Tag: Spiritual Gifts

“Gifts That Build the Church“

Gifts That Build the Church

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 28, 1956

In line with a series of truths which I have been bringing, I want today to speak on the gifts of the Spirit. And many of the things that I say will be repetition. That is, I will have said them at some time in my life, and maybe at some time in your hearing, the hearing of some of you.

But I will sum it up and bring it all together in one place this morning. In 1 Corinthians 12, once more let me read, there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.

Diversities of operations, but the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another diverse kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

But all of these worketh that one and the self, same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. Further on in that chapter, verse 27, Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.

Are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? Those questions are what is known as rhetorical questions, and the answer, of course, is no.

Now, in the book of Romans, the twelfth chapter, we read this. After that famous, I beseech you therefore, brethren passage, which everybody quotes, then we come to this passage which scarcely anybody quotes.

For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ. And every one member is one of another, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith;or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.

And in the book of Ephesians, the fourth chapter, verse 8, wherefore, he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same that ascended, that is Christ, far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.

And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, and to a perfect man, and to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

Now let’s sketch something here that is known to us all, but in order to arrive at where we’re going, when you’re going into a new area, you always have to drive over familiar streets, the ones you know best to get where you’re going, if nothing else, just to get away from your house.

So, the doctrine of the body of Christ here, that the Church is the body of Christ, with Christ the head, and the true Christians are parts of that body. And that the Holy Spirit is to the body what our soul is to our body, the life, the union, that is what unites it, and the consciousness. Let the soul leave the body and all the parts of the body cease to function. The Spirit in the body gives to it life, cohesion, and consciousness.

And each member recapitulates the local Church, that is, every Christian, every human body, is an illustration. Paul uses it in three of his epistles and asserts it three different times in his epistles, not simply as an illustration to pass by, but something very carefully worked out and at great length. And each local church recapitulates the entire Church.

Now always illustrations break down, and parallels break down, particularly when we come to the sacred and infinite things of God. For a man’s body to function, it all has to be in one place. If you separate him and scatter him around, he’s dead.

But the body of Christ doesn’t all have to be in one place, because its unity is the unity of the Spirit. And therefore, the church is never all in one place. Some are in heaven.

I was wondering this morning what proportion of the members of the body of Christ are in heaven. I would suppose that ninety-eight percent of them might be in heaven, having two thousand years gone to die and go to heaven. But whatever the percentage, the largest number are in heaven and the remainder are on earth.

And not all are on earth at the same time, nor in the same place. And yet the body is not torn nor divided, because it is held together by the Holy Spirit, who is the life of the body. And each local group has all the functions of the whole group and recapitulates, that is, gathers up in itself and sums up all of the offices and gifts and workings of the entire church of Christ.

Now the members, according to Paul, we’re still on our familiar streets. The members, according to Paul, are designed for a function. He says the eye is designed to see, and we all know that. That’s what it’s there for. And the ear is designed to hear, that’s its function. The hand is designed for very, very many purposes, the foot for another purpose, the lungs for another, the heart for another.

And so all the parts of the body have their particular function. And they’re designed to cooperate and act in concert with each other. And in the body of Christ, the motto might be a good boy scout motto.

I thought when I was thinking of it here that somebody might say, well, this is a pep talk, because actually it can be summed up like this, all for each and each for all, for that is what Paul says. He says that the whole body exists for its members, and the members exist for the whole body, and that therefore God gives gifts that the body might profit with all.

And remember one final thing, and it is that all take direction from the head. Cut a head off of a man’s body and there’s no direction anymore. We’ve all seen the familiar country scene of a chicken having its head cut off and still imagining that it was called upon to fly away. So it fluttered all over the barnyard, but it wasn’t going anyplace, it had no direction. Its direction was taken away from it and it soon died. So, the body has its direction from the head, and the body of Christ, the church of Christ, gets its direction from its Head, which is Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now I’ve talked about the functions, or Paul has, and what are these various functions? Well, they’re abilities which are called gifts in the Bible, gifts according to the measure of faith, and gifts according to grace.mThey’re gifts, they’re grace, some variously called, and it says, having then gifts, differing according to the grace, that’s in Romans 12.6. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, 12:1, covet earnestly the best gifts, 12:31, and when He ascended up on high, He gave gifts unto men, 4:8, and then in Romans it says, let nobody think of himself more highly, but everybody judge himself according as God has given him gifts.

Now I find that there are more than nine gifts in the Scriptures. I find that there are about nineteen, and I’ve marked down seventeen of them here, but in reading over Ephesians you come to two more, evangelist and pastor. But because in this Corinthian passage Paul develops it by saying that there are diversities of gifts, and then names nine of them, we say those are the gifts.

But brethren, if you will read the rest of the Scripture, and read what Paul says in the passages I read today, and then read what Peter says, you will find that there are more gifts than nine. And it could be that in saying there are nineteen, that I have made too many because it’s possible some of them are synonymous with each other.

So that if that’s the case, then of course, if you were naming your family and you had one named Billy, and you also called him Willie, and you were counting them and you said Willie and Billy, you’d get one too many, because he’s the same one. You’d give him a synonymous name. So that if you, we are counting the gifts of the Spirit as revealed in the New Testament, if we should by accident find, or we should find that the Spirit had designated one gift by two names, then we’d have to cut it down that much and say, well, that’s, I’m sorry, that’s just using a synonym for the same thing.

But now here are the gifts as are found in the passages I read. The gift of an apostle, which means an ambassador or a messenger or one commissioned to go. And it’s generally believed, I think, by all sound Christians everywhere, that the twelve apostles, as we knew them, had a particular office which has not been perpetuated. Because it talks in Revelation of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Judas by apostasy fell away and Paul was added to make up the number of the twelve. And yet the word apostle is only a name. It’s a designation. It means an ambassador.

