Dennis Tuuri

I’m going to be beginning a series today on spiritual gifts. And I think that Romans chapter 12 is a unit. And if I’ve got that right, then you’ll see that it begins with personal transformation. And the chapter concludes with victory over enemies and the joy that we just sang of. And then the content of the middle of the chapter, I think, has something to do with both those bookends. And I think it’s very significant to the work of Reformation Covenant Church right now.

So, we’ll be talking about spiritual gifts from this text and from others for the next couple of months. And let’s begin now by standing and listening to the reading of Romans 12 and today’s sermon text, Romans 12.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body, we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another.

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith. If service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good.

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, but fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another.

Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, “Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for telling us how to overcome the evil in the world, how to bring justice to victory, how to be those bright shining lights that continue what our Savior began in his resurrection and ascension and has empowered us to do by the Spirit to be gospel bringers, Lord God, in our lives in what we say and what we do to the end that victory might be happening as a result of our doing good.

Bless us, Lord God, in this series of sermons on spiritual gifts. Help each and every one of us to be meditating on what our role is that’s distinctive and a gift from you in the body of Christ so that we might indeed do it and do it with a good attitude in love for one another and as a result of that defeat evil with that good. Bless us to that end today, Lord God, by your Holy Spirit. Help us to understand this text and more than that to be transformed by it so that we might not be conformed to this world.

In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. We had an excellent meeting yesterday. Our first what we’re calling synch and training meetings with the leaders of the newly forming community groups. We’ll have one more training meeting in two weeks before the groups actually launch in mid to late February. So each of you will be in contact with your community group leaders to be setting up meetings in the last half of February.

So please be ready for that. We think it’s a very important aspect of what we do this year as we move into the new year. And you know, it’s kind of parish groups plus. And so the plus stuff is intentional discipleship. Trying to empower everyone to be fulfilling their role in the body of Christ. And as a result of that, both making the home that we have here to invite people to a more inviting place at Reformation Covenant and also so that we might shine as lights in the context of our neighborhoods with biblical sense of mission that we’re gathered to be commissioned to go into the world and to transform it with the gospel of Christ.

So that’s very important and I want to emphasize that this is a reset. And for those of you that have not been part of the parish groups in the past, we want to highly encourage you to attend the community group that you’ll be assigned to. Everyone regularly attending RCC will be assigned to a community group for oversight by a leader who’ll be praying for you and trying to encourage you whether or not you come to the meetings.

But it will be much better, I think, and you’ll be better served by attending the meetings if you possibly can. So, you know, we would encourage all of you to at least begin to attend these the first meeting or two. And so we’re kind of hoping that our participation in these community groups will be higher than it was in the parish groups and it will be effective in causing each of us to shine brighter.

Right? “Arise, shine, for your light is come.” That light is us into the world and we want to shine brighter. We want to have more wattage in our bulbs or lumens or whatever you call it. And we think that this kind of taking the community on Sunday into the communities we live in and the communities we fellowship in is a significant part of that. So please consider doing that and be receptive. You know, gladly receive contact from your community group leader as he gets in touch with you and encourages you to be part of the group.

And so to that end, it seems to me that one of the ways to make our house more inviting here at Reformation Covenant is to stress the importance of what the Bible talks about in terms of spiritual gifts. Now, it’s a topic that kind of, you know, in the 70s and 80s, there were these big deals about finding your spiritual gift and the lists were given out and you were supposed to figure out which one you had and there are these inventories you can still buy or download and try to discern what your spiritual gift is.

And it was really not, I think, properly approaching the teaching that we’ll find in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and other places about spiritual gifts. So we’ll say some things today that might be a little different and we certainly don’t want to fall into that kind of spiritual gift craze that sort of happened in a lot of churches in the 70s and 80s. On the other hand, I think that the other ditch in the road is to ignore these central texts such as the one we have here.

Romans 1-12 essentially is a proclamation or presentation of the gospel. And chapter 12 then sort of begins the application, the response to the gospel. And right at the beginning of that response is the significance of these gifts that God has given to every believer. You know, they’re kind of differentiated from the talent that you have when you’re born. When people are brought into the faith of Christ, the text seems to indicate, and others will that we’ll look at over the next few weeks, that God gives you this gift.

