Outline
I. Introduction
II. Transition
a. Focus: “This grace was given”
b. CIT: God gives specific graces to His children.
c. CIS: God’s specific grace should be employed and sharpened.
III. Exposition
a. God gives saving grace through faith, foundational grace. He shows His favor, that is sustaining grace. God also specific graces in the forms of spiritual gifts to His children.
i. I Corinthians 12
b. Graces must be exercised, used, and improved.
i. II Timothy 1:6
ii. I Corinthians 15:58
c. Why graces must be exercised and improved upon.
i. The exercise of graces is how the believer abounds in grace.
ii. The exercise of graces is why God gives them.
iii. The exercise of graces does for us what the world can’t do.
iv. The exercise of graces transforms our understanding. (Manton)
IV. Conclusion
a.
“The Unsearchable Riches of Christ,” Part-3, Ephesians 3:8
Introduction
There was once a horse that ran away in the morning and did not return till the evening. When the master upbraided him the horse replied, “But here am I returned safe and sound. You have your horse.” “True,” answered the master, “but my field is unplowed.” If a Christian man should turn to God with a willingness to use the talents and gifts that He gives us after living a life far from Him, God has the man, but He has been defrauded of the man’s work. And the man himself has been defrauded worst of all.
Transition
Our focus this morning will be on the middle part of Ephesians 3:8, “This grace was given.” God gives every believer special graces or spiritual gifts in order that each individual believer may fulfill their role in the building of the kingdom through the work and mission of the local church.
CIT: God gives specific graces to His children.
CIS: God’s specific grace should be employed and sharpened.
Each local body of believers has a specific purpose in the grand scheme of the work of God. Each part must do its part in unison with the rest. When just one believer fails to employ, hone, and sharpen the graces given to them the rest of the body of believers suffers.
In basic training one of the very first things that American military members learn is how to march in unison. I can still hear the sound of the swish of the pants and the stomp of dozens of heals into the asphalt all in unison, left right, left right…
God has given to each one of us, woven into the fabric of our souls, specific graces. For the Apostle Paul it was to preach. We each have graces given.
Exposition
God gives saving grace through faith, foundational grace. He shows His favor, that is, sustaining grace. God gives specific graces, spiritual gifts, to His children.
In I Corinthians 12 the Scripture offers us a list of those graces God gives.
There are others in the Scripture but here are those listed there: administration
Apostle, discernment, faith, healing, helps, knowledge, miracles, prophecy, teaching, tongues, tongues interpretation, and wisdom.
These graces are given by God but they must be exercised, used, and improved.
“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” (2 Timothy 1:6 ESV) God gives the grace, He places the ember within us but we must fan the flame, empowered by the Spirit.
In 1 Corinthians 15:58 The Apostle Paul gives the admonition “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (ESV)
Many believers are not steadfast and I wonder how many of them are not because they have never exercised the gifts that God has given to them.
The exercise of graces is how the believer abounds in grace. Just as a life of sin has the ability to weigh a person down in sin, so a life of grace lifts a person up to greater heights of grace. How many of you know that the thirst for sin is never satisfied. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we will just commit the sin this time and that will satisfy our desire for it and then we can move on from it.
But that isn’t how sin works is it? Sin is a lot like our family pet Martha, the overweight pug. Every night after dinner she comes into the kitchen and sits in the same spot near her food dish while Christina and I clean up the dishes. She looks at us with sad eyes as though she will soon waste away to nothing. The more scraps we give her the more she begs. Her appetite is never and I’m convinced it can never be satisfied. So it is with sin’s appetite.
However, and more profoundly, it is the same way with the soul’s appetite for grace. The more we exercise our graces, the more of the miraculous we see in our lives the more our hunger for God grows. The more of His Word that we read, the more of prayer that enjoy, the more we worship, the more share the compassion of Christ with a lost world, the more we love the brethren, the greater our desire grows for more of the same! Christ went to Cross after living a life of grace. Do you desire more power? Exercise the graces God has given you!
The exercise of graces is why God gives them. They say that an old or classic car that is never driven is far more likely to have problems than a car that is cared for and driven. On a recent episode of the one my and the boy’s favorite television shows to watch just before bedtime, American Pickers, the main characters of this reality show who travel around the country picking through old barns, museums, junkyards, and everywhere else, looking for lost treasure, came the home of a man who had hoarded tons and tons of wonderful old treasures. The men offered him large sums of money for items that were just piled up all over the place, covered in dirt and rust, but the man who had hoarded all of the items neither used any of them nor was willing to share them.
What a similarly but more tragic and eternal dilemma does the man or woman who has been given graces by God but refuses to share them with the world?! How many believers hoard unshared unused graces while looking to the world to do for them what the world can never do?!
The exercise of graces does for us what the world can’t do. Are you looking today for peace for your soul? Are you looking today for the ability to make sense of your present condition? The world cannot solve eternal problems or even give any deeply satisfying answer or lasting hope for your present condition.
Are you struggling with fear? The world compounds fear with uncertainty. Are you struggling with significance? The world robs souls of significance through empty and vain promises given through sin, only delivering pain in the end.
