SPEAKER_00: Be seated this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to invite you to take your copy of God's Word and turn with me to the book of Ephesians, back to Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking around right now and I'm realizing what the mistake is.
SPEAKER_00: We're down a little bit in number, and I'm like, hey, I wonder what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: And then it dawned on me that last week I mentioned that this sermon was going to involve an encouragement to sign up to serve in children's church.
SPEAKER_00: And that may be it.
SPEAKER_00: That may be it.
SPEAKER_00: And I so I'll tell you what we're going to do.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe we'll just re-preach this next week when everyone else gets uh gets back, but I'm glad you are here.
SPEAKER_00: This morning isn't really about serving in children's church, it's about so much more.
SPEAKER_00: It's about you and me being used for what God intended us to be used for.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, most of you are aware that Kim and I are currently moving.
SPEAKER_00: Um I I do not enjoy that experience, uh, but uh in the providence of God, he has blessed us to be able to move to a place of our own and to settle down here.
SPEAKER_00: And and and by the way, like we're approaching two years here and we're buying a place.
SPEAKER_00: And so for those of you who were like hoping maybe he would move on, sorry.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're gonna be around for a bit.
SPEAKER_00: We love you guys so much, and uh thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we love you guys so much and are just so excited to do ministry with you.
SPEAKER_00: And so a couple of weeks ago, as we're you know how you do when you're moving, you're you know, you're going through and you're trying to organize things and get ready to move.
SPEAKER_00: And we were in the basement working a couple of weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: Kim and I were, and and I remember like she was over in a corner of the basement, and and she came over to me and she said, What is this?
SPEAKER_00: And she held up these, I think they were two ziploc baggies full of screws and nails and bolts and brackets and uh a dowel little sticks.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it all the stuff that you would use to assemble IKEA furniture.
SPEAKER_00: And I've got two bags full of these things, and you know what they are because you probably have one like that yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you assemble furniture, there are always leftover pieces.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm assuming they're supposed to be left over, I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming that the manufacturer is just like, hey, just in case you make a mistake or maybe we made a mistake, we're gonna throw in a couple of extra bolts just for you to have.
SPEAKER_00: And so I always get to the end and I've got one or two left over, and the furniture seems to be no worse for the wear.
SPEAKER_00: Spare parts.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason the spare parts are there for, of course, is because sometimes they may make a mistake and how many they put in, or the machine may make a mistake, and how many pieces or parts they drop in, or they may know that, hey, you may make a mistake.
SPEAKER_00: You may strip a screw or you know, lose a nut or whatever the case may be.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's always some extra parts in the process.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I want you to know about this morning.
SPEAKER_00: If you get nothing else out of our time together, I want you to know that in God's plan for this church, there are no spare parts.
SPEAKER_00: There's no place in the basement of God's kingdom where He has a little baggie where he's got you place, and you're just hanging out for the just in case maybe someday you and I all have a purpose here.
SPEAKER_00: There's no such thing as spare parts in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, and the reason for that, obviously, is because spare parts are there just in case someone makes a mistake.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's why that's why the manufacturer includes them.
SPEAKER_00: God does not make a mistake, he knew exactly who you were and what your gifts were whenever he brought you here.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have got some pretty interesting stories about how you wound up in this room here in this place.
SPEAKER_00: Kim and I learned loving those stories two years ago, whenever we went around and met with each of you, and we learned that you you came here by a set of circumstances that could only be ascribed to God.
SPEAKER_00: And you are here and you are not a spare part because God doesn't make mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know what you're saying, well, Pastor, but sometimes people do make mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: And if they make mistakes and maybe you know they lose a screw or a bolt or a dowel or a glue or something, then then what we need a spare part.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, you're right whenever you're assembling IKEA furniture, but you're not God.
SPEAKER_00: God's the one who's doing the assembling, and we're not IKEA furniture.
SPEAKER_00: If someone was going to mess up, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: God knew that too.
SPEAKER_00: And you're still here, and you're here for a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's no such thing as spare parts in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, last week, as we were walking through, began this process of walking through Ephesians chapter four, at this, at these axioms, these truths, these untruths that we all should know and believe because Scripture teaches them.
SPEAKER_00: We began with the first axiom, which is peace with God requires unity with others.
SPEAKER_00: That you cannot be closer to God than you are to others.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Paul, he's going someplace with this after telling us that peace with him requires unity with others.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's going to point to that unity, and then he's going to move us on to looking at our distinctions, at our disunity.
