One of the sentences that really hit home to me from my own message this week was,

the church should be the humblest and the happiest fellowship on the face of the earth. And I hope that what I say this morning will make that happen or at least bring us a step closer to that ideal this morning.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, now concerning spiritual

gifts, brothers, I don't want you to be uninformed. And I assume that applies to Uth as well. We ought not to be

ignorant about spiritual gifts. So this final message in this four-part series on the Holy Spirit deals with that subject.

Now instead of spreading myself over the whole three chapters of 1st Corinthians 12, 13, and 14,

which is the major section on spiritual gifts in the New Testament, I've decided instead to focus on three smaller texts that we can go into in a bit more detail and save that larger one for later.

Perhaps next fall we'll get into a series more particularly on the individual spiritual gifts.

Now if you were reading through the New Testament from first to last, the first place that you would find the term spiritual gifts is Romans

chapter 1 verse 11 and I would like you to turn to Romans 1 with me if you would. Romans chapter 1

versus 11 and 12 is what we'll look at first.

Paul writes to the Church at Rome, I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual

gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith,

both yours and mine.

Now the translation in the revised standard version that I just read

in part to you some spiritual gift might be misleading if you take it to mean that he's going there to help them get a gift.

That sounds like what it means in part to you a spiritual gift. But in fact, as other translations would suggest,

it means he's going there to use one of his spiritual gifts to strengthen them. That's the meaning. Now, the first thing therefore that we can

learn right off the top from this text is that spiritual gifts are given to us that we may strengthen other people.

I think that's pretty clear from that text.

Now this doesn't mean, as we'll see in just a minute, that

we don't get any great benefit from the fact that God gives us a spiritual gift. We do indeed. But it does suggest that gifts are given to be given, not to be

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