Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
foreign welcome all students this morning this is Byron gray School of ministry this is church history and function today we're going to talk about the gifts the nine gifts of the holy spirit we're going to go through the a lot of scriptures this morning hallelujah we're going to get into listening there that was a great song by Lindell was it was it just Holy Holy by Lindell Cooley that he performed live at the ramp what a great song we could just let that play this morning almost but uh anyway we got to get into it uh I want everybody first let's turn in your Bible this morning uh we're going to start at uh First Corinthians chapter 12. of course and uh again we have talked about some of this talking about the supernatural uh Miracle signs and wonders I mean the gifts of the holy spirit but we're going to look at specifically the nine gifts of the Spirit this morning and we're going to put that up First Corinthians chapter 12 we're going to start at verse 1 right here now concerning spiritual gifts Brethren I would not have you ignorant you know that you were Gentiles carried away unto these dumb Idols even as you were LED or if I give you to understand that no man speaking by the spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost now there are diversities of gifts but the Same Spirit and there are differences of administrations but the same Lord and there are diversities of operations but it is the same God which worketh all in all but the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit with all for to one is given by the spirit the word of wisdom to another the word of knowledge by The Same Spirit to another faith by The Same Spirit to another the gifts of healing by The Same Spirit to another the working of Miracles to another prophecy to another Discerning of spirits to another diverse kinds of tongues to another the interpretation of tongues but all these work at that one in the self-same spirit dividing to every man severally as he Wills now the thing that stands out to me the most In this passage is what Jesus said or through the Apostle Paul here to the church not just to the Corinthian Church but to us when he said now concerning spiritual gifts Brethren I would not have you to be ignorant and I was thinking about this last night as I knew we were going to get on the subject today and I was thinking about it this morning um you know Paul writes this by inspiration the Holy Spirit I don't want you to be ignorant about spiritual gifts but if you went out in the community you know in your community and just picked 10 random Christians out there just I'm not talking about just from Pentecostal or charismatic churches that believe in
the gifts of the Spirit but you just picked random maybe you had one or two Pentecostals or charismatics in that thing but you had just a random selection of Christians out there and you asked them about spiritual gifts and to give you a brief definition or explanation of the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit you know what you would find dramatic ignorance that is what you would find I mean not I'm not talking about just people not people being stupid or whatever I'm just saying not knowing not not understanding it not ever been really been taught about it or it thoroughly or studied it thoroughly or whatever but it is amazing how there's a tremendous ignorance I mean I I can tell you you probably go ask two or three even Pentecostals and charismatics what's the difference between the gift of the word of knowledge and the gift of the word of wisdom and they couldn't tell you um I mean you might find one in ten maybe that could actually explain that um but let's let's uh let's look at these gifts let's read them again and then we're going to back up the flip over to uh just quickly to chapter uh First Corinthians chapter 14. verse 1 there but he says this here let's look at the gifts again there's nine he mentions here and we're going to look at the details in this first of all he says I don't want you to be ignorant of these things and he says there's the word of wisdom the word of knowledge the the gift of faith to another the gifts of healing by The Same Spirit to another the working of Miracles to another prophecy Discerning your spirits to another's diverse kinds of tongues to another the interpretation of tongues so you have these nine gifts and then he tells you I want you to be ignorant of these things and then look at look at uh First Corinthians 14 verse 1. he says here follow after charity or love and desire spiritual gifts but rather that you may prophesy and then he goes on to explain the differences between a prophecy and the gift of tongues unless tongues is accompanied by interpretation in the church service but he says here desire spiritual gifts so two things we want to point out first that the word of God says number one First Corinthians chapter 12 do not be ignorant I don't want you to be ignorant about spiritual gifts number two desire spiritual gifts now this word desire here is a strong word it means to to earnestly long for to lust after almost to truly I mean it's something that you want now that I'm bringing this up this morning because that is the the word of God I mean these two these two scriptures here are clearly God's instructions I don't want you to be ignorant of spiritual gifts and I want you to desire long for
earnestly desire and even lust after to the point of I want the spiritual gift let me just say this I can tell you that someone who is not like this that's not uh earnestly Desiring the spiritual gifts hungry wanting them asking God seeking God digging into it um that person's probably not going to operate in spiritual gifts very often if at all okay so it's something God says hey don't be ignorant meaning you need to study it you need to understand it you need to look into it and then desire it and uh even to this day even though I have been operating in the in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and at one point or another I've seen all nine operate in my life as God Wills I don't will it that I don't choose it to happen um except for the gift of tongues is a little different because God's given us that for prayer and devotion and worship and we'll talk a little bit about more about that in a minute but what I'm saying is is that uh even after you know going on 32 years of operating in the gifts of the Spirit I still hunger and thirst and long for more to be sensitive to God to uh to see the gifts move in my life it's something I guess I'm saying it's something I I continuously desire for God to do in my life not so I could people can look up to me and go uh you know you're some kind of super Christian but because I know the gifts of the Spirit bless and help other people and they bless and help me so uh that's why they're important remember and as we'll read here in a minute and we covered this a few weeks back can't even remember what class we covered in but we were talking about the baptism the Holy Spirit we're talking about the gift of tongues and we're talking about how prophecy and the gift of tongues with interpretation how he says that that's a I think we covered it I think an apologetics class when we were talking about how that is a witness and a sign to unbelievers because it says the secrets of their heart are made manifest and they fall down and say God is in you of the truth so it's a it's an evangelism tool as well but anyway that that's a couple of things I just wanted to point out God doesn't want you ignorant number one so you know that I've repeated this three times so it will be on your test God doesn't want you to be ignorant of spiritual gifts and he wants you to desire spiritual gifts and um and and really and that's the whole mentality and let's let's flip over I want to go to First Corinthians 14 for just a second because this should be the attitude of the church I remember many many years ago I had someone gave me a cassette tape again here we go cassette tape message from brother Kenneth E Hagin on talking about the gift of tongues and and the title
was simply tongues encouraged or forbidden and I thought about that you think about the churches the different churches that are out here in the different Bible schools and seminaries what do they do with these spiritual gifts in in in particular the gift of tongues the gift of Prophecy are they encouraged for people to seek after desire to operate in or they are are they discouraged are they forbidden um here's what here's the attitude Paul said we should have and this is First Corinthians 14. verse 38 . he says but if any man be ignorant let him be ignorant wherefore Brethren look at the word here covet to prophesy what does covet mean that's that strong desire that lusting after wanting wanting to have it so we're allowed to covet uh the gifts here he says wherefore brother covet to prophesy and forbid not to speak with tongues let all things be done decently and in order if we jump back over we jump over to verse I'll go go over to verse 26. he's talking about when the church comes together he says this he says how is it then Brethren when you come together when the church comes together every one of you hath a psalm a Doctrine a tongue a revelation and interpretation let all things be done into edifying If any man speaking at unknown tongue Let It Be by two or three at the most and uh by course and that by course and let one interpret if there be no interpreter let him keep silence in the church but let him speak to himself and to God let the prophet speak two or three and let the others judge a prophet somebody that's going to operate in the gifts of the holy spirit we'll talk about that more in a minute if anything be revealed to another that sitteth Violet the first hold his peace look at the verse 34 you may all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be comforted and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets for God is not the author of confusion but of peace as in all churches of the Saints so just wanted to read a few of those verses what's the attitude about the gifts of the holy spirit now before we go any further into this and start defining these gifts and kind of where you should begin let's go ahead and destroy the lie that these things were done away we either ended with the apostles or ended with the first century when the Canon of the New Testament was put together because that's the argument of some now let's let's look at First Corinthians 13. this is this is an argument I heard from a pastor down in Miami visiting Miami a few years ago [Laughter] and uh oh Joe knows who I'm talking about here and
me and one of my elders and this pastor were having a little discussion in the kitchen and this was and I didn't bring this up this this conversation had already started I just joined in and um but the pastor down there said that the gifts of the holy spirit from from everything from tongues to prophecy to Healing to everything the gifts of the Holy Spirit uh are no longer in the church no longer needed no longer operational because that which is perfect has come and his whole idea of that was if that which is perfect is the scriptures when the New Testament came and was put together so there was no need for the gifts simply because now we have the Bible now that sounds you know theological and philosophical and theology but it's not biblical all right and I pointed it out to him so let's read where they get this from because um of course they have one passage that they twist and take out of context and what gets me is this particular pastor he ought to know I mean he's real big on you know exegesis and hermeneutics and homiletics and he's been taught all this stuff and yet when it comes to this he's very dishonest about this because they don't apply they'll apply the proper you know hermeneutics the laws of biblical interpretation to to things that suit them right but with this issue about the gifts of the holy spirit it's like that goes out the window and they just make up stuff to try to uh you know set it aside because they don't want to deal with this really honestly they don't want to deal with it in their Church they just want to dismiss it all but let's just read First Corinthians chapter 13 we're going to start at verse 1. he says here though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity I'm become a sounding brass or a tinkering symbol though I have the gift of Prophecy and understand all Mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all Faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity or love I am nothing so again I agree with this we we're supposed to love one another now love gets misinterpreted as weakness or uh sometimes or never speaking out against anything but love it rejoices in the truth as we're going to see sometimes love tells you the truth and it's painful but that's part of love Jesus did it and so I mean we could spend the whole we could spend a whole class just talking about the the true definition of what love is um a lot of people are just emotional instead of there's there's Emotional Love there's physical love but there's spiritual love and that's what this is talking about that's why he goes on to say verse 3 though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned and have not love it profitth means nothing charity or love suffers long it is kind charity envious not