And here sitting back in our congregation this morning are two who have gone as ambassadors for Christ, there may be others, two missionaries who have gone as ambassadors for Christ and as messengers for Christ, as those commissioned to go.

So that I am not at all sure that while the twelve apostles certainly were a group in themselves and their offices have not been perpetuated, still I am not sure that it’s not proper and permissible, if we know how we mean it, to call a missionary of an apostle. Because we often hear people call the apostle to the Jews, the apostles to this or that. Maybe we might call one of our missionaries that went into the Baliem Valley the apostle to the Doni, meaning simply an ambassador or a messenger as someone commissioned to go.

The second is the gift of the prophet. Now the gift of the prophet in the New Testament was only secondarily a gift of foretelling events. In the Old Testament the gift of the prophet was to foretell events mainly and to warn and to plead and to call back erring men to God. But in the New Testament the gift of the prophet is not so much to foretell events inasmuch as the Bible has been written and the prophecy stands, and all events have been foretold that God wants to foretell. But the gift of the prophet in the New Testament is to tell forth and to see with an anointed eye and to give meat in due season, and not simply to be a mimicker, but to tell out what God has to say for a given time.

Then there is the gift of the teacher. Not everybody can teach, we might just as well admit it, and even of those that teach, not many can teach. There is a gift of the teacher. It is both a natural gift and it is a gift of the Spirit.

Then there is the gift of the exhorter. Let him exhort, says the apostle. Now an exhorter is not known in our day, but the old Methodists were wise enough that they had an office of an exhorter. They commissioned him, called him a lay preacher. He had a license, he couldn’t marry people, and he couldn’t give the Lord supper, but he could get up and burn up sin and tell how wonderful God was, better than most preachers can do.

It might be interesting to remember that it was a lay preacher, an exhorter, that won Spurgeon to the Lord. Spurgeon came in out of a snowstorm into a Methodist church and got up in the balcony and sat and listened, a young Spurgeon and an exhorter who wasn’t much of a preacher at all, but he had the gift of exhorting. He was exhorting the people. Spurgeon said he said, I believed in Jesus Christ right there and I could have stood up with the best and the oldest saint and sung, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” He was converted.

Then there is the ruler. Now a ruler is used in the same sense as a ruler of the synagogue. He’s not a legal ruler, he’s simply somebody that takes some direction and reads the Scripture and teaches, and I don’t know whether he might be synonymous with a pastor or not.

Then there’s the gift of wisdom also, and the gift of knowledge, and the gift of faith, and the gift of healing, which a few people have had, and the gift of miracles, and the gift of tongues, and the gift of interpretation of tongues, the gift of discernment, the gift of helps. Whatever that is, I do not know, but I sometimes think some people are gifted just to be helpers.

Then there’s the mercy shower, which I’ve called for want of a better name, and this mercy shower appears to be someone who’s particularly gifted by the Holy Ghost to go about helping people that are discouraged, and helping the poor, and otherwise going about doing good, as it was said of Jesus.

Then there’s the gift of government, and that might be the same as the gift of ruling.

Then there’s the gift of giving. Somebody says, aren’t we not all to give? Yes, we’re all to give, just as we are all to have some wisdom. But there’s such a thing as a gift of wisdom.

We’re all to have some discernment, but there’s such a thing as a gift of discernment. We’re all to show mercy and be helpful, but there’s such a thing as a gift of helping and showing mercy.

And so, we’re all to give, but there’s such a thing as a gift of giving. And I believe that God enables some men, if they will allow him by the Holy Spirit, to sow, control, and run business, that they’ll be able to support the Church, and the cause of missions, and the cause of Christ on earth, and to help the poor in a way that we, the average people, can’t possibly do. Then there’s the gift also of the evangelist, and everybody knows that there’s a gift of an evangelist. We admit that today. Then there’s the gift of the pastor.

Now, I’ve named nineteen. Now, my brethren, these are gifts given by the Holy Spirit to individual persons, just as the gift of sight is given to my eye, the gift of hearing is given to my ear, the gift of smelling is given to my nose, the gift of taste is given to my tongue, and the gift of manipulation is given to my hand, and particular gifts are given to every member of the body, so God gives to his Church, of which Christ is the head, these gifts.

Now, the work of the Church is to be done by the Spirit working through these gifted members. Now, you hear me. The work of the Church is to be done by the Spirit working through these gifted members.

Now, I’ll go further than that. I will say this, that in the judgment, when we all receive the gifts for the deeds we’ve done, the rewards for the deeds we’ve done, and we know as we’re known, and that which is chaff and wheat and straw and stubble is separated from that which is gold and silver and diamonds, and all that that is of the flesh perishes and passes away, and that which is of the Spirit alone stands, you will find that not only does God design to do all his work through gifted men, but He does do all His work through gifted men.

Now, He doesn’t carry on all religious activity through gifted men.You don’t have to have a gift of the Holy Ghost to be a preacher. You don’t have to be a gift of the Holy Ghost to be a Bible expositor. We can be Bible expositors by reading commentaries and going to Bible school and learning what men say is true of the Scripture. And a man can get up and preach. A politician can get up and preach, turn from politics if he’s talking to a religious group and preach like a house on fire. You only have to be able to talk and know how to use religious phrases to be a preacher.

But if you’re going to preach so that it’ll stand in the day of the fire, then you’re going to have to speak by a gift of the Spirit. And any preaching that is not done by a gift of the Spirit is not the true preaching of God. For it’s written that Jesus Christ was anointed of by the Holy Ghost and went about doing good. And He said that He was, the Holy Spirit is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, and He opened the eyes of the blind, and so on. Even our Lord Jesus Christ worked by a gift of the Spirit on His human nature.

