We Share Our Gifts with One Another - September 29, 2024

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

Jesus is coming soon. That's why the time is urgent. That's why today's topic

of being the church and everyone sharing their gifts together is so,

so important because Jesus is coming back.

And sooner than we may think.

Well, this morning, the kids are in with us. And so I promised that some of them could help me out.

And so I'll need some help from you. So children, stand by.

And, you know, I've asked you to do this shape survey and a lot of questions.

This is like me. No, this is not like me.

I'm more inclined this way. No, I'm not more inclined this way.

And those of you that have taken it, God bless you. And I appreciate your perseverance in doing that.

If you haven't taken it yet, God will bless you as you take that.

It's really neat because as I'm looking over who's already completed the shape

inventory, as a pastor, I'm just blessed.

As a fellow brother in Christ, I'm blessed looking at all the gifts that God

has given you, the inclination toward those gifts, how God has created you and your personality even.

And when I read the results, because I could see your results,

I'm like, oh yeah, that's totally them right there. You know, it's like spot on.

And it's just a beautiful thing when you begin to delve into how God has created

you and how God has gifted you, not just with spiritual gifts,

but how He's created you to be the redeemed person,

to go out into the world and just to reach out to folks.

And so I thought, since it's the last sermon of this series,

talking about how we are gifted, and that I probably should talk about the gifts

just a little bit, because maybe you took the assessment, the shape assessment,

you're like, okay, what does this mean?

You know, what does it mean that I've got faith or wisdom or knowledge or service as my gifts?

What's this all about? And so just really quickly, let me go down to three categories,

of these 20-something gifts.

There's more gifts that are mentioned in the Bible, but not necessarily on the

assessment that I've had you do.

But let me talk a little bit really quickly about all of you people and all

the gifts that God has given you.

Then we'll jump into the Scripture this morning. First of all,

there's the miraculous gifts.

Those gifts which we see in the New Testament, we may see even today in our Scripture passage.

Those gifts that are just like, wow, that's a miracle.

And so here's some of them. Of course, apostleship. Of course,

speaking in other languages or tongues.

The interpretation of those languages or tongues.

Miracles, just performing a miracle. Healing, seeing God heal someone.

One, seeing someone made whole, that's a miraculous gift.

The healing that comes, those are all great.

An incredible gift. We call those the miraculous gifts because they,

as we look in the New Testament, they're there to confirm the word,

to confirm the message that was being preached.

Now, there's a theological debate. Do they continue today or not?

I just want to tell you that if God needs something to happen,

he's going to make it happen through whomever is available and willing to see that happen.

And so I'm not a cessationist, and you can look that theological term up later on if you want.

The next category of gifts that you may have done a little assessment on,

and maybe this came up to you, are those enabling gifts.

Now, I know sometimes being an enabler is not good, but these are good enabling

gifts, okay? It's okay to enable these. And the first one is faith.

Faith and these enabling gifts,

these are qualities possessed rather than activities that are performed.

So something you have that helps you do the other gifts that God has given you,

or to use your skills or talents.

So faith is a primary one. Some of you have faith.

I saw as you took the assessment and as I looked at the results,

and those are the kind of people when we're praying for someone,

you need to be down there praying because that gift of faith that you have,

boy, it activates whatever's being prayed for in a powerful way.

We talk about the gift of discernment, of knowing, hey, something's off here.

Something's just not quite right. knowing not only the truth from false or fiction,

but knowing what's true and what's almost true or a little bit true.

You see, when we look back to the Old Testament and the fall of man.

Devil was wrong, but he was almost true. So when you have that gift of discernment

to know what's almost true versus what's really true, we go on and we talk about wisdom.

We talk about knowledge and having those special gifts. Those are the enabling

gifts that help you to do the other things that God calls you to do.

And then there's what we call the team gifts.

These are the gifts that are functional. These are the job, the activity,

the ministry, the task-oriented gifts. These are the gifts that get stuff done.

The other gifts funnel into these to help the church do what it needs to do,

and that's what we're going to look at today.

