07-10-11 A Little More On The Gifts

Last week we spent our time together

looking at the 2^nd of 6 principles

given to us by Paul

to help us correctly understand

how God designed the Church to operate in the world.

That principle is given to us in Romans 12:3-21,

and in it he told us that each Christian

has been given by God

both a special gift

and what Paul calls “a measure of faith” for the use of that gift.

In the course of that study

I mentioned to you that the gifts God has placed within us

will operate just fine

whether or not we are ever able to paste a label on them.

God did not call us to learn a system.

He called us to enter into a remarkable union with Himself,

a union in which He places His Spirit within us

and then literally lives out His life through us on a daily basis.

This is truly one of the greatest wonders

and greatest mysteries of the Christian life.

Paul gives us an excellent description

of this remarkable arrangement

that exists between God and His people.

It was a statement

that was originally made by Paul

not to us,

but rather to Peter

at a point in Peter’s life

when he had succumbed to religious intimidation

and replaced the life of Christ within him

with submission to a religious system-

a set of rules

that then made him appear more acceptable,

and more pious to those he wanted to impress.

The incident is recorded for us

in Galatians chapter 2:11-21.

Peter and Paul were both in Antioch at the time.

When Peter first arrived

he joined into the life of the church there,

sharing in their meals together,

making no distinction between Jewish Christians and non-Jewish Christians.

But then a group of distinguished Jews came to town

and began to criticize Peter for his association with these non-Jews.

Every pious, faithful first century Jew knew the rules.

They knew that

according to their religious traditions

just being in the presence of a non-Jew

made them “unclean”.

And, even though Peter knew that, in Christ, there is no such thing as Jew or non-Jew,

still the pressure became too great for him

and he pulled away from his non-Jewish brothers and sisters,

refusing to eat with them.

When Paul saw what was happening

he publicly confronted Peter for his hypocrisy,

and then, in verses 14-21 of Galatians chapter 2,

Paul quotes for us the speech he made to Peter.

And I have to tell you,

I am so very grateful

that Peter messed it up here and got it wrong.

First of all, I’m grateful because it reminds me once again

that even the most mature forget sometimes

and it makes it easier for me to believe

that it really is this GRACE in which we stand.

It never has been about being able to do it perfectly,

and that truth makes it easier for me to live with myself.

It’s all about learning,

and growing,

and forgetting,

and learning,

and then growing some more,

always immersed in the presence and love of our King.

And I’m also glad Peter blew it,

because if he had not,

then Paul would never have made this public speech to him,

and we would never have received

what I believe is the most powerful one verse description of true Christian living ever written.

Do you want to hear the words with which Paul concluded his public confrontation of Peter’s blunder?

After dealing with the specific issue of Peter’s behavior,

Paul concluded his speech to Peter

by applying the principle to himself.

He says,

GAL 2:20-21 "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly."

Are you frantically trying to live for Christ?

How’s it going?

Do you end your days

filled with gratitude to your God

for all that He’s done?

Or do you end them

rather discouraged,

and filled with a sense of failure

because you failed to keep all the rules perfectly?

Or, even worse,

do you end the day filled with a subtle spiritual pride

because you think you did pretty well with the rules,

and you obviously did better than that person next to you.

You know, don’t you,

that Christ never asked us to try to live for Him?

Such an arrangement is always destined for disaster.

It will lead us either to a dismal sense of failure and defeat,

or to an ugly, arrogant, judgmental spiritual pride.

Let me borrow from Paul

and offer an alternative.

How about beginning your days by saying this:

“Thank you, Lord, for the presence of your Spirit within me.

Thank you for Your commitment to live your life through me.

This day, once again, I will trust You to give me eyes to see

the things You want me to see,

and the strength and desire to do the things You want me to do.

I will rest in Your promise to live through me,

and I give You the praise and the honor

for whatever You choose to do.”

I know you thought we were studying Romans.

I know, too, you thought we were studying spiritual gifts.

But I bring all of this up

because the heart of this whole spiritual gift thing

goes right back to this central truth of our walk with God through Christ -

He dwells in us,

He lives through us.

And when we see them correrctly

that’s all these gifts are -

they are simply one of the many expressions of His life being lived out through His people.

