Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:1-31

Sermon Title: The Believer’s Gifts

           While we have finished our series through the book of Colossians, we’re going to continue this week and next under the umbrella of our “Christ and the Believer” series.

For those of you who enjoy sports, you think about a game going into overtime or extra innings because the game wasn’t finished in regulation.

That’s kind of where we’re at.

These two sermons are going to build on what we’ve been hearing, especially being united with Christ and putting on a spiritual uniform.

There’s a reason why we’re doing this.

This year, I’ve been opening our Council meetings—that’s our elders and deacons—with a devotional published through our denomination regarding “Church Health.”

The health of a congregation is not just based on the numbers of attendees on a Sunday and a never-ending growth of those numbers, but there are a variety of indicators.

Some of the indicators in the devotional are the centrality of God’s Word, loving relationships, transforming worship, servant leadership, generous stewardship.

We believe in a number of these areas, we—Baldwin Christian Reformed Church—have pretty good health.

But we know and can admit we have weaknesses, just like any person and any body of people.

One of the devotional’s discussion starters a couple months ago was this question: “Which is the greater danger in the church today: people wanting to be great leaders or people not wanting to be leaders at all?” How we took that question is in our local church, do we find more people forcing their way into leadership positions throughout the church out of pride or lust for power or do we struggle to find people who are willing and eager to serve?

As a Council, we see the second of those options: we struggle to find people willing and eager to serve in leadership and in various capacities in our church.

By no means are we the only church that struggles with this.

A lot of churches, both in and beyond the CRC, struggle to find leaders and helpers for their ministries.

That said, as we do this check-up of ourselves, we’re hoping that in recognizing weaknesses or flaws or struggles, that we can work on these.

So, how do you get good or fitting leaders and helpers in a church?

At least part of the answer is you look for spiritual gifts and how you can use them and encourage others to use theirs. 1 Corinthians 12 is one of a few passages in the New Testament that talk about gifts that believers have.

A major nudge for me to preach on this also came from a series of messages from Alistair Begg.

Some of you know of and enjoy listening to him.

Alistair is a pastor in Cleveland, Ohio, but originally from Scotland—so he has a very recognizable voice, and the program “Truth For Life” puts his messages out on radio and podcasts.

As Christie and I were driving through Indiana and Michigan earlier this summer, part of a series that he did on spiritual gifts, based on 1 Corinthians 12, was being aired.

I don’t know if she remembers, but I got excited and thought that’s what our church needs to hear.

I’m tempted more than I ever have been to just play his messages, but those were for the church he serves.

There are other aspects that we can focus on for our context.

I’ll probably share links in our midweek update, if you would like to listen to his messages, but I trust God’s Spirit has been at work through all this for how we get here this morning.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I want you to imagine a Christmas party, or maybe it’s a birthday party for multiple people or some other event where gifts were passed out for more than one person.

For me, the image that comes to mind is Christmas day at my grandparents’ house as a young boy, and my entire extended family is gathered together, about 20 of us.

We’re sitting on couches and chairs around the room or sitting on the floor in the middle.

The presents aren’t just under the tree but spread a few feet in each direction.

As kids, we exchanged names and each had a toy gift and a clothes gift, the parents’ generation exchanged names and each had a gift, and there were presents to and from grandma and grandpa.

Each of the gifts had names on it, who it was from and who it was to be received by.

Usually, one or two of us kids were grabbing gifts and bringing them to grandpa or someone else to read who it was for, and then we’d bring it to that person.

They opened it, showed it off, and on to the next one until all the presents were gone.

I share that example not just because I enjoy getting and giving gifts and that’s a fond memory, but I share it because it shows a designated, specific gifting.

Each of those presents was intended for whoever’s name was on it.

It wasn’t one of these deals where you unwrap a plastic wrap ball that’s been filled with different items and whatever comes out, you get.

No, whatever your gift was, even when it just became an exchange of gift cards after a while, that was your gift.

Coming back to 1 Corinthians 12, there are many different directions we could go and matters we could take up.

By no means is my message today going to be the perfect and complete answer and explanation for everything going on here.

Where we begin, though, is the basics of spiritual gifts.

What I mean by that is hopefully by the end of this point, we’ll have answered all these questions: Who gives them?

Who are they given to?

Who has what gifts?

What is the Greek word “chareesma”?

What are the biblical spiritual gifts?

And what are the gifts for?

What the apostle Paul laid out for the Corinthian believers is an understanding that God, the only God, gives his people, who he knows, gifts that are unique to them.

When we look at the universal and historic church, made up of all Christians of all times, not every individual has or possesses the same gifts.