And these team gifts, and you know an acronym, the Together Everyone Accomplishes

More, that's the idea that we're working at or working from,

is that together as a church, we

do more together than we could just individually for the kingdom of God.

And in the process, we grow.

You see, what I want you to know this morning is that everyone here is a gift,

a gift of God, not only to this church, but to the world. And you have gifts to share.

It doesn't matter what your age is. It doesn't matter how long you've been in

Christ or not yet in Christ.

You're almost there, or maybe you just are a new Christian.

God has gifts that he wants you to use that will benefit you even in the long

run and benefit you for all eternity.

And so as we look to the scripture this morning, it's one of my favorite scripture

passages in the entire Bible.

It is what I consider the blueprint for the church.

It is what I consider when a church gets off track, we need to go back to Acts

2, starting in verse 42, and get things right again.

And so hear the word of the Lord this morning from Acts 2, starting in verse

42 and finishing out the chapter.

The scripture says that they, the early disciples, devoted themselves to the

apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.

All the believers were together and had everything in common.

They sold property and possessions to anyone who had need.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.

They broke bread in their homes. They ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

praising God and enjoying the favor of all people.

And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Father, take your word this morning, we pray. Lord, pierce our hearts with it.

Father, may it judge our actions, our thoughts, our intents.

And Lord, especially in the context of the church this morning,

may we see where we're off track, and Lord, correct us.

And Father, help us to understand this morning that we are a gift.

But Father, we have gifts to share. And the only reason that we're a gift is

what we started out the scripture reading from earlier this morning is that you loved us first.

And so God help us, Lord, to realize our calling, to realize our responsibilities,

to realize our duties, God, that you have gifted us for and equipped us to do

because that's just like second nature to us.

Father, we love you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, I just want you to know it's a simple message this morning that our gifts,

are made to share with one another.

Quite simply, when we looked at the scripture this morning, in the first verse

we read, verse 42, they devoted themselves, the new believers,

those 3,000 or so that were added to the church, here they are meeting together.

We are created and we are called to do life together.

God didn't save you just so you could just try to be a holy person all by yourself

or try to be a good person.

God saved you to be part of a group together, to be part of the family,

to be part of a body, the body of Christ.

And so when we think about this this morning, especially with verse 42,

we're supposed to do life with others.

I've asked a friend to come and help me today, and Morgan is going to come up

here, and he's going to assist me today. So Morgan, come on down.

You see, the scripture says that we're gifts.

We're the gift of God to the world. It doesn't mean we get all proud and puffed

up, but you can come on up here. Yeah.

But when God brings us into his household, when we have an experience with God,

where we realize that we're a sinner, we confess that sin to God,

we ask God to forgive us, he comes into our hearts and he cleanses up our life,

and we're called a new creation.

What we celebrated today was the old passing away under the water,

the new coming up to new life, a new life with Christ, we know that when that

happens, these gifts within us are activated.

That together as a church, we help together with a pastor to refine and equip

everyone for the work of ministry.

And so Morgan's going to help me here as my visual example today,

but also as an active example.

You see, he's going to represent one of these early Christians,

one of these guys that that came to know Jesus, that heard the message,

that repented of his sin and turned to Jesus to follow him, that identified

himself with the church through baptism.

And God had given him a special gift here. And it's this gift we call evangelism.

This gift to go out and to share the good news with everyone that he encounters.

And the scripture says here in verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.

So after he was saved, after he had this experience with Jesus,

he devoted himself to the Bible, to what the apostles taught.

It says also to teaching. teaching so

he was listening to the apostles teaching learning all he could to

the breaking of bread not only eating fellowship potlucks together

but also when we celebrate the lord's supper the

breaking of bread together to remember christ's sacrifice not only as a memorial

but to proclaim to the world christ's death until he returns as we say when

we have communion together so this is what morgan was all about as part of this

church here it goes on to say

And we'll talk about this in a minute, that everyone was filled with awe and

wonder at what God was doing.

And all this did within Morgan here was to inspire him to use the gift that

God had given him to unwrap this puppy and to say, all right,

I got to share Jesus with others.

