This Sunday, January 15 is the Second Sunday after the Epiphany.
Verse of the Epiphany Season:
This week’s sermon is Guest Preacher: Seminarian Wes Johnson
This week’s readings are:
Spiritual Gifts
Lectionary
Gospel
and Old Testament
Epistle – Semi-continuous reading
Epiphany Season
1
Corinthians (and a little bit of 2)
Thought
it would be interesting to dig into those readings
Small
problem … three year reading plan and I looked at the wrong year.
Done the work so we’ll go with it!
1 Cor. 12:1-11
Spiritual Gifts – Gifts from the Holy Spirit
People get
hung up on these.
“Do
I have the gift of evangelism?”
Sometimes
treated as an excuse.
Often, we
focus on the exotic.
Healing,
miracles, prophecy, tongues
Some
treat tongues, in particular, as proof of the Holy Spirit.
Key is v. 7
“A
manifestation of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good.”
These
are gifts and abilities given to us for the sake of serving the church and its
mission.
“There
are different activities, but the same God works all of them.”
Don’t lose
sight of v. 1-3
Faith
is a spiritual gift, and with it Jesus’ salvation from sin and death.
The
ability to say (and believe) Jesus is Lord.
Greatest
gift! All the others are pretty useless without it!
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