside and he has 40 gallons of milk that he's going to have to dump in the drain "unless, perhaps, Mr. Mueller, you could use it?"  And that's the way God supplied his needs.  Do you know that by the time Mueller died, after 63 years in ministry, God had sent him $7,500,000 for ministry.  And when he died, he had less than $1,000.  Wow!  I'm dazzled.  Are you?  Okay, now here's what I mean by gift projection: I read this and I'm just saying "Oh God, wow."  And then I read what Mueller says.  And here's what he says, "Let not Satan deceive you in making you think you could not have the same faith, but that it is only for persons situated as I am.  I pray to the Lord and expect an answer to my requests.  And may not you do the same, dear believing reader?"  No wonder I'm depressed.  It's that "dear believing reader" bit that puts me down.  I am the unsuspecting victim of gift projection.  There is a gift called the gift of faith, and Mueller had it in magnificent measure.  But what's this eye doing, hollering at me being a foot, to be an eye?  I don't have that gift of faith.  Oh, I have faith - I choose to believe - that's an act of obedience and trust.

But the gift of faith says, "Mountain, go in the sea."  The old lady who had her morning sun blocked by the mountain, and she read that scripture "it would be so great to wake up in the morning with brilliant sunshine in my room."  So that night, she prayed, "Lord, move that mountain out of the way so I get the sun."  And in the morning she woke up and looked out the window and said, "Yeah, just as I thought..."  You see, that's the kind of faith that some of us have.  We don't have that gift of faith.  Mueller wouldn't have even looked out the window - he would have put on his sunglasses.  You see, when you look at the word of God and discover that the sovereignty is the Holy Spirit's, in His distribution of gifts, then you are free to be able to praise God genuinely and sincerely for the George Muellers in this world.  Praise God!  Just think, 121,000 orphans were rescued by that man's faith.  Praise God for his gift to George Mueller.  But, I can also praise God for my gift, which may not save 121,000 people, but God wants me to be steward of what I received - not of what George Mueller got.  And so we can gather together about the table of the Lord, not as people who all have the same gift and not as people who are subject to being gift projectors or gift exalters, but those who gather together knowing that the only reason that we qualify to come to this table is not because we're so great, but because He is that great in loving and that His gifts to us by His Holy Spirit are distributed by His wisdom knowing what the body needs and knowing what we can handle.  And we can praise Him together.  And so we must.

God's gifts to you by the Holy Spirit may not be as dazzling or as spectacular as George Mueller's, but they are God's gift to the body through you.  And I, for one, want to praise God for you.