1 Peter 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's multifaceted grace. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Introduction: The Value of Grace
How much would you pay for an ounce of grace? I think gold goes for about $1600 per ounce right now - what would an ounce of grace be worth to you? Obviously grace does not come in ounces; I just ask the question to get us thinking about how much we value grace. How much would you pay to get more of it than you already have? Do you feel any special need for more grace? Do you feel like your life would be a lot better if you got more? Or that you will be in big trouble if you don't get more? What do we need it for exactly? What does it do? What is grace? It is amazing how often we use words every day in church and then when you go to define it you realize, "Wait a second, do I even know what this is?" We need to make sure we have a clear understanding of what grace is because take a look at verse 10.
1 Peter 4:10 Just as each of you has received a gift, use it to serve others, as good stewards of God's grace
If God is calling us to be stewards of grace, we need to know what grace is. Obviously you cannot be a good steward of something if you don't even know what it is.
What is Grace? God's Favor
So what is grace? The most basic definition of the Greek word is favor. God's grace is favor from God. It is the opposite of having God against you.
1 Peter 5:5 …God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
So getting grace, or favor from God is the opposite of having God oppose you or be against you. So grace is God's favor.
The Results of Grace
Now, what happens to you when God favors you? What are the results of grace? If you get some antibiotics, the result might be that it kills an infection. If you get some food, the result might be a sense of pleasure and satisfaction. If you get a raise, the result is more money in the bank. What happens if you get grace?
Salvation
One thing that happens is salvation.
Titus 2:11 the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared
When you get grace from God you become a child of God, your sins are all forgiven, and you go to heaven when you die rather than hell. But that is not the only effect of grace. What else happens when you get God's favor?
Honor
In 2 Corinthians 9:14 we see that grace causes other believers to have a special love for you.
2 Corinthians 9:14 They will have deep affection for you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you.
People will have a desire to be around you and they have a high respect for you and a special love for you.
Building Up
Acts 20:32 Now I commit you … to the word of his grace, which can build you up
When God favors you and you receive His grace, it makes you more and more what you are supposed to be.
Strengthening
Not only that, but grace also gives you power and strength and enablement to work hard and accomplish great things.
1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
Hebrews 13:9 It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace
Grace gives you strength.
Holiness
In 2 Corinthians 1:12, Paul said that as a result of receiving grace he was able to conduct himself in holiness and sincerity. When God favors you, one of the results is you live a holy life. Your motives become more pure, and you find yourself resisting temptation and choosing God's way over sin more and more.
Joyful Generosity
And that holiness touches every part of life. For example - your finances. In 2 Corinthians 8, God gave grace to the Macedonian churches and the result was incredible generosity. They just gave and gave and gave even out of their extreme poverty and did so with exuberant joy (2 Cor.8:1-9).
Gratitude
It affects your gratitude. In 2 Corinthians 4:15, the effect of grace is it causes thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.
Good Works
In 2 Corinthians 9:8, grace makes you abound in every good work. Not only does it enable you to do every kind of righteous, godly thing, but to abound in all those things.
Self-Control
Titus 2:12 says that grace teaches us how to say "no" to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. Grace gives you self-control.
Satisfaction
Grace also has a powerful effect on your soul. It satisfies some of the deepest cravings and longings that you have. So much so that when Paul was crying out to God for relief from suffering in 2 Corinthians 12, God said, "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Cor.12:9). If you experience God's grace, you will be content and happy and satisfied even if the extreme suffering keeps going. God did not say, "My grace ought to be enough for you." He said it actually is enough.
Encouragement and Hope
In 2 Thessalonians 2:16 it says that through grace you get encouragement (or comfort) and hope.
Successful Ministry
It is the secret to everything. If you ever wonder how Paul could do the things he did and have such incredible godliness and willingness to suffer and so much love and wisdom and perseverance and unbounded joy all the time, and how he could have such an unbelievably fruitful and successful ministry- he gives the secret in 1 Timothy 1:14.
