Gifted For The Good Of Others

Transcript

Well, good morning, Saints. This morning, we come back to Romans chapter 12 as we continue our three-part study of that wonderful chapter. And so we’ll be talking about spiritual gifts, and once again, I have forgotten to send my PowerPoint slides to the faithful folks back there, so I would like to ask you to exercise the gift of forgiveness and patience with me. If you have your Bible, please open it to Romans chapter 12, and if you don’t have a Bible, there should be one in the chair in front of you, and if you don’t have a Bible at home, please take that as Trinity Church’s gift to you. Romans chapter 12, I’d like to invite you to stand for the reading of God’s Word as you’re able. Romans 12, beginning from verse 3. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly

than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. Please be seated. The title for today’s sermon is Gifted for the Good of Others. Gifted for the Good of Others, and I’d like to encourage you to keep your Bibles open

to Romans chapter 12, and as you’re hearing the things that I’m saying, to keep your noses in the Bible, as it were, and check what I’m saying to make sure that’s what we actually see in Scripture. But in Romans chapter 12, we see this beautiful picture of gifting, and in his commentary on the book of Romans, John MacArthur shares the following story, which I think will be helpful for us. After World War II, a group of German students volunteered to help rebuild an English cathedral that had been severely damaged by German bombs. As the work progressed, they became concerned about a large statue of Jesus, whose arms were outstretched, and beneath which was the inscription, Come unto me. They had particular difficulty trying to restore specifically the hands, which had been completely destroyed. After much discussion, they decided to let the hands remain missing, and changed the

Christ’s Hands and Feet

description below the statue to, Christ has no hands, but ours. This is what we see in our text this morning, dear friends. What Christ is doing in the world today is done by the hands and the feet of his people. Specifically, when those people gladly obey and live out lives that are true to the purposes to which he’s called them to live. When we live the lives that God is calling us to live, when we live the lives of obedience that God has given us in his word, we are his hands and we are his feet in this world. His love and care for his bride, the building up of his body, and the spread of the gospel, we get to do that. We get to be involved in that work. Now as we continue our study of the book of Romans, I’d like to remind you that last week

we looked at this topic of a life of worship, and we saw that specifically from verses one and two. And what we saw was, an intentional Christian life is a worshipful life. An intentional Christian life is a life of sacrifice. This is a person who sees all that they are, all that God has made them to be, as a sacrifice unto him for his glory and for the good of his people. And the way that a person comes to living in this way is by being transformed by the power of the gospel, and regularly having their minds transformed by the word of God and the spirit of God more and more and more into the mind of Christ. Now it may seem rather obvious, but I do think that it’s worth stating that what we studied last week and what we’ll be touching on this week is only possible for believers.

This is only possible for people who are born again. This is only possible for people who’ve been changed by the gospel, who’ve come to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and as Savior. You can’t sacrifice yourself and change yourself into being a citizen of the kingdom. That’s not a transformation that any human being is capable of doing. You can’t serve in the way that God calls you to, apart from the miraculous work of the spirit in you. You can’t just will that. You can’t just become that in and of yourself. What we’re talking about, beloved, is supernatural stuff. This isn’t something we simply get better at. Now with those two verses as our foundation, we delve into verses three through eight today. We’ll be looking specifically at this topic of spiritual gifts and what it looks like when we use them in the church. Now an interesting thing for us to consider as we consider this topic of the spiritual

gifts is that Paul is telling us that the Christian life is not merely vertical. This isn’t just how we relate to God. This isn’t just me and God. It’s I believe in Jesus. I love Jesus. He loves me. We’re good. I prayed the prayer. I’m a member of a church. I’m good. I do my devotionals. I’m set. This isn’t how it works, Paul is saying. This is part of it, but the Christian life is also horizontal. This is how we interact with and relate to others. This is how we engage with the world around us. This is how we engage with the Christians around us, with the church that we are a part of. And there seems to be quite a bit of talk about this throughout the Bible, about serving each other, ministering to each other, living with one another, using our gifts. So this isn’t just a one-off where Paul just says one thing to one church at one point