So, it’s a gift. It’s not earned. And this gift is for a particular purpose to cause the body of Christ to mature. We talk about body members a lot. Well, right along with that are these discussions of spiritual gifts. So, it’s important not to ignore that in spite of the excesses that you might have gone through if you’re an older one here in the past or what you might have heard before.

So, we’re going to enter into this topic and I want to begin. Angie did a great job, didn’t she, with the cover. I want to begin with the emphasis in Romans 12 where it puts spiritual gifts, you know, in this context of love. Angie did a great job with the cover. Sharon did a great job with the drawing showing the tenderness with which the ministry is happening in the coloring picture for the kids today.

So what we want to do is just go over the text kind of quickly, make some observations, and then we’ll be done with our introduction to spiritual gifts. Okay. So what I’ve done is just broken the text into particular sections that seem to me to make sense. And I’m starting with bookends. Okay. So the beginning and end of this thing of course are always significant. They’re the context for Paul’s discussion in terms of the basic response to the gospel and what we do having a relationship to spiritual gifts and using them.

So the context are these bookends and the first one is very familiar to us but I wanted just to point out a couple of things. So he says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God.” That’s beautiful language and right away life in the body of Christ and what he’s going to tell us here is the proper response to the gospel is framed in a context of love, kindness, consideration, you know, empathy. He doesn’t say, you know, “Now I command you find your spiritual gift, use that spiritual gift, yada yada.” No, what does he say? “I appeal to you.” And then he does it twice. The second witness to his love is that he’s appealing to them and he’s referring to them as brothers. Right? So there’s a camaraderie that the Apostle Paul shows here in the beginning of this text.

And so the whole text, well, there’s some specific things about love in a few minutes. We’ll say the context is this love and love not just as obeying the law. Okay? Love in the broader sense of the term where Paul is appealing to people to do what’s right. You know, I’ve seen so many a number of marriages over the last few years and you know, husbands, they don’t want to appeal so much as they just want to command. And it’s so out of sync with what the scriptures say. And to whatever degree, you know, we’ve encouraged that or let that happen in this church, I repent in sackcloth and ashes.

Paul has every right now in calling them to respond to the gospel to command them. And there’s a sense in which the word of God is always a command word. It’s a law word, but it’s a grace word. And right away, I hope you don’t think I’m making too much of this, but it’s so important because it sets the entire context of the discussion in Romans 12 of spiritual gifts specifically in this context of love, consideration, kindness, gentleness, right? Family tenderness to one another. And that’s what Paul does and that’s what we want to do.

You know, we’re trying to be careful as we establish these community groups and the leaders and all this stuff. You know, nobody’s like throwing up some new structure and then commanding everybody to get in line. We’re appealing to you that maybe this will be a vehicle that will assist you to do what Paul goes on to talk to them about that they might present their bodies as living sacrifices. Holy and acceptable to God.

You know, it’s interesting. You read the Bible and read the New Testament and who are we? We have here a picture of who we’re supposed to be in Jesus and it seems like a lot of times in our lives in America today, particularly in a secular setting, there’s a pretty big disconnect. I mean, we come here and we say, “Okay, yeah, I got these spiritual.” But he’s saying, “Present your bodies.” In other words, everything that you are has to do with a response to the gospel that what Jesus has saved you to do.

This is intentional discipleship. This is calling each and every one of us to be full-time disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ to grow in him and consecrate everything that we do to the service of the kingdom. I suppose that’s obvious, but it’s life shattering. I mean, when a person does that, when they recognize that this just isn’t a little part of their life that they’ve tacked onto their life, Christianity, this is who they are. This is their identity. They’re supposed to be people that are responding to the grace, mercy, love, kindness of Jesus, speaking through the words of the apostle, appealing to us as brothers. We’re responding by wanting to serve Jesus full-time. Full-time Christian service is what we’re all doing. And so, it’s supposed to penetrate our lives.

All right. Okay. I don’t want to I can, you know, these it’s hard doing an overview, but let’s move on quickly. And then very importantly in verse two, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Wow, that’s significant. Very significant.

