All right, this is gonna be part two of two. I think we'll be done after this. Part two of two of the spiritual gifts. And I do wanna review what we went over last week. I won't repeat myself too much, but I do wanna draw from it a little bit. I did hear, who was it, Garrett summarized last week by saying, here's all the reasons why we should not be studying this, which I don't think is fair. But I see where it's coming from. I gave a lot of reasons why I was hesitant to dive into this subject. And I identified a new one, actually, this week. And it's not this subject. I think it's me. It's kind of subjective. There's too much subjectivity to it, and I don't like that when it comes to theology and anything in general. So that's probably my fault. So I'm going to try to point that out where that is the case so that, well, you'll probably just see me not being too firm on anything, not anything, on some things. But here's just a brief overview of what we covered last week. Don't let spiritual gifts become your identity. They are not a personality test. There's too many people in the church that have turned it into a personality test and then also made it a part of their identity so much that it almost gets weird. And I made the comment, don't trust people that are obsessed with spiritual gifts or that are too into the spiritual gifts. I should qualify that too. What I mean by that is, you know if there's a guy that Only wants to talk about in time stuff, and he like just you can't trust that guy on revelation Don't talk to that guy about revelation. He's It's like when they're weirdly obsessed with it. You're gonna be like all right listen You're not really to be trusted and and I think spiritual gifts is one of those things so You know take that or leave it, but Possibly possibly. It is the currency of the future, so let's be careful there. Another point that we made was you don't need to know your spiritual gift. You don't need to have a firm grasp of it to actually use them or to do it. You're going to do it naturally. How much you identify it or realize it, it's helpful, but it's not absolutely necessary to do it. So you not necessarily knowing where you land on it doesn't mean you're necessarily neglecting them or that you're not exercising those gifts. Another point we made, you don't have just one and multiple gifts. You'll have some measure of multiple gifts and they can work in conjunction with one another. Being strong in one gift does not mean never doing another gift. If you have the gift of preaching, doesn't mean you never do any gifts of service, things like that. Or if you have any kind of gift of speaking, doesn't mean you do no gifts of service. The gifts listed in various places in scripture, there's various lists, so-called lists. None of those are meant to be exhaustive. So if someone genuinely helps serve and strengthen the church with something they've been empowered by the Holy Spirit to do, then we'd say that's a gift. You don't necessarily have to find it in a list. None of those lists are exhaustive. These gifts are given to all members for the sake of strengthening the church. So we talked a lot about the purpose of it and the fact that it's giving to everyone. Everybody has something to contribute and it is for one another's good. It's for the purpose of making the church stronger. So we focus some on the purpose. And then we, I don't know if I made this point too much or not, but this is one of the better promises of the new covenant. I can't remember how much we talked about that. This is one of the better promises. The fact that the Holy Spirit is poured out in such abundance. I think we did talk about that because we said that's one of the reasons Israel was noticeably weaker spiritually in comparison to the church with all her faults, but it is stronger than Israel. We are not as flagrant and are idolatry, I don't think. So that's a review of a little bit of what we covered last week. And then we had Q&A, too, and it went surprisingly long. But nevertheless, we should wrap it up tonight. So one thing I wanted to talk about, this is something that Andy and I have talked about a little bit. The question that is particularly difficult to answer, and that is the difference between a talent and a spiritual gift. And I do want to point to gotquestions.org. That's a decent website. They don't have everything right, but they're generally pretty solid. They've got some good articles on this and on the spiritual gifts in general. But this one, they had one specifically on this that it actually identified some of the stuff that he and I had talked about. So I'm not just taking it and just, you know. feeding it back to you, but there are obvious similarities. I mean, this question wouldn't even arise if they didn't have some obvious similarities between the spiritual gift and the talent, right? And that's one of the reasons this is difficult to answer. You can't immediately distinguish the difference simply by how they look on the outside. They can look very similar. A talent and a spiritual gift can look very similar. And even if we say one is natural to us, it still ought to be attributed to a gift of God. Someone's natural talent Doesn't mean, well, because it's not a spiritual gift, it's not a gift of God. No, it's still a gift of God. Another reason they're similar is they both can be grown and developed. So again, another reason why they're sometimes hard to distinguish. However, I think what we can say is talents seem to be a gift of common grace. And common grace is the idea that it's given to everybody to some degree or measure. So just in the same way that God causes the sun to rise on the just and the unjust and sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, as Jesus says in Matthew 545, he likewise causes both believers and unbelievers to have natural talents. And that's pretty much obvious if you look at anything where people excel, the people with the natural talents, they're not all believers, clearly. Genetics can play a big role in a talent, nature, but so does nurture. So nature and nurture working together really are kind of the heart of talent. You know, big, strong kids are usually better at sports. If you're a big, strong kid, you're probably going to be better at a lot of sports. And big, strong