January 14, 2007 Epiphany 2C
Sermon Title: “Realize Your Giftedness”
Series: How to Have a Happy New Year
Text: Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, 1 Cor. 12:1-11, John 2:1-11
Dr. Steve Jackson
Delivered on January 14, 2007
“Now Concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.” 1 Corinthians 12:1
Realize Your Giftedness
Today we’re looking a the second of four ways to have a Happy New Year in 2007. Last week I began this series of messages by pointing out that the arrival of a new year always presents a time for reflection and personal evaluation for most of us. We typically resolve to change our lives by either beginning or stopping doing certain things. I went on to suggest that if you really want to have a great year, you should consider making some spiritual changes in 2007. Specifically I said there four things you can do, which we’re going to talk about in the four sermons in this series if you want to have a great 2007.
In last week’s message I presented the first of these four things, which is to recognize God, especially in the everyday moments of our lives. Why? Because God is everywhere and if we want to have a great year we need to discern his movement and activity in our lives in the large ways and the small ways and then join Him in whatever it is he is trying to accomplish in and through us.
This week, the second thing I would like to suggest for you to do is to realize your giftedness. If you would get those handy Scripture
inserts out of your bulletins and look near the bottom you’ll see the reading
from First Corinthians and you see Paul address the issue of spiritual gifts.
He begins in verse 1 of chapter 12 by saying, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want
you to be uninformed.” Would you underline that passage on your sheets? It
seems as though there was a lot of misinformation circulating about spiritual
gifts in the church in
By the way, if you’ll excuse the shameless commercial plug, we are beginning a study of First Corinthians tonight in our Sunday Night Bible Study where we’ll be looking at many of those issues. They’re issues you and I still have today. I hope you’ll consider joining us as we study some of those issues together.
At any rate, Paul writes to explain some of the key principles about spiritual gifts in this chapter. And so today I want to do two things with you – using all the texts of the day. First I want to talk about “What you need to know about spiritual gifts.” I’m not going to do a full-blown teaching on spiritual gifts, that would take an entire series of messages. I’m just going to give you the four most important facts about spiritual gifts that Paul offers us in the First Corinthians passage.
The second half of what I’m going to talk about answers the question, “Why we need to realize our spiritual gifts.” That is, why we need to activate those gifts and begin living them out in our lives. There’s got to be a reason for it, otherwise I wouldn’t be teaching that if we’ll do the four things we’re talking about here on the first four Sundays of January we’ll have the kind of fantastic year we’re all looking for.
What you Need to Know about
Spiritual Gifts
Let me start with what you need to know about the gifts. And let me start talking about that with a definition of what a spiritual gift is.
A spiritual gift (Greek charismata) is a special ability
(empowerment, enablement) given by God to every believer to serve and to
minister, in order to strengthen the Church.
There are four things you need to know about spiritual gifts and they’re all contained in that definition and in this passage from 1 Cor. 12.
Variety of Gifts
The first thing you need to know is that there are many different kinds of spiritual gifts, Paul writes, there are “varieties of gifts” (v. 4). There’s not just one kind of spiritual gift. Our God likes variety. In fact, there’s not even a comprehensive list of spiritual gifts to be found anywhere in Scripture. There are three key passages in the New Testament on spiritual gifts (Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4) containing about twenty or so different gifts. But even within those passages there are discrepancies. So don’t get hung up on what the specific gifts are, just understand that there are a variety of them.
Given by God
The second thing you need to know about spiritual gifts is they all come from God. Clearly that’s something Paul is trying to emphasize in this passage. He writes, “Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone…” (skip over to verse 11) “All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” So, Paul says, there are a variety of spiritual gifts, but they all have one source: God. They are supernatural abilities, empowerments or enablements bestowed upon us, gifts given to us by God himself.
