Time Talent Treasure Pt. 4 :: Gifts for His Glory

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Thanks for joining us today as you listen to a portion of the message recorded at Fine Life Church in Boulder, Colorado. If you'd like to connect with us further, you can visit us online at www.findlife.com.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

And they were doing art in kind of Sunday school. And the Sunday school teacher noticed this one little boy with his head down, just studiously drawing. So she went over and she said, What are you drawing? Kid never even looked up. He said, I'm drawing a picture of God. She said, Honey, God's a spirit. Nobody knows what God looks like. And he said, They will in a minute. That's faith, isn't it? But that was part of the problem, is nobody knew what God looked like. Okay? And then Christ came. And Christ came as a physical, incarnate representation of the character and the nature of God. I am and he, and he and me. Right? He also came as a declaration of God's love for us. Unconditional, lavish, and even unto the death. God declares his willingness to suffer with us. And that's what Christ did. And in doing that, he reconciled us to the Father. So we started out with two problems. One is the problem between God and man. And the second one is the problem with man and man. I was thinking about this. I'm just, it's not in the Bible, okay? But I'm thinking about when Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden. And they've been driven out and out they go. And I can see them walking down the road, with there's no road, but walking down the desert or wherever they were in this strange place they'd never been. And now they've eaten of the fruit. And they know about good and evil. They've lost their innocence. And I could see, I could see Adam saying, Way to go, Eve. You really fixed us up this time. She's saying, Me? It's not me, it's the serpent. Don't serpent me. You know. Well, what about you? You ate it. You liked it. Huh? Did you think God was going to get that man? Can you imagine how that worked? Could well be. And even when they had their first kids, one killed the other. So we've always had this alienation problem between man and God, and the problem between each other. But that wasn't God's plan. And so we know that when Jesus was resurrected by the power of God, you do know Jesus didn't resurrect himself. It was the power of God that resurrected Jesus. We know that in that, if we believe in his name, we're resurrected as well. And then that generational curse of sin and death is wiped out. Is that good news? Yeah, that's the gospel. That is good, good news. Through Christ all things are reconciled. All things, all things are reconciled. And that includes us one to another in love. So we've been in a series talking about time, treasure, and talent. Now I think it's kind of a teaching mechanism to use the same first letter. You know, it's like praise, power, and person. You know what I mean? So, first we talked about time. And we talked about two kinds of time. The first kind of time is chronos time. That chronos time is the clock, the calendar. That is a measured time. And you know we all have the same amount. There's 24 hours in a day. That's it. No 25, no 23. Can't save one from the day and take it tomorrow. 24 hours. That's it. That's chronos time. But then there's this other kind of time called kairos time. When I think of kairos time, what I think of is the light bulb going on. Ah ha! All of a sudden you have that moment where you realize something because God is making you aware of something, and that is a different kind of time. Have you ever had it happen when you're trying to think of some solution to a problem and you're going round and round and round, and then all of a sudden, bing, that's Kairos. That's awareness. That's that time of God that's outside of the time of Kronos. Second thing we talked about was treasure. Treasure is the tangible evidence of God's favor for us in every circumstance of life. It's outside of circumstance. When things are going bad, when things are going well, we still have God's favor. And in our spiritual DNA is the gene of love. Now, central to our created identity is the desire to bless him and the desire to be blessed. If you weren't here last week, Luke brought a fabulous message. Amen? Yeah. And I think for me, just me, that message is among the very, very best I've ever heard on generosity. So if you didn't hear it, I would encourage you to go to the Vinelife.com site, go to the archives and hear it. And if you did hear it, I'd encourage you to go to vinelife.com because it's fabulous, it's life-changing, it's liberating, and it's empowering. So do it. Today we're talking about talent. That's the third T, okay? And I would ask that you let me replace the word talent, which is a handy T, with the word gifts, which is a powerful G. Okay? So think of talents as gifts, because we're given gifts. If you look in your Bible in the Ephesians, we're going to be in Ephesians quite a bit, so you may want to just move right into Ephesians right now. If you look in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, verse 7, it says this. