Dealing with Controversial Gifts

I met a young couple recently from Iran. They are actually boat people, asylum seekers, who came to faith, came to Christianity in a profound way. The husband in this couple was very well educated, both of them were very devout Muslims, very devout, practicing Muslims. And one night, this man had a dream of someone he instantly knew was Jesus Christ, who came to him and invited him to follow Him, Jesus. And he woke up that morning.

He said it was about 05:00 and to his surprise, he could hear the crying of his sister down the hall and his mum and his sister talking to one another in sort of hushed, excited voices. He got up to hear what was going on, and to his absolute amazement, he heard that they had experienced the very same dream that very same night. That morning after, you know, talking and sharing and explaining what had happened, that morning, again very early, seven or 08:00 in that morning, a neighbour came to them and said that he had been a secret Christian for many, many years, that he had this family on his heart many times to come and share the gospel with them, but this morning he felt particularly that he could not ignore it anymore and that he needed to give them a New Testament. That morning, all three members of the family, this man, his sister, his mother became Christians. And this man was able to lead them to Christ.

And this is the story. This man had to escape persecution after that in Iran for his faith and is in Australia at the moment. Now what you make of this story will, in some way, affect how you approach our topic this morning. Does God compel human hearts to do or say certain things by promptings? Do you believe that God still speaks in dreams or visions?

What role does the Holy Spirit play in bringing people to faith? Today, we're going to be talking about some particular spiritual gifts in the church. And it has caused a lot of speculation. It has caused a lot of controversy. And unfortunately, it has caused disunity.

We're dealing with this particular topic early on in our series in a way to kind of just get it out of the way, to deal with it, and then to move on to the important things of why. Depending on the scholar you ask, there are about 27 spiritual gifts that are listed in the New Testament. 27 spiritual gifts. Most of these gifts are dealt with in three passages in the New Testament. Three passages.

These ones: Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4. There are roughly 27 listed gifts in these, and there are miscellaneous passages that speak of some. Have a look at them. They're really, really interesting. Encouragement, leadership, mercy, the gift of apostle, of knowledge, discernment, administration.

And like we heard last week, we see that God gives these gifts to empower people to serve the church. God empowering His people. As you can see, there are some really great gifts. The gift of encouragement to affirm and to edify others. The gift of mercy to be moved by the pain and the suffering of those around you, to walk the extra mile in alleviating that pain.

The gift of administration to have the supernatural ability to understand Microsoft Excel, organisational ability, organisational ability. It's a leadership gift that steers the local church. Then there's the gift of pastoring or shepherding, a gift that focuses on the spiritual welfare of God's flock, of God's sheep.

Pastors are generally assumed to have this gift, yet not all necessarily have it. It may be a secondary or a tertiary gift. Same way that not all pastors will have the gift of preaching or teaching. So you can have a whole range of gifts, and here are some of them, and we know that there may be individuals who have more than one gift, but we know at the same time, not every individual will have all of these gifts. For example, the gift of martyrdom is a one-time use only.

Right? So after you've used that one, there's probably no chance you're going to use any other gifts. Most of these are generally accepted. Encouragement, service, teaching, missionary, voluntary poverty, they're all pretty evangelism, they're pretty common. Right?

We were kinda happy with them. There's no eyebrows raised about them. Most churches, most Christians are happy to acknowledge them. But over the last, I'd say, one hundred years, controversy has broken out over some spectacular gifts that have led to some debate about how they are given or what their purpose is. And so this morning, we're going to spend a little bit of time dealing with this so that it doesn't become a stumbling block for us later on.

And again, I'm going to lay it out and I'm going to put it on the table, and I'm going to ask you to pray over it. First of all, I'm going to give a quick history, a bit of a lesson in church history this morning. The controversy about certain spiritual gifts really started based on a small group of these gifts, namely miracles, healing, prophecy, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. Now a movement in the early nineteen hundreds saw people claim to have experiences where confusing utterances and peculiar statements were made. It sort of started very spontaneously out of nowhere really.

Given the social context of the early nineteen hundreds though, a society that was sort of based in the shadow of the Enlightenment, of rationalism, of liberal Christianity that denied the existence of miracles, of a personal God who would still exert power on the world. In the context of that, something so radical that was claiming that God was very much using and involved with His church, it actually, as a counter movement, started gaining a lot of momentum very quickly. This movement was called Pentecostalism. Now these early charismatics claimed that all the spiritual gifts, including speaking in tongues and prophetic insights, were still around and were still available to believers. But as is common with these spontaneous movements, things started needing to be systematised.