kids come from big, strong parents. It's natural genetics. That's inevitable. And the kids that are nurtured, likewise, are nurtured, being taught to play certain sports from a young age, are usually going to be better at those sports. That's likewise inevitable. Musical talent is generally going to come from people within musical families. I'll say that my daughters are the exception to that rule because Andrea and I contributed zero to their ability to do anything musical other than turn on the record player. Generally, that's how it happens, right? I mean, there's a reason the Woody kids are amazing at music. It's because their parents are amazing at music. That's what we would expect. Sometimes God just straight endows gifts and abilities on people, like we saw in the tabernacle workers, Exodus 35, going into the beginning of Exodus 36, he says, I gave them this ability to do these things for the talent. And it was physical abilities, but those were spiritual gifts. Sometimes he just gives abilities, right? But talents usually come from ordinary means like nature and nurture, working together. The obvious difference is that the ability in a spiritual gift is coming directly from the Holy Spirit. It is a straight up endowment of the Holy Spirit, or a tweaking of maybe something you've got, a tweaking to be used well in the church. We cannot always distinguish that so easily, but that is the distinct difference. It's essentially the source. Is it nature and nurture, or is it the Holy Spirit? As such, only believers can have a spiritual gift, but anyone and everyone can have talents. Now, could you take a public speaker and have him preach a sermon, like a really good, talented public speaker, and have him maybe regurgitate a sermon very well? Probably. Is that a spiritual gift? No. Could he have that gift to formulate that and do that regularly with unction? Probably not, unless he's a really, really good, consistent liar. You're probably just not going to get that. Anyone and everyone can have a talent. That is part of common grace. I mean, that's what common grace means. It is common, anyone and everyone. It's not specific to the covenant community. Spiritual gifts are for the covenant community. It's for believers. Spiritual gifts are largely oriented towards serving others and blessing the church, because that's the purpose of them. So that's the way they're going to be oriented. That's one reason you can kind of see a difference. You know, being really good at baseball, that's a natural talent. How are you going to use that to bless serve the church, probably not very easily, right? Unless the church has a softball team maybe, but doubtful, right? So that's, you can tell from the orientation of that gifting that it's not really gonna be a spiritual gift. It's easy to distinguish. So that's probably the most observable difference between a spiritual gift and a talent. But regardless, I would say this, both ought to be used to bless the church. If you have a natural talent, it's not like, well, this isn't a spiritual gift, it's just a talent I have, therefore I can't use it to bless the church in any way. No, no, you can and you should bless the church with your talents as well as your spiritual gifts. It's just that that talent may not be a direct gift. blessing gift from the Holy Spirit. So, you know, the church will take whatever you can offer. If you've got a natural talent at painting or building, the church can use that. That's great. We'll take whatever you can get. Whatever service or talent is offered, whatever spiritual gift, bless the church with it. It doesn't have to be a spiritual gift in order to serve the church. So I would say that's the difference. I don't know if that's gonna help us necessarily, maybe a little bit, identify the differences, but they look a lot alike. I also wanted to give a bit more attention to what Lauren and Garrett both said last week about encouraging one another in our spiritual gifts. I thought that was really good and very helpful comments. And like I mentioned, there's a pitfall in becoming too absorbed in spiritual gifting. And, you know, the so-called online tests or any kind of test that you take to help identify gifting, those can be kind of silly a lot of time. You can kind of direct them where you want them to go. You know, if I'm taking a test that, you know, are you dumb or are you smart? I'm going to kind of contribute in my answers to make myself look smart, right? Well, people tend to do that with any kind of personality test or spiritual gifts test or anything like that. They know the answer that makes them look better and they tend towards those. or they have a preconceived idea of where they want it to go. So those tend to not be very helpful. And remember, we don't want to focus in on just one act or one gift to the exclusion of others. That's another thing we want to be aware of. Or make whatever gift gets identified, we don't want to make it too much a part of our identity. But at the same time, I think there are some things that can be said to aid us in identifying our spiritual gifts. I think there is benefit in identifying them. I'm not saying, you know, forget about figuring it out. There is something helpful there. And primarily, I think the greatest aid in identifying our spiritual gifts, it's from the church. us together, identifying it and then encouraging one another in it. Exactly what Lauren and Garrett brought up. That's the best way to identify it. That's why those comments last week were helpful. Spiritual gifts are often identified where there's some pattern of recognition where others see it. Others identify that pattern and usually bring it up or mention it. So as we encourage one another in how we've been blessed by somebody, then we're contributing to that pattern. You know, we're giving data points in that pattern so that somebody can identify them. So if you have a particular gift, then it will probably get mentioned to you here or there by more than one guy at one time, right? Like not one guy 30 years ago said this one thing and therefore that's your spiritual gift permanently. There's gonna be a pattern, you know, some repeated pattern where people are seeing these things. And let me give you an example. I know I kind of risk embarrassing them, but