The Gift from the Good Shepherd

Introduction

When asked, which 2 holidays do you think Americans look forward to the most? Christmas and their birthday. Why do you think this is the case? For many people on Christmas and their birthday, they receive a gift. Whether you are 5 years old or 95 years old, receiving a gift is an exciting occasion and cause for celebration! Certainly as Christians we celebrate much more than gifts under a tree or the gift of time with family, but many get excited whenever we remember previous Christmas’ and the gifts that we’ve received. Whenever you were a child, if you were anything like myself, the day before Christmas was the longest night in the world because you’d have so much anticipation for the next day to be around family and to celebrate. Christmas is a fun holiday to celebrate regardless of one’s religious background simply because we celebrate with family and open a gift - even if it’s just a small one.

While a birthday might not be a national holiday, many humans look forward to their birthday - although I think there comes a point in our lives where we stop looking forward to that day! Whether you’re 10, 50, or 100 your birthday is a special day as you possibly receive cards or gifts from friends and loved ones.

I would argue that there is a 3rd day in which we receive a “gift” that is even more important than the other two. That is the day whenever you repented of your sins and trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior! This day is forgotten at times when we think about other major holidays or events like Christmas, Thanksgiving, the 4th of July or New Years Day. Yet, this day is even more important than all the others in the life of the Christian because we receive many different gifts! We receive forgiveness of sins, salvation, justification, peace, comfort, the Holy Spirit and so much more! One gift that we receive that we don’t talk a whole lot about in Baptist life is a spiritual gift. Tonight we’re going to study about spiritual gifts and note that every single Christian is given a gift from God! It doesn’t matter how old you are whenever you become a Christian, you receive a gift from God and He gives you a gift with an expectation: You’re expected to use your gift to further His Kingdom! Regardless of your age, if you are a Christian you have been given a gift and I want to encourage you to use that gift at FBC Salem! If you’re 80 and your gift is hospitality, come talk to someone and we’ll plug you in so that you can use that gift. If you or your child/grandchild are 8 years old and you have the gift of service, come talk to someone and we’ll plug you in somewhere so that you can use that gift. I’m a firm believer that we’re all in this together regardless of our age. We must be obedient to our Lord and use our gift!

These gifts aren’t of ourselves. They aren’t our natural ability. They aren’t of our own power. These gifts are given to us by the Lord to serve in His church and fulfill our purpose as His children. Let’s read this evening out of Romans 12:1-8 as Paul gives us some good news and some responsibilities.

Romans 12:1–8 CSB

1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. 3 For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one. 4 Now as we have many parts in one body, and all the parts do not have the same function, 5 in the same way we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. 6 According to the grace given to us, we have different gifts: If prophecy, use it according to the proportion of one’s faith; 7 if service, use it in service; if teaching, in teaching; 8 if exhorting, in exhortation; giving, with generosity; leading, with diligence; showing mercy, with cheerfulness.

Our Individual Command (1-2)

In the book of Romans, Paul hits on many key subjects: Grace, Salvation, Sin, Righteousness, Justification, Ethics, Charity, and more. Douglas Moo, one of the most respected commentators on Romans, shares that there are 6 key sections of Romans and the first several sections are strictly theological. In the first 4 chapters we read about the extent of sin in our lives as sin separates us from God. In chapters 5-8 we read about the hope of the Gospel and how there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Chapters 5-8 of Romans are chapters of great hope! In chapters 9-11 we read things that are foreign to many of us because those chapters don’t get talked about all too often. We read about God’s promise and plan as well as our responsibility. Finally we get to chapter 12-15 and we read about how the Gospel changes our day to day living. Romans 12 begins by sharing with us that the Gospel not only changes our head but the Gospel changes our heart. This is good news, church!

Paul arrives in Romans 12:1 with a full head of steam. He’s been talking about salvation and what God has done for us and he gets to verse 1 and we see him say, “therefore...” Whenever there’s a therefore, we have to go back and see what it’s there for. Why should we present our bodies as a living sacrifice? Because of the mercies of God! Where do we learn about that? Read Romans 1-11! Paul has spent 11 chapters talking about what God has done and how He has lavished us with His mercy and grace. Because of what God has done, we are expected to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. This is what is commanded of us. This is the only appropriate response to Jesus! In other religions, you are told that you have to make sacrifices to receive mercy - in Christianity, we receive mercy and our response is to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice.

