Sermon manuscript:
It is not uncommon for people to think that if the Bible is
true, then there should be lots of miracles. The Bible records many unusual
signs and wonders that God has performed. The way the thinking goes is that if
the Bible is true concerning these things, then these miracles need to keep
happening.
It is understandable how a person could arrive at such an
opinion, but it is not right. The Bible does, indeed, record unusual things
that God did. But God does not just work through unusual means. In fact, he
only rarely uses unusual means. All the other times he works through ordinary
means.
Ordinary means would be those ways that do not appear
unusual. Adam and Eve, for example, simply told their children what God had
revealed to them. Abraham told Isaac about the covenant that God had made with
him. We tend to think that speaking is not a big deal. We do it all the time.
It can seem as though God’s not involved in it at all, because he does not come
with thunder and lightning and smoke like he did at Mt. Sinai.
To illustrate God’s ordinary means we should say something
about how God works in the Old Testament after the time of Moses. God gave the
Israelites the tabernacle / temple. He proscribed priests and sacrifices for
them. This was the way that God’s holiness was communicated to them.
So it is also with the New Testament. Jesus instituted and
commanded baptism as a new birth in the Holy Spirit. Jesus instituted and
commanded us to observe the Lord’s Supper. He says that the Lord’s Supper is
the New Testament in his blood for the forgiveness of sins. These, together
with preaching, are the ordinary means for Christians to receive God’s grace
and holiness.
But, as the saying goes: “Familiarity breeds contempt.”
These ordinary means that God uses to communicate his will towards us, his
grace and favor towards us—they become boring. Our reason starts to think that
they must not be that valuable because only rare things are valuable. The Word
and the Sacraments are given out quite liberally and no bills get sent out for
services rendered. And so Christians might go hankering after something a
little more exotic, a little more uncommon.
So when we read a portion of the New Testament like our
reading today from 1 Corinthinans 12, we might think, “This should do the
trick!” Paul speaks of “spiritual gifts.” Among these gifts are messages of
wisdom, knowledge, and faith. He also speaks of some spicier gifts.
He says, “And to another, the same Spirit gives healing
gifts. Another is given powers to do miracles; another, the gift of prophecy;
another, the evaluating of spirits; someone else, different kinds of tongues;
and another, the interpretation of tongues.”
As you well know, these gifts have not been given to me or
to any of the other members of this congregation. I’m not aware of anyone who
can heal. I don’t know of anyone who has performed miracles. None of us have
been able to know the future. When we think we do know the future, we are often
wildly wrong. No one has spoken in tongues. Since no one has spoken in tongues,
there is also no need to have tongues interpreted.
These were gifts that God gave to the apostolic Christian
church. We hear of them not only here, but also in the book of Acts. God
performed unusual signs through these earliest Christians, perhaps to confirm
the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus. Since these signs were present among the
Christians of the apostolic church, many people get deceived into thinking that
there must be something deficient about the Christian church of today. We do not
have these signs or we do not have them in like measure. This is a very
dangerous and destructive deception. Although it has the appearance of being
biblical, it definitely is not.
There is a big difference between miracles happening and
miracles being required. God is free to do miracles. The Bible tells us about
them. Nowhere in the Bible do you ever hear him requiring his people to perform
miracles. There is no expectation that God’s people should perform miracles
that are recognized as being miracles as by outsiders. In fact, in the grand
scheme of things, miracles are not that terribly common in the history of God’s
people.
Since the Bible records those times in the history of God’s
people where God did things that were unusual, folks get the idea that miracles
were happening all the time. That is not true. The Bible is not an exhaustive,
minute-by-minute, or even year-by-year account of each generation of God’s
people. There are many gaps of hundreds of years where the Bible doesn’t say
anything about what was going on with God’s people.
During those times the people continued on with the ordinary
means whereby God dealt with his people. They preached the Gospel. They went to
the tabernacle / temple. They observed the festivals. The people during these
times were not deficient or inferior to the people of God who were living
during those times when God did more unusual things.
Whether God did unusual things or not does not indicate that
God was more pleased or less pleased with the people living at time that he did
them. Take, for example, the Israelites when they came out of Egypt. I don’t
think there has ever been a generation of people who saw more of God’s signs
and wonders than this generation. They saw the plagues God inflicted upon
Egypt. They crossed through the Red Sea on dry ground. God rained down bread
from heaven. He made water come out of a rock. They saw God’s glory in the
cloud and at Mt. Sinai, and many more.
These people had miracles coming out of their ears. And yet,
what does God say of them? He says that they are a stiff-necked people. He
becomes so angry at them that he several times tells Moses that he is going to
wipe them all out and make a nation of Moses and his descendants instead. But
Moses interceded for his fellow Israelites, and God did not carry through with
his threats.
So we should not think that the more impressive the signs,
the happier God must be with us. The more unusual the signs, the more spiritual
power a group of people must have. The primary thing about being the people of
God is not having spiritual power. The primary thing is to know the will of God
towards us by his Word and promises. This is the way it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be for as long as this present age lasts. What God’s people
have had in common from the time of Adam and Eve is God’s promise of mercy and
salvation in Jesus. This word from God to us does not need signs and wonders to
make it true, effective, or believable.
