Most of you know that Mary and I really enjoy putting together jigsaw puzzles. It’s a fun activity that we can do together and we can actually talk with each other while we’re working on the puzzle. And if any of you are interested, we’ve even brought a bunch of our old puzzles to church and you can find them on the bookshelf in the lounge area. Feel free to take some home for your family. I just have to warn you that many of them are missing a few pieces which apparently fell on the floor and were eaten by our dogs.
I am happy to report that last Sunday we finished our latest 1,000 piece puzzle and we actually had all 1,000 pieces when we finished for a change. And this week as I was thinking about spiritual gifts, I realized that a jigsaw puzzle is the perfect way to illustrate some important truths about spiritual gifts. So this morning’s message is going to be one big “In the Bag” message. You’ll notice that there is no sermon outline in your bulletin this morning. There will be no PowerPoint for the sermon this morning, either. This morning’s message is one to be experienced more that it is to be an academic learning exercise.
However, I do want to encourage you to stay for the “Connections” Bible study afterwards where we will have a chance to dig into this topic in some more detail. If that time is anywhere near as edifying as it was last week, I know it will be a valuable use of your time.
So go ahead and take your Bibles and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and follow along as I read the first 11 verses of that chapter:
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
(1 Corinthians 12:1-11 ESV)
[Hand out puzzle pieces to congregation]
Let’s imagine that the puzzle pieces I just handed out to you are spiritual gifts. The first thing that we can learn about spiritual gifts this morning is that they are received, not achieved. None of you did anything to achieve the puzzle piece that I just gave to you. You didn’t earn it, you didn’t develop it. In fact, you didn’t even ask for it, did you? And none of you got to determine which piece you received. I made that determination.
That’s a pretty good picture of how we receive spiritual gifts from God. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit apportions to each one as he wills. He alone determines which gift or gifts He gives to each person. And He is the one who empowers those gifts. So one of the first things we can learn about spiritual gifts is that they are different than talents.
A talent is something that I can develop in my life. Although it is true that most talents are also God-given, even unbelievers have talents. But they don’t have spiritual gifts. For instance, we have some people in this body like Susan and both Steve Ponzos who have musical talent. And I think they would all agree that they have that talent because God has gifted them with it. But because it is a talent, and not a spiritual gift, it is something that they can develop on their own by practice and training.
You may have noticed that Steve the Younger is not here this morning. That’s because he and Jeremy are up in the woods attempting to develop a new ability of bow hunting. And when they return tomorrow, we’ll see how that’s going.
We have others like Gene Melzer and Jim Copeland who have great talents when it comes to maintaining, repairing and fixing things. And I could go on since all of us have talents and abilities. But they are different than spiritual gifts. But there are a lot of unbelievers who also have musical and mechanical talents.
Now it is true that God often uses our abilities and talents as we exercise our spiritual gifts. That shouldn’t surprise us since the one who created us is also the one who distributes His gifts as He desires. For instance, I really believe that Gene has the spiritual gift of helps, but the way he manifests that gift is often through his ability to fix things. Susan has the gift of exhortation and she frequently uses her musical talent in exercising that gift. But we need to remember that the spiritual gift and the talent are two different things.
Now that you have your “spiritual gifts” I want you to take a minute to study the puzzle piece I’ve given to you. Then look around at the puzzle pieces that others around you have. As you look at your piece and compare it to those other pieces, you’ll discover that each of your pieces is unique. First of all, they are different shapes. Four of you have corner pieces, some of you have edge pieces and some of you have interior pieces. And every piece also has a different part of the picture on it.
Spiritual gifts are like that. Even though they all come from the same Holy Spirit, each is different. Paul points out that spiritual gifts are unique in three different ways:
• First, there are varieties of gifts. The Greek word for gift is “charisma”. That Greek word is related to the Greek word for grace and it means a gift of grace. That’s exactly what we’ve already seen. These varieties of gifts are not earned or deserved. The Holy Spirit gives them to each Christ-follower as an act of grace.
• Next, there are varieties of service. The word for service is the same Greek word from which we get our English word deacon. So we know that the purpose of these spiritual gifts is not just o have them or study them. We are to use these gifts to serve in a variety of ways.
• Finally, there are varieties of activities. The Greek word Paul uses there is the word from which we get our English word “energy”. In the New Testament, that word is used only to describe the power of God, never human power. So here it emphasizes the divine energy working in us in a variety of ways that is manifest by what we do.
So how many different spiritual gifts are there? I’ve seen people use all kinds of approaches in an attempt to answer that question. Obviously there is some kind of list here in 1 Corinthians 12. There is another one in Romans 12. There is possibly another list in 1 Peter 4 and there is a list of positions that are gifts to the church in Ephesians 4. So I’ve seen people come up with lists of anywhere between 8 and 28 spiritual gifts. I’ve even used a number of those different lists at different times myself.
But after hopefully maturing in my walk with Jesus, I now believe that there is not some set list of spiritual gifts. The Holy Spirit is capable of giving whatever gift or gift is needed in order for us to carry out whatever task He has for us. So these lists we find in the Scriptures are only illustrative to help us see the kinds of gifts that the Holy Spirit gives, much as the list of the nine aspects of the fruit of the Sprit that we looked at last week is not intended to be an exhaustive list of the character traits of God that the Holy Spirit develops in our lives.