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. That's where our gifts come from. That's where our gifts all come from. Jesus gave them to us. Now, I have a friend who has a business, really interesting business. He finds lost heirs. Sometimes, you don't know it, but you may have a distant relative who has expired and left an estate, and you're an heir, but you can't be found. If you go to the Colorado treasurer's office, they have millions of dollars in inheritances, in estates, and they can't find the heirs. They can't find them. I'm here to tell you that you have an inheritance. Much more than millions of dollars. Think how you'd feel if somebody showed up. Hello? Hey, I'm from the state of Colorado. And I think you might have $100,000 in gold. Okay? How would you feel? I hope you'd feel good. Could you be a little more excited? How would you feel? It'd be good, right? Okay. So, what about the inheritance of the kingdom of God? You have an inheritance. And it's many, many gifts. See, I think when it comes to gifts, God doesn't know the word enough. He doesn't know about enough. He doesn't live in enough. He knows about more. He knows about more. I don't believe that any of us will ever capture all of the gifts that we've been given. There will be more and more and more. It is our inheritance. God's Word gives us some examples of gifts. For example, in Ephesians 4, you'll encounter the equipping gifts. These gifts are around the apostolic, the prophetic, the pastoral, the teaching, and the evangelist. Okay? Those five gifts. And I would encourage you to think of those as a perspective. Think of them as a perspective. Because what happens is all of us have certain perspectives. The apostle maybe, the perspective of the apostle is to say, whatever we're talking about, is this in the order of the household of God? Is this the culture of God? The prophet, the prophetic says, in this, are we hearing Jesus? Are we listening to the Holy Spirit? The teacher, that perspective says, What we're talking about, what is the best way to present that and invite people into an application? The evangelist says, are we inviting people into the kingdom with us? Is that what we're doing? And the pastor says, are we caring for hearts? Those are perspectives. Those are the equipping gifts. In Romans 12 and in 1 Corinthians 12, we find some other gifts listed. These are spiritual gifts. That piece of paper you have, they're all listed. I'm not going to read them to you right now, but I am telling you that they're part of your inheritance. But there's bad news. If you think about it, in the days when Jesus walked the earth, when the incarnate Christ was here in his ministry, there were a lot of people who could not see who he was. And there were a lot of people that could not hear what he was saying because they were looking for something else. They had another idea of what the Messiah would be. You know we got the same problem. Sometimes what happens to us as we look at our gifts, our inheritance, our legacy, we won't see and we won't listen. That's sometimes what happens to us because it doesn't look like what we're expecting. Sometimes what we do is we interpret. And we have this expectation, and God speaks to us and we shape it. We interpret it. We shift it into what our expectation is, what our soul's calling out, our will, our mind, our emotions, and we try to make it be what we want instead of what God says. You ever done that? Am I the only one? Sometimes we think we have a gift. Now I have to tell you, that's always an embarrassing place, I think, when you think you have a gift and you don't. I uh when Betty and I were first married, I thought I had the gift of singing. You can see what's coming. Now, I like to sing in the shower, and I think this is traditionally a male disease. This is something that comes on to men. And I'm in the shower and I'm belting out one of my favorite tunes, and I hear this knock on the bathroom door. And Betty's, it's her. And she says, Are you all right in there? And I said, Yeah, I'm fine. She said, I thought you were screaming for help. So sometimes you can have a gift, you think, that you don't actually have. Sometimes, and I imagine many of us have experienced this, it's about chronos. You have a promise. A word is spoken over you. And in the chronos clock and calendar, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. And soon we're thinking, when, Lord? Did I misunderstand? Was that really a promise and so forth? Because we forget that it is God's timing, not ours. It's God's Kronos and Kairos that guides our life. Sometimes what happens is we get distracted by our circumstances. You know, good or bad. Sometimes when things are growing badly for you, do you ever feel like you're powerless? Like if you had any luck at all, it was bad luck? Do you ever feel about that kind of way? Or sometimes what can happen is things are going so well. I mean, the Lord is marching before you and it's going so well that, like the people of Israel, time after time after time, we forget God. We just forget God. It's my bank account. It's my ability to do this or that, and so forth. And we don't hear God, and we block the door that leads to our gifts. Sometimes we compare. And when we compare, we fall prey to envy, self-defeat, resentment. As a called singer, I could stand right down there today and look at this beautiful worship that Luke and Shannon and Jason brought. Or Josh, I mean, excuse me. Sorry, Josh. And I could be resentful and say, how come I don't get to do that? How come I can't do that? Gee, I wish I could sing like that. And you know what we do when we compare? We say, God, I reject what you call me to be. I want to be that. I want to be that other person. I want that other set of circumstances. And so we don't hear what God's saying, and we don't gain what he has for us. You know, gifts aren't given in equal measure to everybody. It's like the parable of the talents 10, 5, 1. 