In fact, Jesus complains about the Jews at his time who were
always wanting him to perform more and more miracles. He tells them that they
are an evil and adulterous generation as they are hankering after miracles. He
tells them that the only sign they are going to get is the sign of Jonah. Jonah
spent three days in the belly of the fish. The Son of God would spend three
days in the belly of the earth, dead, in a tomb.
How’s that for a sign? Christ’s death, burial, and
resurrection is a miracle that doesn’t suit people’s fancy to this very day.
Those Jews who were wanting him to do miracles certainly would not have been
impressed with him being crucified and buried. If anything they would have
taken his crucifixion as a sure-proof sign that Jesus was an imposter and an
evil-doer. He was getting his come-uppance for what they took to be blasphemy. The
signs that they were keeping an eye out for were signs that appeared powerful
and impressive, and so they rejected the Son of God. So we must not judge God
and find his ways unsatisfactory because they don’t match up with what we think
would be powerful and effective.
Folks want flashy signs. Barring that, they tend to think
that spiritual gifts do not exist at all. This is another error that we must be
on guard against. Some people know that the crazy things that are touted among
the Pentecostals are not right, but then they fall off the horse on the other
side. They don’t think that God is involved in the lives of his people at all.
Paul begins our reading today by saying, “I do not want
you to be uninformed, brothers, concerning spiritual gifts.” Spiritual
gifts exist. Some of the spiritual gifts that he goes on to mention were
special to that particular time in the history of God’s people. We see this
kind of thing elsewhere in the history of God’s people. It’s like the way that
God manifested himself to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai as I mentioned. He did
tremendous and unusual things before them. It wasn’t always that way, however.
Later in the history of God’s people there weren’t these unusual things.
So it is also with the time of the apostles. At their time
there were unusual signs. We should not expect, and we certainly shouldn’t
require, that such signs should be done among God’s people today.
On the other hand, there are spiritual gifts that are always
present among God’s people. Paul says that no one can say that Jesus is Lord
except by the Holy Spirit. Here we do not have a flashy sign. Saying that Jesus
Christ is Lord will hardly impress anyone, but it can only be said by the Holy
Spirit.
Paul also speaks about wisdom, about knowledge, about faith.
These come from the same Holy Spirit. These, also, can be easily despised. It
is very common for people to think that it is no big deal to believe that Jesus
is Lord. Knowing Scripture is not highly regarded as a life skill. Having God’s
wisdom often looks terribly impractical according to the way that the world
thinks. Regardless of what our reason thinks of these gifts, they are gifts
from the Holy Spirit nevertheless. They are present among God’s people.
Paul also speaks about spiritual gifts in his epistle to the
Christians in Galatia. He says, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
These gifts, which are given to those who believe in Christ, are priceless.
They renew our sin-sick hearts. They bring about miracles of self-less love and
sacrifice. But they are not terribly flashy. If you compare these fruits of the
Spirit to lightning coming out of your fingertips, you know that the world is
going to be more impressed with the lightning. But the world is stupid. It
doesn’t know what is truly good.
The Corinthians, to whom Paul is writing in our Epistle
reading, have the same flesh and blood as anybody else, and so it seems that
Paul is gently teaching them not to overestimate flashy gifts and to crave
those gifts that are beneficial for others rather than those gifts that are
more likely to puff up the one to whom the gifts have been given.
Our reading today is from chapter 12. In the very next
chapter, chapter 13, Paul says that the spiritual gift that they should prize
above all others is love. 1 Cor. 13 is the so-called “love chapter,” which is
fairly well known. This is where he says things like, “Love is patient, love
is kind. It is not puffed up. It does not seek after its own. Love never ends.”
The Corinthians were looking for those gifts that would make them appear great
in the eyes of their fellows, but that is not right.
Jesus says, “Whoever would be greatest must become as the
least. Whoever wishes to be first must become a slave. For the Son of Man came
not to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.”
So we must be on guard against two things that our flesh
more easily believes rather than the truth. Our flesh thinks that either
Christians should be doing miracles every day of the week and twice on Sundays
in order to be genuine and believable. That’s the one extreme that we are prone
towards. The other extreme is that God doesn’t work at all. It is thought that
there are no spiritual gifts. The spiritual gifts that are always present among
God’s people are not recognized as miracle. Spiritual gifts must only be flashy
and unusual ones like dreams, speaking in tongues, or miracles of healing.
But the truth is that spiritual gifts do exist. God gives
them to those whom he has chosen for salvation. But they are not readily
apparent to outsiders. They might not even be apparent to ourselves as we
battle against the flesh, the world, and the devil. But the Holy Spirit is
quietly at work in the people of God. He is healing them from their unbelief
and sin-sickness. It’s like when a seed is sown in the earth. First it sprouts,
then come the leaves, then comes the ear. So also the Holy Spirit works through
his Word and Sacrament. Quietly and unassumingly the Holy Spirit increases our
faith towards God and our fervent love towards one another.
So we must not be led astray on this important topic that so
easily becomes obscured in our day due to Pentecostals on the one hand, and
rank unbelievers on the other. God reveals his will towards us with his Word
and Sacraments. That’s the way he’s always done it. This is his usual means of
dealing with his people. He can also deal with us in unusual ways, but we
shouldn’t expect that, and we certainly should not require it. He gives his
Christians those spiritual gifts that Paul talks about, but sometimes we have a
hard time seeing them clearly, and unbelievers hardly ever recognize them. But
those common gifts that cause us to be believing towards him and loving towards
our neighbor are the best gifts God gives.
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