Let's take our Bibles now. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. I mentioned to you in the past couple of weeks that the

letter of 1st Corinthians, Paul actually wrote in response to questions that the people in the church had for him.

And we have been looking at these four particular questions that the church in Corinth

had for Paul. One was on relationships. That's tackled in chapter seven. Specifically, they wanted to know

about singleness, marriage, and divorce. And then also they had questions about liberty and conscience.

That's in chapter eight. What are Christians allowed to do and not

allowed to do? They also had questions about spiritual gifts in chapter 12. What are spiritual

gifts and how should they function in the church? And then they also had a question about money

and giving from chapter 16, how much and how often should we give. So we've talked

about the first two categories up to this point. We've talked about marriage, sex, divorce,

singleness. We've talked last week about liberty and conscience. And today our focus is going to be

on the third question that they had, which is about spiritual gifts.

Paul spends three chapters talking about spiritual gifts, chapters 12, 13, and 14, right here in

1st Corinthians. And I'm going to summarize those three chapters in one Sunday today.

And you might be wondering, you know, why are you, you know, why are you trying to tackle

three chapters in one Sunday?

Because, you know, why should I spread a church split over three Sundays when I could cause

one in one?

Now, I joke about it, but the truth is, for those of you who are not aware, the topic of spiritual gifts has been one of the most divisive topics in the church, capital C, in history.

And it shouldn't be, but it just tragically is.

And I'm going to explain why such division and controversy in a little bit.

But what I find interesting here is that Paul leads chapter 12 with this statement.

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