Over the last few weeks we’ve been unpacking spiritual gifts. We started off in Romans 12:1-2 and we talked about offering ourselves as living sacrifices and being transformed by the renewing of our minds so that God can use us in ministry, in service to him and to others. A couple of weeks ago we also looked at 1 Cor 12:12-27 and we saw that we are baptized by the Spirit, into the body of Christ and that each part, each member, of the body is gifted in different ways to serve.
In 1 Cor 12:1-11 we looked at what I called “Manifestation gifts;” tongues, interpretation, miracles, healing, those kinds of things, and we saw that those gifts are available to everybody. God gives them as he chooses and they reveal the presence of the Spirit. If we want to see these gifts being used in the church we need to be willing to be used by God and focused on glorifying Jesus.
In Rom 12:3-8 we looked at what I called “Motivation gifts;” prophecy, teaching, service, etc., which are more specific to particular people. These are the gifts that those spiritual gift surveys identify. They tend to be unique to each person, something about the way God has made us as individuals. The important things about moving in the motivation gifts is to know yourself, know you’re part of something larger and know your gifts.
Then last week, in Ephesians 4:11-12 we looked at “Leadership gifts,” apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers. These are specific people who are themselves gifts to the church. Their particular calling as leaders is not to do the ministry but to equip the whole church for ministry.
So this morning we’re going to wrap up the
series by looking at the last of the major “gift passages” in the New Testament,
1 Peter 4:10-11. Each of you should use
whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's
grace in its various forms. If you speak, you should do so as one who speaks
the very words of God. If you serve, you should do so with the strength God
provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him
be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
That phrase “God’s grace in its various
forms” can also be translated as “God’s multicoloured grace.”
According to the encyclopaedia a good computer monitor can display 16.7 million colours, which is just as well because the human eye is really quite sensitive and can actually distinguish millions of colours. Of course that’s assuming you’re not colour blind.
Some people who aren’t colour blind, are colour dumb, like me. But I’m glad to say that Marilyn has worked hard at curing me of my colour dumbness and I'm almost healed. I used to break all kinds of rules that I didn’t even know existed. I’d get ready to go out somewhere and Marilyn would look at me and say something like, “You’re not going to wear that are you?” “No. I just thought I’d come downstairs and display what I wasn’t going to wear before I went and got dressed for real.” My favourite was the time she said, “Don’t you know you can’t wear black, blue and brown together. You look like a bruise!”
Well, whether it’s a bruise, or a flower, or a tree, or the sky, we can only see things because of colour. Pure white light is invisible. It’s only as it’s broken up into colours that we can it, or anything else for that matter.
At the beginning of his Gospel, John says, “No-one has ever seen God.” (John 1.18) Well, yes! One of the side effects of God being able to be everywhere is that you can’t actually see him anywhere. Then John goes on to say that, in Jesus, God has become visible. In other words, if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.
Then in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul says that the manifestation gifts of the Spirit make the Spirit’s presence visible. Once again, the Holy Spirit is invisible, but his presence is shown by the gifts he gives in the midst of his people.
And then here in 1 Peter, Peter says something very similar. It’s all very well for us to talk about God’s grace, about how good God is, how loving, how merciful. But those are only words until his grace only becomes visible in the lives of people like you and me.
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Like white light, God’s grace is invisible. You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. You can’t hear it. You can’t weigh out a kilo of grace and put it in a bag for me. It’s invisible.
How do you make white light visible? You shine it through a prism and it’s refracted, it’s broken down into parts and then you can see the colours.
How does God’s grace to the world become visible? By having it shine through the shared life of the church so that people can see God’s grace in our lives together.
In the Old Testament God’s character was reflected in his law. In the gospels God’s character is seen clearly in the life of Jesus, the Son of God. But after his resurrection Jesus returned to heaven. Where can God’s grace be seen in the time between Jesus’ ascension to heaven and his return to earth at the end of all things? In the church!
Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's multi-coloured grace.
How is the world to know that God is merciful unless those with the gift of mercy use that gift to serve others and then give the glory to God?
How is the world to know that God welcomes strangers and outsiders unless we practise the gift of hospitality and welcome strangers and outsiders into our congregation and into our homes?
How is the world to know the truth about who God is unless those of us who are gifted as prophets and teachers use those gifts to clearly speak out God’s truth?
Early on in this series we said that everybody is gifted. If you’re a child of God, if you’ve given your life to God and trusted Jesus to deal with your sin and make you a new person, then you are gifted with a gift or gifts of the Spirit. And so, Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's multi-coloured grace.