in history and then everything else is just, you know, choose your own adventure. Just define it as you will. That’s not what the Bible seems to be telling us. The Bible seems to be telling us over and over that yes, there is this component, but there is also this component without which this component doesn’t seem to work. So how and why are we gifted by God? Scripture seems to be telling us that it’s so that we can love and bless one another. So let’s flesh that out a little bit in these six verses. First let’s look at verse three, which I’ve titled an accurate self-assessment, an accurate self-assessment. In calling the Roman Christians to a humble assessment of themselves, Paul’s exhortation to these believers is based on, as we see in the verse, only on grace. He’s saying, I’m calling you to look at yourself correctly, and he’s calling on grace in doing

An Accurate Self-Assessment

this. It is only by grace that he, or any of us, can make a plea to other people in a certain way. It’s only by grace that we get to interact with one another in that way. Why? Well, certainly it’s not because the word of God isn’t authoritative. It’s not like I can’t just point to the chapter and verse and be like, hey, brother, sister, you have to do this. The verse says that. The Bible is authoritative. The Bible is inerrant. The Bible is sufficient for all of life, yes. But he says this because it is only by God’s grace that any of us, Paul included, have come not only to know God, but believe in his word, and believe its truths, and rely on it, and see the way that it changes on us. That doesn’t happen just by us being like, well, I guess this is the Bible, so I’ve got

to listen. That’s not how that happens. It’s by grace that our minds are transformed. It’s by grace that God works those truths into us. It’s by grace that God illumines our eyes to see these truths and be changed by them. And so Paul is saying it is by grace that I’m calling you to think of yourself in the way that God is calling you to. When he appeals to grace, Paul then says, don’t think too highly of yourself. A better way to think about this would be how one might esteem themselves. Don’t esteem yourself too highly. Have the correct assessment of yourself, in other words. Don’t be in love with yourself. Esteem yourself correctly. Now for our day and age, this sounds a bit off, doesn’t it? This sounds wrong, like, wait, Paul is saying what? Lower self-esteem? Aren’t we all battling with that already? Don’t we all already have a pretty bad picture?

Aren’t we all pretty stressed out, pretty anxious, pretty down on ourselves, overwhelmed? And Paul seems to be saying, hey, knock it down a few notches. At a time when self-love and self-care and the celebration of self is seemingly at the center of how everything in our world works, this statement reads harsh. This sounds really, really off. Is Paul saying that we need to not like ourselves? Is Paul saying that I need to look in the mirror and just try to find the things that are wrong with me, remind myself of how big of a failure I am, dwell on my past mistakes and on my regrets? Is that what Paul is telling us? To lower our self-esteem? Surely he doesn’t want for the Christian to just be depressed and anxious and self-critical, right? No, because the opposite, dear friends, of high self-esteem or a high self-regard is

not low self-esteem, but a high view of Christ. And what Paul is telling us is not that we just ought to think lower of ourselves. He’s telling us that we ought to think higher of Christ. We ought to have a bigger picture of Jesus ever in our minds. We aren’t just to beat ourselves down and denigrate ourselves, but to look to Jesus. As we consider not thinking too highly of ourselves, it’s easy to just try to think less of ourselves, but the irony of that picture is that the more that you think about thinking less of yourself, who are you thinking more and more about? That’s easy. It’s easy to remind myself how bad I am. Oh, there’s a long list of that stuff. It’s easy to remind myself how much I’ve messed up and how chaotic my life has been and how I continue to mess up and how I continue to fail.

But the solution is to really think more of Jesus, more of Christ in my heart, more of Christ in my mind, more of Christ in my life. The more he is my focus, the less the unhealthy view of myself in my life. Because then I start to see myself in the way that he sees me. And then I start to see the purpose that he has given me. Despite the failure that I am, he loves me. Despite the way that I’ve screwed my life up, he’s made something of it. Paul says the way that this is to be done is with a sober judgment and that this should be according to the measure of the faith that God has assigned you. Faith, dear friends, looks away from me and it looks to the object of my faith. And who is the object of my faith?

