"Spiritual Gifts" Ephesians 4:7-8 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This is the Word of God, Ephesians 4, verses 7 and 8.

Ephesians 4:7

I'll read it for us.

Paul declares, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.

There are many elements of the American culture that are somewhat hostile to spiritual maturity.

Let me highlight two of them briefly this morning.

First would be the idea of consumerism.

Consumerism is just a basic staple of the American culture.

The idea that you as a person exist to receive, you exist to consume, and businesses and organizations and entities in our culture exist to give and to feed your appetite.

That's consumerism.

The idea that organizations and businesses exist to fulfill your needs.

Now that has a lot of strengths to it.

Consumerism is a great cultural attachment for capitalism.

It increases wealth in a society, it expands the, you know, the life expectancy and the level of happiness in a society, etc.

So there are strengths to consumerism, but there is a weakness to it when it affects the church.

Consumerism does not lead to spiritual maturity.

And if people bring their consumeristic attitudes to church with them, it has a very ruinous effect on the church.

If people look at church as just another organization designed to fulfill their needs, designed to uh give them what they're after.

They approach church like you would, should you shop at Giant or Safeway or Harris Teeter, and which one do I go to?

Which one meets my which has the best prices?

Which one meets my knee?

Where is the produce better?

Kind of questions, which is not going to be a helpful way to grow in spiritual maturity at church if you approach church with that attitude.

Another aspect of the American culture that I think is hostile towards spiritual maturity is that of individualism.

The notion that you are happiest when you do you.

The notion that you're the one person in this world that can make yourself happy, and you do that by pursuing what is in your heart in the deepest part of you, you pursue you, and you acquire what you want, and you be you, and that's the key to happiness.

That again might be a good side effect of democracy.

It might fit well in the larger American experiment as a whole, but it is ruinous when applied to church.

And when you combine individualism with consumerism, it's very easy to create a church environment where the church is focused on entertainment.

It is focused on a production or a product, and you are viewed as the consumer, and you're the one who receives what happens on stage, and you receive it and you know admire it or reject it or critique it or criticize it and you go about your way based upon how you felt about the church service kind of thing.

It's a very bad approach to church.

Because they're both counter to how God designed the church to work.

God did not design the church to work for you to be the consumer of it.

He did not design the church to work by making you as an individual happy.

In fact, you understand this in the all of the Christian life, the war is to get your eyes off of yourself and onto Christ, not onto yourself more.

In a marriage situation, for example, a husband has to train himself to stop thinking about himself and start thinking about Christ and then his family.

And a wife has to train herself to stop thinking about herself and the marriage revolves around her and getting her eyes off of herself and onto Christ and then onto her family.

Or, you know, if a family operated with everything revolving around one person of the family, that would be ruinous.

Or imagine a family that operated with everything revolving around a child, where the child thought that he was the center of the family and everything did indeed orbit around him and what he liked and what made him happy.

I know it's a far-fetched idea, but you can imagine how that would not produce a happy and thriving family, amen.

The same thing is true at church.

It's a war to get us to realize that the church does not revolve around us, the world does not revolve around us, and our happiness is not the end for which God created the world or the church.

But it's God's glory revealed through us.

And so one of the ways that God strives to keep our eyes off of ourself and onto Him is by giving the church gifts.

And those gifts are then what unites us together in church and what compels us to minister and to serve others.

Jesus gives gifts to his people to help his people be about service in the church, not about consuming in the church.

And when you approach entertainment that way, what you're asking is does this show bring me enjoyment?

Do I like it?

Does it make me think or does it turn off my mind, whatever mood you're in for?

I'm not judging that part of it right now.

And then you subscribe to one or two or three of those based upon the quality of the content that you perceive and as much as it meets your needs.

Now you recognize, of course, I think just basically chronologically, that the enjoyment you derive from what you're watching on TV does not make the show better.

Like the show's already been produced, it's already been made, you're paying for something that already happened.

Whether or not you enjoy it, it does not affect the show at all.

At the very least, it might affect whether or not you keep subscribing in the future, which maybe means they will make keep making the kind of shows that you like.

I mean, if you keep giving them your money, they'll make better shows with your money.

More likely they'll just make more poor shows with the more money you give them, has been kind of the way that experiment has played out so far.

But you recognize that if you approach entertainment with that, you know, is it making me happy?

That might help you choose something to watch, but it won't make the show better or your life better.

That attitude is the same thing when it comes to church.

If you approach church as what makes me happy, what scratches my itch, you may delight in church, you may really love church even.

You may have found the perfect church, it just makes you so happy, but that does not contribute to the growth and the development of the church at all.

If that's the attitude that is brought to church.

And so Jesus designs his church differently than to make people happy or to entertain them.

He designs the church to serve one another, to expand his gospel in the world.

And he does that by giving gifts to the church.

I'll give you an outline this morning as we go through this.