10, 5, 1. So we don't always get gifts in equal measure, and we don't always get the same gifts. That's another thing that happens for us. And so when we feel we're short-changed on our gifts, or someone's got the gift of this and we don't, then we're not here in God. Now we're just interested in the gap between what we are and what we want. And finally, what happens is we turn from the I ams to the I am nots. Maybe you've been to this place of the I am nots. I'm not smart. I'm not educated. I'm not trained. I'm not lucky. I'm not successful. I've never been successful at this. I'm not successful at anything. Those are the I'm nots. My doctor said I'm whatever. My boss just said I'm whatever. My father told me I'm not. And probably worst of all, we end up at I'm not worthy. It's a terrible lie. It's a terrible lie. And we have to move beyond that. Why does this matter? Because everyone here has an inheritance. Everyone here, there's a knock on the door of your spirit that says from God, I have something for you. I have something for you. Well, in a way, that knock has already been delivered. And in a way, we've already responded. Back to the good news, to the gospel. Okay? What happened in the gospel? What happened in the gospel was Christ. That's what happened in the gospel. That's the gospel. Christ and Him crucified. And through Him, we're fully reconciled to the Father. We're accepted and loved. That's good news. In Him, we've been given everything we need. We're fully furnished right now. We may not be aware of it. We may not have discovered it yet or encountered it, but we are fully furnished for our inheritance, for everything God has in mind for us and the destiny of our lives in His kingdom. And with Christ, if you read Romans, Romans 8, there it is. Paul names all these terrible things, these circumstances that we experience: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, Denver Broncos, all of these many things. And then he says, I'm kidding. He says, I saw everybody to go, where's that? I didn't see that. We're more than conquerors. That's the good news. We're accepted. We're empowered. We have a place at the table in the household of God. That's awfully good news. Awfully good news. Now our gifts call us up, guys. Our gifts are a call up. And when you get called up, sometimes you get called up into some things that aren't so exciting. For example, one of the things is you can get called up into a place of risk. See, trusting God has always got some kind of risk in the war between our soul and our spirit, right? And sometimes that risk looks like fear of failing. We have a fear of failing. And sometimes it looks like fear of success. What if I do this? What if I pull this off this one time, it'll expect me to do it all the time. You ever think like that? Had that thought? Fear of success, fear of failure, a risk. Sometimes our gifts call us up into a place of endurance. And I'm thinking about Joseph now. Now, Joseph was a young man with a low level of emotional intelligence. Okay? He managed to offend everybody in his family except his dad and his mother. Okay? So his brothers sold him into slavery. You know the story. And off he went. But Joseph had a gift of administration. And so he was bought by a guy named Potiphar. That gift expressed itself, and he rose to be the head of that household for the slaves. And it was all good until Mrs. Potiphar came along. And all of a sudden, one day he's a valued, high status servant, and the next day he's in jail. Not a lot different from standing in the bottom of that well looking at a circle of light above his head. And there he is. But he endured. He didn't get mad. He didn't curse God. He didn't kill himself. He didn't do any of those things. He endured. And in time, he was called out of that prison by Pharaoh. And because of the gift he had, the gift he endured with, he was in Egypt second only to the Pharaoh. Sometimes we're called into growth. Now that hurts. You ever had that time where you say, it's Wednesday, and Lord, I've grown as much as I can take this week. Can I not have to grow so much? That can happen. You know, Paul was writing a letter to Timothy, and it was the second letter he wrote, and he was saying, You're going to grow. And in verse 6 of the first chapter, it says, This, Paul saying to Timothy, For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us a spirit of not fear, but power, love, self-control. A little later on, in verses 13, 14, Paul says, Listen to what I told you. Duplicate me, replicate me, grow in. Into being like me. Sometimes our gift calls us into awareness. An 139 Psalm, everybody knows this psalm. Search me, O God. Search me, O God. And if there's anything in me that shouldn't be in me, then show it to me and help me be like you. Search me. I'm after your heart, God. So sometimes we're in a place of awareness. Our gifts bring us up to say, the only reason you sound good in the shower is because it's an echo chamber. Everybody sounds good in the shower. Our gifts invite us into the