I’m not sure that we’ve come spiritually alive yet to the Spiritual Gifts I’ve been preaching about for the past few weeks. So today I want to share with you “Some Exhortation About Spiritual Gifts.” My intent is to explain a couple more things about spiritual gifts and to exhort as well as encourage you to bring your spiritual gift on line in your life and in the life of this church. So lets read 1 Corinthians 12:1-3 . . .
I think there’s a real excitement in seeing a fresh new glimpse of the importance of people who are committed to the Lord’s work. I’m talking about Deacons, committee members, staff ministers and the rest of the church fellowship in knowing what their spiritual gift is. On the other hand, there’s a real problem in not knowing that too. I want you to think for just a moment about the church in light of what Paul said in verse 1 . . . Think about the church as you and I have grown up in it. So many people seem to say, “You know, I’ve been saved a long time, but I’m not happy with my Christian life” or “I don’t seem to be getting anywhere in my spiritual life, there’s no progress.”
When you think about the church you’ve been a part of over a long period of time and the condition of the church today – I think there are 4 things that are evident. 1. In many, many churches there is strife. And it may be for a number of reasons, but there’s strife in the church today. 2. Most people will admit that the church as an influence on society is powerless. How many towns or cities or communities are really and truly being influenced in any real way by the church or individual Christians today? 3. The weakness of the ministry. I’m not necessarily talking about the staff, but the inreach and outreach of the church ministry.
I can remember when I was saved, they accepted the fact that I gave my heart to Jesus and that was it. Live the best you can and one of these days you’ll die and go to heaven. Nobody said, “you have a spiritual gift and you need to know what it is, you’re to grow in the Lord and let me tell you how.” My pastor did give me a set of 10 booklets to study entitled, “The Ten Basic Steps to Spiritual Maturity.” Most of us grew up in churches that were so ignorant all of us have suffered all these years because of their ignorance. Either they didn’t know what to tell me or they just did not tell me. Of course, my first impression is to say “Thank God I wasn’t born 20 years earlier!” The reason we’re so spiritually immature is because either we have not known or taught people how they’re to relate themselves to God spiritually and personally, and then to God’s purpose for their lives and then to the whole Body of Christ.
The majority of the members of this church have never had a place of service in the body and if you were to ask them today what do you think God’s purpose for your life is they’d say, “I’m not too sure.” You look around and say, “I can’t be a Deacon or a SS teacher. I can’t do this or I can’t do that. I think the only thing I can do is come, sit, listen and give. That’s what a lot of people think. We have 619 total church members and 417 live around here somewhere. We may be able to find close to 300 of them, but where’s the other 300? Even at that we don’t have 300 in SS nor do we have 300 in worship on Sunday. But we can have them one day! And we will when the people who make up the heart of this fellowship discover what God intends for you to do. What you hear most churches talking about today is their membership’s dwindling away, they’re having trouble with attendance and finances, people aren’t excited about God’s work, they’re not baptizing enough people. There’s something wrong with a fellowship that’s not growing spiritually. And one of the primary reasons is the ignorance and inefficiency of utilizing the spiritual gifts God has given the body of Christ.
4. The fourth thing evident about the present condition of the church is an unscriptural viewpoint of the nature and function of the Body of Christ. The nature of the church is we are a gathering of baptized believers with varying gifts given by the Holy Spirit who indwells us. There’s not a single one of us like the one sitting next to us. And God has put each of us together right here in this fellowship in order to do something through us. We’re all different and our function is to carry out the purposes of God through the cooperative exercise of our varying gifts. Everybody’s not to do the same thing, but everybody’s to fulfill the ultimate purpose of glorifying God through the Christlike lives of transformed children of God. We’re to be building up each other in the faith as we exercise our God given gift. So God’s purpose is to glorify Himself through the Christlike lives of transformed people which means that the ministry of the Pastor, Staff and Deacons is to reproduce in the lives of the membership a Christlikeness. We’re not to worry about the breadth of the ministry God has called us to, how far it reaches – only the depth. God will take care of the breadth if we’ll take care of the depth of our relationship to Jesus Christ.
