The Empowered Church II - Ephesians: Born for War

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of the Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Road Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

So turn to Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

We're actually in Ephesians 4, because we're going through Ephesians, but I want to start with Acts chapter 2 because I want to remind us of the age that we are living in.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

We are actually living in the age of the Holy Spirit.

We're living in the age of signs and wonders.

We're living in the age of the church.

That began when Christ ascended to heaven.

So when Christ ascended to heaven, some 10 days later, there was a move of the Spirit in which the Holy Spirit fell, and we now call that Pentecost based on the festival of Pentecost, the celebration of Pentecost that was happening in Jerusalem at that time.

So look at verse 16.

And so Peter gets up, Holy Spirit falls, and people are getting hammered by God, by the Holy Spirit, and it looks like they're even drunk.

It even looks like they're drunk.

And so people, a big crowd gathers, probably more like 10,000 gather because 3,000 got saved.

But this is how Peter describes to Jews and Gentiles that were gathered there what's happening.

Verse 16.

But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.

It shall come to pass in the last days.

So men and women, you are in the last days.

Is it the capital L last days?

I don't know, but it's last than it was yesterday.

So, and it's more last for me than for some of you, because I'm older than you.

But these are the last days.

Shall come to pass in the last days, says God, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Anybody who wants to be filled with the Holy Spirit can be.

Whereas back in Old Testament times, the unique work of the Spirit was the way in which the hand of God worked in certain prophets and certain kings and leaders.

Now there's a in the age of the church, anybody can be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

So now it's genderless.

Male and female will be used by God prophetically.

Your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams.

It is ageless.

So God can use children like he can use adults.

He falls upon, he gives visions and dreams to anyone who's available to him.

And my menservants and my maidservants, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy.

In other words, it's classless.

Whether you're upper class or your lower class or your blue collar or your white collar, the Holy Spirit can fall on all kinds of different types of people.

I will show wonders in the heavens above, signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor smoke, the sun shall be turned into darkness, the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

So anyone can be filled with the Spirit, and anyone can be saved.

So before it was just the Jews.

It was mainly targeting the Jews.

But now it's Gentiles.

It's the reason we're here today.

It's because the Spirit, in the last days, the last 2,000 years, has gone to the uttermost parts of the earth, and we were the uttermost parts.

And so the pilgrims came and the Puritans came and they brought the gospel.

And then we are the most missional country ever in the history of the world.

Going out to all aspects of the world, all cultures of the world, all linguistic groups of the world.

We are living in that age and the spirit's being poured out.

But there's a problem.

And the problem is that the God of this age still rules on earth.

Satan does.

Satan and demons are here, and bad people, and unreached people, and people who aren't bad, but they just don't know what they're doing, and they're just enslaved to the systems, right?

And so we're in a spiritual battle.

So we're in this ebb and flow in history.

And what's exciting is you get to be alive when the spirit is being poured out the most ever.

So if we were to look at the church in the first century and what God did there, it was limited to basically Asia Minor, moved across and came into Rome and then Spain, and that's kind of where it ends in Acts 28.

Okay, right there.

But we're in an age where if you're a Jesus follower, you could get in a plane right now, you could fly to Siberia, you could fly to Bangladesh, you could fly to anywhere in India, and you would find a church of Jesus Christ, of Jesus followers, that even though you have no relationship, you meet them in a marketplace, they probably invite you home and you'd have another family.

I mean, that's unprecedented in history.

Even in the Muslim world, Muslims are getting saved by droves.

They're getting saved by droves.

So we're in Ephesians chapter 4, and that's the setting I want you to have as you now read about spiritual gifts.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Because everything that we're going to look at is because of the ministry of the Holy Spirit poured out when Christ ascended to heaven and the Spirit came at Pentecost.

And we started in verse 7 last week, and I just want to read it again because I think it flows so well with the next set of verses.

But each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore, he says, when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and he gave gifts to men.

In other words, I shared last week that when Christ died, he took captivity, that has captured you and enslaved you captive.

In other words, a better way to say it is he kind of took the prison that you are destined to have because Satan and his work and he obliterated it.

