6. Gifts of the Spirit, Part 5

I heard this past week of a pastor who had his own form of shorthand.  And beside the listing of members on his own personal copy of the church roll, he had the initials "FBPO" beside certain names.  And quite inadvertently, his listing of church members got mixed up with other members of the church board, and they wanted to know what did those initials, FBPO, beside certain names indicate.  And he was a little bit hesitant to share with them, but finally he agreed to tell them what it meant.  He said, "those are our inactive members and the letters stand for 'For Burial Purposes Only'."

You have heard me refer to what some people view the church's role is "hatching, matching, and dispatching" ministry.  We are supposed to be around for births, because that's celebration.  We're supposed to be around for weddings, because somebody's got to do the ceremony.  And we're supposed to be around for the funeral, because somebody has to say a few "appropriate words".  And in-between that time, the church just kind of takes up some of the prominent property in communities. Its architecture's is either interesting or its grotesque.  And its pastors are either marvelous or ridiculous.  And the result is the church, for most people in our society, is for burial purposes only.  If that.  But that is not the Divine plan.

The Holy Spirit has been given, by Christ, to the church to give His gifts - not just to the pastor and to the church staff, who become the hired gun - but to every member.  In some churches, the pastors do too much, and the people do too little.  And the scripture says "to each".  Each has received a gift.  "Employ it for one another as good stewards of God's varied grace".  I didn't intend to say this, but parenthetically, let me say what the concern that has been expressed this morning, and that many of you have shared with me in private conversations, concerning the articles in the Mercer Island Reporter concerning youth problems on the Island.  Let me tell you, we have got, by God's grace, some fantastic young people.  Not only in this church, but on Mercer Island.  And what always happens is that the bad apples always stink up the whole barrel.  And if you are genuinely concerned about doing something, there's plenty you can do.  But let me suggest that rather than spend a lot of time dreaming for grand schemes, each one reach one.  Commit yourself, before God, to prayer support and to emotional support and to a kind of adoptive "uncle" and "aunt" support for some of the kids who come from shattered homes, whose lives are shattered - partly out of anger and hostility at those homes that they have come from - that are totally non supportive.  And if you want to know if it pays off, show up around CHIP or JCPs, and watch them.  Some of you will become very paranoid and you'll worry about the windows and the walls.  But I want to tell you, I will replace windows and I will pay for wall repairs out of my own salary in exchange for seeing the glorious changes God is bringing about in young people's lives.  Anybody can paint and plaster.  Only God, by His grace, can remold lives.  And I love this cheering section over here.  Some of you are scattered elsewhere too, but they're very special.  I know they're noisy before church, but some of you don't model that too well either.  All right, end of parentheses.

John Stott describes the condition of many churches, when he says in a little bit of doggerel in one of his books, "the rector is late, he's forgotten the date, so what can the faithful do now, poor things?  They'll sit in a pew, with nothing to do and sing a selection of hymns, poor things."  And that's the way a lot of churches seem to operate.  The church rides on the shoulder of its pastor.  And every so often, somebody says, "Oh, what's going to happen if Dr. Bud* left?"  Well, if Dr. Bud, but God's grace, has done his job, nothing will happen, except occasionally you'll say, "I kind of miss that guy.  What was his name?"  Because the body of Christ should be the fully functioning of every member, and thereby I become a member with a special calling and a special sphere of ministry, but no more critical to the existence and continuing growth and blessing of this church than any other member functioning in his gift.  That's why its so critically important that we know our gifts. Now, don't accuse me of false modesty, because that's never been one of my faults (or virtues).  I have, I think, a pretty good self-image.  I understand that God has gifted me and God has made me in a certain way, and I'm grateful for that, but do not vest me with more importance than God does. Nor should you vest yourself with less.