1 Timothy 1:14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly
His secret was not reading tips from the latest mega church pastor's book on how to have success. The secret was very simple - lots and lots of grace. And that is the secret he passed on to Timothy.
2 Timothy 2:1 You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
That is all you need. If you want to train up a great man of God, teach him how to get grace.
When we need something from God - anything, what does Hebrews 4:16 tell us to do? Approach the throne of what? Grace. When we get to the end of 1 Peter, we are going to see that the entire book was all about grace.
1 Peter 5:12 I have written to you briefly, encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.
And in Hebrews 12:15 we are told, See to it that no one misses the grace of God. That is one thing you can not afford to miss out on. That is why over and over the writers of the New Testament keep saying, "Grace to you" in their letters. Grace to you, grace and peace to you, the grace of Christ be with your spirit - you know how many times that is repeated in the New Testament? I counted thirty-four. How many things can you think of that are repeated thirty-four times in the New Testament? Paul says it, Peter says it, John, the writer of Hebrews, it is in the book of Revelation. It is not just one writer's style - you see it in seventeen different New Testament books. I think God is trying to make a point, don't you think?
So how valuable is grace? Isn't it true that some of you are battling with controlling your tongue? You talk too much or you are too prideful in your speech or you have a sharp tongue – you hurt people. Do you know what the medicine is for that? Grace. Some of you have a massive struggle with lust. You tried everything; nothing works. You know what will work? Grace.
"I've tried Grace! It didn't work."
Then you need more – you didn't have enough. You get enough and it will work.
Some of you have a problem with worry or anxiety – Grace will solve that. Maybe your marriage is in shambles. Grace will heal that. Grace will enable you to be the wife or husband that Scripture calls you to be. Some of you are enslaved to some behavior – smoking, drinking, pornography, overeating – nothing is going to be powerful enough to break that bondage except grace. Some of you can struggle with obsessive thoughts – you just cannot get control of your thought life. Grace will enable you to get control. There are people probably in this church who are destroying themselves by hanging onto a grudge because they just cannot seem to forgive. They want to forgive but it seems impossible. That is because they do not have enough grace. If they had enough grace they would be able to gladly and happily and completely forgive. Did you know that grace can overcome even the deepest depression and replace it with joy? It can transform an angry, hateful heart to a rejoicing, loving heart. Maybe you are just going through a desert. You cannot seem to draw near to God. No matter how much you read your Bible or pray, it seems like he is a million miles away and you cannot find your way out of the pit that you are in spiritually. Grace would do it. Is your ministry lacking fruit? Your efforts are not accomplishing anything? Grace would increase the fruit.
Grace is pretty valuable stuff isn't it? But you cannot buy an ounce of grace even with $1600 or $16,000 not even $16 million. It is not for sale. So how do you get it? How could you ever get your hands on some of this priceless stuff? That is what Peter is going to show us today.
What is Stewardship? Distribution of Grace
1 Peter 4:10 Just as each of you has received a gift, use it to serve others, as good stewards of God's grace in its various forms.
The Household Steward
God requires you to be a good steward of His grace. So what is a steward? A steward is the servant who is in charge of the household. He was in charge of the resources and the rest of the slaves and the children.
Galatians 4:1 as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. 2 The heir is subject to guardians and stewards until the time set by his father.
Luke 12:42 The Lord answered, "Who then is the faithful and wise steward, whom the master puts in charge of his slaves to give them their food allowance at the proper time? 43 It will be good for that slave whom the master finds doing so when he returns.
Luke 16:1 Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose steward was accused of wasting his possessions.
So the steward was in charge of the business, the money, possessions, the slaves, and the children in the household. That is a household steward - in Romans 16:23 we see that there was also such a thing as a steward of a city. Erastus was the city steward. Most versions translate that the city treasurer. The NIV says director of public works. So you get the idea - someone who is in charge of the resources. And the context of 1 Peter points to a household steward. You see down in verse 17, Peter again refers to the church as God's household. When Paul talks about the spiritual gifts, he likes to focus on the metaphor of the church being like a body. And each person's gift functions like a different body part. Peter's favorite analogy for the church is that we are God's household. So Peter frames his discussion of gifts from that standpoint. We are God's children and the church is God's household, so who is the steward God has placed in charge of the household? Well, in Titus 1:7 we find that it is the overseers. (Overseer is another term for pastor or elder.)