Who saved me? And who loves me? And who cares for me? And who intercedes on my behalf and calls me to come near? How is it that I’ve come to be called a child of God? This is what comprises the faith that continuously turns my gaze away from me and onto him. And that’s what Paul is telling us to do. Think with a sober judgment in accordance with my faith. My faith being Jesus. Beloved, we don’t need to esteem ourselves less, but to esteem him more. Paul isn’t telling us to be miserable and depressed, but to be a people who rejoice in Christ and who make much of Jesus. The bigger Jesus is in our hearts and minds, the more alive and effective and true to our calling we are. That is an accurate self-assessment. As we think and talk and pray about what it’d mean for each of us to better use our gifts

for the good of the church, for the good of the brothers and sisters around us, let each of us intentionally analyze what in me stands in the way of me being a bigger blessing to others. What in me makes Jesus smaller and me bigger? What in me stands in the way of holiness? Now I mentioned this last time, but we should really be the kind of people that are regularly analyzing our hearts and striving for holiness, at least in part, to be a bigger blessing to the people around us, to make sure that we aren’t a stumbling block, to make sure that as I seek to serve others, more and more of Christ is seen in me and my ministry. This is a blessing to the people around us. This is how we ought to think about our lives, because once again, jump back to last week’s

passage, my life is a sacrifice. My life is not for me. My life is not about building my kingdom. My life is not about my dreams and my goals and my aspirations. Those are a part of it, to be sure, and God has created us as a people who think and dream and strive and build things, but at the same time, what are we living for? And if it’s for his glory and for your good, then my assessment of self has to make that a fruitful life, primarily and predominantly. This way of living then allows us to minister in the way that scripture calls us to, the way that God has uniquely gifted us, in order to bless others so that Christ might be glorified among us. Amen? Amen. So, let’s take a look at the gifts, all right? Let’s take a look at verses four through eight with that in mind, with that as the foundation,

Unity in Diversity

and here we get to our second point, which is unity in diversity. Unity in diversity. I’m not going to reread verses four through eight, but keep your eyes there. When speaking about the church and the way that Christians relate to and serve one another, Paul uses one of his favorite metaphors to describe the church. It’s used in multiple epistles, it’s used multiple times, this imagery is vivid throughout the New Testament, and that is the image of the church as the body, the body. The image is supposed to communicate this beautiful reality of our need for each other, our interconnectedness, one to another, the fact that one part is not more important than another. And he says this in 1 Corinthians 12 21, that the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. What Paul is communicating in this imagery, when he calls us the body, and he calls us

to be effective and living members of this body, is that we can’t just jump out and be like, I’m like doing this big thing, and then we got the pinky toe somewhere over there, and they’re not doing anything. That’s not how this works. We can’t live without each other, because God forbid that pinky toe gets gangrene, we’re doomed. And so we need to keep each other healthy, we need to prod one another along, we need to encourage one another and love one another. We’re linked to each other forever. Which as an aside, if there’s somebody that you don’t like, you better fix that. You’re going to be next to this person forever. And if God is going to make sure that you are going to grow into being more and more like Jesus, he’s going to keep putting that person in your path. And then because God also has a good sense of humor, I think that when you’re going to

be at the throne, that person is going to be right next to you. She’s going to follow you into eternity. We belong to each other, we need each other, and individually, we can’t survive. And yes, each and every one of us needs each and every one of us. Every Christian has been gifted by the Spirit. Why? To exalt that Christian and to make them really great in the eyes of everybody? No, to be used for the good of others. If God has gifted you, that is not to be wasted. That’s not your gift to waste. That’s not your greatness that you’re squandering. That’s God’s gift to you, but more importantly, God’s gift to the church. It’s not to be hidden away. There are no extras on this set. Everybody’s a live actor. Everybody’s involved. So how are we to think about our gifting? How are we to think about using our gifting?

