Be the Church Gifts to Know/Speaking Gifts Page 1 of 8 Be the Church Gifts to Know/Speaking Gifts I Peter 4:9-11 INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES We are exploring what the Bible says about Spiritual Gifts. It s part of the current Engage challenge Engage the Church by Using Your Spiritual Gifts in the Mission and Ministries of the Church. Folks, we can never BE the Church we were created to be and are called to be and that this broken world needs us to be UNTIL (1) we know our spiritual gifts and (2) we put them to work in and through the church. Those of you who have gone online and actually filled out our GPS (Gifts, Passions, Skills) inventory, will discover that today s Serve Fair is even more helpful. Knowing our spiritual gifts helps us find fulfilling ways to serve and together, Be the Church. But truth be told, we ve been learning throughout this sermon series that there is a little more to this spiritual gift thing. So, let s begin with a quick review. If you missed the previous sermons in this series, you may want to check those out. But let me share the highlights of what we ve already learned. The prerequisite for using our gifts to their full power and potential is unity within the church. Do you want to limit the power of YOUR church? Do you want to undermine THE Church? It s not hard. Just do and say anything you can to create discord and division. Elevate the importance of lesser things. Emphasize those places where we differ our preferences, our interpretations, our stances on social issues, our political alliances. Emphasize and elevate those things and you will successfully limit the power of the church. When we try to find our unity in such things we are doomed. Why? Because that kind of unity will never last. We are in fact, looking for our unity in all the wrong places. Our unity is to be found in one thing and one thing alone the Cross. This is how Paul said it in I Corinthians 2:2: For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Jesus Christ on the Cross don t you see? Friends, that is what unifies us. It is, in fact, the only thing that can truly unify us. What God in Jesus did for each of us AND the fact that every single one of us comes to that cross as a sinner looking for grace. Truth be told we will come to that cross again and again, for no one is perfect, no not one. Without that unity, we can never use our spiritual gifts to
Be the Church Gifts to Know/Speaking Gifts Page 2 of 8 their full potential. But with the never changing unity of the cross, we can and we can Be the Church. That was the first foundational teaching. Unity is the prerequisite. And the second was this: Love is the only context in which our spiritual gifts can be used to their full potential. We must love God and love one another with a very special kind of love. I hope some of you will remember the Greek word. Let s read this definition together. Agape love is the choice to say no to self so that we can say yes to others. Paul called it the more excellent way. And Peter writing to the early church emphasized the importance of that agape love this way: I Peter 4:8-9 8 Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. 9 Be hospitable to one another without complaining. INTRO TO SERMON And then having established agape love as the context for using our gifts, Peter goes on to offer these words of instruction: I Peter 4:10-11 10 Be good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. 11 Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. That s the review but this text from I Peter is also going to help us get started with the teaching for today. Throughout the New Testament, we have several different lists of gifts. No two lists are exactly alike. It is clear that those writing about spiritual gifts were given examples of the kind of spiritual gifts that might emerge in and through believers. I suspect that those lists were shaped by the communities that were being addressed in those letters. My sermons have always been shaped by the people who were going to be hearing what I was preaching. I didn t preach the same sermon in Kenya that I preached in Greensboro. I didn t preach the same sermon in Guatemala that I
Be the Church Gifts to Know/Speaking Gifts Page 3 of 8 preached in my little mountain church. And even now, I don t preach the same sermons when I m visiting a pulpit for a one-time event that I preach here to people that I know and love and who know and, for the most part, love me. It s not surprising that the lists of spiritual gifts change. It was as though the writer was introducing each list with these words: you know, gifts like wisdom, faith, helping, tongues. We are mistaken if we think the lists were meant to limit. Listen to me, friends. We can never put God in a box. Even the words we call Scripture cannot limit God. God does what God chooses to do. The Spirit chooses the gifts. Paul makes that clear. I Corinthians 12:11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. I believe the writer of I Peter shows great wisdom when he addresses spiritual gifts. Instead of listing individual gifts, he puts them all into two categories. speaking gifts and serving gifts. And of course, some of the gifts could be put in both categories well, most of them could. After all, even our speech is meant to serve the good of God s people and the building up of the church. So, to separate the two categories, I ve asked this simple question. Is the primary manifestation of the gift in and through words? If so, I ve categorized it as a speaking gift. The others I ve categorized as serving gifts. And today, we are going to focus on the speaking gifts. Let s get Peter s instructions about those gifts back in our minds. I Peter 4:11a Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God. Those who have speaking gifts are meant to bring the very words of God to God s people. The circumstance and the medium vary but all the speaking gifts are intended to manifest the Holy Spirit, to manifest God through words. THE SPEAKING GIFTS Numbered among the speaking gifts would be things like: exhortation, prophecy, teaching, tongues, wisdom, evangelism, knowledge. Let s take a closer look. Some of these gifts might seem to be different words for the same gift. And that could happen we do that sometimes when making different lists of