charity vonneth not itself or does not boast itself it's not puffed up does not behave itself unseemly seeketh not her own is is not easily provoked thinketh no evil Rejoice is not in iniquity but rejoices in the truth Bears all things believes all things hopes all things endures all things charity never fails now here's where they get in it says charity never fails Love Never Fails true love biblical love the god kind of love the Agape that never fails he says here but whether they be prophecies they shall fail whether there be tongues they shall cease whether there shall be knowledge it shall vanish away for we know in part and we prophesy in part but when that which is perfect is come then that which is in part shall be done away when I was a child I spake as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child but when I became a man I put away childish things for now we see through a glass Darkly but then face to face now I know in part but then I shall know even as I am known now abideth faith hope charity or love and these these three but the greatest of these is charity and then he follows this by saying follow charity and desire spiritual gifts now again why would Paul contradict himself and say you know why didn't he make it clear why didn't he just say you know when the Bible when the New testament's Finally finished guys there's going to be no need for the the gift of Prophecy or tongues or interpretation of tongues no he immediately follows this about when that which is perfect has come he immediately follows it with desire of the spiritual gifts see that's the context but let's go back and look at it that which is perfect has come the context of that what is he talking about when that which is perfect has come and then he says for now we see through a glass of Darkly but then what he's still referring to if you keep up with the Senate structure here he's still referring to that which is when that which is perfect he's come he's saying then so he's talking about something that's going to come at a certain time then what we will see what face to face listen even the thayers Greek Lexicon Bears out here that this passage is about what is perfect coming and when we see it's when we see Jesus face to face okay that's the context and that's the wording in this chapter not when the Bible is the New Testament would be finished and canonized do you understand we cannot just make up stuff all right I want to reiterate I wrote a little
book it's on our website it's called tongues of fire it's about the baptism the Holy Spirit and I have all this documented in there thayers a dictionary talks about this particular passage so what I'm getting at this is the only Passage that cessationist and when I say cessationist that means people who believe that the gifts of the holy spirit ceased either in the first century or with the apostles or when the New Testament was canonized the person that doesn't believe the gifts continued on they're called cessationists all right um but this is the only passage that they use to say that they have no other scripture to base this on so they twist Paul's writings here to try to do away with it but it's really easy to refute let me show you let me show you how you you just go to one you can go to just two passages and immediately it's refuted right and they're in the same chapter so let's go to Acts chapter 2. to deal with this whole issue of cessationism the error the gifts of ceased so we go to Acts chapter 2 this dispensation the opposite of that dispensation and this is another word I will have to get into that because that's a whole service dispensations it simply means the simple definition of dispensation is this is that it's just a season of time God does have different dispensations for instance the Garden of Eden when that you know there that was there for a season and it ended that's a dispensation right um uh but then there's extreme and I'll talk we're going to talk about this later but there's what I call the there's extreme dispensationalism that that gets taken way too far okay with anything remember there's two ditches you can get in a complete denial of dispensational is you know that there are any dispensations of God like certain Seasons where he's doing certain things and then the extreme dispensationalism where they basically chop the Bible down to this is only part you need to know and uh so we'll talk about that later but yeah um what did I tell you Acts chapter 2 Acts chapter 2 I went too far back here all right Acts chapter two here's two verses now let's look this is the day of Pentecost so think about this again how many times did I say yesterday context is everything right this is one of the things that you guys are gonna get pounded into your head context context context the biggest problem I see is I what I call mean Theology and you know everybody thinks they can pull a scripture here and pull one here and that's you know a couple of scriptures and that's the how you create theology uh or sound Doctrine I should say but
that's just not the way it works you really have to piece it all together and it's not there God's word I can tell you I promise you as you're going to study this but after doing it for over 30 years it does not contradict itself if there's ever an apparent contradiction then either you don't understand something in the language the grammar the verb tenses or something's being taken out of context that needs to be other but once you pull all the aspects in the scripture of a certain subject together then you get the what we call the common denominator you see you you get okay here's how this works all right so many times people pull one or two scriptures here and they take it out of context and it's real easy to do but the context and let's get back to Acts chapter two the context of Acts chapter 2 is what happened on that day it's a day of Pentecost it was the day 10 days after Jesus ascended to Heaven he told them to go wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the father these were Christians already born again he had already breathed on them said receive the holy spirit so they had been regenerated they were Disciples of his he says go wait in Jerusalem there's something else you need you're going to be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence so they you know out of the several hundred over 500 people that were at his Ascension 120 obeyed and went to the upper room went to Jerusalem to wait for the promise of the baptism or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit now there are a lot of people that want to say well if you're born again Christian then you have the Holy Spirit In You so what are you talking about I don't deny that if you're a born-again Christian you have the Holy Spirit in you but obviously according to the scriptures according to this in Acts chapter 2 there was more that Jesus wanted Christians to have there was another experience a separate experience with the Holy Spirit after salvation that Jesus wanted it's called the baptism of the holy spirit so they go to Jerusalem and they wait for the promise of the father and of course the Bible says they were all there for 10 days in prayer waiting obeying Jesus and what happened the holy spirit filled all the house where they were sitting there appeared to them cloven tongues like as a fire Great Mighty wind blew through the house and it says and they what all spake with tongues all of them as the Holy Spirit gave the mutterings so the context and that's you know again you can read that that's uh Acts 2 1-4 there that's the context so in this what happens is when the the multitude who was in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost heard this commotion right they come and you know a big crowd gathers going what is going on over here at nine o'clock in the morning right it was nine o'clock in the morning what is going on over here so a big huge
Crowd Goes we don't even know how many we know 3 000 ended up getting saved so there could have been a crowd there of five thousand or six thousand or ten thousand we don't know how many people gathered around this but Peter stands up in the midst of this and preaches all right so we're going to start reading with where Peter started preaching here so let's go to um oh we'll just go to verse 12. because they heard all these people speaking in tongues and all these different languages in this particular instant a lot of these were known languages that these people hadn't learned but it was Holy Spirit speaking through them to these different strangers and foreigners who were in Jerusalem at this time some people take this and think this is the only way the Holy Spirit works it's for known languages but of course Paul addressed that and said no there's tons of men Supernatural tongues of men Supernatural tongues of angels there's a tongues the unknown tongues that no man knows that no man understands and we'll talk about that too more later but here we have the baptism the Holy Spirit and the initial evidence of that is the the gift of Supernatural tongues and it says verse 12 and they were all amazed and were in doubts saying one to another this huge crowd that gathered what meaneth this others mocking said these men are full of new wine they're a bunch of drunk people right but Peter's standing up with the eleven lifted up his voice and said unto them you man of Judea and all that dwell at Jerusalem be this known unto you and hearken to my words for these are not drunken as you suppose seeing it is but the third hour of the day and of course they counted from six in the morning uh so the third hour of the day would be nine o'clock in the morning but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel and it shall come to pass in the last days saith God I will pour out my spirit upon All Flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see Visions in your old men shall dream dreams and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesy and I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs in the earth beneath blood and fire and Vapor or pillars of smoke and the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and notable day of the Lord come and it shall come to pass it whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved so here he says guess what guys in the last days now let me ask you a question I I believe the last day started then but are we still in the last days are we in the last of the last days well absolutely we know that by watching Bible prophecy being fulfilled right in front of our eyes right we are truly in the last days in the last of the last day so if we take in context what he's
talking about here he's talking about we're seeing it in the context of the baptism the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues beginning and he says God said this is that this is that what is it this outpouring about in the church it's all about Acts chapter two it's all about the gifts of the holy spirit being released in God's people and he says this is going to be for the last days this outpouring I mean does that does that say anything about it stopping or ceasing as long as we're in the last days guess what young men are going to see Visions old men are going to dream dreams the handmaidens meaning men and women are going to prophesy you hear what I'm saying so just this one passage but it doesn't stop there just this one fact he said these things will continue and guess what in church history we have records of the early church fathers talking about the gifts of tongues the gifts of healing and prophecy and working in Miracles and casting out demons that those things continued on after the apostles into the second century into the third century and even though there that when the Roman Catholic Church came in in 313 A.D and kind of squashed a lot of this stuff out with their faults doctrines and idolatry the true church was always around the true church was still always there so they never it never got squashed out completely but God did talk about an early Reign and a ladder rain in Joel this this part where he's talking to Joel here he says there would be an uh in the last thing this this Holy Spirit outpouring he said there'll be two two outpourings of it he said there'll be an early Reign and a ladder rain well day to day of Pentecost I believe is the early Reign and I believe the latter rain started around the the beginning of you know the 20th century and we'll we've talked about that some in this class church history now let's keep going Peter continues his sermon he preaches Jesus you guys crucified the Prince of Life and you murdered the Holy One but God raised him up from the dead according to David's prophecy that he would not allow his holy one to seek corruption so he preaches this sermon right and let's go down to verse 36 because remember we're dispelling this whole lie this false teaching of cessationism that the gifts of the holy spirit ceased with the apostles or even with the finished New Testament and this is what he says he finishes his sermon here with these words he says therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom you have crucified both Lord and Christ now when they heard this they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest of the Apostles men and Brethren what shall we do then Peter said unto them repent turn from your sin admit you're a sinner turn from your sin