IMs. We talked a little earlier in the bad news part of this about the I am nots. But what about the IMs? Let me give you a couple of examples. Moses. Moses. So here's Moses. He's a sheepherder. He's been at the heights in Egypt, and now he's hiding out. And God calls him out, and it's like a nightmare. God says to him, You're going back to Egypt. What? Back to Egypt? Oh my gosh. And you're going to talk to Pharaoh. I can't talk. I have a stutter. I have some kind of speech impediment. I can't talk. I am not able to do that. And what does God say? He says, Yes, you are. You're an I am. You're an I am because I am with you. Think about Saul. So here's this guy, the Jewish Jew, and he's been persecuting Christians. That's an easy word, persecuting. He's been killing them. He's been giving them over for torture. He's been destroying families. He's been doing all this, and he finally ran out of people in Jerusalem. So off he went to Damascus. And as you know, on the way he encountered the Lord. Boom. Blinding flash, nobody saw. The voice of the Lord, nobody heard. Except him. And Jesus said, Why are you persecuting me? Get that? Me. Because he's in all of us. He was in all of them. He didn't say, Why are you picking on my people in Jerusalem? He said, Why are you persecuting me? See, he was selecting Saul, who was probably the worst person in the world at the time. He was an expert. He knew exactly how to destroy these people. He knew the things that would wound their spirit. He knew the things that would take their property. He knew the things that would destroy their self-image. He was the worst. And God turned him into an I am. He said, Your name is Paul. I have a new name for you. That's your I am. And look what happened. Look where that went. My last example I'd like to share with you is found in the first book of Samuel, verse 25. And here's the story. So David is avoiding Saul, the king, because Saul has got it out for him. He's envious, jealous, wants to kill him. So David has what probably today would be seen as kind of a protection racket. In that what he's doing is he's protecting people in the area where he's at from being robbed, from home invasions, from all of these things. So he's got a mini army that does this, and in return, they rely on provision from the people they're protecting. So Saul sends some of his young guys over to this farm, and this farm is owned by a man whose name is either Nabal or Nabal. But I'm going to call him Nabal because I think it sounds better. So if I'm wrong, just translate into what you think is right. So he goes, he sends these guys to Nabal's place, and Nabal meets him, and they say, Would you give us some food? And he says, get out of here. You tell that punk David that I've got nothing for him. I've got nothing, and he better not show his face around here. So two things happen. First is these young men left and came back and told David what had happened, and what did David do? He hit the roof. He said, Say what? We're gonna go over there, get your horses, get your swords, get all your stuff, we're gonna get over there and we're gonna wipe those people out. We will not be dishonored and mistreated like this. We're gonna lay that place to waste. And here he comes. Now, meantime, a servant goes to Nabal's wife, who is a lady named Abigail, and realized the time. This is a time where male identity dominates everything. It's a patriarchal society. You have one husband, many wives. Women weren't educated, they weren't empowered, they were in the powerless place. That's the way it was. And here's little Abigail. But Abigail has a gift. She has a gift of discernment, and she realizes oh my gosh, David's gonna be hot. David's gonna be hot, and he's gonna come over that hill, and it's not gonna be pretty. So she immediately rounds up some food and whatnot that David's men were asking for, and she set out to intercept David. And she intercepts him successfully, and she says, My Lord, blame me. This is on me. Do not blame my husband, as foolish as he is, as selfish. Do not blame our children, do not blame our wives, do not blame our service. Lord, heap your anger upon me. And how does David respond? Well, David responds by saying, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you did this, because if I would have gone over there, I would have killed all these people, I would have blood guilt on me, I would be unacceptable to my God, I would be the object of revenge killings for as long as the rivers run. And then Abigail moves into another gift, and she says this. She says, Now then, my Lord, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from blood guilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my Lord be as Nabal. May they be like my husband. And now let this present that your servant has brought to my Lord be given to the young men who follow my Lord. Please forgive the trespass of your servant. For the Lord will certainly make my Lord a sure house, because my Lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live. If men rise up to pursue you and seek your life, the life of my Lord shall be bound in the bundle as you live. If men rise up to pursue you and seek your life, that's a prophetic word, isn't it? And when the Lord has done to my Lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you, and has appointed you prince over Israel, my Lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause, or