March 7, 2010
Dr.
Ron Sumners
Spiritual Gifts: Service after Surrender
Romans 12:1-8
1 Corinthians 12:20-26
After World War II ended, a group of
German students volunteered to help rebuild an English Cathedral in
That is the truth that is taught in
Romans 12. When Jesus was here on earth, He ministered in a physical body, but
since He has returned to heaven, He has ministered through a spiritual body…the
body of Christ…the Church!
In
verse 5, we are called “members” of the same body. Each of us has gifts from
the Lord that enable us to function in the church even as the different parts
of our physical body function together. So, the message from that statue in
The first obligation to the Lord is not
the use of our gifts for His kingdom. The first obligation to the Lord is
complete surrender of our heart, our will, and our life. That is why verses 1-2
come before verse 3. Those first two verses are about complete surrender of ourselves
to the Lord. God cannot use us as individuals or as The Body until we
completely surrender to Him. After that we can surrender our gifts to Him and
His service. He will not have what you can do until He has you! This means
several things for us.
Total
dedication
Verse one is language of the Old
Testament. It talks about a sacrifice. We are to be living sacrifices to the
Lord. The priest would lay the sacrifice on the altar; whether it be an animal
or a drink offering. That is what we are required to do; to lay our lives on
the altar. We are to live a sacrificial life in service of God. It is all
offered to Him!
Radical
separation
Verse two tells us not to squeeze into
the world’s mold. That does not mean that we are world denying or that we have
to be a religious weirdo to be acceptable to God; it simply means that we are
not to conform to the standards of the world. We are to have a different mind
and a different allegiance than the world. We are a “living sacrifice” to God!
That is why the media, that knows little
and understands less about evangelical Christianity; refer to us as “right wing
radicals.” They do not mean it as a compliment, but we should take it that way.
In a perverse way that title acknowledges that Christians have a different
loyalty and standard than the world, and the world cannot understand it!
Inner transformation
Verse
two tells us that salvation begins as an inside job. We will never change
outwardly until we change inwardly. Your behavior will not be altered until
your thinking has been altered. Your appearance and countenance will not
attract people to the kingdom until there is a change beneath the surface. I
hope that is what we focus on here at
It will do us no good at all to deal
with Spiritual Gifts until we have grappled with this issue of complete
surrender! Surrender and sacrifice always go together. The two cannot be
separated. Its like “love and marriage,” you can’t have one without the other.
If you have surrendered to God, you will be busy serving Him and using your
gifts for Him. You cannot be a “living sacrifice” and be lazy and indifferent
toward the ministry of the church. Talk is cheap. We can talk about total
dedication, radical separation, inner transformation, but the proof is in the
service; the ministry that comes from your life. If it doesn’t lead you to
service and ministry; it is not real!
We all have spiritual gifts, given to us
at salvation. I have heard people say that they have no spiritual gifts. I have
discovered that many of those people are simply making an excuse for doing
nothing in God’s service! Or they have never discovered those gifts because
they have never completely surrendered to God.
After the initial talk of surrender,
verse six talks about spiritual gifts. This passage completely destroys the
notion that a Christian can be committed to Christ but not active in the work
and ministry of the Church.
We all have different gifts, but our
obligation is the same; to be faithful to use our gifts for the glory of the
One who gave them to us. If you are one
of those people who claim that you have no gift, listen to verse three: “…God
has allotted to each member…” Verse four tells us that these gifts are given to
“all members.” Verse five says it is, “Every one.” The Lord makes it abundantly
clear that we are under the same obligation. No one is excluded from serving
God with their spiritual gifts.
We cannot forget the importance of
humility. Paul tells us that we are not to think of ourselves more highly than
we ought. There can be a temptation to take pride in our gifts and to compare
our gifts to others. We must resist that and humbly seek to use our gifts.
Charles Billingsly and Ed Cleveland are talented and gifted singers. I would
love to sing as they do, but that is not my talent or gift. They would be wrong
if they somehow thought that their gift was more important than someone else’s
simply because it is so beautiful and noticeable. I can’t speak for Charles
Billingsly, but I know Ed Cleveland sees his talent and giftedness as his way
of serving the Lord!
Magnifying
our gift
There may be people who feel that their
gift is the most important. A pastor may feel that his spiritual gifts that
equip him to do the ministry are more important than the gifts of those who serve
as laymen in the Body of Christ. If so, that pastor has lost his ability to
successfully lead. It takes his gifts and the various gifts of each member of
the body for the work to be done. If you get to the place that you think you
can do without the other parts of the body, you will accomplish little for the
kingdom. Each talent; each gift is important to God’s Church!
In 1 Corinthians 12:20-26, we have a
parallel passage that speaks of the church as the Body of Christ working
together just as a human body. Every part has its function and is important; they
all work together so that the body can function as God designed it to function.
Have you thanked God today for your
pancreas? Do you understand how important it is? Mine no longer functions as it
once did. So, you can enjoy a delicious brownie all sweet and gooey and
chocolaty. I cannot. Actually, I can if I want to be extremely foolish! When
you eat that brownie, the pancreas produces and releases insulin which breaks
down the sugar so it can be used by the body. My pancreas just sits there and
says, “Do the best you can, big boy. I’m on strike!” The best I can do is an
insulin pump. I have to use it, but it is not what God designed. In the church,
we are forced to do some things differently than as God prescribes because many
of you are not doing what God gifted you to do. You may be the church’s
pancreas!
You should not magnify or minimize you
gifts. The person who constantly belittles themselves is effectively saying
that God does not know what He is doing! The person who belittles themselves,
which is false humility, is guilty of pride. Some people do this because they
are fishing for compliments.
A pastor, who was a very prideful man,
asked his wife after a very successful sermon, “Honey, how many great preachers
are there in the world?” She replied, “One less that you think!”
However there are some people who simply
don’t believe that God can use them. If you are that person, look at me! You
are wrong. You would not be a part of the
In my seminary church, I was the staff.
Whatever needed to be done was “my” job. From preaching to cleaning the toilet was
my job. I was often tempted to have a bad attitude about it. But then I would
realize that God was preparing me for a lifetime of doing what needed to be
done; using my gifts and sometimes just toiling in God’s service because the
one with the gift was not doing their job. That is still the case almost forty
years later!
Humility will also help us from
misplacing our gifts.
There
are some people who insist on being used in an area where they have no gifts.
They want to sing or teach or serve as chair of an important administrative
committee, but they do not have the talent or the spiritual gifts to do so.
Some
people ask the choir director if they can sing a solo. It is obvious that they
do not have the talent or gift to do it. They might even get angry enough to
leave the church when they are refused. It is interesting that I have never had
someone leave the church because they were not asked to drive the van, or go on
visitation, or attend a work day. Or work in the nursery!
True humility will keep us from
magnifying or minimizing our gifts.
In verse 3 of Romans 12, the word “soberly”
means “sane” as opposed to “insane.” A man visited an insane asylum. The guard
said, “I know you come here often to visit the residents. Aren’t you afraid
that they might come together and decide to harm you?” The man replied, “No, because
insane people never come together!”
If we are sane we will completely
surrender our lives to God and then we will pour out our self as sacrifice to
God. Unfortunately, many churches act insane; they never come together.
God has given this church so many
precious gifts. Two of the most precious are Unity and Diversity! We need to
focus on who we are, why God put us here, and what gifts He’s given to us, then
we need to get together, put it all together, diverse body parts… all put
together into the Body of Christ. He has no hands but our hands!
We’ll talk next week about some specific
Spiritual gifts. There is no use to do that until we consider the issue of
complete surrender!