God Empowering His People

This morning we're going to be starting another series. Not a series on a book this time, but a series on a theology, really, a concept within the Bible. But before I sort of introduce that, I want to begin with this story of the three tenors of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and Jose Carreras. They are a group of very talented singers who in their own rights have led operas and concerts and sort of thing and drawn thousands of people. But when they come together and perform together, it is really something to behold if that is your thing.

It's beautiful. One day, a reporter asked these three and sort of grilled them a little bit to see if there was some sort of competitiveness among these three exceptional artists. Domingo replied and he said to the reporter, you have to put all of your concentration onto opening your heart to the music that you are leading or experiencing. You can't be rivals when you are making music together. You can't be rivals when you are making music together.

Domingo was saying that in order to be able to make music together that others would want to listen to, music worth hearing, these three great artists had to put their egos aside and focus on the task at hand. If one tried to prove that their voice was better or tried to take another person's part, the end result would not be a work of musical brilliance, but of selfish immaturity. This morning, we're going to be starting on a series on the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts. Something that the church today is wrestling with and has found quite controversial. It seems that among some Christians today, we can have a difficulty in harmony.

Many times it is our differing views on theology and doctrine that can divide us and cause discord among us. And on the one hand, this topic may raise some eyebrows for some, but that's okay. It may make us uncomfortable, but that's fine. You may even completely disagree with me. Well, you know, that's amazing, but that can happen.

The purpose of this series is to bring what the Bible says to the fore, to explain that, to look at it, to study and investigate it, and then for you to decide. And ultimately, it's my hope that we as a church, and again, as a people from very different backgrounds, from very different church traditions, that we as a church may move forward, that we may grow closer together, and may reach a healthy biblical understanding on a topic that may have been influenced by many different people in our past. On the one hand, the Bible teaches us that proper doctrine, proper teaching is important and that we should not take it lightly. One Timothy 4:16 says that. However, if we consider breaking fellowship, if we consider leaving this church on a particular issue, we need to be certain that the issue that we're leaving on is something that the Bible is not only clear on, but is of primary importance.

Of primary importance. It has to be massive issues like whether Jesus is really God or not. It has to be on issues of whether our salvation is by simply believing in the work, the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, receiving His salvation by grace through faith alone. Those are some of the big issues that is worthy of breaking fellowship or leaving. Like I mentioned before, an area that has the potential to cause much division among Christians is our view of the Holy Spirit.

But today we begin a journey, rather than ignoring it, rather than sort of, you know, letting it be a side issue or swept under the carpet, it is my prayer that we graciously open up ourselves to the conversation that we're going to begin, and to wrestle with God about this. My prayer is that we agree that you can't make beautiful music together that other people would like to listen to if our egos or our rivalry get in the way. Alright, so now that is a very serious preamble to something that doesn't have to be very serious, something that is actually very joyful. This morning we're going to be looking at the spiritual gifts. What the Bible says about these things.

Over the next three weeks, we'll be looking at three main passages in the Bible that talks about them. Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, and Ephesians 4. This morning, however, I want us to get the basic understanding right, get the definition right of what we're dealing with here. What is a spiritual gift? What is a spiritual gift?

Well, I want to put it to you guys this morning that a spiritual gift is God empowering His people. It is God empowering His people. And we're going to be breaking this down into these three statements, God empowering His people. The first thing we'll look at, first of all, is that we have to go right back to the start of things when we talk about spiritual giftings. These are what we call, or what the Bible says are gifts or abilities that have been given to members within a church, and it has one place of origin, one common place of origin, and that is God.

These abilities are gifts, and that means they have a giver. KJ, you are so smart. A gift has a giver. This has all sorts of implications, however. It means that when we talk about these things, and I'll talk about the empowering of us later, when God gives these things, no one here, no one as a Christian can claim to have earned them.

If it is a gift, you receive it purely because it is a gift. You have not worked for it. Otherwise, that is by definition not a gift. No one can claim to deserve them. Secondly, since they are gifts from God, it means that these abilities are spiritual.