SPEAKER_00: So let's just do it this way.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at Ephesians 4, chapter 4 through 6.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to walk our way through these few verses, and then we're going to stop and talk about some application for our lives, and then wrap up by discussing some ways that we can use what this text is teaching us today.
SPEAKER_00: So look with me, if you will, at Ephesians 4, verses 4 through 6.
SPEAKER_00: This is where we left off at last week.
SPEAKER_00: You will recall that Paul's talking about our unity and that we're all here together serving, being patient and humble with one another, loving one another as Christ Jesus loved us.
SPEAKER_00: And then he shows how deep that unity goes by saying, Hey, look, everyone here is in the same God.
SPEAKER_00: Like we're all in the same room, the same space inside the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, one Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
SPEAKER_00: You get the idea that he's drawing with a deep black, thick marker, a circle around every person who has ever lived in the heart of Christ and saying, You are all here together.
SPEAKER_00: You are one.
SPEAKER_00: But even though we are one, unity, we are one together, unity, uh, we have unity, but unity does not mean that we have uniformity.
SPEAKER_00: We are united, but we are not uniform.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's important, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Because our sometimes our deepest conflicts come from our differences.
SPEAKER_00: Like you want to do things one way because God has given you the spiritual gift of prophecy, and you believe in telling people exactly what they need to know.
SPEAKER_00: Right directly.
SPEAKER_00: And then across the await from you is someone who has the spiritual gift of mercy or or gentleness.
SPEAKER_00: And so they just want to come up and just very quietly and meekly say something more softly and maybe, maybe cut a cut around the corner in a very subtle way.
SPEAKER_00: And so the two of you may not agree on how to handle problems.
SPEAKER_00: You are unified and yet you are not uniform.
SPEAKER_00: God makes us different.
SPEAKER_00: We are one, but we are not the same.
SPEAKER_00: God brings us together so that we are like um we're like we're like metals of different types that are brought together to create an alloy that is so much stronger than we would be if we stayed apart.
SPEAKER_00: We are like a dish of so many different flavors.
SPEAKER_00: It's not bland at all.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know that?
SPEAKER_00: That being part of church is not boring.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there is a rich variety of flavors inside of a body like this.
SPEAKER_00: We are one, but we are not the same.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's where Paul is heading to here in the very next verse, whenever he says, but we're one.
SPEAKER_00: We're in Christ, we're all part of you know, the same God that we're in is also in us.
SPEAKER_00: And so there is this tight knit knot that cannot be undone in the grace of God, but but he says, grace was given to each one of us.
SPEAKER_00: You're one, you're one, you're one, you're one, you're the same, you're unified, but there's different graces that are given to every single one of us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the word grace here, of course, is one that Paul has used multiple times already in the letter.
SPEAKER_00: The most familiar use of the word grace so far in this letter comes from Ephesians 2, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: That it is through faith by what that we're saved?
SPEAKER_00: Grace.
SPEAKER_00: Through faith by grace that we have been saved.
SPEAKER_00: Karos is the word.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word that we use to describe God's hand reaching down to us, offering us his nail-scarred hand of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Our response is through faith to receive that hand, to acknowledge who he is and who we are not.
SPEAKER_00: And so whenever Paul uses this phrase here and says it's but there are graces, different graces given to each one of us individually, we understand what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: That we're all saved by the same master, the same savior saves us all, but when he saves us, he kind of lets us bring some of our own identity into that relationship.
SPEAKER_00: That we we come into this thing with our gifts and our abilities, and they're beautiful and they're unique.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, for each one of us, grace has been given according to the, I love this here, the in Greek it's matron.
SPEAKER_00: It's uh measure, it has a very detailed math flavor to it, according to the measure of the gifts of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The the the grace of Christ, the gifts that he has given us.
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty cool, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That when we talk about the grace that God shows to us in both salvation as well as the grace that comes by the Spirit who walks with us, that measure is given to us at this at the same weight, according to the measure, the matron of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's something we could stop and meditate on for a while.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's almost like um you you picture, maybe, maybe it's like this scale.
SPEAKER_00: And on the one side, you got the measure of Christ's gift to us, which is immense.
SPEAKER_00: The crucified Son of God died so that you and I can experience oneness abiding with him.
SPEAKER_00: And in my mind, the way I see it, it's almost like the Spirit comes along and says, okay, now it's my work in their life.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna give them grace.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give them gifts.
