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And let us begin this evening by reading in the First Epistle to the Corinthians and chapter twelve. The First Epistle to the Corinthians and chapter Verse Verse 1. Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. And then from chapter fourteen and verse twenty.
Fourteen and twenty, brethren, be not children in mind. Howbeit in malice be you babes, but in mind be men. Now, as you will remember, the topic that you have set before me in these four weeks is the topic of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, their use and regulation. Last week, in order to put this topic into some kind of context, we thought together about the Holy Spirit himself and that glorious ministry that has been committed to him by God on the behalf of God's Son.
We thought about the great objectives that the Holy Spirit has as he carries on his active ministry. We saw how wide those objectives were, how many, and how glorious. And we thought of them at length for this practical reason, that now as we come to think about the gifts that God has given us, and we think how we ought to use those gifts given us, we might have a clear picture in our mind of the objectives that we too ought to be aiming at in the use of our gifts.
The witness to Christ in this world is not left primarily to us, thank God. The Lord Jesus observed that when he went away, the Holy Spirit would come, and it would be the Holy Spirit's responsibility to conduct throughout the whole world God's witness to his glorified Son. Thank God this evening that the weight of that responsibility does not rest primarily with us, but primarily with God the Holy Spirit. And thank God for the glorious record of the centuries, the heart-stirring way that the Holy Spirit has fulfilled his great commission and carried on the witness to the name of the risen Christ, so that starting from the secrecy of the upper room in Jerusalem, it is patch- he has spread the name of Christ throughout the length and breadth of our planet.
But, said our Lord Jesus, when first the Holy Spirit witnesses, then secondly, you too shall witness. Ours is that great and glorious privilege of using whatever gift God gives us to aim at the same glorious objectives as the Holy Spirit himself aims at. So then, last week we studied those objectives, and tonight we're to come to think about our own spiritual gifts, how to control them, how to use them, our attitude and our motive towards them, and our evaluation of them and their, uh, results.
One or two, therefore, preliminary observations as we come to study these chapters. What I propose to do tonight and tomorrow and next week, God willing, is to work through, I trust with you, to work through these three chapters, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, and to examine them quite closely and as rigorously as is in my powers to do. They are long chapters, they are very detailed chapters, they are full of very close logical argument. And therefore, we must attempt as best we can, late at night though it is, to bring out the very best powers of attention we have out of the cupboard where we keep them, and to apply them with all due rigor and concentration, you'll see, uh, for the hour or so that we are together.
The toil of doing it will keep our brains warm in this cold temperature. But then you'll say, we shall also notice that in the course of making his statements and arguing his case, the Apostle Paul very often uses two-sided arguments, arguments with two sides to them, two parts to them. Whereas at first, when we first meet them, he will seem to be just repeating himself, we shall have to take the trouble to see that he's not repeating himself. He is in masterly and balanced fashion putting two sides to the question, and pointing that out will once more involve me in a great deal of very close argumentation.
We shall attempt to follow these arguments, first of all, in the order in which they come. We shall try to resist the temptation to say, ah, ah, yes, yes, I know what chapter twelve says, but, but, but what about chapter fourteen? I shall try to resist that. I shall attempt to come at them with you as the Corinthians would have come at them when they first heard these chapters read in their church, taking the arguments as they come, noticing their order, what Paul puts first, and what he puts in the middle, and what he puts at the end.
And then we shall try to notice the proportion of his arguments, what arguments he gives a great deal of space and time to, so that we may concentrate on them in particular. So all I can promise you is hard work, both tonight and in the nights that shall follow. Perhaps some of you might be tempted at this point to protest, and you will say, but Mr. Preacher, you are now giving evidence that you are wrongheaded. I mean to say, the topic of spiritual gift, surely that topic above all topics in the whole of the Bible is meant to be a topic full of verve and fervor and spiritual elation and shoutings of hallelujah.
Is it not a complete travesty, a grotesque misrepresentation of the whole topic, to reduce it to a couple of hours of long and learned and logical, rigorous argument and detail. And if that's how you feel, then I think I understand your heart. And I shall have to say a few words in defense before we proceed. I could wish that these chapters were full of verve and fervor and exaltation and elation, and that they would have you shouting hallelujah. But then, of course, I wasn't allowed to write the first epistle to the Corinthians, do see.