Well, first, just look at what he’s talking about in our text. He’s talking about serving. He’s talking about exhortation, faith, generosity, zeal, cheerfulness, and it’s important to see that these point inherently and deeply to a deep love of Jesus. These point to a deep love of the people of God. These point to something that is encouraging, that is edifying, that builds up, that lifts up. And do you see how many of these gifts are just somewhat broad, right? These are kind of broader categories. It seems like Paul isn’t providing us with strict, narrow categories of gifting and serving. Okay, you do this very narrow thing, and you do this very narrow thing, and you kind of take care of this thing over here. But what he’s showing us is he’s giving us this broader understanding of how we ought to use our gifts, how we ought to use our abilities, how we ought to use our resources

for the building up of others. He’s showing us that finding and exercising your gifts shouldn’t be a formulaic thing. You can’t just take a seminar on the spiritual gifts and just, boom, I’m done, I’m good, I figured it out. Here’s the very narrow thing that I do, and once I’ve done that, I’m done. I’m gone. I’m doing my own thing now. That’s not how that works. It has a lot to do with finding needs, with meeting needs, with using resources, with being intentional, with being present, with paying attention, loving people, ministering to them. And sometimes this is going to be a combination of very different things. And sometimes it’ll be doing something that you don’t necessarily see as your gift, but that the Holy Spirit empowers you in the moment to do and prompts you to do for the good of a brother or sister.

Just because it’s not your gift, that doesn’t mean that you’re not being called to exercise a gift in getting that thing done for the good of another. Herein lies the uniqueness of how God gifts us and why we need each other. The way that you’re wired, dear saint, your past, your experiences, your emotional and your psychological composition, your resources, where you live, all of these things, God wants to use specifically that to bless His children and to grow His church. It’s not by accident that you’re here at Trinity Church. It’s not by accident that at this very point in history, God has caused you to be here with me. We fit together. And we fit together because we’re different. Two identical puzzle pieces don’t go together. They need to be different so that they could fit. John Piper has this great thought on spiritual gifts.

He says, there have never been two Christians on the face of the earth who have exactly the same mixture of giftedness from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I’ll be gifted a little bit more than you in this way. Sometimes you’ll be gifted a little bit more than me in this way. Even if we have the same exact gifts, God has created those balances a little bit different so that we can serve in very specific, very unique ways. And that’s intentional. That’s by design. So where do we start then with understanding these spiritual gifts? And we have to jump back to the beginning of the chapter because what Paul starts talking about there is what leads into what we’re talking about now. We start with mercy. We start with mercy. How have we come to be known as the people of God? How have we come to know God?

And then in verse three, your eyes are to Jesus. You’re not thinking about yourself. You’re not building your own kingdom. You’re not developing your own sense of this grand idea of how my life is supposed to go. Your eyes are to Jesus. See, we often start thinking about our gifts as thinking about ourselves. Well, what do I want to do? And what am I the strongest in? And what am I supposed to do? And Paul doesn’t start there. Paul is like, how did you even come to be a child of God? How did you come to be saved? Okay. And then two verses forward, he’s like, again, don’t think too highly of yourself. Eyes to Jesus. Eyes up to heaven. It’s not about you. Be overcome with your love of Christ. Be amazed with Christ. Focus on him and think of him often. And then what happens when we live like that is overflowing with the love of Jesus.

