1 Corinthians Chapter 12:1-3

It's important to realize what you don't know and learn about what's important. Obviously, to a Christian, the Bible is important.

You should take the time because it's one of those things that is so easy to do, to read a little bit every day, and yet it has such a deep effect on our lives. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. As the church, we should be committed to helping people understand the Bible and to live the life God talks about. David McGee discusses this and more as he continues in the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 12. But first, do you ever feel like God is cutting away parts of you, like a gardener pruning a tree?

Well, I hope you said yes to this question because it means God is shaping you so that you can bear even more fruit in your life. We want to help you embrace God's pruning in your life by sending you Pastor David McGee's three-part audio series, Abiding in Christ, Keys to a Fruitful Life. It's our way of saying thank you for your gift to help share the truth of Scripture with more people around the world through Cross the Bridge. So get your copy of Abiding in Christ when you give today at crossthebridge.com and discover how you can bear more fruit for God's kingdom. Now here's David McGee with his teaching, Who is Jesus? So Paul is writing to the church at Corinth.

He's writing, let's understand, he's writing a response back to a letter that they had written with a lot of questions. So it makes the book of Corinthians a great book for any church to study, to go, you know, verse by verse, chapter by chapter. So 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 1 says, Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. Now Paul had been in Corinth for 18 months. If you want to get a picture of Corinth, you can read Acts chapter 18.

It tells us all about Paul coming into Corinth, what happened there, who some of the leaders were, the players, if you will. And then Paul was gone for five years at this point when he's writing this letter. So for five years, he's really not sure what's going on in that church.

And I was thinking about this. Then they write this letter that probably took weeks, maybe months to get to him. He writes this book that we're reading today and it takes weeks, maybe months to get to them. And then he wonders, okay, I gave them this correction. I wonder how they're going to receive it. They're going to get mad.

I don't know what's going to happen. And he probably waits for word to get back to him. And when word gets back to him, according to 2 Corinthians, they've received it. They've applied it and whatnot.

That's very different than today, isn't it? Because see, you know, like Thursday night I was up here teaching and even while I was up here teaching, people were on Facebook. As soon as I walk off the platform, I know what people think. And so, you know, Paul, but you can see this shepherd's heart in Paul and, you know, and he's concerned about them. And he's going to speak to them about the spiritual gifts. And again, let's allow this passage to speak to us about the spiritual gifts.

And he says, I do not want you to be ignorant. Friend, don't ever, don't ever be afraid about what you don't know about the Bible. I understand a lot of you don't know much about the Bible. And that's okay.

It's not okay, but we'll fix it. The reason a lot of people don't know about the Bible is because they've been the churches and they haven't been taught the Bible. Now, they've been taught about politics or the wetlands or this or that or some guy's personal opinion. But here we focus on the Word of God. And one of the things that probably the most common comment we hear in this place is somebody saying, you know what, I've learned more about the Bible in three months here than I've learned in 30 years of attending church. So I understand people not knowing the Bible, people not understanding the Bible.

Yeah, there's an old joke that he's that. When Joshua at the place of Jericho, the angel of the Lord really knocked down the walls. And the angel of the Lord, if you read the passage, it's very interesting.

It was actually what we call a Christophany. In other words, it was Jesus who actually knocked down the walls. Because the angel of the Lord, Joshua fell down and worshiped. And the angel didn't say, get up, as the angel said to John in the book of Revelation. He accepted the worship.

What does that tell us? That was God. Angel of the Lord, if it's in all caps, New King James, King James, New King James, King James, that's usually a Christophany.

It's a special Hebrew phrase, if you will. So, but this Sunday school teacher said, now, who is it that knocked down the walls of Jericho? And there was one little kind of troublemaker, a little boy in the room, you know, and he said, well, I didn't do it. And she thought, oh man, these kids, they don't know the Bible.

You know, I'm going to go to the pastor and, you know, share this because it's kind of sad. So he goes, oh man, you know, I'm going to share this with the deacons. So he goes to the deacons and he goes, you know, I just got to tell you the other day, Sunday school teacher was sharing and asked who knocked down the walls of Jericho and, you know, little Johnny said, you know, he didn't do it. And they all kind of looked at him and one of them said, well, if he said he didn't do it, he didn't do it. And another one said, look, I know Johnny's family. They're good people.