Well, there’s two different words that are used here. He says, don’t be conformed to the world. The word used there is kind of like the basis for a schematic, a diagram. And it’s kind of like a cookie cutter, right? Everybody’s cut out the same. You’re conformed to the image of the world. And so the two options for you are either be conformed to the image of the world, looking like what the world wants you to be. In which case, you’re conformed just like the guy next to you and just like the guy next to them. You’re all the same.

On the other hand, if you want to accept, you know, who you are in Jesus, you’re transformed. Different word. And it’s the basis for our word metamorphosis. It means you become a beautiful embodiment of something that’s quite individual, quite distinctly you and not just conform to some cookie cutter image. You know, I’ve used this example before, but Star Wars, that’s what you know, if you think of Star Wars and the Stormtroopers, right? They got masks. They all look the same. They’re undifferentiated. That’s what the world does.

Now, you know, you might have different haircuts and the and that and the other thing, but everybody’s doing pretty much the same secular thing out there in the world. And when you don’t serve and dedicate yourself to the service of Jesus and all that you are, you’re going to become conformed to the world, okay? Particular group you hang out with, you’re going to be like them. But if you want individuation, if you want individualized, if you want to differentiate yourself, if you want to be like the rebels, too bad they’re called rebels, but in Star Wars, those guys all they have faces.

Faces are a picture in the Star Wars movies of differentiation and development as individuals. And that’s what Paul is saying here. He’s saying develop as an individual through the transformation of God’s word and discerning what’s right and wrong in your relationship with Christ in his body. That will produce in you a real character, someone distinct from someone else. You know, it’s interesting to me that as Christianity has waned, we have fewer and fewer characters. Judge Beers who was an important part of the history of this church, he was a character. He was, you know, you had little idiosyncrasies and would do different sorts of stuff.

And they used to have more characters because Christianity frees you as a metamorphosis. You’re changed more and more into the image of Christ. But as an individual in terms of who you are and that liberty, that sense of release of bondage to the world or bondage to your sin or wanting to, you know, make everyone around you happy or whatever it is, the peace and the release from that the gospel brings you should allow you to be a really at peace sort of person. And when you do that, you develop into a character with interesting idiosyncrasies.

Well, okay. So, the point here is that the setting for the discussion of spiritual gifts is this transformation that you’re called to so that you don’t become conformed cookie cutter image to what the world offers you. Okay? So you become fully who you are. So you know when I talk about spiritual gifts and your place in the body of Christ and a ministry you should get involved with and how has God fitted you, it’s not like one more duty on your checklist that you got to do something to help somebody else. It is that. But what we’re being told here at the beginning of the chapter is it is your path to recognize what God has made you individually into.

Okay. Now, as you look over these lists of spiritual gifts, and on your handout today, I’ve got six different texts from the Old Testament and their list of gifts. They’re not the same. And that’s because of what we’re talking about here. There are some things that different people were doing in different congregations, but it’s not as if that’s the list you have to choose from. Because the whole point of this is you’re an individual and God will give you a particular gift for use in the body of Christ that will bring you to differentiation and maturity as an individual.

And so, you know, we don’t want to get stuck into this idea that there’s only like 20 spiritual gifts and you got to pick one. That’s not the idea at all. The fact that the gifts are not the same means they’re not exhaustive or conclusive. And so, it doesn’t mean that. So, what we’re saying here is it’s really important for you as a person to become fully who you are to go through the transformation of becoming a beautiful butterfly, right? To go through that and to keep developing in beauty and differentiated beauty in terms of who you are as an individual.

It’s really important that you attend to what he’s going to say now, and that has to do with your place in the body of Christ. Now, the other book end is significant too and as I just said, you know, it does sort of there’s a transition. And in chapter 13, he begins to talk about the civil magistrate. And so there’s that application. But here, I think he’s still talking about the church and our relationship to the church.

And we’re going to have difficulties. And he tells us in the context of that not to take our own vengeance on each other. Okay? And so he says you not to do that and to instead, you know, don’t, you know, overcome evil with good. Verse 21, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Now, here’s the deal, folks. To the degree the community groups are effective and to the degree that this set of sermons on spiritual gifts is effective and gets each of us a little more involved with what we’re doing with each other and our place in the body of Christ and our particular ministry which will make us happy. There’s a downside. It means that you’ll be operating in the context of community more and that means friction can happen. You know, if you’re all by yourself all the time, it’s not much fun. But on the other hand, it’s not much trouble, right? If you’re going to hang out with people and do evangelism or teach Sunday school or get together and do work days at the church or whatever it is, whatever your ministry is, you’re going to get together with people. There’s going to be an opportunity for friction.