And now this he ascended, what does it mean?

But that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth.

He who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things.

So Christ, when he died, he descended into hell.

Hell was made up of two parts.

There was the Hades part, there was a torment part, and then there was the abundance of what we might call Abraham's bosom, is actually what it's been called.

But it's paradise.

And there's a gap between the two.

And Christ came and he took away the keys.

Revelation says, from Satan, and he released the power of death over believers, and even believers who were pre-Christ's resurrection, who were who believed from afar.

Hebrews 11 talks about this.

They were set free, and some of them actually resurrected from the grave.

And that's why we have what we see in the Gospels where Christ immediately when he died, there was an earthquake, right?

That's because Christ went down into hell to release those captives.

They're the true believers, and some actually were resurrected, and it says some of the saints of old were seen by others.

So Uncle Fred, who everybody had heard about, shows up in the next family reunion and was like, whoa! And of course, at that time they didn't make the association, but now we have history.

We have what's been written in Scripture.

We can look back and see the reality of that.

So all of that is setting us up for verse 10, the last part.

He says that he might fill all things.

That's the goal.

That's what this is all about.

The story is about Jesus filling every part of the globe.

It's what Abraham Kuyper, the former prime minister of the Netherlands at the turn of the century said.

He said, There's not one square inch on the face of the earth by which Christ doesn't say mine.

He controls the plants, he controls the animals, he controls the heavens, he controls bees.

He controls yellow jackets.

He controls flowers.

He controls it all.

It's all his.

And all the enemy can do is come and destroy.

All he can do is steal, kill, and destroy.

He can't make anything.

He can't create anything.

He just messes with God's creation and messes it up.

And the main creation that we're most concerned with is human beings.

We're the highest of creation, a little lower than angels, the scriptures say.

You have the indelible mark of Jesus upon your life.

Whether you're a believer or not, you're created in the image of God.

You can think, you can love, you can experience emotions.

You can worship.

You can rebel.

You can follow after God.

That you're created in the image of God.

You're beautiful.

And there's no other creation like you.

And every baby that's formed in a mother's womb is created in the image of God.

That's why we believe in every human being having a chance to live.

And it's why it's why God wants to fill, God wants to fill every womb.

God wants to fill the oceans, teeming with fish and teeming with beauty out there in the oceans and all of the beautiful foliage that's way down deep in the oceans.

It's all God's.

He wants it all.

That's what this is about.

And now he says this the way I fill human beings is through spiritual gifts.

I have given gifts to men.

And you now have the power through the Holy Spirit to experience your talent, your gifts, and your skills to the maximum degree.

If you'll follow me.

So he says, verse 11, and he himself gave some to be apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.

Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

So, God, right now, we just settle our hearts and we want to hear from you.

God, we know that there's so much more than even what we're experiencing right now.

And we're here today to be edified.

We're here to be encouraged and equipped.

We're here, Lord, to discover more of the kind of man, the kind of woman you want us to be.

God, we just thank you that you poured out your spirit on all men and women.

You've poured out your spirit on all kinds of people, whatever their class is by the standards of this world, you will use them in a mighty way.

God, we just thank you, Lord, that whether we're considered smart or not as smart as others, there's a purpose for us being on this earth.

We're created in the image of God.

Lord, would you instruct us and speak to us from your word today in the name of Jesus?

Amen.

So look back, you guys, at verse 11.

It says, He gave some to be apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers, and some in the charismatic Pentecostal movements have talked about the five-fold ministry.

That this is kind of the five-fold leadership ministry.

I'm not going to argue with that, but I don't want a five-fold ministry at this church.

I want a 55-fold ministry at this church.

And so my belief is that all the lists, and there's six of them in the New Testament for spiritual gifts, they're never exhaustive.

These are not exhaustive, they're examples.

So when Paul was writing to Ephesus through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he was writing, God gave him these five gifts.

But when he was writing in Romans, he has another list.

And when he was writing in 1 Corinthians 12, he has another list.

And we're going to look at those in a minute.

So don't limit what God can do based on these.

These are not even, in my opinion, leadership gifts.

These are not even leadership gifts because the gift of leading is actually in Romans 12.

