December 2, 2025 | 1 Corinthians 12-14
===
[00:00:00]
Introduction and Welcome
---
Hey folks. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello, Tuesday. It is Tuesday. In case you were wondering what time it is, what day it is. It is Tuesday. It's December 2nd. We are well into December now, all the way 48 hours, little over 24 hours probably as you're listening to this.
Into December, the last month of the year. Hopefully you're on your way to enjoying Christmas season looking at Christmas lights. I gotta get my Christmas lights up yet. I don't know if they're up yet. I almost put them up Saturday morning this last week, and yet it had rained and I thought to myself, you know, I don't wanna fall off my roof, so I'm not gonna put 'em up yet.
Probably a wise move. Yeah. Yeah, but you should get them up. I need to. It's do, it's just the rain keeps coming in, so it's like, I don't know if I can get 'em up yet. Well, as we're recording right now, looking okay right now, you should. Do it well, except that, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's cold today too, man. At least when we're recording, I don't know what it's gonna be coming up.
Christmas Memories and Gifts
---
Do you remember the best toys that you got for Christmas? For sure. Gimme a Taste. Do the one that sticks out in my mind. I got Turtle [00:01:00] GI Joe. Oh, okay. Do you remember GI Joe's? Oh, of course. It was this massive, probably like. I don't know, 18 wheeler looked like an aircraft carrier tank and it had a rocket Wow.
Ship that it had a rocket that came up off of it that launched that you could shoot the bad guys with. I think I remember this. And so I had that. Yeah. In the same Christmas my mom got me this Playmobile doctor helicopter. Oh wow. And she was so excited for that because she was a doctor. The GI Joe thing was like.
So I played with both, but I shot the doctor helicopter outta the air with the GI Joe Rocket. So that was, those are not enemy non-combatants, bro. Come on. That's a violation. I was like six or seven years old at most. Wow. And so, yeah, that sticks out. That was a big memory for me. How about you? I don't remember 10.
I remember I got a Sega one year. Yes. A Sega Genesis. Yes. With Sonic the Hedgehog. That was. Amazing. Yes. That was one of the best Christmases I ever had. I also remember getting, for one Christmas, I got a stereo system with the Michael Jackson history CDs. Okay. So I don't know if that's where [00:02:00] my love for music began, but it certainly was reinforced at that point because I used that thing all the time.
It was an awesome gift. Is that when you learned the moonwalk? I, yes. Yeah, the moonwalk, the Crip walk, the YMCA, you gonna bring those out on stage on a Sunday morning for I will do all of those. Okay. At, during the first song, maybe during the sermon, I'll show off my moves. If the sermon is good, you won't see me.
If I've sensed that there's a bit of energy waning, I'm just gonna step right behind you walking and moonwalk across the stage, just right in front of me. Just do it right in front. Just right down on the floor there? Yeah. Yeah. Or the Crip walk. I can do both. Maybe I can do a combination of the two.
That would be crazy. That would, that would, or the boots Scoop Boogie. I can try that one. That would make the news for us. Yeah. I think that would be another way for us to get on the news. Yeah. Yeah. Good gifts, man. I remember getting some of the coolest gifts. I do like though, trying to be creative and giving good gifts.
Now I'm not there yet. I still have a lot of work to do, but I I enjoy giving gifts. I think Jesus was right. Something tells me Jesus is right about this when he said he's more blessed to give than [00:03:00] to receive. What about people who say, ah, you know what? I, a gift card. I'm good with a gift card. Just gimme a gift card.
I think that's fine too. Yeah. If that's really the best gift that they can think of it's harder for adults. Because adults, if you want something generally you're probably gonna get it. Kids are easier 'cause they're not getting stuff all the time. So I can understand that for an adult it's much harder to do that unless you know them really well and you can think, oh, this is the one thing they don't have yet, or whatever else, and it's harder to do that.
So I get that.
