Speaker 1 0:17

The central question for our study on Spiritual gifts: What does Paul say will cease? When might that happen? And what does he say will abide? Go ahead and read the main passage most and we'll talk about it.

Speaker 4 0:29

First Corinthians 13, 8 through 13. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face, now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide. These three, but the greatest of these is love.

Speaker 1 1:17

I love that passage. Which things pass away or cease, and which three abide.

Speaker 4 1:24

Prophecies, tongues, knowledge will pass away.

Speaker 1 1:28

But which ones abide?

Speaker 4 1:30

Faith, hope, and love.

Speaker 1 1:32

Okay, so to that effect, when and why and how? Like what when did they pass away? Yeah. Does anybody have any thoughts on that? I have my thoughts, but I'm curious what you guys think. Do all these gifts still exist? Do all the spiritual gifts still exist? Do people actually speak in tongues? Do people prophesy? Or do some of them exist? You don't have to get theological about them, just you know, what do what do you guys believe about that in a nutshell?

Speaker 3 2:00

In the Pentecostal churches, they still speak in tongues and you know, but you know, it says the test of spirit, there's always supposed to be an interpreter. There's not always an interpreter. That has been my experience with that. I mean, they might think that they are.

Speaker 1 2:18

Yeah.

Speaker 3 2:19

But I don't think it's necessarily of God.

Speaker 1 2:23

There's definitely a lot of people that were Pentecostal that I've heard teach that are good teachers now. Not to bash what they believed, but they will proclaim that it was kind of like caught up in the moment kind of thing. They actually thought they were, but it was just a trained babble. And when you study what tongues meant in scripture, the actual word tongues is referring to language. You have the one part about language of angels. He's talking about babel when the nations were spread out, and there was an angel, a member of, from my vantage point, Yahweh's divine council. It says there was an angel appointed each of the seventy nations. So who would have taught them language?

Speaker 4 3:04

Well, each angel, no.

Speaker 1 3:06

Angels. So that's how I justify the language of angels. Paul's talking about Babel, when the angels were teaching people real language, and that's actually converted a lot of Pentecostals away from understanding that passage in that context. I heard a guy, Mike Sullivan, said that when he heard that taught that way, that was when it all clicked for him. The divine counsel uh view of scripture helped him to understand that that wasn't a real thing. That people don't just speak that way, and then you need interpreters and you need all these people to understand. My biggest argument, if somebody said they want to speak tongues here, I would just say we don't have an interpreter, so you gotta save that. But anyway, for me, that was like eye-opening. That yeah, that's an argument in scripture that is damning for the that damning, but it doesn't help their theology, they're not gonna want to hear that. Anyways, do they all exist? Do some of them exist, and why? What do you guys think? Had to use the example of the Pentecostal churches, is it real? Do people ask?

Speaker 3 4:05

You know, like in my experience there, I felt like it was phony. I you know, who am I to judge? But it just felt weird.

Speaker 1 4:14

Well, I know one of the things that you could say is that if you had the gift of healing, why don't you work at a hospital? Instead of collecting money at a little tent at all the church gatherings and telling people they, you know, you have allergies, I'm gonna fix that. Oh, you weren't faithful, that's why it didn't work. It's making Christianity kind of a circus, in my view. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 4:38

I think that's important uh fact that you felt something about that. I mean, that's our new heart, that's the new man, that's the new creation. As believers, we so many times think we need leadership to help us discern. But the Bible teaches us that it's our inner man that discerns. And as a new creation, when we confront things and we get a check in our spirit, we could listen to it because it's we're only going to get more sensitive to those type of things. So that's an awesome testimony, I think.

Speaker 4 5:07

Testing the spirit, yeah.

Speaker 1 5:09

Sure. So do you think you have the gift of testing spirits? I'm not sure about that. How would we know? The next question is how do we know those feelings are correct? And to that I have to say, well, for me, I I want to make sure that scripture supports it. And we can do that on our own. We don't have to be a doctor of theology to do that, as we talked about earlier. We can pray for understanding. But for me, it was eye-opening to understand fulfilled eschatology because it made a lot of sense. The feeling that Patty had about the Pentecostal church is I had it, but I didn't know how do I prove that to myself that these people don't actually have something I don't, because they uh will proclaim it as, oh man, you want these, desire these gifts that you don't desire.

Speaker 3 5:52

That's all you have to do is desire it and it'd be given to you, and they would even lay hands on you to bring it out. And and I was always kind of like, well, how come it's not working?

Speaker 2 6:05

Yeah. So to be a good point.

Speaker 3 6:09

Well, I just call it the gift of discernment, I guess.

Speaker 1 6:13

So do you have it?

Speaker 3 6:15

In that case, I did.

