Sermon: Gifted to serve His body. Scripture: 1 Peter 4:7-11 July 26, 2015

Transcription

1 Sermon: Gifted to serve His body Scripture: 1 Peter 4:7-11 July 26, 2015 Last Sunday we looked at one aspect of what it means to be a church. We saw that all the way from God s promise to Abraham to the architecture of the temple in Jerusalem to the birth of the church itself, God s plan for the church has always been to be a house of prayer for all nations. And I hope that we can become that kind of house of prayer. We already made a start last Monday where we started praying for Nigeria because Wayne s aunt lives there. Today we will add a new country to the mix and Kailash will share about this during sharing time. But today we are going to hear about another aspect of the church, we are going to hear about spiritual gifts within the church. You see as you walk into a church it is like you are given a door prize. A spiritual gift that enables you to serve the rest of the body and ultimately God himself. This is what we are going to look at today. We will start with Peter s observation that God has gifted the church with a great diversity of gifts. The first aspect of these spiritual gifts that catches Peter s attention is this great diversity of gifts. In the New Testament there are at least three lists of 1 P a g e

2 spiritual gifts. (Romans 12:6-8 has a list, 1 Cor 12:4-11 has a list and 1 Cor 12:28 has a list.) These cover areas like prophesying, teaching, preaching, leadership, giving, encouraging, healing, even tongues and interpretation of tongues. But I like the image 1 Cor 12:27 offers for us to help us understand this great diversity of gifts. There it speaks of the church as the body of Christ and how each of us play some part in being the body of Christ. So if you have the gift of teaching and preaching that could be the mouth. The people who are very quiet and never seen upfront but always ready to help with some tasks behind the scene whether it is cooking or some aspect of maintenance, that person is like the hands of Christ, missionaries who go places are the feet of Christ. And the body analogy helps you to see how all the parts of the body then are equally important. But in our passage today Peter wants to draw your attention to the great diversity of gifts. Peter describes it like this. He says the spiritual gifts are diverse as God Himself is diverse. The diversity of gifts are a reflection of where they are going from. I think it is important to appreciate this diversity so that we do not miss out on people who God may have been gifted with a spiritual gift that go beyond the what we are used to thinking as spiritual gifts, like preaching or healing or prophesying. For example there are some people who are so quiet and behind the scenes that you may never know they exist. But they may have a special relationship with numbers that may be a great service to the church in keeping the accounts of the church in order. There are other people who have the gift of memorization. Well God sends people with the gift of memory into 2 P a g e

3 areas where it is illegal to carry a physical Bible so they just memorize portions of the Bible to communicate the Word of God. In one of my slides from my presentation last Sunday I showed you a picture of a little boy. He has this particular gift and he amazed everyone in the room by reciting Romans 12 from memory. Then there are people with gifts that sound strange, things like cultural anthropology. These people have a gift for understanding completely different cultures. They can go into remote cultures that don t even have a written language and learn that language, create a script for that language and then translate the Bible into that language. Can you imagine doing something like that! I can t even read my mother tongue, which is a language called Malayalam. Some have the gift of aviation. They can fly planes into remote places for God. Some have the gift of music like Samuel. Samuel can pretty much teach himself to learn any musical instrument. Did you know that Samuel did not know to play the guitar when he started playing in our church! Jack too I believe has a gift like that in music. And what a blessing they have been in helping us to worship God this morning. On my India trip I came across a person who has a gift I had never come across before, the gift of extreme boldness. When God called her into ministry, God put on her heart to go to England and get a degree in the Bible. But when she landed in the airport and went to clear immigration, the immigration officer told her that she had not filled all the paperwork required and the only option she had was to turn and go back to India. This lady, looked the officer in the eye and told him that God has called her to come to 3 P a g e

4 England, get this degree and use her to bring many people to Christ. She told him, If you send me back now, then the blood of all those people who will not get to hear the Gospel will be on your hands. If you are willing to take that responsibility then you can send me back. The man immediately stamped her Visa and told her to go and fulfill her calling. The gift of boldness. The church is simply the most incredible place there is because the people in the church have been given an incredibly diverse array of gifts with which to fulfill the churches purpose. Now I know some of you may be thinking, oh I don t know if God has given me any spiritual gift. Or maybe what I contribute in church does not compare with what so and so does or even maybe what I was able to do when I was younger. So maybe I am an exception to this idea. Well, in verse 10 of our passage Peter is very clear, he says, God has given each of you a gift. The clear implication is that there are no exceptions to this rule. If you have the gift of salvation, then you are also given a spiritual gift to bless the church with. I want you to take a closer look at this word that is translated gift. The original Greek word is charis from the Greek word charisma. You see this word charisma is a fascinating word. Charisma describes the result of or outworking of God s goodwill. In other words your charisma or spiritual gift is the product of God s goodwill toward you. Charisma does not come from you, it comes from God to you. There is another word used to describe charisma in English. Does anybody know what that word is? It is the word grace. So Peter is looking at his audience and saying, each of you have 4 P a g e