We go and we start loving people. That’s the formula. Mercy, Jesus, love people. And in the process of doing these things is where we start to discover, oh wow, God has given me this opportunity to serve this person here. And God has given me this seemingly very different kind of opportunity to serve this person here. You don’t find your gifts by thinking about them on your own, by sitting at home and being like, what am I gifted in? What should I be doing? Because you can spend your whole life processing yourself that way. And again, don’t think too highly of yourself. You can’t find these gifts or use them if you’re not regularly around your brothers and sisters. It’s really difficult to learn about all of you if I’m not around you. If I only see you on Sunday for about an hour, hour and a half or so, it’s really difficult

to find the way that I can serve you in the way that I should be serving you. And so as you head to church on Sunday or as you head to your community group on Wednesday or as you head to men’s breakfast or women’s brunch or any other event at the church, any other gathering at the church, I want to invite you to just be prayerful and to be praying and asking God to make you a more loving Christian, to make you a more merciful Christian, to make you more generous, to give you this gift of encouragement and exhortation, to give you opportunities and to open your eyes to the opportunities that He gives you. There may be a time when the Spirit fills you miraculously and seemingly completely out of nowhere and maybe just momentarily to say something or to serve in a way that

ministers to a brother or sister that they really, really needed, that God really, really needed for His child. And He’s going to use you in that process. And you can’t be used in that way if you’re not available and if you’re not present and if you don’t love this person enough to come to them and put your arm around them and pray with them and ask them how they’re doing and ask them if you can help and ask them if they need a meal and all of these different things. We need each other, and so are we asking for these opportunities? Are we praying as we go to church? Are we praying as we go to gatherings and as we go to meals with other saints? As we think about how to use our gifts, saints, I would encourage you to regularly be in prayer

Gifts in Action

for how you might use them here at Trinity. We need to ask God to fill our church with His gifts, and that is all of us using the gifts that He has already provided. We need to ask God to give us those gifts so that we may all be more and more built up and make Him known among us and through us. So Paul starts walking through these different gifts. Paul gives us this picture of how we even approach these gifts, and then he starts walking through this list. This isn’t an exhaustive list, that’s the first thing I should say, but the other thing is I’m not going to go super in-depth on any of these because I think that the bigger picture is not so much the individual gifts that Paul is listing here, but the heart and the mind behind these gifts. Why we have gifts in the first place, why we need to be exercising our gifts in the

first place. But when Paul starts his list, he starts with prophecy. And so to keep the focus on the way that we serve others and use our gifts and to bless brothers and sisters, all I’ll say here is that some commentators say that this is prophecy just like in the Old and the New Testament, that this is the prophetic gift of thus says the Lord. Some commentators, some preachers would say that this more specifically speaks about preaching or teaching or communicating the truth of God. But the important thing is not so much like what exactly Paul means here, but what he’s talking about and how he qualifies it. And he says prophecy in proportion to our faith. This speaks most importantly to the message that the prophet or the preacher says in that it has to align with what God has revealed himself, revealed about himself in his word,

the gospel truth. This is what God wants for his people to know. This is what God wants to use to bless his people and grow his people. And it is to be rooted and tested by the revealed word of God. And so when Paul is speaking about this prophecy, this prophetic utterance that needs to be given to the people of God, he’s speaking about something that needs to be rooted and grounded in the word of God and the truth of God as he’s revealed it. And when we look at things like this, we can get caught up with the minutia of like what these gifts mean, how much the miraculous spiritual gifts are present today or how much are they not present? How much are they practical or how much are they to be practiced? How and when and to what extent are we to practice or use these gifts and trying to

figure out this exact combination of how to understand this thing. But the thing is, dear saints, wherever the miraculous spiritual gifts are discussed in the New Testament, the topic is always love and the good of others. The topic is always that God has given people something to build up his church. It’s not about who exercises what gift at what time, but what we’re looking at is how do we express love, God’s love to one another, the love that God has placed in our hearts here in the midst of Trinity Church. And how do we build each other up into Jesus? When we think about gifting and ministry, it’s always to be flowing out of a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit, someone who loves Jesus more than anything, and someone who is willing and ready to give themselves for the good and the edification of others.

