The Spiritual Gifts: God Empowering His People

We are busy working through a series on the church, which is always good and refreshing for us to do, to come back and think about why we do what we do. Why do we gather like this on a Sunday? Why do we say we belong to the church? Why can we expect anything of the church? And so on.

You'll remember we talked about how the church has been formed, constituted, God reconciling people with one another and people with God. We have seen that God has brought us together in the ethic of love, that we do everything we do because we love. Again, as we heard from 1 John 5 this morning. We saw how the purpose and the mission of the church, at least in this time before the coming of Christ, is to make disciples of the nations, to baptise them into the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, into God, and to teach them what Christ has commanded. Now this morning, we come to the truth of how God empowers the church to do those things, how God empowers the church to do its mission, and we're going to look at what is called the spiritual gifts this morning.

If you have your Bibles with you, we're going to be jumping through three sections, and so if you have a few bookmarks, you can place a bookmark in each of these. Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, and Ephesians 4. We'll be putting some of these verses up on the PowerPoint, but because they are such big sections, we won't be able to read through all of them. And so this is really just an overview of some of these key passages. So what are the spiritual gifts?

Gifts given by God to the church. Well, they are abilities given supernaturally to each Christian so that the Christian can use it to be a blessing to other Christians in their church. That's my basic definition of it. Supernatural gifts given to each Christian so that they may use it to be a blessing to other Christians in their church. I don't know if you've received it yet.

We printed off a few pages, a few copies of just an overview on Robert Hillman's book at the end, 27 Spiritual Gifts. Bob Hillman was a scholar and a pastor in Australia, in the Australian church, in what I would say the conservative biblical part of the Uniting Church. In the eighties and nineties, he passed away tragically from cancer. Brilliant thinker. And this is a great little book that gives an overview of the spiritual gifts.

On there, you'll find a really helpful section, I think, on how we can evaluate what your gifts might be and to prayerfully do it. There's all sorts of strategies and tactics I've seen, questionnaires you can fill out and so on. I think this is probably a better one. In his book, however, 27 Spiritual Gifts, he unsurprisingly says or identifies at least 27 supernatural gifts that God has given the church. And he has got a great list there that I can also maybe post a little bit later to people to identify what those are.

But again, what is the purpose of these gifts? Well, I want to put it to you that a biblical definition of a spiritual gift is God empowering His people. God empowering His people. And so that phrase is going to serve as the backbone for the sermon today. Let's begin with that first clause, God.

In talking about spiritual gifts, in understanding God empowering His people, we have to understand where it all starts. When we talk about spiritual giftings, these gifts are things that have been given to members within a church, and they have one place of origin, and that is God. I mean, the very fact that they're called gifts presupposes that they have a giver. This idea is found in several places, like I said, in the New Testament. For example, in Ephesians 4, one of those passages we're looking at, Paul tells the Ephesians this: but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore, it says, when He, Christ, ascended on high, He led a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men. That's an Old Testament prophecy. Paul says fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and Jesus, when He has led us, the captives that He has won for God, He has given out gifts. He says to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge, and according to the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, to another gift of healing by the one spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit who apportions to each one individually as He wills. And then in another place, in the same letter, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7:7, I wish that all were as I myself am, but each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. So firstly, the spiritual gifts come from God. Now that's a very basic statement. But sometimes we see the gifts and we forget the giver, don't we?

I mean, human beings do it all the time. We've exchanged the Creator for the created. But for Christians, this has a massive implication. First of all, look across those three passages, and you'll notice the inclusiveness of gifts. God gifts to each one of us.

God gives to each one as He wills, in another passage, so that Paul says each one of you has their own gift from God. It means that if you are a believer, God has given you gifts. Even if you don't feel particularly gifted, by faith this morning, you are commanded to acknowledge that you have gifts given from God by which you must serve Him and His church. But since these gifts are from God, none of us may ever claim that we have earned them. No one can claim that we deserve them.

Secondly, since they are gifts from God, that they've only come to us through the Holy Spirit by faith, as Paul says, these abilities are spiritual. Now something that is spiritual is different to something that is physical. It means that no one can claim that they've learned these gifts. No one can claim that they've inherited these gifts. These aren't necessarily abilities that you have been born with.