I would have written it differently. It wasn't I who wrote it, it was the Apostle Paul who wrote it. And therefore, if I would be faithful to what he has written, I must simply repeat and expand upon what he said. But to my rescue at that point comes two or three observations, do say, and the first is this, that if you're talking about spiritual gift, then could you find for me a bigger spiritual gift than that which the Apostle Paul had? I rather fancy he had half a dozen gifts, I don't know. He was a preacher of the gospel, and he was a teacher of the Gentiles.
He was an apostle, he was an evangelist. If ever a man had a plethora of spiritual gifts, it was Paul. Most of us wouldn't be sitting here tonight had Paul not first brought the gospel to Europe and used his gift for the evangeli- evangelization of us old out of the way Gentiles. And here, Paul, the gifted Paul, is using his spiritual gift, particularly his gift of teacher and pastor. He had others, of course. But if you want to see an example of a spiritual gift being used at the level of teaching, then here we have it in front of our very noses.
Do you get the point? These three chapters are the result of an inspired apostle using his spiritual gift to teach us. That's my first line of defense. And my second, this, and here I'm sure you'll agree with me, that behind this great apostle Paul, as he teaches us, is none other than the Holy Spirit. And if I want to know about spiritual gifts, and how they should be used, and what spiritual gifts I ought to be seeking, and what my motives ought to be in seeking those spiritual gifts and in using them, and what my objectives ought to be, well then, to whom could I possibly go better and more authoritative than the gracious Holy Spirit himself?
Who here tells us about the spiritual gifts he has given and the spiritual gifts that he would empower us to you. And my third line of defense is a- is as follows. Round about Christmas time, my jalopy, being a very venerable jalopy, broke down, you'll say. It was a minor complaint, arthritis in the work somewhere, you'll say, but, um, it broke down. And when the hours of Yuletide were gone by, I called my motor mechanic.
He's a bright young man. And when he arrived in all his kindness, there he came up in a spiffing motor car set by my jalopy. My jalopy blushed for very shame. Anyway, there was he, Dorsey, in his magnificent carriage. Uh, I cast an envious eye upon it, and I said, uh, that's a beautiful car, and he said, yes, I got it secondhand. Uh, you'll see, but he knows how to do up these things. And I gently inquired, and I said, how much would they cost? You'll see, I had notions in my head, and he told me what they cost, you'll see. But then, looking at me straight in the eye, he delivered a warning. He said, you know, it's not everybody's car to drive, this one isn't. I said, oh, no, he said, you'll see, the thing is so powerful that if you're uncareful, you put your foot down and the back comes trizzing round to meet you in the front.
And I said, that would never do for me, for I wouldn't know what to do if the front came round to the back and the back to the front. What do you do then, you'll see? So I said, ah, pity, yes, yes, I understand, yes, yes, yes, and we went about our business. But you'll see, that is the fact, isn't it? The car was very powerful, but they couldn't be trusted to a incompetent driver like me to drive a very powerful car. I wouldn't know how to drive it properly. It wouldn't be the fault of the car, it would be the fault of me. I could do a lot of damage to myself and other folks if I didn't learn patiently how to control this very powerful car. And you know, I'm not denying tonight that what God's gifts, these spiritual gifts, can be exceedingly powerful.
But the more powerful your spiritual gift is, my dear madam, my dear sir, the more you will need to seek the instruction of the Holy Spirit, just how to use that powerful gift of yours. So that you may use it to your own profit and to the profit of the church. And not do damage to yourself and others. Through your spiritual gift. And not damage yourself by seeking spiritual gifts that are not within your competence to use, and which the Holy Spirit has never designed to give you.
So then we start upon our task, and we come to the very first statement that Paul makes here about spiritual gifts, and let's read it together if you have your scripture in hand. You'll need to check me tonight and in these coming weeks, because in some things, perhaps in a number of things, you will be inclined to disagree with me at the first. You may still be inclined to disagree with me at the last, but that's another story. At least give me the opportunity to point out that what I'm talking about, I'm attempting to expound what's here written in Holy Scripture. And the very first thing that Paul is led to mention when it comes to the topic of spiritual gift is here in verses one, two, and three of chapter twelve.
Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. You know that when you were Gentiles, you were led away unto those dumb idols, howsoever you might be led. Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking in the Spirit of God says, Jesus is anathema, and no man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit. So from those verses, we observe as follows. The first thing, I repeat it, the first thing that the Holy Spirit guides Paul to say, the first thing that Paul feels led to urge upon the believers in this question of spiritual gift is that spiritual gift must be tested to see whether it is a genuine gift of the Holy Spirit or whether not.
Why does it need to be tested? Paul gives us one hint here in verse two. The people to whom he was writing were many of them Gentiles. Before they became Christians, some of them had been involved, most of them perhaps, in pagan religions of various kinds. Some of them, he says, ha- were led away unto dumb idols. And the verb he uses is very interesting, isn't it? He says they were led away, as though some power got hold of them and led them away.
Not they went after them, they were led after them. Idolatry has a great fascination for many people, but in addition to that, there were some religions in the ancient world that were what you might call ecstatic religions. Let me just mention one example too. The worship of Dionysus that came from Asia Minor across into Greece, and from Greece into Rome in the ancient world, was the worship of a god who was thought to be the deification of wine, and the deification of ecstatic experience.
Wine actually, uh, served a very small part in the worship of Dionysus. The form it took in Greece was this. Women folks, and it was generally women in Greece rather than the men, would band together in a group. They would have as their leader a young man, preferably good looking, of course, but if they couldn't, well, another. And he would be a young man whose hair was allowed to grow long. At a certain time in the year, this band of women led by their young men, they would leave their homes, they would leave their chores in the house, you know, the getting of breakfast and the catching of the seven twenty eight into Belfast and such like things, and they would leave even their babies in their cradles, and also would go up the mountains to celebrate the worship of Dionysus.
The women would dress themselves up in fawn skins, you know, uh, uh, the young of, of deer, fawns, fawn skins. They would carry a fennel reed in their hands, suitably adorned with tufts of material that was thought to have magical powers. As they followed their leader, this young man, they came to believe that, uh, he was perhaps the god incarnate. As they followed him, they hoped that the spirit of the god would enter into them and give them wonderful ecstatic experiences.
When they got up the mountaintop, they would very often sit down in a company on the cushion of the leaves and, uh, uh, nurse the young of animals and cuddle them peacefully. Then on times they would start singing in the spirit. A beautiful and weirdly beautiful kind of music, according to the reports of those that heard them. Delightful, weird, almost supernatural music. And all of it apparently delightful. Not, uh, somebody standing there and giving out a chorus, but somehow a power coming upon them, so that they sang in the power of this spirit, whatever it was.
Of course, there were other sides to their ecstasy. Presently, they would rise up like a pack of wolves run down the mountainside, and coming across a heifer or a bull, they would attack it, and by sheer brute force, these women would tear the animal from limb, limb from joint, with a power that was certainly more than normal in human beings. And they would dip their fingers in the raw flesh and eat the raw flesh. And in their ecstatic state, it would seem to them that that bull that they had torn to pieces represented the God, and as they ate it, the God was going into them.
They called it in Greek, they experienced entheos, meaning God in you, and the elation and the ecstasy that accompanied it, they called entheosiasmos, from which we get our English enthusiasm. Then they would run down the mountainside to the next village, enter into the homes of the people, take snatch little babies out of their cots, for instance, and put them on their shoulder and go dancing away without holding them, and the babies would stay put on their shoulder. Such was their sense of balance. And when the farmers came out to protect their homesteads and flung spears at them, the spears would pierce their flesh, but no blood would come.
It isn't just in Christian circles that you meet ecstatic experiences or singing in the spirit. The great Greek tragedian writer Euripides wrote a magnificent play on this very topic of this ancient worship of Dionysus and its ecstasies and its, uh, beliefs. It was very necessary, therefore, that Paul should first state to the believers at Corinth, some of them would have been gent- were all Gentiles, and some of them mixed up in the pagan subjective cults of the ancient world.
It was exceedingly important for him to remind them that they were to test their experiences to make sure that what they now had as Christians was the real thing and not a deception. And by what test then would you test spiritual gift to see whether it is genuinely a gift from God and not some counterfeit. The first and foremost test, and here we come to the second very important thing.
The first and foremost test of a spiritual gift is the doctrine that is conveyed by that gift. No one, says Paul Dulce, no one speaking in the Spirit of God, says Jesus, is anathema. Now, what he means is this. He's not talking about ordinary everyday statement or conversation. He's talking about what a person would say when they came under the influence of this spiritual power and spoke in some kind of ecstasy.