even your unbelief toward Jesus Christ as the Messiah repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost for the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are afar off even as many as the Lord Our God shall call this is about as crystal clear as it can possibly get what shall we do repent you want to be saved you want you you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit here you go repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift everybody say the gift the gift let me just go in and tell you the gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of tongues that is kind of it's you know how they say that marijuana is the gateway drug to a lot of other things or they say this thing is a gateway to this or a gateway to that let me just go and tell you the baptism holy spirit with the evidence of Supernatural tongues is the Gateway into the rest of the gifts of the holy spirit now I'm not saying that God can't sovereignly move in any of his gifts in any person whether they speak in tongues or not I'm just going to tell you from my experience and from what I read in the scripture that this is where God prefers to begin in the life of a person because this is how he did it you know again if this is how he did it with the church in Acts chapter 2 why should we think that there's a better way why why should we think there's another one I I've never even understood that because I'm I'm kind of like at the mindset well if this is how he did it with the early church and this is um I just kind of accept that hey this is the way he did it and it must be important if this is how he wanted to start the church the True Church of Jesus Christ built upon again the foundation of the Apostles and the prophets Jesus Christ being the Chief Cornerstone but this experience this event called the baptism of the Holy Spirit the beginning of that is the evidence of other tongues but what does he say here this the gift he said repent be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and this promise is unto you and to your children and to all them that are far off even as many as the Lord Our God shall call does that give any hint like this would cease for future Generations that the gifts of the Holy Spirit The Gift of the Holy Spirit the gift of tongues prophecy word of knowledge Word of Wisdom healing miracles
does any envisions dreams this the gifted Discerning Spirits we're going to talk about all that and but does any hint that this is no absolutely not so again many in the church are ignorant of spiritual gifts they don't desire spiritual gifts because they're pastors teachers and professors have told them they don't exist anymore that that happened but it's not happening anymore now let me go ahead and address this are there counterfeits yes Satan always counterfeits he always corrupts he always has his version of things that's what you know what fortune tellers diviners and these witches and satanists and people they do operate in the Supernatural guess what Satanist can speak in tongues too demons can can help satanists and witches and people speak in tongues but just because there's a counterfeit dollar bill just because there's a counterfeit does that mean that the real doesn't exist in fact what is a counterfeit a counterfeit is a copy of a real they're trying to copy it as close as they can so they can trick you but if you have a counterfeit and I worked in a bank years ago if you have a counterfeit then you had to have a reel don't you counterfeit can't even exist without a real so yes Satan has counterfeits we have to discern by the holy spirit is if someone's moving in in whether it be tongues or even the gift of healing or whatever we have to be seeking God for Discerning of spirits on that um but I wanted to just completely dispel this I did I think we thoroughly covered it this morning that the gifts did not cease so now that we've established that I want to show you something else too just before we move on talked about this in previous classes though but look the the classic Pentecostal position only give the holy church you hear me say this time and time again is that the initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit people want to I I say the initial evidence rather it's the gift of tongues the supernatural gift of tongue um people want to argue and say well no no wrong you know well the if you have the Holy Spirit in you then you should have the fruits of the spirit okay yeah but that's not what we're talking about the fruits of the spirit are part of you growing and maturing in the Lord but these were baby Christians in Acts chapter two they were brand new Believers right the 120 in the upper room and God wanted them full of power he he knows they need to mature and grow and learn and all that stuff but he
wanted them full of power so they would have power to be Witnesses for him and so that people's faiths would not stand just in the in the wisdom of their words or the eloquence of their speech but it their that people's Faith would stand in the power of God so he said I want you to be baptized you know acts 1 8. I want you to be baptized in the holy spirit so you can have power dunamis power Miracle power Supernatural power to be my Witnesses all right so the baptism of the Holy Spirit I say the initial evidence of that is the gift of tongues I'm not saying God doesn't want you to mature and have the fruits of the spirit or that you neglect these things but we're not we're talking about two separate things we're talking about the being endued with power from on high being filled in the gifts of the Spirit beginning to work in your life versus growing and maturing as the Holy Spirit teaches you and trains you and you learn and you grow the fruits of the spirits one thing the gifts of the Spirit another thing today we're talking about the gifts of the Spirit all right but people this is what people do all the time they just confuse things they want to mix things up and they think like one thing the fruit of the holy spirit this is what you need to focus on okay I agree but you don't need to ignore the power of the holy spirit either you need both now one you can have the moment you get saved the other takes time to grow and develop and maturian right um let's look at Acts chapter 10 just so you see why I believe that this the classic Pentecostal definition of the initial evidence of the baptism of the holy spirit is the gift of tongues it's because this is what we see in scripture it's not Pastor Dean's opinion it's not a Pentecostal denomination opinion I'm not even in a Pentecostal denomination but I'm just telling you it's not it's not a man-made Doctrine or Theory because we see Acts 2 so we have that situation and then we see the same thing again in Acts 10. look at Acts 10. this is the holy spirit leading Peter for the first time to go preach to the Gentiles so he goes to cornelius's household and we're going to get we're just going to skip down to verse 44. here's what he said while Peter yet spake these words Peter's preaching the gospel to cornelius's household and everyone he'd gathered there said while Peter yet spiked these words the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word and they of the circumcision which believed were astonished as many as came with Peter because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift everybody say the gift of the Holy Ghost right now we're not even talking about the gifts we're talking about the gift of the Holy Ghost and how did they know they had received
the gift of the Holy Ghost which is also called in Acts 2 the baptism of the Holy Spirit how do we know he says for or we know this because they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God then answered Peter can any man forbid water that these should not be baptized which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we and he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord then prayed they him to tarry certain days now here let me just point this out too because we got a lot of people preaching that water baptism is what does everything water baptism saves you water baptism is what opens the door for you to be baptized in the holy spirit let me ask you what happened first here did they get baptized in water first or baptized in the Holy Ghost first huh they got baptized in the Holy Spirit first meaning water baptism had nothing to do with them being saved or them being filled with the Holy Spirit water baptism is an outward sign of obedience it's an outward witness a public testimony but I'm getting real tired of people pushing baptism as what saves you and opens the door for water baptism what saves you and opens the door for everything let me ask you was the thief on the cross was he baptized in water before he died and went to Paradise With Jesus that day no no he believed in Jesus he asked Jesus to remember him and Jesus forgave him that moment and he says today you will be with me in Paradise the thief on the cross never had water baptism it was by faith in Jesus and um that's good enough all right water baptism is is needful I'm not saying you shouldn't do it I'm just saying that let's not put it gets all mine it's one of my pet peeves I guess when Christians start trying to put all this emphasis on some outward ritual instead of inward reality right um but just pointing out here they heard the gospel from Peter they believed in Jesus and they and listen this Peter didn't even give an altar call he didn't even have a chance to say hey you guys want to want Jesus they believed on Jesus while he was preaching so much that those people got saved with that with him still preaching they got saved they got born again because boom they're filled with the Holy Spirit and how do they know they received the gift of the Holy Spirit they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God so that must be the initial outward evidence of the gift of the Holy Spirit the baptism of the Holy Spirit and then you say well okay pastor Dean you have given us two examples let me give you the third right
Acts chapter 19. first one and I have to even though we've covered this before I have to cover this talking about the gifts of the holy spirit because again this is the beginning of the gift of the Holy Spirit the gift of tongues is the beginning because this is the gift that God wants us to have to help us in prayer private prayer and devotion and also to begin to it's What strengthens us spiritually it's a it's a tool God has given us to strengthen us spiritually it's very important it's like it's like a battery charger it's like like again like having the your iPhone and having a battery charger the baptism Holy Spirit praying in the gift of tongues is the battery charger we'll talk about that we'll go to those verses in a minute but let's read Acts 19. it says and it came to pass that while Apollos was that Corinth Paul having passed through the upper Coast came to Ephesus and finding certain disciples and he said to them have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed now let me just go in and say something right here that Bible School professors Seminary professors even a lot of pastors will say these guys were not Christians let me ask you something would Paul say have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed if they were not born again yet no the Apostle Paul is fully aware that the baptism of the holy spirit is something for believers and that that's a secondary issue it's not if you came up on 12 people that weren't saved the first thing you want to do is get them saved but if you're determined he determined they were Disciples of Jesus and they were born again the next thing you want to do is say well have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit have you received the gift of the Holy Spirit have you been filled with the holy spirit so what do these guys answer he said he found certain disciples and and he asked them Paul asked them have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed and they said in him we have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost and he said unto them unto what then were you baptizing they said unto John's baptism repentance and water baptism that's good then Paul said uh then said Paul John verily or truly baptized with the baptism of repentance saying unto the people that they should believe on him which should come after him that is on Christ Jesus when they heard this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus and when Paul had laid his hands upon them the Holy Ghost came on them and they spake with tongues and prophesied and all the men were about 12. now what do we find here let me let me show you something Acts 2 is 120 in the upper room how many spake with tongues 120 all of them we go to cornelius's household how many received the gift of the Holy Spirit spoke with tongue all of them