Titus 1:7 for it is necessary that an overseer be blameless since he is God's steward.
The elders are the household slaves who have been given the task of being in charge of the household as stewards under the authority of the Master Himself. However, Peter is not talking about pastors here. Look at verse 10 again.
1 Peter 4:10 Just as each of you has received a gift, use it to serve others, as good stewards of God's grace in its various forms.
There is a very real sense in which every single one of you is a steward.
"Wait a second - wouldn't that be kind of a lot of chiefs and not enough Indians? How can every single person in the church be in charge of the household?"
Well, Peter does not say you are a steward of the entire household. Elders are stewards of the household in general; what does he say you are a steward of?
10 Just as each of you has received a gift, use it to serve others, as good stewards of God's grace in its various forms.
You are in charge of the distribution of a portion of God's grace. Remember what Jesus said in Luke 12?
Luke 12:42 The Lord answered, "Who then is the faithful and wise steward, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time?
Everybody in the household gets their share of food, and it is the steward 's job to dole that out. The steward decides how much you get and when. If you want seconds on dessert, that is up to the steward. If the steward decides you get nothing today then you get nothing today. He is in charge of the distribution of food. And in the same way, you are in charge of the distribution of what?
God's grace.
If you want grace, the way to get it is you are going to have to go to the steward in this household who is in charge of distributing it.
Food is a good analogy. You cannot live on a diet of only carrots, or only oranges - not even only chocolate cake. In order to stay alive you have to have a wide variety of foods. They are all under one big category (food), and yet the various different kinds of food have different purposes and different effects on your body and serve different purposes in keeping you alive. And God's grace is the same way. The benefits of salvation that come from God, the various components of spiritual life are multifaceted, many colored, and they come in a huge, wide variety. Some of them keep your hope strong. Other forms of grace are designed to help you overcome sins of the flesh. Still other forms are what you need to improve your worship. Other forms help with prayer, other forms increase your love, etc.
If you can imagine a household where the master said to all the servants and children, "OK, I'm going to make each one of you a steward. You - you're the steward in charge of doling out cereal in the morning. If anyone wants cereal, they have to get it from you or go without. And you - you're in charge of all the meat. You're in charge of the potatoes. You're in charge of the drinks," etc. So for each part of your diet you have to go to a different steward to receive it.
That is the picture Peter gives us here of how God's grace is distributed. The various benefits of salvation - the components of spiritual life - are doled out at the description of the various stewards in the church who are in charge of those components.
Stewardship Matters
"So what if one steward is unfaithful? Suppose the guy in charge of the cereal isn't doing his job? What if he only shows up at church once every six weeks or so? And when he does, he keeps to himself. Then what? Does God let all the children just go without? Or will God bypass that person and supply us with that form of grace through some other means?"
If God just bypassed the person and supplied that grace another way, then our stewardship would be a farce. It would be meaningless. Nobody's ministry would matter, because God would just make it happen whether the person was faithful or not. God will let us go without.
If you know me you know that I am about as Calvinistic as they come when it comes to my belief in the sovereignty of God over all things. I believe in that with all my heart. But we need to make sure we do not let human reasoning run amuck so that our belief in God's sovereign control gets perverted into a denial of the reality of human free will and responsibility. God has given us a decision making role, and it is real decision making - such that outcomes will go one way or the other based on what we decide. So if we are unfaithful stewards, will God allow His children to become malnourished and even starve? Yes.