If it helps us to place a label on some specific aspect of Christ’s life through us,

that’s fine...label away!

If it helps to call it a “gift”,

that’s fine, because it is,

just so long as our focus always remains

not on the GIFT,

but rather on the GOD who is living through us,

not just in the area of gifts,

but in every aspect of our lives,

daily working for our healing,

for our growth,

and for the kind of productivity

that He knows perfectly fits

with His unique designs for each of us.

Now, I had planned to move on to Romans chapter 13 this morning,

and to the 3^rd principle for life in the family of God,

but I’m going to hold off on that until next week

because there are a couple of areas of application growing out of this whole gift thing

that I don’t want us to miss.

The first application

concerns a fascinating message

that I see imbedded in Paul’s teaching on the gifts,

a message that has tremendous power to bring healing into our lives.

The older I get

the more aware I become

of how desperately the entire human race

is searching for some affirmation of significance.

At it’s most basic level

do you know what’s really going on in the marriage relationship?

In marriage both husbands and wives

are asking their mates the same basic question -

“Do I have significance? Do I have value? Does my being here matter?”

And in the most remarkable and powerful way

when the marriage relationship is working as God designed it to work

the husband can effectively answer that question for his wife,

and the wife can do the same for her husband.

And if they do not...

if either of them fail at that fundamental calling in their relationship with one another

the marriage will encounter tremendous difficulty.

But that same search for a sense of significance

goes far beyond the marriage relationship.

To some degree

it is at the heart

of everything we are doing in life.

I recall seeing a TV drama some time ago

in which a family was caught up in the belief

that there was a great world government conspiracy that was out to get them.

The family wouldn’t even allow a phone line

or an electrical wire into their house

for fear THEY would use the wires to listen in.

When I was watching the show

I found myself wondering

why in the world people would ever get pulled into such irrational behavior.

And then it hit me -

Of course! It’s another little game we play

to prove to ourselves that we have significance.

If some huge government conspiracy is out to get me,

if they’re watching me,

and listening to me,

it proves that I matter,

I’m important,

I have value.

Obviously most of us don’t get into such irrational reasoning processes in our search for the validation of our significance,

but at the same time

our separation from our God

has created the same hungers within all of us.

Because we are eternal beings,

formed in the image of God,

we know we have tremendous, eternal significance.

But apart from our God

we have no way to validate it

and in desperation we turn to the unreliable voices of our fellow human beings

who are all too busy trying to validate themselves

to be concerned about what’s going on inside of us.

But one of the thoughts that crossed my mind

as I was looking once again

at God’s teaching to us concerning the gifts of the Spirit

is the remarkable underlying message that is built into what He’s saying to us here.

Look at this!

When God Himself tells you and me

that He wants to personally express Himself through us,

and that He is equipping each of us

with our own personal gift

and our own measure of faith for that purpose,

and then, when He goes on to assure us

that He wants that expression of Himself

to be blended with our own distinct personalities

so that it is uniquely our own,

He is providing us with one of the deepest sources of healing we will ever know

from this internal agonizing over our own significance.

God Himself has honored us

by allowing each of us to have a part in His work on this earth.

And in the process

He will allow us to touch the lives around us

in ways that no other human being could ever do.

Of course,

we do tend to muck this whole thing up a bit

by continuing to focus on the voices and the lives of those around us,

forever wondering what God is doing through them,

and how it compares to what He’s doing through us,

and worrying about what those around us think

about what God is doing through us,

and on and on.

But through it all

God’s message of healing to us is clear -

we truly do have great and eternal importance

because we have great and eternal importance to our God.

And then just one additional thought here

before we move on.

If you are God’s child,

living in union with Him through faith in Christ,

and you continue to wrestle with feelings of insignificance

or unimportance,

it may be because you are attempting to evaluate

the value or success of the life of Christ through you

on the basis of the cultural success measures

forced upon us by the society in which we live.

Our society measures success and effectiveness

on the basis of “how many?”,

“how big?”,

“how much?”.

That is not God’s way.

Most of the time,

with most of us

God entrusts into our care

just a few other individuals -

sometimes only one or two.

Faithfulness in our stewardship over the gifts God has given us

is never ever measured by how many,

or how big,

or how much.

It is measured on the basis of our heart response

to whatever stewardship He has entrusted into our care.