I'm going to do it anyway. When the McCoys first came here, it was fairly obvious, pretty quickly, how gifted they were at encouragement. It was obvious. And I don't know how much that's been brought up to you guys, but we saw it. And I think we mentioned it to you, so I'm sure most of you have seen it. And I'm just singling out one family I know, but we could do this with many of us. But if you interact with them, you're going to witness it. I'm sure we've all seen that same gift by Sherry, right? Who would ever doubt that in Sherry's ability? No one would say she's void of spiritual gifts. Her spiritual gifts are out front, they're obvious, and we've experienced that for many years now. So there's going to be a pattern that the church identifies and sees. And that sort of thing is a fairly public gift. So it's one of those that's inevitably going to make itself known. It doesn't go hidden very easily. When we as a church comment or we mention our recognition of it, when we mention how encouraging something was that they did or how much we benefited from something that they've done, then that gift is being identified and is creating those data points and creating that pattern for them to help identify their own spiritual gifts. But then we'll ask the question, well, what about maybe more private spiritual gifts, the ones that we practice more behind the scenes? Maybe somebody has a gift of prayer. Well, in that case, I think we likewise look for a pattern. It's not going to be so much from other people, because they're not going to see you in your private prayer closet. They're not going to see you doing a lot of this work. And there's a lot of spiritual gifts that get done behind the scenes. But you still should look for a pattern. Are we consistently drawn to that act? Would be a question we have. Are we constantly being pulled back into that act? You know, that prayer or faith, the gift of faith, is it showing itself to be particularly strong in your life? It's a question you can ask yourself. Likewise, there tends to be an element of joy. Steve and I were talking, Steve Ken and I were talking, and he used the word fulfillment, which I think is even better. It's more accurate than just joy. There's joy that comes around with practicing a spiritual gift that you have, but fulfillment might be a better word because maybe you have a spiritual gift that's laborious, or the gifts of service aren't always fun. But you can have joy in it, but fulfillment's probably a better word. Fulfillment is joyful, but it's more of a sense of you're doing something helpful and you're sacrificing your time, your money, your talents, whatever it is, to do that thing. So there's an element of joy and or fulfillment that corresponds with the practice of that gift. So you should pick up on that. You should recognize that pattern as well, of when I do this thing, I feel fulfilled, I bless the church, I get joy out of that. Blessing others this way. So that's one of those things that you can evaluate these private spiritual gifts with. It's not really that it's, hold on, I think I worded this funny. Oh, okay, I think I see what I was trying to say. I think it's really hard to have a spiritual gift, to genuinely have it, and then not enjoy practicing it, not finding that fulfillment when you do practice that spiritual gift. So I think that's one of the reasons we can use that as an identifying mark. So there's a sense of internal confirmation that comes with identifying spiritual gifts. And that comes from that enjoyment, that fulfillment. It's not a mere feeling. There's still evidence to be examined. You should still look for those patterns that should be observable, that give us confidence that, yeah, that is a spiritual gift of mine, or, you know, you recognize those patterns. I am drawn to prayer quite easily, quite frequently, and I very much enjoy it, and I can pray a lot, that sort of thing. And then once they are recognized, you can sort of test them a little bit. If you think you might have a spiritual gift, you can test them a little bit. You can lean into them, if I could say it that way. pray for more opportunities to practice that gift, and then make an effort to practice them all the more. Remember what Paul told Timothy. He said in 2 Timothy 1.6, I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of hands. So, other translations probably say it a little bit better, stir up that gift. He says, I remind you to stir it up. The idea of fanning into flame, like a bellows is used to cause a fire to grow and to spread. Anybody that's started a fire, you know how you fan that coal and it gets hotter and hotter and it'll spread, it grows, right? That's what Paul is saying to Timothy about his spiritual gift, probably with leading and preaching and that sort of thing. If we do not use or stir up our gifts, then they tend to grow cold with disuse. Sort of like that coal, you leave it alone, it tends to grow cold. So we are encouraged to stir them up, to use them. So that's another way that talents and spiritual gifts are similar, right? They can both be strengthened and developed in us. So it's not like you can only do that with a talent with practice. No, spiritual gifts are meant to be the same way. But doing so should make that pattern more obvious. It should make the enjoyment and the fulfillment of it more noticeable to confirm a gifting. Or honestly, you can clarify that maybe you aren't as particularly gifted at something as you thought you were. Or maybe you wanted to be initially and then you did it and you're like, oh, well, maybe not. You know, if you go stir up a gift that you don't actually have, no gift's going to be stirred up, right? You can't stir up what's not there. This is one of the reasons that we have Third Timothy, right? Give the opportunity to explore that. If you have that ability or that desire, do you find fulfillment and joy? And is there a pattern of, oh, this is helpful to people? We have Third Timothy for that because that's one of those spiritual gifts that you Kind of need to be very deliberate about the opportunities, right? They don't just present themselves to you Very easily like gifts of service or or helps or giving and that sort of thing So that's one of the reasons we have third timothy. It's to develop that gift