THE ORDERLY USE OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS (14 OF 17)

The Orderly Use of Spiritual Gifts (14 of 17)
1 Corinthians
Zach Terry
1 Corinthians 14:1-40

CONTEXT: Let's review - so far in 1 Corinthians we have been studying Paul's response to the questions raised by messengers of a prominent lady named Chloe's. At this point Paul has addressed:

- The influence of worldly ideologies
- The proper way to address unrepentant sin in the church
- Lawsuits among believers
- Married and Divorce
- Addictions
- Issues of Conscience
- The Role of Ladies in the Church
- Communion
- And for the last three chapters Paul has taught in detail about Spiritual Gifts. Specifically, he has addressed the gifts of tongues in great detail.

Now how many of you have in your entire life heard a sermon on tongues before coming to this church? Very few, but Paul has taught on it in great detail here in 1st Corinthians.

There are two ways to approach the text of scripture:

1. Deciding for myself what is important and searching the text for passages that I believe are relevant.
2. OR - I can allow the text to instruct me as to what is important.

- The first approach assumes YOU have the proper perspective and it places you above the text to a certain degree as a CRITIC.
- The second approach assumes GOD has the proper perspective and it places the Bible above you as a COACH.

We have adopted the second approach here at this church. Thus, if there is more said about Spiritual Gifts in 1 Corinthians than any other subject, we assume that they are important. You see?

Could it be that something significant is missing from your life and Christian experience simply because you are what Paul described in chapter 12, "uniformed brethren"?

Vance Havner said, that is the biggest denomination in the world, the "Uninformed Brethren"

Could it be that you are struggling needlessly with some area of your life simply because you do not comprehend the place of spiritual gifts?

ILLUSTRATION: Last week a brother in o ...

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