“Gifted People”

Sermon by Pastor Tim Goff

As a launching point today, I’d like to invite you to reach for a Bible and turn with me to
Matthew 16. Matthew 16 lays a platform that I believe will help us grasp the concept of
what Jesus is doing, what Jesus is doing through the church. Now what I want you to
look at specifically is the connection between the Messiah and the church. Notice this,
Matthew 16:13 – When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked the
disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of man is?” “Well, they replied, “some say
John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
They were speculating who came back from the dead, you see. And then He shifts their
attention. “Who do you say that I am?” And Simon Peter, as you know, was under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, able to understand who Jesus is, and he said, “You are the
Christ, the Son of the living God.” Now friends, for Peter to say that, for Peter to
announce that -- right there was a testimony of his conviction about what he believed
about Jesus. For Peter to say that Jesus was the Messiah was to put himself out there on
the edge of the limb of risk and responsibility and say, “You’re the Christ, You’re the one
we’ve been looking for for 4.000 years!” Do you see the significance of this moment?
He put himself way out there on the edge to say, “You’re the Messiah, the Son of the
living God.” Now, what I want you to see is that the moment that he gets this and
announces it to the other disciples, whether they understood it or not, Jesus said to him
“You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to
you. Now I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” I
wonder if you see the connection. Do you sense the connection now between the Messiah
and the church?

The next great redemptive act of God, friends, after the gift of Jesus to us as a sacrifice
for sin, is the church in the world. A lot of amazing things are going to happen between
Jesus’ resurrection and the second coming – a lot of amazing things that we can look to,
even some prophecies that will be fulfilled – but friends, the next greatest redemptive act
of God in the world is the birth of the church. And Jesus said, “I’m going to build it.”
He didn’t say you and I would build it. You and I can get together and think up many
strategies and many purposes, many ideas, and gather our resources, and we can use all of
those things, hopefully to the glory of God, but in the end we must know that it is God
that’s doing it. We can do a lot of things, incidentally, that would not be in harmony with
His will. Just a short study in Matthew 7:21 would reveal that. But they’ll be many that
will say one day, “Lord, Lord, did we not do these things in Your name?” And He’ll say,
“I never knew you.” So it’s important, friends, that we’re guided by the Spirit. But what
I want us to notice here is that Jesus makes a direct connection between the ministry of
the Messiah and the ministry and mission and purpose of His church. The Messiah will
give them authority. The church will have responsibility. The church will advance the
work of overcoming evil with good and saving people from their sin and breaking down
barriers. It would be in harmony with His teaching and the Great Commission to go, to
go into all the world.
I want you to notice a distinction, however, between Christ and His church. I want to
make four distinctions, very briefly here. First, Christ is the message – the church is the
method. Jesus is our hope – but the church must bring this hope to the world. Jesus is
our redeemer – but the church must be redemptive. Jesus is our high priest – but the
church must be a priesthood of all believers. The gift of Jesus is indeed the greatest
redemptive act that God has ever done. Of all the messages in this series, of all the
redemptive acts we might consider from time, from Creation to the second coming, the
gift of Christ is the greatest redemptive act. But the gift given after that redemptive act to
save the world is the church in the world to save sinners. After the resurrection of Christ,
the Holy Spirit-gifted church is the greatest redemptive act that the world needs at this
time – a people that will communicate faith, a people that will bring hope. The church is
God’s final redemptive act before the second coming. And so it begs the question -- How
important are you and I personally to God’s plan? How important are you, the way God
created you, with all of your uniquenesses and qualities, to His plan? How important is it
for us as a congregation to recognize that He’s gathered us as a flock in this region to be a
redemptive community along with other believers in this region? The great redemptive
acts of God – Creation, the flood, Abraham, Exodus, the Messiah, and now the church –
the church is the bride, the bride of Christ. The church is to be a community of faith, of
blessing, of hope and redemption, a force for good, a force for good against evil. The
church, we might say, is the continued incarnation of Jesus in the world. For those of you
who have been looking at the spiritual body building books that we’ve started, one of the
lessons that we’re exploring is how the church is God’s continued incarnation into the
world. For we must understand that we are God’s eyes to see the hurting; we’re God’s
ears in the world to hear the cry of brokenness; we’re His hands that reach out and help
others; we’re His feet that go where our hands need to do some work; we are the
sensitivity in a world that is broken and afraid; we’re the incarnation of Christ; we’re His
body in the world.