And if these were the leadership gifts, you'd assume that one of them would be leadership.

But it's not.

So these are just five examples of gifts that Paul was led to write about.

So let's just get look at some definitions here.

I want to give you a definition of an apostle.

Oh, let me start with this.

Spiritual gifts define.

This might be different than anything you've heard before.

Okay, listen to this spirit, this definition I have for spiritual gifts.

A spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church.

Let me say that again.

A spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church.

So what that means to me is, whatever, I mean, when you go in that kitchen over there and you smell that food, somebody in there's got a spiritual gift of cooking.

Now it's not in the list, but Jesus probably used the spiritual gift of cooking more than any other gift because you find him eating with people all the time.

So somebody did some cooking there.

And I have a feeling that when he kept going back to Mary of Bethany's house, I doubt she was a lousy cook.

So, and so when you see Ricky Bobby in there, what does he call it?

The Roadkill, Ricky Bobby's Roadkill Cafe, okay, that's on Tuesday mornings, or Daryl and Della, or Matt Wilcox, and or any of those, I love the spiritual gift of cooking.

My wife's got it.

She did not have it when we first got married.

She was very unanointed.

She thought she could cook because she could do two dishes.

So on the third day of our marriage, we have problems.

So this is not exhaustive.

By the way, tomorrow's our anniversary, 36 years together.

35 years of happy marriage.

Because it's hard.

Anyone know that marriage is a little bit harder?

Alright.

So that's a spiritual gift.

So I think anything, any talent or gift under the power of the Holy Spirit is a spiritual gift.

Because in the sixth list, there's only 22 mentioned in the New Testament.

And I, again, I think he's giving examples in each case.

But here's Apostle.

Here's what I think apostles.

Apostle literally means sent out ones.

Those that are sent out, what it means.

So I want to make a distinction between capital A apostles and small A apostles.

Capital A apostles are twelve men that can never be repeated again.

Those are the Lamb's twelve.

Those are Jesus' 12 disciples who saw him literally, physically, risen from the grave.

And Paul was one of them.

He took Judas' place because of the vision that he had on the road to Damascus.

So he saw Jesus also risen from the grave.

So these men are the 12 apostles.

I'm not talking about them.

They're irreplaceable.

They will be the pillars of the New Jerusalem in Revelation.

So they have a unique place.

But then there's small lay apostles, and I would call a small lay apostle like today, it would be someone who plants churches, builds ministries.

They have the gift of government.

In other words, they can oversee complex political, spiritually political things.

They can raise up leaders.

They're good in that regard.

I think of Dr.

James Dobson as a modern-day version of apostolic gifting with the ministries that he had.

And Bill Bright with Campus Crusade and Billy Graham.

Even as an evangelist, he was also so used to start like Christianity Day Magazine and other different ministries.

He was always starting other ministries, and I can see apostolic gifting on a guy like Billy Graham.

And there's others even in modern times.

So that's the apostolic.

That's the apostolic gift.

Prophets.

Prophets can be variously translated as forthelling and foretelling.

Forthelling and foretelling.

So I'm ministering in the office of a prophet right now by opening God's word and forthelling truth.

So you moms and dads out there, when you open God's word with your children and you teach them, you're moving prophetically.

You're bringing forth truth.

So anytime you open God's word or you speak God's truth, that's a prophetic gifting.

Okay, but then there's also a foretelling side, which is wherein you see things.

You can see stuff in people's lives about their future.

Another word in the Old Testament would be seer.

S-E-E-R, a seer.

Or S-E-E, apostrophe E-R, where seer comes from.

Seer.

You can see things.

It's Romy Zaret at the Anaheim Vineyard in 1994 when Liz and I were struggling whether to stay at the vineyard there at that church or move here and plant the church.

And she walks up to me after a staff meeting, never met her before, and she says, Hey, I don't know who you are, but I had a vision about you during worship.

And the Lord said, You're seeking him, you're seeking me about something in your future.

And I had this vision, and you were standing on a rock.

No, you were standing on rocks.

No, you were standing on Rockies.

And the Lord wants you to know, He's told you what to do.