As soon as you start to do something in the church, probably friction will happen to a certain degree and problems will occur. And you’re going to say, “Well, geez, that was a mistake.” No, it gives you the opportunity to move to the end of what this involvement means. And that’s overcoming the evil that lies in each of us with good. It means that we power through the frictions by, you know, loving each other by not repaying evil for evil, but by loving each other and doing good to each other.

And so, you know, Paul acknowledges at the end that there’s going to be problems as you get more and more involved in the life of the church and then in the life of your community. But the end result of that, number one, he tells us the solution, overcome evil with good. And that’s a bit of a promise, too. That’s how Jesus brings justice to victory. He overcomes the evil of the world in the large sense of the term through good. What good is he talking about here? Through the good of the service that you perform in the context of the body of Christ using the gifts that the Holy Spirit has sovereignly given to you and empowered you for service with.

So I think that this is you know this beginning of the response to the gospel in the book of Romans and Romans 12 is telling us how victory will be ushered in. It’ll be ushered in by each of us you know lovingly patiently serving each other serving the body of Christ as it seeks to affect its community in the broader world as we go about doing those things, as we take up ministries in the church and as we let the work of the Holy Spirit shine through us in the particular way he’s made each of us, we become whole people.

The church is matured and the culture evil is driven back through good. Now, that’s something worth doing, right? You know, with God, it’s always the small things. It’s the guy, you know, carrying that ring through difficult times and nobody even notices him to cast it into the fire that will destroy it. It’s those small little things that we do that the scriptures over and over again says carry the power to transform cultures.

So it begins by calling us to transformation. It ends by promising us difficult times more of an opportunity for friction. But the answer to that and that the answer will indeed bring victory to the world. Does that make sense? Hope you got that because that means the center stuff should be quite important to us. If that’s what it says, okay, then what is the center of this that tells us how this is going to happen?

Well, so part two is verses 3 to 5. And so now we move into the center where we acknowledge unity through humility and sobriety. Now, the way this is going to work is unity and diversity are what spiritual gifts is all about. And we’ll see this in all these texts we look at. We’ll see it here in Romans 12. We’ll see it in 1 Corinthians 12. We’ll see it in Ephesians, right? All this unity stuff. And then he gives gifts to the church, particular men, particular gifts, individual people doing their thing.

So, unity and diversity. And he stresses unity here at the beginning, but he does stress it through humility and sobriety. “For by the grace given to me, again, you know, those aren’t just throwaway lines for Paul. It means the whole setting for this is gospel. The gospel grace is what Paul is communicating to them. I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Okay? For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. So we though many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. So what is he saying? He’s saying that there’s an essential union. And that the individual exercise of the faith, the grace, the gifts that God has given to us has to have as its context the understanding that we’re not doing this as lone rangers. We’re doing this as part of a body. We’re a little cell here or there and the whole functioning of the body is what is being stressed here.

And how do we do that then before we get to the actual description of the gifts? He talks about he’s telling them the manner in which it should be had. And this is essential. The manner is love, right? So, what do you do? Well, you don’t think more highly of yourself than you ought. And when we get to gifts, you may think, “Wow, I’ve got the gift of preaching.” You know, I realized as I was studying through this stuff, I don’t know if I realized, but it came to me, and I think this is right, that public teaching for me is this is a gift. It’s a spiritual gift. It’s not who I was. I’ve told many of you this. When I was a kid, you know, I’d be frightened of going and buying a candy bar and I’d send my younger brother up to pay for it, right? And I’ve been like that all my life and I continue to be like that.

I have a hard time, you know, in most things, you know, calling people or doing this or that. I’m shy and retiring, but I’m not up here. Why? Well, I think it’s just a gift of the spirit to me. And so, I could then say, well, my gift is pretty darn important. I’m getting up in front of everybody. And I think that’s what Paul’s referring to here. You have to keep yourself not thinking that you are more important than you are. Every part of the body, the unity that we ascribe to means that every function is just as important as every other function.