Now, there are some prerequisites to discovering your spiritual gift, and I have to remind you of them today, because it is the foundation.  Next Sunday and the following Sunday we will look at the specific ways in which you can determine what your spiritual gift is, and then we take Easter - we've got to celebrate Easter, that's too great, you've got to celebrate it - and then we'll get back into the specific gifts.  I promise you, I'm not just baiting you and keep...  You know, its like "come and see" every Sunday.  I feel a little guilty about that.  Some people get in the position where they say, "today we're going to hear..." and they kind of build up a little salivation problem and they come to church really expecting today, and then "...next week" they keep hearing.  That's not fair, but I am so absolutely convinced that this has got to build solidly.  I know its fun and exciting and anticipatory to get into the gifts, because that's kind of exciting, but the gifts will serve the body of Christ no purpose whatsoever unless it is on a foundation that is firm and solid and deep in the word of God.  When Jesus told the parable of the wise man who built his house on the rock and the foolish man who built his house on the sand, the houses (from all the description given in scripture) were identical.  And the conditions that struck those houses were identical: the rains descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat upon the house.  Nobody can tell me that that teaches that the Christian somehow has a "cozy corner" that God wraps him all up and keeps him sheltered from what Shakespeare calls the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."  We experience the same thing.  The difference is one is built on the rock and the other is built on sand.  And I don't want to construct this construction concerning the gifts of the Holy Spirit unless I am convinced that, before God, I had been a workman that does not need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word, in order that a foundation is built under it.

First of all, then, the first prerequisite is: you must be a Christian.  Spiritual gifts are for spiritual people.  Please, do not make synonyms out of "spiritual" and what the popular usage today of the term "pious" is.  Piety, by the way, is a solid word.  It is a good word.  It is a word from history and from the scripture.  But its a word that carries with it, saccharin sweet connotations of hypocrisy today.  So we don't like to use it.  And don't make a synonym out of the word "spiritual".  We are called "spiritual" by the virtue of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is imputed to us, if we have faith in Him.  Now, why do I say a person needs to be a Christian?  Because spiritual gifts are only for Christians.  What does that mean?  "Be a Christian"?  To be a Christian does not mean you're a baptist or a Presbyterian or a Methodist or Episcopalian, or covenant.  To be a Christian does not mean that you are white or black or that you are republican or democrat or that you are anything else.  The passage of scripture that pastor Steve read from Colossians 3 says all of these human differences that fragment and separate people from one another are inconsequential if we are one in Christ.  And so the personal relationship with Jesus Christ - a person becomes a Christian by making a conscious commitment of their entire self - intellect, will, and emotion - in which they recognize that God in Jesus Christ has made a way to relationship with the Father:  I am not part of that way, I want to be part of that way; I need to invite Christ to come into my life to initiate me into that way, and walk with me on that way.  And that is what the Bible calls "born again" no matter what the sports pages are doing with that term.  It simply means an entire new life has begun.  Paul says in II Corinthians 5, "if anyone is in Christ, he becomes a new creation."  That's what is meant by "being a Christian."  Being a Christian does not involve sitting in church a certain number of painful hours out of each week.  Being in church is an expression of that which has taken place for many.

Now, I make it this clear and I try to cover this territory because I know there are people here every Sunday who do not have a commitment to Jesus Christ - who are, by Biblical definition, not Christians and I have to say I am so thankful you are here.  You are so welcome you can't even know how welcome you are.  Now, I don't even know who some of you are, because how can I tell who's a Christian?  The ones with white shirts?  Well, not necessarily.  You see, we sometimes like to judge on externals, and I know some Christians who don't look as much like Christians as some non-Christians.  Thank God its in the hands of Him.  Not me.  But the scripture makes it very plain that those who are born of the Spirit are the only ones to whom spiritual gifts are given.  Romans 8 says, "however, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if, indeed, the Spirit of God dwells in you and if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.  And in I Corinthians 14, in speaking of the gifts of the Spirit, it says, "but if all prophesy and an unbeliever - or an ungifted man - enters..."  Now, there the term "unbeliever" and "ungifted" are synonyms.  Therefore, only those who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ are given spiritual gifts.  Now, I know a lot of non-Christians who have enormous talents that dwarf any talents I may have.  But as spiritual gifts, as we have defined them in previous weeks.  Therefore, that's the first prerequisite.