It's March the 1st, it's time to march.

And I was like crying and everything.

And then I knew he was calling us to Colorado Springs to plant church.

That's a sear.

That's foretelling.

And so sometimes people use that and they manipulate people, though.

So you have to be careful with that gift.

God told me to divorce you and to marry her.

And there's this foxy 25 years younger than you type person that might not be God.

Okay?

So the prophetic can be a very um, it's very subjective, right?

That's why I want to encourage you to be careful with these prophets online.

And all their big prophecies like Trump's gonna win and all this stuff, like everybody had, I mean, everybody was saying that.

Trump didn't win.

Now, whether it was a stolen election or not, everybody can debate that until the cows come home.

I don't know.

But here's what I do know I know they didn't win.

Okay?

So listen.

Because God could have worked out the details of that too, with all that happening.

Here's the point.

My point is in the prophetic area, you need to know people.

Don't receive stuff from people that don't have a track record of good godly character.

Because there's a lot of weird stuff out there, right?

So the prophetic gift is an exciting gift.

We wouldn't be here, you know, 27 years ago if it wasn't for Romy Zarrett speaking so powerfully in our lives.

Evangelists.

Evangelists are those individuals empowered by the Holy Spirit who've been gifted to effectively.

Tell others about Christ and see them get saved.

So the evangelistic gift is one of the unique gifts in that everybody's called to be an evangelist.

So the great commission by Jesus: go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to all believers.

So, in one sense, we're all called to do the work of an evangelist, that means to share our faith and to be a witness for Christ.

But some people are really gifted at it.

And that really drives them in their life.

I like to call evangelists inviters and includers.

Inviters, these are people who are always inviting people to stuff.

They're always including people.

That's an evangelistic gift.

That usually goes with someone who's got, it doesn't have anything to do to be an extrovert or introvert.

It has everything to do with this passion for people to come to Christ.

Okay?

And we should all have that, but some have it more pronounced than others.

And that would be those that are in the evangelist gifting.

Pastors.

Pastors are those individuals empowered by the Holy Spirit who have a heart for caring for others.

And so this, I mean, we we just started our community groups, our house churches that we're starting.

You better have the pastor gift if you're going to be a leader of a community group.

Because you're going to have issues that you need to care for.

And it must be something that really turns you on for the Lord to help people, to minister to people in need.

That's a pastoral gift.

And we've disassociated the two from pastor as a job from pastor as a function.

So there are people who are called pastors that don't have the pastoral gift.

There's people who are not pastors who really have the pastoral gift.

And so at the road, we want to see community groups happening all over the city as the first line of pastoral defense.

We're already too big.

We're already too big for our pastoral staff.

We cannot minister to all the needs happening in this church right now, at any moment in time.

We're just too big for that.

We're probably between a thousand and 1,500 people on a weekend, you know?

And so with that happening, it's just, we've got five, six pastors.

It's not going to happen, you know?

And so that's where small groups come in because I'm willing to wager 30% of you in this room have a pastoring gift.

If not more.

I think we actually draw an inordinate number of people with compassion in pastoral gifts.

So that's the pastor gift.

And then he mentions teachers.

Teachers are those individuals empowered by the Holy Spirit who are gifted to study, prepare, and teach for the glory of God.

So this doesn't mean you teach from the Bible, it means you teach anywhere.

How many school teachers do we have in this room?

Raise your hand.

You're a school teacher.

Okay.

So a lot of you guys, you have a gift of teaching.

Probably back when you were nine years old, you were telling your brothers and sisters what to do.

And you are, and you were telling them about the story that you read, or you're teaching them something about history.

You've got a teaching gift.

I think the main part of a teaching gift is you love research.

You like to study things, you like to dig in and discover more stuff on things.

That's a teaching gift.

And so some have argued, Wayne Grudham in his systematic theology mentions this that the pastor-teacher gifting often goes together.

Some of your Bibles say pastor-hyphen teacher.

And that certainly is a possibility of what it means.

But this is the point I want to make.

Spiritual gifts are not exhaustive in the New Testament, but they are examples.

Wayne Grudham, in his book, Systematic Theology, says this.