So, too, when we look at one congregation, like our own, we don’t all have the same gifts.

The Holy Spirit of God has gifted each believer something particular that they can contribute to the rest of the church.

There is debate over what the gifts exactly are or what they entail or if certain ones are still given and present in the church—I’m not getting into that today.

But it seems rather clear from verses 4 through 6 and verse 11 that all believers have been given at least one gift by God.

“There are different kinds of gifts…different kinds of service…different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men…All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.”

My gifts as an individual and a pastor weren’t given to me just because I went through an ordination process.

My gifts weren’t given by Western and Calvin Theological Seminaries.

My gifts and all of our gifts originate from God.

We want to get to this question of what the biblical spiritual gifts are, but before we can deal with that, there’s a Greek word that we should be aware.

It shows up five times in this chapter, as well as in two of the other spiritual gift passages—Romans 12 and 1 Peter 4, and that Greek word is chareesma.

I think you can hear a word that’s been passed down, which we would say in English, “charisma.”

When we read 1 Corinthians 12 verses 4, 9, 28, 30, and 31 that there are gifts, the Greek word being translated is chareesma.

In our day, you might hear some churches or believers claiming to exercise more supernatural gifts and they get called, “charismatic gifts” or those are “charismatic churches,” but to go to the source: chareesma is simply a gift.

Let’s look at the biblical gifts then.

Whether for a time in history or for all of time, God can give believers the spiritual gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing and the calling of a healer, miraculous powers and the calling of a miracle worker, prophecy and the calling of a prophet, distinguishing between spirits, speaking in tongues and the calling of one who does that, interpreting tongues and the calling an interpreter.

In terms of other spiritual gift callings, we read the gifting of an apostle, a teacher, helping others, and administration.

Those are all spiritual gifts that be given to and received by believers.

These are gifts we can be equipped with by God for use in his church and accompanying our faith.

The biblical list doesn’t stop there, though.

If we go to Romans 12 verses 3 through 8, we find added to the list, the spiritual gifts of serving, encouraging, contributing to the needs of others, leadership, showing mercy.

Ephesians 4 verses 11 through 13 adds the callings of an evangelist and a pastor. 1 Peter 4 echoes callings from these passages.

These are gifts from God.

They are not natural talents.

They are not just interests.

They are skills and contributions to the church of Jesus Christ, which our Lord has given to each of us as part of his body.

The last piece of establishing the basics here is what we read in verse 7, “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”

It is for the benefit of, the profiting of, the church.

They’re for use with the whole body as we also heard that imagery.

We’re not to read these passages and decide for ourselves or take any number of spiritual gift surveys to determine what our gift or gifts are and then decide to lock them behind closed doors, to keep them secret or hidden or only for our benefit.

No, God’s word calls us to use them in service to one another, to build up, to help in discipleship and in worship and ultimately for the glory of God.

These are the basics of spiritual gifts that all Christians can be on the same page about.

They are from God to all believers, unique, distinct, specific to them.

They are a “chareesma,” a gift that we have not earned or bought ourselves.

There are many gifts that have been given, each gift and person gifted is valuable according to the purpose of God.

These gifts are to be used to the glory of God and for the benefit of his body, the church.

How do we take this into our church, our life as part of the body of Christ together?

You and I can look at the landscape of churches that exist today and find great variety.

There are congregations of a dozen people or even less that gather and worship and operate where once there were hundreds of people.

There are also massive congregations, megachurches with thousands, even ten thousands of people, gathering and engaging the truth of God and his gift of salvation.

There are churches like ours that have a long history, and have seen both growth and decline in membership and wonder what the future looks like.

Other churches are just starting out, some with great enthusiasm, others with fear over whether they’ll make it.

There are house churches and other ways that believers associate that are different from the traditional church that we’re used to.

I bring those situations up not to say that one way of church is absolutely correct or that churches of a certain size are doing things right and everyone else must be wrong.

But Paul writes here and elsewhere about the church as “the body.”

He calls it, “A unit…made up of many parts,” all real parts are part of the body and not cast off.

All parts are needed, and according to verse 18, “…In fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be…” and they need each other.

In his church, God has given all the parts, all the gifts that are necessary to be the body.

To go back to what I was saying in the introduction, Council’s recognition—and I’m not trying to put myself or my fellow officebearers in hot water—but we recognize there are necessary, good, and beneficial parts of the ministry here at Baldwin CRC that we believe God has called us to, which are lacking people willing to lead and serve.

Yet we as Council don’t believe we’re lacking people with the spiritual gifts to lead and help in these ministries.

We trust that God’s congregation here at Baldwin CRC is still a part of this body that God has given all the parts for.