SPEAKER_00: In the Greek, it's do it's Doria.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give them Doria's.
SPEAKER_00: And I want this measure of how much grace and gifting I'm pouring into them to be equal to the measure of the shed blood of the tri uh of the Son of God, the triune son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just tell you, that is tremendously gripping to me because when I think about, like it's difficult for me to imagine the gifts that the Spirit has poured into me.
SPEAKER_00: But whenever Paul comes by and says they are in accordance, they are within measure with the gifts that Jesus gave to you in salvation, I walk away realizing I am a blessed individual.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Pastor, why doesn't that translate into the Sunday morning preaching experience?
SPEAKER_00: Well, listen, we are all a work in progress, and so the point of this isn't about our efficiency, it isn't about our effectiveness, it is about the fact that the Spirit gives each one of us exactly what we need to do the job he is calling us to do.
SPEAKER_00: And he is in fact calling us to do a job.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the the axiom for the day.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you want to write this one down along with the one you wrote down, and I know you did last week, here is the one for today.
SPEAKER_00: When you are called to salvation, you are called to service.
SPEAKER_00: I may have said this one sentence to you more than any other most other sentences I've ever said to you because I think it's so important to recognize that whenever Jesus calls you to salvation, he doesn't call you to salvation and put you into a plastic bag and throw you in a drawer in the basement.
SPEAKER_00: He has a plan for your life.
SPEAKER_00: You have a beautiful purpose with eternal consequences.
SPEAKER_00: That's enriching, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Because there is nothing more miserable than a person who feels like they don't have a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: A person who has lost their way.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing more miserable than being that person.
SPEAKER_00: A feeling like, oh, I've I don't know why I'm here.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know if I'm making any difference at all.
SPEAKER_00: God made you that way.
SPEAKER_00: God made us to contribute, to have presence, to have purpose in this world.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he took Adam and Eve and He placed them in a perfect garden and still yet said to them, This yard has to be mowed, and that plant has to be attended to and the fruit has to be picked.
SPEAKER_00: God could have made a creation that would have, but it would have been automatic.
SPEAKER_00: The grass could have been AI, but God didn't make the grass AI.
SPEAKER_00: God made the grass to grow and weeds to pop up and places where you don't want them and branches to extend and the God made the grass to grow through your driveway.
SPEAKER_00: God bless you, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's there, and there's a reason for it.
SPEAKER_00: It's because you and I have this purpose, this desire for purpose, and that is especially true when it comes to how we interact and encourage and support each other in community.
SPEAKER_00: God made us for a purpose, and he gives us such a great purpose.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the reasons Jesus came down.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what Paul says here in verse number eight.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is about to quote uh Psalm chapter 68.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Psalm 68 is a it's a triumphal entry psalm.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of psalm that might be sung or played on the radio whenever a general came back into Jerusalem after having victory over the Canaanites or the Philistines or somebody.
SPEAKER_00: And so this was a this was a way that the people worshiped nationally for victory that God had given them.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 4, verse 8, he says, Paul says, Therefore it is written, he quotes Psalm 68, he says, Therefore it is written, when he ascended on high, he led a host captive of captives and gave gifts to men.
SPEAKER_00: Now pause there for a second.
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain to you sort of what's happening in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: In the book of Psalms, whenever this is originally written, the verse reads a little differently.
SPEAKER_00: It mentions that whenever this great conquering king, uh in alluding to the fact that God himself enters his abode here, uh he says that when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, uh, which is what a military general would do coming back.
SPEAKER_00: He would bring back the spoils of war.
SPEAKER_00: He would bring back the nobility, he would bring back the people who were conquered, and he would present them for everyone to see, I have conquered these people.
SPEAKER_00: They now, they are now subject to me.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the image of the text there.
SPEAKER_00: And so we see that that whenever God saves us, when he conquers our heart, he brings us in, and we are now spoils of his war.
SPEAKER_00: That's good, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That whenever Jesus died on the cross and the enemy was conquered and death was overrun, you and I are led out in the gracious chains of Jesus Christ as the spoils of war, and I am so glad to have been part of the part of the bounty that he won on that day, aren't you?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so he is uh he's leading a host captive, and then uh in in Hebrew in Psalms, it it says, He receives gifts among men.
SPEAKER_00: That was fitting for the time that people would give gifts to the king, they would honor him and his new status as ruler over them by giving gifts to that king.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem with that.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you take this and you translate it fully to the work that God did on the cross and his sovereignty and his omnipotence and his omnipresence, the problem with that is you can't give God anything that he doesn't already own.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you you don't you don't have anything.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's yeah, you've been conquered.