We needed to have a theology to explain what happened. Things needed to be set in place. Structures needed to be formulated. Theologies needed to be codified and written down. And so from this movement, we started seeing sweeping assumptions claimed that, for example, all Christians needed to experience this.

That all Christians needed these spectacular gifts. All Christians needed to speak in tongues. And all Christians needed to experience a special second infilling of the Holy Spirit. But, again, any movement usually has a counter movement. And so we see that in this time, there were Christians that were starting to question some of these foundational precepts of the Pentecostal movement.

These individuals were questioning whether these gifts were in fact still active and whether the Holy Spirit still moved in this spectacular way that these guys were pointing to from Scripture. Now like I mentioned at the start of this morning's sermon, what you make of the Iranian couple's experience will likely show where you sit on the issue of spiritual gifts or these spiritual gifts in particular today. The crux of the issue comes down to two schools of thought, and they are big words, and you can write them down. Firstly, continuationism. The school of thought of continuationism, the belief that the New Testament gifts of the Spirit continued till today.

Or cessationism, the belief that the New Testament gifts ceased. That's where the word cessation comes from. Have ceased, that they ceased in the early church when God's revelation of Christ was fully made by Jesus Christ Himself and then affirmed by the apostles. Traditionally, the reformed churches of which we're a part, though not unanimously, have been on the side of cessation. That the gifts were given to the early church for the purpose of that huge gospel explosion that happened in the first century.

And so we have to ask the question, why has there been a hesitancy in our circles regarding gifts like these that I mentioned? There are some good reasons. There are some good reasons. It comes down to one or two of them, and they are worthwhile questions to wrestle with. Firstly, cessationists wrestle with the idea of the form of revelation, whether that be a prophecy or an interpretation of a tongue that has prophetic sort of intentions.

And the question comes down to whether these things could erode the authority of the Bible as God's final revelation, God's complete revelation. They say that a prophecy in the Bible remember biblical prophecy, the prophecies of people like Jeremiah or Daniel or Moses, that their prophecies were on the level, the same level as the word of God. What they spoke when they said, thus says the Lord, was on the same level as the word of God. Prophecy became Scripture, and Scripture is God's infallible word to humanity on which we stake our faith. Therefore, prophecy has a huge responsibility.

Therefore, there is a real danger with prophecy or false prophecy. And so there are massively serious warnings against false prophecy. Deuteronomy 18, for example, says that anyone who prophesies as one speaking from God, and that prophecy is found to be false or what they have foretold would happen does not happen, that individual is to be taken outside the camp and is to be stoned to death. This is how serious this was. Prophecy was a serious thing in the Bible because it was claiming to be the very word of God.

Now cessationists ask, people who claim to have a prophetic gift today, whether they admit it or not, speak words that arguably should be held up as being of equal importance as Scripture itself. And if these prophecies then contradict the Bible in some way, does it mean that God has given a special new revelation? Does it mean that God has changed the game plan in some way? Cessationists say that prophecy and other spectacular gifts that accompanied the preaching of the gospel, like miracles, like healings, were powerful gifts that were given only to the early church as it was preaching this new gospel of Jesus Christ. And it was accompanied in such spectacular ways so that the truth could be pointed out.

It could be validated that what they were saying was having God's seal of approval. But after that generation, when the apostles had died out, those gifts were brought to a close because the work was done. Now that's the cessationist perspective. They quote, for example, 1 Corinthians 13, verses 8 to 10 to explain this. But where there are prophecies, they will cease.

Where there are tongues, they will be stilled. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. Cessationists say that perfection that is spoken of here is the closing of the canon, closing of or the finalisation of the biblical books, the 66 books that we have. And so that is God's perfect revelation.

We don't need to know anymore of the story of Jesus, of the implications of His death and His resurrection, of the prophecies before He came. We have it completely for understanding salvation. Therefore, a true cessationist who consistently holds this view would say that God did not speak to this Iranian family through a dream. If a cessationist holds consistently to their view, this would not have happened. It may be in God's providential way that they had a dream that was roughly similar and made them question some of these things, but God ultimately had the Holy Spirit, through His word, speaking conviction into their lives that made them Christians.