And so if you’re giving and serving and working and it’s not by a gift of the Spirit, you may lose everything you’ve done, and everything that you’ve put into it may go down the drain in that day. And if we don’t have the gifts of the Spirit, then where these gifts are not present, then the Church is thrown back upon four or five things which I want to name. All of them should be talked about at length, but of course I can’t talk for two hours here. You wouldn’t stay, and I wouldn’t blame you.

But we fall now upon talent. We use the word talent. That is, some fellow can whistle through his teeth, or somebody else has a marvelous gift for impromptu composition of poetry. Somebody else is marvelously gifted in mathematics. You can give him a whole handful of numbers, toss them up, and by the time they’ve been said, he’ll tell you the sum of them. Now those are talents.

Some people are talented composers, some are talented musicians, and some are talented singers, and some are talented talkers, we might as well admit it. Some of you dear, honest, good, godly people haven’t opened your mouths in public because you just don’t have any gift for it, and it doesn’t mean that you’re dumb or ungifted, it just means that isn’t your gift. But some of the hollowest, most hopeless people in the world can run off at the mouth and talk like everything. So, talent. That’s the next thing. Talent.

And the talent runs the church, not the gifts of the Spirit, as God intended, but talents run the Church. Just as you can keep a body alive by a little while, or keep it functioning by, you know how Colonel Lindbergh and his name did? The man who wrote the great book about man? I’ve forgotten his name and doesn’t matter. But they took a chicken’s heart and kept it alive for a month. But it was being done by artificial stimulus from the outside, so the church can be run like that.

And then another method religion can carry on with is psychology. And a great many people are skilled master psychologists. They know how to handle people, really. They’re amazing how they know how to handle people. So, the church can be run, a new man comes in and the crowds come, and first thing you know you have what looks like an amazingly successful church. But that man is simply a shrewd psychologist who knows how to say Jesus in the right place and say tender things.

Then others, other religious work can be done by business methods. And a lot of it is being done by business methods today. And then some use political techniques and some use plain sales methods.

And so, with Christianity now, the church, this church, any church, can be carried on by the exercise of human talents without a touch of the Holy Ghost, by sharp use of psychology without a touch of the Holy Ghost, by business methods, by political techniques and by sales techniques that have not one trace of the Holy Ghost in it.

But I’m telling you and warning you, my dear friends, that when this takes place, we may not know it until the great and terrible day when our deeds are burned with fire and only that which was wrought of the Holy Ghost stands. Jesus said even now the axe lies at the root of the tree and whatever isn’t of God and wasn’t planted by my Father and doesn’t bring forth fruit shall be cast down. And much of the religious activity during the centuries has been an activity wrought by talent and psychology and business methods, political techniques and sales methods.

All right, you say, now Mr. Tozer, let’s be honest about this. If you say that the gifts of the Spirit ought to be in the Church, and I emphatically do, and that the people of God could have these gifts of the Church and could labor in these gifts, then why don’t we simply throw in our lot with the tongues people, the Pentecostal people, by various names. There are, I guess, seventeen or eighteen different splits and divisions of them. Why don’t we throw our lot in with them?

Well now, what I’m going to say now is going to hurt some of my friends. And God Almighty made me do it. He made me do it. And He makes me draw blood and hurt my friends. I don’t want to do it. I’d rather love them and have them love me and go around telling what a nice boy I am. But I must tell the truth, and so I have studied those who are of what we call the tongues persuasion since 1918. That’s about forty-one years, isn’t it? And in all love and charity, I tell you my findings. Not forty-one years, no, but whatever it is, my mathematics always leads me.

In all love and charity, and with complete Christian kindness, I want to say this. First, that there are some good, sweet Christians among our tongues friends. No question about that. I’ve met some of them. I’ve prayed with some of them. And some pretty nice songs, and no great songs, but say, Oh Sweet Wonder, for instance, came out of the Pentecostalism.

And there have been a few lovely songs, never any great songs, but a few good little sweet songs have come out of it, and some good people, and I have friends among them. And I’m not condemning, but I’m going to tell you this, that before I will become a part of a movement, or a school of thought, or a theological school of thought, or a church group, or a denomination, I am going to have to test them and see what have been the characteristics and the marks and earmarks of that group down the years.

Now, with the full understanding that there are many individual churches of which what I say is not true, and with a full understanding that there are individual Christians that are excellent, wonderful, godly, sweet people, then I say this, that the marks that have characterized the various splits and divisions of Pentecostalism since the turn of the century have been, A, a magnification of one single gift above all others, and that, the one that Paul says was of least value.

B, the unscriptural exhibition of that gift before the people like a boy with a toy on Christmas.

C, a tendency to place personal feeling above the Scriptures, which is always an insult to God.

D, an almost total lack of discernment, revealing itself in a predominance of women in their leadership, and sometimes women of questionable character. A credulity beyond belief, allowing them to be taught by little boy preachers, little girl preachers, religious racketeers, people back from the dead, they say, and allow them to adopt rock and roll music long before Elvis Presley, and that led them to splits and divisions.

E, free love, divorce and remarriage among their preachers to a shameful degree. E or E or whatever it is, unbecoming public conduct, not justified in the New Testament.

Now brethren, when a group of people say, we have the gifts of the Spirit, come and join us, then I want to see what cloud hovers over them. Is it a cloud of purity? Is it a cloud of sanity? Is it a cloud of sharp discernment that knows the flesh from the Spirit? Is it a cloud of moral living? Is it a cloud of cohesion and unity? Or is it a cloud of noisy flesh, and sex extravagance, and careless moral living? And if it is the latter, and it is, then I want nothing to do with it.

Realizing that there are among these brethren some good people, and some sweet people, and if they’re mad at me, I’ll grieve about it, because I don’t want them to be. I’m only saying what can be proved and would be agreed to by everybody that knows the facts. Well, so therefore we cannot help ourselves by going somewhere else.