And if you doubt that, just ask yourself - isn't it true that there are some churches where there is a famine of God's Word? The Word of God is not faithfully preached or taught. Isn't it true that God allows that to happen to some churches? And isn't it true that in some churches there is a famine of compassion? And wouldn't you admit that in some churches there is no discernment? And in other churches there is very little encouragement? In others hospitality is lacking, and in others there is hardly any peacemaking? Some have a lack of leadership, others a lack of service, others a lack of mercy, or wisdom or passion or love? I have never been in a church in my life where ever single steward is faithfully doling out the form of grace they are called give out as stewards. I know that because every church I have ever been a part of has had me in it. And I am constantly falling into the sin of unfaithfulness in various areas where God has called me to be steward of some portion of His grace and I have dropped the ball.
What are Spiritual Gifts? Stewardship of Grace
So how do we avoid dropping the ball? What exactly do you have to do to distribute the portion of grace that you are in charge of? Please notice - Peter's point here is not on how you can get grace. His point is on how you can make sure others get it. And how do you do that? How do you dispense grace to someone? Do you lay hands on him? Is it done through some ritual? Or prayer? How does this actually happen? Look back at verse 10 again.
1 Peter 4:10 Just as each of you has received a gift, use it to serve others, as good stewards of God's grace in its various forms.
The way we distribute the grace of God is through our spiritual gifts.
Examples
If you have ever wondered what spiritual gifts are, this is an excellent definition. Gifts are the way we carry out our stewardship of God's grace. The way to deliver grace to a person is not through rituals or ceremonies or any of that – it is through the use of your spiritual gift.
"What would be an example of a spiritual gift?"
We have a whole list of examples in Romans 12, and then another list in 1 Corinthians 12. Those two lists are very different. There is some overlap - some gifts that are mentioned in both lists. But there are also a bunch in each list that are not in the other list. I think that is an indication that the things in those lists are just samples. They are not exhaustive lists. But just to give you an idea, here are some of the gifts in those lists:
One gift is the gift of leadership. Another is a the gift of teaching. Another gift is serving. Every Christian is to serve the body, but some of you are just really good at that. It comes more naturally to you than it does to the rest of us. And then there is the gift of encouraging. Isn't it true that some people are a lot better at encouraging than others? Another category of gifts is the giving category. We are all called to be generous, we are all instructed to worship the Lord with giving, but for some of us that is one of the really hard commands and for others it is one of the easier ones. Another is mercy - helping people who are in trouble. And another is helping. I think that is an interesting gift. Some people do not really specialize in any particular area, but they have such a wide variety of interests and abilities that their gift is literally helping other people do their job. Maybe God gave you the gift of mercy, but you need help carrying it out. Or you have the gift of leadership or encouraging or serving, but you need help. And that is the job of the people with the gifts of helping.
I think these are the people who do not really have any singular, driving passion for any one ministry. God did not give them that because He wants them to just be available to fill in where needed. These people get frustrated with the spiritual gift inventories because they come out with an equal number of points in each quadrant. Or their dots on the chart look like a shotgun pattern - little miscellaneous abilities scattered all over the chart.
This gift might include the ability to implement decisions that have been made. Some people are gifted at making good decisions and others are good at implementing those decisions. People with this gift are good at setting up and managing the infrastructure of the church.
So that is a sampling. In addition to those, Scripture also mentions several miraculous gifts - the ability to do miracles or heal the sick, etc. I am not going to get into the whole discussion of the role of those gifts in our day. I wrote an appendix in the sermon notes about that.
Variety
Those are some general categories. Can you see why Peter calls it God's grace in its various forms? Literally: God's multi-colored grace. God's grace comes in a whole lot of forms. When a ray of light hits a prism it splits into numerous different colors. When God's grace hits the Church it explodes into a million different varieties.
The list I just gave you has wide variety, and those are just categories. There might be one hundred different gifts that fall under that leadership/administration category. Some people are really good at the organization part, others are good with handling relationships and the "people skills" aspect of managing, some are really good at planning, others are great at coming up with ideas, others implementation, and on and on.
No one has all the gifts, and there is no gift that belongs to every believer. So the only way you are going to get the well-balanced diet of grace that you need is to be ministered to by a wide variety of saints - the wider the better.
Necessity
"But can't I just go to the Bible and prayer and get the grace that I need?"
