Discernment a Gift of the Holy Spirit

To watch the sermon The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Discernment

Shabbat shalom, everybody.

Those of you who are left, now that all the kids have exited, it's good to see you, good to be with you this morning.

We have a lot to dive into, so I'm not going to waste a whole lot of time.

I don't know if you were like me when you were growing up.

I remember going to church and listening to the 23rd Psalm.

I remember that we memorized it at vacation Bible school and Sunday school youth camp, and normally it was in the King James Version.

And I have to confess that I never wanted to raise my hand and admit that first sentence doesn't make any sense to me.

Because when I would read, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," my little brain said, "Well yes I do.

I mean, I'm supposed to want him, right?"

You see, we don't use 16th century King James English, and so we don't use the word "want" the way it is used in that opening sentence.

What I heard was that I didn't want him, when in fact I did want him, but then I found out that's not even what it's talking about.

It's actually talking about that I will not be in lack.

That because he is my shepherd, my needs will be met, therefore I won't be in want.

Anybody struggle with that when you were a little kid?

I mean, I just didn't want to raise my hand and admit, I don't understand what that means.

Now I know you know this, but "I shall not want" was David's way of saying that the Lord is so gracious that he will provide all that we need so that we will never be in that state of lack.

And literally the word also has the idea of never lagging behind.

We'll never be in last place.

I mean, the first line of the 23rd Psalm is an amazing declaration of everything I was saying last week about how the Lord had blessed the Corinthian church.

But I've never drawn a line between the first line of the 23rd Psalm and the Corinthian church.

Why?

Because one of the things you hear growing up your whole life about the Corinthian church, and it's not that it's not true, it's that it was a very carnal church.

It was a very fleshly church.

It was a church coming out of paganism.

The city of Corinth was a port city and the port city brought in all of the riffraff that was going between, because of the ships.

It was a place of idolatry and paganism.

And though many people had come to know the Lord, they were struggling with their flesh.

And so you kind of grow up hearing, "Well, those Corinthians, they were so carnal."

But I keep coming back to what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1.

He said, "I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in him, in all speech, in all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, for God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."

In verse 7, Paul uses the very same Greek word — when Psalm 23, which was originally written in Hebrew, was translated into Greek about 250 years before Jesus, when they went to find the Greek word that they would use to translate this idea of wanting or lacking, it is the very same word that Paul will use, or just used in this opening part of his book.

And what has he just said about the Corinthian church, this carnal church, that they are rich in the graces of God, that he has enriched them in every way.

In fact, he says, "You do not even lack or want for even one of the spiritual gifts."

That same group of people, so known throughout history for struggling with their flesh, were also a people who experienced the gracious and lavish grace of God.

And if I struggle to understand what David originally meant in the Psalm, how much more do I struggle to understand why God gives his amazing operational grace, gifts to people like me, like you, who sometimes are led more by the flesh than by the Spirit.

And yet that's exactly what our Good Shepherd does.

He gives us everything that we need so that we will lack nothing.

So let me ask you a couple questions before we pray.

So what about you today?

Does the opening line of the 23rd Psalm ring true in your spirit, or like a child have you failed to understand that where sin increases, grace increases all the more?

Do you struggle today with understanding what God wants for you, is that for you to understand He has left you with no want?

Kind of a hard thing to wrap our brain around.

Is it possible that to finally understand and believe what David so poetically and powerfully declared in the 23rd Psalm, we actually need to go to a letter written to a group of people living in a pagan city, fighting pagan impulses?

Well I'm gonna suggest to you that yeah, the Lord has kind of helped me understand what it means to not want for His grace.

Will you pray with me?

Abba Father, I come to you, b'shem Yeshua ha'mashiach, in the name of Jesus the Christ, the anointed one.

And Lord, sometimes that opening line doesn't ring true in our spirit, because in our flesh we still want.

Lord, you have addressed this subject so powerfully in your letter to the Corinthians written by your servant Paul, and so my prayer today, Father, is that we would not want for one element or aspect of your grace to miss us in this moment.

My prayer, Father, is that in the richness of your grace for each and every heart, every life that is in a different state, a different condition, a different challenge, that in every way, in all speech, in all knowledge, and in all confirming testimony, in this very place, in this very day, Lord, that you would show us that you have everything we need in your grace.

Lord, this time is yours for the glory of your people, in your name, amen.

Well I hope you did your homework this week.

