SUPERNATURAL GIFTS
TEXT: Matthew 10:5-16

A few years back I was leading a women's retreat in Florida. After one of the sessions a woman took me aside to talk with me. She told me that earlier in the day one of the other women had lost the diamond out of her engagement ring and was completely distressed. So the woman who had lost the diamond gathered with several of her friends to pray about it. The woman who was speaking to me was in that group that prayed.

She told me that as they prayed, an amazing thing happened. She saw the diamond. They weren't anywhere near where it was, but she saw the exact place where it was...under a chair back in the conference room. They stopped the prayer, went to the spot, and it was there. The woman who had the vision wanted to talk with me about it because she was afraid. She came from a background that always spoke of such things as the occult and labeled them evil. She was afraid that the devil had gotten hold of her and that she had done something wrong.

I explained to her what I want to say to you also at the outset of this sermon dealing with the more supernatural of the spiritual gifts. The thing that makes the use of psychic and miraculous powers right or wrong is not the act itself, but the source of the power. All through the Bible, the people of God are doing strange and wondrous things. Even if you don't count the work of Jesus, you still have others who heal the sick, raise the dead, multiply food, use oracles, see visions, predict the future, interpret dreams, you name it. You also have places in the Bible where much of that is forbidden. Which is it?

We actually have a chance to see the contradictions sitting right together in the story of Moses before Pharaoh. As Moses is trying to convince Pharaoh of the authority he has been given by God, God tells Moses and his brother Aaron to do a number of miraculous acts. You can read about it in Exodus, chapters 7-8. The first three things that Moses does, the magicians of Pharaoh also do. A rod becomes a snake, water is turned to blood, a plague of frogs. Both Moses and the pagan sorcerers are doing the exact same thing. Today we have come to assume that a person turning a rod into a snake is a sorcerer and that such acts are evil. What I'm trying to show is that we can't determine the good or evil question by the act alone. What makes the difference is the source of the power.

The woman in Florida was worried because she was doing something that psychics do and she thought that action made her evil. I was able to point out that God has supernatural gifts that are given for the building up of God's people. They were praying and asking God to show them where the diamond was. Through this woman's gift of knowledge, God was able to answer their prayer in an immediate, clear, and positive way.

I know I'm going way out on a limb here to get up in a church in front of an established New England congregation and to suggest that this stuff is real. But I've seen too much and heard too much from people I trust to think otherwise. Some churches teach that the time of miracles ended with the writing of the Bible. My studied, thoughtful, intellectual opinion of that theory is... "Nonsense." Jesus and later Paul give every indication that such things are also gifts from God for the work of God's kingdom, and even has the disciples go out and practice it from time to time as we read this morning.

So with that as background, turn with me to the spiritual gifts sheet and we'll walk through some definitions for the gifts we didn't do last week. The first one that we skipped is under the Leadership Gifts...number five, Miracles [energemata dunameon I Corinthians 12:10, I Corinthians 12:28]. Literally, the Greek words mean "operations of powers." This category might include all sorts of things...including things listed under other gifts. Healings, exorcisms, walking on water, raising the dead, parting the waters...any number of things that we see being done in both the Old and New Testaments as well as things we hear about today, especially in parts of the world willing to believe that such things are possible.

But the reason miracles are set apart as a different gift from others that we might also term "miraculous," is that the gift of miracles is a gift that focuses on the power and authority of God. The miracles that Moses and Aaron performed before Pharaoh were given to show that God was stronger than anything the Egyptians could muster. By the third plague, the Egyptian sorcerers can no longer do what Moses is doing. Elijah performs miracles to show that God is more powerful than Baal...the local Canaanite deity. Jesus performs miracles to show that he speaks with God's authority, and the disciples perform miracles for similar reasons.

When miracles are done to enhance the fame of the person doing them or through some power other than the power of God, the person is in dangerous waters, even if the gift was legitimately God's gift to begin with. The fall will be great, and depending on the powers you have tapped into...maybe even fatal.

The gift of miracles is under Leadership because of its emphasis on the authority and power of God, which is one way of legitimizing leadership. If the focus ever shifts from God to you, however, you have moved from the gifts that delight God to the thing that God condemns. To exercise the gift of miracles, you need the gift of faith, which is under the Knowing Gifts. We all have faith to one extent or another. The gift of faith is that surge of confidence in the power of God that allows you to literally move mountains. It was the confidence that let Peter get out of the boat and walk on water with Jesus.

The next things that we skipped were items four and five under Supporting Gifts -- Tongues [gene gloson I Corinthians 12:10, I Corinthians 12:28, I Corinthians 12:30] and Interpretation of Tongues [hermeneia glosson or diermeneuein I Corinthians 12:10, I Corinthians 12:30]. Visit an Assemblies of God or Church of God church or any of a number of denominations that fall broadly under the category of "Pentecostal," and you are quite likely to see these gifts in action. You can also see it in other denominations and in the Roman Catholic Church, if you find one with a small group or prayer meeting labeled as "charismatic."

If you are not used to it, being in a place where this is practiced can be frightening. The thing to remember is that exercising the gift of tongues is a willful act. Some people are afraid that they will suddenly be caught up in it against their will and end up doing something they'll regret. Don't worry...God doesn't operate that way. Those who suddenly jump up in a worship service and speak in tongues, do so willingly. They choose for God to use them in that way.

The gift of tongues is the ability to speak in a language you don't know and haven't studied. It is a spontaneous speaking in an unknown language. It has two purposes. The first is for private use. At those times when your heart is full...either in joy or sorrow...and you have a need to speak to God but have no words, tongues is a wonderful gift. It allows for verbal expression to God without the distraction of forming sentences and collecting thoughts.