A steward is a manager. He or she manages something that doesn’t belong to them on behalf of someone else. Marcel Desjardins is the general manager of the Ticats. He manages the team and supervises the coaches. What does or doesn’t happen on the field this season will be his responsibility. But he doesn’t own the team. Bob Young does. Desjardins’ job is to serve as a faithful manager, a faithful steward, of what he has been given responsibility for.
It’s the same with us. Any gifts or abilities that we have are just that, gifts from God. Our job is to manage them well and serve others so that God’s grace becomes visible through us.
What does that look like? In this series I’ve split up the gifts of the Spirit three ways; Manifestation gifts, Motivational gifts and Leadership gifts, based on the passages I’ve been preaching on. Peter divides them two ways; into gifts of speaking and gifts of service.
If you speak, you should do so as one who
speaks the very words of God.
When Moses was about to die he declared all
of what God had done and said during the exodus through the desert. Then, “45 When Moses
finished reciting all these words to all Israel, 46 he said to them,
“Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that
you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. 47
They are not just idle words for you—they are your life.” (Deut 32:45-47)
In John 6:65 Jesus says, “63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The
words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.”
The essential character of God’s word is that it’s life-giving. One of Peter’s major concerns in the rest of his letter is about people in the church bad mouthing each other and he insists that in our conversations, our words should be used to build people up, not tear them down.
That’s even more true if you find yourself
with one of the speaking gifts; teaching, or prophecy, or exhortation. When I
get up here to preach on Sunday mornings the question I have to ask myself is,
“Does what I’m saying bring life?” Not, “Will people like what I say?” or “Will
it make people happy?” or “Is it easy to listen to, or funny, or interesting?”
but “Does it bring life?” Does what I have to say help us to live more like
Jesus? Does it help us to understand better who God is, to know him better?
Because in John 17:3 it says, “3 Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
If what I’m doing up here doesn’t serve that purpose then I might as well quit now. If our Bible studies and other teaching ministries are not helping us to follow Jesus, then we’re missing the point. Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Philip and Apollos, used their speaking gifts to proclaim the gospel to the world. Others like Timothy, Priscilla and Aquilla used their gifts to build up the church.
If you speak, you should do so as one who
speaks the very words of God.
If
you serve, you should do so with the strength God provides,
Others in the New Testament had service gifts. In Acts 9 Dorcas is described as “always doing good and helping the poor” (Acts 9:36); In Acts 6 Stephen, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas are identified as responsible for the social work of the church as they cared for the widows. And, just to stop us from falling into the trap of thinking that these gift categories are rigid, Philip is in that list too. Ministry in the church is based on gifting, not on position. Philip was an evangelist who also had a heart for the poor and widows, so he did both.
Over the centuries the church has taken
these charismata, these gifts, and made them into positions with titles like
“bishop” or “pastor.” But the only model for the church that we have to follow
is the one we find in the New Testament. And when we look there we see a
community of Spirit-filled Christians exercising their spiritual gifts with the
strength God gives them. Some, like Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Philip and
Apollos, used their gifts to declare the gospel to people outside the church.
Others used their gifts to sustain the internal life of the Church—Timothy,
Ananias (Acts 9:10), Mary the mother of Mark (Acts 12:12), Phoebe (
In Ephesians 3, Paul clearly states that his own “gift of God’s grace” as an apostle was “to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone my administration of this mystery” of the gospel (Eph. 3:7-9). Paul was an apostle; this was his spiritual gift. For him it involved evangelism and church planting as well as teaching and spiritual oversight. He wasn’t effective because he was some kind of superhero. He was effective because he was exercising the gift and calling he had received from God the Spirit.
Philip was an evangelist. Agabus was a
prophet. Dorcas “was always doing good and helping the poor” (Acts 9:36); that
is how she exercised her spiritual gifts. Lydia of Philippi led a house church
and practiced the gift of hospitality (Acts 16:13-15). Silas was a prophet
(Acts 15:32), and Phoebe was a deaconess (
They all had different gifts, just as we all have different gifts. But they all had the same goal; “that the church may be edified” (1 Cor. 14:5), that, “all reach unity in the faith and in the know1edge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining the full measure of perfection found in Christ” (Eph. 4: 13), and here in 1 Peter, “so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”
That’s why God gives
gifts to his people, so that the church can be built up. Why? So that we might
reflect something of God’s glory and that the world would see what a wonderful
God we serve and be drawn to him. Not only because “this is eternal
life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you
have sent.” But also “so that in all things God
may be praised through Jesus Christ.”
In the end it’s not
about us. It’s about him. The gifts and callings that God gives us are ways in
which we can make the invisible, visible. As he pours the white light of his
grace into our lives and we allow that to be refracted and shine through them,
we can make God’s grace visible to a world that desperately needs to see it and
be drawn to it.
That’s our calling.
That’s why we’re here. To serve others with the grace gifts that God has given
us and so to draw others to him.