Prismatic Gifts 2 2 Corinthians 12:4-7
The Goal of the Gifts is the Good of All
Introduction
Chuck Swindoll tells a story about a man living in Atlanta who was flipping through the Yellow Pages in search of a restaurant. His noticed an entry for a place called The Church of God Grill. His curiosity got the best of him and he dialed the number. A man answered with a cheery, "Hello! Church of God Grill!"
He asked how the restaurant had gotten such an unusual name. "Well,” the man answered, “we had a little mission down here, and we started selling chicken dinners after church on Sunday to help pay the bills. People loved the chicken, and we did such a good business, we found ourselves needing to shorten up our church services in order to get enough dinners ready on time. After a while we closed down the church altogether and just served chicken dinners. We kept the name we started with, and that’s Church of God Grill.”(Charles Paul Conn, Making it Happen, quoted in Swindoll, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart, p 214 )
It’s easy to lose our focus, isn’t it? As crazy as the story of the Church of God Grill may sound, it’s easy enough to fall into. The folks at the Church of God Grill stopped looking at their mission, and focused instead on what was popular & successful. You don’t have to do that for long before you find yourself serving chicken instead of saving souls.
The church in Corinth had lost its focus. Instead of using the gifts God had given them accomplish His purposes, they had gotten wrapped up in the gifts themselves: fighting over who had the best gifts and determining their relative worth based on their spiritual gift.
It is a tragic irony, that often, the gifts that were given by God to strengthen the church, have become a source of division in churches for centuries. Satan has two great ways to use spiritual gifts to hurt churches: one is to make us focus too much on the gifts instead of the Giver and the Goal, the other is to make us shy away from them – or from some of them – often with the argument that they cause division in the church. The problem in Corinth wasn’t that they were ignoring the gifts of the Holy Spirit – their church abounded with gifts. But the folks there had lost their focus. Even though Paul had never been to the Church of God Grill, he knew that their improper focus threatened to destroy the church. And so he reminds them of two vital priorities for restoring focus.
The first Priority is “The Giver is more important than the Gifts” (vss 4-6)
The Holy Spirit gives a variety of gifts
Rarely in the Scriptures will you find something repeated three times in a row.
But Paul does that here
If he goes to all that trouble, there must be a significant reason.
“there are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit;
“…different ways of serving, but the same Lord
“…different abilities to perform service, but the same God”
Each phrase has two words in common:
different
same
When we look around at the gifts in our congregation, we see a broad variety:
teachers
servers
leaders
encouragers
administrators
and we could name more
But where did those gifts come from?
the same Spirit
the same Lord
the same God
What Paul is pointing out through this is that having (or not having) a certain gift doesn’t make one person any better than another.
Because each of us has received a gift or a number of gifts, from God Himself
We lose perspective when we start thinking of the gift and stop thinking about the giver.
There is a tendency I have observed to minimize our own gifts and see others as having greater ones
Part of the reason is that when we operate in the area of our gifts, it feels so natural, we think, “Oh, ANYBODY could do that!”
One time I was at a prayer meeting with my friend Ann, whom many of you met. We had to gather in groups and pray with folks we’d never met before. Our group consisted of Ann & I, a pastor from another church and his wife, who were both probably in their 60’s and three middle school girls.
The person up front would give us some guidance and ask us to pray for several minutes, then he’d give us some more areas to pray about and we’d go to prayer again. The three girls obviously felt VERY uncomfortable, which rubbed off on the rest of us. None of them prayed or contributed to our discussion. With each little prayer session, the feeling of awkwardness grew. I found myself getting frustrated, but had no idea how to do anything about it.
Finally, before the last prayer time, Ann started talking to the girls, asking them questions about their youth group, what they’d like to see happen there, if they had friends they’d like to see come to Christ. To my amazement, the girls started to open up and share about those things. And, in answer to Ann’s gentle request for them to pray with us about those things, they did. I was all but sitting with my jaw hanging open. I couldn’t believe how Ann had been able to get through to these girls who had been total strangers just minutes before. When we talked about it afterward, her response was, “It’s no big deal. Anybody could’ve done it.”
But that wasn’t true! I couldn’t have done it. If I could’ve I would’ve, but I couldn’t, so I didn’t.