Jesus' gifts to the church.

And we're going to see that Jesus' gifts to the church are spiritual gifts, and they accomplish really three functions.

They're all described here in verses seven and eight.

Now, before we get to our outline, and don't worry, that will be back on the screen later.

I want to define what a spiritual gift is.

It's an important definition, I think, to have.

We'll circle back to it again also later this morning, this definition.

But I define a spiritual gift this way it's any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry to build or strengthen the church.

It's an ability that God gives you that you use to build and strengthen the church.

That's a spiritual gift.

That's a spiritual gift.

And the gifts are used, as I said, to build and strengthen the church.

Now we'll come back to this definition again later, but let me give you the first part of your outline this morning.

Jesus uses gifts to bring unity.

Jesus gives gifts to the church to bring unity.

That's what's happening in Ephesians chapter 4, is that Paul is writing about the unity of the church.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Chapter 4, verse 1, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

And if you recall a few weeks ago we looked at how that's a bit of a pun in the Greek, that he's asking you to walk worthy according to your calling.

That word calling in Greek is a pun on the word church.

That you've been called ecclesia, you've been called out of the darkness, out of the world, and into church.

God has brought you from the world to church, from darkness to light.

But the calling is not merely a calling to salvation.

The calling of the church is a calling to gather as a congregation.

That's what the word church means: the gathered, the called.

A church is by definition a group of people that are gathered together through their shared faith in Jesus Christ and their common confession and the church leadership and all of that, but it exists with the gathering of the church.

The gathering is critical to this.

You've probably heard it said that a church isn't the building, it's the people, right?

It's a very common expression.

But that definition is incomplete.

A church isn't the building, it's the people, dot dot dot gathered.

That's the key part.

The church is the people gathered, brought together, because that's the context in which you see their unity.

You don't see their unity in dispersion.

You see their unity in their gathering.

And so when they're gathered together, of course, some people are like porcupines.

Humility and gentleness is hard to appreciate when they're all gathered together.

They poke each other.

And so, verse two, you have to bear with one another in love.

You have this unity through your calling.

You're gathering, you're all in one place, and now you maintain this unity, verse three says, by love in verse two, and with the bond of peace.

There's an actual unity the church has, but that you're all Christians.

You're saved by the same Holy Spirit.

You're at the same place in the same gathering, you're part of the same church, and now you're bound together with love.

Love chains you together as you strive for peace.

That's the unity of the church.

Now that's so much easier said than done, isn't it?

I mean, that looks great on paper, right?

Unity of the church because Jesus saved you and he brought you here and you love one another, so great.

Harmony, kumbaya, let's go.

But the reality is that unity is much more difficult to maintain.

And if you recall, last week, I believe, we looked at the fact that you can't create unity in the church.

Unity in the church is created by God, it's an ontological reality.

You all possess the same Holy Spirit, you all are baptized into Christ, predestined by the same Heavenly Father, saved by the same Savior, rescued by the same Spirit.

You're all one in Christ.

That's the reality.

But the manifestation of that reality is where it gets tricky.

Because people pursue their own ends.

They put themselves forward, they strive against other people, and that creates the appearance of disunity.

And so Paul says you maintain unity by pursuing love and the bond of peace.

Because, and we looked at all the ones last week.

There is one body, meaning one universal church.

There is one spirit, meaning how you were saved, there is one hope that you have, hope of heaven.

You're all going to be in heaven with each other, so you may as well like each other.

Verse 5, there is one Lord, there is only one faith of one faith that leads to heaven.

There is only one baptism.

Everyone's baptized the same way into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There's only one God and one Father of all.

So there is a real unity in the church.

Now that unity is on display when the church is gathered together.

When it's gathered together.

This is a new thing in this new era, the church age.

In the Old Testament, God was working all over the world in 10,000 ways, but he was working specifically and particularly through the nation of Israel.

That's why the Old Testament is about Israel.

In the New Testament, he is no longer working specifically and particularly through Israel.

In the New Testament, he's working specifically and particularly through the church.

And so the New Testament is about the church.

That's what God is building in this era.

That's what Jesus is building.

He declares to Peter, I will build my church.

That's what that's the main thing happening in the world today.

It's not the lead story in the newspaper, it's not what's on the cable news networks, it's not what people are talking about in social media, but it's the main thing going on in the world, I'll tell you that.

Is that Jesus is building his church.

And he builds his church to display the triune plan of God, the unity of the Trinity on display through redemption in the earth.

And as he builds his church, he builds his church one individual at a time as a person is saved from darkness and brought into light, and he builds his church by saving them and putting them into the church.

It's so easy for us to talk about how the point of the gospel is to save people, but that again is not the full story.

The point of the gospel is to save people by bringing them from darkness to light and putting them into the church.

It's all about putting them into the church.

You are a brick, which is not a noble thing, unless you're part of a really cool building, and then it's pretty cool.