Be the Church Gifts to Know/Speaking Gifts Page 4 of 8 examples use different words to describe the same thing. But, in this case, and given how specific the Greek language is, I think the shades of difference in meaning matter. WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE Let s begin with wisdom and knowledge. Similar, but not the same not by a long shot. Now both are important for sure. But Paul is very, very careful to make a distinction between the two. I Corinthians 12:8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, Here is the distinction between the two that I find most helpful. Knowledge is knowing all about a given subject or concern knowing the facts, the figures, the specifics. Wisdom is knowing how to use that knowledge the right way in the given time and circumstances. I do my best to make sure that the Finance Team in the church includes people who regularly work with money bankers, accountants, business folks. But I also make sure there are people on the team who do not work with money professionally, but work closely with our programs and people moms, Sunday School teachers, youth counselors, mission team members. The money people have the knowledge we need, no doubt. But at times they need a little help with the wisdom of how to use the money in a given time and circumstance for the sake of our ministry with people. Both are gifts; both are important, and both are needed if we are going to make good decisions. But as different as they are, knowledge and wisdom do have one important thing in common. It s the utterance of each that is the real gift. Knowledge and wisdom are of little help unless we share them and do so in a way that others can understand and use. There is much knowledge and much wisdom to be found in our church. Let s encourage people to share both of those and then, let s make every effort to listen as they speak the words of God. It s one more way to Be the Church together. PROPHECY Another speaking gift is the spiritual gift of prophecy. The Greek word used here meant the ability to utter inspired messages. You can see why the same Greek word is at times translated as preach. Too often we understand prophecy as
Be the Church Gifts to Know/Speaking Gifts Page 5 of 8 the ability to see the future. Of course, some inspired messages are about the future but far more are about what s happening right now. Tying it to the future really limits the New Testament understanding of prophecy. To me, prophecy is the ability to recognize God at work where and how and articulate that to others. That s how I explain the gift of prophecy. The prophet is the one who helps us understand just what God is up to, how God is at work, and what God is doing. To do that, the prophet has to be able to recognize God at work. Now, folks, we all know that God speaks through all kinds of people. Consider the different prophets in the Old Testament each so different from the other. In my own life, God has used a variety of prophets my grandmother, my children, professors, countless preachers along the way. God s like that using the ordinary to accomplish the extraordinary. Some people think that our spiritual gifts never change. You have this gift, I have that gift, and the gifts never change. I disagree. I do believe it is important to know our spiritual gifts. I believe inventories help us to identify the gifts that are most prominent in our spiritual make up and thus help us work in and through the church more effectively. But, I also believe any gift can appear in and work through any faithful believer at any given moment when it is needed. Prophecy is one of the spiritual gifts that I think pops up in the life of faithful folks when it is needed. Hopefully, it is a gift that graces most pulpits on Sunday morning but I suspect that inspired messages are just as important in the work of Sunday School Teachers, Stephen Ministers and Pastoral Counselors. People all around us need help seeing God at work in their lives. They need to hear inspired messages. In other words, people need a prophet. When prophets show up among us, they help us Be the Church. Who knows? Today, that prophet just might be you. TEACHING I hope you are beginning to see how the speaking gifts complement one another and serve to build up the church in different ways, in different circumstances. Let s take a closer look at just one more speaking gift one that is hugely important to the church and specifically to this church, Williamson s Chapel teaching. I ve heard this way of clarifying the importance of expressing the Gospel in different ways (can t remember where). It helps me understand the gift of teaching. Preaching proclaims the Gospel, teaching explains the Gospel, mission makes the Gospel real. Clearly all are important. The word used here for teacher is a form of the Greek word didaskalos. Didaskalos teacher that is the title most