SPEAKER_00: We've been we've been graciously overrun.
SPEAKER_00: I the darkness in our heart is graciously conquered by the power of Jesus Christ, but we have nothing to offer him.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody needs to hear that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: That you're here because you're trying to earn the pleasure of God by doing something for him.
SPEAKER_00: Give me a break.
SPEAKER_00: He is the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills.
SPEAKER_00: There are there are seven billion people other than you.
SPEAKER_00: And there have been seven billion people more other than you and I.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think God really needs something of us or from us?
SPEAKER_00: No, we don't give him the spoils of war.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he is maxed out, he has it all.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Paul, I think he turns this on its end, he flips it around.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, there's a there's a targum that gives this interpretation as well.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul may be leaning on this ancient tradition or reading of this text.
SPEAKER_00: He says that whenever this particular king ascended on high, he didn't receive gifts, he gave gifts.
SPEAKER_00: What a great God we serve.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's no other God in all of human history who is presented in this way.
SPEAKER_00: Every other God stands there with his hands out held out open.
SPEAKER_00: Our God stands there with his hands held out open, and they are nail scarred for you and I.
SPEAKER_00: He's presenting gifts to us.
SPEAKER_00: And watch what Paul does in explaining this in verses 9 and 10.
SPEAKER_00: He's a little parenthetical here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Now in saying he ascended, or this king ascended, what does it mean but that he must also have descended?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, if a king's going to ascend up to the heights of Jerusalem to be held as the victor, he must have first descended into the valley to partake in war to the lower regions of the earth in this particular case.
SPEAKER_00: This is where Jesus came to.
SPEAKER_00: This, by the way, I'm I'm going to suggest to you is not a verse that describes Jesus going to hell and letting people go before he rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to talk about that, we can talk about the interpretation.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's what he is saying here.
SPEAKER_00: It was a popular translation, even to this very day, and the patristics wrote about it.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you don't care because you don't know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: But, anyways, if you believe that, I'm just telling you, you're missing the point of what's happening here, I think.
SPEAKER_00: I think what he's actually saying here is Jesus came down and descended into the depths of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: That's where I live.
SPEAKER_00: How about you?
SPEAKER_00: The dirty space here on the earth, Jesus came down and he did war here in this valley, and he who descended is the same one who also ascended.
SPEAKER_00: The one who came down and won the victory is the same one who has risen now far above every, Paul says here in this passage, above every principality, above every power.
SPEAKER_00: He now ascends above all of those things, all of those entities, all of those realms, all of those governments, all of those rulers, far above all the heavens, that why he may feel all things.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna tell you, I've read that many times.
SPEAKER_00: I preached from this passage uh uh probably a dozen times throughout my ministry, but I've never stopped to look at this phrase where he says that he might feel all things and to wonder, what's he doing there?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, why is it that the ascension of Jesus out there in heaven is connected to the feeling of all things here?
SPEAKER_00: And after all, if he's going that far away, isn't that like moving his presence away from all things here?
SPEAKER_00: How is it that his ascension up there makes him more common, makes him more present here?
SPEAKER_00: Here's where I got to with it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we are here in this space in Montgomery County, and the mayor is not here, but we do live under his influence.
SPEAKER_00: And the governor is not here.
SPEAKER_00: If if she is, I want to I want to chat with her for a minute, stick around after service.
SPEAKER_00: We want to chat.
SPEAKER_00: And and and um but she's not here, but yet we live under her influence.
SPEAKER_00: The president is not here, and if he's here, I really, really, really, really want to talk about him about that post earlier this week.
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna go there, but he's not here, but we live in his presence.
SPEAKER_00: And the higher up we go, the more that presence spreads, the more that influence spreads.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has ascended to the heights of the heights, he is maxed out on his ascension.
SPEAKER_00: You can't go any higher than Jesus, which means you can't have any more influence than Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: His presence is full, he has become, he has become the filler of all things because of his ascension.
SPEAKER_00: The higher he goes, the more influence he has.
SPEAKER_00: What do you think about that?
SPEAKER_00: All right, that's my thought on it.
SPEAKER_00: You may have a different one, but the point here that Paul is clear clearly Making is that what Jesus did with the power of his resurrection and his shed blood is to give gifts to us.