Or when somebody got up and professed to be a Christian teacher and to be led and empowered and enlightened by the Holy Spirit and proceeded to teach the Christian congregation. Somebody in the process of exercising his gift. Then what does he say? His gift is to be tested according to its doctrinal content. What does it say about the Lord Jesus? An evil spirit will refuse to acknowledge the unique deity of Jesus Christ our Lord.
They may talk about Lord, they prefer to talk about Jesus, but that Jesus is the sole and only Lord, that they will not admit. You say, are you not now delving into remote things that are not likely to trouble us here in Ulster? We'll say my great-great-great-great-grandmother and her great-great-great-grandmother were all of them Christians, so have you not mistaken your congregation to warn us of these things? Well, I hope I have.
We'll see. But we're moving into a changing world. Up and coming and sweeping America and sweeping the continent, Germany in particular, and soon one day, who knows, here in Ireland, will be the tenets of the new age. That New Age movement is a mixture of all kinds of religion, and a great part of it is Hinduism. We had a little crude smattering of it some years ago, nineteen seventy two or three, three or four it was.
I remember seeing the lorries go through Belfast, all decorated up with garlands, and they called themselves the Divine Light Mission. They were rather an amateur crowd, of course. Uh, this good man, uh, he came from India, and I made a lot of money, incidentally, but then his mother home at India decided, after all, he wasn't the Messiah, his brother was, so she called him home and sent his brother. It's nice to have somebody in control, isn't it? Anyway, we'll say, um, uh, they call themselves the Divine Light Mission. And I remember one afternoon distinctly, there came a knock on my door, and outside was a dear young lady, and she was canvassing for this aforesaid Divine Light Mission, we'll say.
And she informed me that she'd been to London and she'd seen the light. Marvelous experience it was, she said. She'd seen the light, and she wanted me, of course, I think also to go to London and and see the light. And what did I think of that? And I said, my dear, I've no doubt at all about what you've seen, the light. My question would be, which light? She said, what do you mean, which light? Well, I said, you know, Holy Scripture tells us that Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. You'll see. And his minions do the same. And we have to distinguish, don't we? Between that false light of Satan and his minions and the true light of the world.
Which light did you see, I said? And how do you know which one you saw? As we stood talking, her leader came up, and he began to get rather angry about us narrow-minded Northern Ireland people. I felt that was a compliment, being an Englishman myself. I do say, and I, I get a bit angry. We all believe the same, he said. You narrow-minded people wanting to make differences between religions. We all believe the same. I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, just like you do, he said. But I also believe that this good Indian man, he's the Messiah too. I said, where is he at the moment?
He said, in i- i- i- in Boston, in the States. I said, that proves he isn't the Messiah, because our blessed Lord said that if anybody came to you and said, look, Messiah is in New York or Boston or somewhere else, that was sheer straight evidence that he wasn't the Messiah at all. I said, you don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah, do you? Me, I do. No, I said, you don't. There happened to be two milk bottles on my doorstep, and pointing to the, uh, milk bottles, I said, now look, hold, sir. Uh, see those bottles? Yes, two bottles, aren't there? Yes, he said. I said, suppose they were both of them filled with milk.
Would you refer to them as two milks? You wouldn't, would you? Two bottles, but not two milks. No, of course not. It's one and the same substance, isn't it, in both of them? It's milk. Only there's one lot of milk in one bottle and one in another. He said, yes, well, that's how it is. I said, so what? Well, I said, now, I'll tell you what you believe, don't you, sir? You don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah, really. The Messiah to you is the great world spirit. And you really believe that at one point in history, the great world spirit came and filled Jesus of Nazareth and used Jesus of Nazareth for his task.
And when that task was over, Jesus of Nazareth went off into the world beyond to some sixth or seventh degree of heaven. And then eventually your man came along, and the same great world spirit filled your man. Isn't that what you believe? Well, he said, yes, actually, if you push me, that is what I believe. I said, I thought so. So there are two bottles. Jesus of Nazareth and your guru. Neither of them was the Messiah, they were just receptacles into which the great world spirit, who according to you is the Messiah, was pleased to dwell for some period when they were on earth.