If you remember, I asked you to read chapters one through 11 of 1 Corinthians.

If you didn't do it, that's all right.

We have several more weeks in this series.

You have time to catch up.

Because I really want you to take time to understand some of those flesh battles, those carnal issues that Paul was having to deal with that arose within their midst, because each one of them is exposing a struggle where people are struggling to live a spiritual versus a carnal or a fleshly life.

The Corinthian church's evidence that what Paul wrote in Romans 5 about the ever increasing grace of God is true, that even in the midst of a people who are struggling with sin, God doesn't turn his back.

Isn't that good news today?

What that means is, if you look back on this last week and you come to this morning and you're thinking, "Mm, I wouldn't want to be graded on this last week."

God doesn't say, "Okay, I'm going to withhold my grace from you."

He says, "I'm going to keep giving you the grace you need so that you can win."

While the Corinthian church is evidence of that, it also helps us understand that moral perfection is not the key to our experiencing the grace gifts of God.

Submission to His will is how we connect.

The journey begins with some honest introspection and humility and a heart that wants to know and submit to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

So today we're going to dive really deep into 1 Corinthians chapter 12, all three first verses.

We're going really deep.

Let me read it for you.

"Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware.

You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the mute idols.

However, you were led.

Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, 'Jesus is accursed,' and no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit."

Now that all seems very straightforward enough, so why take time to stop and focus on it?

Why not just go ahead and jump to the descriptions of the gifts that he first outlined in chapter 1 in all speech and all knowledge, in all confirming testimony?

Why not just go there?

Because like that first line of the 23rd Psalm, there are some things I have to confess I didn't understand and that I need to make sure I'm clear on their meaning.

Today's theme word is discernment, and by that I mean understanding.

Paul is going to start this journey into the gifts of the Spirit by calling us to understand something, to discern something.

And I just want to warn you in advance, those who are here and those who are watching online or may come across this, this is a message that is really about looking deep.

It's not just about discerning the word, it's about discerning the truth of the condition of our heart.

So let's dive in and see what Paul has to say in these introductory lines.

Verse 1, "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware."

Thank you, Paul.

"Neither do I."

Amen?

I mean, how many of you want to be ignorant?

Well, let's be honest.

There's a reason we came up with that little cliche, ignorance is bliss.

Because sometimes we may say we want to be aware, but the truth of the matter is there's a little bit of safety in being unaware.

But Paul starts this journey by saying, "I want you to know what God has done."

So where do these topics come from that Paul has been addressing from chapters 1 through chapter 11?

Well, as it turns out, 1 Corinthians 7 indicates that Paul, this is really a follow-up letter to a letter that had been sent to Paul from the Corinthian believers.

And so as you read through the book of 1 Corinthians, it reads as if very systematically, even though he only says it once or twice, he references the letter, but systematically it feels very much like Paul is just kind of going down through a list of things that had first come to him from them.

Now I would assume that whoever brought that letter to him also brought some firsthand eyewitness accounts of how some of these things were actually playing out and probably gave Paul a little bit further context and background to what's going on.

But it indicates something about these people.

Can we just have some grace for these people?

I mean, so often we just beat them up for their carnality and quite honestly, Paul, you know, he does so a little bit too.

But this letter is written because those people, or at least a contingency of those people, want answers to tough questions.

And that makes me kind of like them.

I kind of like people.

I don't really like people who want to pretend that they're so spiritual they don't need anybody to help them know anything.

I don't really like being around people that think they know it all because they get in the way of me knowing it all.

Crickets.

I like people who are gutsy enough to ask honest questions.

I mean, I was trying to think of like, well, what would we have the courage to write Paul and ask him to discuss?

Would we dare ask him, "Hey Paul, should believers use cannabis?"

Hey Paul, what kind of language should believers use?

Oh, okay.

You're getting testy, so I'm going to move on.

I'm just saying, I mean, if we sent a letter, what would our issues be?

Would we have the courage to say, "Hey, we want a definitive answer about this."

Because sometimes you don't necessarily want a definitive answer because a definitive answer is a definitive answer.

And if it's a definitive answer, you're supposed to align yourself with it.

And that's why sometimes we don't want to be aware.

They did.

And I respect them for that.

Guys, this is a hardcore self-discernment moment.

Do we really want to know about the amazing operational grace gifts given to believers?

You see, this is why we have to, I want to teach this the way Paul teaches this.