SPEAKER_00: He fills us, which means that these gifts that we have been given, that Paul is referring to here, that they're not like tools that Jesus gives us and says, here, you go and you walk away.
SPEAKER_00: You go do your thing.
SPEAKER_00: He gives us that gift and he's right there with us, like a loving father who's teaching his child how to use the gift and how to, he's empowering us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, um Paul continues here to talk about what these gifts are.
SPEAKER_00: One more verse we have to read.
SPEAKER_00: He explains what God is doing here with these with these blessings.
SPEAKER_00: He says that he gave the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists and the shepherds and the teachers.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are some reasons for what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: Um Paul is talking to the church about what God has blessed them with as a community of believers.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there was some idea that they didn't have everything they needed to do to do the ministry that God had called them to do.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul is saying, look, God has blessed individuals with gifts.
SPEAKER_00: And then he has gone into communities like this, and he's blessed communities with people.
SPEAKER_00: People are a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: But people are a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: God has blessed us with people, God has blessed us with you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what I want to do in the next very few short minutes that we have left, because I'm a pastor and I've I've I've not only been a pastor, but I've been a church member.
SPEAKER_00: And so I know anyone tells, when someone tells me that I'm gifted, or whenever I tell someone else that they're gifted, the very first thing that my mind starts to do is it begins to create excuses for why I can't do the thing that I need to be doing.
SPEAKER_00: And I've jotted down, I wrote down four excuses, four categories of excuses for why it is that we we somehow don't live by the power of this text that tells us that we've been gifted according to the matron, the measure of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I want to give these to you quickly and I want to show you examples from Scripture as to why they're not legitimate reasons to avoid using the gift that God has given you.
SPEAKER_00: Here they are.
SPEAKER_00: You can write these down if you would like.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, especially if you run across one that hits you between the eyes, I I had one or two of these that really pierced my heart this week.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is the word season.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the excuse that we offer for not using the gifts that God has given us occurs when we say, I'm too busy right now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm too busy right now.
SPEAKER_00: I think about the priest or the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: They're on their way to do a good thing, probably, they're down to Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: That's typically what they would have done.
SPEAKER_00: They would have gone down to Jericho and then out somewhere else to do ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And yet on the way down, they see this individual who had been wounded on the way down to Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: He was there on the side of the road and he needed help, but the priest walks by and leaves him untouched and unhelped, and the Levite walks by and does the same.
SPEAKER_00: And you wonder why do they do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, this text seems to indicate, I believe, that they were focused on their task at hand.
SPEAKER_00: They were too busy.
SPEAKER_00: Now I get it.
SPEAKER_00: I live in this world just like you are, and I know how busy life can be.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever someone says to me, hey, you need to add this one other thing to your schedule, the very first thing I think is like I crawl up into my, into a fetal position in my mind, and I'm like, I don't know that I can add one more thing.
SPEAKER_00: But then I begin to do the math in my life, and I realize how much time I spend sitting in front of the TV and how much time I spend on my phone.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we all need downtime.
SPEAKER_00: We all need downtime.
SPEAKER_00: But I think if you and I were to measure, use that little screen app, um, uh screen time app on our phone, some of us, present company included, might be embarrassed at how much time we have wasted whenever Paul is about to tell us later in this chapter we need to be redeeming the time.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Season.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people say, I can't because I'm too busy, and I understand that time needs to be managed, but you need to remember that in Scripture we're we're told of the time that God made the sun stand still in the sky because the children of Israel ran out of time in a war.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think you think God's in control of time?
SPEAKER_00: Don't mean to get too deep on this, but he dwells in the realm of unapproachable light.
SPEAKER_00: And if you know anything about physics, you know in inside light there is no time.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's got time.
SPEAKER_00: He's good.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, skill.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people say, I am not gifted enough.
SPEAKER_00: I think of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: You recall whenever Moses stands before God in the burning bush, what you think would be the only argument you would ever need is a fire talking to you out of a burning bush.
SPEAKER_00: That would get that would do it for me.
SPEAKER_00: How about you?
SPEAKER_00: Well, God says to Moses, I want you to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses starts giving this concophony of lists, but ultimately the the point that Moses uh of excuses, but ultimately the the point that Moses is making is he comes down in verse number uh chap verse uh 10 of chapter four and says, God, I'm just not a good speaker.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I stutter and I stammer and I mispronounce my words, and he Moses was from Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00: And um so he um he says, God, he's I'm just not a good speaker.
SPEAKER_00: You wanted me to go speak, and this job entails a rhetorician, and that's not me.
