You've Got A Gift! Sermon by Paul Decker, 1 Corinthians 12:1-31

I. Spiritual gifts are special abilities distributed by the Holy Spirit to every believer according to God’s design and grace for the common good of the body of Christ.

II. God has designed the church to work interdependently.

III. We are different, but not divided.

IV. We have one or more spiritual gifts.

PA: How is the change to be observed?

Version: ESV

RMBC 04 January 04 AM

INTRODUCTION:

ILL Notebook: Talent (viola) [slightly revised…]

When Deborah Hays began viola lessons as an adult, she called her mother to share her excitement.

"Wonderful!" her mother ex¬claimed. "But I’ve never heard a viola. What does it sound like?"

Unable to give an apt description, Deborah phoned her mother a few days later, after buying a CD of viola music. "Listen to this…” she said as she placed the telephone receiver next to the stereo speaker, and turned the music on for about 30 seconds of a Schubert sonata. Then she picked up the receiver. "Well, Mom, what do you think?"

A moment of silence followed, then a ques¬tion: "I’m speechless, Debbie. Your more gifted than I thought! How many lessons have you had?"

Well…

Has anyone ever told you that you had a gift?

They told you that you were really good at something.

They understood by watching you that you were especially blessed.

You know…

I like getting gifts.

How about you?

This may sound crazy, but I like getting socks and ties.

And I really like getting books, cds and dvds.

But what I would really like as a gift is a BMW Z5 convertible – blue if you have it.

Now that’s a gift!

OUR STUDY:

Do you know that we have been gifted by God?

Think for a moment, because you have been gifted with infinitely better things than the silly ones I just mentioned.

First, we have been given eternal life.

Listen to Romans 6:23…

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And, there is more, for we have been given the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of God residing in us.

Listen to II Corinthians 1:21-22…

And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

But even that is not the end.

There is even more!

You see…

1. As Christians, WE HAVE BEEN SPIRITUALLY GIFTED.

There is not a believer in this room who does not have what is called a “spiritual gift.”

Each one of us has been gifted by God with special abilities that we did not have prior to being a Christian.

They are, in fact, the result of the Holy Spirit coming in and residing in us.

Sadly though, the truth is that we don’t all use them.

They are for the church untapped resources, because we don’t know what we have then or how to use them.

This means that many of us end up settling for far less than God intended for us.

Now, as a point of clarification, spiritual gifts are different than talents.

Talents are what you are born with; spiritual gifts are what you are born again with.

Our spiritual gifts are worth knowing, because we are assigned to have a proper estimate of ourselves.

In the Scripture text we read this morning (Romans 12:3), it says…

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.

To better understand what spiritual gifts are, consider this definition…

2. Definition: Spiritual gifts are special abilities distributed by the Holy Spirit to every believer according to God’s design and grace for the common good of the body of Christ (Bruce Bugbee).

Spiritual gifts are divine endowments.

They come from God to us.

And they are true gifts.

The Greek word that is translated spiritual gift is charismata.

At the beginning of that word is charis, which is the word for grace.

So spiritual gifts are really endowments of grace.

They are special abilities that are graciously given to us so that we might make our unique contribution to the body of Christ, the church.

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