And then another one said, look, let's don't talk about who knocked it down. Let's just appropriate the funds to get it fixed. So they didn't know the Bible. It takes time. It takes a commitment, but let me tell you, I've been studying this book for years. I love to study the Bible.

I love to read it and really get in depth with it. And you have a commitment from me and this ministry. That's a covenant that's beyond a promise. It's a covenant with you, an unbreakable covenant that we will continue to teach you and share with you the Bible. Amen.

Yeah. Here's the life lesson. It is important to realize what you don't know and learn about what's important. It's important to realize what you don't know and learn about what's important. Obviously to a Christian, the Bible is important. You should take the time to learn about the Bible.

You should make the effort because it's one of those things that is so easy to do, to read a little bit every day. And yet it has such a deep effect on our lives. The word of God's powerful. So we need to commit ourselves as individuals and as a community to learning the word of God. I too, I'm a student of the Bible. You will never hear me refer to myself as a Bible scholar. I've been studying it for years. I speak and read Hebrew and some Greek. But I'm never going to call myself a Bible scholar.

This book is too deep to act like I know most of it. So we're on this journey, if you will, together. I've always loved the Bible. I had no idea that I would grow up to be doing what I'm doing here today, whenever I do grow up. But, you know, God knew. I always loved the Bible, enjoyed the Bible. And Jesus was always, to be honest, a hero to me. I always thought Jesus was awesome. So much so that I used to run around the house and he was my hero.

Please understand. He was my hero. And I would run around the house and put empty those little tape things, you know, when they empty out little cardboard loops. And I'd put them on my hands as bracelets and run around going, I'm Jesus.

My mom was like, don't do that. I said, well, Jesus is my hero. Yeah, but you can't walk around saying you're Jesus.

Okay. I'm Moses. You know, I wanted to be a Bible hero.

We talk about gifts. Let's understand too that, you know, I don't think anybody can ever decide really to be a pastor. That's a decision God makes. And if somebody makes that decision and God has not gifted them to do that, that doesn't go well. You have probably sat under somebody that was teaching that they decided to be a pastor, God didn't call them. And usually what happens is you walk out of a teaching like that and you go, oh, I don't get it. I don't understand anything. And maybe sometimes you go, wow, maybe there's something wrong with me.

No, no. When God calls, anoints, empowers, gifts a person to be a teacher, it's really quite easy to see it and to receive. Ephesians, very important, very important passage, talks about what's called the five fold ministry. Ephesians chapter four, verse 11 says, and he himself, and this is talking about Jesus. He himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.

Now look at that. That's the five fold. The apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, pastors, teachers.

And why did he give those? For the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. So here at the bridge, what we believe is that God gives the church the five fold ministry. Their main ministry is to equip the body to do the work of the ministry. It's not that there's a few professional Christians, staff members who are supposed to do all the work of the ministry, who are supposed to pray for everybody, share the gospel with everybody, visit all the sick, do all these things. Certainly those are things that we should be doing, but they are things we should all be doing. And so our role is to equip you to do the work of the ministry.

Now the beauty of that is guess what? We're all called to ministry. If you've asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins, you're called into ministry. What type of ministry?

I don't know. Every one of us has a different type, different calling. Now in the New Living Translation, this passage is, now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors, and the teachers. And their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

This is a beautiful picture of what happens here, isn't it? I believe that God has gifted me as a teacher and as an evangelist. And so I proclaim God's word. I proclaim his good news. You guys are equipped, and God is using us to build up his work, to build up the church.

You guys invite family, and friends, and co-workers, people you go to school with. Why? Because, you know, this is a safe place where the word's going to be taught and the good news is going to be proclaimed. And none of us, you know, the very nature of a gift is that it's given to you, but you haven't really earned it. See, we've all received spiritual gifts. We didn't earn them. I didn't earn this position. I didn't earn the title of senior pastor.

It's something God did. And again, I had, I really didn't, until later on in life, I didn't have a clue what God had for me. I had a really bizarre dream as a young teenager. I still remember it. There was like, and I wasn't even thinking about it.