So he said, well, that, that, well, if you want to be, if you want to be theological, that is what I believe. I said, yes, and now let me read you a verse from the scripture. And I read him that famous verse from one John two and chapter twen- uh, verse 22. Who is the liar? Save he that denies that Jesus is the Christ, is the Messiah. Jesus wasn't filled with the Christ, he was the Christ. And you will see from the strength of John's language, loving apostle though he was, you will see the seriousness of the matter, would you not?
Here is the difference between heaven and hell. Here is the difference between loyalty to the blessed Lord Jesus or fundamental disloyalty and treason to him. The test we are to apply to all spiritual gifts is the test of its doctrine, and in particular, what it says about the Lord Jesus. And you will perceive from the difficulty I had on my own doorstep that we have to be prepared to be rigorous in our analysis, for the powers of deception are exceedingly cunning.
Maybe over centuries of preaching of the gospel here in Ireland, we have been protected, but as the age proceeds, and many people whose Christian faith has only been nominal and virtually non-existent are attracted to all kinds of new movements and so-called spiritual movements, such as the New Age. As that age goes onwards, we shall need grace and clarity of thought to test so-called gifts, whether they be of God or not.
There are other tests prescribed in scripture. I may not spend more time on them, save only to notice one imprecation. If we have to test a gift by the doctrine that it conveys. We must know what the person says, mustn't we? That will have particular application to those who claim to speak in a tongue. The validity or otherwise of their gift is not to be decided upon simply by the fact that it seems to be supernatural.
The validity or otherwise of the gift depends on what is being said. And for that purpose, you must know exactly what is being said. You couldn't afford to be put off with mere paraphrases. So then that is the first thing, and I put it first because Paul puts it first, and with that we go on to two arguments from verses four to eleven. This is one of those occasions when Paul has a double statement putting two sides to a question. First side, verse four: Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the same God who worketh all things in all. So here, what Paul emphasizes is that whatever differences there are among the gifts, there are all kinds of gifts geared to do different jobs, and therefore their actual practical use is different, and the technique they use is different. There are different gifts, and there are different administrations, and so forth. When it comes to spiritual gift, every gift has this in common, that it comes from the Blessed and Holy Trinity.
The man who is gifted to do a healing has his gift from the Lord. The man who preaches the gospel likewise has his gift from the Lord. The man who is a dreary, old, painstaking pedestrian teacher, believe it or not, has his gift from the Lord. You say, why make that? Well, because sometimes we fall, do we not, into the trap of making false distinctions. Many years ago now, more than I care to remember, thirty plus, I was being entertained in the home of a good man who placed a great deal of emphasis on spiritual gifts, and uh, so forth and so on.
He was inquiring whether I would be prepared to come and speak to the particular group he associated with. I said to him, well, would they really welcome me? Then he thought a moment, he said, well, perhaps they wouldn't. You are not charismatic, said he. I said, I am. No, he said, you're not. I said, I am, pardon me. For all these gifts, if you want to be very learned, and now and again I try, if you want to be very learned, well, you'll have the Greek for it then. One gift is charisma, and two gifts will be charismata, you'll see.
And if you want an adjective, well, put it in decent English. Uh, it's the best language in the world. Cha- charismatic, if you want an adjective. Of course, the gift of tongues is charismatic, but please, ladies and gentlemen, so is the gift of a teacher. It is a charisma. And so is the d- gift of an evangelist. It is akarisma. You all say, and I personally am a little unchristian at this level, eh, to be honest, resent it a little bit.
I wasn't to do that, did I? For the whole point and purpose of the verses that we just read is this, that whatever your gift is, if it is a gift of God, it is a charisma. There are not some gifts of the Spirit that are charismatic and some gifts of the Spirit that are not charismatic. That's a false notion. The very verses are telling you the opposite. All gifts, whatever their kind, come from the blessed Lord himself, the gifts of the risen Christ, and are worked by the Holy Spirit of God. All of them are charismata, all of them charismatic.
We needn't spend any more time on that, for it's obvious. But now come verses seven to ten. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit with all. For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, and to another gift of healings in the one Spirit, and to another workings of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another discernings of spirits, to another divers kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally, even as he will.
So the first, uh, passage was saying that though there are many different kinds of gifts, they all come from the gracious persons of the Trinity. But you may have a question, and that question is this: who decides who gets what gift? Who decides whether you'll be an evangelist or a help, or the gift of this or that or tatter? Who decides? And ultimately, the verse says, all these worketh the one and the same spirit.