And I feel like Paul doesn't just dive into a list of gifts.

He slowly moves in and causes us to think about, do we really want to keep going?

Because just like I was saying about those definitive answers, the minute we start learning about the spirit led life and the spiritual gifts that are already within us, I mean, once you see that God's word dwells within you and you are prepared for how that might, are you prepared for how that might contrast with the way you're currently living, thinking and behaving?

I mean, this is a discernment moment.

Is it possible that the body of Christ, and I'm not just talking about those here, but is it possible that the body of Christ does not press in deeper to what God has put deep within us because we instinctively spiritually know that when we come in contact with what his holiness has done in us and put in us, it is going to require change.

And it's just easier to make a carnal decision about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

You know, that decision that we made because of what we saw on TV.

That's kind of how I grew up developing my position on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

It wasn't what God's word said.

It was based on something I saw and in my own flesh, I made a judgment and shut the door.

I'll get real for you guys up here, okay?

I won't make you answer out loud.

Paul doesn't want them to be ignorant without knowledge and understanding of God's grace gifts, but do we?

You know, last week I said, I don't have to convince anyone of the actual operational impact of the spirit of this world.

We see it everywhere, every day and everyone.

No one doubts the power or the operational nature of the spirit of evil in this world.

And yet pastors in churches on Saturdays, on Sundays, on Wednesdays, it doesn't matter, spend an enormous amount of time trying to convince their flock that God has put a supernatural part of his presence within you so that you might be the righteousness of God and that his presence is not a concept.

It's an actual operational reality of his presence.

But I don't have to spend two seconds convincing you of the activity of the spirit of evil.

You see the problem with that?

So why is it that Paul doesn't want them to be unaware?

So what is it that Paul doesn't want them to be unaware of?

Paul writes now concerning the spiritual.

Let me just give you a few translations how this verse is translated.

The New International Version says now about the gifts of the spirit.

The King James Version, both old and new, says now concerning spiritual gifts.

The English Standard Version says now concerning spiritual gifts.

The New American Standard says it the exact same way.

One ancient Aramaic text says but about spiritual things.

The text actually has the word pneumaticon.

Now pneuma is the, you hear that word don't you?

Pneuma, pneuma, pneuma.

I don't know why that does it in my head.

But pneuma is the Greek word for spirit.

But Paul is writing about spiritual things.

Now why do I say that?

Because the word gifts is not in that sentence.

In almost, in all translations, we insert the word gifts just because we kind of know the rest of the story.

We kind of know where he's going.

But I think that may be a mistake.

Because while I do believe that he's going to, this is an introduction to the spiritual gifts, I think there's a bigger picture that Paul wants to key us into and that is all things spiritual, which is a term that we struggle with in the church.

Now here's the beauty of Japheth, that's what I call the Greek language.

It uses a particular case, the genitive case, that helps us understand.

When it's in the genitive case, you know that it is describing something that is of something.

Now in Hebrew, all I have to do is put two nouns together, dog, house, and it's the dog of the house or the man of the house.

That of aspect is just understood because I put two Hebrew words beside each other.

In Greek, we have the help of the genitive case.

So why doesn't Paul use the word, the Greek word for gifts, which is charisma?

Because Paul isn't just going to describe spiritual gifts.

The real point is about becoming spiritual people, people who are being described as being of the spirit.

You see all that Greek, there was a reason for that.

Numatikon is talking about not just spiritual gifts, but it's an adjective.

It's describing all things that are spiritual, meaning all these things that are in our lives that are of the spirit of God.

Now the first controversy we come to, the first heresy in the church was a thing called Gnosticism.

How many of you have heard of Gnosticism?

Gnosticism grew out of a Greek philosophical thinking and it held that spiritual realities did not mix with physical realities.

So the spiritual world couldn't actually interact with the physical world and this led to a heresy that because the physical world was perceived as purely evil, that Jesus could not actually have come in the flesh because he was coming from God, from spirit into the flesh and they couldn't perceive that.

They couldn't handle that because their whole philosophy said those two don't mix.

Now in the Hebrew world, they didn't see that at all.

But in the Greek way of thinking, the Greek philosophy way of thinking, those two things couldn't interact.

And so this led to the heresy of saying that Jesus only appeared to come as a man.

He just kind of supernaturally faked it from the womb to the cross the whole time.

He was never really in the flesh.