Some people get a little confused about this command, though. They say something like this, “I prayed the prayer when I was 5, so it doesn’t matter how I live my life.” Certainly we have a relationship with the Lord and that is between us and Him - but does Jesus just want 1 moment of your life? No. He demands all of our life as we talked about this morning. He wants our all! Christianity isn’t so much about individual moments in life as it is an entire lifestyle of submitting to and following Jesus Christ wherever He leads. In the Greek the word for living sacrifice is “zosan” and that is a present, active, verb. Meaning, we don’t just present our bodies as a living sacrifice one time and call it good. No, this is a daily command for us to lay our life down as an offering to Jesus and let Him lead us however He see’s fit! It’s a daily call to come and die.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor during WWII, once said this, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him to come and die.” What does this mean? It means that whenever you follow Jesus, you must lay your life down and watch the Lord completely change your desires from the inside out. We don’t offer blood sacrifices of animals, we offer a living sacrifice, our bodies, to the Lord. This is our command today.

We are living in a world that says that we don’t need to do anything for anyone beside ourselves. A world where the idea of presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice seems crazy. A world where people stress to just go with the flow and do whatever is right in your own eyes. How many of you have cell phones? Over the years the number of people with cell phones have exploded to the point that most people nowadays have a phone. If you have an iPhone you know that every single year it seems like they come out with a new model that’s supposed to be faster, lighter, and better than previous ones. As technology continues to change, older models start to work a little slower and less efficiently. Why do companies continue to come out with newer and better things? So that you and I would be forced to buy the latest and greatest thing. Why do iPhones continue to change the power cord? So that you and I have to pay $15 to buy a new cord to charge our phones. If you don’t conform to the new way that things are done, you’ll be left in the dust - at least so they say. Technology is a great thing - it’s an asset in many regards as technological advances make our lives easier and help us live longer. Yet, technology also makes us conform to it rather than allowing us to use it. Technology loves to become our master rather than allowing us to master it.

Paul warns his audience in Rome to not be conformed to this age. We are living in a world that desires mass conformity. A world where the Christian worldview is quickly becoming looked down upon. Why is this the case? Because, as Christians, we have freedom in Christ! Because we are free in Christ, we don’t look at things the way that the world does. We look at the world the way that Jesus does! We have a renewed mind. We are transformed. We don’t live the way that the world does. We don’t think the way that the world does.

In Romans 6 we read that before Christ we were dead and that we are no longer dead but alive

Romans 6:11 CSB

11 So, you too consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Spiritually speaking, we are dead to sin and alive in Christ. Because we are alive in Christ, the only acceptable sacrifice to give is a living one! How can we offer this type of living sacrifice? By living a life that is holy. By having a renewed mind. By following the Lord’s perfect will. By obeying His Word. By sharing His Gospel. This is our individual command that we must not take lightly!

Only whenever we listen to the Spirit and abide in Christ will we be able to discern and follow through with God’s will. To fulfill these commands, we must do 4 things:

Delight in the Word

Devotion to Christ

Daily Seek His Kingdom

Depend on Christ

As we find our delight in the Word of God we will be transformed from the inside out. As we live a life of devotion to Christ we will stand out in our world of conformity and serve as His witnesses. As we seek His Kingdom, we will lay our life down at the cross and seek to honor Him and do whatever He calls us to do. As we depend on Christ’s power and not our own, we will humble ourselves and present ourselves as a blank check to the Lord.

Our Corporate Responsibility (3-8)

In the next section of the text, Paul transitions from giving individual commands to addressing the entire body of believers. Later this week, many families around our country are going to be gathering with one another in order to celebrate Thanksgiving. Think of some of the sweet memories you have of family gatherings. You have yourself and your parents, possibly your siblings and you gather with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. You eat food, talk about what’s going on in life, play games, watch football, and as Baptists love to do - take a nice, long, afternoon nap! It’s always sweet whenever we have time to simply gather with our families because we’re reminded of the unity that exists. Does this mean that we share everything in common with our extended families? Certainly this isn’t the case. We have different jobs, different backgrounds, different views, and different beliefs. We’re different - but we’re still family. Growing up in Southwest Missouri, I’ve been a Cardinals fan my whole life. My entire family is comprised of Cardinals fans. We love the Cardinals, and that also means that we don’t exactly like the Chicago Cubs, their biggest rival. Do you know that God has a sense of humor? As God would have it, Lindsey is a Cardinal fan, but her mother and grandmother are huge Cubs fans. We’re apart of the same family, but we’re different! We cheer for different teams.

Our body is the same way. How many of you wake up in the morning and you already feel a little bit sore? You sleep on your arm the wrong way and your arm reminds you that you’re getting a little bit older! It seems like all of us have parts of our bodies that work a little better than other parts. Each part of our body is connected to the other parts but they all have slightly different functions. The brain tells our arm to move, our arm picks an object up, the heart pumps blood to the arm to be able to pick the object up. Our body parts are connected, but they are different from one another.