These are good questions to ask. They're important issues to wrestle with. Can these gifts be used to erode our position as Christians on the infallibility of God's word, the all-sufficiency of the Bible? My position, and our elders are aware of this, and I think some of them share this with me to some degree, my position is that God still speaks through dreams and visions. Therefore, He can still speak to us through the New Testament spiritual gifts.

And these happen to be just so happen to be the more in-your-face sort of gifts. In that sense, I am a continuationist. And I would like to explain to you why I hold to this position and, again, leave it up to you to pray about. Coming to 1 Corinthians that we've just dealt with, it talks about particular gifts coming to an end. Very obviously.

Okay? It talks about prophecy coming to an end, tongues, the gift of tongues, because in this context, remember 1 Corinthians 12 that's dealing with all these was just before it. So that's the context in which it is happening. I do not believe that it is talking about the closing of the canon. It's not mentioned in this passage at all.

I think it is a bit of a stretch, in fact, to say that. If we understand the wider context, you see that it talks about the Christian experience of our limited understanding of living in the here and now, of wrestling through what God's will is for our life, why He allows certain things to happen. In fact, a little bit later on, a few verses later on, it talks about this. It says this: now we see in our life but a poor reflection as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face.

Now I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I am fully known. I don't think the apostle Paul was talking here about Christians, the early Christians, that were wrestling with coming to terms with the gospel of who Jesus was and trying to understand that in the new, the Old Testament Jewish understanding of what they had. What I believe Paul is talking about here is he is speaking of Christ's return. He's speaking of when Jesus comes again, and we will see God, we will see Jesus face to face. And all the things that we struggle to comprehend now and all the things that we look at as though through a mirror dimly, and again, those mirrors in those days were not like the mirrors we have now.

They were polished bronze, so you could not even see your pimples or anything like that. You could sort of make out that it's a human. Looking at this mirror dimly, we will understand when He comes again completely, perfectly. But when that happens, there will be no need for prophecy anymore. There will be no need for the gifts anymore.

At that stage, the in-between last days will end. And the church won't need to be using all these gifts because it will be perfect. Coming to the issue so we will see Him face to face. We will understand things perfectly. That's how I interpret 1 Corinthians 13.

Coming to the issue of prophecy and the other revelatory gifts, two points. Firstly, prophecy in the Bible was never really removed from the rest of God's word. Even the great Jeremiah and Daniels. Biblical prophecy included some supernatural insights into the unseen or the unknown. I mean, Isaiah 53 that talks about the coming of the Messiah is so correct, so spot on, it's scary.

Right? So you have these amazing insights into things that would be happening six, seven hundred years later. And this is the aspect called foretelling, foretelling in prophecy, telling of things unseen or unknown. But there was always much more emphasis on the second aspect of prophecy, which is forth telling. And that is the aspect where people are taught, where people are reminded to walk in light of the gospel.

And how are people reminded to do that? They are brought back to the covenant. They are brought back to the promises of God. So many times, Jeremiah and Daniel and Ezekiel were saying, guys, you've completely messed this up. Go back to these things that God said earlier to you.

Cling to these. Remember these. Hold to these. Always pointing back to Scripture. There's a unity in their prophecy.

Why? Because it always pointed back to the other parts of Scripture, to the outworking of God's complete overall plan. Prophecy was always subject to the rest of Scripture. We find Daniel, after seventy years, realising seventy years had gone, remembers the prophecy of Jeremiah the prophet, and therefore starts praying for God to rescue the people. Prophecy is always subject to the rest of Scripture, and all prophets were able to be held accountable to that.

So how do we know that the particular gifts of prophecy or miracles or tongues are the real deal? It's a good question. Well, since the New Testament has these gifts in use, obviously, in the churches then, it's no surprise that they have a lot on the records of how to deal with this, what parameters they are to be used in. Because like today, like in our churches, there were Christians in those days as well, fallible creatures like you and me that were using them in the wrong way. And so there's a lot of parameters.

There's a lot of wisdom that the apostles give us. Firstly, they are always to be tested, these gifts. 1 Corinthians 14:29 says that they are to be weighed by the others. So if a person with a prophetic word says something, everyone else has a responsibility to check it. Secondly, so they are to test this, firstly, with Scripture, Matthew 22:29, or the example of the Bereans in Acts 17:11 up there.