Now I say we ought to have the gifts of the Spirit in the church. Every church ought to have. Well then somebody says, I believe what Tozer says, I’m going to go somewhere else. No brethren, I don’t know of a group or denomination or fellowship or communion anywhere in the world that realizes the Pauline apostolic doctrine of the body of Christ, with each member recapitulating the local church and the local church recapitulating the entire church, and that work as a team, and each one having a proper gift as God gave them to do, and work thus in the Holy Ghost.

Now I know denominations and churches where there are a few like that among them, but I don’t know denominations or groups or churches where that is the regular and general and common thing. So I’ll tell you this, you won’t help yourself by going somewhere else. We here now, in this present moment, this 1956, the 28th of October I think it is, we here and now can receive, this day before the sun sets tonight, we can receive an enduement of the Holy Ghost.

If we will pay the price, each one of us, any one of us, all of us, can receive a downcoming, an enduement of the Holy Spirit. And when he comes, he invariably brings these functional graces, which will enable some to have a sharp discernment.

Now you say, what gifts do you think that we ought to expect? And it says, covet earnestly the best gifts, and we have a right to pray for these gifts and covet them before our God that we might use them to bless His church and glorify His name.

You say then, what are the gifts that you would say would be the most needed in the Church today? I believe the gift of discernment is one of them. We have in fundamentalism ruled the Holy Ghost out, and because we’ve ruled him out, we have gone blindfolded down these decades, with the result that the church has traveled way over into entertainmentism, way over into rationalism, way over into worldlinessism, and the true church of Christ is scarcely to be found anywhere on the face of the earth. It’s not because men were bad, but because men had fearfully ruled out the Spirit, and so the gift of discernment was not there.

The mighty gift that can discern. Let me, I don’t think he’s here now but let me point out a man that I believe has the gift of discernment. Now I don’t think he knows he has, but I think your old praying brother Tom has a gift of discernment. It’s amazing how he can look at you and see through you and tell you all about yourself, and yet he doesn’t make anything out of it at all except to pray and help you a little.

And if this gift of discernment had been in our leadership, we wouldn’t be where we are today. We wouldn’t be locked up behind dispensationalism over here and entertainmentism over there and something else over here, but we’d be in the middle of the way going along. Pray that the leaders of the Church might be endued with the gift of discernment.

Second, I believe the gift of prophecy. That is, the gift of the prophet that can see his generation, know what’s going on, and tell it abroad and make folks listen in one way or another, and find the church in the middle of things and help the church through. I believe we need that gift. I believe we need the gift of faith. Everybody has to have some faith or he wouldn’t be saved, but there are those who have a peculiar gift of faith. And they come around when this church was being built, and we were trying to pay off the old one in the middle of things. There were a few people, I don’t know who they were all, but there were a few that had the gift of faith.

Twenty-eight years ago, when this Church, then the old building, meeting the old building, called me here as pastor. I wrote them back and said, thank you, very much, thank you, thank you, but I’m not coming. And they reported it properly to the church and to the board, that I was not coming, but there was a little woman in this church, still living, very old now, and she was a member of the prayer band. When she got up and said in her broken Dutch English, she said the Lord had shown her and answered her prayer and I was coming.

I said, don’t worry about it, that’s it. She said, this is all settled. I said, here’s the letter saying thank you, but I don’t feel it’s right, it’s not the will of God. She said, that’s okay. She said, the Lord showed me. I hadn’t heard it yet, but God had shown her. She didn’t write to me, that would have been a mistake for her to try to be a messenger boy to me. She just kept still and talked to God. Then shortly after that I began to feel it and sense it.

And that’s what I mean, that gift of discernment and faith that can get through to God when everybody else is excited, or everybody else is jumping up making speeches, let’s do it this way, let’s do it this way.

When the Bible school gets into difficulty, then the members of the board, and here’s one of them, not this one, he wouldn’t do it, he knows better. But members of school boards, and we’ve got another one back here, chairman of a school board or Bible college, and the members jump up and say, well, let’s call in a money-getting concern that for 29% of the proceeds they’ll raise the money for us.

Or let’s make a film of our church work, suppose we do that. Let’s photograph Brother Ruben Eglund in action, and let’s photograph Brother Chase in action, and wave your arms and hold your Bible high, and we’ll take that around among the churches and show that, and thus we’ll get the money. Oh, brethren, that isn’t the way it’s done.

Somebody sitting by will say, God has told me, He’ll look after us, and we don’t have to astute to that. And usually he’s voted down, but if he isn’t voted down and can have his way, God will honor that faith and bless that school. And somebody said recently that in all the Bible colleges and Bible schools, a great number, maybe not all in America, but vast numbers of them were examined, and there were only six of them that were going anyplace and increasing in numbers and making progress, and they were the ones that don’t use any business methods to get their money. They just pray. They have men on their boards that say to God, now here, God, you either do this or else the whole thing will blow up in our faces. And God does it.

I think I mentioned this briefly, that over in Highland Lake, last July, I spoke for a week there, and incidentally, out of that week, six young people went to the Bible school to become preachers and missionaries, out of that week. But anyway, this young man, Merrill Fuller is his name, forty years old, just when I got there, he had his birthday, and they sang Happy Birthday in the dining hall.

Well, this Merrill Fuller owns I don’t know how many hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property right around there, and over across the Pennsylvania state line, he owns another vast holding, which is going to make a Christian high school. He had no more idea how to run a Christian high school than I know how to run a B47. But he said, Mr. Tozer, a whole faculty came to me without my ever soliciting anybody, and said, I want a job, I want to teach. A whole faculty of Christian teachers, a whole high school faculty came.