Join me please in Philippians 4:11. I would like to unpack with you more here – God’s
church, His purpose, and what it means to be gifted people. Philippians 4:11 – “It was
He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some
to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body
of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the
Son of God, and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
I want you to notice with me the four qualities that the apostle is bringing to our attention
in this passage. First, I want us to notice that He’s anointed each one with the Holy
Spirit, but specifically He’s anointed four kinds of people. He’s anointed some to be
apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor/teachers. And they have a very important role.
Their role is to prepare God’s people for works of service. Do you see that? If you have
the spiritual gift of pastoring or evangelism or apostleship or teaching, your responsibility
in the body of Christ is to help the rest of the members of the body of Christ draw into
unity. We’re to prepare God’s people for works of service; we’re to cultivate a vision. In
fact, the pastors, teachers, evangelists, and apostles are to help create the atmosphere, if
you will, in a congregation where it becomes normal to know our ministry; it becomes
normal to know what my gifts are and to use them; it becomes normal to find my place in
the body and to use those gifts for His glory and to build up the body of Christ. It
becomes the normal conversation around the body of Christ – “So how’s God using
you?” – and you give a testimony of how God is using you. It becomes normal to mentor
one another in the faith of Jesus, all of us growing together, you see.

The second value I want you to notice here is that these four gifts are given to draw unity
of the faith. Now this doesn’t mean a look-alike faith. It doesn’t mean that you’re to
look like everyone sitting next to you in a given situation. Unity is not conformity.
Unity --- Biblical unity – is about shared purpose, and that shared purpose is love for
Jesus. It’s love for who God is, His redemptive plan for us. Biblical unity is a heart for
the things of God. Actually, the church is usually healthier when we have diversity of
opinions and diversity of thought. If we thought identically, I would say we’d be in a
dangerous situation of not growing, or blinded by our own self-importance. It’s vital
therefore, that the diversity of a congregation be shared in the congregation. It does not
mean that we always do things the same way; it means we do things in creative and fresh
ways because that’s the way God is. God’s diversity is so fresh and wonderful. And so
unity, friends, is not about conformity; unity is actually about including diversity – but
unity around love for God and His purposes in the church. So we might think differently,
we might do things differently, we might even pray and worship differently, but it doesn’t
mean we’re having disunity unless we insist that our way is the only way. Do you see the
difference? It’s when we start insisting that we run into trouble. We don’t insist on
anything, except that we need God.

The third value I want you to see here in this passage is that the apostle Paul says that
after the unity of the faith we’re to come together in knowledge of the Son of God,
knowledge of Christ being the Son of God. Under this heading I want to give you three
more points – the knowledge of Christ. You see the church is to do three things in terms
of knowledge. The first is that we must have a clear message as to who Jesus is. That’s
why last time we spent additional time in the message exploring how and why Jesus must
be our substitute Savior. There are a lot of Christian concepts today circulating, and not
just recently but over the years, that have insisted that Jesus is a good man but does not
have to be the substitute. That is very troubling to me, and I wonder how many of you
are aware of that concept. I won’t take time to unpack that thoroughly here – I’ll let you
do some homework on that – but it is vital that we have a core essential truth that Christ
Jesus took our judgment for us that we might have life. So there must be knowledge of
the ministry and the work and the purpose of Jesus. Salvation in Christ alone, Christ’s
methods, Christ’s ways. Jesus teaches us to go baptize in the name of the Father, Son,
Holy Spirit and there, right in the whole baptism, is the teaching that we die to the old
way; we rise up in newness of life. Dying to sin, becoming new, we recognize that Jesus
did that for us. It’s vital that we have an organized plan, for example, to even accomplish
this in the body.