in Some of our folks that's why we have gifted brethren. There's we recognize there's people with the gift of preaching and teaching That maybe you haven't been called to office or aren't available for office yet or something along those lines, but we recognize that gift and we're gonna Bless the church with that gift. So we just had a conversation before the service about this. It gives the opportunity for men with that gift to do that gift. And I'm glad that our church says it. That's a pretty deliberate kind of thing. There's not a lot of churches that do that, that present those opportunities because of a recognition that it's not just elders and pastors that have the ability to teach and preach. Now I do want to talk, and I think, yeah, we have time. We have plenty of time for this. I want to talk about the specific gifts themselves just a little bit. And I want to read some definitions that aren't, they're not my personal definitions. I didn't go through and like give a definition for each one, but I, I've seen definitions. Sometimes these, Definitions can come from word studies, how that word is used throughout scripture, if it is used in scripture, or how it's used at the time. There's difficulties with some of these words, like I think the gift of helps, that word is, I think it's the gift of helps. That word's not used anywhere else except for in 1 Corinthians where it says the gift of helps. So you're like, okay, well, What's that mean, then? And there's some difficulty there. And this is where I think of the subjectivity. There's subjectivity to it. And you know, you read definitions, you're like, but how do you know that? How do you know that's what that means? And that can be a little bit frustrating. So some of these, we have an idea, but we don't know. We can't be super precise, not as precise as I like to be anyway. Sometimes the name of the gift makes it relatively obvious, right? And not a lot of people have the question of, what is the gift of teaching? Hmm, I don't know, let me think about that. The name itself is pretty obvious. But the definitions we find, sometimes I don't think they can be entirely justified. Sometimes I think they're. Maybe pulling a little bit too much, more than they should. So we want to be careful of not being overly dogmatic, saying what the gifts are and are not. So if somebody says something like, oh, I've never heard that. That's definitely not right. Well, I don't know. They might be right. I don't know. There's not a ton of precision. So that's unavoidable on this subject. I am going to pretty much just skip over the gifts of prophecy, speaking in tongues as speaking in other languages, interpretation of tongues, that's obvious, it's the interpretation of other languages. The gifts of healing, that's a gift of healing, in case you didn't know that one. Miraculous powers, working some kind of miracles and signs. Those are the apostolic sign gifts and the gifts of revelation that we've talked about with cessationism, therefore the apostles and the apostolic era, and that sort of thing while they're waiting for the fullness of scripture. We've gone through all that, so I'm not gonna redo all those, and I'm not gonna give a whole lot of attention to them. One, because they're obvious, and two, because we're not really looking for them right now anymore anyway. I want to talk a little bit more about some of the other gifts that are listed, and there's various translations of how these might be said, but there are some of these lists, and you can collect them, and you can get a list, one comprehensive list, but it's not exhaustive. It's just comprehensive of everything that's said in scripture, so gift of leadership. Gifted leader is one who, and this is just one of these definitions that I didn't come up with, but I want to read it and we can kind of talk about it. Gifted leader is one who rules, presides over or has the management of other people in the church. The word literally means to guide and carries with it the idea of one who steers a ship. So that gives you a good idea of steering the direction of a church or guiding it, looking out for danger, that sort of thing. Again, this is one of those that isn't too complicated. One with the gift of leadership rules with wisdom and grace and exhibits the fruit of the spirit in his life as he leads by example. So there they're kind of pulling in a bit of the list of qualifications for like an elder or deacon. Those are mostly character, abilities or character qualifications, character traits where they display the fruits of the Spirit. So a leader in the church that has a spiritual gift of leadership is likewise going to be graced with having displayed those gifts. They're not going to be caught in horrible sin. Or they're not in the midst of horrible sin when they are put in place as leader At least they shouldn't be obviously they can fake it and trick people but you know generally speaking if it's a spiritual gift of leadership They will likewise be graced with the fruits of the Spirit as well. So that one is a little bit obvious the gift of teaching this gift involves the analysis and proclamation of the Word of God explaining the meaning of context, and application to the hearer's life. The gifted teacher is one who has the unique ability to clearly instruct and communicate knowledge, specifically the doctrines of the faith. So this is somewhat, I mean, obviously intellectual, but it's more than intellectual. And this one goes hand in hand with teaching, preaching, evangelism, shepherding, but evangelism is sort of like a targeted preaching to an unbeliever Shepherding kind of rolls teaching and leadership into one. There's a gift of shepherding that, you know, it's multifaceted and teaching is one facet of it. Teaching, I think, we can say is more explanatory. And it's not the same thing as preaching. Like tonight, I'm not preaching, I feel like I'm teaching. I think you would say I'm teaching, I'm not preaching it. Preaching has more exhortation and urging to it. But they do always go together. Preaching and teaching always go together. You know, you don't have sermons where you preach without teaching, and you don't have teachings where you're not urging or exhorting something. There's preaching that goes in. It's just kind of how much of