On behalf of Pastor Mark and Grace Driscoll, we want to thank you for listening to this series based on the book of First Corinthians titled Good News for Bad Christians.

In this series from 2007, Pastor Mark is taking us on a 33-week journey through First Corinthians verse by verse.

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Thank you again and enjoy this message from First Corinthians.

As we get into this issue of spiritual gifts, what we are talking about here is the Holy Spirit giving each Christian at least one ability to do ministry.

As we get into this, there are many controversial issues like tongues and prophecy and healing and in the coming weeks we will deal with all of them in great detail.

But by way of preface, let me start by telling you about Jesus.

Because if we ever study anything and we don't connect it to Jesus, we are bound to get into a lot of trouble.

So what I will say to you about Jesus is this, that Jesus is our eternal God and that He knew that we had sinned and separated ourselves from Him.

And so rather than leaving us in that dire situation of separation from God, Jesus Christ came into human history as a man.

And He was born and He grew up and He lived and He spent the final three years of His life doing formal public ministry.

Before that, He had lots of informal ministry, but His formal public ministry lasted about three years.

And so Jesus taught people and He healed people and He served people and He encouraged people and He counseled people.

And this is what He did.

Now as we study the Bible, we find that Jesus did His ministry by the power of God, the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps the best book for you to read on this to see this connection between the Holy Spirit and Jesus is the gospel of Luke.

And there in Luke continually connects the empowering ministry, the Holy Spirit, to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

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