Don’t think more of yourself than you ought to think. You know, this is like uh you gift pride, right? So, I can do this and means I’m better than everybody else. That’s not love. So, right away he tells us now have humility. Think with sober judgment. You know, be calm, be sober. Don’t be goofballish about this stuff and estimate that what you’re doing is your particular function in the body, but there are many other functions going on. So, he stresses unity in the exercise of the gifts.

And then he acknowledges diversity through the exercise of the gifts themselves in verses 6 to 8. Okay? So, he says, “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. Let us use them.” That’s pretty much it. That’s the message of spiritual gifts. God’s given you something that’s probably your particular deal. Don’t be prideful about it. Have sober judgment. Recognize you’re part of a body that everybody’s got something. And you just do what you’re supposed to do. And as you see what God wants you to do, do it. As you recognize what you can perform, what God has gifted you for through the work of the Holy Spirit, do it.

It’s that simple. Now he goes on to talk about particular gifts that are operative at this point in the church of the Romans and he lists out things right prophecy in proportion to our faith, service, gift of service, exhortation. So he lists some, he lists some specific individual gifts here and so he stresses the diversity that each of us are fully an individual. We’re not stormtroopers here. We have faces and the faces look like all these different kinds of things but they’re differentiated. So there’s unity and then there’s diversity. As I said, this is a common theme whenever gifts are talked about.

Ephesians 4, he goes, you know, we’re familiar with the text, “One body, one spirit, one hope, one lord, one faith.” We’re all attaining to the unity of the spirit on and on and on about unity. And then he says, “But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gifts.” Same thing. So he stresses the unity of our working together and how we’re to accomplish that, love. And then he stresses the individual aspect of our gifts.

Turn to 1 Corinthians 12. We’ll come back to this next week, but look at this. 1 Corinthians 12:4. If you could turn there in your Bibles, please. You know if I keep saying unity and diversity you should be thinking something you should be thinking God right the Trinity is unity and diversity and that’s being reflected in the use of spiritual gifts and unity now verse four says this: “Now there are varieties of gifts so Romans 1 Corinthians 12 is the other major passages on spiritual gifts and he says well there are varieties of gifts so there’s a lot of different gifts but what does he say but the same spirit so diversity of gifts unity because there’s one spirit.

There are varieties of service things that we do but the same Lord and there are varieties of activities but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each one is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. So again there the goal is the common good. The way it’s accomplished is unity and diversity. And that unity and diversity is specifically talked about in 1 Corinthians 12 is relating to the Trinity—spirit, son, father. And we’ll talk a little bit more next week about how that lines out with the way he describes this. But I wanted you just to see that and at the beginning of a discussion of spiritual gifts in the church, unity and diversity is what it’s all about. Okay.

All right. Unity. So then number four, we’re to love genuinely. So the exercise of these gifts, how we go about doing it is more important, I think, than the gift itself. And he goes on to instruct us about how to do this and to do it in love. So verse nine of our text in Romans 12: “Let love be genuine.” So genuine love, don’t just pretend it. Don’t just put on an act. If you know, but let it really come from your heart.

Now, let me just pause there. You know, you hear all this stuff these days about how God works from the inside out. And I’m going to talk about that in this series as well. And there’s an important truth to that. Out of the heart springs these things, and we don’t want to ignore the heart. On the other hand. If you say, “Well, I don’t really feel like being kind to this person, so I’m not going to be because I don’t want to be hypocritical about my love.” You’ve messed up the idea of this thing.

God uses external actions to train our hearts. Okay? You’re going to get to genuine love if you start by just trying to do what’s best for other people. We talked about this with marriage, right? If you bless people, people that you don’t even like necessarily, what you’re going to find over time is you start to like those people. And so this doesn’t mean love means you’re not supposed to do anything until you have good feelings about somebody. But it’s saying don’t just love them in your deeds, which is good. Don’t kill them. That’s love, right? But be genuine about it. Work to the goal that you really love that person.

And so he says, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good.” So the opposite of love being genuine is evil. So love and evil are the two options. So what we have here is not just a bunch of commandments as the fulfilling of love. We’re to love genuinely.