If that stewardship involves just one other human being,

it is every bit as high and noble and significant a calling

as if it involved hundreds.

Andrew and Peter were brothers.

Both were disciples of the Lord when He was here.

When we look at the record of Andrew’s life

we see him bringing to the Master just one man, his brother Peter,

and one little boy with a basket containing a few fish

and few small loaves of bread.

Peter, on the other hand,

stood before thousands.

But I think it is fascinating to see

what the Lord chose to do

with what we would consider to be

the very limited stewardship He entrusted to Andrew.

He took the one man that Andrew brought

and multiplied that man’s life into a multitude.

And he took the one boy he brought

and used that one boy’s lunch to feed a multitude.

James and John were brothers.

Both of them were within the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples

during the few years He was on this earth.

John was chosen by the Lord

to live longer than any other apostle,

and to be the person who would bring into being

two of the most influential documents ever written - The Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation,

as well as three other shorter but no less powerful letters.

What He wrote

literally changed the human race forever.

His brother, James, on the other hand,

wrote nothing, did very little, and was dead within months of the resurrection of Christ.

But when Jesus was here in the flesh

in the most remarkable way

He was able to draw strength from his friendship with James,

motivating Him to make certain that James was next to him...close to Him

at every critical point during His time with us.

John was able to touch the people of God in unique ways,

but James was able to touch God Himself in unique ways when He was here in the flesh.

What our God assigns to us is never the issue.

What He chooses to do with it is not the issue.

The only issue we ever need to be concerned about

is our heart response to the stewardship He has entrusted into our care.

Then, I would also like to offer one other observation

about something I see God telling us

as He outlined for us

His design for the Church, especially as we’ve seen it in this section of Romans.

The true Church,

the one designed and established by Christ Himself,

operates differently than any other human organization on earth.

I didn’t say much about this last week

because we had so much to cover

and so little time to cover it,

but I want to emphasize it now.

I don’t know if this will interest you,

but I have to tell you it fascinates me.

You see, whenever we human beings put together any kind of group,

or organization,

or governmental structure of any kind

there is always a hierarchy of both power and position within that structure.

Someone will be the president,

or the general,

or the chancellor,

or the King or Queen,

and one, or a very few will have a great deal of power,

and the rest will have little or no power or control.

But when Christ designed His church

He did something unique in all the world.

When Paul looked for an analogy

to help us better understand the true nature of the church,

he didn’t say it was like an army

or like a nation,

he said it is like a human body.

There are many members,

many different parts,

and each is needed,

each is equal in value,

and each is dependant upon the others.

And then he tells us that the head of this body

is Christ Himself.

Now, it is true

that God has established a form of designated leadership within the Body of Christ.

But it is a leadership that exists

not to control the Body,

but rather to protect it

and to make sure it is properly fed and nourished.

Listen to this -

these are the words of Christ Himself

as He prepared His followers

for the life they would know in the Church.

MAT 20:25 But Jesus called them to Himself, and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them.

MAT 20:26 "It is not so among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant,

MAT 20:27 and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave;

MAT 20:28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. "

And when the Apostle Peter,

who was universally recognized

as the designated leader of the Christian movement

during the first few years of its existence,

when he instructed his fellow church leaders

in the proper approach to church leadership, listen to what he said.

1PE 5:1 Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed,

1PE 5:2 shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness;

1PE 5:3 nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock.

1PE 5:4 And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

There are some fascinating words in that passage.

Peter says “shepherd the flock”.

A shepherd does not RULE his sheep.

He doesn’t use them,

or manipulate them,

or beat them into submission.

A shepherd protects,

and nurtures,

and feeds his flock.

Peter says, “not lording it over those allotted to your charge...but proving to be an example”.

I bring all of this up

because it is an essential part of our understanding Christ’s design for His Church.

We are so comfortable

with human governmental structures,

and if we are not careful

they so easily infiltrate the family of God.

And my warning to us here is simply this -

whenever you see a man or woman

seeking power,

or control over others,

or prestige within the church community,

know it is not of God.

That is not the way His church operates.

OK, with that we’ll leave this section on the gifts,

and next week move onto the third principle governing life within the Family of God.

And I think what we find in this third principle

is going to come as a surprise to some of you.