He not only empowers them, but he distributes to each one even as he will. Who decides who gets what gift? The decision lies in the sovereign choice of the Holy Spirit of God. He decides. You say, Mr. Preacher, are you not forgetting that a later chapter says that we are to seek spiritual gifts, and that if an occasion is appropriate, we may ask to be given a spiritual gift? I thank you for the, for the reminder, but I, I hadn't actually forgotten, as it happened.
You'll say, yes, it is open to us to ask in a given situation where there is obvious and pressing need to ask whether the Lord might, in his goodness and wisdom, give us such and such a gift. But even as we ask, we should have to bear in mind that the Holy Spirit is sovereign, and we must be content to leave it ultimately to the sovereign choice of the Holy Spirit. It's he who decides. And presently, as we shall see, there is tremendous comfort and psychological health in observing this thing.
Mm. Ah, I've Saturday night confessions to make, I suppose, and that's why it's upon me, but um, if I were to confess, and you will not tell anybody else, will you? Public secret this. I've always wished I hadn't been a teacher but been an evangelist, you see. Mm-hmm. That's why I make a poor teacher and still worse an evangelist, actually. You see, I ought to have concentrated on the teaching, didn't I? But you see, the evangelist, marvelous man. He gets up and preaches, and folks come tripping down the aisle, and he can point in the course of ten years to one hundred and twenty five people here, there, and everywhere, and he's brought them to the Lord.
And you say, Mr. Teacher, sir, there's no reason for you to be green with envy because all these converts need teaching, don't they? I know they do. But then listen to Paul, and you can't escape this one. Talking to the Corinthians, he says, you can have ten thousand instructors in Christ, says Paul, but you've only one potfather. And I say, yes, yes, yes. And what wouldn't I have given to be an evangelist like that? To be able to point to them and say, a whole church there, look, I'm their spiritual father. I led them to Christ. Marvelous, isn't it? Any old body can come along and teach them. But I'm not an evangelist.
And if I don't learn my lesson, I shall make myself very inefficient and eat my heart out with all kinds of jealousies and wrong ideas. Unless I come to see this and accept it and praise God for it, who decides what gift I shall have? The decision lies with the sovereign Holy Spirit of God. And there I can rest, can't I? How do you get a gift, anyway? By what process? To explain these things, Paul moves on now, does he not?
This is chapter twelve and verse twelve onwards. First of all, to give us an illustration. For as the body, that is the human body, is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body. So also is the Christ. So first comes the physical illustration, and Paul has now been talking about the fact that there's a variety of gifts, but they are all given and worked by the one and the same Trinity. Now he goes on to illustrate, uh, the situation. God, says he, you will see, is building a body, the body of Christ. And how the body of Christ works, you may see if you contemplate for a moment an ordinary physical body.
If you can bear it, there's one standing in front of you now. Uh, bear a glimpse of it and then turn away, and you will perceive that, uh, this body is one body, but it's got many members. Though for all the fact that there are many members, it's one body. This whole body in front of you is not one monolith. It has a variety of members and therefore a variety of gifts, yes. And for all there are many members and many gifts, there is only one body. But that's simple enough. And Paul draws the analogy, and he says, so also is not Christ, but the Christ.
Meaning not only the Lord Jesus himself personally, but the Lord Jesus and all those who believe on the Lord Jesus, together with the Lord Jesus, form the body of Christ, and he is the head, and we are the members. And that's how we come by our gifts, actually. By being in the body of Christ. So our first question now is, how do you get into the body of Christ? You see, you won't have a gift at all, my good man, unless you can first get into the body of Christ, will you? Hm.
How do you think my body was put together? Do you suppose my parents went to all the secondhand shops they could find in Ipswich and, and collected a few odd feet that were no longer required, went up to the local hospital and said, have you got a decent head to put on this thing here? No, it wasn't done like that. You'll say, how did you get your ability to push a pen? Well, it didn't they manage to find up in Harrods in London a special pair of hands that were good of it and said, this would be a good pair of hands to put on this body. Bodies aren't made that way. I got this pair of hands because, well, I was born a body and found out afterwards, it took me some while, that I got a pair of hands.
Took me a lot longer to know how to use them and what could be done with them and what shouldn't be done with them. And how do we get our spiritual gifts? By first of all being incorporated into the body of Christ, that's how we get them. Oh, my good friend, you'll never urge your unconverted friends to try and get a gift, will you? I've known folks to try and urge upon unbelievers to come and get the gift of prophecy or the gift of speaking in tongues. What a perilous thing that is to do. We may get something or other, it won't be the genuine thing.