So we think about FBC Ashland with 300 members, let’s scratch 300 of them for the time being. All of them have varying gifts that God intends to use to glorify Himself as we cooperate with each other. We’ve got a lot of uncooperative people haven’t we? We can’t find them, don’t know where they are. They never come, never give, never attend – they may be listening, but if they are – they’re strangers on the other end of the air waves! We don’t know what’s happening in their lives. Now, the Scripture says we all have a God-given gift that He gave us for the purpose of helping you and me as we help one another grow up in our spiritual lives. So we’ll just have to admit that things haven’t worked like God intended for them to work. However, for the church or individual Christian to function at a maximum, a knowledge of your spiritual gift is necessary. And what do you think the difference in the church could be when at least a segment of FBC discovers what God intended you to be involved in all along? That blows my mind to think what God could do if enough people got excited about doing the one thing the Lord has equipped you to do. Well, that covers the introduction. Now, the 2 things I want you to be informed about today to delete some ignorance is the difference in a Natural Talent and a Spiritual Gift. So first of all let’s look at:
I. The Receiving of A Natural Talent
How do you know the difference between what God gave you and what you got from your grandparents, your mom and dad? 1. First of all, the Natural Talent is what you were born with. That came with you when you first got here. 2. Secondly, it’s a talent available to the saved or to a lost person. Some people are eloquent who are not Christians. They have a talent to speak. Others have natural abilities in other areas – physical talents, mental abilities, all kinds of abilities that are Natural Talents that God created you with from the beginning of birth. 3. Thirdly, A Natural Talent operates on the physical and social level, but not on the spiritual level.
That’s why God’s people aren’t to do God’s work from a physical talent solely. You know why so many churches have so many problems with Deacons and the reason they’re so weak in the Sunday School? I’ll tell you why, because men and women have exercised a place of responsibility in the church on the basis of their Natural Talent. People have been elected and nominated to positions of responsibility on the basis of say their business relationship or their social prominence and many other bases except the fact of their spiritual devotion to God. Nothing could be further from the Scripture and nothing could cause more problems than to put a person in a place of responsibility on the basis of their natural talent to do a spiritual work. Those two are at opposite ends of the pole, which says we’ve been impressed by what we see in somebody on the outside, not what’s on the inside.
We’re not to use natural talents to accomplish the work of God. I mean by that, we’re not to depend on human talent. That doesn’t mean we’re not to exercise and utilize every single God-given ability He’s bestowed upon us – but not to depend on that solely. So a Natural Talent is something you were born with, it’s available to the saved or lost and it operates on the physical and social level primarily. Now let’s look at:
II. The Receiving of A Spiritual Gift
1. First of all, we receive our Spiritual Gift when we’re born-again. Verse 3 gives us this by implication. When you believe in Christ, the Bible says you were saved by God’s grace, His unmerited, undeserved favor. When the Holy Spirit came into your life He brought something with Him that fitted you, that you didn’t have before. You received your Spiritual Gift when you were born-again. 2. Secondly, it is the Holy Spirit who gifts you. 1 Peter 4:10 starts out, “As every man hath received the gift...” You have received the gift of the Holy Spirit and with Him He gifts you with God’s grace in a personal way with a motivational, spiritual, heart gift. God has grafted you into the Body and He’s gifted you because He’s predestined you to be conformed to His likeness so as to minister one to another in the Body of Christ and to help build others up in the Body. He gives us the gift because He knows what we need to fulfill His purpose for our lives. Therefore, it’s our responsibility to find out just how He’s gifted us because that reveals how His will is to be lived out through us.
3. This brings me to the third thing about receiving a Spiritual Gift – it’s given for the profit of the entire body. That’s what verse 7 is all about . . . Does He mean that we as individuals are to profit? Well, we’ll be blessed, but that’s not primarily what God’s concerned about. He’s concerned that it profit the Body, the whole church. Our ministry should be guided by our Spiritual Gift. That’s why you should discover what your spiritual gift is. We have put people where they don’t belong so long they don’t even know where they belong in ministry and service. And the leadership of the church is who’s responsible for that. We can’t blame you. We’re responsible as the spiritual leadership for that.
There’s a difference between a Natural Talent and a Spiritual Gift. And the essence is, you were born with Natural talents and abilities while you were born-again with a Spiritual Gift. You may exercise your talents in all kinds of fields, but the spiritual gift God’s given you is to guide you and give you direction for the living out of the life of Christ within you. Therefore you shouldn’t depend upon your Natural Talent to do spiritual work. That’s what causes the strife and division and weakness in the church. When a person exercises their Spiritual Gift to do their spiritual work and their secular work you’re going to be a happy person. Far happier than you’ve ever discovered!