5 been given atleast one spiritual gift that you did not produce or deserve. This gift comes from God s work in your life. Because your gift comes from God and is promised to everyone who is part of the church, you cannot deny your spiritual gift without making God a liar or casting doubt on his goodness. Now you might say, ok I want to believe that everyone has a spiritual gift, but I can think of some exceptions. What about the extreme cases, of someone who has a severe physical or even mental handicap? Well to answer that we have to go back to the cross. Hebrews 10:14 says, For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Hebrews 10:14 implies that for someone who has experienced the power of the cross in their life, the cross has made that person perfect from God s perspective. In other words, the question is not what physical or mental capacity a person has from an earthly perspective. The question is, has this person been redeemed by the blood of Jesus. If the person is redeemed, no matter what kind of person they may be, as one of my favorite songs puts it, the cross has made us flawless. Sure we are all a work in progress on earth, but we are flawless from an eternal perspective. So coming back to the extreme cases. Have you seen someone with Down s syndrome smile? Just one smile from a person with Down s syndrome can make your day. Well the capacity to smile itself is a great spiritual gift. The problem arises with our human tendency to compare ourselves with others even in this area of spiritual gifts. And no good can come from comparing yourself with someone else because everybody has a gifting that corresponds to their call. God will gift you for what he has called you. Also comparing 5 P a g e

6 yourself with others can either make you feel inferior or superior to the other person. Neither state is unhelpful in the church. Matt 25 verse 23 says, you who have been faithful with little, therefore I will put you in charge of many things. God expects us to exercise well the spiritual gift God has given you. Because everyone of us in church have been bathed in charisma, the special spiritual gift coming from God s goodness. Now there are a few practical matters to address here. You might be saying, I don t know what my spiritual gift is. Well, in the American church we have this practice of doing a spiritual gifts inventory. This process has to be done carefully because the danger here is of equating our spiritual gifts with something we are naturally good at. I want to be very clear. Our spiritual gifts are not things we are born good at. You see God gives us natural abilities so that we can survive in this world whether we choose to be part of the church or not. It is like the mark of protection on Cain. On the other hand, our spiritual gifts are abilities we never had but appeared in our life after our spiritual rebirth, when a need for that particular gift arose in the church. A spiritual gift is a spiritual ability given for the benefit of the church. A spiritual gift is God s way of telling us how he wants us to serve His body, the church. There may be another practical problem that arises in the church. There may be multiple people with the same gift that leads to competition in the church. How do we deal with spiritual competition in the church? Well, if there is spiritual competition you can be sure it is not from God. Remember God does not make mistakes. God equips the called, he does not call the 6 P a g e

7 naturally equipped. If God is equipping someone for a call, God is not going to equip multiple people for the same task if multiple people are not needed for that task whatever it is. So if there are multiple people competing for the same task in the church it is possible that the competition may be between someone with a natural ability and someone with the spiritual gift. If that is the case you know who God is calling to the task. Obviously the one with the spiritual gift. This brings us to the final aspect of spiritual gifts that Peter is addressing in the text. Apostle Peter in verse 10 makes the point that when you employ your spiritual gifts you have to make sure you give God the glory. If God has given you the gift of speech, then Peter says do it as if you are God s mouthpiece and don t take credit for the words of wisdom. If your gift is to help others, then do it with the strength that God provides and not on your own steam, because your own steam is very limited. If you can play an instrument, then play it in a way that will makes those listening to the music turn their gaze up to heaven and not to yourself. The principle Peter is trying to communicate is this, if you have a spiritual gift then make sure you employ your gift in such a way that God gets the glory. Let me point you to an Old Testament hero who did this perfectly. Remember Joseph with the coat of many colors? Well when Joseph was called out from prison to interpret the Pharaoh s dreams, we have a very poignant exchange between him and the Pharaoh that God thought was important enough to record for all posterity. Imagine this scene. Joseph had been languishing in the prison for over 10 years unjustly 7 P a g e

8 and one day he is called in to meet the Pharaoh himself. Now the Pharaoh tells him, I have heard that when you hear a dream you have the ability to interpret it. Now Joseph would have been very tempted to make the most of this one chance he had to impress the Pharaoh and get released from prison. Instead Joseph tells the Pharaoh without any hesitation it is beyond my power to interpret dreams. However, he says God can tell you what your dream means. You see the way Joseph does it, when he goes on to exercise his spiritual gift and give the interpretation of the dream, even though the Pharaoh does not care even a little bit about the God of the Israelites, yet he was left with no doubt that the ultimate source of the dream interpretation was Joseph s God and not Joseph himself. This is such an amazing example to us of how we must use our spiritual gifts. You see Joseph was able to exercise his amazing spiritual gifts without keeping even one tiny bit of credit for himself. Because he did that, even the Pharaoh was forced to take notice of God s work. This is so important because we live in a world that desperately wants to find alternative explanations for God s work. The one kind of plagiarism that is totally acceptable in this world is stealing credit for God s work for yourself. That is why it is so important for Christ followers to exercise their spiritual gifts in a way that gives glory to God. After all God deserves the credit for the work he has done. Glorifying God is simply giving credit where credit is due. Remember a spiritual gift is not the same as your natural abilities. God has given you unique spiritual gifts that enable you to serve his body the church in unique ways. So ask 8 P a g e

9 God to help you clarify the call he has on your life, ask God to give you eyes to these new abilities he is growing in you and then exercise your new gifts to serve His body giving all glory to God. Let us pray. 9 P a g e