Paul found 12 disciples in Ephesus and when he laid hands on them and they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit The Gift of the Holy Spirit how many of them spoken times all of them all right my point is is you cannot ignore the biblical testimony on this you say now wait a minute Pastor he doesn't say in First Corinthians 12 do you all speak with tongues yeah but don't take that out of its context don't add to it or subtract from it just because we he said the question do all speak with tongues he didn't say all can't speak with tongues he just said it's a matter of fact that all don't right why well unbelief bad teaching I mean there's just different reasons ignorance just don't know about it don't understand it but there are a lot of Christians and let me State again and I've made this clear over and over and over again I do not believe you have to speak in tongues to be saved or go to heaven this is not what this is about I know there's some extreme Pentecostal denominations out there that believe you have to speak in tongues to be saved it's ridiculous this is something God wants us to have remember he said desire the spiritual gifts he wants you to have this to help you all right so as we begin now looking we're going to look here at the gifts of the holy spirit I want to go into first let's let's really dig into this the gift of tongues okay the gift of tongues because it's the initial evidence I believe it's the the doorway when I was baptized in the holy spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues immediately the other gifts word of knowledge the gift of Prophecy the gifts of healing increased in my life all right I mean it it really took off okay even as a young believer so let's get a hold of this let's go back to First Corinthians chapter 14 to look at the reason behind this first Corinthians chapter 14. so we're going to look at the gift of tongues right now in the interpretation tongues all right remember First Corinthians chapter 13 said there's the tongues of men and of angels we've seen that in the book of Acts we've seen the gift of the tongues of of men where somebody just receives the gift of tongues and they never learned Chinese but all of a sudden they speak Chinese I've seen that happen in a service I saw a woman stand up in a service in a big church she never learned Chinese in Chinese a difficult language to learn she'd never learned Chinese never been to China and she stood up and spoke in tongues it sounded Asian but I was like I don't know Chinese or Japanese you know I don't know that I'm not that good at knowing the difference between the languages she stands up in church the Lord has her stand up give speak out in
tongues for about 30 seconds um a little bit later a man who was visiting from China she didn't know was in the congregation and said she spoke perfect Mandarin Chinese and this is what she said now that's not an interpreter that's not the gift of interpretation it just happened to be a man who spoke Chinese and understood everything she said that is a man at one manifestation or one of the divers or different kinds of the gift of tongues that can happen um I did that to an Arab Taxi Driver a Muslim taxi driver in Israel because he wouldn't take me where I wanted to go was trying to I just spoke in tongues for a few minutes I have no idea what I said but he sure dropped me off and and quit trying to rob me of money okay all right I had a little fun with it I have no idea what the Lord spoke to him through that I don't know but uh he sure enough changes too but there's the other aspect or the different you know the Bible says diverse kinds of tongues or different kinds there's the unknown tongue meaning having never been known new tongue Jesus said in Mark 16. a new tongue the word new meaning never known before brand new fresh um the tongue that no man's understands so let's read First Corinthians 14 just the first few verses here because I want you to see the purpose of this gift of tongues and Paul tells us and he's explaining it to them all right so First Corinthians 14 verse 1 he says follow after charity and desire spiritual gifts but rather that you may prophesy for he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men but unto God for no man understandeth him how be it in the spirit he speaketh Mysteries so let's stop right there he that speaks of an unknown tongue speaks not unto men so he's obviously Paul here is talking about the different kind of tongues it's not a known language in the world we could call it the tongues of the Angels but it's a supernatural thing he says no man understands him so anybody out there that says the gift of tongues is only for known languages and for missionary work or evangelism to people that you don't know their language that's just simply not true it's not only for that can be for that but not only for that all right because Paul is going to give you the primary reason that God wants you to have the baptism the Holy Spirit and the gift of the Holy Spirit of the gift of tongues because he says here he that speak of the unknown tongues is speaking not unto men but unto God so it is a direct line to speak to God and he says in the spirit you are speaking Mysteries now what does Mysteries mean Mysteries mean something that is hidden it is hidden from you it's hidden from the Devil
let me tell you in Warfare we uh I remember in the World War II remember the what was it they made a movie about it the what would they call it the Wind Talkers or something like that we knew that the Germans and the and the then that the Japanese didn't understand uh Navajo because Navajo was a dead language so they found some Navajo Indians that would use their language as a code because they knew that no man understood that language but them and so we use that as a code so the enemy wouldn't know what we were talking about back and forth and so when you're praying and speaking in an unknown tongue in your prayer time you are speaking directly to God you're praying things the Holy Spirit through you is helping you pray things that you don't even know you need to pray about but of course it's bypassing your understanding but you're speaking directly to God and it's hidden it's hidden yes it's hidden from you sometimes but it's hidden from Satan well you know that's pretty valuable I love it when the devil doesn't know what I'm praying about you don't need to know everything he doesn't know listen the devil doesn't read your thoughts he can't read your mind but moment you open your mouth he knows what's in your mind see what I'm saying when you speak out something that's why you need to be careful what you speak because the devil knows what then he knows okay this is where they're this is where their mindset is this is where they're going right and he'll work with that um but let's keep going so he says that he speaks directly to God no man understands him how be it in the spirit in the spirit realm he speaketh Mysteries then he says but he that prophesieth speaketh on demand to edification and exhortation and comfort now prophecy let me let me just go ahead and Define these two for you okay the gift of tongues is a supernatural utterance by the Holy Spirit he gives you you have to speak out you and you have to cooperate and let the gift of unknown tongues flow out of your mouth he does not move your mouth for you he doesn't move your tongue for you he doesn't breathe through for you you have to cooperate but it is inspired utterance that you choose like Peter to step out of the boat and walk on the water you choose to cooperate and operate in that and it's supernatural utterance all right meaning its source comes from Supernatural from the Holy Spirit you've just cooperate the gift of Prophecy some people have defined the gift of Prophecy as simply preaching and teaching it is not okay this is something we need to get across anybody can preach and teach the Scriptures it does not mean it's the gift of Prophecy at all right the gift of Prophecy is an inspired a supernatural inspired
utterance that you speak in your known language that you speak clearly to those around you it has nothing to do with unknown language or unknown tongues the gift of Prophecy okay and it's It's Supernatural it's inspired it's powerful um let's put it this way the gifts the gifts are like power surges you know how we got the electrical system it just kind of cruises along it's all regulated and moderated and then every now and then what happens some some for some different reason cool the power will surge the gifts of the holy spirit that's their their power surges according to the will of God all right now the gift of Prophecy let's go ahead and say what prophecy is if you look up the word itself in the Greek what is it going to tell you the gift of Prophecy is a divinely inspired utterance right that's at times will be foretelling future events that's not always what it's for but sometimes it will be foretelling future events all right it's it's that whole thing about um [Music] you know again some people think it's that's only what it is but it's not um for instance let me give you an example um well here's an example that this happened when I was pre when I was pastoring the church in Montgomery Alabama uh on Sunday September 9th 2001. does that date sound familiar everybody two days before September 11th now I'm preaching so I'm in the middle of preaching a sermon and I will never forget it because I was preaching to someone called the blessings of God had nothing to do with Bible prophecy had nothing to do with the gifts of the holy spirit had nothing to do with anything and I was just talking about how God you know how many times how much God has blessed us and even things where he intervenes and we don't even know he's intervened right well in the middle of this sermon I feel the presence of God on me and the anointing of God on me and then the gift of Prophecy starts working it's like a power surge and it just came out of my mouth I didn't plan to say this it wasn't in my notes and I said that there will be a terrorist attack on New York City in Washington D.C I said really I'm surprised these things haven't already happened
they are the it's the and I said it's the blessing of God that it hadn't happened boom two days later the two cities I named New York City Washington DC can I tell you people in church were freaking out but that was a manifestation of the gift of Prophecy that happened to foretell an event that was going to happen in a couple of days but I didn't plan it I didn't think it up I didn't you know create that moment it was a holy ghost power surge um but then there can be Gifts of Prophecy like for instance um a woman came to my church for instance and I won't go into the details of this but she visited I'd never seen her before and I won't go into the details because it was both a word of knowledge and a word of Prophecy and maybe we'll get to that in a second but but she I remember she was sitting on my right and when I finished the lord gave me a word for her to not be afraid but to preach to not be afraid to preach the gospel where she worked okay well sure enough what does she say she she stood up and told the entire Congress she was visiting from Atlanta I mean she just decided to visit our church she said that she just got a new job and she was afraid to share her faith in Jesus at work and she was asking God for confirmation that she should step out and share her faith at work and so what when I gave her that was a word of Prophecy it was divinely inspired at that moment to speak directly to her and what did it do it encouraged her it edified her it encouraged and strengthened her to step out and do what the Lord wanted her to do right so that's why this says right here he that he that verse 3 but he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification to build them up to strengthen him to exhort them or encourage them and to comfort them and I've had many instances where God's Gift of prophecies comforted somebody going through a struggle all right and then he says this verse 4. let's get back on the gift of tongues here he says he that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself but he that prophesieth edifyeth the church now again these are not contrary one to another do you need self strengthening the word edification means strengthening building up it can even mean charging like a battery when when your iPhone's about dead or your your smartphone's about dead what does it need recharging it needs re-strengthening refilling it needs edifying all right