one or the other is happening in each one. They always go together. Preaching kind of calls for more unction. That's a good word, I think, that is helpful for understanding preaching. It calls for more unction. needs more clarity and analysis. You have to be able to analyze, clarify it, but then communicate that in a way that the people can understand what you're saying. There's things I can sort of understand in my mind, but I don't know how to explain well. But generally, the gift of teaching is gonna be an understanding of the word of God in an ability that you can communicate it to others. So not having the gift of preaching doesn't mean you can't understand it necessarily. There's a lot of people that understand the word, but the ability to make others understand is key to that gift of teaching. It leans more intellectual. Preaching leans more practical. And again, I don't want to say that it's one verse the other. Just like teaching lends itself to systematic theology and preaching lends itself to biblical theology. Not that systematic theology isn't biblical, but it stays in a certain context and teaching draws from a system of doctrine and it kind of pulls things together and makes them work. But none of them is ever done to the exclusion of the other. So preaching is never without teaching. Teaching is never without preaching. Practical theology is never without intellectual theology, if we can call it that. Intellectual or doctrinal theology is never without practical theology. All good doctrine is going to be practical in some way. So for instance, Paul's epistles, he teaches first, right? He always, he goes through, these are the things that are true, what we call the indicatives, this is so. And then he usually goes into preaching, but he bases it on that teaching. Therefore, because this is true, therefore here are the imperatives. So, you know, they always, they always go together. Good teaching will produce good preaching, which is why we take them both pretty seriously. Another gift that is mentioned, serving. And this one can sometimes be translated as ministering. This gift involves providing service of any kind. It is a broad application of practical help to those in need. Serving is a translation of the Greek word, diakonein, diakonein, it's hard to say. Deacon, it's the word for deacon. It's where we get the English word deacon. It's a servant, someone that serves. I can actually read the Greek better in Greek than I can in English, and that's part of my problem there, because it's written in English. So, serving is a very broad category, like that one says. I think that's fair to say. It is broad. I mean, what if somebody preaches like, well, they're serving the church through preaching, therefore it's a gift of serving? Yeah, kind of, but I think it means kind of more specifically, like direct serving less than, you know, every gift can be said to benefit the church and in that sense be serving. But I think serving is like, it's picking up the chairs and the tables and keeping this place. picked up and organized and usable. I mean, these things don't, this church doesn't just stay that way on its own. We beat it up every week, and every week it needs to kind of get put back together. It takes servants, and there's a lot of servants that contribute to it, and we're thankful for all of it. And all of it, and you know, none of that is particularly joyful, but it is fulfilling. So I thank you, Steve, for that word because that was like the, I wasn't comfortable with the word enjoyment because I was like, some of it is just dirty work. Who gets joy out of dirty work? But you do get fulfillment and that's different. It's a better word. Here's one that's really interesting. The gift of encouraging. Now I've mentioned it, but I've only mentioned one part of it. So this gift of encouraging is also called exhortation. When I hear exhortation in English, I think it's something different than encouraging. This gift is evident. in those who consistently call upon others to heed and follow God's truth, which may involve correction or building others up by strengthening weak faith or comforting in trials. And again, you can see how that could play out in very different ways. So I think the gift of encouragement is actually broader than we might think. I think it's a little bit tricky. The word is a little bit tricky. So it's the Greek word periklesis. And you might pick up on that, it's the same root word for paraclete. We all know who the paraclete is, that's the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, I will send the paraclete, a helper or a comforter. So helper and comforter are both translations or, you know, they're words that are seeking to translate paraclete. And in English, exhort and encourage, I think have different senses. I don't think of the same thing when I hear those two words, but they're both, They're both valid translations of the Greek word that's being used here. When we think of exhortation, we think of a preacher doing a sermon. What's a preacher doing? He's exhorting from the text, right? And that's fair to say, that's true. But when we hear the English word encourage, we think more of maybe the idea of building each other up or being a comfort. When someone's going through the trial, you come alongside them, you're a comfort to them, you encourage them. We think of a close friend, not so much a preacher. Not that a preacher doesn't do that, but you're going to look for a close friend to do that more so, probably. Or a mentor, something like that. So maybe this gift of encouragement is, you know, a little from column A, a little from column B. One of those sort of things. It's a multifaceted gift. It depends on the situation of how it might look. It can look different ways. So a preacher does exercise this gift in preaching. He does exhort. And yes, that may comfort you, and it may encourage you to be more faithful. It may build you up, and you're just ready to go run through a brick wall. There's just various things that come from preaching certain texts, right? So a preacher's going to exhort from the text. He's going to use that gift of encouragement. Friends likewise exercise this gift in a slightly different way when coming alongside someone to help them in their Christian walk. In fact, coming