For that reason, spiritual gifts are different to talents. Talent is still given by God, but talent is given at birth. Talent can be given to a non-Christian. I love watching NBA basketball. Those guys are talented basketball players.

Not all of them are Christian. Perhaps not most of them are Christian. But they can play basketball, and that is a talent. You may have a talent for learning. You may have a talent for maths, which I definitely don't have.

But that is different to a gifting that God gives to someone in His church. So the first thing we must remember when we deal with the topic of spiritual gifts is that it begins with God, and we thank God, therefore, for those things. It is His gift to give, and He gives them to every believer. Paul says, by His grace, so that no one can say they've earned them nor anyone boast about them. They are spiritual, different to physical talents or personalities or temperaments.

The second clause there, God empowering His church. Empowering. Spiritual gifts have been given for a purpose. Now, that purpose is only achieved through an equipping, through an empowering that happens. The Bible teaches that every member of the church, every Christian has a function.

We read that passage, didn't we, in 1 Corinthians 12, that each one serves a purpose in the body just as physical members of a human body serve the body. In Ephesians 2:10, we are told that we have been saved by grace through faith in order to do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do. All of us, saved by grace through faith to do good works, which God has prepared for us to do. It means that every Christian in some way has a ministry, a ministry of good works, everyone. It also will mean that there will be a massive variety of ministry.

Paul describes the church with that great metaphor of the human body. If you are a hand, you do the function of a hand. It means if you are a hand, that you are not meant to be a foot. A hand does the work of a hand. The foot does the work of a foot.

In Ephesians chapter 4, the apostle Paul talks about the church being active players in this great team. No one is simply a spectator. Everyone is a player on a team. Each person has a type of service. Service is ministry.

Not everyone will play fullback in this team. Not everyone can play fullback. Everyone has their own position, and each position is there to work towards the team's goal. Now, what is that goal? What does God equip or empower the church to do?

Paul expresses that in Ephesians 4:11-12. And He, who is Jesus, gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. Just in context, the apostles, the prophets, that's being quoted or that's being said in the context of that previous quote on Jesus giving gifts to the church. So these apostles, prophets, evangelists are seen as gifts. But we see the purpose statement of those gifts.

They are to equip, empower the church to build up the rest of us to do works of ministry. Paul will add that this building, this edification is to bring people towards a full maturity in Jesus Christ. In other words, the reason God has given spiritual gifts to the church is that we might grow up, is that we might be mature, is that we will, in essence, become more and more like Jesus. Elsewhere, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that the gifts are given for the common good. Because we belong to the church body, our gifts and even our very selves belong to each other, Romans 12:3-8 will tell us.

Our gifts, even our very selves belong to one another. Our gifts exist to serve the church. My friend Carl Dienick, who wrote that book that I mentioned a few weeks ago called Gather Together, says a great example of this can be seen in one of these 27 listed gifts here, the gift of celibacy or perhaps more commonly referred to the gift of singleness. God tells us in 1 Corinthians 7:7 that singleness is a gift. Singleness is a gift.

Carl himself is an older bachelor. He's a lecturer at SMBC in Sydney, and he makes the point that singleness is a gift for the church. This is what he writes about it. He says, some people choose singleness, accept the gift of singleness for the sake of serving the kingdom. But some people will have singleness thrust upon them as it were.

They would love to be married and they find being single very difficult. It is a gift they would never have chosen for themselves. But your singleness, whether or not you chose it, is God's gift to the church. God has given you this gift so that you can love the church and build up the church. If we remember what the purpose of the gift is, it is to love the church and build up the church.

He adds this perspective helps us to see how singleness is also a good gift, not just to the church, but to the individual. Since using that gift in the service of God and others is one of the ways that we find joy. So it would be awesome to work through all the 27 potential gifts mentioned in the New Testament. But to talk about singleness as an example, singleness is really the gift of time. Having been a single man until 36, I can tell you that the biggest blessing of singleness is of having flexible time to visit people, to just hang out, to be the guy that you can call whenever and probably do a coffee or a tea or a beer with.

As a single man, you can work and write and think at all hours of the day. I can tell you as a married man now, once you start having kids, you have much less time. Singleness, if you are single, can be considered a wonderful gift if you are willing to see it as a service to God and a service to others. Another example is the spiritual gift of administration. Yes.

