Derek Prince Sermon: The Gifts of The Holy Spirit (Transcript)

Full text of Derek Prince’s sermon titled ‘The Gifts of The Holy Spirit’ whichwas preached on Friday afternoon, October 6, 1967.

TRANSCRIPT:

Derek Prince – Bible Teacher

Yesterday afternoon, we spoke primarily about the gift which is the Holy Spirit, which is not the same as the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And in the Greek of the New Testament, two quite distinct words are used to maintain this distinction.

I pointed out to you that the glory of the New Testament revelation really is this: that God’s first two great gifts to man are gifts which are God Himself. And this, I believe, lifts New Testament Christianity on an altogether different plane to any other kind of religion I’ve ever heard of.

God’s first great gift to the sinner is a Person: Jesus Christ.

‘God so loved the world that He gave His Son…’ And John 1:12: ‘as many as received Him (Jesus) were born of God.’ Christianity does not center in a creed or a doctrine or an institution or an experience. It centers in a person: ‘Jesus is Alpha and Omega; He’s the Beginning and the End’ (Revelation 22:13). And ‘in Him we are complete. And all the fullness of the Godhead dwelleth in Him bodily.” (Colossians 2:9-10)

Now when you have received Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, and you are born of God, then the next great gift of God to the believer in Jesus Christ is another Person. Who is that Person? The Holy Spirit.

Now I use the word ‘another’ on the basis of Scripture, for Jesus said, “If I go away, I will send you another Comforter who will be with you for the entire age.”(John 14:16) That I’ve been with you just a little while, three and a half years of ministry, 33 years of actual life here on earth. Now I’m leaving you but in My place, I’m sending another Comforter.

Now I don’t want to be controversial, but to me the word ‘another’ indicates plainly that the Comforter is just as much a person as Jesus. One person goes and another person comes.

And in John 16, He said, “I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away.’ It’s in your best interest… because “if I don’t go, the Comforter will not come; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.” There is a real genuine exchange.

While Jesus was on earth, He was the personal representative of Godhead on earth. But when He went away personally to heaven, and as far as personal location is concerned, my Bible teaches me that Jesus is now at the right hand of God the Father. But in His place, on the day of  Pentecost, He sent another person who represents Him and the Godhead. This other person is the Holy Spirit.

Acts 2:33, Peter says, ‘He, (Jesus) being by the right hand of the Father exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Spirit has now poured out this which ye both see and hear.” There we have all three Persons of the Godhead involved in the Pentecostal experience.

Jesus exalted at the right hand of the Father, received from the Father the Spirit which He then poured out upon the believers. And He was always careful to say that, though He would send the Spirit, the Spirit proceeded from the Father.

One of the delights of studying the Scriptures is to see the absolute perfect coordination and cooperation between the Persons of the Godhead in every act that involves the gospel.

You see, even in the earthly ministry of Jesus, it always delights me to read in Acts 10:38, that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.

God the Father anointed Jesus the Son with the Holy Spirit, and all three Persons of the Godhead… I wonder if I could say this reverently, none of them wanted to be left out when it came to ministering deliverance to poor, oppressed humanity. The Father anointed the Son with the Spirit and the Godhead — entire — went into the business of deliverance. And the one that was responsible for man’s oppression was not God but the devil.

And so we have then these two great gifts that we spoke about God’s gift to the sinner, His Son Jesus Christ and then God’s gift to the believer, the Holy Spirit. Remember, in John 14:17, Jesus said, “The world cannot receive the Holy Spirit for it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.” The unbeliever cannot receive the Holy Spirit.

If a person has received the Holy Spirit, we know that he is a believer. That’s how Peter and the other Jews in the house of Cornelius realized, that  Cornelius and his household were believers, because they had received the Holy Spirit. Unbelievers can’t receive the Holy Spirit, the world cannot receive it. It is only for the children of God.

Jesus is God’s gift to the sinner; the Holy Spirit is God’s gift to the believer. Now as I pointed out yesterday and I just hope I get beyond today what I covered yesterday, but at the present rate of progress I don’t think I’m going to do it. Uh, but these things are so basic.

It grieves me to see people just interested in spiritual experiences without being interested in the author of all spiritual experiences. See this is a terrible condition to be in, it ends in terrible disaster sooner or later.

But anyhow, when a divine person comes to indwell a human life, things happen, there are going to be changes, things will not remain the same. If there have never been changes in your life, I question whether God has ever come to dwell in you because it’s inconceivable that God in person shall indwell a human life and leave things the way they were before. That would be out of the question.

Now I believe there is in the Scripture, in the  New Testament, one distinctive Greek word for the, any or all of the changes produced by the  indwelling of a divine person and this Greek word is ‘charisma’. And having studied this in the New Testament there are well over 20 different things that are called charismata, that’s the plural of charisma.

Today, in certain circles, this is limited more or less to the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit. So that when we talk about a charismatic renewal or charismatic people, what we mean is people that believe in and experience the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

However this is narrowing down this Greek word charisma in a way that the New Testament certainly does not do it. The first use that I know of in the New Testament of this Greek word charisma is in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the charisma, the grace gift of God is eternal life in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Notice this eternal life is a grace gift but it’s not what you’d call a supernatural manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the normally accepted term.

And notice that you do not receive the charisma first, you receive the Person first and as a result of receiving the Person, the charisma makes it felt. You receive Jesus Christ as a person and in Him you receive the charisma, the manifestation of God’s grace which is eternal life.