But like a brick on the sidewalk is just like, you know, garbage.

You would see it and you want somebody to pick it up and put it away or throw it away.

So this idea that the gospel exists just to save people is very limited and short-sighted.

The gospel is given by God to the world to save people and to place them brick by brick into the church.

That's what Jesus is building right now.

And because he's putting us together, we need to serve one another.

And so God gives us these spiritual gifts that are act like mortar almost to bring us together, to hold us together.

This, by the way, is why the American phenomena of consumerism and individualism is very dangerous to spiritual growth.

Because for a brick to be effective in the wall, it can't be an individualistic brick.

You know, it can't be like the wall is about him.

No, he's a piece of the larger thing.

If a person brings the attitude to church, or if church is about serving them, it's not going to produce spiritual growth in the church or in that person.

So God brings unity to the church with spiritual gifts.

You hurt that unity when you elevate yourself, but you maintain that unity when you use the gifts that God gave you to keep you serving one to another.

Another side note here, another huge danger with the American church when it comes to spiritual gifts is to view the staff as the one responsible for the ministry of the church.

That's very harmful.

If you have this concept that the church staff is the one that does the ministry, that's bad and will not produce spiritual growth in the congregation.

The church staff might be the ones that facilitate ministry, but they are not the ones that do ministry.

The congregation, the members of the church are the ones that do ministry.

I mean, the church staff may have the key to the building.

And if you want a master key and you ask really nicely, we'll probably give you one.

But that's not the point.

The point is not who has the keys, who can log into the computer.

The point is who's doing the work of the ministry, and it ought not be staff.

I mean, and that's the temptation.

If you have a consumer-based ministry, there's this idea that you need excellence to attract customers.

Okay, if you if you run a fast food restaurant, you need a better burger to steal the customers from the other place.

If you have that attitude at church, it becomes all about production, what's on stage, the quality of what you're doing, the quality of childcare, the quality of curriculum, the quality of this, the quality of the sermon, the quality of the music, and your mind goes to, well, we should to build the quality, let's staff that out.

Let's hire somebody to do that.

That'll raise the quality of it.

And that may raise the quality, but it diminishes the spiritual growth that comes when it is the congregation that is doing the work of the ministry.

That's why I don't even like to distinguishing, the, to distinguish between laity and staff.

It's kind of a, it's really a Catholic distinction.

It comes from Catholicism, the idea of laity versus ordained ministers of the gospel.

It's sort of a pre-Reformation hangover, and it's not helpful for spiritual growth.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't pay pastors, for example.

Because Paul makes that clear that the worker is worthy of his wages, and Jesus doesn't say it because he concerns about the ox.

That's 1 Timothy 5.

I got verses and all, and there's boxes in the hallway.

There's boxes in the hallway.

Please give generously.

But the ongoing ministry of the church has to be from the congregation, of which certainly the pastors and other staff members are members of the congregation, of course.

So everybody should be serving together.

That's what gives us this unity.

The church, then, on the Lord's Day, is the gathering.

It just is by definition, the church is the gathering of believers to do the work of the ministry.

One of the reasons that this concept of satellite church is so dangerous because it doesn't have that basic element.

It's not gathered, it's scattered.

It's gathered in little bubbles everywhere, which is not the unity of Christ.

It is not the gathering of the congregation to serve one another.

It's powering on a screen and powering off the screen.

So I appeal to you to recognize the nature of the church is the display of unity, Christ's body manifest in local congregations as believers are glued together through love and peace and service.

That's what we need to have a unified church.

Gifts are very much what unite us.

That's what Paul's doing here in Ephesians 4.

He's arguing for the unity of the church into verse 7, but grace was given each of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

So verses 1 through 6 is unity.

Verse 7 is the grace that holds us together.

This gift we have is what holds us together.

That's why Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 7.

1 Corinthians 1:7

You are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Listen, the church at Corinth was a train wreck.

I mean, it was on fire, it was a dumpster fire.

If you had come across the church in Corinth, you would have wanted just to burn the thing down and start over.

And Paul writes a letter to them rebuking them for their the way they were doing church, and he begins it by saying, listen, your problem is not that you don't have the right gifts.

You don't lack, there's not a single gift you're lacking.

Jesus has given you everything you need to be built together in unity.

There's something about the nature of gifts that creates unity, isn't there?

I mean, just think of Christmas morning at your house.

Everybody's gathered around the tree, and the kids are so happy and they're so nice to each other.

And the night before, there was like a riot in your house.

They were ODing on hot chocolate and arguing about this, that, and the other thing.

But Christmas morning comes around and they are there and they're nice jammies and they're around the tree and they're just so adorable little children.

And it's what brings that kind of unity Sunday morning.

I'm sure it's because they're thinking about baby Jesus and his gift to the world, right?

It's the gifts that draw them there and hold them there.

And you know, the little kids want the, they're hoping the biggest box is theirs, and the the wife is hoping the smallest box is hers.