Admin is a spiritual gift. 1 Corinthians 12:28 says, and God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers. It's 1 Corinthians 12:28. First apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then the gifts of miracles and gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Now, like singleness, you might hope that God gave you a flashier gift, a more up the front sort of gift, but you know that you are ridiculously good at organising things.

You're good at administrating things. God has given you the gift of administration so that you can love the church by organising and helping us be organised as a church. Again, Robert Hillman, this Australian pastor and scholar, he points out that there is nowhere in the Bible an indication that there are only 27 spiritual gifts. That's what Paul and the others have mentioned as gifts is the limit. It's entirely possible that God gives spiritual gifts spiritually and doubt gifts that we have no biblical evidence for, but that they have been given spiritually to the church nonetheless.

They all, however, have this one purpose, to serve and build up the church. So that second point is that God empowers certain individuals for certain tasks by giving them certain gifts. But the final and next logical question is, who does God empower? And ultimately, what does that achieve? Well, our statement says God empowers His people.

We get an indication from scripture, especially 1 Corinthians chapters 12 and 14, that firstly, the gifts are bestowed on the church because they are the community of God. These gifts are given for the growth and the sustaining of the body of Christ. And that corporate importance of spiritual gifts is emphasised over and over again and over against the enrichment and the enjoyment of the individuals having those gifts. In other words, they're not for you. They're for everyone else.

It means that selfish or self-centred use of a gift, proud use of a gift is in opposition to the purpose and function of that gift. Spiritual gifts are for the edification of the whole body. We know that when the Holy Spirit comes and lives in a new believer's heart, comes to be in their soul, all sorts of things start happening in them. As Christians, we start becoming better people. The Holy Spirit starts this process of cleaning us up from the inside out, and we have now better behaviours.

We have better thoughts. We have better affections. The Holy Spirit starts expressing holy qualities in us called the fruit of the Spirit. We now love more than we used to love. We now experience joy more often than we used to.

All of these are qualities called the fruit of the Spirit. So you can see on the one hand, the work of the Spirit is very personal, very private, very internal. But then we are also told that the Holy Spirit equips each one of us to serve, and that is an external thing. That is that happens outside of our bodies. When the church is matured into Christ, one of the results is not simply holiness, but a willingness to work towards the purpose of the church.

We saw a few weeks ago that the mission of the church is to ultimately fulfil the final words of Jesus to the disciples, to make disciples of all the nations, to baptise them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and to teach them the things that Jesus commanded us. The spiritual gifts empower the church and equip us to fulfil that ultimate task while we wait for Christ to return and while we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus. When it comes to spiritual gifts and the church, the Bible says that no one person will be given all of them. There is no superhuman Christian that has all the gifts. Not even the apostles had all the gifts.

The apostles needed the church. That's why Paul begins his letter to the Philippian Christians thanking God for their partnership in the gospel with him. He needed them. He says to them that you are all partakers with me of grace. That's why Paul, I think, also needed Barnabas.

That's why Barnabas was Paul's greatest ministry partner. Barnabas was the son of encouragement. That was his nickname. Barnabas means son of encouragement, and that was, I believe, his spiritual gift. It means the pastor of your church doesn't have all the gifts.

It means the elders of your church don't have all the gifts. The ministry leaders doing 80% of the work don't have all the gifts for the church to function properly. So there are no superhuman Christians with all the gifts. On the flip side, it means that no one single gift is given to every Christian. This is a fundamental error when people say that every Christian needs to be able to speak in tongues.

Whatever we understand what that looks like and how that functions today, no one is given that gift across the whole church. Thirdly, not all the gifts are equally noticeable. They are all, however, important. Spiritual gifts can become a haven, a stumbling block for disunity in the church because it leads to either pride, if you have them, or insecurity, if you don't. This was the problem of the Corinthian church.

They all wanted the showy gifts. They wanted the visible gifts. They wanted to be able to speak in tongues. They wanted to be able to have gifts of prophecy. Now, the spiritual gifts can be divided into two basic functions, speaking gifts and serving gifts.