Why could she do what I couldn’t do? Because she was working in an area where she was gifted.
Why did she feel what she did was “no big deal”? for the same reason
God has gifted her to be able to connect with young folks like that, and so it feels totally natural for her to do it. But it isn’t totally natural, it is supernatural, because it is a gift from God.
The first priority when thinking about spiritual gifts is that the giver is more important than the gift. There is no gift that is greater than another, because each have been given by the same hand.
The second Priority is: “The Goal is More Important than the Gifts.” (vs 7)
There is a reason God has given us gifts – there is a goal He desires to accomplish as we use them. Spiritual gifts are just tools God uses to accomplish His purposes.
And what is the purpose God is seek to achieve?
Verse 7 tells us: The Spirit’s presence is shown in some way in each person for the good of all.
I think that shows us a two-part goal
The first part of God’s goal for the gifts is that “The Spirit’s presence [would be] shown in some way in each person.”
I’ve often heard people teach that there is a sharp distinction between natural talents and spiritual gifts. I have a hard time with that, mostly because I don’t see the Scripture drawing such a hard line. And also because it implies that there are abilities we have that didn’t come from God. The way I see it, even my ability to get out of bed and brush my teeth comes from God! Any abilities I have are God’s gifts.
But I think Paul’s words help us to distinguish between a natural and a spiritual gift. A spiritual gift demonstrates the presence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life
That may mean that they use a natural gift in a way that demonstrates the Holy Spirit working in them – as Tom often does for us with his art
The second part of God’s goal for the gifts is that this demonstration of the Spirit’s presence is “for the good of all.”
Paul uses a term there for “benefit,” or profit. Generally Paul uses that word to refer to spiritual benefit. In other words, the gifts are given to build up the Body of Christ.
Teachers and preachers build up the Body of Christ by helping people to understand and apply God’s word.
Encouragers build up the Body of Christ by giving others the strength to persevere
People with the gift of service build up the Body of Christ in countless small – and big – ways. Their actions often demonstrate the love of God in ways that communicate more clearly than any preacher could
People with the gift of evangelism build up the Body of Christ by reaching out with the Good News of the Gospel to those who don’t yet know Christ.
The Goal of the Gifts is the Good of All
Our society all but worships individual freedom
We have very little understanding of “the common good.”
Criminals’ rights are often given more consideration than the rights of the ones they’ve victimized
The idea that one would sacrifice his or her “rights” for the good of others seems almost quaint.
Even more out of date is the idea that we are here not just for our own health, wealth and happiness, but that we might contribute to the good of others
But often, along the way to individual freedom, we have also lost a sense of purpose. The recognition that God is doing something. That there is a grand, eternal plan for humankind, And more than that, that each one of us can play a role in that plan. That is what gives our lives meaning and purpose.
Discovering and using our spiritual gifts means discovering who we are and why we are here.
The Goal of the Gifts is the Good of All
There is no greater joy than that.
We talked last week about how the church serves as a prism: If you shine a beam of “white light” on a prism, that beam is broken down into its full spectrum and we see a rainbow. All the colors were there all along, we just didn’t see them until the prism separated them
In the same way, the “white light” of the Holy Spirit shines on us, His “component parts” are broken down into a full spectrum, demonstrated in our spiritual gifts.
"During World War II, England needed to increase its production of coal. Winston Churchill called together labor leaders to enlist their support. At the end of his presentation he asked them to picture in their minds a parade which he knew would be held in Piccadilly Circus after the war. First, he said, would come the sailors who had kept the vital sea lanes open. Then would come the soldiers who had come home from Dunkirk and then gone on to defeat Rommel in Africa. Then would come the pilots who had driven the Luftwaffe from the sky.
"Last of all, he said, would come a long line of sweat-stained, soot-streaked men in miner’s caps. Someone would cry from the crowd, "And where were you during the critical days of our struggle?” And from ten thousand throats would come the answer, "We were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal."" (Don McCullough in Waking from the American Dream.)
Not all the jobs in a church are prominent and glamorous. But it is often the people with their "faces to the coal" who help the church accomplish its mission. And with that mission comes meaning.
The Goal of the Gifts is the Good of All