But there's this unity you have around the giving of the gifts.

Well, in the church, the same thing is true.

We're gathered together because God has given us gifts to serve one another.

Unlike a Christmas gift, which terminates in your reception of it, the gifts that Jesus gives us terminate as we use them to hold ourselves together.

This is the first way that Jesus uses his gifts is to bring unity to the church.

The second way is to produce maturity in the church.

That's where the argument of Paul is going in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

That's where gifts fit in.

The first six verses that are about unity, and then the starting in verse 11 all the way down through verse 16, it's about maturity.

That's how Ephesians 4 is structured.

Unity produces maturity.

And the maturity in the middle there is held together by these gifts.

I mean, just look what he says.

He's giving the spiritual gifts, verse 11.

He gave the apostles and these different uh forms of spiritual gifts to the church.

Verse 12, for the building up of the body.

That word building up means the strengthening, the putting bricks on top of bricks, the making the wall taller, the building stronger, the roots deeper, the muscles more ripped.

I mean, it's making you big spiritually speaking.

Verse 13, until we attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

He's saying these gifts will help you grow up big and strong.

That should sound familiar because that's what he said back in chapter 3.

He ended chapter 3, for example, in verse 16, that according to the riches of his glory, he'll grant you to be strengthened with power through your spirits in your inner being.

And he'll strengthen you by giving you spiritual gifts.

These spiritual gifts, verse 13 of chapter 4, will cause you to be a mature man.

Not a child.

Look at verse 14.

Not like a little child.

A child tossed to and fro by the waves, carried about by every wind of doctrine.

And I mean the image here is of a child playing in the ocean waves and seeing the waves, the current pulls him and the waves are battering him, and he can't get out of the water.

And it's okay.

He's a little kid.

He's not expected to stand against the waves.

You need a grown-up to go fetch him.

And so Paul's saying, the church, there's so many kids in the church that are getting battered this way and that way.

And he's writing to the church at Ephesus, which is the best New Testament church, by the way, the most mature of the New Testament churches.

This is not Corinth, he's writing to here, the Ephesians.

And he says, even in the Ephesian church, some of you are like children because the winds of culture carry you this way and you drift that way.

And the cultural winds go the other way and you get drifted that way.

And politics go this way and you get pulled that way.

And they go the other way and you get pulled that way.

And that's just immature.

Rather than being immature, grow deep roots and become big and strong spiritually.

Be a mature man instead of a little kid.

I mean, it's okay to be a child if you are, in fact, a child.

I mean, you wouldn't look at a six-year-old and say, hey, grow up already.

He's six.

But you would probably look at a 17 or an 18 year old and say, come on, man, grow up.

And that's appropriate because he's expected to grow up.

He shouldn't be acting like he's six anymore.

That's the language from 1 Corinthians 12 that JJ read earlier when I was.

A child, listen, it's okay.

And chapter 13 is coming to it.

When I was a child, I talk like a child.

That's acceptable.

But then I want to grow up and put childish ways behind me.

It's spiritual gifts that cause you to do that in the church.

The gifts are what take you from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity.

He does that through, and God does that through the gifts.

Look at verse 15.

You speak the truth in love of chapter 4, so you grow up into every way into him who is the head the Christ, from whom the whole body is joined and held together with every joint with which it's equipped.

When it's all working pop properly, it makes the body grow so it builds itself up in love.

This should remind you of chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians that was read in our scripture reading today.

It's the same language.

There are different members of the body, but we're held together through love by our gifts.

By our gifts so that we get built up.

And so spiritual gifts are what cause us to grow up big and strong spiritually speaking.

Again, the definition, which I want to draw your attention to a specific part of my definition that maybe you missed earlier.

It's any ability, a spiritual gift is it's empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry to build or strengthen the church.

That's the point of the spiritual gift.

To build the church up.

And the key part is to focus on the strengthening or the building of the church.

A spiritual gift does not serve yourself.

You can't edify yourself.

You are serving others.

You can't, I mean, I suppose you could give yourself a gift on your birthday, but it's not really, it's kind of diluted the power of a gift, then, isn't it?

I gave this to myself.

No, that's not a full sense of the word gift.

Jesus gives us gifts not to serve yourself, but to serve others so that the church is built up or strengthened.

1 Corinthians 14, verse 26, says it this way: all gifts are to be used for the edification of the church.

1 Corinthians 14:26

Edification is a building word.

You're putting the bricks on top of each other.

And that's what makes spiritual gifts spiritual.

Is that you're using them to build the church?

God doesn't build his church using fleshly means, Paul says in 1 Corinthians.

He doesn't build the church using worldly wisdom or worldly logic or worldly power.

He builds and strengthens the church using spiritual power, namely the spiritual gifts he's given the church.

So I was in the gym earlier at the 9 o'clock service with some of the high school students, and one student got his Skittles or whatever stuck in the vending machine.