These Jewish people heard Paul the Apostle come and bring them the gospel, and they said, thank you very much for that, but give us a little bit of time to go back to the Old Testament, to our Scriptures, and see if you're speaking the truth. Test these gifts against Scripture. Secondly, God has given some individuals the gift of discernment, of distinguishing, 1 Corinthians 12 says, between the spirits. Not necessarily simply just whether this is the Holy Spirit or an evil spirit that's at work here, but also what is the spirit that they have when they bring come into this? What is the attitude that they have when coming into this?

The gift of discerning between spirits. So some people will be able to just intuitively by the help of the Holy Spirit, know whether this is true or not. Thirdly, test them with their character or their fruit. Jesus said in Matthew 7, there will be many people that said, Lord, did we not profess or prophesy in Your name? And He said, well, I never knew you because by their fruit, they will be known.

By their fruit, by the character of their lives, you will know whether they are the real deal or not. Fourthly, you can test them whether they are true by whether they serve Jesus Christ as Lord. 1 John 4 talks about no one can prophesy without declaring that Jesus Christ is Lord. If they cannot do that, if they are not a Christian, there's no way that they can have the gift of prophecy. Fifth, do they submit to church leadership?

That's a big one. You see a lot of individuals sort of thinking that they have this amazing word or revelation or insight and don't care two hoots about what's happening in the church, who God has placed in the church as leaders there. So do they submit to church leadership? And lastly, do they speak too long? 1 Corinthians 14, Paul says, if someone is prophesying and someone else wants to speak, that first person should sit down immediately because the Holy Spirit is obviously moving on.

And the danger there is, you know, talking for too long because you love to have your own voice heard. Okay. So we're good at this. I think as reformed people, we're happy to test things. We're happy to say, well, let's go and look at all these things and okay.

But the second thing is a hard thing. If they pass a test, then we have to believe it. And we have to accept it. 1 Thessalonians 5 says, do not treat prophecies with contempt. Don't disregard them.

It says there as well in the same sentence, test everything, hold on to that which is good, and avoid every kind of evil. So if it's false, avoid it. But hold on to what is true, what is good. So if it is proven to be true, they have to be accepted. This is just what the Bible is saying.

So the Bible is very clear on how, say, the gift of prophecy is to be used. Will all this gift be given to everyone? No. Will every second person in our church have this gift? Probably not.

God gives this, like we heard last week, sovereignly to whoever He chooses. That is His right and that is how He will operate. Will prophecy be an everyday occurrence? No. Because we believe and we know that our greatest need, our greatest sense of insight and wisdom will always be this.

And we have this all the time. We have it at our bedside. We have it in the morning when we wake up with our coffee. We have this all the time. We don't need a special insight every day.

We have to remember that the pattern of biblical prophecy was a rare occurrence. When it happened, people stopped. People listened because it wasn't happening every day. This is where I think some Christian circles have failed. Prophecy doesn't happen every morning, telling your husband what colour tie he should wear to work.

Prophetic insight for you. Authentic prophecy may only happen a handful of times in the life of someone who has been given this insight. The same can be said of healing. It won't happen every other day. Just a final word on another more spectacular gift, and that is the gift of tongues.

Scripture seems to indicate that there are two instances or two uses of this. Firstly, there's the occasion in Acts 2 that we are aware of, Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit came to the apostles for the first time and where they went out and were able to speak in different tongues, different earthly tongues that people could understand. At that time, there were many tourists in town in Jerusalem, and they could hear these apostles in Arabic and Greek and Syriac and all the languages of that time. They could understand the gospel, and 5,000 people came to faith in that time because of it. Secondly, we see there's an indication in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 1, again in the context, remember, of talking about the gifts of tongues and prophecy.

1 Corinthians 13, verse 1 that says, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Giving the context of the previous chapter, I believe Paul is talking here about another use of the gifts, is a supernatural or an angelic heavenly language that God understands. And what is the function of well, either one of these gifts? Well, again, in the first instance, it may be for an individual to spontaneously be able to express or inform someone of a different culture or a different language the truth of the Bible, of the gospel. And we believe in a big God as a reformed people.

We believe in a sovereign God. We believe that He can hit a straight shot with a crooked stick. And if someone needs to believe, God will make it possible. There are missionaries and stories personally that I've heard from missionaries and they are not wacky, weird sort of individuals who have been able to say that in instances they have spoken and said something they believe was in English or their mother tongue and someone said to them, I didn't know you could speak Urdu. I didn't know you could speak Arabic.