SPEAKER_00: So you just send someone else.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, if you know the story, you know that God finally gets tired of him and says, Okay, I'll send someone with you.
SPEAKER_00: I'll send Aaron because Aaron's an eloquent speaker.
SPEAKER_00: And if you know anything about that story the way it ends, that was a huge mess for him.
SPEAKER_00: I promise you, there were many, many mornings where Moses woke up and thought to himself, I wish I had just shut my mouth and nodded my head and left Aaron out of this.
SPEAKER_00: Aaron was a huge problem for him.
SPEAKER_00: All because Moses looked at his gifts and said, they're not enough.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, they may not be.
SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, hey, guys, I'm just telling you, like, I'm with you on this.
SPEAKER_00: Like I look around at the things that God has called me to do, and I think to myself, there are people out here who can do it better.
SPEAKER_00: You know, God has, whenever I've said that, God has never said to me, No, no, no, no, no, you're you're you're perfect, Major.
SPEAKER_00: You're the best.
SPEAKER_00: He's not said it because it's not true.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not, it's not about being skilled enough.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about being the one who is like the most outgoing or the most collected or the most anything.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about, it's about being the person God has appointed for the job.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think Peter was the best person that Jesus could find to be on his team?
SPEAKER_00: Give me a break, man.
SPEAKER_00: Those guys were a mess, and yet Jesus appointed them anyways, in spite of their skill.
SPEAKER_00: So we use the season excuse, sometimes we use the skill excuse, other times we use the significance excuse.
SPEAKER_00: Probably the prophet who I can relate to more than any other.
SPEAKER_00: I like preaching from Jonah because he's good and easy, but the prophet I relate to more than any other is Amos.
SPEAKER_00: Because Amos was a southern boy.
SPEAKER_00: Carrie, you remember this.
SPEAKER_00: He was a good southern boy who God said, go up north and preach the gospel to them.
SPEAKER_00: That's how I felt whenever I was in Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_00: I felt like Amos, Southern boy up in Wisconsin preaching the gospel there in Illinois and around.
SPEAKER_00: And so Amos was just, he he, so he gets up to the north, and there's this guy named Amaziah who was the professional.
SPEAKER_00: He was the professional priest.
SPEAKER_00: Like he was, you know, he had it all together, had a great resume.
SPEAKER_00: He he was significant.
SPEAKER_00: And Amaziah comes up to him and says, Who are you, anyways?
SPEAKER_00: What's your pedigree?
SPEAKER_00: You're you're not, I mean, get where are your degrees?
SPEAKER_00: Where's your resume?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you?
SPEAKER_00: And Amos says, Dude, I'm nobody.
SPEAKER_00: He said, and I love this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm not a prophet, and I'm not the son of a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just a guy.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just a guy who God came to and said, You go and do this thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't significant.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't use significance.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't look for people who are significant.
SPEAKER_00: He looks for people who are the youngest son of some individual who's out somewhere tending his sheep, and his dad, he's so insignificant that his dad doesn't even think of him until the old priest Samuel says, Are you sure you don't have any more sons?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesse looks around and says, One, two, three, four, five, six.
SPEAKER_00: The redhead one, that guy, where's he at?
SPEAKER_00: You ever have to do that with your kids?
SPEAKER_00: You know, you lose names.
SPEAKER_00: This is the other one, where's he at?
SPEAKER_00: He's so insignificant that his dad even forgets about him.
SPEAKER_00: And yet that's the one that Samuel says, God, you're looking on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: God says to Samuel, you're looking on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: Don't look on the outside, look on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: This is where I'm looking.
SPEAKER_00: Your significance doesn't matter to God.
SPEAKER_00: Number four, and finally, um, is sanctity.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, God wants us to be sanctified.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to be set apart.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to be holy, but sometimes we use the fact that we are imperfect.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody in here imperfect, right?
SPEAKER_00: We use our imperfection as a reason for not following God's God's giftedness in our life, and we say, I'm not holy enough.
SPEAKER_00: Which is true, we're not holy enough, but we're never going to be holy enough.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God used unholy people.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know why God used unholy people?
SPEAKER_00: It's all he has to work with.
SPEAKER_00: We're all unholy.
SPEAKER_00: Even Paul himself acknowledged that he was unholy.
SPEAKER_00: When he wrote to his son in the faith, his protege, which by the way, like whenever you talk to your proteges, the people who look up to you, you don't often want to tell them the truth.