He said, we were just praying, that’s all. They had me up at five o’clock in the morning praying. Boy, I never felt so old in my life. But I went up there and prayed, and we had a great time. Five o’clock in the morning, and then he said this. Every time he’d get up, he’d say,

Now, friends, we have put this whole business on a platform where it’s either God or total collapse. If God doesn’t hear our prayers and send in the money, we’ll all finish, and that’s the end of it, and we’ll close this place up and write Ichabod over it. He said, I am not going to pray and then do something in such a carnal manner that I won’t know whether God answered or whether my carnal methods worked. So he said, we’re going to walk out and say, Now, God, here I go. You either hold me up or I perish. Now, I ask him, do you think he’s going to fail? No, he’ll never fail. The man who trusts on God will never fail.

Well, the man of faith, we need some faith. Then I think we could use some people with the gift of showing mercy. We’re all so starry-eyed and long-distance in our piety, and we tremble about the Baleen Valley, but there are people within the neighborhood that could use a little help.

You say, why don’t you go do it? Brother, I’m already staggered to bed at night without what I have to do, and I’m not gifted anyhow. I’m not gifted to go to anybody and help them much, but certainly some of you could be, and maybe I could be, but we all ought to be gifted. I think a mercy shower would be a great help around here.

And then I think that God should bless some businessmen and give them a gift so that honestly and without cheating or without preying against a competitor, they could have money enough that they could keep God’s work humming along like a diesel engine.

All right, brethren, we don’t have to go somewhere else. God will not do anything for any church that He won’t do for this church. And He won’t do anything for any people that He won’t do for this people. And He won’t do anything for anybody that He won’t do for you. We here now can receive. Ye shall receive power, says the Holy Spirit, said Jesus about the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes, remember this, that he will bring not only the gifts, but the graces and the fruits of the Spirit.

So, it is my earnest hope and my earnest prayers, that we God’s children here, with the dignity and self-control that belongs to Christianity, with the calmness and sweetness that belong to Jesus Christ, but with the abandonment that belong to the Apostles and the early Christian church, might throw ourselves out on him with an expectation that He should come and endue us. Come Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, with all thy quickening power, come shed abroad a Savior’s love in these cold hearts of ours. I believe he’ll do it.

And He may easily come in great fullness to some people that you and I are kind of overlooking. And He may pass over some that we think are pretty bigshots. And some big shots may even look askance and wonder if it’s God. But I believe that the Spirit of God wants to do a new thing. I believe He wants to do a new thing.

Just about, I don’t know, maybe about the time my daughter was born, that’ll be seventeen years back. No, it was more recently than that. 1944, how long was that ago? Twelve years ago. God and I had something out. We had something out and settled. And God began to fulfill in my poor, ragged ministry what He had promised me so long that He would. And I believe He’s ready to do this for us all.

It wasn’t in 1944 that I was baptized with the Holy Ghost. That was when I was nineteen years old, I know that. But twelve years ago. And I have lived to see God do things He said he would do. I’ve lived to watch Him work and do the things He said He would do. Until out of this poor, humble, uneducated, and worthless preacher, God has influenced, and influenced in the right direction, men whose shoelaces I’m unworthy to loose around this world.

Brethren, we don’t have to go somewhere else. We can now and here have all the mighty outpourings of the Spirit. And wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if to us in this Church would come that which came to the Moravians? And they could only explain it by saying, it was a sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed.

Now that’s what we want. A sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed. And then will come along with it, Scriptualness, purity, cohesion, dignity, usefulness, high moral living, purity of life. Because that’s the only kind of nearness the Holy Ghost ever brings. And the only kind of life He ever motivates.

So shan’t we now, brethren, as we sing a song of our brother’s choosing. I won’t choose. He does such an almost uncanny job of choosing the right song that I won’t choose one. I’ll let him choose it. We’ll sing it reverently. And as we do, shall we not be expecting something from God this day? All right.

“The Spirit’s Gifts and the Church’s Duty“

The Spirit’s Gifts and the Church’s Duty

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 7, 1956

Over the next few Sunday mornings, the Lord willing, I want to talk on a chain of topics or ideas which the church of God needs very badly. And I’m going to read this morning, or rather, I’m going to let Paul talk to us and give us the Scripture, out of which later, over the next few Sundays, I expect to draw some truths.

Now I’m not going to tell you from where I’m reading, because I’m reading from Weymouth’s translation, a very old and honored translation, deliberately this morning. I rarely do it, but I want to today.

The man of God is talking to us. He says, Now, about spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. We can go astray as easily by being uninformed as we can by being wrongly informed. We have no right to be either.

You know that when you were heathens, pagans, that is, Americans, you went astray after dumb idols. By dumb he means idols that couldn’t talk. Paul wanted his God to talk. And what disgusted him was that the gods of the heathen couldn’t talk. Jeremiah and Isaiah had something to say about that too. A dumb idol is no good. Dumb gods, no gods at all.

And he said, for this reason I inform you, that no one speaking under the influence of the Spirit of God says, Jesus is accursed. That is, it’s quoted. Nobody says, and the quotation is, Jesus is accursed. And that no one is able to say, in quotes, Jesus is the Lord, except under the influence of the Holy Spirit. That is, I assume, he means, no one is able really to say. You can mouth anything. But nobody can actually say and believe that Jesus is the Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, he says, there are various kinds of gifts, but there is the same Spirit. Various kinds of official service, and yet the same Lord. Various kinds of effects, and yet the same God. Notice you have the Trinity here, the Spirit, the Lord, and God. The same God who produces all the effects in each person, but to each a manifestation of the Spirit has been granted for the common good.

God never gives a gift to anybody except for the common good. To one, he says, the word of wisdom has been granted through the Spirit. And we can use a little of that now.

And to another, the word of knowledge by the will of the same Spirit. And to another, in the same Spirit, special faith. And to another, various gifts of healing in the same Spirit. And to another, the exercise of miraculous powers. And to another, the gift of prophecy. To another, the power of discernment between Spirits. To one, varieties of the gift of tongues. To another, the interpretation of tongues. But all these results are brought about by one and the same Spirit allotting to them each individually as He pleases. For just as the body is one and yet has many parts, and all its parts, many as they are, constitute one body, so it is with Christ. In fact, in one Spirit all of us, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free men, were baptized to form one body. And we all are imbued, or were imbued, with one Spirit.