that's what this is the gift of tongues unknown tongues is so that you can strengthen edify build up yourself spiritually it is a tool for Spiritual strength edification encouragement refreshing and it's very important so he's saying that the gift of tongues is primarily for you it's primarily to help your spiritual life to enhance your spiritual life now I don't know about you guys and gals out there but I need all the help I can get the battles the draining aspects of just living in this world I call it the lot effect you know where it says he was vexed living among the wicked I mean when you live this this everything's against us spiritually mentally emotionally even physically I mean from everything from the the Chemtrails and the GMO I mean everything's against us right so I don't know about you but the spirit and then we talk about the spiritual forces of Darkness and they're constantly wearing on us with our in our minds and our Spirits trying to wear us down uh trying to attack us physically make us sick or struggle you know we're in a constant battle we are in hostile territory we live in a hostile Realm and I'm going to tell you I need every tool I can get to strengthen edify build up and so that's why I don't I don't see why anybody would be against seeking God to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and have the gift of tongues to help them in prayer and to help them edify themselves um he goes on to say let's just go ahead and and deal with this because everybody reads this and they think Paul's being negative about tongues no he's just giving you some basic instructions here look what he says in verse five it says I would or I would or I desire or what I would I want all of you he said I would that ye all spank with tongues but rather that ye prophesied for greater is he that prophesied than he that speaketh with tongues except he interpret that the church may receive edifying so Paul was saying here look you know the Corinthians were zealous about speaking in tongues and he said you guys need to get a grip for a second it's important for your self-edification but what's more important is to the to help build the church to encourage the church to strengthen the church he said so so don't just sit around and speak in tongues he said seek God desire that you may prophesy so that
you can edify and build up and exhort and encourage the church he said now except he says no greater is he that prophesied than he that speaketh with tongues so a lot of people take this the anti-tongues people take this as Paul was being negative he wasn't being negative he was just showing you what's more important he says accept unless though you couple tongues the gift of tongues with one of the other nine gifts of the holy spirit which is the interpretation of tongues and if you have those two things what do you have the gift of Prophecy right so the gift of Prophecy can manifest multiple ways just without tongues or with tongues and interpretation of tongues so when in a church service in a group Gathering where the church assembles together when someone stands and gives a public message in tongues that must be interpreted by someone else now let me add this people get all bent out of shape if there's not an interpretation well sometimes it's not because of the person who gave the tongues it's the person who God gave the interpretation to but they're afraid to speak out I've had this happen so many times that somebody stood up and gave a tongue I knew it was from God and I knew God was given the invitation say to so and so back on the back row over there but he was scared to speak was that the person that gave the tongues fault or the person that was supposed to interpret it fault so the person that gave the tongues was not out of order but the but the anti-tongues crowd they like to twist that on right but hear what I'm saying that's why it says again diverse kinds of tongues there is a public tongue for a church Gathering a worship service that needs to be interpreted so the church can receive edifying again it doesn't mean if somebody speaks in tongues and somebody doesn't interpret it doesn't mean they're out of order it just means either that church is not ready or somebody's not obeying and you know then you just you just move on from it right but he says here unless he interprets let's read verse 5 again he said but I would that you all speak with tongues but rather that you prophesied for greater is he that prophesied than he that speaketh with tongues except he interpret that the church may receive edifying so plainly here he's saying tongues and interpretation equals prophecy and itifies the church and then it goes on now Brethren if I come unto you speaking with tongues what shall I profit you except I speak unto you either by Revelation or by knowledge or by prophesying or by Doctrine I want to I want you to get this right here notice the difference this is remember I said this a minute ago that the gift of Prophecy is not simply preaching or teaching or sharing um it's something different because he says what shall I profit you unless I speak either by Revelation something God showed me from the scriptures he
revealed to me he enlightened my eyes and mine too or by knowledge things I've learned here or by prophesying the supernatural inspired utterance of the Holy Spirit the power surge of the Holy Spirit or by Doctrine I systematically teach Doctrine so these are the different ways that we preach and teach and minister to the church prophesying is not teaching Doctrine teaching Doctrine is not prophesying you get what I'm saying what I'm doing today teaching is not the gift of Prophecy all right um so let's go back and um well you know a minute ago I talked about I want to I do want to share this verse with you because Paul refers to this verse um go over to verse 21. because well again we're talking about the the purpose of the gift of the Holy Spirit you know the initial evidence of the gift of tongues for personal edification strengthening charging he says here about the gift of tongues he says in the law and actually it's in the book of Isaiah but in verse 12 he says in the law it is written with men of other tongues and really the word men of is not there that's a it's in italics I think they were trying to add to help with clarification but let's just read it without that what does he say with other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people and yet for all they will not hear me saith the Lord so let's go to let's go to Isaiah 28. to see what to get the whole prophecy he's referring to here because I want to make a point here with this this is important because this was prophesied the gift of tongues he says for with stammering lips and another tongue will he God speak to this people can I just say this before we read any further stammering lips in another tongue God says I will speak to this people so the gift of tongues is a way that God is speaking to us he's speaking through us and he's speaking to us and when we couple that with the gift of interpretation of tongues we get to hear what the Lord is saying first let me give you an example of how this worked for me one time in Israel when I was in Israel we went for a month we bought one-way tickets to Israel this was in 1988 me and my brother and um after the end of the month we had a three-month Visa but but at the end of the month we didn't know how long we would stay but at the end of the month after one month the Lord said you know begin to impress both of us it was time to go back to go home and so I went that day and we went to the travel agent the day the previous
day before and said here's what we got we we have one thousand dollars left we need two tickets to Atlanta Georgia from Tel Aviv Israel we need two tickets for under a thousand dollars right um and the lady looked at me like I was crazy person right she said well I don't have anything like that and at the time it was even hard to get flights out of Tel Aviv there was some crazy stuff going on I won't get into all that but um she said I tell you what she said well I'll try to I'll try to land you guys some some standby tickets so come back here tomorrow at 4 pm in the afternoon and I'll see what I have for you so sure so the next morning we got up and we're at a youth hostel and I went up on the roof to pray for a while my brother stayed down in the room to pray for a while but I was just heavy and I was up there until about 10 o'clock in the morning came back down I said my spirit I'm just heavy I feel like we need to pray so my brother came over and we started praying together and I just couldn't I couldn't seem to get through with English with my known language I just I just felt like I'm not praying what I need to pray right I'm not getting through and it's not getting through to me but I felt like God wanted me to tell when to tell me something and I needed to know something I was feeling this urgent heavy burden that something you need to know right now right so while we're praying I finally just pray in tongues for you know I don't know 30 seconds 60 seconds I don't know what it was I just prayed in the spirit because I didn't know what to pray and I prayed in tongues and immediately after I prayed in tongues for however long it was as soon as I stopped the Holy Spirit gave me the gift of interpretation of tongues began and this was what I heard the spirit of God say and the interpretation it's not like you hear me it's that still Small Voice on the inside but it was crystal clear the Lord spoke to me and said go to the travel agent now now remember the travel agent said come back tomorrow at 4 pm this was 10 in the morning the Holy Spirit through the gift of tongues and interpretation of tongues said to me go to the travel agent now so man we jumped up we took off and running through the city it was about took us about 10 or 15 minutes to get to the to the travel agent there's no Uber back then so we actually walked ran uh and the moment I opened the door the lady was on the telephone our travel agent her jaw dropped open she said I'm on the phone I have two tickets to Atlanta for 350 each but you have to buy them now
right now I said let's do it now this is a Jewish lady she she was like how did you know to come right then we got to talk to her give her a testimony and we're Christians we believe in Jesus is the Messiah and we're baptized the Holy Spirit he spoke to us and we came here pretty powerful witness huh but we got our tickets for under a thousand dollars had three hundred dollars left over right got to eat in Paris when we were there for a little bit changing flights got to eat in New York so the Lord got us the tickets we needed and a little money left over to travel home on right but that's how that works so here let's read it again Isaiah 28 11 and 12. for with stammering lips and another tongue well he God speak to this people to whom he said listen to this this is the rest somebody say the rest this is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest and this is the refreshing yet they would not hear God is saying about the gift of tongues coupled with the interpretation of tongues in your life that he will use that as a tool to speak to you and he will use that as a tool to give you rest and refreshing in the spirit I don't know about you but that sounds pretty good and I can't tell you how many times over the years when I've been burdened tired spiritually mentally emotionally physically when I'm worn out as a pastor as a minister how that it's praying spending time in my prayer time praying in unknown tongues that is edifying and strengthening me and refreshing me and giving me rest and I'll tell you the truth I think that's why so many have run back to some of this Hebrew root stuff about the Sabbath look Jesus the Holy Spirit just let me go and take the holy spirit is the spirit of Jesus Christ that's that's used in Philippians the spirit of Jesus Christ all right he's my rest he's my Sabbath but so many people refuse to do things his way and this is what he's talking about he says there look what he says this is the rest wherewithy may cause the weary to rest and this is the refreshing yet they would not hear how many Christians refuse to hear this truth about the baptism Holy Spirit the gift of tongues the importance of praying in tongues and worshiping in tongues for rest and refreshing and strength and edification the reason I will not turn loose of it is because I know how valuable