And parents, you know, your kids are buying candy in there.

I just want you to know that.

My conscience is clear now.

Skittles are stuck in the vending machine, and another student runs from, I would say, probably 10 to 12 yards away and flax the vending machine, and the Skittles are free.

There's rejoicing in the youth room, and the student says that he has the gift of the vending machine.

Now, I'm not gonna use names because the students are in here.

I see them right now, actually.

I'm looking at the screen, not at anybody in particular.

Is that a spiritual gift of the vending machine?

And I am not, listen, I'm not gonna be so quick to dismiss that.

If you have the ability to knock the stuck Skittles out of the vending machine at the mall, that's not a spiritual gift.

But if you're using that gift to strengthen the church, I'm just saying I have room for it.

The point is that every gift God gives us is to be used in the building of the church.

Then I went again, building, it's not the actual physical building, it's the gathering of believers.

That's the key part.

The gathering of believers.

If you're not gathered, you're not gonna be strengthened by the gathering.

That makes sense, right?

If you're not gathered, you can't be strengthened by the gathering because it's the gathering where you're exercising your gifts to strengthen one another.

So somebody says, I feel like our church isn't unified.

Are you gathered?

And secondly, are you serving?

Because if you're not gathered and you're not serving, you're not gonna be unified or strengthened.

Now, what are the different kinds of gifts that God gives the church?

I mean, there's several.

I don't think of them as mutually exclusive, you know, labels of gifts, like if you have this gift, you don't have that gift.

I think rather they're best described in broad categories.

That's certainly how Peter does it in 1 Peter 4, 10 and 11.

He says it this way as each of us has received a gift, use it to serve one another.

In other words, every one of us is a spiritual gift, use it to serve other people.

As good stewards of God, God's varied grace.

Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God.

Whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

Notice that Peter here uses the same word gift that Paul does, and he breaks it down to two categories of gifts: those gifts that are words and those gifts that are actions.

So some people have a gift in speaking and they use their speaking to build the church, and some people have their gift in doing and they use their doing to build the church.

That's two categories of gifts right there.

I just love Peter's simple way of dealing with it.

Isn't that just so straightforward?

Some of you talk and some of you serve, do it together with love, and God is glorified and everything.

You can tell Peter was a fisherman, just gets right to it, and doesn't make it too complicated.

On the other hand, Paul was a lawyer, not a fisherman.

And so Paul has his own four lists of gifts.

And here they are for you.

By the way, the word gift that's used in Ephesians 4 is the same word that's used in these lists.

And the book of Romans and 1 Corinthians were both written seven or eight years before Ephesians.

Okay?

So the people in Ephesus who received the book of Ephesians already had Romans, they already had 1 Corinthians, so they understand they're not getting what they know about spiritual gifts from the book of Ephesians.

They're getting what they know about spiritual gifts from Romans and from 1 Corinthians, and Paul is reminding them of that in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So in Ephesians 4, Paul says, but grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ's gift, and he's talking about spiritual gifts.

They already know these lists because they have those books.

That's the point of this.

Now, these lists can seem overwhelming.

I mean, there's a lot on there four different lists, a lot of different things.

And so let me, we'll go back to the slide in a second, but when I go to this slide here that just shows you that a lot of the things in the four lists are the same things.

So I color-coded in there.

Everything that's in white is basically in all four lists.

Like, for example, the top.

You have this special gift of leading, and or in Romans, in 1 Corinthians 12, this gift of wisdom in 1 Corinthians 12, 28, apostles, Ephesians 4, apostles, these early leaders of the church that had a supernatural ability to lead in this kind of way.

Or the second line, prophecy, and Paul uses that in his list of the book of in Romans in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 8, 1 Corinthians 12, verse 28, Ephesians 4, it's also on the list.

1 Corinthians 12:8 1 Corinthians 12:28

Prophecy, prophecy, prophets, prophets.

Or teaching, the third line, teaching to the Corinthians, he describes it as knowledge, and then again later as teachers, and to the Ephesians, he describes it as teachers again.

So you're seeing the same thing across the board, is my point.

Edification on one, or uh exhortation on one, sorry, exhortation, the ability to motivate people with your words, and then pastors over in this list to the Ephesians, and then you see healing in both lists, and miracles in both lists, tongues in both lists, interpretation in both lists.

You see service, and I think a service is very similar to this idea of helps.

And so a lot of this list is similar to each other, is my point.

It's not as complicated as you might think it, but I'm going to go back one slide because I just want to get the full sense of the list here.

By the way, this is all the things in the New Testament described as gifts, with one exception.

Matthew chapter 19, verse 11, 1 Corinthians 7, verse 7 describes singleness as a gift.

Matthew 19:11 1 Corinthians 7:7

That God has given people the ability to lead a single life for a period of time, to be fully devoted to ministering the church in a way where their interests are not divided, like a married person's will be.