Spiritual Gifts in the Church
---
So I don't know if you did this on purpose, but we're talking about gifts in our text. That we're covering today for Corinthians 12 through 14. The best gifts, the best are spiritual gifts. Gifts are spiritual gifts. And you can't give, these ones can't wrap 'em up yet. You can't wrap these ones.
You can't give them from the spirit. They just, they're his gifts to give. I guess you could, like somebody could show up at church on Sunday morning wrapped up and be like, I'm here, church. Here I am I'm the present. Yeah. My presence is your present. You would do that, wouldn't you? I did not say me.
No. No. You're going to show up to church wrapped up. [00:04:00] Yeah. Well, Paul makes clear in chapter 12 that the purpose of the gifts is for the building up and the unity of the body of Christ. And it's interesting, and I think I, I said this last year and it just sticks out to me every time we come to this section is that it's fascinating.
That's something that was meant to be. Unifying to the church has proved to be one of the more divisive elements in the church, and that is the interpretation of the spiritual gifts. But in chapter 12, Paul's gonna start by saying, Hey look, this is the point. The gifts are different, and that's a good thing.
He's gonna celebrate that and compare the body of Christ, the church to a human body. He's gonna say, just like the human body has different parts, and all those parts work together and that's good. So it is with the church, he's gonna say, if everybody were the same, the church would hurt. Overall, just like if everybody were the same, every body were the same part, the body wouldn't be able to function the way it should.
And so I love verse 18 because it says God has arranged the members of the body, each one of them as he chose. I see that personalized for the churches that God has individually arranged the [00:05:00] church, the local church in such a way as to provide for the needs that are gonna be there. You're gonna have the gift of leadership.
You're gonna have the gift of hospitality. You're gonna have the gift of. Service, you're gonna have the gift of administration. You're gonna have all of these things that are gonna be represented in the body of Christ, especially if the body's gonna work together for the overall health and unity of the body.
How much of these gifts should we expect to see today? It seems like Paul talks about all sorts of different gifts, and I don't think he's being exhaustive. I don't think he identified every single gift that the church could enjoy. There's lots of gifts here that aren't mentioned. But the ones that he talks about here, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, various kinds of tongues, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, we would still see like administration's available, leadership's available.
We still see those. What, to what extent should we expect these gifts and how do we know what to expect versus what not to expect? Sure. We've talked about recently in the Book of Acts that there are things that are being done by the apostles that are meant to confirm the message in the messenger to, to validate the message in the messenger.
Those were the miraculous things that they were doing. And so I'd say the gifts of miracles were [00:06:00] unique to this time within the church. This is still early on in the spread of the church. And so the miracles were being done to again, validate the message and the messenger and that would include the gifts of.
Of tongues as well. In fact, we're gonna see if in fact if we wanna go there, we can go there in chapter 14. I think chapter 14 makes it clear, at least in my mind, that the gifts of tongues were gifts of known languages that were being spoken by the person that was speaking them. In fact, the Apostle Paul is gonna even say in one Corinthians 14, starting verse nine, he says, you yourselves know if with your tongue you're, you utter speech that is.
Not intelligible. How will anyone know what is said for you'll be speaking into the air. And then he says this, there's doubtless many different languages. So we notice he's talking about languages in the context of tongues here, there's different languages in the world and none is without meaning. But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker.
In the speaker. A foreigner to me. Verse 13. Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. And so there, I think Paul's making it clear. These are known languages and the gift of tongues, the miracle was [00:07:00] that they were speaking in language. They didn't know by default.
And there was gonna be somebody to interpret there, and that was gonna be seen as something to validate again, the message in the messenger. And later on he's gonna say the gift of tongues is for those outside the church. I have that right, right. Not backwards. The gifts of prophecies for those inside the church.