operating in this gift has been in my personal life to strengthen me refresh me and help me people sometimes say Pastor Dean how in the world are you how in the world do you you know what to preach exactly then what Sunday and what to preach and that was just exactly what I said look a lot of times I don't a lot of times I'm just as tired and worn out and would rather not even go to church much less be the one have to get up and preach and teach right and I'll say you know when I hit a wall spiritually mentally emotionally when I hit the wall um or maybe it's a Wall of Resistance demonic and satanic resistance I'll just pray in tongues for I'll pray in the spirit for a while sometimes you know five minutes sometimes ten minutes sometimes I've prayed for hours I prayed one time you know an hour sometimes I've prayed longer an hour in tongues you say my understanding is unfruitful but I know I'm believing the scripture I'm operating in faith that God will strengthen me he will use this to strengthen me to refresh me to give me rest spiritually and sure enough man I'll be praying and some it's I have no there's no certain time frame on it but you you pray and finally you feel the burden lift you feel refreshed and strengthened and then you I hear the Lord say like especially when I'm praying Lord what do you want me to preach and teach on Sunday and he says he'll I'll hear him say this right here this is what I want you to do now think about if I if I leaned on My Own Strength what I'd be doing well I don't know I guess just arbitrarily my own head picking all right I guess I'm gonna preach on this tomorrow I don't do that I always seek God about what to teach and preach always all right and that's something as ministers if you guys are going to be ministers pastors teachers evangelists prophets Apostles whatever Sunday school teachers you need to see God about what to preach and teach not what you think you need to do that day all right because God knows what people need far better than we do so let's go back to First Corinthians chapter 12. and we're going to break down the other gifts of the Spirit so we've talked about today the gift of the baptism of the Holy Spirit the gift of tongues the diverse kinds different kinds of tongues and the gift of interpretation of tongues so we've and we've actually talked about the gift of Prophecy so what what have we just covered three gifts of the nine right but let's look at the others all right so if these are power surges let's let's for instance let's talk about the gift of faith for a minute all right the gift of the Holy Spirit the gift of faith everybody that's we're back at First Corinthians chapter 12. and we're going to look at it's verse 9 says to another the gift of faith
it's given or Faith by The Same Spirit now the Bible says this and we've covered this Romans 12 3 it says what God has dealt to every man The Measure of Faith right right God's dealt to every man to measure of Faith all right and you had to have faith in Jesus and the word of God to be saved right to be born again all right so and then if you're a Christian you walk by faith you live by faith I mean it's it's it's every day so what is he talking about the gift of faith what did I say the gifts are power surge right this is remember over and over again you would hear Jesus say to some people like the Centurion who came and said just speak the word my servant will be healed what do you say I have not seen so great faith no not in Israel there were times that the disciples would be struggling and Jesus would say oh you have little faith why do you doubt there was another time he said how is it that you have no faith our faith kind of wavers up and down doesn't it kind of we go through periods of strength and weakness but when just like we anybody can get up and preach and teach anybody get up and talk about the word of God but what is prophecy it's a supernatural powered inspired talk right it could be short or long but it's a supernatural Divine that it's above and beyond the normal preaching and teaching well faith is the same way the gift of faith is a surge of God's power that just gives you Supernatural faith in a moment that's far beyond your normal daily up and down Faith I'll give you an example many years ago a brother came to my house and uh my cousin Todd brought him and he came to my house and he had broken his hand and he had his hand in one of those little splints he hadn't he hadn't uh put it and didn't have a cast on it yet and he but he had broken the bones in his hands and they were getting ready to put a cast on it but it was in the splint thing but anyway I led him to the Lord sitting there at the table the dinner table and we got to talking about his hand and he told me what happened to his hand and I just been reading about again the gifts of healing and how Jesus still heals and these signs shall follow them that believe Mark 16 they shall lay hands on the sick in the shall recover so I started sharing with him about you know Jesus is not only our savior he didn't just shed his blood to deal with our sins but it says that he also bore our sicknesses right so I start telling him by his stripes we were healed do you believe Jesus will heal your hand and he said yeah and and let me tell you I said well I'm going to pray for you and your hand's going to be healed and I had this surge of faith it was this faith faith is believing it
before you see it and I was so I knew in my spirit from the Lord from the Holy Spirit I I so knew that his hand was going to be healed I had this surge of faith that when I laid hands on his his hand and prayed for him the moment I said in Jesus name amen and finish my prayer I squeezed the Daylights out of his broken hand I mean like I was trying to crush it scared him at first he he about jumped out of his seat right no pain he went oh he's like he started moving his hand he took the thing off he's like it's healed that was the gift of faith now should you just go run out and grab somebody's broken hand and squeeze it no you better have had the supernatural surge of faith for that miracle at that moment all right now or or Supernatural healing now that was kind of you could say could have been two or three you know two of the gifts mixed together the gift of faith and the gift of healing or the gift of working in Miracles but I think it was just the gift of faith it was just Supernatural Faith what did Jesus say many times but your faith has made you whole right what you believe so again Supernatural surge of God's power when it talks about the the power of the Holy Spirit the word power is dunamis and it means the miraculous power all right there's another word use translated Powers called exous it means the authority that we have or the right to use the name of Jesus but these gifts are power dunamis where we get the word Dynamite from they're little explosions of power all right um let's talk about the word of knowledge let me give you the definition of the word enough now what is a word a word is a piece you could say a word is a piece of understanding or explanation words are how we communicate but a word of knowledge now don't we all have knowledge I mean we're not vegetables we're not brain dead so we all have knowledge and today we're studying a subject in the Bible now we're not ignorant of it we're gaining knowledge okay but when he says here A word of knowledge is a gift of the Holy Spirit he's not talking about our normal walking around Bible knowledge or intellectual knowledge he's talking about a surge of power Where It's Supernatural peace of knowledge that you didn't have before about a person a place or a thing in the present or in the past that's important for you to know so the gift of the word of knowledge is
when God reveals a piece of knowledge supernaturally that you did not have about a person place or thing pertaining to the present or to the Past all right I'm gonna give you an example of a word the gift of the word of knowledge um the same woman I was talking about that the Lord showed me you know told me to to tell her to not be afraid to preach or you know to share Jesus at her workplace she this is what happened she had come up for prayer at the end of the service and this happens with me a lot is that um most of the time I don't get a word for somebody it's just sitting in the crowd it happens sometimes but most of the time when I pray for them when I lay hands on them it's just like I see things about them all right now I had a word of knowledge about her and this is what I saw she came up for prayer never seen this woman before and I was just praying for her to be blessed and refreshed and strengthened in the Lord right and so I see a vision about her my eyes are closed and I'm praying for I see this play like a movie in my mind I see her standing in a grocery store aisle being afraid to talk to people about Jesus and the Lord tells me to tell her what I saw and to not be afraid to tell people about Jesus so I'm telling her this I start telling I said I see you standing in a grocery store aisle and you're afraid to talk to people about Jesus and I'm just thinking it's in a public place so she's afraid to talk to people about Jesus and the Lord wants me to tell you to do it to be bold to not be afraid but to step out and speak to whomever he leads you to speak to right and I see the tears start running down her face so what she testifies she turns around and testifies is that particular week in just the past week she got a job in a grocery store as one of those people who give out samples in the aisle and she said she had people coming up to her to take the samples and there would be people she felt like she should talk to about Jesus but she was afraid if you know offending people or losing her job and all this stuff and she said she was asking God what should she do we'll see what happened was what God showed me about her in that Vision form was a word of knowledge it was a piece of information a piece of knowledge about her that there's no way I knew in the natural in my own normal everyday knowledge okay now what happened was that blew her mind because she had also been asking the question to God where are the gifts of the Spirit today where are men of God who actually operate in the gifts of the Spirit today and boom she got a lot of her questions answered that the spirit the gifts of the Spirit are still for today and they're still men of God who operate and gives to the Holy Spirit and she was
just what I'm saying is she left there blessed encouraged edified strengthened questions answered all because of a supernatural word of knowledge all right that's called edifying the church that's why the gifts of the Spirit are so important you see that with Jesus Jesus the word here's a Biblical example of the word not John chapter 4. we talked about this recently remember the woman at the well the Samaritan woman and starts talking to Jesus and Jesus finally says to her after they chat a little bit about water and living water and all this stuff Jesus said go get your husband and she said I don't have a husband he said you're right he said you've had five husbands and the one that you're with now is not your husband and that you said truly that was a word of knowledge that was the gift of the Holy Spirit working in the Lord Jesus he gave her a word of knowledge about what was going on in her life in the present and in the past and she said sir I perceive that you are a prophet right that is the word of knowledge okay there's many examples that we could use all right so we've covered what if the tongues interpretation of tongue prophecy faith and now the word of knowledge let's go to the word of wisdom all right the word of wisdom again what is that it's a supernatural download or explosion or power surge of the Holy Spirit giving wisdom and what is wisdom when we seek for wisdom what is wisdom it is to have understanding and knowledge right about really about God's will in our lives um for instance that part where I told her that God wanted her to share the gospel with people at work that was a revealing of God's will see you had about what in that one little incident with that lady visited my church in Montgomery you had like four gifts of the holy spirit work in there prophecy word of knowledge Word of Wisdom and um Discerning of Spirits because I saw it we'll get to that in a sec because I saw a vision of but Word of Wisdom is a supernatural you know power surge of the Holy Spirit about the will of God for the present or the future for instance I'm in Washington DC 2008.