Okay, getting back to Paul, “Love one another with brotherly affection.” You know, again, I hear people tell me, “Well, yeah, I love my wife. I did this, this, and this.” Well, where was the affection? “Well, I just did what I was supposed to do as a husband.” That doesn’t cut it. Okay, that’s not what it’s about. It tells us here that the exercise of spiritual gifts specifically is to be done with a genuine love for people that you’re ministering to and that will grow as you continue to minister.

And he tells us specifically, love is not just the completion of the law or doing things that you’re required to do. He tells us that love is this aspect to it of brotherly affection. If you think you’re serving the body of Christ and you’re exercising your gift and there’s no affection. In fact, if your exercising that gift is not characterized by brotherly affection, useless, no good, not what is called for. That’s not what will prosper us as a church.

God isn’t going to bring people into this church and grow RCC if we have that kind of attitude at work. If we’re just trying to do what’s required without brotherly affection. You know, God loves his kids and he’s going to put them in churches that love them. He’s not going to put them in churches that are maybe great on keeping the law and knowing what the law is and all that stuff, but where they’re not going to be loved with brotherly affection.

Why would God send his kids to that kind of school or that kind of group? You wouldn’t. We wouldn’t. God doesn’t. He goes on to say, “Outdo one another in showing honor.” You know, you’re supposed to actually be competing with each other to be kind to each other and to give people weight and glory. You know, when you exercise a spiritual gift, you can think, “Well, that’s a spiritual gift. What I’m supposed to do, and I do it with somebody, and you know what they do with it is their business.” No.

You’re supposed to give honor to the people that you serve. In this church, we should be a church marked by brotherly affection. That’s the goal. And we should be a church where there’s no doubt that we’re all honoring each other, giving each other weight, looking up to each other, being competitive about it, even about giving each other honor, glory, weight, esteem. We’re supposed to esteem one another.

Spiritual gifts are great. Glad you got the gift of evangelism, but if you’re not loving and you’re not brotherly affectioned and you’re not giving honor to the people you’re talking to, bad. We’ll get to how bad in just a couple of minutes. “Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord.” So the exercise of spiritual gifts has this component of love that is actively involved trying to do things. So we’re to love.

That’s the context here. “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.” Now one thing I might just mention there, hospitality is one of the gifts according to the gift lists, right? But here says to everybody, show hospitality. So, that’s another thing you got to recognize with the gifts. Some people are really good at showing hospitality because God has gifted them to do that. It’s a grace from God. But that doesn’t mean we all shouldn’t be doing some degree of hospitality. And it doesn’t mean that if you’ve got the gift of hospitality, everybody else is a jerk because they don’t do it like you do, right?

There’s this gift projection thing. “Well, it’s easy to show hospitality. I have people in my house two, three times a week. What’s wrong with you?” “Well, maybe it’s easy for you to get up and preach, Dennis, because it’s a gift. It’s got nothing to do with your natural abilities. And God doesn’t give everybody the same gift. Well, it’s easy to talk to people about Jesus. I go out there and evangelize. And boy, this church is all goofed up because you guys aren’t really cranking out evangelists all over the place. You’re not all doing that. Wait a minute. It’s a gift. We all have an obligation or a duty, a joy to talk to people about Jesus to some degree, but in a particular city church and I think that’s this is addressed to some people are going to be particularly gifted at evangelism even though we’re all required to share the gospel of Jesus.

Okay. So love is the context for the exercise of spiritual gifts. And if you don’t have love you don’t have much. Paul says that in 1 Corinthians 12. 1 Corinthians 12 goes into 13. Right? So in 1 Corinthians 12 we’ll look at it next week. All about spiritual gifts again. And then he says in verse 31, “Earnestly desire the higher gifts and I will show you a still more excellent way.” And then he says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

Well, there it is. This is why I wanted to start with love. The exercise of spiritual gifts, the way you exercise them in love is more important, I think, than the exercise of the gift. I believe it is. Paul says here, he takes one gift, right? There’s all kinds of gifts and one of them he’s listed as speaking in tongues. He just chooses one. I don’t know why that one, but he does. And he says, “Look, I got a spiritual gift. I can speak in tongues, but you know what? If I don’t do that in love, not only is it non-effectual, it stinks in the sight of God.”