That's 1 Corinthians 7, verse 7, Matthew 19, verse 11, both of which are described as a gift.

1 Corinthians 7:7 Matthew 19:11

But beyond that, these are the gifts in the New Testament.

Let me reiterate one more time.

I'm not arguing that these are exclusive, like if you have one, you don't have the other.

I'm saying Paul's just giving you these categories of gifts.

Each one of you is made differently.

Each one of you has a different gift that's made up of a component of these things.

I mean, you might have, some of you might, you know, be good at teaching and serving, some of you might be good at teaching and giving, or whatever your combination might be.

You were all different, you know.

We're all spiritual snowflakes.

And I don't mean that in the postmodern sense.

I mean that in the unique sense that God made you individually with your own assembly of gifts for you to use in serving the church.

That's the point here.

These categories, of course, overlap, and of course, you can have more than one is the idea, but God made you for the purpose of you serving in this church.

God designed you perfectly for this church.

That's why I don't fret about, I don't lose a lot of sleep over, oh, there's nobody to do this ministry or there's nobody to do that ministry, because I know whatever burdens God places on our church, he places the people there to do those ministries.

God's not going to give the church a burden for a ministry if he doesn't give the people to do that ministry to the church.

I mean, if you don't believe in the sovereignty of God in any area of life, you should believe it in every area of life.

But if you don't, you should at the very least believe it in church.

If God can't get the right people to the right church at the right time for the right ministries, then what are we even doing here?

So you have to believe that God has placed all the bricks in this wall of Emmanuel Bible Church perfectly.

He's got the right people to do the right ministries right now, right here.

And he does that through gifting you to serve in the church.

And not everybody has the same gift as each other.

Don't think of unity being uniformity.

Okay?

I think a lot of people error with that.

They think that unity in the church means uniformity.

Unity in the church means everybody acts the same way.

Unity in the church means everybody serves the same way.

No.

Unity in the church is seen as diversity.

What gives it unity is that we're all striving together to promote the gospel through the church, through the same church.

So, what are these gifts?

I'm not going to preach a sermon on each one of them, but just to give you a broad swath there.

I think the gifts of apostles up on the uh the top row there was something that God gave the early church before the completion of the New Testament.

That is paired also with the gift of tongues, the ability to speak in languages, the gift of interpretations to interpret those languages.

So you don't have, you don't know the language, you've never studied it before, and you suddenly have the ability to speak in it, that's the gift of tongues.

Or you don't know the language, you never studied it before, but you suddenly have the ability to interpret somebody else speaking in it to a congregation, that's the gift of interpretation.

The gift of miracles, the ability to be able to perform miracles at will, like raising the dead, the gift of healing to heal people that are sick at will.

That's how you see it practiced in the New Testament.

So I think those gifts have all ceased with the with the with the deliverance of the New Testament.

They're spoken of in the past tense already in the book of Hebrews, where Paul says that in previous times God had distributed those kind of miraculous gifts according to his will.

You see that they've already run their course in the New Testament.

Paul was all already leaving uh Trophimus sick, he didn't heal everybody that he could have, where he was earlier in his ministry doing that.

I mean, these gifts are just, they've ceased.

You don't have people with the ability to speak unlearned languages anymore in the world.

It's so interesting.

With the invention of the internet, many charismatic churches have changed their definition of tongues to now be like an ecstatic utterance, a language of heaven, not on earth.

That's not what it was defined as at any point in world history until the internet was invented.

Once you have the ability to record somebody and put it into Google and find out that's gibberish, not Swahili, you lose the ability to say, oh, the gift of tongues is ongoing.

I mean, I'm just, for time's sake, I'm just speaking directly to you instead of more tactfully.

You know, and people will say, how what Bible verses say these miraculous gifts have ceased?

Okay, what Bible verse says that the natal star over Jesus' cradle when he was a baby is no longer there anymore?

Can you prove to me that stars moved on using Bible verses?

No, you can't.

But the star is not there anymore.

It's left.

Can you prove that this miraculous gift of languages or the ability to raise the dead or the gift of apostleship is not still active in the church?

Yeah, it's not here.

I can prove it to you the same way I can prove to you that there's no pink elephants.

There's no pink elephants.

I mean, it's self-authenticating right there.

So for somebody to say these gifts are still existent in the church, they would have to be able to point to somebody that can speak, to use the same example, Swahili without ever having studied it.

It would be very easy to authenticate.

But lo and behold, they're not around.

The gospel going forward in the world would be so much easier, by the way, if that gift was still here.

I mean, still thinking in Chidean terms, coming back from Chad, I mean, if you had the gift to just translate into languages you never studied, you should get on a plane and go to Chad right now.

It would make a lot of people's lives a lot easier rather than you going on TV and asking for money.

Um, close parentheses.