God is spiritual, the Bible says. And something that is spiritual is something that is different to the physical. Something that is spiritual is different to something that is physical. It means that no one can claim to have learnt them. No one can claim to have inherited these gifts.

You are not born with these abilities. It means that there is a distinction between spiritual gifts and physical talents. You could be like Billy, an exceptional AFL player, and we can believe that God has granted him that talent, but that's because physically he can kick a ball really far and accurately. That's not necessarily a spiritual gift. Having a talent for learning, having a talent for accounting is different to a gifting that God gives to someone in His church.

So spiritual gifts are firstly a gift that hasn't been worked for, and secondly, a spiritual ability that hasn't come to us naturally. Now how does God give these gifts to people? Well, the Bible gives us one answer to this, and that is through the Holy Spirit. That is through the Holy Spirit. Now, just to back it up again a little bit, as Christians, we believe that the Holy Spirit is one person within the Trinity of God, the Triunity of God who is, we believe, one and three persons at the same time.

The Bible makes clear in John 16 and other places that the Holy Spirit is God's active force or active personality in this world. Remember that. That's really important to remember. The Holy Spirit is God's active force or personality in this world. He is like the Trinity's agent on the ground.

He's at the coalface of working with people by or manipulating history or convicting hearts or changing minds or bringing hope. When we sang together this morning for God to give us peace and joy, we are asking the Holy Spirit to bring that to us. When we pray for a sense of contentment in our hearts, it is the Holy Spirit who brings it. And therefore, when we talk about Christians receiving spiritual gifts, 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 talks about it being the Holy Spirit that delivers them. In this passage that I just mentioned, 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, the Apostle Paul says that some people will be given through the Holy Spirit the gift of wisdom. To other people the gift of knowledge.

To another person, the gift of healing. To another incredible faith. And at the end of this in verse 11, Paul sums it all up and says, all these gifts are the work of one and the same spirit. And He gives them to each one of us just as He determines. So we see a willpower of the spirit to be the one that determines who receives these gifts.

And so the Holy Spirit is much more than a Star Wars Zen, sort of the power of the force thing that's impersonal and stuff. He is one who can determine, one who can reason, one who has a will, and the Holy Spirit is the one who determines which of us receives these spiritual gifts. So the first thing we must remember when we deal with the topic of spiritual gifts is that it begins with God. With God who is the Holy Spirit, and it is His gift, and it comes from the realm of the spiritual rather than the physical. Okay?

The second thing we move to is the part of empowering. The spiritual gifts are given for a purpose. They are given for a reason. The purpose is to empower or to equip individuals for certain tasks. The Bible teaches that every member of the church, of us, every Christian has a function.

Every member here in this church has a function. Ephesians 2:10 says that we've been created when we become Christians in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do. This means that everyone has a ministry. It means that everyone has a job, has a ministry. It also means that there is a great variety in this ministry.

Paul describes the church with the metaphor of a human body. He says that there are hands in a body, that there are feet in a body, that there are vital organs, hearts, livers, kidneys, stomachs. I like to be the stomach. If you are a hand, you will do the function of a hand. If you are a leg or a foot, you will do the function of a foot or a leg. If you are a hand, you are not intended to be a foot.

And whatever your ministry is, you must determine what that is, and then you must exercise that function. As Christians, when God saved us, this is what we believe. When God saved us and reached into our hearts and lives, He started transforming us. And in that transformation, we become sensitive, we become aware of things around us that desperately need His love as well. We get aware of that. We become sensitive to that.

So today, we might be acutely aware and we might vividly sense that this world is in need of God. We may see people crying out for justice. We may see people crying out for equality, for peace, for employment, for authentic worship of God, for authentic faith. We see what's happening in the Middle East, and it stirs something in us. But we are also painfully aware that there is no man or woman in all this earth who can ensure that these needs are looked after.

There is no person that can single handedly do this. It would in fact take a whole lot of people to bring about this change. It would take a team the size of this world to bring about lasting change. And in Ephesians 4, the Apostle Paul talks about the church being this active team, with active players or team members in this worldwide team. So no one is simply a spectator in this team, in the world.