alongside is actually one of the mental images that's used with this word. A coming along call to one side is a periklesis. So a friend will exercise this gift, not in the same way that a preacher would, but it's still kind of at the root of it is very similar. You know, it can be a comfort in trial or an urging to strive for obedience or wisdom. You know, somebody struggling with this temptation and they're coming alongside him and they're, you know, You just want to shake them by the shoulders, and you can do this brother. This is the thing you do. Fight this in, hate this in. That's a gift of encouragement. Even though you're not preaching a sermon to them, and maybe you're not necessarily comforting them in a trial, but it is a comfort, and it is an exhortation, and it is an encouragement. So all these ideas are kind of wrapped up in this gift. You could say exhorting, urging, encouraging, comforting, giving joy. All of these are somewhat collective under this gift of encouragement. So think of that as a broader gift of maybe more than just, you know, I felt better after talking to them. That's probably gonna be a symptom of the gift of encouragement, but it's, there's some, it's a little bit more dynamic. Remember when we just read about Barnabas in Acts 4? just a little bit ago, a few weeks ago. His real name was Joseph, but remember they called him Barnabas, which means son of encouragement. I mean, you can kind of look at Barnabas and see how he exercised this gift of encouragement. You could see that he was an encouraging guy. So we'll see him later in Acts. He comes alongside Paul after Paul was initially converted and he introduces him to the church. You know, he's this guy that everybody was skeptical of. Barnabas sort of is like, this is Paul, he's one of us. Calm down. And he's an encouragement to Paul in that way. And they obviously do a bunch of missions work together. In Acts 13, he and Paul together are urging the converted Jews, people that started following them and learning from them. He urges them to continue in the grace of God. That's the gift of encouragement. In Acts 15, He brings up to Paul, Barnabas says he wanted to go revisit all those places that they had gone to and encourage them, basically see that they're continuing in the faith, build them up in the faith and encourage them. That's Barnabas's idea to go on this, I think it's the second missionary journey, I don't know that for sure, but I think it's the second missionary journey. But then him and Paul kind of have this dispute a little bit about John Mark. There's this weird thing during the first missionary journey, John Mark is with him, but He apparently deserted them in a way that Paul does not like. And Paul's like, no, we're not bringing John Mark. He left us the first time. I'm not risking that again. I don't know what his deal was with that. I'm not saying he was wrong. I'm not taking a side between Paul and Barnabas. They're both right. You know, I don't know. Paul's not thrilled by that idea. Well, Barnabas is willing to, and so they do go their separate ways, but Barnabas gives John Mark a second chance and takes him along on a missionary journey, and Paul then goes with Silas. So, I mean, it's a dispute, but it actually got two mission teams out of what probably would have been one. So God's using it to his glory, he's multiplying the efforts. Barnabas is an encouragement to John Mark that way in giving him a second chance. So I think Barnabas seems to be a practical example of using that gift of encouragement in a multi-faceted way. Straight up encouraging people in the faith, the preaching, and then coming alongside John Mark, the idea of these churches are out there, they want our help, the idea of bringing Paul in when people would really have some doubts, a lot of hesitation towards him. He's probably one of the ways that we can learn what that gift is. But hopefully you just see that the gift of encouragement or exhortation is interesting. It's a multi-faceted gift. The gift of giving. Gifted givers are those who joyfully share what they have with others, whether it's financial, material, or the giving of personal time and attention. Now that is something we've actually mentioned over the pulpit many times. Sacrifices and service are not just financial. Yes, churches need money to run. Yes, we need to, we can't go and literally help John and Angelina in India and these churches in the Philippines, but we can send money. And yes, we need finances. But when we do the gift of giving, it's time and attention. It's our material stuff. It's more than just our money. The giver is concerned for the needs of others and seeks opportunity to share goods, money, and time with them as needs arise. And that does Take something, because when you lend out your stuff, your stuff gets beat up. Your stuff gets broken. Your stuff gets lost. It gets forgotten. So to have a... Lack of reservation and eagerness to still give in spite of that fact. That's that's something that's a gift. It's a spiritual gift because you're like you're kind of turning it over somebody. I remember I think was it the first few months we were here. I borrowed Randy's car and trailer. And I filled up that trailer with all kinds of garbage, stuff that had no business being brought back down here. And I strapped it up with ratchet straps, and I shook them. I'm like, that's not going anywhere. Well, it is. It's going somewhere. Because I ran it over a sharp edge, and the vibration cut through that ratchet strap, and I had a wheelbarrow fly off. And somebody hit that wheelbarrow and then sued Randy's insurance company because of me and the garbage that I wanted to bring down here. So that was a gift of giving. I still feel bad about that just so you know whenever I'm getting too proud. I'll just remember how much of an idiot I was Doing all that but That sort of thing like this this could cost me, but I'm gonna give You know your time like you don't have time, but you make time that sort of thing gift of giving That one is it's pretty obvious, but it deserves more attention gift of mercy Closely linked with the gift of encouragement, according to this definition, the gift of mercy is obvious in those who are compassionate towards others who are in distress, showing sympathy and