But these other gifts are still active in the church, namely teaching, exhorting, which is the ability to encourage people with your words, mercy, seeing people with problems and suffering and meeting their needs, service, meeting other people with needs in the church, giving using your money to further the gospel and the work of the kingdom.

And I mean what a powerful gift these are.

You know, not everybody has these gifts.

Some of you try to help and you hurt.

And some of you try to help, and people are so thankful for your helping.

That's the gift of mercy, or the gift of giving.

Some of you give and your money is not doing anything.

You're not giving the right places or for the right reasons.

It's not, it doesn't seem like it's being effective in the gospel ministry.

And others, if you give and your money is running around the world, it's doing all kinds of things all over the world.

That's the gift of giving.

The gift of discernment to be able to distinguish between true and false, right and wrong, the gift of faith, the ability to believe God in unusually difficult circumstances.

You know, you all know that all things work for God's glory and for your good, right?

Everybody knows that.

But then you see somebody going through some terrible trial and they really believe it.

And like that is the gift of faith, right there.

I mean, they are believing what is true.

It's it's true, but they're really holding on to it in incredible circumstances.

That's the gift of faith.

The gift of administration.

The word administration just means it's a fancy Greek word that means pilotage.

It's the word for the person who's steering the boat.

It's the person who's who's keeping the ministries of church running and directing them.

The gift of helps, again, like the gift of service, the ability to meet people's needs.

Teaching, evangeliz, evangelizing.

Some of you are very gifted at evangelism.

We're all supposed to be evangelists.

I mean, we're all supposed to do all these things, right?

You can't say I don't have to give because it's not my gift.

You know, I don't I don't need to, you don't need to see it serve in the nursery because teaching is not my gift.

Good luck with that.

I don't need to show you mercy because mercy is not my gift.

No.

I don't need to evangelize.

This is where people don't say any of those uh of those other things.

Nobody actually says those other things, but they do say this.

I don't need to evangelize because that's not my gift.

No.

All Christians do all of these things, but some of us are gifted, well, all of us are gifted in a particular area over others.

And so you best use your gifts when you find where you're skilled at using your gifts and you use them to strengthen the church.

Some of you, I mean I just want you to ask yourself right now not even how, not even which one of these gifts is mine.

Pause that question.

Get back to that in a second.

The first question to ask yourself is how am I serving in the church now?

That's the question you should ask.

How am I serving?

How am I serving?

Our church has grown with so many new people over these this last year.

We have so many new people here.

And I know many of you have come as kind of refugees, and you're welcome.

We receive you with open arms.

Uh thank you for being here.

But after a few months, you're gonna have to ask yourself, am I here as a refugee or am I here to use my spiritual gifting in the church?

And at some point, you're going to have to stop freeloading and start serving.

And I don't even mean that in the giving sense.

I mean that in the actual serving sense.

And I'm I'm trying to be as direct here.

I mean, I'm happy for people to come here because there are other churches are closed still.

I'm happy for that.

Feel welcome.

Don't feel compelled to get plugged in yet.

But as the weeks turn into months and the months turn into more months, I worry for your spiritual growth if you're just coming as a refugee.

For you to grow spiritually, you're going to need to serve.

And honestly, the easiest way to start serving is just to get to know people and encourage people that you're around, develop friendships with people and start, you know, living life with people, have people over for dinner, or pray with people in the hallway or after the service and start these relationships.

And over time, those relationships will develop into you serving in the church.

That God just has an incredible way of channeling them to where the needs are.

You know, you'll just start meeting with somebody and praying with them, and then they might start asking you to teach in their Sunday school class or to serve by bringing this person a meal or to serve in this way or that way.

God just providentially directs those things.

He takes care of that part of it.

I'm not a big fan of the spiritual gift tests personally.

I've taken a few of them.

They seem to always boil down to one question: What are you good at doing?

I mean, you take a question, you know, do you enjoy driving?

Yes.

You might be gifted in the shuttle ministry.

I paid$45 for that.

I mean, just use your gift.

Do what you feel led to do.

Now, if you come and tell me I feel led to preach next Sunday.

No.

Maybe start in a Bible study, and if people from the Bible study come and say, oh, this guy is a gifted teacher.

I mean, he's convicting us of sin and he's encouraging us and we're learning from him.

Well, then we'll talk.

But that's the idea with all gifts in the church.

You don't start by giving a million bucks, you start by giving smaller amounts and seeing how the Lord uses it and what he's doing with it.

And that's the nature of all these spiritual gifts.

And so let me just encourage you, let me challenge you, instead of getting fixated on which one of these is mine, rather just ask yourself, how can I best serve in the church?

Because as you're serving, you will be growing.

That's what Paul says in Romans 12, verse 6.

Romans 12:6

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

Let's use them.

If prophecy in proportion to our faith, God gives you gifts in proportion to your faith, which means the more mature you are, the more, I think, powerful your gift is going to be.