Speaker 1 6:16

I don't always have the gift of discernment. I call it I call it discernment, but uh uh you know, I would just see that for for me, fulfilled eschatology answered all those questions because from the Pentecost until um the destruction of the temple, you had a second 40-year period of time, just like the first Exodus, where God led Israel out of Egypt into the promised land, and there was a 40-year period. There was a 40-year period starting at Pentecost leading up to the destruction of the temple. And at the temple destruction, the body of Christ had become fully matured. That was the consummation of the new covenant age, from my vantage point. It would have marked the end of the age of the signs and wonders for the second Exodus period. I don't know if you guys have ever looked at the view that there's a first Exodus and a second Exodus. There's a ton of really neat parallels in scripture if you follow that view. So if the second Exodus included an age of signs and wonders, that would completely justify why there were so many signs and wonders. And what were they for? They were for that age for those people, right? It wasn't just so they could show off magical powers. It was for the establishment of the church. Once it was established, they were no longer needed. They were in the promised land now. So when Joshua led Israel into the promised land, the gifts and wonders ceased. So if we see it from that view, then it's perfectly acceptable to say all of those miraculous gifts have ceased. The only part that sounds depressing at first is, well, what do we get then? Well, faith, hope, and love remain. Even despite all that was going on with prophecy and signs and wonders and healing, he said faith, hope, and love are the greatest. And love was the greatest of all, the greatest spiritual gift. And we still have that today. Those don't cease, because he said they don't. Even if you believe all the other ones, you know, were there, and then if you believe they didn't enter, they did. We know that those values remain. And I think that's what we see in the church today. And that's why the church gatherings require participation, because we get together and we display those values.

unknown 8:24

Right.

Speaker 1 8:25

And those guide us to be teachers, guide us to study and learn and share and passion, faith, hope, and love. So that's my view.

Speaker 4 8:34

It makes a lot of sense looking at that exodus like that.

Speaker 2 8:37

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 8:39

We know in part, prophesy in part. So how does partial knowledge, childhood, maturity, a dim mirror, and face-to-face knowing work together? You know? How do you deal with all that? To me, face to face with the Lord is being in the presence of the Lord. That's life. Life is being in the presence of the Lord. Yeah. That's what I'm supposed to have. So that's the perfect. It wasn't actually me being Melissa's husband, like we talked about in the past. It was life.

Speaker 2 9:07

Oh man. Why is love greater than faith and hope? Because love is a being. That's a good point, Jack. Yeah. Love is a being. That's why.

Speaker 4 9:18

When scripture says God is love, is that what you're referring to? Yeah.

Speaker 3 9:23

Jesus demonstrated the ultimate act of love.

Speaker 9:27

Good point.

Speaker 3 9:27

Yeah, he sure did.

Speaker 9:29

That's true. Not only did he demonstrate it through his sacrifice, but remember he demonstrated it through a total obedience to his father his whole life. Yes. And and he also demonstrated it by being willing to be separate from his father for a period of time. Even though people said, Hey, he's God. If he dies, what's the big deal? He's just gonna live again. But what he did is yield his being to his father, experienced separation from something that was eternal. Remember, they had eternal unity, and he voided himself from his father's presence for a small period of time. That's pretty amazing. That's a sacrifice.

Speaker 1 10:11

He probably dreaded that more than the punishment and torture. That's probably what he was sweating as a flood about. I don't want that.

Speaker 10:20

I don't want to be separate from you. That's love, see? That's why love is the greatest, because love is a being.

Speaker 4 10:27

Boy, did that bring power to what Christ did. Just realizing that he emptied himself of his deity like that while he was here.

Speaker 10:34

I Jesus, when he rose, he rose as a man, didn't he? So Jesus sacrificed was to become an eternal man.

Speaker 1 10:43

Wow. It was pretty unique because he came in a bodily form.

Speaker 10:47

Yeah. He rose in a bodily form.

Speaker 1 10:50

When he ascended into heaven, not necessarily, probably transitioned at some point into a heavenly body, but he rose in a bodily form to show everybody, look, I defeated death. He still had the holes in his hands, but did he take those with him to heaven? Probably not. Just throwing that out there. It's kind of an interesting thing. Yeah, there's a couple songs to that effect, I think.

Speaker 2 11:12

Yeah.

Speaker 11:14

Yeah. So that there's no question about love being the greatest gift. You know? That's a wonderful topic. Because the other two, faith and the hope, they're the sourcing of love. Amen. They're what store love. I use the example a lot of times about the hope in us. It's like I think I even use it with this gathering at you know, when my dad went to the store and he said, I'm bringing you back a candy bar. At my age, when I was young, that's all I talked about from when he left until he drove in the driveway. That was my hope. That he's bringing me a candy bar. He is. He's gonna do it. He's bringing me mom, dad's bringing me a candy bar and he comes home. Right. That's the hope and the faith in my father that he was gonna do it. But when he showed up, that's love.

