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Commentary on "Spiritual Gifts for Evangelism and Witnessing"
Day 3: Monday, April 16, 2012 - The Spirit and His Gifts
Overview
Today’s lesson discusses that spiritual gifts are necessary for our involvement in spreading the gospel. we need to exercise them, and we need to recognize that gifts that nurture and disciple are as essential as the gifts of evangelizing and pastoring. The lesson refers to the story of Paul and Barnabas and their splitting up in ministry. The teachers’ comments asks the questions, “How do we maintain the right balance between human decisions or planning and the Holy Spirit’s leading?”
Observations
Once again, none of this lesson can be properly understood apart from being grounded in the true gospel. Adventism is a false gospel, and the biblical mandates for evangelism and the promise of spiritual gifts apply only to born again believers in Jesus.
The questions about the “right balance” between human choice and the Spirit’s leading is a straw-man argument. When we are born again, reality is that our flesh is opposed to the Spirit (see Romans 6 and 7). Our proper stance before God is to submit our dreams and desires to Him and allow Him to bring us the work He created in advance for us to do (Eph. 2:10).
Our own decisions and plans are just that—our own. God does not enter our plans and make them succeed. Rather, He draws us into His story and gives us a role to play. Adventism sees the relationship between God and man upside-down. God is not restraining Himself to protect our free will. God is asking us to trust Him and to let go of our desires and plans and to allow Him to bring to us what He wants us to do.
God is sovereign; all human authority and power is granted to us by Him. Jesus Himself made this fact very clear to the gentile Pilate just before Jesus’ crucifixion:
So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:10-11 ESV)
Just as God gives us our spiritual gifts, even so He gives us His work to do. The more we can let go of our tight grip on our own desires, the more He will reveal Himself to us and through us.
Summary
- Spiritual gifts and God’s work cannot be understood apart from the context of the true, biblical gospel and born-again believers.
- We do not try to balance our decisions with God’s leading. When we are alive in Christ, our response is to let go of our tight control and let God show us what He has prepared in advance for us to do.
Copyright 2012 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised April 15, 2012. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Camp Verde, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
The Sabbath School Bible Study Guide and the corresponding E.G. White Notes are published by Pacific Press Publishing Association, which is owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist church. The current quarter's editions are pictured above.
Official Adventist Resources
Standard Edition Study Guide Week 3
Teacher's Edition Study Guide Week 3
Easy Reading Edition Study Guide Wk 3
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