Most of them - no. You can go to the Bible and prayer and get some kinds of grace. In fact you absolutely have to do that. If you do not do that, you for sure will not have enough grace. But just doing that will not be enough. You also need the varieties of grace that come from the varieties of Spiritual gifts in the church.
That is one advantage of a large church. There are advantages to small churches and large churches, and one of the advantages of a larger church is more spiritual gifts. More stewards walking around dispensing God's grace.
That problem you have in your life that you need grace for - if you want enough grace to be able to come out victorious you are going to have to go around to a bunch of different stewards – all the various stewards who are in charge of distributing the various kinds Grace that you need.
So for example, if you have a spiritual problem, for one thing, you are going to need the grace that comes through teachers and preachers. If you are one of those people who says, "I don't need any preachers or books or commentaries - just me and the Holy Spirit," – that is like a person who has a rich uncle who mails him a bunch of money every week. But he is starving to death because he never goes to the mailbox. He says, "I don't need mailboxes or postmen or any of that garbage - all I need is my rich uncle." Your rich uncle has all you need, but if he chooses to deliver it to you through the mail, and you refuse his means of delivery, then you don't get it.
So you need a variety of teachers. You are also going to need some people to encourage you. There will be times when the truths from God's Word that you desperately need in some hard situation, for whatever reason, just do not come to mind. And you will need someone to come along and remind you of them.
There may be times when you are in great need, and God's way of supplying will be through some person at church with the gift of giving. But if you are so distant from that person and never establish a relationship, you miss out. Your time of need comes and that person with the gift of giving does not even know who you are.
You are also going to need some leadership. And you are going to need mercy. You are going to need someone who understands your situation because he went through something similar. You are going to need someone who is really good at mediating a dispute or reconciling relationships. You are going to need a full, well-balanced diet of all the various components of grace.
So, what is the definition of a spiritual gift? Your spiritual gift is the unique combination of vitamins and nutrients that flow from God through you to His Church. So every gift is crucially important - including yours.
When you come to church and give someone a word of encouragement, or a loving rebuke, or you pray for them - I hope you don't just think of that in naturalistic terms. I hope you don't think of it as just being nice to someone. There is a certain thing that person needs to survive and flourish spiritually. It is called grace, and there are forms of it that are only released through you. Lots of people can encourage, but no one does it quite the way you do it. We can all pray for one another, but no one prays quite the way you pray. They do not think of the same things you think of to ask God for. When you use your spiritual gift in ministry, universe-dwarfing power flows through you. The Spirit of the living God is at work!
The church cannot afford to go without anyone's gift. We need them all. That is one thing the people in Corinth did not understand. They had two kinds of people. One group was saying, "My gift isn't needed." They did not have a big, impressive, showy gift so they concluded they were not important. In the body analogy they would say, "Because I'm not a hand, I'm not a part of the body." In Peter's analogy of the church as God's household they would say, "Because I'm not in charge of distributing the hamburger, I'm not really an important steward." Those people feel like they could just kind of disappear from the church and no one would really notice.
“No one would miss me, it would be no loss - I don't really matter. My gift is a throw-away gift." That was one group. Then there was another group that had an over-inflated idea of their own importance. So they looked at those non-showy gifts and they agreed - "We don't need you." So some people were saying, "My gift isn't needed," and the other group was saying, "You know you're right. We've got this handled. You don't know what you're doing - we are good at this - you just stay out of the way and let us do it." Some people's gifts are impressive. They are really skilled and they really can do things better than anyone else. So they wouldn't come right out and say it, but when those low-confidence types say, "This church doesn't need me," these people secretly think, "That's true. We are all better off if they just stay out of the way."
Both groups are dead wrong. Every gift is needed. Maybe you are not handing out the meat and potatoes – you are just in charge of distributing oranges or something. And it seems like you could just go away and it wouldn't really make any difference. And at first it would seem that way, but years from now we all get scurvy because of the lack of vitamin C.