Our Lord himself has warned, has warned us that you could speak prophecies and not even be a child of God. Matthew chapter seven it is. Some shall come in that day, says he, and say, but Lord, we prophesied in your name, and in your name we cast out demons. And he shall have to reply, but I never knew you. It is getting the cart very seriously before the horse to try and urge unconverted men and women to try and get some Christian spiritual gift. How is the body of Christ formed?
Well, Paul goes on to explain, for in one spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, and were all made to drink of one spirit. Now, many people have found this verse a complicated verse, and I beg you now to have patience with me as I spend my last ten minutes trying my best to explain what Paul is saying. How do we get into the body of Christ? By two great operations involving God's Holy Spirit. One is, verse thirteen, in one spirit were we all baptized into one body.
Operation number one. Operation number two, and were all made to drink of one spirit. That's how the body of Christ is formed. That's how you get into it. Two operations, baptism in the Holy Spirit, being baptized in the Holy Spirit, and being made to drink of the Holy Spirit. The first operation then, in one spirit you were baptized unto or into one body. Let us notice it is not by the Holy Spirit.
The verse does not mean that the Holy Spirit took you and the Holy Spirit baptized you. If it had meant that, that you have been baptized by the Holy Spirit, the Greek would have used a very different preposition. As it is, what it is saying is you were baptized by the Holy Spirit or with the Holy Spirit. The Greek has in the Holy Spirit. It's in or with, it being a preposition of instrument and not of agent. Don't bother about that if you don't care for grammar.
Let's take an illustration that will illustrate it and put it beyond doubt. The first person in the New Testament to talk about baptism in the Holy Spirit was John the Baptist, of course. And you will remember the occasion and the context. As he was baptizing people, calling on them to repent, and thousands were coming to his baptism, the religious officials came to him to inquire, who are you making all this splash here out in the wilderness? Who are you? Are you Moses or Elijah? And he said, no, no, no. Well, are you the Messiah then? And he said, no. No, no, I'm not the Messiah.
Yes, goodness me, no. Uh, gentlemen, said he, you see, I baptize you in water. That's all I can do. There comes one after me who is mightier than I, the same shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit. And we do well to pause there to grasp the significance of what is being said. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is not some little incidental thing that among others happens to you when you trust the Savior. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is that ministry of the Lord Jesus that marks him out unique among all the prophets that ever have been.
Be they Moses or Elijah or Elisha or Isaiah himself, not to speak of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Obadiah. Great men of God, inspired though they were. They fade into virtual insignificance by the side of Jesus Christ, God's son. What's there different about him? Well, this to begin with, he can baptize people in the spirit. You said it last week, let's recall it. The Holy Spirit isn't just so much stuff, and he's not merely so much power like electricity is.
The Holy Spirit is God. Think who Jesus must be if he can take you and put you in the Holy Spirit. This is one of his unique glories. From what the Lord Jesus does, we can take an analogy from what John did, can't we? I baptize you in water. So this is you, and you come to John, and he baptizes you in water, huh?
With water. So John does a baptizing, and you get baptized, and John baptizes you, meaning he puts you in the water. I baptize you in water, uh, there stands one among you, he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit. Do you see the parallel? When you come to Christ, Christ takes you. Christ does the baptizing. Christ baptizes you in the Spirit. He puts you in the Spirit. Oh, magnificent part of our salvation. This is not some little extra, some icing on the cake, a few thousand hundreds and thousands and a little candle to decorate your Christian birthday cake.
This is the very basis of the gospel. And hold your humble head up high at the wonder of it. And having met Christ, because you've met Christ and trusted him, the incarnate Son of Deity has not only forgiven your sin and pardoned your transgression, he's taken you, a worm of the earth, and put you in the Holy Spirit. Never let the glory of it depart, never let it reduce to some little minor ecstatic experience.
Ah, but even that, glorious as it is, wouldn't be enough, would it? Did you not notice that there are two operations to form the body of Christ? In one spirit you were baptized, and you were all made to drink of one spirit. So we've got two operations, haven't we? Not one. Baptized in the spirit, given to drink of the spirit. You say, what's the difference, and why do you need two? Well, let me illustrate that again. Here's me standing in front of you. I'm now about to baptize myself in water. Well, I can't do the whole lot, so take this finger, it's part of me. You'll say this finger here, I'm about to baptize it in water.