I think that's what he says. So yeah, the gift of tongues is another one of those miraculous gifts. All that to say that I don't think we should expect today because it was again, used to spread the gospel as far and wide and fast as possible. The gift of prophecy is a unique one. Some have compared the gift of prophecy to what we know as the gift of preaching today because it's spoken of as something that's used for the building up of the body of Christ, that they bring the word and they use the word in order to explain it, to build up the body of Christ.
I think we see other examples in the Book of Acts, for example, with Agabus as a prophet, somebody who is actually exercising the gift of foretelling or foretelling. What is actually gonna take place there? That I would say is in a forthtelling nature, something that was reserved for the early church in that [00:08:00] timeframe.
The other gifts, the gifts of teaching, the gifts of administration, the gifts of leadership, those are continual gifts that are available for us to still today, that are more about the building up of the body of Christ and the functioning of the body of Christ than they are the early spread of the gospel.
Perhaps one good cross reference here as you're reading through this, especially as you're thinking through some of the implications of these things, the verse 28, chapter 12, here, it says, in God has appointed in the church, first apostles. Second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, gifts of healing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Ephesians chapter two, Paul says that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Now think about that language here. How many times do you pour a foundation into something? Ideally only once, right? Unless you're totally destroying the building. So here you have a foundation of the church being established and laid, which is why some of these gifts are necessary.
And once the foundation is laid, you now get to build on top of it with a whole host of other. Materials and supplies. And so the foundation again, is the apostles and profits. A lot of the things that you see growing out of it are a result and a consequence of the foundation being properly laid. So the gifts here [00:09:00] are established for the church's edification to build them up, to do good to them.
A lot of the gifts that you see here that are more on the extraordinary side are helpful and necessary, and some would even argue still available today if and when the situation calls for it. You're in a remote country and you're in some kind of weird, animalistic spiritualistic kind of context.
Maybe in that context, God would be inclined to utilize gifts to affirm the message that's possible and that fits into our theology. Wouldn't say that God couldn't or wouldn't do that. It's possible, but ordinarily what the word of God, we have the word of God, clear, clearly defined for us. We have the foundation laid for us.
We should expect to see more of the mature. The mature the mature expressions of the body being established or being shown in the church? Yeah. So what we're talking about here, you'll often hear it talked about as cessationism or continuation cessationism would be that the camp that would say that the gifts, the miraculous gifts have ceased in operation today.
Continuation is, would be, as you might expect, those that would say no, they're still in operation today. They're still continued [00:10:00] today. We are cessationists. But to clarify that, as you pointed out there, I like to say we're cessationists as far as what? What is to be expected as normative in the everyday operation of the church?
What's to be expected as normative in the everyday operation of the church? We would say are not the miraculous gifts that opens the door and still leaves room for, like you're saying, if there's some situation where God still wants to use the gift of tongues in a given circumstance. Yeah, he can still absolutely do that today, but is that what's normative within the context of the local church?
We would say, no not anymore, which would probably put us closer to the camp of open, but cautious and a limited slice of where we might expect to see that, but we would also distinguish ourselves from others who would talk about tongues as an ecstatic. Utterance, right? A language that is unknown, a spiritual language, the language of angels, some might call it.
We don't think that that's what's happening here in this particular text. And so there are some in interesting cases that are made through the text to say, well, this could mean it's a language that nobody knows and that's, it's just between you and God from here, from one Corinthians [00:11:00] chapter 12 and in 14.
But again we don't see that. We think it's far more likely that these are no languages and that this is the. Gift that God gives somebody to speak, a language that somebody understands and someone interprets, and that language is a known language. That would be our biggest push and the biggest distinction between us and probably a lot of others who are charismatic leaning.
Yeah.
The Role of Love in Christianity
---
Like I mentioned earlier, this has been divisive and in chapter 13, Paul's after kind of. Diffusing that and saying, Hey, we don't need to be divisive about these things. He's gonna say that the greatest thing that anybody can have basically is love for other people. And this is the famous chapter where he defines love.