Every Believer Has at Least One
The third thing you need to know about spiritual gifts, something that was mentioned in the definition I gave you and in the last verse I read, verse 11 is this: Every believer has at least one spiritual gift. Look again at verse 11, “All these are activated by one and the same Spirit (they come from God), who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” Spiritual gifts aren’t some special thing only the spiritually elite possess. They’re not for a few but for all. Some of you may be thinking, “Pastor Steve, I’m a believer and I don’t know of any spiritual gift I have.” My response to you is, you may not realize what your gift is, you may not know what it is at all, but the Bible says you have at least one. And that’s what this sermon, and this challenge for the new year, is all about – each of us needs to discover what our spiritual gift is (gifts are), and we need to be acting on that giftedness, living it out. You may need to do a Bible study on the spiritual gifts, you may need to make that a prayer point in 2007. The simple truth is though, you have at least one spiritual gift.
Spiritual Gifts are Given to
Strengthen Others
The fourth and final thing you need to know about spiritual gifts found in this passage and in our definition is that your spiritual gift or gifts weren’t given to you for just your own edification. Look at verse 7, “To each (there again, we all got one) is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” This is the thing that many believers lose sight of: Spiritual gifts are given for the common good. You received your spiritual gift(s) from God to strengthen others. This doesn’t mean, of course, that the person who has the spiritual gift gets no joy or benefit from it. But it does mean that spiritual gifts are given by God to be shared with others. They aren’t given by God to be hoarded. A spiritual gift is an expression of faith meant to strengthen faith; yours and others’, when you use it.
That’s really all you need to know about spiritual gifts: there’s a variety of them, they all come from God, every believer has at least one, and they are given for the common good, not just for your own edification.
Why you Need to Realize your
Spiritual Gift
Now let me turn to the second part of what I want to say this morning in this challenge to us all to realize our spiritual gifts, and that is to answer the question of why? Why do we need to realize our spiritual gift, why is it so important that we do this as we enter the new year? The answer, I believe, can be found in the three other texts we read for this morning, Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, and John chapter 2 verses 1-11.
Because The Lord Delights in You
The first reason you need to realize your spiritual giftedness is found somewhat hidden in the Isaiah passage in Isaiah 62:4. It’s not something I specifically mention very often to you in my preaching, but it lies behind each and every word I’ve ever uttered from the pulpit. It’s only five words, but it’s five of the most wonderful words you’ll ever hear. Are you ready? Hear this: “…the Lord delights in you” (Is. 62:4). Did you hear me? The Lord delights in you. Let that sink in for a moment.
You know, I suppose if I were to go around the room this morning and ask, most of you would probably say you already know that God loves you. You’d agree that he knows every hair on your head, and every thought in your mind even before you think it. You’d say he knows everything you do and that nothing can separate him from you.
But have you ever thought of the fact that God delights in you? Do you know what that means? Those of you who have children of your own may have some idea of what it means to delight in someone. I take great delight in my children. Those of you who have known true love in your own life may have an inkling as well. Though she and I often carry on with you here on Sunday mornings, joking about our relationship, there is little in this world that delights me more than Donna.
I probably shouldn’t do it because I’ll have to keep my emotions in check, but I think I got a glimpse of “delight” whenever I was around Bob and Diane Allen. They delighted in one another’s company. Delight is much deeper than love, it’s much deeper; deeper and wider. It’s hard to explain.
We struggle to get our hands around the concept of delight don’t we? For some it’s a hot fudge sundae dripping with chocolate sauce. For others it’s tickets to the big ballgame. For still others it’s time in the outdoors away from the hectic pace of daily life with a fishing rod in your hands. For still others it’s a trip to the shopping mall or an afternoon spent in the day spa being pampered.
Truth is, we can’t even fathom the depth of delight God feels about us. All our human examples of it fail. The best Isaiah could do was to liken it to one’s wedding day, when the skies are clearer and the air is cleaner and there is apparently nothing ahead but promise and bliss.
But what does the fact that God delights in us have to do with spiritual gifts? I believe it relates because when you delight in someone you wish only the best for that person. And nothing pleases you more, not even your own success or pleasure, than they’re succeeding and their living out their life as God intended.
I feel that way about my own children. Why shouldn’t God feel that way about me. I also know my parents felt it about me. I recall glimpses of delight in my dad from years ago. I remember some days when we’d be practicing football when I was in high school and I’d look up from the field and see my dad leaning on the fence watching football practice. And I remember the night I got ordained as a minister and looking into my dad’s eyes and seeing his delight in me.