And so what Morgan does is he's going to go out and he's going to tell people

about Jesus. He's going to bring them in.

So Morgan, you've got some people in mind you want to share the good news with.

He's going to use this gift that God gave him, this gift of evangelism,

to go and to find some people to tell them about Jesus, to tell them what this

life in Christ is all about.

And so that's what Morgan is doing. And this is an example of what God wants us to do.

If you have the gift of evangelism, he doesn't want you just to keep it bottled

up and just share it within the walls of the church, but to go out to where the people are.

And that's exactly what Morgan's doing right now. He's going out to find some

people to share with them about God and God's good news.

You guys can come up here. You don't have to stay on the floor.

You're allowed to come up here. So don't worry about that because come on up. Come on up. Yeah.

Yeah. Don't worry about being distinguished. You look great.

Doesn't he? It looked better than a pastor. That's not hard to do,

but he makes it look good.

But check this out. Morgan, he used his spiritual gift to go out and to lead others to Jesus.

And they then became part of this group, this group called The Way,

this group called The Church.

By their repenting of their sins and following Jesus, these gifts,

the Holy Spirit gave each one of them.

Gave the gift of prophecy. It gave the gift of teaching.

Gave the big gift of exhortation. And here's another one. You ready for this?

All right. Now the gift of serving.

You see how God starts to develop his church?

It started with just the disciples and the gifts that God would give to them

and to go out and to share.

And so we've got our brother here. fear, he begins to prophesy.

Now, not to tell the future of what's going to happen, but to foretell the word of God.

You see, Morgan loved this guy so much, he said, he's got to be in heaven with

me. I cannot be in heaven without him.

And so he goes and he searched out and he found him. He shared Jesus with him.

He got saved and God gave him this gift of prophecy to where he could preach,

proclaim the word of God without fear,

to proclaim the word of God that people People need to turn from their sin and

come to Jesus, that people need

to use their gifts to go out and to follow and to reach out to others.

And then our sister here, she had the gift of teaching.

She was so understanding of the Word of God that was being shared,

the Word of God that was being preached, that she began to teach others what

this meant, that she began to teach others, hey, this is what needs to happen.

This is how you follow Jesus and grow up into Him.

And then which gift did you get? Exhortation. This is a big one.

It's kind of confusing and scaring to some.

But she's just going to tell it like it is.

She has learned the word from a teacher. She's been brought to Christ because

an evangelist. She has heard the word preached and she's responded to that word.

And now she wants to exhort and say, you've got to follow. I'm here to encourage you.

I'm here to exhort you to come on. Now, not extort, all right?

We're talking about exhortation.

She's here to encourage you to follow the word, to go alongside.

And boy, just to see God do amazing things. And then we got our brother down

here on the end, all the way down. Oh, you're fine.

He's got the gift of serving. That's one of the greatest gifts there is.

It means he's just here to help.

He might not want to preach. He probably don't want to teach.

He's probably not going to tell people like it is and help encourage them along the way.

He's maybe not going to go evangelize, but he's here just to serve.

He's here to say, where's there a need? I'm here to help meet that need.

That's a versatile gift. If you've got the gift of service. God bless you.

You show up to these work days.

You show up when no one else wants to show up because you just can't help yourself.

You've got this gift and you've got to help.

Also known as the gift of helps. And so check this out. Here's how this was

working in the early church. They were meeting together every day.

Every day they were meeting together. The scripture says, they were each filled

with awe at the many signs and wonders that were were performed by the apostles.

All the believers, again, were together and had everything in common.

And so the cool thing about this is they didn't consider what they had their own.

They wanted to share with everyone, not only their spiritual gifts,

but they also wanted to share whatever they had been given with anyone.

So remember, we are called to do life together. And because of that,

we will live the Christian life in community together.

We're not called to be isolationists. We're not called to go off and be by ourself,

but we're called to live life together.

I mean, can you imagine if my brother here decided he was going to be in isolation

and he has the gift of prophecy?

He's just preaching to himself, right?

In the mirror, and you look good doing it.

But he wouldn't be very useful if it was just by himself.