The second purpose of tongues is more controversial and that is when someone stands up in worship and speaks in tongues. Paul devotes all of 1 Corinthians chapter 14 to dealing with the difficulties this gift can cause in public worship, and that chapter should be preached at least once a year in churches that openly practice the gift. It can get out of hand. Paul explains that the gift, like all spiritual gifts, is meant for the building up of other Christians. It doesn't build anybody up to have someone stand up and babble at you in a language you don't understand. That is why Paul ties this gift very closely with the Interpretation of Tongues. In private use, God does the interpreting. But in public, the sign that you have spoken words from God is proven by someone...maybe you, maybe someone else...speaking immediately afterward with the interpretation. Read 1 Corinthians 14 for a more detailed description.

We need to move quickly to the Knowing Gifts. First on the list is Prophecy [propheteia Romans 12:6, I Corinthians 12:10, I Corinthians 12:28]. Often we think of a prophet as one who tells the future, and this can be the case, but in a broader sense, the prophet is one who makes known the word of God, whether that word interprets past or present events or describes a future toward which we are headed. A brief glance through the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures will show that a prophet is not always appreciated. Unlike the evangelist who is always bringing good news, the prophet brings all the news from God...God's pleasure and displeasure with what we are doing.

Prophecy can take different forms. There are those who are primarily verbal. They sense God's message and either speak or write it. Jeremiah is a verbal prophet. Others are non-verbal, like the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel sees visions and has out of body experiences where God shows him things and interprets them. Ezekiel does report some of this in words, but he also shows a lot of it in symbolic action. Today we would give Ezekiel a nice padded cell somewhere. We have forgotten that God gives gifts that speak to us through non-rational as well as rational means.

Prophecy is similar to number 5, the gift of Knowledge [gnosis I Corinthians 12:8], but they are distinct. The prophet tends to present God's opinion and thought and interpretation. The one with the gift of knowledge is a channel for God's information. The woman who had a vision of where the diamond was, had the gift of knowledge. It wasn't symbolic of a larger truth, it was needed information to solve someone's distress. When police call on a psychic to help with a case, they are looking for someone with the gift of knowledge. Where is the body? Who made the call?

Again, this gift can come in rational or non-rational forms. The woman I knew saw a vision. For me, I well remember one night in the late 80's when I woke up from a sound sleep in the middle of the night knowing that I needed to pray for Mother Teresa. I had no particular connection to Mother Teresa, wasn't reading about her, didn't even at that point know a whole lot about her beyond the basics of what she did. But I sat up like a bolt, knowing that I needed to pray. I did. The next morning in the paper, it reported that she had a heart attack the night before. I imagine that there were people all over the globe suddenly stopped in their tracks to pray because it was needed and we were open to it. That is another form of knowledge.

Related to that gift is Discernment [diakrisis I Corinthians 12:10]. Discernment is a kind of knowledge, but rather than straight fact or instruction it represents the ability to discern between good and evil, right and wrong, health and illness. Often you will hear it described as the discernment of spirits. If you find that sometimes when you meet someone you have either very good or very bad feelings about them...even though you don't know anything about them, that is an indication that you might have the gift of discernment. It operates with people, with places, and also with things. This can be the troubleshooter...the technician who knows exactly where the problem is...with your phone line, with your relationship, or with your digestive system.

In its more supernatural forms, people who perform exorcisms...which are on the increase, by the way...have this gift. They have discerned that they are dealing with an evil spirit as opposed to mental illness or ecstasy from God. This is also the gift of those who do work with energy and auras...discerning health or illness, positive an negative energy.

That is not to say that everyone engaged in those activities is doing God's work. But it is to say that there is some Biblical support for gifts from God operating in that ways and in other ways that we tend to simply label "occult" or "new age." It might mean that the psychic down the street needs not our condemnation, but our encouragement to see a higher source and greater power for those same gifts. Maybe they don't need to quit what they're doing. Maybe they just need to ground what they are doing in the God of Jesus Christ.

Time is running short...so quickly through the others. Wisdom [sophia I Corinthians 12:8] is the ability to unite the practical and theoretical...to see the whole picture...the forest and the trees both. If you can not only envision a program but can also know what details need to be taken care of to make the thing happen, that is wisdom. Therapists of various sorts often have the gift of wisdom. They can identify the general problem of whatever type...mental, spiritual, or physical...and can also come up with concrete things to do to help. Judges can be wise when they can see the big picture they are dealing with and then figure out the detailed legal steps that will result in justice. To simply figure out what is going on is discernment. To also know what to do about it is wisdom.

There could be a whole sermon on Healing [iamata I Corinthians 12:9, I Corinthians 12:28]. In its natural form, healing is the ability to help someone through a process...emotional healing through months or years of therapy, physical healing through medical treatment. Those natural processes are forms of the gift of healing. It also takes supernatural forms of instant healing...again in physical, emotional or spiritual ways. If you have ever prayed for someone and right then and there the problem is gone, that is the supernatural form.

Yes, there are shams and scams. But just because some doctors are quacks does not mean there is no truth in medicine or no doctors worth their fees. It's the same way with all of these supernatural gifts. Because some healers are in it for the money and the glory and everything is staged does not mean that all of them are or that God never heals that way. It's the same with the other gifts. Some are crocks or crooks. Some are committed to powers other than God. But there are some Tarot card readers that pray before readings and others who feel exiled from a faith they would like to explore because their particular gifts are seen as evil, even though the Bible seems to be full of their use.

To be complete, to be whole as the people of God, we need all the gifts among us. Yes, all of them need to be well grounded in the God of the Bible. But let's be sure that everyone gets that opportunity. Let's be sure that we don't label the work of God as the work of evil or as nonsense by mistake. Dare we be open to all of the gifts of the Spirit?

Amen.

(c) 2001, Anne Robertson