It's the farthest thing from my mind. I was on my way to being a rock musician already, but the, in this dream there's like seven snakes, and I said, well, God, if you'll get me out of here, I'll be a preacher. And I woke up the next morning.

I was like, what was that? I didn't, I mean, I guess you'd be a beautiful, and then I entered seminary. No, then I continued running from God. I'd won a public speaking contest.

I was 16, won the state. But I mean, that was, again, this was God just kind of leading me, giving me His gifts. And He wants to give you gifts. He's already given you gifts. And if you're sitting here and you're going, well, I don't really have any gifts, you're wrong.

You are wrong. Don't let the enemy tell you that. You have gifts. You are wonderfully and fearfully made. While you were yet in the womb, He knew you. And He has given you incredible gifts, not just to bless you, but also to bless others.

So we need to learn about these things. You're listening to Pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge. He'll be back with more powerful insight from God's Word in just a moment. But first, what does it mean when God prunes away at parts of your life? Is He angry at you? Have you done something wrong?

Far from it. Jesus teaches in John 15 that God lovingly removes things from your life so that you can grow into the person He created you to be and bear more fruit for Christ. We want to help you do that by sending you Abiding in Christ, Keys to a Fruitful Life, a three-part audio series from Pastor David McGee on what it means to be pruned by God and how you can embrace the process. This encouraging resource is our way of thanking you for your gift to help reach more people with the powerful truth of the gospel through Cross the Bridge. So go to crossthebridge.com today and request your copy of this series. Pastor David McGee This is Pastor David McGee with Cross the Bridge.

You know, I want to thank you for listening to Cross the Bridge. I also want to tell you about an exciting website. The website is lostlovedones.org, and it works very simply like this. You go to the website and you put the first names of up to 10 people that we begin praying that they get saved. Now, it takes two things to get saved – presentation and prayer. And what we're offering is prayer and also there's different tools there to help you present the gospel to them. So we're there with you, helping you with the presentation, helping you with the prayer. There's over 920 people that belong to the prayer team on Lost Loved Ones, and you can join the prayer team as well and help us to pray for others who don't yet know Jesus. And together we can see a huge revival, starting with your lost loved ones.

Now back to today's message. Pastor David McGee Verse two says, You know that you were Gentiles carried away to these dumb idols, however you were led. So here, you know, we see and we've talked about this and that most of the city, most of the town of Corinth was Gentile, not Jewish. And Corinth is in Greece. There's still a city there, a lot of ancient ruins. They had no spiritual theological upbringing.

None. The only spiritual upbringing was they were brought up worshiping all these pagan idols and going to pagan temples and stuff. And yet God used them to establish one of the earliest, most powerful churches.

New Living Translation is verses, You know that when you were still pagans, you were led astray and swept along and worshiping speechless idols. Now some of us think, well, yeah, we don't have idols anymore. Yes, we do. And they talk. Our idols, a lot of our idols, they come in like 21 inch, 25 inch, 42 inch, 47 inch idols and they do talk. But yeah, we can have idols too. What's an idol? Anything you put above God.

An idol can actually be something good, but once you put it above God, it becomes bad. I love my family. I have a wonderful family, wonderful wife, kids, great father-in-law, great mom. And yet all those folks know that Jesus comes first in my life. That if I were to put my family first, my family would become an idol. Now if you're sitting there going, well, man, your family's in trouble.

No, no, no, no, no, no. My family would be in trouble if Jesus wasn't first. Because I've seen marriages where they focused on the marriage and put that first and it was a train wreck. And now I've seen marriages that both of them had Jesus first. It's beautiful.

It's awesome. So anything can be an idol that we put above or over God. And so Paul's saying, look, I want to explain about these spiritual gifts.

I want you to know about them. And it used to be that spiritually and theologically with the idols, you didn't understand a lot of stuff. Let me restate something in a life lesson. We are committed to helping people understand the Bible and to live the life God talks about. We are committed to helping people understand the Bible and to live the life God talks about.

That's what we have been committed to from the very beginning. You know, our services have not really changed since the home Bible study. Back at the home Bible study, we'd have worship.

We'd have a time in Bible teaching. And we moved down the street here to 1210B, small little 1600 square foot place. And so we changed a little bit there. We did worship and then we did Bible study. And then when we moved over to the 365 West Bodenheimer on the first half of the building, we changed again. We did worship and then the Bible study. And then we went into the whole building and we changed again. We did worship and did the Bible study. And then we moved over here.