And if our evangelist here, if he was trying to win himself to Jesus,

how many times can you win yourself to Jesus? Jesus.

He knows the good news of Jesus. He just can't wait to share it.

And if our teacher here, if she was her own student, that wouldn't really work very well, would it?

And our gift of exhortation here, encouragement, and our brother down here who

just serves, that's a great gift, but he'd just be doing chores around the house

and help himself out. Do you do chores around the house?

Okay, well, if you didn't, you would now because you got the gift of service.

So they work together. And let's say our evangelist, Morgan,

he has this great idea in mind.

Hey, there's more people that need to be here than just us five.

And so through the prophecy gift, the proclaiming, the preaching gift that our

brother here has, he gets with the evangelist, they come up with this idea.

Hey, we need to go out. We need to find more people.

And the teacher's all, yeah, we need to, because I need more people to teach

the word of God. And then our encourager says, yeah, and I need to encourage more people.

And our server says, well, yeah, I'm just here to help whoever comes in and I'll help you guys.

And so guess what they do and what they're going to do.

They're going to go out and they're going to find some people.

And so guys go out and find two more people, just two, and see who comes in.

Folks, the scripture says we are called to share what we've been given.

That's what the disciples did from verse 43 to 46.

They had everything in common. and they shared everything together.

They weren't afraid of that. If someone had a need, then that need was going to be met.

And God gave all of them the different gifts so that others could be blessed as well.

And so our early church here, they're going out, they're reaching out,

and they're winning others.

And here comes some more. And guess what? They get saved. They become part of the church.

They show themselves as being baptized to identify with the church,

identify identify with Christ.

And here they are as vital members of this growing, exploding,

if you will, thing called the church, the way.

And so here come along and, oh, here's one down here. That's for you.

We have one that's a shepherding, also known as pastoring.

She likes to take care of a little group of people together.

So vital in the church, not only a little group, but a big, we have one that loves to show mercy.

Oh, praise the Lord for mercy showers, especially for those that will have the gift of mercy.

You just have a compassion for other people. You love them so much that you

can't help to see their life transformed.

We've got another one, and that's giving. The Lord has blessed this young lady

with material possessions that she could share with others.

And she don't even mind sharing because she gives all her money away.

And guess what? Her pockets are filled up again somehow.

It's just this gift that God has given. But it's not just material things like

stuff, but it's also just giving of herself to others.

And God builds her up in that. All right. right, we've got some more.

We've got this gift of administration.

Well, this guy knows how to organize. He knows how to make sure everything flows

just like it should so that our crazy evangelist here gets an idea.

The administration guy can say, hey, wait a minute.

We got to do this the right way now. We just can't go off halfway and we got

to do it right. And so he kind of helps to coordinate everything.

Again, we've got our brother down here. He's got the a gift of faith.

So this dude, he just believes when the evangelist says, hey,

we can storm the whole world and lead everyone to Christ.

Our brother with faith says, yeah, let's go. I know we could do it.

We can do this. And so that gift of faith helps to drive things forward because he believes.

Boy, isn't it amazing what faith does? Oh, don't worry.

You're not left out because you've got the gift of discernment.

I talked about this a little bit ago.

He knows the difference between right and wrong, but he knows the difference

between deception and truth.

When people take the truth and they try to twist it, our brother here can say,

oh, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

That's not the full truth right there. And so all these gifts,

I've got one more down here. I've got actually a couple more.

You've got the gift of wisdom. Actually, you get two gifts. You get the gift of knowledge too.

It's this gift of wisdom to know what the truth is, but really how to apply

that truth, the knowledge that he has been given, a knowledge even beyond himself

that can help to bless others.

Working with our discerner here, he's able to really say, okay,

what's going on here? And how can we best serve the Lord?

Do you see how the church begins to grow and how every single one of these gifts is needed?

Now, I would tell each of you to go out and to get some more,

but our stage is going to become so full.

Everyone out there will be up here because you guys are using your gifts and

you're so eager to do that.

Hey, can we have a hand for these very helpful volunteers this morning?