Love is patient, love is kind, and so forth and so on there. And it's given in the context of the local church. This is not given in the context of a husband and wife. This is given in the context of brothers and sisters in Christ within the same body of Christ. And this is how we need to treat each other because all these other things are gonna pass away.
But love is gonna pro. Pervade love is gonna persist. Love is still gonna be operative when we're in the eternal state together on the new earth together. And so we are called now to be loving one another in this way. This is the most important feature of [00:12:00] our faith. Love is God is defined by love, number one, and number two, his command to us for all of life is love him and love other people.
This is why this makes so much sense that Paul would interrupt his conversation and say, hold on a second. You think that this is what Christianity is about? Let me clarify for you what it is about. This is everything for us we don't love is not God. God is love. There's a big difference there and the biggest difference is that we don't glorify the idea of love.
We glorify God who's expressed love to the degree that he can be personally called by that very same word, and God himself is love. He's displayed love by sending his son to live in diner place. And we rise for race for our justification. So if you wanna understand Christianity the gifts are awesome and it's great to use your gifts.
You should use your gifts, yes. But remember, it all comes back down to love, love for God, love for people. And when you have that properly ordered, a lot of these other things kind of figure themselves out. It doesn't become easy, still complicated and messy and all sorts of things like that, but love really is the most important feature here, which is why Paul says here, faith, hope, and love.
Abide these three, but the greatest of these is love. It's [00:13:00] not a mistake to think that Christianity is the religion of love, because that's essentially what God himself says. Jesus says that too, right in the upper room when he says, by this, will all people know that you are my disciples? If you have good theology?
Yes. Yeah. Good theology. That's what he said. And love for one another. That's better. Yeah.
Order and Conduct in the Church
---
Hey, how about chapter 14 where he tells wives not to speak up in church, but to ask their husband their questions. Pastor Rod, do you wanna talk about that? Sure. In fact, I was gonna bring this up earlier.
Where is this? What chapter are we on? This is end of chapter 14. This is end of chapter 14. This is verse 33 into verse 34. Okay. I'm totally tracking with this. Okay. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the church. So here's what we know. He's not saying because earlier he says in chapter 11.
That. I want you to understand that the head of every man of Christ, the head of every wife is her husband. And he says here in verse four, every man who prays or prophesizes with his head uncovered dishonors his head. But the every wife who prays or prophesize with her head uncovered, dishonor her head.
So clearly he's not talking about prayer or prophecy in this case, he's saying that they can do that. So it seems more likely to me that what. [00:14:00] Prohibiting is not speaking at all that she has to stay quiet from this moment. She walks into the door to the moment she leaves, but that there's a disruption in what she's saying when she's saying it, that there's something about confusion.
Verse 33, God's not a God of confusion. And so something's happening here where she is speaking up at an inappropriate time and so he's saying, ladies, hold off the questions and the commentary, especially some, I read that one interpretation of this is that she might be speaking up and judging her husband's prophecy.
Oh, interesting. Whether or not this is of the Lord or of some other spirit. So Paul, it seems it might be saying, ladies, this is not the time or the place. This is not the best way to do this. This is not the right way we do this. So still wanting to honor your head and do this at home where it might be more appropriate and helpful to offer your insight.
But here in the church, we don't want you to do that. I think that's what's happening here. What would you say? Yeah, I would agree. I think it's that I think there's. Issues of disruption that are taking place. And that would be indicative of disrupting the order and structure of Christ is the head of the husband.
The husband is the head of the wife. Right. Which is [00:15:00] why Paul has to address this. I think this is fascinating because we're. Real time watching the development of the church take place. Like Paul's speaking into the church trying to figure out how to do this. We've had 2000 years of church history behind us.
Yeah. Paul's real time here saying, oh, okay, yeah, let's deal with this. Let's deal with spiritual gifts. Let's deal with what do we do with this and here's my instructions to you. This is what you should do. Oh yeah, let's deal with marriages over here. Here's my instructions. This is what you should do.