It all changed drastically. Again, we did worship and had Bible study. Verse 3, therefore, I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Saying that Jesus is Lord unites the people who really passionately mean that. We're going to have a clergy meeting here. We've got Baptist, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Assembly of God, Nondinam, Arab Christians, Jewish Christians, all coming to meet here to eat together and pray with one another.

Why? Because we all believe that Jesus is Lord. Now, we can sit around and argue about what we should wear and what kind of music we should worship to. Or we could just say, you know what? You believe Jesus is Lord?

Yep. Praise God. Let's fellowship.

Amen. Now, in the New Living Translation, this verse says, so I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God will curse Jesus and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. One of the rumors that was going around in the Church of Corinth that actually still exists a little bit today. And Paul's going to be talking about the very controversial issue of tongues in this chapter, chapter 13 and chapter 14. And we'll be talking about it. And we're going to be looking at the Bible.

I have to see what it says. But people were saying that if you prayed an unknown tongue that you were cursing Jesus. And Paul in this verse is saying, no, no, no. And he's also saying that you can't say Jesus is Lord unless the Holy Spirit is leading you. Jesus is Lord.

Can you say that and mean that today? What does this mean that Jesus is Lord? Let's understand that the word Lord here is in the Greek. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew.

I have some suspicions that the book of Revelation may have been written in Hebrew, but that's a rabbit trail. I'll say that for another time. It's because of the phrasing and stuff. But the word here for Lord in the Greek is kurios. And what that means is supreme authority. That's kind of interesting. Especially when you consider some people that say, well, Jesus never said he was God and the Bible really doesn't say he was God.

Yes, it does. He was crucified for claiming to be God. They felt like he was being blasphemous.

So they crucified him. And the word kurios in the Greek is the word that is used. There was a Bible version called the Septuagint. The Septuagint was the Hebrew Old Testament. The first language it was really translated into was the Greek in Alexandria, Egypt.

And there were 70 people who were responsible for that, and that's how 70 Septuagint. And the word yave, which is the Hebrew word. When we say Jehovah, that's really kind of a mistranslation through a German thing. But the word yave, Hebrew, supreme God, the I am, is translated kurios in the Greek.

Why is that important? Because it's the same word used here. Jesus is God. Jesus claimed to be God. Jesus is God.

And to be able to say that is to be led, if you will, by the Holy Spirit. Early Christians during this time, they were not martyred because they said Jesus is God. They were murdered because they said Jesus is the God. People at this time believed that the Roman emperors and the Caesars were deity. And they would say Caesar is Lord. And when you said Jesus is Lord, you were messing with the government structure, if you will.

Treason. I think it's important for us to remember that. Because as much as I am open to fellowshipping with other people who believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and we can agree to disagree about a lot of other stuff, I cannot fellowship with people, whatever religion. I can't have true heart spiritual fellowship with people who reject the Bible and reject Jesus as Messiah. I'll hang out with them. I'll be their friends. I'll help them out anytime I can. I will pray for them. I will not be condescending. And yet there's not fellowship there. We need to understand that. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking Him to help you to live for Him. Now God wants you to pray this prayer so much that He died to give you the opportunity and the ability to ask Him to forgive you.

Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.

And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. So congratulations, friend.

You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. Abiding in Christ. Keys to a fruitful life.

This encouraging resource shares from Jesus' own words as found in John 15, where He teaches that God's pruning is a sign that He is pleased with you and wants to prepare you to bear even more fruit for His kingdom. This series is our way of thanking you for your gift today to help share the gospel with thousands around the world who need to hear God's word in clear, straightforward language. So visit crossthebridge.com today to request your copy of Abiding in Christ when you give.

You know each day comes with its share of stresses. So what better way to wake up than with an encouraging word from the Lord? Visit crossthebridge.com and sign up now for David McGee's email devotionals. Each devotion includes scripture and a message from the heart of David McGee. It's easy and it's free. Sign up today at crossthebridge.com. And be sure to join us next time on Cross the Bridge with David McGee to hear more from the book of 1 Corinthians. We'll see you then.