And again, in the context of the Corinthians, you can imagine that the speaking gifts, the things like preaching, the things like teaching, well, they jump out more. You have the guy up the front, hopefully, that has one of those gifts. They are more visible, while the serving gifts, the gift of mercy as is listed in the Bible, the gift of generosity, or the gift of hospitality are more quiet and subtle. But God wants us to understand that all the gifts are necessary. They are all equally important for the church.

They're integral to the healthy functioning of the church body. The gifts in themselves aren't the thing. They work towards the thing, which is the maturing of other believers and the work of the gospel to reach the lost. It's an unfortunate thing that in churches, so often, we elevate the gift of preaching over all the other gifts. So much so that we start thinking it is more important than all the others, and that is not to say that preaching isn't important.

But think about this. Where would the weekly preaching of God's word be if there was no church body who had people in it with gifts of generosity, which is a spiritual gift, to give generously towards the pastor's salary, which makes it possible for him to commit his time to prepare and preach the gospel? Where would the church be? Where would a preacher be without the gifts of service of musicians that spent an awful lot of time to give their time and talents to lead a worship service? Who would a preacher preach to if there was no one with the gift of hospitality or service to help people sit in an environment that is clean and safe and hospitable? I dare say it's theologically improper for us to assume that the church functions around the single gift of preaching.

Without the other gifts, a local church just can't function. We need to keep remembering that we all have a gift. Different gifts, but they serve the same purpose. A pastor once got 10 people up on the stage. He was a more brave pastor than I am getting interaction from the audience.

And he brought 10 people up and he said, we're pretending to be firemen. And we're all on the big fire truck together. And he started assigning different people different tasks. He said to one guy, you're the one driving the truck. You're the other guy using the hose. And to another person, you're the guy that sits on the weird ladder with that weird steering wheel at the back. I don't know what that's for.

And so he goes through 10 people and they all have different tasks. Then at the end, he says, okay, can you please explain to us what's the task? And so each one of them goes through his. I'm the driver. I'm the hose guy. I'm the guy on the ladder. After they were all done, he said to them, you are all wrong. Your purpose, every one of you, is to put out fires.

God has given us, the church, all different gifts. Not to get obsessed with the gifts, not to get jealous over the gifts, not to get insecure over our gifts, but to get on with the big job of getting people out of the fire of hell, to put out the fire that they are heading into. And the church so often can get broken and can go wonky when it doesn't understand and apply their gifts in the right way. So in the spiritual gifts, we understand God empowering His people to fulfil the mission of the church. The only reason we can do this, however, we know, is because we have received the greatest gift of God, the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ.

All the other gifts that we have come from this one great gift. It's only possible to possess and exercise our gifts because we have received Him. It is only as we are filled with His Spirit that we are empowered with His gifts. And it's only as we receive Him that in the words of Ephesians 4:15, we can grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped. When each part is working properly, it makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Again, we come back to that supreme ethic, empowered to love in service towards one another. So Christians, let's be challenged with the thought that you and I don't belong simply to God, we belong to one another. You have been given certain gifts which I pray that you may already know, and I pray that you will humbly seek God to understand about yourself. You've been given gifts which you are commanded to use to serve the church, and those gifts are given to you to humbly build up and mature the church, so that we will all become more like Christ and that we will all reach into the maturity that God would have for us. Let's pray.

Our God, it is encouraging, it is inspiring, and perhaps, it is also daunting to think that you've given us abilities, gifts to use for your church, even a church as small as us. We pray that we may use these things without fear, without trepidation, without thinking we might have it wrong, but to know, Lord, that ultimately, if they are from you, if they are guided by you, you will also be the one that gives us the opportunity to use them. So Lord, as we think about these things, and perhaps some of us try to learn about them for ourselves, we pray that you will steer us into knowledge, steer us into guidance, and help us to use them ultimately for your good purposes. We thank you for your church. We thank you that there is an avenue for us to serve you in such practical means.

We thank you that it is true that when we serve you, there is real joy that we experience. And so help us to direct those things in a way that is helpful. Help us to always remain humble, help us to understand that we work with one another as a team and help us to have that great vision of how the church becomes this beautiful, organised, orderly, functioning body that does a good work of growing others into your image and reaching the lost. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.