Spiritual gifts are not as mysterious and otherworldly as people sometimes make them out to be.

Many of them are intensifications or highly developed instances of phenomena that most Christians experience in their own life.

Like I would say, there's a spiritual gift of entrepreneurship.

I believe that's a spiritual gift to start companies, to start ministries, to start things that will end up hiring people that will be highly successful.

We are in an age, and I'm not speaking at a businessman's bureau's meeting, but I believe, if I was, I'd say this.

I believe we're in the age of entrepreneurship.

The government is forcing us to be.

So you've got you've got all these different jobs that we're involved in, and they're putting mandates on us that go against your conscience.

Go against your convictions in some cases.

Not all of you, but for some of you.

And it could be that God is making your life so uncomfortable in your job because he wants you to go out and start something better.

You may be in UC Health right now, and you're being this pressure being put on you, and UC Health, and you realize maybe God wants you to go out and start another UC Health.

Somebody started UC Health.

Why can't we start UC Health part two?

And it's better.

Some of you in the school system, this pressure's coming.

Maybe you're supposed to homeschool.

Maybe you're supposed to start another school.

Do not be shackled by the box that you've been living in.

Blow that thing up.

Blow that thing up.

Think outside the box.

God's given you a mind.

He's given you a heart.

That's how things get started.

That's how things get started.

That's how cars get made.

Right?

I mean, that's how companies get started and new ideas are formed in the hearts of people who are under the inspiration.

Here's the thing.

You can be an unbeliever, but you can still be under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit because you're creating the image of God.

But as Christians, we do it for the glory of God.

We do it for his glory and for his honor.

And so God's on the move and he's using these things to wake us up.

So here's another list: Romans 12.

Other kinds of spiritual gifts.

This is what I mean.

It's not exhaustive, but it's examples.

We have different gifts according to the grace given to each one of us.

If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith.

If it is serving, then serve.

If it is teaching, then teach.

If it is to encourage, then give encouragement.

If it is giving, then give generously.

If it is to lead, do it diligently.

If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

1 Corinthians 12, give us another list.

There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.

There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.

There are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.

I mean, you get the idea that God loves diversity?

He loves differences.

You know, like I am, when I took this test at Villa, I don't know, this is like four or five years ago when Ryan and I were in a competition to see how much body fat we could lose.

That was pretty fun.

Kind of got us going.

But they do these tests, and I found out that my left arm is like 4% weaker than my right arm.

So I so I guess what that means is that's the reason if you're bench pressing, you can start to get heavier and heavier weights.

If there's going to be an angle, you know, when I'm pushing up, it's going to fall slightly on my left arm because my right arm's a little bit stronger, right?

But I don't cut my left arm off.

That's what the church does.

So he's weaker, or we don't value his gift or something.

You know, the non-charismatics, well, we don't value the gift of speaking in tongues.

Or the teacher looks down on the helper because you really just teach the word.

Everything's about the word, teach the word, you know, and all that.

And then there's the there's the helper over here.

Well, he's always teaching the road, but he never does anything, never washes any of the dishes after our small group.

Whatever.

That's what we do.

That's the church in action.

I've been doing this for 27 years, I know.

My church, but I say, don't do that, we still do it.

We need each other.

It's what he's a diversity of gifts, differences of ministries, diversities of activities.

So we're all different.

It's good, it's not bad.

But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.

For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same spirit, to another, faith by the same spirit, to another, gifts of healing by the same spirit, to another, workings of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, and to another different kinds of tongues, and to another interpretation of tongues.

But one and the same spirit works in all these things, distributing each one individually as he wills.

So it's the dancing hand of God.

He's always moving, he's dancing around.

And sometimes you're given the gift of prophecy, and sometimes you're given the gift of teaching.

It may not be with you all the time because there's more permanent giftings than they're tertiary giftings.

So some of you minister largely in teaching, largely in helps, largely in cooking, largely in administration.

I'm so glad for Nellie Baretta and our church and her gift of balancing the books.

And we have a, we have elders who their job is stewardship.

So we are always checking and balancing on finances of the church.