Now hold on to that because we think that that has gone away, but I don't think it's gone as far as we think.

Now I assume that all of us would rise up against such an incorrect worldview.

The Hebrew world certainly did not see the physical and spiritual as mutually exclusive and unmixed.

Well, why not?

Because God who is spiritual spoke the physical world from within himself.

I've shared this many times that I prefer the Latin term ex ipso to the Latin term ex nilo.

Ex nilo is a term that we use to describe that God had created out of nothing.

We use it to emphasize that God didn't reach out to a preexisting material world and then just shape and form that into what we know.

No there was nothing there.

I'm not crazy about that term.

I understand its intent, but I like ex ipso better because God's word doesn't say that God turns nothing into something.

God's word actually says that God took the only genuine something that existed, his own life, his own being, and spoke it into the nothing.

That he was the substance, which means God who is spirit was able to speak something from out of himself that became physical.

Now if the physical reality can dwell in the context and the nature of God as spirit, why do we think that can't happen here?

Are you with me?

You see, this is the whole reason why we accept the incarnation.

I know my Jewish brothers struggle with it, but you can't at one moment say God spoke us and spoke the world into creation and then deny that the physical came from the spiritual.

Apparently they are not mutually exclusive.

So I like that term ex ipso.

Gnosticism didn't take into account the denying Jesus lived in the flesh is a denial of the very nature of creation in which both physical and spiritual interact.

But Christianity over time has slipped back into a low grade version of this heresy.

And in truth, it is the undeclared reason many believers struggle to let the Holy Spirit do all that he was given to do in our lives.

You say, wait a minute, Brent, are you calling me a Gnostic?

No, I'm saying there's a low grade version of it that may dwell in our thinking that we're not aware of.

You see, we see ourselves solely in the context of the physical.

That's the carnal life.

And because we are quite aware of our fleshly failings, pretty soon this low grade Gnosticism sets in where we do not really believe in the actual impactful presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.

The Holy Spirit dwelling within us is reduced to a concept.

Not today, Satan.

Man, he's been bugging on me lately on technology.

I don't know what the deal is.

Where was I?

And don't say an in conclusion.

You see, this low grade Gnosticism, which we would never call it that, actually can begin to work within us when we get so focused on our flesh that we stop believing in the actual impactful presence of the Holy Spirit.

It kind of becomes something we sing about and we celebrate, but the minute we leave the environment where we might feel his presence, we don't leave the place expecting to feel his presence out there.

And the problem with that is that sometimes we come in here and we do experience his presence, we do experience, you know, but our emotions are connected as well.

And somehow we just go through life just not really believing that the Holy Spirit can actually dwell in this fallen flesh.

Church, isn't that the Gnostic heresy?

Do you understand why sometimes we don't move deeper into the Spirit?

Because we have this low grade version.

We're not going to go out and say Jesus didn't, you know, come and live in the flesh.

I mean, we believe it happened in him, but then we turn around and struggle to believe that it's happening in us.

That the ruach ha-kodesh, the Spirit of God's holiness dwells in me and everything in my flesh says that's not possible.

That's Gnosticism.

Paul is going to turn the discussion to spiritual gifts, but before that happens, we need to be reminded that the spiritual was always designed to be an integrated reality of the physical.

In fact, it's so relevant that the Bible says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

That doesn't mean flesh and blood cannot encounter the Spirit.

It just means God is coming for a people.

He intends to resurrect our bodies by the power of His Spirit so that we are a unified being, both body and spirit.

We don't get into the kingdom just because of the flesh.

You know, we, just to backtrack just a moment, there's a lot of things that we struggle with because they're spiritual.

The church has struggled for years with what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11 about partaking of the elements of the Lord's Supper.

And people actually having physical manifestations of illness and death because they are mishandling the elements.

And we don't get it.

The church is notorious for arguing and fighting over baptism with a huge part of the body of Christ saying that's just a physical act, it's just a symbolic act.

And another part saying no, no, that is not just a physical act, it's not just a work, it's a spiritual act.

And the problem is we expose our own Gnosticism because He gives us these things and we can't see the unification of the physical and the spiritual.

Are you with me?

You understand what I'm saying?

We struggle with this.

And if we struggle with that, then we struggle with our, in our lives.

Here's another hardcore discernment moment.

Is it possible that I don't want to pursue the spiritual, that which is of the Spirit?