This is on the ground unfolding before our eyes and before their eyes of this is how we should live and this is how we should operate. And that speaks to, again, why the miracles were so helpful at this time because this wasn't just Paul showing up, just like there were a lot of itinerant people that some her heretics that came in behind Paul that tried to undermine what Paul was doing right.
For Paul successfully. So yeah, for Paul and Peter, some of the others, to come in and display the power of God in such amazing ways that caused the people to go, okay, this is legitimate. I can listen to what he's saying and I can say, this is what I'm gonna follow. There's no more new revelation today.
I'm not coming to you with something saying, Hey, we're gonna, [00:16:00] we're not gonna open the Bible today. We're gonna listen to Pastor PJ's wisdom on this, and so let me do a miracle for you so that you'll listen to me. We're not doing the same thing today, but it would've been the equivalent of that in Paul's day, in the Apostles day, for them to show up and say, I've got some new revelation from the Lord, new authority from the Lord.
This is how you should conduct yourself. This is how a husband and wife should act. And they were doing that rightly because God was revealing those things, but those miracles were there to help people go. Okay. Yep. We can pay attention to what they're having to say here. Yeah. And I think the point here is that Paul, Peter, all of the apostles that were establishing the church here, they cared about the church.
Yes. The people that come after them, they, who knows what they cared about. It wasn't the church. Right. It was their own power, prestige, their pocket books, whatever else. But you'll notice in this whole chapter, chapter 14 in particular. Paul's concerned about striving to excelling striving to excel in building up the church.
Yep. Don't be children in your thinking because I want you to serve and build each other up. I don't want you to be bamboozled because I want you to care about the church and serve the church. In fact, did you notice there's a ranking of spiritual gifts? Yes. He ranks them, and I found that fascinating to me at this time because I was thinking, [00:17:00] okay, what's the scale by which he ranks the gifts?
And maybe you're already astute enough to have caught this, but here's my takeaway. Paul ranks the gifts and by extension the spirit, the spirit of God ranks the gifts in order of their service to the church. Boom. Your mind blown. Yeah. Yeah. Mind blown. The more you're able to serve the church, the more highly God ranks that gift, because the expression of God's spirit is in service to his people.
Yeah. Remember, God is love. He shows his love by the way that he serves his people, by the way, he loves his bride. And in this case, Paul is saying, you wanna be more like Christ, more like God will serve the congregation with their gifts. So tongues, even though it's awesome, if it's not serving, it's a lower ranked gift, right?
Prophecy serves the congregation and therefore it's a higher ranked gift. All of that. So amazing. So incredible. You don't need the special gifts to do that. Just find a way to go serve your church. Love the church. Yeah. Show up, set up, tear down. Do things. Love your church. That's what one Corinthians 13 and 14.
Really, the whole gifts Section 12 through 14 Yeah. Are about reinforcing, serving the church, loving the body of Christ, [00:18:00] not being bamboozled by that theology. So if you're out there and you're listening to this going, I don't know if there's a place for me to serve in the church. The answer is there's a place for you to serve the church.
Church. Oh, there's a place. Absolutely. Come talk to us. He, his car washed on a regular basis. At the very minimum he could do that. We'll put you to work and doing something better than that. Absolutely. After you finish that wash job. Yeah, for sure.
Conclusion and Prayer
---
Alright, let's pray. God, thanks for the church and for your instructions for us.
I pray that we would take these things and live them out. Well, we wanna be a church that is a God honoring church. A church of order, not of chaos. And so, Lord, help us not to be divided over things like spiritual gifts or where we're serving or what our role or position is, but helps us to be united on saying we wanna see the church built up.
We wanna see Christ exalted through us being a strong, healthy body. We pray that you'd give us that and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading new Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See ya. Bye.
Cedric: ​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. [00:19:00] You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.
PJ: Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said