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 it, let me do a little bit of summation work from last week. We will spend seven weeks looking at the spiritual gifts.

Last week we kicked it off and what I told you was this, that when it comes to looking at this issue of spiritual gifts or supernatural endowments that the Holy Spirit gives you to do ministry, the most important thing is to start with Jesus.

And in starting with Jesus, what I told you and want to reiterate for you is that it is all about Jesus.

And if at any point we pursue ministry or spiritual giftedness or service, apart from Jesus, we end up getting in all kinds of trouble.

And so the story is this, that Jesus is God, that Jesus made us and made the earth and He gave us the earth to enjoy as a gift, to build culture, to steward creation, to serve one another and deliver life of total ministry.

That would include our families and our job and our play and all of that to be done to God's glory and our joy.

Now what we did as rebels is we sin against Jesus and we did what He told us not to do and that sin separated us from Jesus and one another.

The result being that Jesus had compassion on us and knew that we would never be able to overcome this problem of sin and death.

And so Jesus, our eternal God, entered into human history and He lived on the earth as a human being.

And throughout the course of His life He was empowered by God, the Holy Spirit and He did ministry.

He taught, He did miracles, He healed people, He encouraged, He served, He organized and administrative, Jesus did all kinds of ministry.

And then Jesus went to the cross and there He substituted Himself and died for our sin.

And He did that because He loves us and in so doing He paid the penalty for sin which is death.

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