Easy to see with the pastor.

It's the easiest analogy with the pastor.

A spiritually immature pastor or a spiritually immature preacher or teacher is not going to be effective.

But as he grows in spiritual maturity, so the power of his ministry would likewise grow.

That's true with every spiritual gift.

That's what Paul means in Romans 12, verse 6, that as it grows, as you grow in maturity in proportion to your faith, the power of your gift will go.

Romans 12:6

Recognizing the whole time that God is the one who determines the effectiveness of all gifts.

You have to understand that in Christian ministry.

I can preach this sermon today, and another pastor could preach the identical sermon somewhere else, and God would do total two totally different things with it.

Sunday school teachers might know this, you know?

Your kid might go to Sunday school one hour and hear one message and go the second hour and hear the identical message from a different person.

It's the same thing.

And yet one of them works in the kid's life different than another.

That's just the nature of Christian ministry.

Nobody can figure it out.

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why.

Some pastors and preachers have these powerfully, you know, impactful ministries, and other guys that seem just as godly and just as knowledgeable and just as skilled don't.

It makes no sense to me, but that's okay.

I don't have to figure it out.

It's God who sorts through that.

That's true with every spiritual gift.

So God gives us a gifts, that gives every person different gifts, he gives them in different capacity in proportion to their faith, and as you exercise them, you grow big and strong spiritually.

So we've seen so far that Jesus gives gifts to the church to bring unity to the church, he gives gifts to the church to produce maturity in the church, and finally, he gives gifts to the church to proclaim victory through the church.

This is what's meant in verse 8.

Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.

So the ascended on high, there's some different ascensions here.

Jesus ascends on the cross where he's crucified.

He then descends to the grave where his body is put into the tomb.

His soul descends to Sheol, where he proclaims victory over the devil and over sin to the souls of the righteous who had already died Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, etc.

Old Testament saints who are dead.

Jesus descends into the earth and proclaims victory to them.

He then ascends to earth, back to earth, reclaims his body, resurrects from the grave, and tells the disciples, You're gonna go into all The world preaching the gospel, and I'm going to send the Holy Spirit who's going to give you gifts.

And then he ascends on high to heaven in his body to heaven where he remains at this moment.

And he sends, along with the Father, sends the Holy Spirit to earth now on Pentecost that seals believers and gives us gifts.

That's what Paul's describing in verse 8.

We will spend all next Sunday on that concept.

So we'll unpack that in great detail from Psalm 68.

But for this Sunday, just take this point from this.

You might ask the question this way: who died and made Jesus king of the church?

And the answer is, Jesus died and made himself king of the church.

And he did that by resurrecting from the dead so he can do whatever he wants.

I don't watch football games, hardly ever, except on Thanksgiving, but I'll sometimes watch at the end of the Super Bowl when the quarterback will, you know, will you the winning team will usually be asked this question, now that you've won the Super Bowl, what do you want to do?

And depending on who gave him the most money, influences his answer.

I think is how that works.

But the most common answer, I'm going to Disneyland or what have you.

I like that question because there's something about that moment.

He's just done the athletically, and don't correct me later, you know, Lamont's is actually harder.

No, he's in the athletically most insane accomplishment.

He's the world champion in football, a hugely physically demanding sport.

He can do whatever he wants to at this point.

And so it's an interesting question.

Now that you can do anything in the whole world you want to, what are you gonna do?

Go to Disneyland.

Yeah.

So Jesus has conquered death and conquered sin and conquered the devil and has ascended to heaven and he can do whatever he wants to.

And what does he want to do?

He wants to give you gifts.

That's the kind of savior he is.

He's conquered the world and he wants to share his Super Bowl ring with you.

He wants to give you gifts to build you up in the church and to strengthen the church.

That's what he wants to do.

That's why he ascended on high.

He led us out of captivity.

He led the Old Testament patriarchs out of captivity, and instead of being captive to the fear of death, he gives gifts to men.

Lord, we're grateful that you are a giving Savior.

You proclaim your victory over sin, over hell, over Sheol.

You proclaim it loud enough for the world to hear, and you do so through the way the church serves one another.

What a proclamation.

You've taken sinners who've fallen short of your glory, who have treasured sin in our heart, who have walked in the ways of this world, and you have washed us and saved us.

And you didn't merely save us, but you saved us to use us.

You brought us from darkness to light.

You brought us from pursuing our own hearts to pursuing the needs of others through the church.

What a gift you've given us.

The love for one another that binds all of us together, the bonds of peace that we see through love.

Lord, help us manifest those gifts as we serve one another.

We're here gathered together as a church body to proclaim the unity of the Trinity to the world.

The Father chose, the Son saved, the Spirit regenerated, sealed, and now we're here to serve your body, our Lord Jesus Christ, by serving one another, proclaiming the supremacy of our Heavenly Father, who is over all, in all, and through all.

It's to him we give all the glory.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.