I guess from a practical, pastoral perspective that’s why I’ve felt such deep
joy this weekend and in recent weeks as I’ve watched the body of Christ in this
church (“my children” in some sense) living out its giftedness. Each one
playing his or her part in our financial crisis this summer, in building the
clinic in Yama, in our ministry campaign in the fall, in helping the Hoover
family, and, most recently, in attending to the Allens’ needs in their time of
loss this past week.
What I’m saying is we should discover, embrace, and live out our spiritual giftedness because when we do God is up there leaning on some celestial fence watching us “practice” and delighting in us as he sees things on earth happening like he created and intended them to work. Not that he loves us any more or less. Nothing can change that. But because we want Him to delight in us. We want to please Him in every way.
Because He Is Our Fountain of Life
and Light
The second reason we should realize our giftedness is found in Psalm 36 verse 9 and it’s because when we do we discover God’s “fountain of life” and because it’s in “your [God’s] light we see light.”
Water (fountains) and light are the two images in this sentence. They are common biblical metaphors because both are essential for life to exist. I don’t know about you, but over the years I’ve discovered that there are certain things that suck the life out of me, and certain others that seem to pump new life into me.
Being stuck in traffic sucks the life out of me, so do pushy, rude people, eating the wrong kinds of foods, and not getting enough rest. Other things seem to fill me with energy and new life: things like worshipping God, going for a good, long walk, and more to the point of this sermon, being used in ways that I have no doubt were from God.
There’s just something about getting on God’s wavelength that seems to make living so much easier, everything seems lighter, clearer, and less burdensome. It puts a bounce in your step. There’s a freedom there that you don’t sense any other time.
What I’m trying to say is that a lot of people are walking around “thirsty” and “stumbling around in the dark” because they aren’t living out their giftedness from God. Instead of “feasting on the abundance of God’s house” (Is. 62:8) and “drinking from the river of His delights” (ibid) we are accepting what my good friend Dallas Willard calls “dreary substitutes.” Instead of enjoying the fullness of life God intended for us (John 10:10) we go around hungry and thirsty, bumping into things in the dark. I ask you, Why would we ignore our giftedness and fail to enjoy God’s fountain of life and his light that lights up the world when He stands there today, offering these gifts to us?
Because It Glorifies God and Helps
Others Believe
The third reason I want to give you why it’s important to realize your
giftedness comes from the gospel passage in John. There we learn that doing so
always reveals God’s glory and helps
others to believe in Him. The story is the familiar one where Jesus
performs his first miracle, turning water into wine. And there, in the very
last line of the passage we read, “Jesus
did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of
The final reason why it’s important to realize your spiritual gift is because God’s ultimate aim in giving us spiritual gifts is that His glory might be revealed and that people might come to believe in him through the faithful exercise of those gifts.
On one level the story of what Jesus did at the wedding at
When it comes right down to it, the goal of all our activities should be to bring glory to God. There is a very famous catechism of the faith called the Westminster Catechism which is a series of questions and answers about the Christian faith. The very first one of these asks, “What is the chief end of man?” The answer given is, “To glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”
There is a sense in which that is indeed what everything is about: glorifying and enjoying the Lord. If one of the things that discovering, embracing, and living out our spiritual gifts does is to bring glory to God and bring others to faith so we can all enjoy him, then it is imperative that we do this – little in life is more important actually.
And so I challenge you; let’s make doing this a priority in 2007 individually and as a church. After all, when we look back at 2006 and we see the ways where when we did exercise our specific spiritual giftings we see that God blessed us and others in miraculous ways, and God got the glory, and, I believe, some people who didn’t believe before at least started down the road to faith. Since that is the case – and it is – then why shouldn’t we make it a priority in 2007? We should!
The more we do this, the more opportunities God will give us to exercise our faith and our giftedness. I praise God for that in advance.
In conclusion…The Bible says every believer has certain abilities which the Holy Spirit has given and which He wants us to use to strengthen others. One of the greatest joys in life is to discover what those giftings are and then to pour yourself into others by the exercise of these gifts. Therefore…
Let’s Recognize God in our midst, and then
Realize our giftedness,
walking in his light,
giving our Father, who is delighted in us,
all glory and honor, thus
helping others to believe in Him.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.