The second is: we must recognize the reality of such things as spiritual gifts.  I received a fascinating report after the first service this morning.  One of our members came to me and said, "Pastor Bud, you need to know that two people approached me this week who were very critical of you, and of the series of sermons you've been preaching."

And I said, "well I had more than that myself."

And she said, "but there were two people who approached, and I think you might be interested and find their criticism beneficial."

And I said, "good.  Lay it on me.  I've been stroked this morning, so I'm secure."

And she said, "one person said, 'I believe pastor Palmberg is entirely too harsh toward the Charismatics'"  (using that term in the incorrect way - "towards the tongues speakers" in other words).  "'He is entirely too harsh, judgmental, closed".

I said, "Now what was the other criticism?"

"The other criticism is, 'Pastor Bud is entirely too supportive of the Charismatic movement'."

I must be doing something right.  Because both of those brothers and sisters, whoever or whichever they happen to be, are going to be driven to the word.  And that's the authority.  And I've had people say to me, "boy since you've been in this, you've said some things that oh boy, I've gone home and I've gotten my Bible out and I really dug in."

And I say, "Praise the Lord, isn't that exciting!"

That is about time that we study to show ourselves approved unto God.  You are not coming here for a weekly injection of spiritual vitamins from the hired gun.  You have the scriptures - and if you don't have one, see me afterwards or the deacons will provide you with a Bible.  But we want you to become men and women of the Book.  And if you are men and women of the Book (and, by the way, if you find that I am wrong in what I proclaim from here, you show me - from the word.  I don't care about your opinion.  Give me your authority.  And it'll be corrected.)  We are, therefore, of necessity for the prerequisite and understanding and receiving and knowing our spiritual gifts, we not only have to be born into His Kingdom - we not only have to have His Spirit living within us (or, be a Christian) - but we must also believe in existence and reality of spiritual gifts.  If you are ignorant and never been informed, or ignorant because of misinformation, then you are right in line with those to whom Paul wrote in I Corinthians 12, when he says, "Brothers, I don't want you to be ignorant concerning the spiritual things."  And there are some people who do not recognize the reality of spiritual gifts, because nobody ever talks about it.  And when other pastors find out that I'm in this series and have been for who knows how long, and how long I'll be, they say, "Boy, I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole in today's church climate."  And that's why there are so many people who are ignorant of what the scripture teaches and they don't know they are gifted people.  And they walk around with feelings of invalidity and insecurity.

Now, as you study the scriptures, you must come to understand that gifts exist.  There is no other possibility.  The gifts exist!  And if you are a Christian, you come to the understanding the scriptures teach that you have at your spiritual birth been gifted.  That you are therefore responsible to discover and to exercise that gift for the building up of the body.  The gifts, I say again and again, have never been given to give you a "blessed buzz".  The gifts are given to build up the unity of the body of Christ.  And the fact that you see gifts being abused in different segments of the church society today, does not mean that there is no valid reason to seek after the understanding of gifts.  If I'm driving across I-90 and some guy in a Galaxy 500 Ford cuts me off, drives me into the rail, and then proceeds to do that to three other cars, I do not thereby say, validly, "that guy that drove that car is not only a bad driver, but he is a lousy citizen and what's more than that, he's not even an honest man because he didn't stop for the red...  I therefore will never drive a Ford."  And there are so many people who, looking at the abuses of spiritual gifts, say, "well, look at all those abuses.  I therefore don't want anything to do with them."  Now that doesn't make any sense at all - and scripture is, of all things, sensible.