He says, “I’m like a clanging cymbal or a banging gong.” Do you know where cymbals and gongs were typically found? In pagan temples. God, wake up. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. See us. We love you. Bang, bang, bang. Look at us. We love you. We’re doing great things. We got to wake God up and get him to look at us.

And so the text tells us that you got a spiritual gift and you’re not exercising it in love. What is your motivation? You’re trying to prove yourself to God. You’re trying to gain God’s presence and favor to you. That can frequently be the case. And God says that stinks. It’s a denial of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s a denial that this was a gift I gave to you to be exercised in love. So, not only is love significant, it becomes all important in the exercise of our gifts.

Now, again, I’m not I don’t want you not to do ministry that God’s called you to do until you get a loving heart. I’m saying if you got a gift, if you got a ministry, do it. But do it in love. Make sure you understand the context. If you don’t do it in love, you’re not going to become differentiated and transformed. You’re being conformed to some pagan idea of worshiping God. Okay? Cookie cutter image. And if you don’t do it in love, you’re not going to achieve victory over evil.

You’re in contributing evil to the world through the exercise of the gift. The gift doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily using it or that you’re using it properly. Love is the absolute required context. And you know the rest of the text, right? 1 Corinthians 13 goes on to talk about that. It ends in verse 14, “Pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts especially that you may prophesy.” So again he links them together. Pursue love in the context of doing your spiritual gift. And so the text in Romans and Corinthians tells us about that.

Now there’s I was going to talk here about hardness of heart and we’ll come back to this in a future sermon. You can look up those references. It’s on the outline. But let me say this, and I’ve decided to do a full sermon on this because I think it’s so important. You know, in my 30 years of ministry, I’ve seen hardness of heart. I see it in a few people right now. Usually, there’s a few people at church at any given time whose hearts are hardened.

And the Bible talks about this. The Bible says to Christians, you can forget the nature of your salvation and who you are. And that God graciously saved here. You can forget that. The Bible says you need to be renewed by the Holy Spirit and you need to have your heart right with God and you need to have a heart that is open. I know people that could care less what the elders say to them about a particular difficulty going on in their lives. They may feign, “Oh yeah, we want to hear from you.” But they never take advice, never particularly want to get together. They just want to go on their little way even though their way is miserable.

Why would people be like that? I mean, why? I mean, God gives them he gives them the gift of men to encourage them in their walk with Christ, right? And they don’t make use of it when they’re suffering. Well, because they’re, the Bible talks about a hardness of heart condition. It says your forehead can be blunt as a rock. Your heart can be as hard as a diamond is what can happen to us. And I’m, like I said, I’ll talk more about this in future weeks, but that’s true of you. You should be careful not to end up with a hard heart and the evidences of a hard heart are this you know kind of “my way or the highway.”

You don’t take instruction. You don’t take correction. You really don’t want the people around you who are going to disagree with what you particularly do and this that or the other thing and as a result your life becomes miserable. The fact that love is the context for the exercise of the spiritual gifts reminds us and the fact that love is connected to otherly affection, not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought, humility, service to other people. It’s the requirement for exercising gifts in a godly way.

All of these things tell us that as we begin a discussion of spiritual gifts in this church, we have to address our heart condition. We have to pray that the Lord God would not give us hardness of heart and that if we have hardness of heart, he soften us. And we do that through the other people at church. We’ll talk more about that in the future, but it’s it’s so important, right? David said in Psalm 119, “The proud have forged a lie against me, but I will keep thy precepts with my whole heart. Their heart is as fat as grease, but I delight in thy law.”

Your heart can get as fat as grease. And you can sit here in these pews week after week and you can, you know, make a mess of your life and not listen to other people who want to bring correction. I know people in this church right now. Is it you? Is it me? I don’t know. But as we begin a discussion of spiritual gifts, it’s really important that we do a heart check.

And I’ll be talking more about that in weeks to come. Evidences of hardness of heart. But the significance of love to the exercise of gifts points us to the significance of our heart toward one another. That’s how you find out if you have a hard heart. How you treat other people, right? How do you hear what the elders have to say to you? So, love that comes from a heart, right? The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart.