sensitivity coupled with a desire and the resources to lessen their suffering in a kind of cheerful manner. So I think one place you might see the gift of mercy, especially, or where it's really important to a local church is when someone is repentant. for maybe an obvious sin, a grotesque sin, something they're truly ashamed of. And the church is not, you know, a gift of mercy is like, you don't rub their face in it. Like, you're repentant, you're with us. We're all purified sinners here, right? That's really, really important for a church to have people that are merciful towards repentant sinners. We're not rubbing each other's face in our faults and beating each other up about that spiritually. We don't have the too good for so-and-so, too good for this or that sin. That is a gift of mercy. Recognizing that there's a sensitivity there in someone's sorrow over sin and showing sympathy in that. Or they're in distress over some particular life situation, and again, that could be sin. It's being careful and compassionate towards that person. And that is a spiritual gift. Because sometimes, you know, Paul, when Paul came into the church, How do you not have a chip on your shoulder about Paul? What if your family was one of the people that was persecuted or arrested or potentially killed because of Paul, and then suddenly he's showing up in the church? Oh, and by the way, he wants to be teaching. It's like, what? I'm not gonna learn from this guy. I don't care what letter he wrote us. Get it out of here. I know who that guy is. No, that's hard. That takes mercy to see that this guy has genuinely changed. So yeah, I would say that's the gift of mercy. A few more here quickly. We're wrapping up. Word or utterance of wisdom and then there's word or utterance of knowledge. They're not talked about like they're the same thing, but they've got to look pretty similar. So word of wisdom, the fact that this gift is described as a word indicates it's some sort of speaking gift. But, you know, you have to have the intellect to be able to say it, too, so you have to recognize it intellectually so that you can say it verbally. This gift describes someone who can understand and speak forth biblical truth in such a way as to skillfully apply it to life situations with discernment. Word of wisdom is very helpful in counseling or mentoring, discipling, that sort of thing. Word of knowledge, this is another speaking gift that involves understanding truth with an insight that only comes from revelation from God. Those with the gift of knowledge understand the deep things of God and the mysteries of his word. So this might be someone that really, really has dug in and can kind of comprehensively, systematically look at scripture where somebody, you know, You think of the gift of discernment like somebody says something and you're like, you know what? That sounds right, but here's why it's wrong. Think about all these other scriptures. It doesn't fit. It can't fit with those scriptures. So even though that sounds biblical almost, it's not. So, you know, you gotta reject that. So that would be a word of knowledge, probably a word of discernment. I don't know if, not word of discernment, but some level of discernment that goes in there coupled with knowledge and wisdom. Again, I'm not speaking super precisely, I don't think. It bothers me, I hope it doesn't bother you too much. I don't like it when I'm like, maybe this, a little bit of this, I don't know. Gift of faith, isn't that interesting? First of all, we say all faith is a gift, especially saving faith is a gift. But then there seems to be a gift of faith that is over and above saving faith. Like almost a faith that just never gets rocked. It never doubts, it's just steady, rock-solid faith. That's a spiritual gift as well. So all believers possess faith in some measure, but then there's some sense that there's a bestowal on faith of faith where, you know, the guy loses his job and it's just like, whatever, God's always taking care of me, he's always gonna take care of me. It's fine. You know, their faith isn't wavering. They're not... becoming vulnerable by bitter providence super frequently because their faith is so strong, because their confidence in God's goodness just never wavers. That's an awesome gift. That's a really enjoyable one to have. I would assume, I'm not claiming it for myself, I'm just saying, that sounds really nice. I think that's what we'll get in heaven. We're not gonna have bitter providence to really shake our faith in anyway, but it's gonna be really great to have that faith to the full measure as well. So it's exhibited by one with strong and unshakable confidence in God and his word, his promises, the power of prayer to affect miracles. I think another place you can see this is when skeptics or atheists or apologists against the faith come up with a new reason why the Bible can't be trusted or a new reason why Christianity is false. Those people, even though they might not have an answer immediately, they're like, look, I've been through this a thousand times. There's always an answer, just calm down. It's not not going to be proven false. Of course it's going to be proven false. It's always proven false. There's always a reason why it's silly because it goes against God's word and they just don't waver. So that'd be a gift of faith. Man, there's a couple more here. I'm gonna skip over the discerning of spirits, because I don't know a lot about it anyway, but probably just a level of discernment and being able to, truth and false. But the gift of helps, I wanna do this one because this one is a little bit harder. It's one of those words that's only used once in the New Testament. Like I mentioned, it's translated as helps, maybe more literally to relieve, succor, participate in and or support. kind of gives you an idea of where it's headed, right? Those with the gift of helps are those who can aid or render assistance to others in the church with compassion and grace, can probably be summed up with lending a hand, which again is one of those broad ideas, can be done in a variety of ways. You can help people in a lot of ways. Do they need a tire changed? Do they need an explanation of a text? Do they just need someone there to listen to them? There's a lot of ways to help, right? So the gift