for my Lord working salvation himself. And when the Lord has dwelt well with my Lord, then remember your servant. And ultimately, Abigail took risk, put herself out there, and became a queen. That's where it ended up. She became a queen. Let's have a little ministry time. You know, Peter in his first letter writes this. He says, Since we're approaching the end of all things, be intentional, purposeful, and self-controlled so that you can be given to prayer. Above all, constantly echo God's intense love for one another, for love will be a canopy over a multitude of sins. Be compassionate to foreigners without complaining. Every believer has received grace gifts, so use them to serve one another as faithful stewards in the many colored tapestry of God's grace. For example, if you have a speaking gift, gift as though, excuse me, speak as though God were speaking his words through you. If you have the gift of serving, do it passionately with the strength God gives you, so that in everything God alone will be glorified through Jesus Christ. What I'd like to invite you to do is just sit for a moment here, and you have a little handout. And on the front side of the handout, there's a little scriptural message, some commentary about unity and about diversity. We are all one. You've read Paul over and over again saying there's one God, one Father, one Jesus, one baptism, one body. It's in the unity that our diversity can manifest. It's in that place of unity where our different gifts, and Paul uses the analogy of the body, all those things come together in unity. And then there's room for the power of diversity. But if we're not in unity, then the power becomes divisiveness. It becomes all the I'm nots. So we're sitting before the Lord in unity. One Jesus, one Christ, and Him crucified. And you're invited to do a couple of things. First of all, as you're sitting before the Lord, ask the Holy Spirit, show me some of my gifts. Show me some of my gifts. Just two or three. You don't have to pick the best ones. They're all there, okay? But just what are two or three? And when you have those in your awareness, then remember the good news, the power of Christ in and with and through us. And think about what are some ways that I can fan the flame of my faith and grow in the understanding of these gifts you're showing to me today. And thirdly, give a little bit of time and ask yourself this question: What shall I do this week to concretely use these gifts? What shall I do? What can I do? Because you can think about your gifts and you can do speculation about your gifts, but you were given gifts. Your inheritance is not just for you, it's for others. Abigail had an inheritance for David. Paul had an inheritance to be one of the greatest authors in God's word of all time. Moses was the great lawgiver. He had an inheritance. So let's just sit for a minute. We'll have a little music on. Think about these questions. And we'll come back in a bit. It's a place of beginning. And if you're in that space right now, stay there. Stay there. It's the best thing you can do. Feel the spirit talking to you. You're loved. You're accepted. You're redeemed. You're reconciled. You know, James wrote that faith without works is dead. These works, they're the faithful outworking of our time and our treasure and our talents. And our purpose is to bless one another. Jesus gave the commandment. He said, A new commandment I give you. Love one another as I have loved you. Love one another. You know, Saul could have been a great king. Samson, why, he could have been a great judge over Israel, not the bad boy of the Bible. Pilate, Pilate could have been just and perhaps changed the course of history in ways that we couldn't imagine. Possibly. But they all listened to their soul and not to God. Let's not make that mistake as we reach our kingship and our judgeship and our movement in the kingdom of God and all the inheritance we have, time, talent, and treasure, all flow together to bless the people of the household of God. In Revelation 2.2, Jesus tells John to write to the church at Ephesus, saying, This, I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear for those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you're enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. These words should pierce us. If you look back and you think about the day you met the Lord, the day that you encountered the Holy Spirit, the day that you knew that you knew that you knew. How did you feel then? What was it like? How passionate were you? How amazed were you? How wonderful was it? But then you probably started going to church. And you began to learn things. You began to experience rejection and counter-argument and all that, and you can fall away completely. And what Paul, or excuse me, John is saying here is go back to your first love. Go back to what it was like. Remember how it was when you were at that time before you knew so much and had tried so much and all of that. Go back to that place and repent. Change your thinking. And recover. Recover your first love. I have a prayer to close us today, if you'd bow your heads. This is a prayer. It's found in Ephesians. And Paul is praying and he says this. He says, For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. That's Paul's prayer for us. That's our prayer for today. Let's stand. Ministry team, could you come, please?