And by the way, at the rate we're going, in the next four years, we'll be debt-free as a church.

It's amazing.

We've gone from 1.2 million owed when we first merged with this uh the Chapel Hills Church here, to today, we're at 700,000.

We keep it there, we keep putting extra money in to take care of that so that if the government ever comes and they can't call our loan because we won't have one.

You know, and so God's on the move, you know?

And that's because of the stewardship of your elders and them and us working together on our finances.

And then we give money away, we give solid 10% away all the time to missions and stuff like that because we're committed to that.

Well, somebody administrates that, and I can tell you that's not a gifting for me, but I still appreciate that gifting in others.

So this is not exactly.

So I'm gonna give you three thoughts on spiritual gifts.

Can I give you three thoughts?

Number one, God is the one who gives gifts to us.

So God gets all the glory for their effectiveness.

So if you're really smart, like Robert Moore, he's an inventor.

This guy invents things.

You ever go to one of these outfits where you got the big Pepsi machine?

Is it Pepsi or Coke?

It's Coke, of course, sorry.

Okay, you work for Coca-Cola.

He was part of inventing that machine where you can push a button and then it says what kind, and you got all there, you push another button and da-da-da-da-da, and all that stuff.

That's the guy.

Well, that's a gift of entrepreneurship, a gift of inventing, whatever.

That gift was from God, and God gets the glory in Robert's life.

Okay?

And John over here is a lawyer.

And I use John to help me set up one of my, both of my LLCs.

John doesn't.

He's a lawyer.

He's got a legal mind.

God gets the glory in John's life.

And so you hear what I'm saying.

So that's number one.

Number two, God gets the glory.

He sovereignly gives gifts to men.

Number two, God is the one who enables and empowers us through the power of the Holy Spirit to effectively exercise our spiritual gifts.

Okay, so God gets the glory, but here's what this means: it means don't compare.

Don't compare who you are with anybody else.

You are unique, and here's the key here the closer you walk with Jesus, the more pure will be God's gifting flowing through you.

So the closer you get to the one who gives the gift, the more the manifestation of the gift will bring glory to him and joy to your heart.

And then thirdly, spiritual gifts mean very little if your character is not being transformed.

So I think of a hose.

The water flowing through the hose is your spiritual gifting, the hose is your character.

So you may be really gifted, but you're a jerk.

Or you're really gifted, but you're embezzling money.

Or you're really gifted and you're abusive to those who work with you.

You're an abusive leader.

Not good.

Because then you're never gonna reach your full potential, you're never gonna reach your effectiveness if you don't let character, your character, be developed at the same time as your spiritual gifts.

So there's a lot of doctors who've gone to med school, there's a lot of mechanics that have gone to the schools that they do to develop mechanic, and you just can't stand being around them, but they're the best.

They're the best at what they do, but their character hinders what God could do through them.

So work on your character simultaneously.

Verse 12.

So now the rest of the verses here, you guys, is why we have spiritual gifts and what their purpose is.

Actually, your spiritual gifts are not for you, they're actually for others.

Your spiritual gifting, your talents are not for you.

Mainly, they're actually for others.

So look at verse 12.

For the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry.

So, number one, the purpose of spiritual gifts is equipping the whole congregation with the ministries that God has.

So, my job is to equip you to be who you're to be called to be in your life, and same with you.

That gift, your gifting, is to be encouragement actually to others.

Equipping here actually is the word for setting a bone in place.

For setting a broken bone in place.

That's actually what the word equipping means here.

And ministry, listen to this, really important.

Ministry means in Greek to serve.

Ministry means to serve.

That means ministry is not isolated to the local church, it's wherever you are.

You're doing ministry when you are a plumber and you are fixing pipes and you are helping people have good plumbing.

That's a ministry.

So do it effectively.

You're in ministry when you as a mom are staying home with your kids and you're ministering to them, and they've got poopy diapers all the time.

And you're changing poopy diapers five times a day.

Gets on your hand.

Ugh, it stinks.

I know all about it, man.

Seven kids, man.

My wife in there.

That's ministry.

She's serving.

She's serving those kids.

Somebody's got to do it.

Right?