of helps is that idea of compassion and grace towards someone that needs assistance. They're willing and able to render assistance. They say that this is closely related to the gift of mercy, which I would assume so. That makes sense. Those with the gifts of help are able to render assistance. Others, yeah, we said all that. Broad range of application. Most importantly, it's the unique ability to identify those who are struggling with doubt, fears, and other spiritual battles, to move toward those in spiritual need with a kind word and understanding and compassionate demeanor, and to speak scriptural truth in both a convicting and loving way. See, that's one of those where I'm like, yeah, that all sounds good. I don't know for sure that it's all of that. And you can say, yeah, it's this unique ability. It's a lot to draw from one word. But it does make sense. It's probably going to work out that way, even if you can't say, well, the word means that. It probably will work out that way. So the gift of helps is a little bit encouraging, but lending a hand, rendering help to whoever needs help, knowing that it's probably gonna take some time, and you're probably gonna do a lot of listening, a lot of working, whatever it is. A broad idea, but we got a lot of problems, and we need a lot of help. So you might not need help now, but you're gonna need help eventually, and you're gonna need somebody with the gift of helps to be able to help you. So that's kind of the idea. I'll just wrap up with this last idea about the purpose of spiritual gifts. Again, just drawing from what Scripture says, using its own wording from 1 Corinthians and Ephesians 4, just to remind us, spiritual gifts are to promote the maturation, the building up, the comforting, the strengthening of the body of Christ, the church as a whole. To build up the church is what 1 Corinthians says. to prepare each other for the works of service until we all, and this is Ephesians, reach the unity in the faith, the knowledge, the fuller knowledge of the Son of God, and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. That's Ephesians 4, where it's one of the speaks of spiritual gifts again. Remember, Christ has all these in fullness, and he dispenses them to us. So these are gifts from Christ to us, applied by the Holy Spirit, and that is the reason for the building up and the strengthening of the church. So that's, I think, all I know about spiritual gifts. I don't think I could create another lesson out of this, but if you've had something in particular, you can say it, otherwise we'll move on to something else. Any questions before we wrap up this long two-part series? Good, so we should never have any doubts about spiritual gifts ever again. I did enjoy learning it because I don't feel like it was a strong area of mine. There's not a lot of subjects like that where it's just like there's not a ton of precision. There is precision in some, I don't want to pretend like the whole thing is like that, it's not. but it does make it harder because you have to tread lightly, right? You know, you're talking about the gifts of helps, and you're just like, I don't want to say too much about this because I can't justify it biblically. But this seems right. So that's hard. Oh, we got one. So clarify which gifts you think are still in force today. Gifts still in force today are all of them but revelatory gifts. And revelatory gifts include prophecy, The words of knowledge in the sense of not just like knowing stuff But the words of knowledge like revelatory words of knowledge things that you wouldn't know except the Holy Spirit literally gives revelation of them and the speaking in tongues, which is a form of prophecy so those are revelatory gifts and then the apostolic sign gifts and such as the miracles and the healings, the signs and the wonders that we read about the apostles doing. So those ended with the apostolic age and the, because they were there to confirm the apostles as messengers of God, the revelatory gifts end with the fullness of revelation, that's the scripture. So that's the whole five part series. All the others, You know, that list is not exhaustive, so I hate listing them like these are the ones that are still in force. It's all the others, plus whatever ones aren't listed, whatever those may be. Because none of them, they just, whenever they talk about the gifts, they just kind of mention some of them. But none of them are saying like, here's all of them, and they must, your gift must fit in this category. But they're probably going to be akin to many of those things, right? It's really hard to distinguish sometimes when someone is having the gift of helps, and the gift of service, and the gift of mercy, and the gift of encouragement. That's really hard to distinguish between those four sometimes. They can look very similar. And again, you don't need to know which one it is to do it. Just do it. Anything else? All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are thankful that you have bestowed on us spiritual gifts through Christ and applied by your spirit. We're thankful for these gifts because it helps us to help one another. It causes us to do things we would otherwise not do, gives us abilities we would otherwise not have. It's a clear gift of grace because we haven't earned any of this. We haven't practiced all of these gifts to the point where we deserve them or develop them on our own, Lord. So thank you for giving this bountiful blessing to your church so that we might be built up in the faith. We pray for these spiritual gifts at Grace Chapel specifically, that you would give them to our body of believers so that we do mature in the faith. If there is a gift that we are lacking, we pray that you would develop it in us or bring in new believers or outside believers that may be moving into the area. We pray that you would bring them in so that they can contribute to our church in that way. We pray that we would exercise these gifts with joy, with humility, and with much grace, and that it truly does cause us to walk in holiness, to grow in our confidence of our great and awesome Savior, Jesus Christ, and that we would bless one another as we grow in maturity in the faith. Build us up into the fullness of Christ. We pray all these things in Christ's name, amen.