Conclusion: Understand the Value of Your Gift
I think the biggest hindrance to ministry in the Church is probably the lack of appreciation most people have for the value of their gift. One of the great sources of joy in life is giving gifts that are of great value. As a father of adult children now I can tell you one of the delights of my life has been to watch them learn the whole "It's more blessed to give than to receive" principle. At Christmas time, when they were little they were mainly excited about what they were going to get. But the older each of them got, the more you could see their joy shift from that to giving. Now as they open a gift, that still puts a smile on their face, but they get most excited when their sibling is opening the gift from them. They thought really long and hard about what would be that perfect gift, they spent a lot of money, and they just cannot wait to see their sibling open that gift. And you can see now that that is the highlight of their Christmas morning.
The problem is, that has become so enjoyable to them that they get carried away with it and spend more than they can afford on gifts. I think probably the funnest Christmas they could imagine would be if a couple months before Christmas time I gave them each $1000 to spend on gifts. They would have a blast with that. However, there is something you can give that is worth more than $1000. The grace that flows through your spiritual gift. If we had any idea how valuable grace is, we would be blown away at the privilege of being able to dispense it at will. And we would be like Paul - tireless in ministry. God has given us each not $1000 to spread around, but a checkbook that we can use to draw out of His unlimited account of grace. God has given you a spiritual gift, which is a debit card that draws on the account of a grace Billionaire, and He has told you, "Here, use this card to get some gifts for your brothers and sisters. No limit - just go nuts."
Some of you have no appreciation at all for the value of your gift. Maybe it is an effort at humility, or maybe you are just in the habit of putting yourself down for whatever reason. You have just developed a habit of saying, "I'm crummy at this, I'm lousy at that. I'm ugly, I'm dumb, I'm weak…," and you just have a habit of self-deprecation. And you look at your gift, and you do not see it as the work of God, so you trash that right along with everything else. Picture a woman who is down on herself and says, "I'm ugly. Everything about me is ugly - my eyes, my hair, my body, my dress…" And right then someone steps in and says, "Whoa - hold on a second. I made that dress." He is the greatest dressmaker in the world, and he makes the most beautiful dresses there are. And so when you are trying to put yourself down and you get to the part about, "This dress is ugly" - he steps in and says, "Wait - you've gone too far. Now you're not just putting yourself down; you're slandering me." When you disparage your giftedness you have gone too far. There is no good reason for you to be putting yourself down anyway, but you have really gone too far when you badmouth something the Holy Spirit has done.
Now, don't take that analogy too far. In my analogy, the dressmaker does not mind if you criticize your own face, but he does not want you to criticize his dress. The dress is not part of you. But that is where the analogy breaks down. Because your spiritual gift really is part of you. Even though it is the work of the Holy Spirit, at the same time it really is part of who you are. It is as essential to the core of your being as anything. It is even more a part of you than your eye color or height or personality type. It is very much a part of who you are and at the same time it is 100% the work of the Holy Spirit.
So your gift is tremendously valuable - sort of. It is valuable in the way a credit card or checkbook is valuable. It is valuable because of what it can get. What is really valuable is the actual grace. And your gift is valuable because it can be used to get grace to people - grace that they would not otherwise get. When you see someone in the church who is not laboring in ministry, or when we become lazy in ministry, or reluctant or slow to engage in ministry for whatever reason – it is a sign that we have forgotten how valuable grace is.
Do you realize there might be someone in this church who has been in bondage to sexual sin or drinking or has not been able to get control of his tongue, and he will stay that way until he gets the grace from God that comes through your gift? And if he would have had access to your gift three years ago he would have been walking in victory the last three years? When Peter says that your gift is a stewardship of grace, do you have any idea the value of what you have to offer?
That is not to say you have the all the answers for everyone. Some of us actually do more harm than good because we think we have the solution to every problem. That's not what I am saying. I am not saying your advice will solve everyone's problems. It will not. What I am saying is that there is grace that flows from your spiritual gift that is one ingredient to the solution to that person's problem.