When believers exercise the graces that God gives them – when they employ their gifts to His service through the Church, in daily life – those graces become instruments of God’s grace, developing faith, strengthening spiritual resolve, undergirding faith in difficult times, dissolving questioning, nurturing faith.
I have prepared and delivered literally hundreds of sermons. By the time it’s all said and done surely that number will climb to several thousand sermons. I have and continue to exercise that grace that chief of graces that God has given to me.
In the process my faith has deepened as from a well to the depths of an ocean channel and surely by the end of my life, so long as I continue to exercise that grace that God has given to me, it will only grow deeper.
Has God given you the grace to naturally and lovingly and confidently share Christ with others? Has God given you the means and the heart to be a great giver and sender in the Church? Has God gifted you with the graces of hospitality and charity and a deep desire to welcome strangers into the life of the Church?
Whatever those graces are that God bestows to His children, when they are sharpened, hones, and exercised they become the very things God uses, not only impact the world and other believers, but to strengthen our faith as well.
The exercise of graces transforms our understanding. (Manton) Friends, when we exercise our spiritual gifts, those graces of God, it transforms our understanding.
Preaching, for example, is as much about reading people as it is about reading the Bible and studying theological and practical works of the Church. As I study and learn people I am better equipped to minister to people.
As much as I preach the text I also preach to people. As much as I study the Bible I apply its truths in the lives of people. So it is with all of the spiritual gifts. As we exercise our gifts we engage people.
As we engage people we rely on strength from God and draw closer to the heart of God because at the center of God’s heart is a desire to gather the nations to Himself in worship.
We must exercise our gifts so that in so doing we will put ourselves in the position to transform our thinking from the way of the world to the mysterious ways of God. In his book “Let the Nations be Glad,” John Piper tells the following story.
“During the 1960s the Lord raised up an indigenous leader in the church in Mozambique named Martinho Campos. The story of his ministry, Life Out of Death in Mozambique, is a remarkable testimony to God’s strange ways of missionary blessing. Martinho was leading a series of meetings in the administrative area of Gurue sixty miles from his own area of Nauela. The police arrested him and put him in jail without a trial. The police chief, a European, assumed that the gatherings were related to the emerging guerrilla group Frelimo.
But even when the Catholic priest told him that these men were just “a gathering of heretics,” he took no concern for justice, though he wondered why the common people brought so much food to the prisoner, as though he were someone important. One night he was driving his truck with half a dozen prisoners in it and saw “what appeared to be a man in gleaming white, standing in the road, facing him.” He swerved so sharply that the truck rolled over and he was trapped underneath. The prisoners themselves lifted the truck so that the police chief could get out. After brief treatment in the hospital he returned to talk to Martinho because he knew there was some connection between this vision and the prisoner. He entered Martinho’s cell and asked for forgiveness. Martinho told him about his need for God’s forgiveness and how to have it. The police chief said humbly, “Please pray for me.” Immediately the chief called for hot water so that the prisoner might wash, took him out of solitary confinement, and saw to it that a fair trial was held. Martinho was released. But the most remarkable thing was what followed: “Not only did the chief of police make plain his respect for what Martinho stood for, but he also granted him official permission to travel throughout the whole area under his jurisdiction in order to preach and hold evangelical services.” There would have been no way that such permission would have been given through the ordinary channels. But God had a way through suffering. The imprisonment was for the advancement of the gospel.”
The exercise of graces transforms our understanding. I’ve often wondered how many of God’s chosen missionaries live frustrated lives as bankers, stockers, factory workers, with the nagging feeling that God has something else for them.
On the other hand, how many bankers, stockers, or factory workers live full in the knowledge that they are right where God would have them to be because there in the bank, the stock room, or the factory, they exercise their spiritual gifts?
What if this church leader in Mozambique had chosen not to answer the call? It was in the suffering that he endured as a consequence of exercising his gifts that God performed a miracle and opened up doors for the Gospel.
God will never do what He calls us to do and we can never do what only God can do. He works out His will through us. That is how He has chosen to do it so that He gets the glory and we find purpose and rest in Him.
Conclusion
My son Kurtis plays the Bass Clarinet the band for his school. Regretfully, I never played an instrument growing up and do not do so now with the exception of a few chords on a guitar. However, any musician who plays in a band or orchestra knows that for the symphony of music to please the ears and ring true to intent of the composer, every member of the band must play in relative harmony.
For the music of the local church to ring out into the community and the world each member of God’s orchestra must exercise, hone, and sharpen their gifts.
“Grace is given to trade with; it is given to lay out, not to lay up. Grace is a candle that must not be put under a bushel—but set upon a candlestick. Grace is a golden treasure that must be improved, not hoarded up, as men do their gold. Grace is a talent, and it is given for this very end, that it should be employed and improved for the honor and advantage of him who gave it. The slothful servant, in God's account, is an evil servant, and accordingly God has denoted him, and doomed him for his ill husbandry, to destruction, Mat. 25:24-31.
"What a shame is it," says Jerome, "that faith should not be able to do that which infidelity has done! What! not better fruit in the vineyard, in the garden of God, than in the wilderness? What! not better fruit grow upon the tree of life, than upon the root of nature?” Friends, the graces of God are given to be honed, sharpened, utilized, not laid up to rust. May we be a people who exercise the graces that we have been given! Amen.