SPEAKER_00: You want to, you want to kind of hide your failings because you want them to keep respecting you.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what Paul did.
SPEAKER_00: Paul wrote to Timothy and said, he said, Listen, I've been appointed a preacher of the gospel to take the message to sinners.
SPEAKER_00: And then he turned to Timothy and he says, he says, I he says, I'm the chief of sinners.
SPEAKER_00: I am the chief of sinners.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say past tense, I was the chief of sinners.
SPEAKER_00: Remember all the persecuting, all the bloodshed, all the beatings, how I used to persecute the church and cuss and swear and look at things I shouldn't look.
SPEAKER_00: Like he didn't, he didn't do any of that.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say, I was a sinner, I was the chief of sinners.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I am the chief of sinners, which means if you think that you're the worst sinner ever, you're gonna have to stand toe-to-toe and argue with the apostle Paul, who said, under the inspiration of the Spirit, I'm the worst there could ever be.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God uses him.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, returning to Ephesians chapter 4, Paul says that he wasn't, he was called specifically.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what he says, Paul says in chapter 3, verse 7 and 8.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gifts, the gift of God's grace, which was given to me by the working of his power.
SPEAKER_00: Now look at that verse one more time.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the words.
SPEAKER_00: Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace given me by the working of his power.
SPEAKER_00: That does that look familiar to you?
SPEAKER_00: It's the same words, those three words, gift, grace, and given.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same word, only in reverse order, the two of them, anyways, the two significant ones there, that he uses in four verse seven to talk about us.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says to the church at Corinth uh church at Ephesus, to me, grace was given this gift to minister the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And then he turns to the Ephesian church and says, Grace was also given to each of you, to each of us, according to the measure of Christ's gifts.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same word.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, what Paul is saying here is the same person, the same God who gifted the apostle Paul to do the incredible work that he did has gifted you and I according to the measure of Christ's gifts.
SPEAKER_00: Which means our excuses are all wasted before him.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the season may not be right, but maybe the season isn't right because God wants us to realign our priorities and he wants us to trust him with our clock.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we may not be skilled enough, but maybe the truth is that God wants us weak so that through his weakness he can express his strength.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's the case that we're not significant because God doesn't want us relying on our significance for our identity, but he wants us to rely on his significance in our life for his identity.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's the case that, yeah, we're not sanctified enough, but the reason we're not sanctified enough and the reason we're growing in sanctification is because God doesn't want us depending on our own righteousness, but wants us depending on the righteousness of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is a beautiful plan, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: God calls us to the most important work in human history.
SPEAKER_00: The most important work in human history is to see societies and families restored by the power of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: What influence that is.
SPEAKER_00: But he calls us to that task in such a way so that none of us can be prideful about it.
SPEAKER_00: We're all humble because we know for a fact that this isn't the season for us.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have the skill, we don't have the significance, we don't have the sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: All we have is him and his power.
SPEAKER_00: That's enough.
SPEAKER_00: Can I just ask you for a moment?
SPEAKER_00: What is the gift that God has given you?
SPEAKER_00: You've been given a gift.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you have trouble finding it.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever I met with you all the church two years ago, and if I've not met with you, would um Kim and I would still love to meet with you and hear your story.
SPEAKER_00: But you remember you remember the the question I asked you that didn't feel so spiritual?
SPEAKER_00: What's your hobbies?
SPEAKER_00: What's the thing you're passionate about?
SPEAKER_00: What's the thing you love doing?
SPEAKER_00: And the reason I ask you that is because I know what has been taught to us through the science of flow.
SPEAKER_00: Most of you recognize the word flow.
SPEAKER_00: If you've studied anything about efficiency or being effective at your work or you know, trying to be more on point or more focused, the idea of flow is about how to how to how to accomplish a task and stay focused and set in your seat.
SPEAKER_00: The idea was um popularized by a Hungarian psychologist named Mihali Chekhins Mihali.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I practice that a lot.
SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, but it's a name familiar if you study the topic.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he wrote in the book called Flow, the psychology of optimal experience.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He says, flow is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the experience itself is the enjoyable, is enjoyable that is so enjoyable that people will do ever do it even if boy, how about we start over with that?
SPEAKER_00: Is that okay?
SPEAKER_00: That's more of that skill thing that we were talking about earlier that I don't have, but it's reading, but that's beside the point.
SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He says the state in he says, flow is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.
SPEAKER_00: The experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost for the sheer sake of doing it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I ask you, what do you enjoy doing?
