We’re going to talk about spiritual gifts tonight. I’m going to just do a real brief summary and then I’d like to cover tonight if the Lord wills the Evangelist and the Pastor. Those two giftings, the teacher and pastor, some scholars believe kind of go hand-in-hand. It’s kind of the same gifting, but as you will see through the body of Christ, a lot of these giftings work with other giftings a lot of them are paired with, and we’ll talk about that in a little bit.
Spiritual Gift – Apostle And Prophet
Spiritual gifts does not mean you’re spiritually matured. Remember, we talked about that, what constitutes spiritual maturity Pastor Lane Farley? Fruit of the spirit. And remember, we don’t want any nuts, we don’t want any flakes, but we want some fruity people in our church, right? We don’t want nutty people, we don’t want flaky people, but we want fruity people!
So, look at somebody next to you and say you’re looking awful fruity tonight. It’s a compliment. it’s not an insult, amen. Praise God! Spiritual gifts are given to Believers. They’re not given to folks that aren’t Believers, they’re given to believers and spiritual gifts are not natural talents. We’ll talk about that in a little bit spiritual gifts are not natural talents.
By nature, spiritual gifts are designed to build up the body of Christ, amen. We’ve read scriptures about that. These giftings are for the edification of the body, amen. They’re designed by nature to be others-oriented not self-oriented, for others-oriented.
Again, the giftings and talents that Pastor Tom has if he kept that to himself how selfish would that be? I’m glad that he decided to think of others and to preach the gospel and to sing and minister under the anointing of the Holy Ghost because how many of our lives have been blessed by his ministry? Amen! He’s allowing the Holy Spirit to flow through him.
The Bible tells us to earnestly desire spiritual giftings, right? Amen. Jesus, He didn’t just come and build a foundation and go away and say forget it. Jesus built a foundation and He’s depending upon us, His church to continue building His church, amen!
Now, when Jesus was here on this earth, He could only be in one place at one time, right? Right. So, when He left, now we’re the temple of the Holy Ghost, the Bible says, and the Bible says that the He said, “The works that I do you’ll you’ll do greater.” Not that we can do anything greater than Jesus, but He’s multiplied His ministry Himself through His body, So now there’s millions maybe billions of Christians all over this earth that can be used by God to build His kingdom.
We learned that there’s gifts that Jesus gives, there’s gifts that the Holy Spirit gives and there’s gifts that God the Father gives. We’ve gone through all these Scriptures. Here again, the gifts, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good of the body. Sister Donna talked about you know just because you’re not the pastor, the preacher or the evangelist doesn’t mean you’re not important. It doesn’t mean you’re not a part of the body. Every member is important.
Donato’s Pizza got this from the Bible because if you have a Donato’s pizza and you look on the box guess what it says? Every piece is important. Go get a Donato’s pizza and see if I ain’t telling you the truth every member is important, amen. We talked about 1 Peter 4:10, it says each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others.
So, whatever the gift is, listen, everybody’s important, and the reason I like to point these guys out over here, brother Wayne Brewster, a lot of times you probably don’t even see him over there. You don’t even realize he’s over there, but he’s important. He keeps the words up on here. He helps us with the PowerPoint.
People like him, the behind the scenes people. There’s a lady in our church you would probably not even know who she is, I would guarantee 90% of the people do not know who she is, but this dear Saint goes around and helps people privately. What I’m saying is don’t think shes not in ministry.
You know if you’ve ever been in a situation and someone shows some mercy to you and helps you out, it’s such a blessing. It’s such a Ministry we’re going to see an example of that in Scripture tonight if we get to that, amen. So, spiritual gifts, we talked about they can be found in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Romans chapter 12 and Ephesians chapter 4.
Okay, we talked about how our giftings need to be cultivated. When you get a gift you know. If I handed you a brand new AR-15 brother Steve, and you never shot one, you got to get to know that rifle. You’ve got to understand how it works. Same way with our spiritual giftings. God may give you a gift of prophecy. He may give you a gift of evangelism. Well, you might think, ‘okay this is cool,’ and go out here and start trying to do something. You might cause more damage than good, right?