the Holy Spirit speaks to me and he says these words to me very clearly in my spirit he says this church is going to fire you on November 30th when they do I want you to go back to Alabama to your hometown to Auburn Alabama and start a church all right now what was that sure enough guess what because I had stepped out in that church and started addressing some problems that were within that church I knew they were getting upset and that's really the only church I've ever worked in that actually had the bad government system of hiring and firing pastors um the the church government system I should say but um but I knew they probably would but the Holy Spirit gave me a word of wisdom first of all he warned me of what was coming so that was really kind of the gift of problems they're going to fire you on November 30th and they actually did I have I still have the email where they sent me an email on November well it was a few days it was right after Thanksgiving but they said we're terminating our contract with you effective November 30th that was their words when they do I want you to go to Auburn Alabama start a church I was in Washington DC let's go to Auburn Alabama and start a church so the part about go to Auburn Alabama and start a church now there's nowhere in the Scripture it says Dean odle go to Auburn Alabama and start a church but I needed the holy spirit's Direction in my life I don't want my own Direction so what I'm always praying God show me your will fill me with the knowledge of your will so he spoke to me very clearly is what I want you to do that's the word of wisdom can you say we need words of wisdom a lot right now I mean we see these in the scriptures all the time like like the Apostle Paul gave a word of wisdom you know when he's on the boat you go back to you know acts 27 and acts 28 when he's on the the boat and they're taking him to Italy and they're in the storm and all this stuff and he comes out and the Lord tells him you know what you're not going to lose anybody right well remember when the storm got really rough and they were having to throw things overboard and the ship was breaking up and he told him he said look unless you remain they were going to jump overboard he said unless you remain in the boat you cannot be saved kind of a word of wisdom you need right there right now how did he know that they all thought they were going to die but Paul said the Lord had spoken to him that he wasn't going to lose any of them but they better stay on the boat
right that's a word of wisdom you can see it so many so many times in scripture Word of Wisdom all right so now let's move on from that remember it's a supernatural Word of Wisdom a supernatural surge of holy spirit Power revealing and he can do it by Vision By A Dream by his still Small Voice remember this goes along with what we talked about last week discerning the voice of God you got to put those these two teachings together they are they're not separate from one another all right so you have the word of wisdom it's a supernatural revelation surge power of the Holy Spirit to reveal something about something you need to know about the will of God in the present or in the future okay all right now let's go to Discerning of Spirits at this point the gift of discerning of spirits very interesting because if you look up the word Discerning you're going to find two things that it says about the gift and you look it up in the Greek dictionary two things that it says about it number one it's perceiving perceiving or seeing all right it has to do with visions but it says here you have this is First Corinthians 12 10 to another the work of the miracle to another prophecy to another the Discerning of spirits perceiving or seeing spirits now I want to be very clear here there are a lot of people out there and even some Christians that because they haven't been through Deliverance they haven't been through breaking generational curses some that had had witches and fortune tellers and mediums in their families or voodoo witch doctors or whatever Freemasons and they were born with a gift and they see in the spirit Realm some got involved in meditation and visualization and different types of you know Eastern Buddhist Hindu type meditation or and they opened their so-called third eye which is really just a demonic link between the soul and the spirit that gives them the ability to see in the spirit realm all the time I'm just going to put it out there for you right now a born-again Christian is not supposed to see in the spirit realm Spirits good and bad all the time it should be frankly should be very rare and only when God so chooses because we he said we walk by faith and not by sight that's what II Corinthians 5 7 says we walk by faith and not by sight but every now and then God will let you see what's going on in the spirit Realm but it's rare okay even for I'm someone called to the office of a prophet and
it's rare for me and I don't see all the time it's not something that happens every day it's not something 24 7. if you're seeing in the spirit realm all the time there's some kind of open door to Demons there's some kind of stronghold there from the past if you're a Christian now you know if you're not a Christian and you have this going on there's some kind of witchcraft either in your that's been in your life or in your family's life that's been passed down to you so just understand us what's going on all right or you've played with yoga or again meditation visualization chanting mantras you know you've opened the door somewhere I can assure you if I sit down long enough and talk to you we'll find the doorway where it was right but no Christian's supposed to see but let me just say that the gift of discerning of spirits is not just seeing sometimes it's seeing a spirit and I'll give you an example of that in a minute sometimes it's just perceiving it okay you just sense it you feel it and and you know what it is and let's so let's go here's your biblical example here of discerning spirits acts 16 and we are going to go a little long today but acts 16 uh we're gonna go down to verse 16. so Paul is in Philippi here it says and it came to pass as we went to prayer a certain damsel possess with a spirit of divination met us which brought her Masters much gain first by soothsay she used a fortune teller she was a divination now I don't believe Paul discerned this immediately and this is why I say that because it says the same followed Paul and Silas and cried saying these men are Servants of the most high God which show us the way of Salvation is that correct these men are Servants of the most high God they show us the way of Salvation what was coming out of her mouth was the absolute unadulterated truth she was speaking what was true so I think that that fooled Paul for just a little while because it says and this she did many days why did if Paul knew from day one that she was possessed with the spirit of divination why did he allow her to follow them around and constantly be speaking this out of her mouth for days see discernment sometimes you just have to be around somebody for a little while and you start figuring out what spirit's really operating in them okay so Paul says here but Paul Verse 18 being grieved now this word grieved me in his Spirit was troubled it was Heavy it was burdened his Spirit was annoyed okay he says being grieved turned and said to the spirit the demon spirit I command
thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her and he came out the same hour now we're going to stop here because my only Point here is that Paul finally perceived after this woman was there for many days he finally discerned the gift of the Discerning of spirits work and he finally discerned that even though what was coming out of her mouth was correct and and was absolutely true and sounded right you ever run into anybody like that what comes out of their mouth sounds right but the spirit working behind them is wrong and so Paul knew he discerned that it was that what that the spirit working in her was the spirit of divination some people say it was a python Spirit no it's pythian completely different okay pythian she the pythian spirit she was operating she was one of the priestesses of the Oracle of Delphi okay it was pythian not python I heard that my whole life I was like no people it's 50 and she was one of the because what they had the Oracle at Delphi was a woman demon-possessed woman who would go down into this cave and breathe the the methane gas basically she'd get high but she had operate in the counterfeit Supernatural the satanic the Demonic Supernatural and she would give prophecies to Kings and Generals and armies and and a lot of these things would come to pass and they looked at the Oracle of Delphi as you know as the spokes but she was the spokesperson for the god Apollos isn't that interesting right and so people looked at her especially in the Greek world back then and this went on for hundreds of years and what happened was you'd have you'd have this group of virgins right nuns that's where the nuns came from this is where holy water came from because they had streams there and they would sell the water as holy water all the stuff in the Roman Catholic Church came from a lot of it came from the Oracle of Delphi the pythian spirit and so you know they would have all these around her there would be one woman though who was chosen she would be the Oracle these others would be that her Priestess is in training and when she finally passed away or went nutsle or whatever then they would pick one of these priestesses and that's what this woman was so she had been you know with the Oracle and I'm sure just full of Dean right but Paul said you know you're not going to attach yourself to my Ministry and polluted because that's what she was trying to do okay but he'd finally discerned the spirit operating behind her and this is why you got to have Discerning Spirits because there can be people in your life who seem like they're Christian they taught Christian they talk right but just inside of you if you have the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the holy spirit working you just inside of you is just going hey you'll start to feel your spirit grieve check bothered something right for this
person but when the Holy Spirit really the gift of Discerning the spirits works he'll tell you exactly what Spirit it is working I've had the Lord tell me exactly what demons working in somebody now sometimes he'll let you see it all right I have seen people for instance they did a healing service in McDonough Georgia on March first or second of 2008 and there was a woman sitting in the back and how would I put it I knew there was a spirit I could see it I you know it's like I could see her and I could see this Spirit draped over her shoulders like a almost like a snake with wings all right I could see through the spirit like he was transparent but I could see and immediately perceived the Discerning spirits that it was the gift I mean it was the the not to get with the gift of the Discerning experience I could see that it was the spirit of lust on her right strong and so of course later when she came forward for prayer I bound that demon and commanded it to leave her right and she and she fell over and hit the floor it was crazy we had an interesting evening that evening but of course I wasn't there to pastor and I wasn't there to continue on ministering her so I don't know whatever happened but like in this situation it just kind of dealt with the spirit I saw and dealt with at the moment and and had to move on um I've had people like we had a sister one time we were doing a service in Georgia Nancy and I when we went to Georgia for a brief time and a sister uh true you know sister in the Lord loved Jesus beautiful voice could sing I think I've shared this story before but she came forward for prayer because she couldn't sing I mean her voice there was something terrible for with her voice and I mean that was really her gift her and her husband you know would travel around and Minister and you know write songs and he would play and they would sing together and she had a beautiful voice she couldn't sing anymore so she comes forward for prayer and I remember I'm standing at the podium we're meeting in a hotel and she comes down the aisle and as she's coming down the aisle I see this demonic hand like it's cut off right here but it's got its fingers like these huge Nails dug into her throat and her right here and I see this hand it's like it stuck to her she's walking around with it and so when she came for prayer I said I just bound the spirit I said you this demon Spirit clutching I told her what I saw clutching your throat trying to still I command it to loose let go leave her now in Jesus name and I saw it let go and leave you know after that she was healed and began singing again she's still singing to this day
