Sermon by Roberto Miranda
The purposes of these sermons is to raise in us a mentality of faith, a supernatural mentality, so that we can understand that the Christian life is a life that is walked in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Christian life is not just a routine life where you navigate a lot of words and theological concepts and mechanical teachings.
The Christian life is a life that is navigated with the power of the Holy Spirit, with the gifts that God provides to give us victory in all the situations that we may encounter.
And that is ultimately the central purpose of all these teachings that we have been giving and sharing. We have talked about the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, the need not to depend on routine, just coming to church just to have the tire re-inflated that is a little tired for the week and we return again to…. No, the Christian’s life is a life that is nourished by an inner source.
“… rivers of living water will flow from within us…”
That is the presence of the Holy Spirit and we have to ask the Lord to baptize us, to fill us with his Holy Spirit. Brethren, I encourage each one of you, from the newest to the oldest in the Gospel to understand that, that we have to continually go before the Lord so that he baptizes us with his spirit. That is an experience.
There is a baptism that is initial, it is a baptism that opens the connection with the Holy Spirit and that fills us, but after that we have to go repeatedly for fresh fillings of the Holy Spirit, continuously.
The word of the Lord says, “… Be filled with the Holy Spirit…” that is, it is something continuous. Be filled with the Holy Spirit continually. And one of the things that the Holy Spirit does is specifically provide us with gifts. Gifts means gifts, supernatural provisions so that we can successfully walk the Christian life.
And I was preaching in the last interventions that I made based on Chapter 12 of First Corinthians, where the Apostle Paul speaks of the different gifts or gifts, or provisions of power that the son of God receives for the tasks that have been assigned to him , that the church has received to carry out the tasks that God has given it.
First Corinthians 12, verse 7 says, “…but to each one, to each one is given the manifestation of the spirit…”
Remember that always, to each one, it is not one here, and another there, the most beautiful, the oldest, the most consecrated. I believe that God gives each potential one a gift of the Holy Spirit from him. You have a gift in your life. You have a provision of God’s grace, you have a manifestation of God’s power that can be used for something that God wants to do and for your own benefit as well.
“…..Each one is given the manifestation of the spirit for what? for profit…”
I’m going to talk a little more about that. Note that for what are the manifestations of the spirit of God given? For profit. In other words, for whatever is needed, for the blessing of the person, or for the blessing of the church, or for a constructive purpose.
Many times you have heard people say that the gifts are no longer in manifestation because the time of the first century has already passed, before the New Testament was written, before the canon was closed and all these things. This doctrine is called cessationism, that the gifts have already ceased. And there are many very pious evangelicals who love the Lord very much, who say that the gifts are no longer in function because it is no longer necessary because the need for the gifts was for when before the church finished writing the Bible, the New Testament and the old one that was already written before.
I don’t see that. Here he says that the gifts are given for benefit, that is, for blessing and that need for blessing has never ended, we will always need some kind of benefit from God. Amen. So the gifts are going to be in function because God gave them for profit and for other tasks and other purposes that we will see later.
Then he says “…. for to him is given by the spirit the word of wisdom….”
We already talked about the gift of wisdom, I say that the gift of wisdom is a provision and you can see that sermon and listen to it, it is a provision for situations, it is a supernatural provision of practical knowledge, of practical wisdom for any situation in life. We speak of the wise Solomon who received wisdom for certain things.
Jesus, when they tell him, whose coin is this, to get him in trouble, he says, ‘well, which side is the coin?’ ‘Caesar’, ‘well, then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s… ”and in this way he very wisely avoided the trap that was being set for him.
Wisdom, God has wisdom for you to navigate any situation in life. The Apostle James says, “if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives abundantly and without reproach…”
We can receive a piece of wisdom for a specific situation. Now, there are people, I believe, that God has endowed with a supernatural gift of wisdom to give advice, to resolve situations. That person walks in a gift of wisdom and those people have always been through the church, they have been very gifted people to bless the church, and they receive that infusion of practical wisdom to help people, to help the church. It is a special gift.
But it can also manifest in your life in certain situations. You can receive a word of wisdom for a specific situation.