Because I'm so overwhelmed with my physical reality that I don't really believe that the spiritual is as real as my physical.

Or do I believe it?

I just can't understand how both can really happen in my life as a reality now.

You see, Paul can write a list of all the things that God has placed within you.

And you can read those from now to kingdom come.

But if you don't believe that the spiritual presence is an operational grace of reality in your life, you're never going to connect with them.

So we've had, we have some hardcore questions we really need to ask ourselves.

So let's move on to verse two.

You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the mute idols however you were led.

What is this?

Is this Paul just rubbing it in the face of the non-Jewish believers?

Or is there another point of introspection that Paul wants them to wrestle with?

Paul says, remember when you were pagans.

Now that word ethne has kind of a specific definition and an implied definition.

Ethne just means, is where we get the word ethnicities.

It just means people groups.

And when you're talking about just people groups, there's nothing inherently evil about people groups.

There's no one people group that is inherently holier than another people group.

So why do we call them pagans?

Well because these people groups did not have the revelation of the Lord's righteousness given to Israel at Mount Sinai because they weren't aware of him, they turned to making up their own gods, their own idols.

And so paganism, this word ethne can be used of non-Jewish people groups, non-Israelite people groups who have been led astray into paganism.

Now please understand that Paul wants them to understand what they didn't have when they were pagans and compare that to what they now have in Christ.

But he didn't just now come to this topic.

In fact, the spiritual gifts is one of what I call two destination topics in the book of 1 Corinthians.

What I mean by destination topics is when you're going through chapters 1 through 11 and he's dealing with all those issues, many of them who probably he had been written about, he is in a journey to two main topics that quite honestly, if they will understand these two main topics, it will answer a lot of the other things that he's just been dealing with.

If you have your Bibles, turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

We want to take a really fast look at verses 6 through 15.

He says this, "Yet we do not speak wisdom among those who are mature, a wisdom however not of this age nor the rulers of this age who are passing away, but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which was predestined before the ages to our glory."

Let me just insert a couple thoughts here.

Paul is saying the knowledge and the understanding God predetermined would be given to those who chose his son.

This is part of what Paul is saying in Romans 8.

This is what was predestined, that he would conform us to his image, that he would use us for his glory, all those things.

I mean, this is what God planned to do.

And Paul says, "We're operating from that.

We're not operating from worldly wisdom.

We're operating from what God said he was going to do in us."

Verse 8, "The wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood, for if they had understood they would not have sacrificed or crucified the Lord of glory.

But just as it is written, the things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him."

Let me just insert again, "That which wasn't understood by the rulers of this age who are controlled by the spirit of the world, yet are made known to those of us who now have the spirit."

Paul's saying, "This is how the gospel came to you.

This is how you live.

You came to the gospel because you saw they were bankrupt with true knowledge."

Verse 10, "For to us God has revealed them through the spirit.

For the spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?

Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the spirit of God."

This is kind of like a calvary.

If a man understands, who is better qualified to understand the spirit of a man than a man?

And who is better qualified to understand the spirit of God than the spirit of God?

And that's the spirit he has placed within us.

The spirit that knows the mind of Christ, that knows the mind of God.

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.

Guys, we're only in chapter 2, and he's already, did you see what I said?

He's setting up the destination to get us to chapter 12.

Listen to what he's talking about.

He wants us to know the things which are freely given to us by God, which things of which we also speak.

Not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

You know, when we were pagans, we were led by the spirit of the world.

But now we have received the Holy Spirit that we may know the things.

What things?

What kinds of things?

Verse 13 answers that question with three words, and you have to just hear this in the Greek because it's just a hoot.

Remember the Greek word for spirit?

Pneuma.

That last phrase, taught by the spirit, combining spiritual thoughts and spiritual words, this is what that sounds like in Greek.

Pneumatos, pneumatikos, pneumatika.

Let's all try that together.

No, I'm just kidding.

Pneumatos, pneumatikos, pneumatika.

Of the spirit, by the spirit, through the spirit.

That's what he's saying.

That's how it came to us.

It was of the spirit, it was by the spirit, and it was communicated spiritually.

Not just through the flesh, not through common sense, but through the Holy Spirit.

Verse 14, "But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised."

Let me change that translation.

They are spiritually discerned.

What does spiritually mean?

Of the spirit.

How do you discern these things?

How do you come to understand these things?

Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

"But he who is spiritual, of the spirit, appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.