Now, he writes to a different group and says this. To each of us individually, His grace was given, measured out with the munificence of Christ. For this reason, Scripture says, He ascended on high, He led a host of captives and gave gifts to man. And he puts in parentheses this explanation. Now this ascended, what does it mean but that he had first descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the same who ascended again far above all the heavens in order to fill the universe.

And He Himself, which is Jesus of course, appointed some to be apostles, and some to be prophets, and some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, in order to fully to equip His people for the work of serving, for the building up of Christ’s body, till all of us arrive at oneness in faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and at mature manhood and the stature of full grown men in Christ.

So, we shall no longer be babes, nor shall we resemble mariners tossed on the waves and carried about with every changing wind of doctrine; according to men’s cleverness and unscrupulous cunning, it makes use of every shifting device to mislead. But we shall lovingly hold to the truth and shall in all respects grow up into union with Him who is our head, even Christ. Dependent, he says, on Him, the whole body, its various parts closely fitting and firmly adhering to one another, grows by the aid of every contributory ligament with power proportioned to the need of each individual part, so as to build itself up in the Spirit of love.

And he wrote to another, not a group this time, but to one of his boys. He wasn’t going to be around too long, and he wanted to get everything straightened out, so he said, now, begins now, doesn’t he, about every time, says, Now the Spirit speaketh, or expressly declares, that in later times some will fall away from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and the teachings of demons.

Paul, obviously, had not been taught not to offend. This is offensive language, that some people are listening to deceiving spirits and the teachings of demons, and this through the hypocrisy of men who teach falsely and have their own consciences seared as with a hot iron, forbidding people to marry and insisting on abstinence from foods which God has created to be partaken of with thankfulness by those who believe and know the truth.

Paul wasn’t married, but he was determined that nobody was going to lay the yoke of celibacy upon anybody. They could marry if they wanted to, as far as he was concerned. He told them that they would have double trouble, but he said, If you want to get married, it’s natural. He told them that somewhere else.

And then he was a man who wasn’t a great eater. He was a frugal, careful man, practicing fasting in long cryings and tears, but he was determined that nobody was going to lay compulsory fasting on anybody. So, he says, these false teachers are forbidding people to marry and insisting on abstinence from foods which God has created to be partaken of with thankfulness by those who believe and know the truth.

For everything that God has created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if only it is received with thanksgiving. It is made holy by the Word of God and prayer.

Now he said, If you put this to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Jesus Christ, nourished on the lessons of the faith and of the good teaching which you have faithfully followed. But profane stories, fit only for old women, have nothing to do with them. Train yourself for godliness. Exercise for the body is not useless, but godliness is useful in every respect. Physical exercise helps you, a little, but godliness helps you in every way, possessing the promise of the present and the future life.

Faithful is this saying and deserving of universal acceptance, and this is the motive of our toiling and wrestling that we have our hopes fixed on the living God who is the Savior of all mankind and especially of believers. Command this and teach this. Let no one think slightingly of you because you are a young man. I don’t need that. But in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, be an example to your fellow Christians. Until I come, pay attention to public reading.

Now what do you suppose he wanted them to publicly read? Scriptures. Exhortation and teaching. Whether that says public reading or not, I don’t know. We’d have to look it up in the Greek, and mostly it simply says reading. But he says public reading in this translation.

Do not neglect the gifts with which you are endowed, which were conferred on you by prophetic indication when the hands of the elders were placed upon you. Practice these duties and be absorbed in them, so that your progress in them may be evident to all. Take pains with yourself and your teaching. Persevere in these things, for by doing this you will secure your own and your hearer’s salvation. Well, now, of course, I read from 1 Corinthians 12, from Ephesians 4, and from 1 Timothy 4.

Now, it is my duty and my high Christian privilege first to pray for this church. No man has any right to talk to a crowd he hasn’t prayed for. No man. So, it is my duty, if you want to allow the word “duty” in your Christian thinking, most people don’t. I think the old word duty might well come back again.

A colt out in the pasture field knows no such word as duty. But his well-trained, hard-working mother in the harness, pulling the wagon of the plow, she knows duty. The colt only knows freedom, but the mother knows duty.

And I wonder if our inordinate desire for freedom and our strange fear of duty, may not be one thing that’s wrong with us now. But it is a duty nevertheless, but a privilege, certainly a high privilege, to pray for this church. And it is another, though perhaps not such a high duty and privilege, to preach to the people who foregather here. And by church I do not mean this organization. Strictly speaking, you cannot organize a church, and the church is not a church by organization.

We live in society and we live under laws, and therefore, being what we are, it is necessary for us to organize. I believe in organization, a free, loose organization. I think it’s necessary. Paul told Titus to set things in order and to appoint men. That meant organization. It could have meant nothing else.

But I say you can’t organize a church, the same as you can’t organize a ball club. You can have a ball club which has a captain and so many pitchers and so many catchers and so many outfielders and so many infielders and so many basemen, but that doesn’t make a club as a certain Chicago club proves. It’s just an organization. And so, you can’t organize a church.

You can have your pastor, elders, deacons, deaconesses, and all the rest, and under law, a constitution, but you don’t have a church. The church is something else altogether. The church is within that organization, maybe, but that organization is not the church. The church is the assembly of the saints. And wherever the saints meet, you have the church. And wherever they habitually meet, then you come to name the church, maybe, and thus you have a church, such as this one or some other church.

And so, it’s a joy to preach to those who have over the past years and who do now and who will preach or foregather in this place, and it’s a privilege to preach to them and to guide and to plan for the future.