That’s what’s most important about these gifts. That’s what’s most important as we discuss individual gifts or gifts broadly. And that’s what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us through the Apostle Paul. And so as Paul goes on from there and starts talking about serving and teaching and exhortation, we see that the focus, again, is not about the teacher. It’s not about the person who just is so gifted in exhortation. But the emphasis here is the blessing of those being ministered to. The emphasis, and this is so important for us to remember as we think about exercising our gifts, it’s not so much about like, what’s my gift and how do I use it? That’s part of it. But what does my gift produce? Is it building up? Is it encouraging? Is it edifying? Is it making people more like Jesus? And that’s what the picture of the kind of the outpouring of the gifts in the church

should look like. And by the way, when we talk about teaching, it’s easy to think about this as something that’s specific to pastors or preachers or teachers. But to each of us think about what we do once we’ve taken in the truth of God. Once we’ve listened to a sermon or once we’ve sat in on a Bible study lesson or once we’ve listened to a really great seminar, what are we doing with that? We ought to think about how we then go and teach and communicate these truths to others. We ought to think about how we’re learning and being shaped by the Word of God and the truths of God and then taking that and passing it on to the people that God sends our way. That goes for you, mom. That goes for you, dad. That goes for all of our friends. That goes for our coworkers.

That goes for our neighbors. What are we doing with the truth of God that we take in? This isn’t just that the gift of teaching or preaching is just exercised here for an hour and that’s the only way that God uses teaching in the church. It goes beyond that. And it ought to be something that we think intentionally about, like, what am I going to do with this truth that I’ve taken in? How am I going to share it with others? When I encounter a brother or sister outside of this building, are we going to talk about these things? Am I going to encourage? Am I going to build up? That’s the gospel. If I’ve heard the gospel maybe presented in a way that I hadn’t thought about before and I’m talking to my coworker and I’ve been praying and thinking about, man, how do I talk to

this person? Have you ever considered that maybe you’re hearing it in a unique way because God is trying to give you different angles so that you can share the gospel with that person at work? How are we passing these truths on to people beyond what we take in? And then Paul says, the one who leads with zeal. This is interesting. If you’re a zealous leading Christian, first of all, you need to know where you’re going. You can’t just be zealous in your leading and just stomping off into the middle of the woods wondering if you’ll find your way eventually. That’s not zealous. That’s naive and hopeful at best, but that’s not zealous. And so leading with zeal is knowing where you’re going. This is why our focus and our emphasis and our direction should always be Jesus. Because if our mind is on Christ and my mind is not on me building up my own life and building

up my own kingdom, then when I lead people, I’m not leading by personality. I’m not leading by just, oh, well, this guy or this gal, they’re just interesting and they’re cool, so I’m just going to follow where they go. No. The more that our minds are set on Jesus, the more that our direction is Christward, we can confidently lead others there. This is why Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ in another letter. It’s not because he just thinks he’s so perfect. He says as much earlier on in the book of Romans, but what he’s doing is insofar as I follow Christ, follow me. And this is how we ought to be leading others. And moreover, leading with zeal is something that we need to be on guard against complacency in our ministries, in our lives. As we lead others or as we are an example to others, the way that we communicate that

is by guarding our hearts against complacency. Never allow yourself, Christian, to just go through the motions, just, oh, it’s just my Christian thing. I’m just doing this and now it’s time for church and now it’s time for this and now it’s time for that. No, there’s, there’s a zeal with which we move about our lives. There’s an excitement. We have the message that brings dead men to life. Amen. Yeah. So there’s something there that we just gloss over when we get used to sitting and hearing this gospel message and sitting and learning more and more about Jesus and sitting and understanding more and more about everything from eschatology and pneumatology and all the ologies. But it’s really easy to just kind of make that the rhythm as opposed to just being on fire for Jesus, having a Christward direction and being excited about the fact that I get

to participate in what God is doing on earth. We get to be his hands and his feet. And then Paul goes on to say about how we give, how we contribute. And so the question we ought to be asking ourselves when we read that portion of our text is, do we give joyfully? Do we give generously? Do we give sacrificially? When teaching his disciples, Jesus has this really fascinating lesson about what sacrificial giving looks like. And he points as they’re watching all of these people giving in the temple. And some people are giving a ton of coins that kind of rattle around in the coffers and they make a ton of noise and everybody around is like, whoa, that guy just gave so much. And this woman, this poor widow comes and she drops in her two little coins, which don’t make any noise at all.