And so, love and its significance tells us as well that’s what’s central to this. All right, some closing comments at the bottom of your handout. We’ll go over these quickly and then we’ll be done. One, every Christian has a spiritual gift or gifts. So we just read that to each one of you this grace has been distributed. So this is talked about over and over. Now if you look we’ll be talking about this more too but in Romans 12:3-6.

Let me read this real quickly. Write that. I think it’s on your handouts. Romans 12:3-6. How to discover your gift. “By the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment. So think with sober judgment. Don’t be prideful. Consider what you’re good at doing, what God has gifted you for in terms of the scriptures and service to Christ, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body, we have many members, etc. So we though many are one body in Christ. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.”

So he says, first of all, have sober judgment and not prideful. Consider what you maybe should be doing in the body of Christ, what you’re gifted to do. Secondly, he says you live in the context of a community and that community will help you discern what your gifts are. People around you can speak to your life, get counsel, get advice, and also make use of the various opportunities in a church for ministry. Try things out. And then three, when you get then to an understanding of what you do, do it. It’s that simple.

If you think this might be my gift, do it. Get involved. So, everybody has a gift and the scriptures give us some instruction and we’ll come back to this in future weeks about maybe how to help you think through what your gift is too.

Two, the manner of the exercise of the gifts is as important as the gift. And as I said earlier, I think it’s probably more important than the gift. 1 Corinthians 13. So, you know, before you get into a big long exploration of which gift you’ve got, understand that the more significant thing is a willingness before God and a commitment to him to use it in the context of love, the manner of the exercise of the gift.

Three, the gift lists indicate that they are not exhaustive individually or collectively, but illustrative. So, they illustrate some gifts that are at work in a particular city church, but they’re not exhaustive. And so, don’t think you have to choose one of those. 1 Peter 4:11 seems to provide two categories of gifts. So, here’s what we read in 1 Peter 4, verses 10 and 11. “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God. Whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

To him be the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” So, it seems like Peter may be telling us and we’ll look at this in a couple of weeks that there are two kinds of gifts. There’s speaking gifts and there’s serving gifts. And that may help you to differentiate where you lie. Has God gifted you with the grace to serve other people administratively? Whatever it is, or to speak things, speak or service, those seem to be two categories of gifts. And you know, it’s interesting because I think probably the two officers of the church are kind of like that.

The elders are have to have speaking gifts. And the deacons have to have serving gifts. And we all got to do it in the right way and love. And you know, so it doesn’t mean elders don’t serve and it doesn’t mean deacons can’t speak truth or teach, but it does mean their primary significance is the teaching gifts or the serving gifts.

Five, some have categorized the gifts under the three offices of Christ, prophet, priest, and king. We’ll talk more about that in the future. There’s another way to look at these gifts, and we’ll look at that at kind of a Trinitarian way of looking at it.

Six, we are to steward these gifts, right? And be content with the ones we possess. So, 1 Peter 4 verse 10 says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” So, if you have you have a gift as you go about doing that thing, you’re to steward it. So, you’re supposed to kind of know what it is, mature it, make sure you’re exercising it properly in the body of Christ.

Seven, we should avoid gift projection. I mentioned this earlier. I can do it. Why can’t you? We should avoid gift confidence, thinking that somehow because I can get up here and teach, I’m right with God. No, not necessarily. It could be a clanging gong thing that you don’t see, but what God does see. So, we don’t want to have confidence ultimately in the gift that God has given to us. Jesus specifically tells us that some people were given the gift to cast out demons and yet weren’t right with God. And he tells them on the day of judgment, “Depart. I never knew you.”

So, you know, gift confidence, gift projection. And then finally, gifts can be thought of as tools while fruit, the fruit of the Spirit is its environment and goal. And so, the ultimate purpose or ultimate goal of these gifts according to 1 Peter 4:11 says this, I just read the speaking and serving thing and he says that the end result of this is in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the gifts that you’ve given to us and distributed to us. We thank you for the significance of love in those gifts, for its context. We thank you for unity and diversity. Bless us as a congregation, Lord God. May we become brighter lights for you this year through an application of the truth of these texts we’ll be looking at on spiritual gifts in Jesus’ name we ask it.

Amen.