For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ."

I mean, Paul sets his mark on the gifts of the Spirit.

I mean, he is, this is where you get the idea, this book is going somewhere.

And one of these go-to places is where Paul is gonna help these people understand the spirit-filled life.

Paul says, "The carnal man can't understand it, because they're spiritually discerned."

Meaning true discernment and understanding of all that God has revealed, that's given to us, requires the spiritual.

Now let's go back to chapter 12, verse 2.

Paul says, "When you were pagans, you too were led by the Spirit."

But it wasn't the Spirit of God's holiness, it was the Spirit of the world.

It's a strange sentence.

And there's two ways that we might read it.

Let me read it two ways that might help us understand Paul's point.

It says, "However you were led."

Now in that sense, however simply means by whatever the means that happened to be, that's how you were led.

However you were led.

In this way, however, he points to the means or the way we were received.

Or you could read it this way.

"However you were led."

And in that context, it's a contrast.

"You were led away to mute idols."

Well, if they're mute idols, how can you say that I was being led by something that can't speak?

Well, the idol can't speak, but the Spirit of this world can.

It's a little thing called temptation.

It's a little thing called deception.

And Paul is stressing, before you get into an understanding of being led by the Holy Spirit, you need to remember how you were, you lived as a pagan, you were led.

Now why is that so important?

Because to fully appraise and discern or understand what the Lord has given us in the Holy Spirit, you're going to have to accept that you must be led by His Spirit in the process.

And this is again a hardcore self-discernment moment.

The reality is that many believers, including myself, want to understand what they can figure out for themselves.

The bottom line is they don't want to be dependent or admit they need someone to be led.

I remember when I was a teenager, I still have those memories.

They say they come back the older you get.

And I can remember the two dreaded words.

I mean, if you went to youth group and you didn't hear these two words, you hadn't gone to youth group.

Peer pressure.

Dun-dun-dun.

And there were times when I got busted doing things I shouldn't do.

And I could easily admit that I had done something wrong, but you want to know what I would never admit?

I didn't do it because of peer pressure.

Why didn't I want to admit that?

Because that would make me look weak.

And quite honestly, I would just rather look stupid.

Like I was just having fun and I knew it was wrong, but it was fun, so I did it.

But if I admit that I did what I did because somebody was exerting, there was a pressure, there was another thing leading my heart and mind, well, that just makes me look like a big time loser.

I'm just weak.

Because we don't want to admit that we can be influenced.

See, I think Paul's trying to get us ready to understand if you want to understand the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you're going to have to start with some humility.

You're going to have to understand that you can't just decide to accept that which you can figure out.

And that's the problem with so many in the church and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

I'll accept whatever I can wrap my rational brain around.

I'll make judgments about what I think is and isn't from God, but I'll do it in the flesh, not in the spirit.

Folks, do you see a problem with this?

All right, I got to get moving.

Verse three, "Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, because of what I just said, I must tell something you must understand by the leading of the Holy Spirit."

And Paul says, "No one speaking by the Spirit of God," a little Jewish moment here, "Devar Hashem," the Word of the Lord, "Prophetically, no one speaking by the Spirit of God will ever say Jesus is accursed."

And all God's people said, "Well, duh."

I mean, could you be more captain obvious, Paul?

Why do I need Paul to tell me that the Holy Spirit of God will never move someone to say that Jesus is accursed?

How does that even help me?

Well, very quickly, just know, notice something.

It doesn't say that someone might say that Jesus be accursed, meaning someone is speaking like a curse on Jesus.

Remember, this is in the context of the church.

He's talking about something that someone might say and then claim was they were being led by the Holy Spirit.

He doesn't say that it said Jesus be accursed, it says that no one will say Jesus is accursed.

That's a very important difference.

One is a declaration against Him, the other is something someone might say if they misunderstood the gospel.

Remember Paul's writing to believers, so how does this work?

After all, does not the Bible say, "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree"?

The Greek mindset came up with Gnosticism, the separation of flesh and spirit.

To understand why someone might say this, I would point you to the next destination chapter, chapter 15, the resurrection.

Paul's next big destination topic, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, which some were saying in the midst of the congregation didn't happen.

Come on church.

So he's not talking about what some Jewish person outside the community was saying.

He's saying when the Spirit of God is speaking in a believer, he's never going to say Jesus is accursed.

So what does that mean?

Well, we need to understand the definition of the word.