but I saw it so Discerning of spirits can be perceiving the spirit operating you don't necessarily see it in Vision form or with your eyes but it can be seen in the spirit Realm so like when I had the vision of the woman who was um in the grocery store aisle that was um that was the Discerning of spirit I mean I'm that's the gift I'm seeing in the spirit realm I'm seeing supernaturally I'm seeing something in the past there's no way unless it's the Holy Spirit right um just to give you another Discerning of spirits one I guess you could say or vision because Discerning of spirits is really where you're you're seeing two visions when you're seeing things in the spirit world let me just go and tell you when you're seeing them in a dream or a vision or they're actually manifested there and you see them like I've seen Angels appear in a room I've seen demons appear in a room very again very rare but it's happened over the years um those Visions are the Discerning of spirits it's your spirit man his your spirit man spiritualized seeing either what's going on or what something that's in the past that's gone on um I mean there's there's many examples of that I mean you could go Peter getting delivered from prison and the angels appearing um you know I think one good one would be Acts Acts chapter nine when uh Acts chapter 9 for instance verse 10. where it says and there was a certain disciple at Damascus named ananias to whom the Lord said in a vision ananias you know I'm here he said the Lord said arise go into the street it is called straight and inquire in the house of Judas one called Saul of Tarsus and look at what it says about Saul says he's praying and he has seen in a vision a man named ananias coming in and putting his hand on him so this wasn't just a word from the Lord this was a vision with a word from the Lord and ananias and just to put that out there about him he's just the average disciple he wasn't an apostle or one of the elders or one of the he was just a regular guy and the Lord appears to him in a vision speaks to him go pray for this man Saul of Tarsus because he's seen a vision of a guy named ananias coming to pray for him you know God does this kind of stuff all the time Peter's vision about the the uh you know the sheet let down and it opens and all the the Beast and the creeping things the unclean things and Jesus speaks to him said what I've cleansed call not common or unclean anymore and again he was giving him a vision he was seeing in the spirit realm something God wanted him to see and that's Discerning the spirits you're seeing in the spiritual realm what's going on and sometimes it's the Lord and sometimes he's showing you his work his operation
something he's doing even an angel Angelic Spirits or sometimes just showing you what Satan's doing the enemy's doing and his evil spirits are doing all right so we've covered all of them but now what do we have left we've got oh yeah the gifts of healing and the gift of the working of Miracles those I saved those for last because they're pretty self-explanatory except for just a slight difference all right um listen I believe according to Mark 16 go ahead and put up Mark 16. Jesus said this he said these signs shall follow them to believe in my name they shall cast out Devils they shall speak with new tongues mean new never known before brand new tongues they shall take up serpents that's taking authority over demons you don't always have to cast them out sometimes you just take authority over them to stop their operation says if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover now I believe this is clearly teaching that all can speak with tongues all believers can all believers can lay hands on the sick and and pray in the name of Jesus and see people healed there's other ways to be healed James chapter 5 says call for the Elders of the church let them be the sick person be Anointed with oil the elders pray for them the prayer face shall save the sick that's one way all believers I believe all believers and operate and pray for Jesus to heal in somebody that's sick or has some kind of Affliction however what is the difference between that and the gift of healing someone who operates in the gift of healing is going to have these Supernatural again surges of power where they're going to see it more frequent in their life if they really have this gift and operate in it um I've known people that I can say again all Christians can see people healed but I've I've noticed people like there was a guy what's his name um Nathan Morris no question in my mind I love the guy to me not the greatest preacher in the world right in the sense of his preaching and teaching ability now he may have improved since way back then but what I'm not saying that to put him down because he's a sincere young man but there is no question right that the gift the gifts of healing and working of Miracles operates in his life I went there I saw it with my own two eyes he preaches Jesus um of course he prayed for a woman that had been paralyzed in in a car accident a pastor's wife down in Mobile she's been paralyzed in a car accident in 1987 from the waist down she gets up out of the wheelchair healed in his service him praying for her we saw him pray for we were there pray for this little girl right in front of us
eight or nine years old was going blind in one eye and she said I you know I'm seeing so I look at him and I said you know have I seen Miracles playing praying for people Kevin seen Miracles praying for people yeah because we're Believers and we believe in that but I think there are people that really have the gift of healing and that's kind of their their it operates real strong in their life and real frequent in their life kind of like a prophet someone called to the ministry of a prophet it's going to operate a lot in the gift of Prophecy word of knowledge word of wisdom and visions but someone with the gift of healing is just going to see more people heal than your average Christian who doesn't operate in that gift okay now the difference between I'd say the gift of healing and the work of the miracle some people get these things why would there be why why is there two things isn't a healing a supernatural healing a miracle right not necessarily okay let me give you the difference healing can be a process meaning you let's say for instance you have something that you say you have a broken leg and it's going to take eight weeks or six weeks or eight weeks for that to heal right and you go up and you get prayed for and it doesn't you're not healed instantly but in two weeks you're completely healed what did God do there was there's a natural healing process but he sped it up so that would be healing it wasn't instantaneous but it did heal when either quicker or there's some things that don't heal that that are just they'll tell us you know doctors will say this isn't going away right on its own and over a period of time it could be a day it could be a week it could be a month it could be a year you've been prayed for but something that's not going it's not supposed to go away goes away that's healing so healing can be a process of time but it's still Supernatural because either it's faster than the normal process or it overrides stuff that you're not going to get healed from okay stuff that you know it's permanent unless God intervenes a miracle though a miracle is something that happens instantaneous all right and also can be like creative meaning like okay the man with the withered arm that Jesus healed on the Sabbath that caused such an uproar that was a miracle because there was no healing process Jesus said stretch forth your hand and his hand was instantly made whole normal right that's a miracle because boom um you know like the one of my elders the guy that one of the guys that I'm ordained under his name is Jean May he he has the documented evidence of
this I mean he has the proof of this that when he was in his 20s he had some kind of serious problem with his stomach to the point that in his 20s now think about this a young man in his 20s has to have his stomach surgically removed all right and he lived this way for six years five or six years and then he got into believing for miracles he went from being a Baptist to being one of us crazy Pentecostals and started believing that Jesus still heals and guess what he went to a service and got prayed for by a Believer who believes this and God gave him a brand new stomach made one out of thin air right out of nothing boom that's a miracle all right and you can see that I mean again you can see the differences in scripture for instance what is it Mark chapter 8 I think it is where Jesus Jesus prays for a blind man and he he says do you see anything and the blind man said well I see men in his trees walking meaning his vision got a little better he couldn't see anything before he's blind Jesus prays for him one time he says do you see anything I see Ministries but it's still blurry so what's Jesus do pray for him again and boom his vision comes back that's a healing there were other blind people Jesus said go wash in the pool of silo and you'll see and they went and he anointed their eyes with the with the spit and the dirt he said go wash in the pool asylum in a minute the moment they obey they wash boom instantaneous right there was no process to that so the only difference between miracle and healings I see is healing is a process take a little time Miracles instantaneous creative um another interesting interesting side note someone who truly uses the power and authority of Jesus Christ to cast out a demon Jesus himself called that a miracle casting out a dean I don't know why he calls it a miracle but he does so casting out a demon is counted as a miracle and sometimes when people are delivered from you many times in fact Jesus would cast The Demon out of somebody and they would be healed so demons cause sickness and infirmity and problems not all the time but a lot of the time it is then so these are the nine gifts of the holy spirit why are we talking about these this is our church history and function class right this is how the church is supposed to function trust me we could spend we've spent today what is it an hour no two hours now because we started late today but two hours dealing with just the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit and I
didn't even go through all the examples we could have pulled out of the gospels and out of the book of Acts um to show you how these things work or even we could even go back I mean some of these things you could go to you know the Book of Revelation how God was showing John these things those were the gifts of the holy spirit working through the Apostle John but what did we learn before we close out today what do we learn mostly number one gifts of the holy spirit are still for today biblically that's Bible don't let anybody talk you out of it um God doesn't want you ignorant of them so that's why we're studying them and looking at them and he wants you to desire them seek God and tell you're baptized in the Holy Spirit until you have the gift of tongues until you are you know he says First Corinthians 14 he that prays in an unknown tongue let him pray that he may interpret so God wants you to have this and oh before we close out let me let me let's go back to First Corinthians 12 real quick because I want to make this point before I close this is important this morning a lot of people miss this little Point here all right I want you to look at verse 4 and 5 first and six and seven just reduces now there are diversities of gifts but the Same Spirit and there are differences of administrations but the same Lord and there are diversities of operations but it is the same God which worketh all in all so differences of the gifts different operations but look at verse seven everybody looks over this verse but the manifestation of the spirit meaning the operation when the gifts of the Spirit manifest reveal Works in you he says but the manifestation of the spirit is given to who some every man what's he talking about here that he wants and I believe this is God revealing his his perfect will to us every Christian to have the manifestation of the spirit the gifts of the Spirit this is in the context here this is right in the middle of the gifts of the Spirit and then he says go down to verse 11 after he lists the nine gifts that we just covered he says here but all these worketh that one in the same uh the self-same spirit look at look at this last part of the sentence dividing to every man severally as he will severally meaning God doesn't want to just give you one he wants to give you several gifts of the Holy Spirit you may have a different package that I have in the sense of the gifts
like I said I think like Nathan Morris definitely the gift of healing and working in Miracles is in his life but then there are people that are going to be more geared toward the prophetic Revelation gifts word of knowledge Word of Wisdom Visions the gift of Prophecy see what I'm saying there's going to be some that just operate in the gift of faith I think Smith Wigglesworth was known as a great healing evangelist in the early you know 1940s to Mid 1940s and he was called the Apostle of faith I believe the gift of faith just operated in his life so strong and so frequent um but anyway notice he says there the manifestation of the spirits given to every man so God's not saying that there are people in the body of Christ that he doesn't want to give his gifts to that he didn't want the gifts to manifest it and then he says I want to give to every man severally I want to give you more than one so that's why he says he that prays another own tongue that's one gift let him pray that he may interpret God wants you to have the gifts of interpretation God wants you to prophesy so there's three right there he says I want you to have I want you to operate in pray for it ask desire see want it go after this until you receive until you're doing it that's what you that's the heart you're supposed to have toward these things no do we put them above preaching the Gospel of Jesus and leading people to Jesus no but we don't neglect them either okay all right we're going to pray before we quit today I do want to put this one on YouTube uh since it goes along with last week's because I think there are people that need both of those these together and they were we greatly encouraged last week so but let's pray I love it Father in heaven we thank you today for um just your mercy and Grace and your love and God that you want your people to be filled with your Holy Spirit and power and gifts that it's not done away with like we've been lied to by pastors and seminaries and other Bible schools and Lord that your word is clear that the baptism the holy spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues the nine gifts of the holy spirit are still for your church you you don't want us to be ignorant of it you don't want us to to have a passive or dismissive attitude about it you want us to desire and covet the gifts and learn how to operate and flow and yield uh to your spirit working in our lives and I pray that for each one of these students and those that will be watching seeing this Lord I ask you to guide them into the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gifts
of the holy spirit according to the scriptures and I pray this in Jesus name amen all right glass dismissed