So, what is grace? It is everything we need from God. What are spiritual gifts? They are pipelines God mostly uses to deliver that grace to His people. And how does that work? Does God's grace flow through you to others automatically? No, you are a steward of it. It is up to you how it is doled out. You could choose to go to your prayer group today and make your variety of grace available to the children in the household (or do it some other way in some other context), or you could just go home right after the service and cut them off. "None of this kind of grace for you," - and we just go without. It is your call. It is your stewardship. You are in charge of the distribution of a certain repository of God's grace that has been entrusted to your care.
And there are good stewards and bad stewards. And Peter is calling us here to be good stewards.
10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as good stewards of God's multifaceted grace.
Obviously the Master is not going to be pleased if He returns and discovers that His stewards have been stingy with the grace He entrusted to them to distribute.
"But I don't even know for sure what my gift is. How do I discover my gift? And once I discover it, how do I know where I should be using it? How do I know what ministry God wants me to be a part of?"
We will plan on getting into all that next time. But for now, just remember that whenever you have an opportunity to serve, if you do it, then all of the rest of us will get forms of grace we would not otherwise get. And that form of grace is priceless!
Benediction: 1 Corinthians 15:58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
1:25 Questions
1. What kinds of ministries do you find most fulfilling? If God asked you to pick one category of ministry to focus most of your attention on right now, what would you pick?
2. What is preventing you from more generous distribution of the form of grace you are a steward of?
Appendix: The Miraculous Gifts
The first one is prophecy. I believe prophecy is the ability to speak new revelation from God with divine inspiration and 100% accuracy. That is how we got the Bible - from the Prophets. And you can see that that is really more of a category than a specific gift. Just read the Bible and you will see that no two prophets did it exactly the same way. They all had different gifts, but they all fall into that general category of prophecy.
And prophecy is the only miraculous gift in the Romans list. The 1 Corinthians list has several miraculous gifts. Gifts of healings, miraculous powers, tongues, and interpretation of tongues. There is a lot of debate about the role of the miraculous gifts. I believe their main purpose was to authenticate the message of the New Testament.
Hebrews 2:3 this salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. 4 God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his will.
That sounds to me like a past tense thing. Jesus announced the gospel, the Apostles spread it and wrote it down, and how do we know for sure that they were from God? God let us know by giving them the ability to do miracles. Lots of people claim to be speaking for God, so how can you know for sure when it is really true? Miracles. That is why there was a huge cluster of miracles in the time of Moses, and again in the time of Elijah and Elisha who represent the Prophets, and then again in the time of Jesus and the Apostles. With Moses God was authenticating the Law, with the Prophets He was authenticating the rest of the Old Testament (the Prophets), and with Jesus and the Apostles He was authenticating the New Testament. Throughout most of the rest of biblical history you do not see any miracles. So it would make sense that the miraculous gifts would have the same basic purpose as miracles in general. And that would explain why you see a greater emphasis on the miraculous gifts in an earlier book like 1 Corinthians than you do in a later book like Romans.
That is my view on the miraculous gifts. Others would argue that God's intension was that miracles should be common place throughout the Church age, and they should take place every time we get together for worship. I am not convinced that is the case, but I am not closed to the idea of miracles. If one of you starts performing miracles, I am not going to argue - as long as your doctrine matches Scripture.
Deuteronomy 13:1 If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, 2 and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," 3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul.
If someone comes along with the ability to heal the sick and raise the dead and walk on water and all the rest, but his teaching is unbiblical, he is a false prophet. Miracles only prove someone is from God when that person also holds fast to sound doctrine. So those are the miraculous gifts, however that is not the whole list of gifts. It is not even most of the list. And I mention that because there are some people who seem to think the miraculous gifts are pretty much all that matter. People will call the church office and say, "Do you believe in the gifts?" And if I answer by saying, "Yes, of course. We have people in our congregation who are good at service, and helps, and giving, and teaching, and mercy…," they will think I'm being a smart Alec. There are people today who make the same mistake as the Corinthians - they get so enamored with the miraculous gifts that they think they are more important than the other gifts. But if you look at God's Word you'll see that there are far more non-miraculous gifts than miraculous ones.