Anathema basically means something that is devoted or set aside.

Many times it's something that's devoted to destruction or something that is set aside with no intention of retrieving it.

The Greeks use this word to describe a votive gift, something that you would give maybe and put in the tomb of someone who died.

I mean, if you gave a gift like that, think about all the pagans, Egyptians, all that stuff.

They're all that expecting to go get it again.

Once you give it, you're cut off from it.

The Hebrews use this word for offerings that were not mandatory, not required, but they also used it to translate the word harem, which means cut off from God.

Meaning once it's been given, it's cut off from God.

Now let's put these two together.

If someone is falsely teaching, okay, yeah, Jesus took our sin, but if he took our sin upon himself, guess what?

Think that Greek mindset?

Think Gnosticism?

You're cut off from God.

Do you see it?

One leads to the other.

If you, and you can see how this Greek thinking might have made someone say, "Well, I've figured out how this works.

Okay, I'll accept that Jesus was sent by God.

I'll accept that Jesus gave his flesh for me.

I'll accept that he became sin, but when he did that for me, harem, he became cut off from God.

He is accursed."

And Paul says, "Nobody speaking by the Spirit of God says that."

Now why would he say that?

Because someone's saying it.

In the same way, someone within that body is saying, "There is no resurrection."

Does this help?

It's not just someone saying something mean about Jesus.

It's someone pretending that they're saying something by the Holy Spirit, some instructive thing that isn't true.

Well, he goes on and he says, "No one speaking, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit."

Now why do I need to understand and discern that?

Worship team, you can come back.

Because the bottom line is that once you dive in to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, once you begin to understand all things spiritual that have been given to you by God that are active grace operational realities in your life, you are going to become the righteousness of God.

You're gonna go out there and God is going to use you as a vessel to speak the redeeming truth into another person's life.

And church, here's the danger zone.

When that person comes to the place where they say, "I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, I call Him Savior, I call Him Lord, I call Him God," it didn't happen because of you.

It happened because of the Spirit who dwells in you.

You see, we have to begin this journey, I mean, you're about to find out how rich you are.

Woohoo!

And the problem is, and if you haven't seen this in the body of Christ in every flavor, the minute churches start growing, so do the egos.

Come on.

You've probably never seen that.

Pretty soon everything has to, everything, the big show, everything has to be perfect.

Pretty soon everything is, I mean, pretty soon it becomes about what we're doing.

And I'm gonna tell you something, you will never discern the fullness of what the Holy Spirit wants to do in your life.

If you start down that path thinking, "I want this gift so that people can see what I can do," nobody is gonna come to that moment and say, "Jesus is Lord," unless it's by the leading and the power of the ruach ha'qodesh.

And you may be the vessel, you may be the gifted one, you may be the one given that word of knowledge, that perfect thing to say in that moment.

Can I tell you what happened yesterday?

In our other church, father of a lady in our church, one of the fathers of one of the elders of wives passed away, and I knew they were out of state and I knew they were there and that there was gonna be a moment when they removed him from the life-sustaining things they were doing.

And I don't know, maybe around four o'clock I just kind of felt, man, I just, I haven't said anything, I just need to reach out to him.

And I just sent him a quick text, "hey, I just want you to know I'm praying for you right now."

What I didn't know was that was the very moment they had just finished their prayer before telling the medical staff to go ahead and take the next step.

They got that text and they looked at it and they were stunned.

Was that me?

Did I have clairvoyance?

Did I have ESP?

No.

The spirit of God dwells within me.

And all glory and all praise goes to Him.

And as we continue this journey, diving into all these things, He wants us to know, He wants to teach us.

We're gonna have to come to that moment where we realize it's never gonna be about me.

It's gonna always be about Him.

And I have to ask the hard questions.

Do I really want to encounter the spiritual?

Am I willing to humble myself and admit my weakness?

Am I willing to say, I think I thought I knew something that maybe I didn't know so well.

Will you teach me?

This is where our journey really begins.

And so as we come to this song of response, as we sing, I just, whether you stand and sing, whether you sit, however you use this moment, my prayer is that you will just use this time to really genuinely think, am I ready to let the spirit be the one teaching me instead of my ego and my flesh?

This could be an amazing day.

Jesus have your way in our hearts, have your way in our lives, in every heart and every life in this place.

May your spirit speak and may we be found to be listening.

Amen.

Amen.

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