Now I try to see the church whole. I want to see you as a part of something vastly bigger. I’d like you to think of yourself as part of something bigger than you are. You know, the sociologists and psychologists talk about the need for belonging. They say that a rejected child is, maybe, developed dangerous mental or nervous traits because he has no sense of belonging.

And they explain the clubs of youngsters, the wolf packs that tramp our streets, as those who in the main come from homes where they have been rejected, where the father drinks, the mother too, and where they’re out nights, and where they’re not loved after they’re five years old or six, and where they feel they don’t belong to anything, and they want to join something in order to feel that they belong. There’s strength, there’s human strength in a sense of belonging to something. That’s why we have secret orders.

Men who are pushed around by their wives and pulled off by their bosses until they get the feeling, they have no soul they can call their own, not a tattered shred of self-respect is left, they go join a lodge. And as the cartoon had it, the wife is speaking to her husband, and she says, the high exalted potentate can’t go tonight because I won’t let him.

And they become high exalted potentates and name themselves big names, but the point is, little men want to belong to something. And that is not a bad thing, that’s a good thing, because we’re gregarious by nature. We’re not wolves to go alone or travel in narrow packs which break up immediately, but we’re sheep to travel in flocks that stay together a lifetime.

So, when I talk about the church, I talk about the whole church. Unless I say this church, because I want you to know that this church is a part of a great church. I can imagine how lonely, now I’m talking in the presence of a young soldier who’s just back, and he may contradict me for this good-naturedly afterward, but I don’t think he will. I can imagine how lonely a soldier would feel in a foreign land among a people whose language he can’t speak except for his uniform, that identifies him with a vast crowd of such fellows all over the world, and particularly with his homeland and his flag.

The sense of belonging is necessary. The young fellow somewhere in some remote corner of the earth wearing an American uniform received a cable or word somewhere from the commander-in-chief that he’d received a dishonorable discharge and was no longer a part of the army. I can imagine what an utter collapse it would be to him, psychologically he’d break down, and half his manhood would leak away from his broken heart.

Belonging to something is what matters, my brethren. Belonging to something that’s going to last, and something that’s worthy, something that’s valuable. I couldn’t belong to a man-made society; I couldn’t possibly do it.

Imagine me getting on my knees and swearing to follow the order of this and that lodge. God made my knees hard to bend, and my American upbringing has made them impossible to bend, unless God bends them. Now imagine that I could ever do that, I never could, but I want to belong to something.

No man is ever individualistic enough to go it alone, no man. The man who does is sick, the hermit is sick. A man who lives alone in his attic, and who refuses even to answer the door, and who sneaks out in the dark, and buys something at a delicatessen, and sneaks back, that man’s sick.

He’s not a normal man. A normal man, good or bad, sinner or saint, wants to walk out and look around at others of his kind and say, I belong. This is my race. These are my people. This is my language I hear spoken there. That’s my flag flying there on top of that school building. I belong here.

That is necessary to our welfare, necessary to our health, our mental health. And that is why rejection, unwanted children, and persons who feel themselves rejected, can sometimes develop very serious and dangerous trends. I want to think of this church then as its relation to the whole church of Christ.

That’s why I like to sing songs about the church, the church of Jesus Christ, which He purchased with His own blood, part in heaven and part on earth, and of every color and tribe and nation and tongue around the world, as the Bible says. And we’re a part of that.

We didn’t begin when Dr. A. B. Simpson organized the Society for Christian Missions back in New York in 1884. If I thought that for a second. I’d never finish this sentence. I’d break off with a semicolon, and I’d close this Bible and leave and resign, and find the church that went back to Pentecost.

But I believe that we’re a part of that which does go back to Pentecost. I believe in the apostolic succession. And I believe that it’s not a succession of bishops and men with names and organizations. I believe it’s a group, it’s a living organism. Just as I believe that my organism goes back to my great-great grandfather Adam, and that I’m a part that the living stream floated down the centuries, and ties me organically and racially and vitally with the first man.

So, I believe that this church is organically and vitally a part of the true church of Christ that began when the Holy Ghost fell on a body of believers and made them one, and baptized them into one body and made them God’s people in a way that no people ever had been before. And therefore, every Christian is a part of us, and we’re a part of every Christian group around the world.

When I hear a good thing or read a good thing that’s said or done by some great man or good man or good woman anywhere in the world for Christ’s sake, I have a good feeling in my heart that’s part of me. That’s part of me. That belongs to me, and I belong to that. And whether I ever meet that person on earth or not doesn’t matter. The church of our Lord Jesus Christ is one. She’s one around the whole earth.

So, I want to think of her that way, and I want to think of you as belonging to the great Church of our Lord Jesus around the earth.  And I want to think of you and your relation to God first of all. Your relation to God first of all. A man got into the papers here the other day by starting a little campaign to get all of his people to vote. Whether you vote or not is your business. I expect to. If you do or don’t, I’m not going to needle you about that.

I’m only going to tell you that every country has the kind of leaders it deserves. But I’m not concerned so much with whether you’re a Democrat or for a Republican, or I’m not concerned so much for whom you’re going to vote. But I’m deeply concerned about your relation to God. That’s first. That’s first.

Before there were any Tories or Whigs or Democrats or Socialists or Republicans or what have you around the world, there was God. Before man ever knew the privilege of the ballot, there was God. And your relation to God is absolutely first.

And then your relation to others is very important too. And your habits and your tastes and your service, all this is very important. And so, we’re going to think about what a church must do and what it’s our privilege to do and what God will give us power to do, and the gifts of the Spirit and all this over the next weeks. And to do all this requires itself a gift of the Spirit.

Now, back in the book of Isaiah, if I can find it without keeping you waiting too long, in the book of Isaiah there’s a passage which I love very much. There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Now that, of course, is Jesus.

And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and shall make him a quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears, but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.