Everyone is a player. Each person has a ministry. Not everyone is going to play fullback. Not everyone can play fullback. Everyone has their own position, but Paul makes a point this way in Ephesians 4:11-12 that he says it was Jesus Christ who, for the church, gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers.

Why? Verse 12 says, in order to equip people for works of service so that the body of Christ, the church, may be built up. He gave fly halves and half backs and full backs and props and locks to do the work of equipping everyone else to do the task that God is calling the church to do. In other words, all of God's people form a unified organisation where everyone is a key stakeholder and investor in this movement, in this team. There are some people who have been given the role of player coaches.

The apostles, for example, were player coaches. They were busy in ministry. They were active players, but they were also coaches. They were teaching and training us and the generation that they were involved with. Others have been given the job of reminding the team what the game plan is.

They are the pastors and the teachers. They are given the responsibility of equipping the saints for works of service. To use the example, my job as a pastor, as commanded by God, I believe, is not to run the show. It doesn't say anywhere that I am to play fly half position and call all the shots. My job is to assist all the players in their correct positions and to encourage them to do it to the best of their ability.

That's my job. And that is why churches, including our church, still refer to their pastors as ministers. Ministers, technically of the word. They are to administer the word of God to people, to remind them what the game plan is. To paraphrase James Stalker, who wrote a book on preaching, this is what he says.

It's a beautiful model, a beautiful image. He says the minister of a church is simply a person from this congregation, from a congregation who has been set apart for a particular purpose. That church simply says to one of its members, look, brother, we are busy with our daily work, and we are perplexed by domestic and worldly cares. But we eagerly long for peace. We eagerly long for light to cheer and illuminate our life.

Now we have heard of a land far, far away where these things are to be found. We struggle to find the freedom and the time to go there regularly enough for long enough. But we choose you, and we set you free from our toils so that you may go there week by week and trade with that land and bring to us its treasures and its bounties. In this church, he says, a pastor has been identified as having the spiritual gift of preaching and teaching, who has been set apart not simply by God, but by the church, who have identified this gift. And like the author says, to go to the rich land of God's word and to return to the church body and say to everyone, look, look at what I found.

Take this to gladden, to enrich, to fulfil your life and be blessed by it. That's my job, my spiritual gifting. And so our Reformed churches, although we wouldn't say that we have focused on spiritual gifts very much, we've been doing that for hundreds of years. We've been recognising a spiritual gift for hundreds of years. So God empowers certain individuals, calls them out for certain functions by giving them certain gifts.

But then the next logical question is, who exactly does God empower? Who receives these gifts? Which individuals get these gifts? God empowers His people. The third point this morning is that God gives an indication in Scripture, especially in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, that firstly, the gifts are bestowed, are given over to the church, onto the community of God's people.

And they are for the sustaining of the church body. And they are of corporate importance. And this is emphasised much more than the individual enrichment of this. They are for us, for the body. They are for the growth and sustaining of the church body.

In other words, selfish or self centred use of a gift is never the intention of the gift. And this is important for next week when we talk about some of these things a bit more. They are not used for self centred or selfish reasons. The spiritual gifts are for the edification of the building up of the encouragement of the whole church. Scripture seems to indicate that the spiritual gifts are given to us when people become believers in Jesus Christ.

The Bible says that when a person comes to the point of believing that Jesus is their Saviour, that He is their King, at that moment of faith, the Holy Spirit enters their hearts permanently. The Holy Spirit, the Bible says, resides, literally lives in them. He sets up a nice little cosy place in there. And this is hugely significant. God living in us.

The New Testament scholar and pastor, N. T. Wright, says this. He says, those in whom the Spirit comes to live are now God's new temple. They are individually and corporately places where heaven and earth meet.

That's huge. In us is where heaven and earth meet. At this moment, when the Spirit comes to live in us, all sorts of things start happening with us, and you'll recognise this in your own life. We start becoming better people. The Holy Spirit starts the process of cleaning up our sin, the stuff inside of us that hurts us and hurts others.

