Monday, October 13, 2008

Spiritual Gifts, week 1

Spiritual Gifts

week 1 - Friday, October 10, 2008



To prepare for our study we were to read the following chapters of the Bible. I am not going to include them this time as they are pretty long.

Ephesians 4
Romans 12
1 Corinthians 12
1 Corinthians 13
1 Corinthians 14

We covered quite a bit of ground last week, talking about questions we have about spiritual gifts, the reasons God may give us these gifts, and about the first uses of these gifts.

Where do we first see the use of spiritual gifts? Acts? James? It never really occurred to me that the miracles we see in the old testament could have been the use of spiritual gifts. They may not have been spoken of as spiritual gifts, but gifts none the less. It's amazing when you think about the men of old. So, where was the first account of the use of these gifts? We didn't figure out for sure the first usage, but we think it's safe to say that we can at least go as far back as Moses and see gifts used.



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So, what can we learn from these instances? What is God doing? Why is God giving these gifts to be used?

Moses

We see in Exodus 3 that Moses comes to the burning bush and gives excuse after excuse as to why God can't use him. For each excuse God gives something to Moses. For his speech problem he gave Aaron, and for those who don't believe God sent Moses, God gives Moses a staff. Moses use this staff to work miracle after miracle.


  • Plagues in Egypt
  • Parts the Red Sea
  • Strikes Rock and water flows from it

Why did God use Moses and these gifts in combination? What was the purpose of these miracles? We know that God didn't NEED to use these miracles to move his people from Egypt to Israel. So, what purpose did these instances have? What did this do?

I think it proved who God was. It showed Israel, and Egypt that He is the I AM. The gifts Moses used proved to everyone who God is.

Joshua

After Moses died Joshua is left in charge. One of the first things Joshua does is to lead the Israelites across the Jordan. When they got to the Jordan river it was basically in flood stage. They had a couple options, they could build a bridge or they could wait for the river to recede so that they could walk across. But what does Joshua do? In Joshua 3 he tells the priest to walk into the river and when the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the ark touch the water it starts to back up upriver. The ark has what in it? It carries the ten commandments and, that's right, Moses staff, the one he used to part the Red Sea.

Why would God have Joshua do this when they could have just waited for the water level to drop? What was God's purpose? This sign helped establish to the people that Joshua was truly God's appointed leader.


Elijah

Elijah does miracles over and over.

  • Raises the widow's son
  • Prophecies the drought
  • Challenges Baal's priests
  • Outran a Chariot

Why did God choose to do these things through Elijah?


Elisha

Elisha was Elijah's successor and does about twice as many miracles as Elijah. One of them is parting a river with Elijah's cloak

Samson

Samson kicked butt and took names, burned fields of the Philistines by lighting foxes tails on fire, etc.


David

Was stone slinging a spiritual gift? Well, maybe not, but it was surely a talent. But in this instance was David using a different spiritual gift? What about the gift of faith? It had to have taken an astounding amount of faith to stand before Goliath and proclaim that God had delivered him from bears and lions in 1 Samuel 17 and David says to Goliath

1 Samuel 17:45 Then David said to the Philistine, "You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. 46 "This day the LORD will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, 47 and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the LORD'S and He will give you into our hands."


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We have amazing examples of old testament characters that used spiritual gifts. But, what was God's purpose in these situations?

Here are some of the conclusions we came to about spiritual giftedness in the old testament.

  • The giftedness proves who God is
  • The giftedness proves who God's people are
  • It is used to defeat the enemy
  • They are freely given to ordinary people
  • The gifts further His kingdom
  • These gifts inspire His people

So why does God give us spiritual gifts? One common denominator in all of these conclusion is that the end result glorifies God. So let's put the focus back where it belongs, off of me and back on God.

As Dave said "It's not what gifts we get, but how God is using us for His benefit"

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Way to be thorough brother. Thanks!
-Bobby