Third, you must be willing to go to work.  Another prerequisite for discovering your spiritual gift is you've got to get ready to get up and get going.  Someone has, probably accurately, described the church like a football game: 60,000 spectators desperately in need of exercise watching 22 men desperately in need of rest.  When this congregation had 35 members in it, every one of them wore three or four hats.  We were busy.  We knew there was a task to do, and you could look around and see that everyone else had their sleeves rolled up and "if somebody's going to do it, I've got to do it."  Since that time, God has blessed and prospered this congregation so that we now have between 600 and 700 people in two services on Sunday.  But what's happened is an inverted pyramid has grown up.  And if you look all the way down to the bottom, there are still 35 people working very hard.  And the body of Christ, as described in scripture, was never intended to be this way.  It was intended to be this way: the support system is enormous, as designed by God.  But as really experienced in the church today, it is enormously exhausting.  It should not be.  The steps to follow in finding your spiritual gift requires spiritual exercise.  The gifts you've been given are not for putting in a trophy case.  They have been given because God has work for you to do in His body.  He wants you to serve Him through His body, and His gifts are to equip you for that work.  Now, He knows how serious you are about going to work.  Some people would kind of like to look at the catalog and see what the possibilities are.  But even a great ship cannot be directed no matter how large that rudder, unless the thing's moving.  And if you want to discover your spiritual gift, you'd better be prepared to get up and go with it.  You had better be prepared to exercise it for the sake of the body.  You'd better be willing to get out of the spectator's seat and put on your overalls, and really put in the work and - not because there's going to be your listing in the bulletin, or because somebody's going to hand you a plaque - but because you have the incredible joy of participating in the building of the unity of the body of Christ, by His grace.  He knows if you want to discover your gift, because its kind of a kick to do, or because its the "in" thing.  And if so, you can just forget about it.  And you can forget about His help in your discovering of that gift, because that's a self-centered kind of a desire, and he's not going to honor that.  But, if instead, you promise before God - if you covenant with Him - that you will use that gift He has given to you by His Holy Spirit for His glory and the welfare of the body and realize that discovering gifts is not some sort of ego trip (it is an equipping for an active productive service), then I have every confidence that you will know, for certain, at least the foundational gift you have been given.  I'm still in the process of discovering things that God has given to me, but I know - at least some of the things He has - and I'm responsible for those things I know, being used.

The fourth prerequisite is prayer.  If your discovery of spiritual giftedness is to be useful and if it is to be kept safe from abuses, or from bad teaching - if it is to be guarded from distortion or divisiveness or arrogance or pride - it will be because it is wrapped completely in a living, vital, prayer life.  It will be because you spend time with His word, and because you spend time with Him.  Your quest must be steeped in a consistent prayer life, which results in a consistent lifestyle and behavior.  Otherwise you will succumb to the three basic abuses that exist today in the whole area of spiritual gifts.  That is: ignorance, and competition, and comparison.  Ignorance of unknown potential.  Ignorance of the realization: you are gifted.  God loves you so much He not only birthed you into His body by the death of Christ on the cross, but He has by His Holy Spirit given you gifts to be used as gifts to the body.  You see, spiritual gifts are not just received - they are received in order that they might be given.  And so, we want you to give your giftedness to the body in order to fulfill God's purpose and plan.  Now ignorance must be avoided.  That's why we're spending so much time in the preparation.

Secondly, competition has to be avoided.  And the only way you can avoid competition is if you spend an awful lot of time in prayer and with the word of God.  Competition says, "My gift's neater than your gift."  And then you get trapped into gift exaltation and all that stuff that we talked about before.

Comparison is the other problem.  And here, more likely, is where we are.  And that's the feeling that, somehow, your gift is neater than my gift.  Let me take just a moment to elaborate.  In his book "Psycho-cybernetics", Dr. Maxwell Maltz says at least 95% of the people have their lives blighted, to some extent, by feelings of inferiority.  And to millions, this is a serious handicap to success and happiness.  Now, the result of those kind of attitudes within the church is obvious, where needs are critical.  Where are the men and women to meet those needs?  And hand-wringers will say, "Well, its a lack of commitment on the part of people."  Well, it may be on the part of some people.  But more often than not, rather than lack of commitment, it is a lack of feeling that they have anything to offer.  There are an awful lot of people who are deeply committed to Christ who feel so poor that they've got nothing, really, to give.  I'm convinced that that's the sad conclusion an awful lot of Christians have come to.  Let me refer back to Dr. Maltz's book.  "Psycho-cybernetics", as you know, is not a Christian book, but truth is of one part.  He says, "It is not knowledge of actual inferiority in skill or knowledge that gives us an inferiority complex and interferes with our living - its the feeling of inferiority that does this.  And this feeling of inferiority comes about for just one reason: we judge ourselves and we measure ourselves, not against our own norm or par, but against some other individual's norm.  And when we do this, we always - without exception - come out second best."  Church, stop comparing.  God in His infinite wisdom and the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, gives His gifts as He wills.  You've got yours, and I've got mine.  And I may think yours is a neat gift, but boy so is mine.  That's the body of Christ in function.  Anything other than that: comparing our gifts with one another (in a sense of superiority or in the sense of inferiority) is really an act or mark of carnality - not spirituality.  And that's what was going on at Corinth, and that's why Paul writes to the Corinthians and says, "I don't want you to be ignorant concerning the spirituals"  And earlier in the book he says, "You know I would like to write to you as spiritual people, but you're not.  You just give all the evidence of being carnal people."  And one of the marks of their carnality was that they were trapped into the abuse of thinking less of themselves or more of themselves than they ought to think.