The Holy Spirit starts expressing certain qualities in us called the fruit of the Spirit. So we will start to become more loving. We will start to have more joy. We will start to have more fulfilment, goodness, self control. John 16 goes on and says that the Holy Spirit reminds us of what Jesus taught, that He points back at it and says that you are now a follower of Jesus, so follow in His footsteps.

He reminds us of the life of Jesus. But then also, and what's particularly relevant for us today, is that the Holy Spirit imparts these supernatural gifts to every believer in the church. When it comes to the spiritual gifts and the church, the Bible says that no one person will be given all the gifts. No one person will be given all the gifts. The pastor of a church will not have all the gifts.

The elders of the church will not have all the gifts. There is no such thing as a superhuman or superman Christian. At the same time, no one gift is given to all the people. Not everyone is going to have the gift of evangelism. Not everyone is going to have the gift of mercy.

Not everyone is going to have the gift of tongues. But we'll explore that obviously a little bit later. Again, it is important that we realise that if not everyone will have all the gifts, the implication is that like a human body, we really need each other. We really need each other. Like a body will need all its vital organs to do their respective jobs, change various members to do theirs.

Thirdly, although not all the gifts are equally noticeable, they are all vitally important. Certain gifts will jump out more. They'll be more visible. Other gifts will be more gentle and unseen. Some gifts will be audible or visual.

Some gifts will be something that is hidden behind the scenes. But what is important to remember is that all of these gifts are important, according to 1 Corinthians 12. They are integral to the healthy functioning of our church body. God empowering His church. That is what the spiritual gifts are about.

In wrapping up this morning, I just feel it's really difficult to stress just how important it is for us as Christians to understand correctly and biblically what the spiritual gifts are and aren't, and the significance of God giving these gifts to His church. Howard Snyder, in his book, The Problem of Wineskins, writes this. He says, the church truly becomes the church only when the biblical meaning of spiritual gifts is recovered. That's a big statement. He says, a church whose life and ministry is not built upon the exercise of spiritual gifts is biblically a contradiction in terms.

In other words, Snyder goes as far as saying, you cannot be a church without the spiritual gifts. You cannot be a church without the spiritual gifts. That's how important it is for us to think about. As we wrestle with understanding these things over the next few weeks, be praying, be praying like I have and our elders have these last months about understanding what our giftings are, what our purposes are, what God is calling us to be and to do. It is so important to realise the Holy Spirit is lifting and working in our hearts.

He is. There's no point otherwise for the church. Without them, there is no purpose for our lives. The Holy Spirit is the power of God in our lives and He breathes life and energy into it. Finally, I had a few quotes, but Paul Washer, another pastor, well known pastor, says this. I used to teach young preachers that in order to preach, you must have the power of God on your life.

Now I tell them, in order to tie your shoes, you have to have the power of God in your life. Be praying this week for God to open our eyes to His empowering of our lives, to open our eyes to how He empowers our lives. God is so at work in our church at Open House, and I'm really looking forward to what He has in store for us. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you thanking you for teaching.

Thanking you for the gift that you have enabled me to be called to and set aside for. Thank you, Lord, that your word is so accessible to us, that there is no difficulty in looking at it, in reading it, in understanding it, that we all can be a part of this as well. Father, I pray that as we enter into this time over the next few weeks, as we look into spiritual gifts, Lord, that this is not an academic exercise, that this is not theoretical by any means, Father, but that we will understand what it is to be your church, and what it means to be followers of Jesus, and what it means to have the Holy Spirit living in us. Father, I pray that as we go through this, as we enter into this time, Lord, that you will be revealing to us what you are already doing inside of us. Lord, that you will show us the calling that you have placed on our lives, wherever and in whatever context that is.

And we pray, Lord, furthermore, for the joy and the knowledge and the peace of your love and of your salvation to us as well. So, Father, we bring all these things before you in Jesus' name. We pray that you have your will in us. Amen.