And Jesus looks at her and he looks at his disciples and he points and he says, she gave more than all of them. Which is confusing at that time. It was confusing for his disciples, but what Jesus was pointing to is not the quantity of the giving, but the heart behind the giving. He holds her up as an example of generous and more importantly, worshipful giving. More than any of the people who gave much, much larger amounts. And so Paul is asking, do we give out of a desire to invest into eternal things? Do we give out of a desire to bless and to support and to help and participate in gospel work? And more importantly, are we joyful when we give? Do we rejoice in getting to participate in that work? Second Corinthians 9.7 says that God loves a cheerful giver. Cheerful giver. How great is it to receive gifts that are gladly given when somebody’s like, man, I

thought of you and I saw this thing and I just, I knew you had to have it. And I went out of my way and I ordered it for you and here it is, dude, enjoy it. It just lights your heart. You thought of me? Really? Wow. I don’t like it at all. No, I’m just kidding. It’s so impactful when we get to see that somebody thought of us and cared enough and took the time and made the effort and stepped into my life thinking about me and what might benefit me and what might bless me. Shouldn’t this inform this feeling that we’ve all felt? Shouldn’t this inform how we give to others? Shouldn’t this inform how we participate in gospel work? Consider saints how God gives to us. He’s not stingy. He doesn’t hold back and he’s glad to give us gifts and his son and his bride and everything.

Eternal blessing and brothers and sisters and a community and love. He graciously provides, lavishly provides. And so as those people who’ve received that, Paul is saying, how are we not to give cheerfully knowing that I get to do that which God has done for me and which many brothers and sisters have done for me. So we give cheerfully. And then at the end of the eighth verse, Paul says, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. Mercy done with cheerfulness. Do you ever dole out mercy in kind of a stingy way? Are you ever frugal with mercy? No? Just me? Friends, this isn’t how God gives us mercy. God doesn’t look and think and that is the fourth time he’s crossed the line. So I guess I got to teach him a lesson. That’s not how mercy works. He’s glad to give it. And boy, aren’t we glad to receive it.

Do we understand that we cannot exist apart from grace and mercy? And so how willing and ready are we to give it to others? And when we do, when we finally do extend that mercy, is it begrudgingly, fine, take it? Or is it gladly knowing that as much as I’ve received, this is nothing? Since we know how good and delightful it is to receive it, we should gladly and cheerfully give it to others. So I want to ask you, Saint, do you derive joy from being merciful? When you minister to others, when you show kindness, when you forgive sins, when you don’t hold a list of debts owed to you, do you derive joy from that? Now in each of these things, dear brother or sister, I hope you’re seeing how many different kinds of people and how many different types of gifts and how many different temperaments

and resources and opportunities are needed to make all of this happen. Any one of these things is a challenge for any one of us. And so we need people that are wired differently, that are gifted differently, that have different abilities and capabilities and have different allotments of time and have different stages of life in order to actually see this fleshed out in the church. Now I’m not going into the weeds of any of these things. Again, the goal here isn’t to tell you what your gift is and how to find that one very specific thing that you need to be doing in the church, but we need to be pressing into the heart of why and how it is that we serve others with the gifts that God gives us. Again, we need one another. Saints, I need you. Alone we wither and we fade.

We Need Each Other

Together we flourish and we grow more and more and more and more into the man or the woman of God that God is calling us to be. And so I need you to do that for me. I want to be more like Jesus. I’m tired of being more like Andre. I want more of Christ to be seen in me and I can’t do it alone. And Saint, you can’t do it alone either. That’s not how this works. God’s design for you is to be in my life and for me to be in your life. And it’s precisely because we’re different. It’s precisely because we’re unique. It’s precisely because of our limitations that we can uniquely serve one another and help each other in the way. Beloved, I want to ask each of you, are you intentional about what we’re doing here? Are you intentional about your involvement in church life?