And they said, you know, how the heck did that happen? But at other times, the Bible indicates that the tongues is for the strengthening of Christians. So that is for non-Christians. But other times, it is for the strengthening of Christians and the church. And Paul teaches that the tongues are generally a private thing.

And that he would rather speak five understandable languages, understandable words in a church context than 10,000 of these angelic heavenly languages. Unless he says there's someone who has a gift of interpretation, these people should remain silent in the big group context. So why then? This is the most logical question after this. Why then does God give this gift if it's not to be used at every single occasion?

Because it is generally for private use. Again, this is used so badly in some Christian circles today. It is for private use, but it is used with an intercessory purpose. Remember, every gift is given for the strengthening and the building up of the church, not for the individual. This gift is given for private use, I believe, and I'll tell you why soon, for the intercession, for the praying of brothers and sisters, for the praying of God to do what He's doing. And the reason I think this is it comes from Romans 8 that touches on this, and I don't think it's exclusively to do with just a gift.

I believe every Christian has this. But if you turn to Romans 8 with me, Romans 8:26. Romans 8:26 says that the Spirit helps us in our weakness. This is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit helps us in our weakness.

We do not know what we ought to pray for sometimes, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. So here we find the intercessory work of the Holy Spirit helping us as Christians to pray. But then there's this aspect of groans that we cannot express what we feel. Now again, I don't believe this is necessarily purely for tongues. I think every Christian has the Holy Spirit intercessing.

There's a sense in a Christian that they have an urgency or a feeling or something that they cannot really understand why, but they just know that God is able to hear them. They just know God is able to understand what this is on their hearts. That's the work of intercession of the Spirit. But I believe these words that people with the gift of tongues have are the same thing. It is the Holy Spirit that brings forth this urgency or this sensation or this weight on them that they translate or that comes out or manifests in this tongue.

The same principles remain. The gift of tongue is praying on behalf of someone or something. Again, the gift of tongues is sovereignly given by the Holy Spirit. It does not mean that everyone is going to have the gift of tongues. If it really is given by the Holy Spirit, then it is also used by the Holy Spirit and not at the discretion of the individual.

Repeating banana banana banana banana a hundred times, if you've been to a charismatic movement, you may have heard that, is not speaking in the gift of tongues. You are trying to imitate an intercession that only the Holy Spirit brings when He chooses to do so. Why do I believe in the continuing work of the Holy Spirit through gifts? Because the Bible hasn't told me that it would finish. The Bible hasn't told me it would finish.

In fact, as long as the church exists, the Bible says God will be empowering and enabling her. But at the same time, because the Old and New Testament events were unique, we have to remember that as well, some of them were unique in that they were orchestrated sovereignly by God with men and women He sovereignly chose. Some of these spectacular events will not happen in the same way, and it will not happen 24/7. And so we should be careful about that as well. Miracles and prophecies were rare in those days.

That's why when it happened, people noticed them. And they happened to all point to the same thing. And what was that? Jesus. All pointed back to Jesus.

Any gift, whether it is the gift of mercy, whether it is the gift of administration, whether it is the gift of prophecy. If it does anything to rob the glory of Christ, if it does anything to take our eyes off Him, it is not from Him. It is inauthentic. It is invalid. If it damages the church, God won't be content with that for too long.

Because the God who gives can also take away. And so my prayer is, as we work through this again, that you guys will be praying with me and for me, and we pray that God may protect this church of ours as we deal honestly with this topic, with integrity as well. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we bring these things before You, as we again deal with some things and perhaps get intrigued by some of these things and maybe uncomfortable with some of these things, Father, I pray that above all, because all of these passages that we've dealt with were written in the context of unity, maintaining unity in the church. Father, I pray that that will be what is done here.

Father, that as we deal with these things, that they may not also just be an academic practice, but, Father, that if we are convinced of the truth of this, that we will act on it. And Holy Spirit, we do give You permission to sovereignly, by Your power, by Your right, do what You want in us and in this church. Father, I pray that our minds may be transformed, that we may be more moved into the likeness of Your Son, Jesus Christ. And, Father, that as we continue in this, Lord, that You will be our guide and our shepherd in all things. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.