So we’ve got to learn to cultivate, to depend on the Holy Spirit to help us with these giftings. Get around other folks that has this gift. Ask them, “Hey, how does this operate in your life/” One of these times I want to ask Pastor Lane, I want to ask Sister Shelby, “When you feel that prophecy coming on, how did you know?”
You know what I’m saying? I mean, maybe you feel like, well, maybe I might have that gifting. I want to hear from the people that have that, amen.They may be able to shed some light, but if you feel like, ‘I’ve got the gift to prophesy,’ talk to Brother Lane, talk to Sister Vicki. They’ve been using the gift of tongues of interpretation. Talk to Sister Shelby. She’s given messages out in prophecy.
Okay, and then we covered last week, we covered the Apostle. Now the Apostle is one of the five-fold ministry gifts. Brother Lane there’s a “hand thing” right? The Apostle is the thumb…. Explain this Brother Lane, get him on a microphone, just keep that there brother, I’ll be calling on you come up here.
Okay, here’s the Apostle, he’s the thumb. Now notice your thumb will touch every finger you have, so he is involved in all the other four ministries. He’s the leader. They all cue off of him. He’s the one that is a pioneer. He’s got a pioneer spirit. That being the case, you will find him involved in churches. Starting new churches. Overseeing new churches and the new church growth, but he also is a person that is in charge of bringing policy and direction to the churches as the Apostle.
Next, you have the prophet, that’s the pointer. Thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord, and he is the one that has the word from God not only individually but a prophet will have a word for a nation, yes, or a group of people. David Wilkerson is a good example. The books that he’s written about prophetic things of the future, and not only what’s going to happen to future, but what is the temperature of the present Church. Yeah, are they on fire or they are cold, that prophet will tell you.
Then, your longest finger is your middle finger and that’s the Evangelist. He is reaching out. He’s the longest. What consumes him and his passion is soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul! He thinks about the lost, he lives about the lost, he eats the lost. He’s all about souls.
Then you have your ring finger. That’s the pastor because he is married to his church. Yes, he loves his church. He will protect his church. He’s involved in his church. He’s there at all times of all hours, caring and shepherding his people. And, of course, the baby finger, that’s the teacher. You may think the teacher is the weakest point in the church. He may seem little.
You may think that your position as a teacher is little, but as you walk up to something like this and you try to pick up a desk without the use of that baby finger and try to get a grip, yes, it’s hard to get a grip, but when you use that baby finger to grip onto something and lift it up, you get a good grip, What am I saying is that the teacher is the grip of the church.
A church is only as strong as the teaching ministry involved in the church, and so sometimes we look down on the teaching ministry, but the stronger the teaching ministry is involved in the church, the stronger the church will be, and we have a great teaching ministry in our church. Praise the Lord!
And then last week we gave some examples of who I would consider modern day apostles. I would say that’s more of the missionaries that go out, Brother Kincaid that we support and Brother David Pepper. Some of these men who have established hundreds of churches, who’ve gone out and to do the work of the Lord establishing. And then we also talked about the prophets.
Pastor Lane gave a great example here also. Prophets, how do we know someone is a true prophet? Well, first the easiest thing is if they prophesy something it comes to pass, then that you know that’s a good sign. Okay does it line up? Does their prophetic word, does it confirm Scripture? Does it line up with the Word? Does it confirm something?
If someone gives you a personal word, does that confirm something that the Lord has already spoken to you? You know what I’m saying? So these are some things that you can tell is there prophetic word? Is it motivated by selfishness? Is it a grab for power to show like “I’m the man you need me to get the word?” You know we’ve seen a lot of abuses in the body of Christ over some of these giftings like this and it’s left a bitter taste in a lot of people’s mouths because of that the abuse of these gifts.