Do you take being present and active seriously? Or are you dismissive about body life? I got to tell you, I’m so encouraged and I’m so blessed by these conversations surrounding congregationalism and how we might all be more involved here and how each of us might stick our hands into the mix more and more and become a part of this from every different angle. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing, but it takes intentionality. It takes seriousness. It takes commitment. You can’t just be passive in that process. Can the hand or the eye or the foot take a day off? Can it just not be present? Can it just like, whatever, I’m not really, you know, this isn’t foot day. Yes, saints, things come up. Life happens. Illness and travel and work and kids get sick and all of this stuff. And the insanity of modern life is always pressing on us.

And please, I don’t want you to hear what I’m saying as legalism, like you have to attend X amount of times. It’s not what I’m communicating at all, but is being away from the saints and being away from the body the exception or the rule in your life? Do you value what’s happening here? Do you value the life and the growth and the maturing in the ministry of this church? These people, are they on your heart? Are they in your prayers? Do you love these people? Do you love what God is doing here? Are you hopeful about the many more people that may come and hear the gospel at Trinity Church and see a room full of people that have been radically transformed by the gospel? Do you pray for that? Are you excited about that? And friend, if this is a challenge for you, I got news.

I know a room full of people that God has sent to help you. They can pray for you and they can help you. And this is where that openness and honesty and vulnerability of coming to a brother and sister and be like, dude, I’m struggling. I just, I don’t really want to be here. And there are days where I’m just not excited about what God is doing. And then I feel convicted and I just need help. Can you pray for me? Can you pray with me? Can we talk about this? It’s a beautiful thing that we get to participate in. There’s a temptation that may arise thinking that the gifts that I have are insignificant, right? We think that, oh, well, this isn’t super needed. There’s other gifted people that are doing other important things and that seems to be moving the church along just fine and those people will get it done.

And there’s that temptation that I don’t have this to think that I don’t have the certain gifts that would make me feel more valuable. And this couldn’t be further from the truth, beloved. This is a lie straight out of hell. This is not what God is telling us in his word and this is not the model for the church. If God has saved you, then God has gifted you. And if God has gifted you, that is for the serving of his people. If you’re here, God wants you here. You’re not here by accident. You’re not here just for your own sake. You’re here for all of our sake and we’re here for your sake. We need you here and we need your gifts and I can’t grow into Jesus apart from you. Yes, we are frail. Yes, I am frail. Yes, we are weak. Yes, we lack.

Yes, we are limited. But God is not limited and God is not lacking and he is wise and he knows what he’s doing. And as part of our good heavenly father’s design for his church, he called you and I to be together and to love one another and serve one another and build up this body. So let’s do that. Amen? Amen. Would you bow your heads and pray with me, saints? Father, we are weak. We are frail. We have so many limitations and we so desperately need the power of the Spirit and the love of our Heavenly Father and the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ just to make it through today. But that’s exactly where you want us to be. Were we a self-dependent, self-reliant people, we would not be the people that you are calling us to be. And your church would be known for us, not for Jesus.

Lord, protect us from that. Protect us from a life that focuses on us and help us to lean heavily on Christ, to love Jesus more than anything, and to live in such a way as to give ourselves for the good and the blessing and the growth of the people that you and your wisdom have placed around us. Father, I thank you so much for Trinity Church. I thank you for every single person here. I thank you for their stories. I thank you for their testimony. I thank you for their gifts, for their abilities, and I thank you for their prayers. Lord, we exist because you want us to exist, and we grow in the way that you have called us to live and grow into Jesus. And so please help us do that. Please help us become a people among whom Jesus is known. We ask for his glory and in his name, amen.