Speaker 1 12:00

Yeah, and I think that analogy is really neat because when we're struggling in our Christian lives, I think that attitude is excellent because you're just like, you know what, the Lord has something for me. He rewards the faithful. And we gotta remember that. It's not just belief that we've already been given. He continues to reward us. Maybe he sends you a cheerful bird singing on the branch one morning, and you know, he's he'll send you something to let you know, and he gives you little rewards, and then he gives you a boost in morale, he gives you something, you know. He's just always he's always making himself known. It's an error if you think that you're walking around constantly talking to God and he's not talking back. That doesn't happen. He's gonna speak to you when you're talking to him. It's a conversation. Prayer is a continued conversation, right, Jack? I mean, it's not just you sit down and you have to do a certain structure, it's a continued lifelong conversation with our father. And I like how Paul says certain times, my God, and then other times he says, our God. It's his father. He emphasizes that this is my God, this is my father. I talk to him all day, and you guys talk to me too.

Speaker 13:09

Yeah, yeah, like uh one of my favorite musicals is Fiddler on the Roof. The picture of the father in that whole thing, in that musical, is one of relationship with the father. Have you seen the movie or the play? Fiddler on the Roof? Oh my goodness. You have to grab some popcorn and and get to find the musical and sit down and watch it. The father has such a He's of course he's Jewish, right? He leads the supper, all that stuff. He's he's Jewish, but he has a relationship with the father. He goes, Oh, why are you doing this to me? You know, the whole thing. But it's a beautiful picture. I said just a beautiful picture of relationships. Cool. And that's really that's what it's all it's what it's all about. It's what it's everything is. It's relationship. It's being able to turn and say, Um, Lord, I just love the flowers that you put before me. I'm so thankful that you've given me a circle of friends. I just want to rejoice in the fact that you've given me help and that you allowed me to experience those things. Our conversation with our Heavenly Father should be just like that. No posturing, no uh preconceived ideas, no nothing. Just spontaneous relationships. That's what he wants. That's why he died. That's why Jesus died so we could share that relationship. If we don't drill down to relationships, nothing else matters. That's what we should be living our heavenly calling right now.

Speaker 1 14:44

To that effect. Who distributed these gifts in the first place? Going back to the first century church, circle back, who distributes these gifts? They came from God, right? And so faithful love comes from God. It's the vine, the vine and branches, the grace-vine relationship, right, Jack? Exactly right. So does Paul describe them as personality types, natural talents, ministry preferences, or a manifestation of the spirit of the Father?

Speaker 4 15:13

Say that again.

Speaker 1 15:14

Does Paul describe spiritual gifts as natural talents, ministry preferences, or manifestations of the Spirit of God?

Speaker 4 15:22

Manifestations.

Speaker 1 15:24

Manifestations, evident. So you couldn't just take a spiritual gifts test and be awarded some title? What are these gifts tests all about? Here's an interesting thought on a spiritual gift test, if you've ever taken one. Do you think a non-Christian could take that same test and be awarded spiritual gifts? Oh, without question. That kind of makes it not very real, doesn't it?

Speaker 15:45

Well, I don't know who you hand them into.

Speaker 2 15:47

That's the only one. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 15:53

Yeah, I'm mailing these off to heaven, so I don't know when we're gonna hear back. Until then you don't have the you know, you don't have the gift, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 16:02

I wanted Melissa to read some of the last supporting passages. One of them is Ephesians.

Speaker 4 16:07

First Corinthians twelve, four through eleven. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit, and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

Speaker 1 17:05

And then Ephesians 4, 11, 5 through 16.

Speaker 4 17:09

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, and the evangelists as shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. I give thanks to my God always for you, because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, in that every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you're not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 18:34

We know that from our last topic that we're all one in Christ, right? No slave nor free, male nor female. But Paul in Galatians writes, and when James and Cephas and John, who seem to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave me the right hand of fellowship that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Doesn't it kind of seem like Paul had a special dose of grace?

Speaker 19:01

I think we're all given a special dose of grace. Paul's special dose was to do what he was supposed to do, and mine is to do what I'm supposed to do, and yours is to do what you're supposed to do. Remember, I I always keep this in the back of my mind, a couple things. One is there's no fear in love, so we don't have to fear our father, and the vessel has no right to tell the potter how he's made. Well so. So we have been given grace because we we understand that. That's communicated to us through the word. Each is given their portion. So we need to live in our portion because that's where the greatest satisfaction is in our life. Living in our portion. That's why pastors go through nervous breakdowns, divorces, all those things. Because they're not living in their portion. They're living in what they think they're supposed to be. Our calling as individuals, as believers, is to live in our portion, because it's all there. Everything's there. Right? Everything we need.

Speaker 1 20:04

At the end of all that talk, Paul says, Pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. He but starts out again with love. Pursue love. And then earnestly desire the spiritual gifts.

Speaker 20:16

Why would you want the spiritual gifts? Because you've pursued love, and now you can better use the gifts that you've been given because you've experienced love.

Speaker 1 20:26

That's excellent. I want to close with this passage because this is what we've been talking about. This is the passage that sums up everything, in my opinion. First Corinthians twelve, twelve through thirty one. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less part of the body. And if the ear should say because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body, the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, and that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ, and individually member.