So, how do you discover your spiritual gift?  Well, we're going to get to that next week, but I think its critical that we understand why we need to discover them.  We need to discover them in order to be put to work, to use them, to exercise them.  Dr. Bill Bright tells the story of the Yates pool, which is an oil field in Texas.  He tells about how Mr. Yates bought that property.  He used it as a sheep ranch for years.  When the depression came, Mr. Yates used to spend just about all of his waking moments out there tending his scraggly little miserable sheep on those pitiful pasture lands, wondering how in the world he would ever pay his bills.  And then along, one day, came a seismographic crew.  They said, "We have reason to believe that there may be oil on this property.  Do you mind if we drill?"  Yates signed a contract giving them permission to drill on that basis that he retain 90% royalty of whatever they might hit.  At 1,115 feet, they hit the first well.  It brought in 80,000 barrels a day.  Another well in that same pool currently is bringing in 125,000 barrels of oil a day.  It is the largest pool known in the western hemisphere, and yet Mr. Yates lived on government welfare with that incalculable wealth under his feet.  And the body of Christ is so often characterized by people who live in a kind of spiritual welfare system, when God in His infinite mercy, has gifted us totally.  He writes to the Colossians and he says, "In Christ, you have all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily."  What more do you need than you have?  Nothing!  Discover what you have.  Live in the power of what you have received.  And rejoice in that

The Bible says we've been given those gifts.  Paul in Romans 12 - in his chapter on gifts - says at the very outset, "I say to you through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.  But to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith."  Now the English translation of that verse uses the word "think" three times.  The Greek actually carries with it a double connotation, because when he says "think soberly", the word translated "soberly" is also a form of the verb "to think".  And so what Paul is saying is when you're talking about spiritual gifts, as I'm just ready to start he says in Romans 12, "I want you to think and think and think think".  There is no way in which some of your apprehension and some of your concerns is rightly, Biblically, justified.  Some are so afraid they say, "When are we going to talk about gifts?  We're moving into something kind of spooky.  Something kind of far out.  Something kind of religiously esoteric!"  No we're not!  Paul says at the very beginning, "I want you to think.  I want you to think soberly.  Not to think more highly or yourselves than you ought to think.  And then with the outset and the outline and the foundation of a thinking approach, to what God has given, he moves into the gifts, which we are not moving out into the spooky fringes - we are talking putting our theology in work clothes and getting on with God's program.  The word is not interested in far out experiences.  And neither am I.  Far out experiences can be had with LSD or with demonic action.  And I'm not interested in either one.  If God, by His grace, should happen to give me some kind of a far out experience, I'd try not to freak you out with it because God may not choose to give you that.  Paul had a vision.  He had a vision so spectacular he couldn't remember if he was in the body or not.  But it was fourteen years old when finally they shaped him into sharing it.  Paul did not have "a vision a day to keep the devil away".  Paul was a man who walked logically, rationally, because God is a God of logic and rational precision.  And so as we move in now, we are not looking for titillation.  We are looking, by God's grace, for some tools.  And tools are to be used.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to quit and you'll have to come back next week.


* I was called Dr. Bud this last week.  I got a promotion and I'm grateful for that honor.  I'll never get one any other way.