This is the same principle in the church. Verse 4 of Romans 12 reminds us that we are different in the church. There is diversity within the Church when it comes to our gifting. However, there is unity when it comes to our mission. Just like our physical body works together so that we can run a race - in the local church we have to work together so that we can run the race of life before us and fulfill our mission as we discussed this morning.

In recent years there has been a growing trend among proclaimed Christians that you can be a “lone-ranger” Christian. Meaning this: You don’t need the body. You can do it all on your own. You don’t need the church, you don’t need corporate worship, you don’t need accountability, you don’t need any of these things because… Christianity is *just* a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Is this person wrong? On one hand, no. Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ… But, Christianity is a whole lot more than that. Being a Christian means that you’ve been saved from the punishment of your sin. It means that you’ve been adopted by God into His Kingdom. It means that you are a co-heir with Christ. It means that you are saved to serve. It means that you are now apart of an eternal family. We’re not created to go through life on our own - read the book of Acts and you clearly see that the earliest Christians consistently gathered to worship the Lord together and to serve their community. We have a corporate responsibility to come together and to be the body of Christ - even if our world says otherwise.

In verses 6-8 Paul gives a list of several specific gifts in the church. In the modern church lots of people know their enneagram number, their horoscope, and possibly even their Myers-Briggs Indicator, yet lots of people don’t know what their spiritual gift is from the Lord. Here are 3 facts about spiritual gifts

Every Christian has at least 1 gift

We are given a gift to use it in the church

Every gift is important

Sometimes we look at what someone else has, especially during the Christmas season, and we get a little bit jealous. We like what we have but we really want what someone else has. The same thing can happen with spiritual gifts. None of us are immune from this comparison! The great Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers whose gift from the Lord was teaching/preaching, once said, “Wesley and Whitfield might preach the Gospel better than me, but they could not preach a better gospel.” What is Spurgeon arriving at here? There are always people who are gifted differently than we are but we must be obedient to the Gospel above all. Don’t look to your left or right, don’t compare your gift with someone else, use your gift and serve in the Church.

The gifts found in these verses are shown on the screen:

Prophecy

This gift isn’t so much speaking about our emotions or feelings, instead it is about speaking the truth of Scripture and building up the faith of others. We see two examples of this in Acts 21.

Ministry/Service

The literal Greek word in verse 7 is the word “Diakonia” which is where we get the word deacon. God gifts some with the gift of service in order to do what? Serve in the local church!

Teaching

This gift is straightforward - teachers are called by God to teach. There are different places that teaching goes on in the church but one who is gifted in teaching will help make clear the truth’s found in God’s Word. Teaching instructs the mind and aims to change lives.

Exhortation

The literal Greek word in verse 8 for exhortation is “paraklesis” and it stresses to come alongside and encourage. Those with this gift do a good job of warning, challenging, and being present. Exhorters help show how to do something.

Giving

All Christians are called to give - often churches fall into 2 extremes in this regard: We only talk about giving or we never talk about giving. Neither of these are appropriate. Does the Bible talk about giving? You’d better believe it does. Jesus talks about giving often. We are expected to give. We give of our time, resources, and our gift. In Acts, we see that the church of Macedonia and Philippi had people filled with this gift and they helped fund Paul’s missionary efforts with great generosity and sacrificial giving. Again, this is an important gift in the church just as the others are.

Leading

Paul continues to share that leaders are called to lead with diligence. This doesn’t involve being a dictator or having a “holier than thou” mentality. Sadly, we view “leadership” in a secular term often in church-life. Leadership isn’t a “better” gift than service or giving. They’re all important in different ways! Again, we can’t let the enemy come in and allow us to “wish” for a different gift because we like one more than the one that God has given us.

Mercy

The final gift is mercy and Paul says to use this gift with cheerfulness. Have you ever met someone with this gift? Someone who is quick to reach out to you whenever you’re in need? These are people who are simply present more than they are vocal. Barnabas was said to have had this gift along with the gift of exhortation in Acts 9 and 15. It’s a blessing to be surrounded by people with this gift.

Conclusion

We are called to come together and use our gift. Whichever gift you have, use it for the glory of God and for the expansion of the Kingdom! As Paul hit on in verse 3, don’t think that you’re better than someone else because you’re gifted in this area and they aren’t. Remember that we’re a team! We’re a body. We have individual and corporate responsibilities to come together and “be” the body of Christ together!

A couple of takeaways from this text:

Make sure that you’re a Christian - only Christians have spiritual gifts

Present yourself to God as a living sacrifice - Romans 12:1-2

Pray for Wisdom as you use your gift - James 1:5

Seek a place to serve the Lord in the local church

If you don’t know what your gift is, come next Wednesday night and let’s figure that out