And say, maybe, you know, in this day and age, you got stay-home dads.

Okay, so you're in there.

That's ministry.

And for some of you, you're accountants, and some of you, you're you're um you're working as realtors.

Whatever it might be, it's ministry because you're serving.

It's not isolated to the local church.

For the edifying of the body of Christ.

So the word here edify means edifice to build and strengthen.

And actually, it's interesting, it means oikodoma.

Oikodoma means it has oikos, it has the idea of family.

So when you are ministering in your spiritual gift, you are building a family at the church.

You're making this a church family.

But simultaneously, when you're ministering in spiritual gifts at home, you guys are building church in your family.

So it was Jonathan Edwards who said every home should be a little church.

So when I was planting Mountain Springs, and then when I was planting the road, I was always planting two churches.

I was planting the Holt Church, and then I was planting Mountain Springs, and then I was planting the road.

And the Holt Church was more important.

Sometimes my time was spent more with the Holt family than the church.

Sometimes my time was spent more with the church family than the Holt family.

But the point is that the word actually does mean that.

It means family church.

It means that we're a family by being the church, and that's what spiritual gifts should intensify in our lives.

Look at the next verse.

Till we come to the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man.

Telios.

To the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

That we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.

Thirdly, it builds unity and maturity.

So spiritual gifts should be building unity but also maturity.

Because look what's out there.

This is even in the first century.

It's more pronounced now.

Winds of doctrine.

There's all kinds of new winds of doctrine out there.

By the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.

Folks, that happens in the church.

We know it happens outside the church, but it happens inside the church.

Be careful with podcasts and bloggers out there, because there's another spiritual gift.

It's called the spiritual gift of self-promotion.

There's a lot of self-promoters, and that's how they raise money.

They raise money by us believing what they're saying, whether it's a prophecy or they're ripping another church or they're ripping another person in the body of Christ.

And they look at those likes, man, and boom, boom, boom, boom.

They start seeing the likes go up.

It's called the gift of self-promotion.

Be careful with people like that.

They're always kind of flexing their theological muscle or whatever and hurting people.

And I'm for unity, guys.

Everybody makes mistakes.

And I am not going to be a modern-day Pharisee and be nitpicking everything.

We've got to unite right now.

We've got to work together.

I'm not talking about heresies out there.

I'm just talking about on the nuances of the gray areas, I am fine with disagreeing.

Matter of fact, that's what we just read.

Diversities of ministries.

Diversities of gifts.

And so some churches in this town are going to be more evangelistically gifted than others.

Some are going to be more gifted at teaching.

Some are going to be more gifted at compassion ministries.

Let's celebrate.

Let's celebrate the body of Christ together.

That's what the gifts of the Spirit are all about.

Then he says, but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things unto him, who is the head Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

So everything's about love.

Ultimately, spiritual gifts are about growing up in love for each other.

I'll tell you what, when the body of Christ is working with love, nothing can stop us.

Nothing can stop us when we're ministering out of compassion and love to others.

When we walk in that kind of love, God can so use us.

Let love be our motivation.

How many would say you're gonna go out to lunch after the service day?

You're gonna go to lunch.

Raise your hand.

You're gonna go to lunch.

Okay, a lot of you.

Love that server.

Love that server.

You come to the road, 25% tip.

25% tip.

You heard it from me.

That's what you do.

You break that mold of the churchgoers that are a bunch of cheapskates that come.

I want people to say they're from the road.

I can't wait to serve them because they know they're going to get some jackola from us.

Okay?

So we're generous people.

We're loving people.

We remember that that server right there has got some issues oftentimes in their background and in their situation.

They're young.

They're trying to go to college or they're trying to make ends meet.

And we're going to bless them.

We're not going to like give them no tip and then give them a four spiritual laws.

Sorry, folks, doesn't cut it.

Give the four spiritual laws.

Give them a 40% tip.

But let us be examples of love.

Maybe be examples of love.

Even when we disagree.

At the end of the day, we'll probably get more hits and more hurt because we do this, but it's the right thing to do.

And God wants to bring a kingdom revolution through love in our lives.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to the road.org.

God bless you.