Watch what happens to the finger. Here it goes. It's about to be baptized in water. You say, what happens? Well, you say the finger goes into the water. Huh. So that's the finger in the water. That's baptism in water. Now I'm going to give myself to drink of water. You watch what happens to the water. You watch. Hm. And this time it's not me going into the water, is it? It's the water going into me? You get that? That is vastly important, isn't it? I in the water, the water in me. Yeah.
Why do you need both? Because to have a body at all, you must have both. Take a little fish. And a fish is different from us humans, isn't it? Can't live on land. If the fish is going to live, it's got to be in the water and the water in it. If the fish is in the water, but the water doesn't get into the fish, then the fish dies. And if there's some water in the fish, but the fish isn't in the water, it's out on the bank, it will gasp its last and die.
And when it comes to our human bodies, the same is true, isn't it? Only our element is not water, but air. To be a body, to be alive, madam, you need two things, and two things simultaneously. You have to be in the air, and the air has to be in you. You can't have one without the other and still be a, a workable human body, can you? If you were to come to me and say, now, okay, gooding, we're going to do an experiment. You'll say, so, uh, uh, uh, um, you come up to me and you put your hands around my neck, and I'm in the air, but the air isn't in me.
No use it. You keep that up for long, I shall not only be half alive, I shall not be alive at all. You say, we're now going to do an experiment. We're going to sit you on the outside of a rocket and send you off into space, old chap. So take a deep breath, because there's no air outside up there, up the loft, so you'll need a lot of air with you. Take a deep breath, whew, and off you rocket me into space. And what happens then? Well, I just go pop, that's all, because the air is in me, but I'm no longer in the air. Yes, to be a viable human body, you've got to have two things simultaneously.
You can't have one without the other. You've got to be in the air and the air in you. And to be a member of the body of Christ, you need two things, and you must have them simultaneously. You have to be in the Spirit, and the Spirit in you. There is no such thing as receiving the Spirit within you and not yet being baptized by the Holy Spirit. You must have both simultaneously, else you're not in the body of Christ at all.
And Paul puts the point quite plainly in Romans 8 and verse nine, talking to every believer. He says, you are not in the flesh. The flesh might be in you, of course, still a lot, but you, the real you, since you found Christ, you are not in the flesh. You are in the Spirit if the Spirit is in you. That's a glorious part of our salvation, isn't it? We were talking about gifts. We'll come back to that, God willing, next week. But here is the very foundation of our being gifts, of being given gifts and becoming gifts and operating truly in the body of Christ.
The first absolute sine qua non is that we shall be members of the body of Christ. How do we become members? The answer to that is our very basic Christian gospel and salvation. We become members of the body of Christ by being taken by the blessed Lord Jesus and baptized into the Holy Spirit, and then by that same Lord Jesus being given to drink of the Holy Spirit, so that from then onwards and forever we are in the Spirit, and the Spirit is in us.
Next week, God willing, we shall have to consider the implications that come from this. But as now we reach the end of our study and our minds are tired, let's pray that God will help us remember what we have seen and help us, as we perceive its glory, to be ever more grateful to him for this wonderful salvation. Shall we pray? O God, we praise thee as the wonder comes upon our spirits this evening. Before our salvation, thy son came to our world and became human. That in Jesus Christ our Lord, God was and shall be forever with us, veiled in flesh, but Godhead see.
And O Lord, if that were not wonder enough, we bless thee now, and our hearts bow down in worship before thee for this other wonder, that thou hast not only forgiven us, but taken us mere creatures of time and put us in God, the Holy Spirit. Oh Lord, this is more than I we can, or almost more than we can bear. It is certainly going beyond all that we could understand. It goes beyond our very words to thank thee sufficiently for it, but in the name of our Lord Jesus, thank we thee we do, and from our very hearts, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen. Now shall we bring the meeting to an orderly close by singing the last two verses of number five hundred and seventy eight. Five hundred and seventy eight. Give me a faithful heart likeness to thee, that each departing day henceforth may see some work of love begun, some deed of kindness done, some wanderer sought one, something for thee. The last two verses, verses three and four, and we stand after the introduction, please.