Before we move on, I want to make one more point here. If I did this right every one of you has a puzzle piece. That is because every genuine Christ follower has at least one spiritual gift. Notice what it says in verse 7:
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit…
Paul is clearly implying that every single believer is given one or more spiritual gifts.
If we were to just stop now and all of you were to leave here with your individual puzzle pieces, we would have certainly learned a few things about spiritual gifts. And unfortunately, I’m afraid that’s where a lot of Christ followers stop. They study spiritual gifts. They might even complete a spiritual gifts inventory or go through a class to help them discover their spiritual gifts. But that’s as far as they go. And frankly, that’s just about as useful as a single puzzle piece.
That’s because puzzle pieces, like spiritual gifts, are not designed to operate independently. They only have meaning when they are linked together with all the other puzzle pieces to make a whole picture. So guess what we’re going to do right now? That’s right – I’m going to ask you to bring your puzzle pieces up to the table here and work together to assemble the puzzle. If that’s difficult for you physically, it’s okay to give your piece to someone else and ask them to put it into the puzzle for you.
[Give people time to put the puzzle together].
Let’s summarize what we just learned.
The first thing we learned is that those puzzle pieces are worthless unless they are actually used. If you just hung on to your piece and didn’t put it into the puzzle, it really isn’t of any value. The same thing is true with our spiritual gifts. I firmly believe that the best way for someone to discover his or her spiritual gift or gifts is not to complete some spiritual gifts test, analysis or survey, but rather by getting to work serving somewhere in the body of Christ. I’ve found both personally and in observing others that as we serve within the body, God uses those experiences to help us understand our gifts much better than any survey or test can do. And that is certainly consistent with what we saw in verse 5 where Paul linked spiritual gifts to a variety of service.
The second thing I hope we discovered is that these puzzle pieces are not designed to serve themselves. They only have meaning and purpose as part of the entire puzzle. The same is true for our spiritual gifts. As Paul writes at the end of verse 7, they are given to us for the common good.
Apparently the people in the church at Corinth were having a hard time with that idea. They were seeking out the more public gifts as a way of bringing attention to themselves and to show that they were more spiritual than others. So Paul has to devote three entire chapters of his letter to try and address this issue. Unfortunately, the church is not immune to that same kind of thinking today. Far too often when we teach about spiritual gifts the emphasis is on discovering my gift as an end in itself rather than seeing how God wants me to use that gift to serve the body as a whole.
When Mary and I put together a puzzle we always start with the edges and the corners because for us it’s easier to put together the puzzle once we’ve established the boundaries. So there is a tendency to conclude that those are the most important pieces.
But I’ve also watched my granddaughters put together a puzzle by working from the inside out. And I’ve come to realize from watching them that all the pieces, even though they may have different functions, are equally important. We certainly realize this when we finish the puzzle and there are pieces missing. It really doesn’t matter whether they are edge pieces, corners, or interior pieces – the puzzle is incomplete without them.
Paul reinforces that same idea when it comes to spiritual gifts in the last part of 1 Corinthians 12, where he compares the operation of the gifts in the body of Christ to how indispensable the individual parts of the human body are to the body as a whole. We won’t have time to read the rest of the chapter this morning, but I encourage you to take some time to do that this week.
As you can see, there is one piece missing from our puzzle. That’s because I held on to one of the pieces for myself. And without that one piece, even though this still looks pretty much like a picture of Jesus teaching some children, the picture is not all that it should be.
Unfortunately the same thing happens within the body of Christ, both on a macro basis with the church universal and on a micro basis in local churches like TFC. Too many churches are missing pieces of the puzzle for a variety of reasons:
• There are some people who are claiming to be followers of Christ but who have never genuinely repented and committed their lives to Jesus and made Him both Savior and Lord of their lives. And because they haven’t done that, they don’t have the Holy Spirit living in their lives and without Him they can’t possibly have any spiritual gifts.
• There are some Christ followers who rarely or never serve within the body so they have never really discovered what gifts the Holy Spirit has given to them.
• There are some people who know what their gifts are, but they aren’t using them for the common good of the body. Perhaps they are merely hanging on to them for their own personal benefit or perhaps they just aren’t using them at all because that would require them to step out of their comfort zone.
Regardless of the reasons, I’m convinced that every local church is not able to do what God has called them to do because there are some people in the body who are not exercising their spiritual gifts as God desires. And when they fail to exercise those gifts they are not only hurting themselves and stunting their own personal spiritual growth, but they are also harming every other member of the body.
Since this message has been a bit unconventional, it seems only appropriate to take a bit of a risk and ask you to respond to God’s Word this morning in a manner that might be unconventional. I’m going to step out in faith a bit here under the assumption that the Holy Spirit is at work here and that He is just as capable of speaking to you as He is to me.
So let me ask you to share what you believe would be an appropriate way to respond to God’s Word this morning.