Word of science or in the original Greek is knowledge, and I have said, there are many different…. I come back again, go to the sermon on the gift of knowledge. To my knowledge, and to many other people I’ve read, the most convincing thing for me, the most convincing interpretation is that it’s a gift specifically for situations…. that is, it can be technical knowledge, it can be administrative knowledge, it can be knowledge like the one Daniel had, for example, revelation knowledge, but also administrative knowledge. Daniel had both. The gift that Joseph received, I believe, was a gift of knowledge to manage the finances and economy of Egypt. The gift that Neemiah received was a gift that I believe was knowledge to help Jerusalem rebuild her walls and to handle a very difficult situation and how to deal with the king and all things.
The gift that Besaleel and Aholiab received to design the tabernacle, God gave him gifts of design, gifts of colors, gifts of fabrics, gifts of crafts, gifts of architectural design, I imagine, all those gifts, knowledge…. They are people who walk…
I think there are also gifts of knowledge that manifest in terms of people who can think in a very deep, theologically developed way. All of this is…. gnoseos is the word, of knowledge.
In my opinion that is what it means. Some people believe that it means, the gift of knowledge is that you know something that is not normally accessible to the human mind, for example, when Peter knows that Ananias and Sapphire have not given all the money of the inheritance that they have sold, that they say they have given. That can also be a gift of knowledge, but it is again, it is a specific knowledge endowment about something that is not normally accessible. That might be it too, right?
Everything that has to do with the supernatural apprehension of the reality that we live in, all of that can be a gift of knowledge.
We talk about the gift of faith, which is the gift that for me is the central gift, without that gift one cannot maneuver, I believe, in the other gifts. Abraham had that gift when he set out to walk because God told him ‘leave your land and your relatives’.
Look there in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, all those heroes of faith. And by the way, it’s interesting that there in the count of the heroes of the faith, people, men and women who had faith, there are two types of people there. There are some whose faith brought them great victories, they opened the sea, raised their dead, closed the mouths of lions, defeated great armies, knocked down giants like David, but he also says that there were others who walked the world wandering the earth, fleeing , being stoned, suffering different kinds… he says, of which the world was not worthy.
Remember something, that faith is not only…. a person who has faith is not just a person who is always victorious and who always beheads demons. Sometimes it takes faith to believe that God is good even in the midst of difficult situations.
Job had tremendous faith, because even when everything seemed to deny God’s love and consistency and faithfulness in his life, he persisted in believing that God was good and had a purpose for him. And so he overcame his faith and put the devil to shame and glorified God, and finally received God’s blessing. Because faith is a process. You see?
That is to say, there is much in the Pentecostal charismatic world, we have the bad habit of only glorifying faith when it manifests itself in a positive, bright, victorious, easy way, but many times we do not understand that God also chooses painful and dark processes so that it also manifests itself. Faith. Amen, do you understand? That is to say, that faith many times, you stand firm, as the Book of Ephesians says, “…. and having passed the bad day to be firm….” like the Roman soldier who stood at his post and no matter what happened, he stayed in his position, and all the enemy’s arrows were fired at him, and when everything was over he was in the same place from the beginning, defending his post.
So that’s faith too. And as I say, the Pentecostal charismatic world often does not know how to handle the complexity of what faith is and that is why sometimes we are so superficial and we are even so weak, many times to deal with the complexity of the life of the spirit.
So we have gifts of wisdom, gifts of knowledge, gifts of faith, and now here in verse 9 another gift is mentioned, it says:
“… to some were given the gift of faith by the same spirit, and to others gifts of charismáta and amaton healing….”
How many dare to pronounce that? Carismamato and amaton, which means, charismata, charisma is a gift, charismata, gifts, is the neuter, a plural neuter gender, gifts of healings.
That is to say, there are believers, there are people, there are figures in the life of the church who again move in a gift of healing. They have that specialty so to speak. They have received the gift of healing. It doesn’t mean that every time you pray for a person, that person is healed because I don’t believe there are such things as perfectly manifest gifts. The gifts are so complex that sometimes there are situations that we do not understand why the…