Thank you. Take it with you. Yeah.

We are called to share what we've been given. All these, oh,

you okay? Stage diving in church, man.

Who knew we were so progressive? Except when you stage dive,

you're supposed to have someone there to catch you.

Where's our teacher? She should have taught that. No.

We're called to share what we have to really bless others. Just like the early

church, they shared with everyone that had need.

Now, I don't want you to misunderstand this because this verse has been twisted

and our discerner would say, hey, wait a minute, that's not right.

This isn't communism, okay? This isn't socialism that we're talking about.

Don't let people take this and twist it around. It's not a biblical justification

for that kind of government.

But what it is, it's the church loving one another. It's the church using their

gifts to bless somebody else,

to bless those that are within the walls, to really reach out to those that

are out in the world that are in need, to know that there's a Savior that loves

them, that their lives can be be transformed.

It's a glimpse, this side of eternity, what the kingdom of God is all about.

People using their gifts, people using their talents, their strengths,

not only to bless those within the community of the church, but to look outward

and say, how can we bless others too?

At last this morning is that when we share our gifts, multiplication happens.

Now you kind of saw it in the beginning when our brother Morgan went out and

he began to add one and then add two there was some addition that went on there, right?

I'm not going to give you a math lesson, don't worry, but this math lesson is

cool because he saw two of his friends that needed to be part of what God was doing.

That addition turned into multiplication when all three of them then went out

and they found some more people to bring up.

And if this group continued, this little group would grow exponentially by an exponent.

It would continue to multiply. And that's God's plan.

For the church is that we multiply, not just add one here and one there,

but that each of us would use our gifts to reach out and to invite others into his family.

And when we think about this, this powerful verse in verse 47,

praising God and enjoying the favor of all people, the Lord added to their number

daily those who were being saved.

You want a church growth plan? There it is. Just do what God has created you to do.

Just be who God has created you to be and work together with other people in

God's family to see God bring about something spectacular, something amazing, something incredible.

A church isn't built on the reputation of its preacher.

It's not built just on the reputation of its people, but it's built on the working

of the Holy Spirit in each one of us using those gifts that he's given us as

we go out and we serve others, as we faithfully do what God has gifted us to do.

How can we do that? How did the early church do that?

I believe that the early church had just a great appreciation for the grace

of God that was shown them.

The 12 guys that started out that were chosen by Jesus with one betraying him.

Then there were 11 and then another added.

They had a profound appreciation for the grace of God, the grace that was shown them,

the love that first came from God that was shown by Jesus to these disciples,

that they couldn't help but go out and bring others into this group.

Hey, you got to come meet Jesus.

Our evangelist Morgan over here would say, you got to come meet Jesus.

You got to learn about this guy. You got to learn about this guy who took our

place on the cross to pay the punishment for our sin.

That then after I accepted what he did and I accepted the free gift that he

gave me of eternal life, of forgiveness of my sin, then man,

he's given me these gifts that I could use to go out and to serve others.

And when we think about the grace that God has shown us, don't we have a world

of people that are looking for something like that?

Don't we have a community, maybe even in your own neighborhood that are looking

for some kind of purpose in life?

But man, they're just living day to day and life stinks and they just see no purpose in it.

They see no justification, no rhyme or reason for it.

Church, there's a world that is in need and they need your gifts to be exercised.

So I wanna encourage you this week, Use the gifts God's given you.

Again, if you don't know what they are, let me help you.

Start by taking that little survey, and we'll build on from there to really

see how God has shaped you for ministry, shaped you for serving others.

That's what I mean by ministry. I don't mean you got to come up here and preach.

Hey, if God's called you to that, I'll give you a chance.

But guess what? God just wants those that have the gift of service to go out and serve.

Those that have the gift of discernment to speak truth and all the lies that are out there today.

Those with the gift of exhortation to go out and to encourage Hey,

just hang on for one more day.

God's going to do something. He's going to do something great But just hold

on in all these things god Wants to be glorified.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast You can find a copy of

today's sermon as well as other sermons and the sermon outline from today on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that

recognizes the authority of the Bible.