SPEAKER_00: Because I personally think that whenever God saves you, He takes who you are and He repurposes it for His glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so I personally believe, take some spiritual gift assessments, that's great, but I personally believe that for many, your spiritual gift is hidden behind your hobby.
SPEAKER_00: And you think golf can't be, can't be spiritual, or you think woodworking can't be spiritual, or you think farming can't be spiritual, or you think uh accounting can't be can't be spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: It can't where's Jen at?
SPEAKER_00: Is Jen in here or is she working today?
SPEAKER_00: Like I asked Jen.
SPEAKER_00: Jen to tell you accounting can be spiritual, right?
SPEAKER_00: You think those things can't be spiritual, but I'm here to tell you they can be.
SPEAKER_00: A uh theologian named uh Frederick Um Frederick Buckner said that the place that the place God often calls us to is the place where our deepest gladness and the world's deepest hunger meet.
SPEAKER_00: That that's what we're called to do.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying to you that your giftings, if you're trying to figure out, okay, what am I called to do?
SPEAKER_00: I'm no, I know I'm called to do something, but what is that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, pray about it, search scripture, take a spiritual gift assessment.
SPEAKER_00: But if you are going to look for any application for what should come out of this message, my my question is how do you take the things that you enjoy the most and leverage them for the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: You can play basketball, I'm telling you, like you can you can use that in children's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: You you you uh you enjoy uh you enjoy uh horticulture, planting, uh gardening, you can use that in children's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: You enjoy working with chainsaws and power tools, you can use that somewhere else other than children's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: But you can use it somewhere, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so your homework assignment, our homework assignment for today is to figure out okay, what what has God given me and how can I use it for the featherance of his kingdom and ministry to this body of Christ here at Christiansburg Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're almost done.
SPEAKER_00: I want to, as a as a final word of encouragement, to direct you to the church's website because at the website you're going to find a place where you can look for your place to serve.
SPEAKER_00: Because Paul is telling us, he says, we've called, God has gifted us with all of these different kinds of people and for a significant purpose, and we're going to look at that next week, but just to look ahead, it he says it's to equip the church.
SPEAKER_00: And so my question is to you where has God called you?
SPEAKER_00: What gifts, what abilities, what passions has God given you to edify the body, to encourage, to lift up, to build up the ministry that is being done here out of this space.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to the church's website, which is our goalislove.com, and you look at the top menu under uh um next steps, there's information about there there for about joining the church and baptism and joining a small group, and down at the very bottom, there is a spot about serving.
SPEAKER_00: And if you click that serving link, it'll take you to another page where there's a little button about just a description about what it means to serve, and uh and a button where you can fill out a form and learn more about the things that we're needing help with as a church that we're praying that God says, hey, Lord, we know you're gonna send us the people who can help us in these areas with you know, with media or with security, with children's ministry, with youth, whatever it is, you can go to that page and you can read, hey, here's what the church is is seeing right now.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where the greatest needs are right now.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to encourage each of you to go online to look over that page and say, okay, my gifts, my passions, my abilities, where could they possibly fit into this?
SPEAKER_00: And you may be shocked at what you come up with.
SPEAKER_00: I am, listen, I have no problem with doing ministry the way everyone else does ministry right throughout the years, things that have worked, and if we can learn something for that, that's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: I would rather be the church, though, that has such unique ministries that people look and they say, you can't go anywhere else but CBC and see that.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because we haven't started with some idea of what we would like church to look like in comparison to other churches in this area.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, we start the way the apostle Paul did here.
SPEAKER_00: And we start by looking at the gifts that God has given us, you, and to say, hey, what has God given us?
SPEAKER_00: How has he brought people here with their unique gifts and abilities?
SPEAKER_00: And how can they serve?
SPEAKER_00: Check out that list there.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't see something on that list, we left a blank for you too down at the very bottom, just to say, hey, Pastor, I don't know where you can use this.
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't know where you can plug me in at, but if you can use this, then then I'll come alongside you and pray about the opportunity to leverage my gifts, my abilities, my my skills for the featherance of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: See, you are you are here for a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, if you don't get anything else, don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: You are here for a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: You are not a spare part.
SPEAKER_00: You have been brought Here for this season, ever how long you are here, you've been brought here to this place to be used, to be applied, to grow, to have purpose and impact here in this faith community and in the community around us that God has called us to serve.
SPEAKER_00: You are not a spare part.