Now, that’s said about Jesus, but that’s true, or ought to be true of the members of the body of Christ. For just as the oil was put upon the high priest’s head, and it ran down to the skirts of his garment, and cleared down to his feet, and gave fragrance and sweetness to his whole body, so the mighty power that was poured upon the head of Jesus must trickle down and flow down to every member of the body. And so what was true of him can be true of his ministers. The Spirit of wisdom shall rest upon him, and the Spirit of understanding, and the Spirit of counsel and might, and the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah and shall make him a quick understanding.

And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes. The curse of modern leadership is looking around and getting your bearings from what you see. Neither shall he reprove after the hearing of his ears, listening carefully to see which way things are moving, and then judging accordingly. No, he’ll never make that mistake.

But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and with equity the meek of the earth. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. And he’ll always be right in his spirit, and right in his wisdom, and right in his judgment. And he’ll not be judged, nor allow himself to be judged by what’s going on round about.

Now, my dear friends, I’m going to break this off here within five minutes. This is Communion Sunday, and I’ve got lots more to say developing this thesis, perhaps until Brother Reidhead comes. But it takes a lot of patience and a lot of persistence and a lot of courage in this day in which we live to find the will of God and to take it.

And I believe that God wants to help us. I believe that He wants to do something new for us here in this church, in our fellowship, I believe it. He’s doing something new for me, and I can’t see why it should not flow out and down and over and up and around until we’re all swimming in it. And I can’t see why God should omit any of us in the breaking of the bread nor in the pouring of the oil.

You and I stand here and mingle together here and foregather here as an assembly of the saints, with all of the obligation resting upon us that rested upon them at Pentecost. It has not diminished one little bit, and there is not anywhere one sentence of Scripture to be found, nowhere is there any proof or a line that could be twisted nor tortured into teaching that the organic, living, vibrating church of Jesus Christ, just before He comes, won’t have every obligation and every privilege and every right and every power at her disposal that she had when she first was born in the early part of the book of Acts.

You know, there is such a thing as being tough about this, my brethren. There is such a thing as saying to God and to yourself, and at times maybe over your shoulder, to the devil, that you’re not going to give up to the times. And that you’re not going to give up to the ways of the world, or even to the common ways of religion round about you. And that you’re not going to judge yourself by others, and you’re not going to allow your Church to be judged by others. And if it looks a little better or a little worse, then worry about it or be glad.

But you’re going to take the New Testament’s standards as your standard. And just as sure as God sits in His high heaven, unless Christ comes within the next twenty-five years, unless He comes within the next twenty-five years, the Christian Missionary Alliance and all such groups as we are, fundamentalists generally, are going to have to recall and have back upon us a revival that will eventuate in a new moral power, and a new separation, and a new cleanness, and a new bestowment of the mighty enablings of the Spirit, or God will have to raise up from somewhere a new group to carry the torch.

Now, I prophesied twelve years ago about something, and it came to pass that my only mistake was I didn’t go far enough in what I said. I’ll tell you about that next Sunday, if you honor me by appearing here, or honor your own soul by coming to the house of the Lord. And I’m prophesying this without fear.

If we do not do something, if the church doesn’t do something, if we don’t make a hard swing back to the roots of Christianity and beginning over again to seek the face of God, God is going to pass us up, as a farmer passes up, eggshells that are empty, throws them out and buries them. As you throw away tin cans that have been emptied and their contents taken, and they’re thrown out to be carried away in the refuse. As we bury dead men whose spirit has left them, and who can no longer stand up or talk or hear.

We reverently lay away the shell where they were. There was a day when Israel, believing in the perpetuity of her place in the sun, said to Jesus, we be not born of fornication, we be the seed of Abraham, and this temple is the temple of God. And Jesus said, they are the children of Abraham who do the works of Abraham, and as for this temple, there’ll be a day when not one stone will be upon another.

And that came to pass literally, and the Roman emperor sent his plows and plowed the foundation with plows. To fulfill, he’d never heard it said, and he didn’t know Jesus had ever said it. But Jesus said, not one stone will stand on another. And they plowed up the foundations after knocking every stone down level with the ground. The very sacred temple, God will leave it when it ceases to fulfill His purpose and do His will. There isn’t an organization in the world God won’t desert.

The Salvation Army, the Christian Missionary Alliance, the Nazarenes, the Mariners, Christian Businessmen’s Committee, any group anywhere, God will desert them in the hour that they cease to fulfill His will. There isn’t a denomination on this wide earth anywhere, you can’t make your robes long enough, nor your chains heavy enough, nor your titles long enough to say the church, when once she ceases to fulfill the will of God. There isn’t a group anywhere, God will raise them up in 1884 and desert them in 1964, unless they continue to fulfill the will of God.

There isn’t a group like this anywhere, my brethren, unless we follow on to know the Lord and humbly and meekly follow Jesus Christ in fear and godly reverence and in faith and in love and charity. There isn’t a church, I say, anywhere that God won’t turn away from and go to some colored mission or some group somewhere of simple-hearted people that don’t know too much and don’t have too much, but that do love God and want to obey him. I say, God will desert a crowd anywhere.

It doesn’t mean the individual members of that group who are Christian people will be deserted, but it does mean that the cloud will lift from that assembly. Dear God, I pray that if it ever lifts from this church, God will tell me twenty-four hours before the tragedy occurs, for I want time to get out of town. I want time to get away where I don’t have to stand and look at the despoiling of a church.

Only when the cloud is there and the fire, only when the Holy Ghost is present, and the Shekinah glows is a church a true church. And then if you lack everything else, you still have a true church. Now I’ve read from Paul about the possibilities, the privileges, the obligation, the commission that is ours, the job we’ve got to do, our future, what we’ve got to do right here and to the ends of the earth.

I’ve read to you about the power that God gives to enable us to do it. Then I have read of the strange teachings that come in from everywhere to spoil that holy oil. So, over the next weeks we’re going to talk about it, God willing. But that will be all for now.