Be the Church Gifts to Know/Speaking Gifts Page 6 of 8 often used in the New Testament to refer to Jesus. That should indicate just how important this gift is in the life of the church. I want you to think for a moment about those who have been teachers for you in the church. Hopefully there was a pastor or two who managed to do some teaching from the pulpit, but just as important are all those other teachers: Sunday School, Youth Group, Small Group Bible Studies, VBS. Churches can do pretty well with only one or two preachers (prophets) but churches need many teachers. We have some outstanding teachers here at Williamson s Chapel but we need more. Teachers, we need you. If you have this gift, step up and put it to work in your church. If you have this gift, you should be hard at work serving through our Grow ministries. Teachers, former and current, help the rest of us figure out how we too can Be the Church. DANGEROUS Speaking up for God whether through teaching, through prophecy, through the utterance of wisdom or knowledge or through one of the other speaking gifts speaking for God takes courage. And, it can be very, very dangerous. The first danger is I think pretty obvious. People don t always want to hear what God has to say in any given situation. In the 1860 s, Southern Methodists did not want to hear that Jesus expected them to free their slaves. Most of us can think of times when a prophet or a teacher, speaking for God, said something we knew we needed to hear but we just did not want to hear it. That s why using our speaking gifts takes courage. But there s an even greater danger. People with the speaking gifts are always in danger of mixing their own words in with God s words. Or even worse, becoming convinced that their words actually are God s words. Believe me, as one who has been given the great honor and responsibility of standing in a pulpit on a regular basis, this is a real and present danger. That s why it is so important for people with these speaking gifts to spend lots and lots of time in God s Word in the whole of God s Word and not just with our favorite passages. Every single verse of Scripture needs to be understood in light of the whole of Scripture. And, people with speaking gifts have to be very, very careful that they come to Scripture to first be shaped by the Word for God s purposes, rather than to shape the words for their own purposes.
Be the Church Gifts to Know/Speaking Gifts Page 7 of 8 I m leading what the conference calls, a preaching cohort right now. I meet with a dozen preachers once a month and together we are exploring how we can preach to Bring the Bible to Life. The first book I ve asked them to read is entitled Shaped by the Word by Robert Mulholland. The whole premise of this book is that we we preachers need to come first to the Bible to be transformed ourselves, to be shaped into the person God is calling us to be. Too often we preachers, and I suspect teachers too, come to the Bible as though it was a toolbox. We are looking for just the right tool that we can pull out and use to accomplish our own purposes, to reinforce the point we want to make, support our stance on a given issue. We try to use the Bible to shape others rather than letting the Bible shape us first. And that, Beloved, is dangerous indeed. That s why it is so important for preachers and teachers of Scripture to spend time in personal Bible Study and meditation, carefully and faithfully praying the Scriptures rather than only studying the Scripture to prepare a sermon or a lesson for others. That s the only hope we have of, as I Peter says, speaking the very words of God and helping others Be the Church. CONCLUSION It s a bit overwhelming to realize that when we use our spiritual gifts effectively, people can actually meet God in us. But it s true. They can see God in us when we use our serving gifts to build up the church. And, they can hear God in us when we use our speaking gifts to speak the words of God. And when that happens, Beloved, we are well on our way to Being the Church. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen Life Application Questions: 1) The prerequisite for using spiritual gifts effectively is UNITY and the necessary context is LOVE. Do you feel these two things are a reality in your community of faith? Why or why not? 2) Is the distinction between knowledge (knowing all about a given subject, facts, figures) and wisdom (knowing how to use the knowledge in a given time and place) helpful? Can you name people who you have heard speak words of knowledge in the church? How did that gift make a difference?
Be the Church Gifts to Know/Speaking Gifts Page 8 of 8 Can you name people who you have heard speak words of wisdom in the church? How did that gift make a difference? 3) Prophecy is the utterance of divine messages. The sermon suggests that the gift of prophecy might pop up in any faithful believer when there is a specific need. We expect to hear prophesy from our preachers but where else in the work of the church might prophesy be needed? Have you ever felt that a faithful friend had the gift of prophesy? 4) Name some people who have been teachers in the church for you. What difference did their gift of teaching make in your life? Give thanks to God for them. If possible, contact them and thank them personally.