The second point I want to draw your attention to with regard to knowledge is that it’s the
responsibility of the church to reveal error, or to correct error, if you will. Jesus did this
frequently. If you were to study Matthew for example, especially in His sermon on the
mount and following, there’s some curious sayings. Jesus will say to His followers,
“You have heard it said,” and He’ll reference things like divorce, or he might reference
an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and He goes on. You know what He says after that?
“You have heard it said,” and then he says “but I say to you”. Now it’s curious that five
times He says this – “you have heard it said.” In other words, there were some ideas
circulating around, things that were wrong, things that were inherent in their belief
system – it’s the way they did their culture, it’s the way they related to one another.
And he says, “You’ve heard it said” that this is the way people live and do and act and
relate to one another in marriage and so forth. He said, “But I say to you that is not the
way it is.” You see, Jesus will correct error. It’s also curious to me in Matthew where
He says “you’ve heard it said” five times, he actually says later ten times, “but I say to
you.” Jesus speaks with authority. He will correct error. He will correct errors such as
issues regarding death and hell. The world suffers today in fear that there’s an eternal
hellfire in which sinners are going to pay the penalty forever and ever and ever. Friends,
this has done more damage to the character and image of God than probably anything
else. We must correct this error in the world. Sure there will be a judgment, sure there
will be hellfire, but thanks be to God He is not unmerciful – the fires of hell are going to
go out! We must correct this error in our community, in people that have it. We must do
it in a godly way, in a compassionate way. There’s the character of God at stake. There
are misunderstandings about the second coming. Friends, we must correct these errors,
we must do this in a sensitive and godly way.

The third point I want to bring to you with regard to knowledge is that the church is
called to restore truth in the world as well, not just correct error. For example, over the
centuries God has been revealing and rebuilding the church. During the Reformation
there were two significant truths that emerged as a result of Martin Luther –
righteousness by faith alone through the ministry of Jesus on the cross, and the priesthood
of all believers. These two truths are core truths. But you know, as time goes by the
church continues to reform and grow and correct error and restore the truths that have
been lost. Truths such as Jesus is coming – the urgency that Jesus is coming. And then
we might consider that God has called us to live healthfully. God has given this church a
message right from scripture, friends – not from somebody’s creative idea, but from
scripture – God has called us to live healthfully and to encourage health in the
community – because people live better, they love God better, they relate better, they live
longer with their families, and they’re a better witness in the world. You see health is not
for health’s sake, it’s for everyone else in the body of Christ. I find it curious today that
insurance companies, in order to try to lower their costs, are actually helping people by
reducing their rates at health clubs. Anything they can do – this is the world doing this,
you see! This could be the message of the church. I believe it is.

And then there’s Sabbath and Sabbath-keeping. Friends, if there is one truth that is
sorely missing in our Christian community today, much less the world, it is the benefit of
rest. Oh, what the church could do if the world would wake up to realize that they need
rest. They need rest from their weekly cares, rest from their responsibilities, rest from
their burdens, not just rest from those things, but an opportunity to reinvest in family,
reinvest in relationships, and reinvest in the vertical relationship with our Lord and
Savior. Oh, if we could restore that, not only in the community around us but maybe
even in the church ourselves. I wonder how many of us are not taking the full benefit of
Sabbath rest. Here’s the issue – we get bogged down -- and your kids get bogged down
more than anybody -- on the don’ts of Sabbath-keeping. But I’d like to highlight
something with regard to Sabbath-keeping. The scriptures teach us essentially two things
not to do on Sabbath. What are they? Do not work your regular business, and what’s the
other? You’ll find it in Isaiah, and it’s not to do your own thing. Now from there, many
rules and regulations have been set up, including our Jewish neighbors who have written
hundreds of rules, and we have our own cultural rules too -- and they change from city to
city, and state to state, from country to country, and from continent to continent, in fact.
Now I find it curious that in one place it’s fine to do this but not fine over here.

We get all hung up on the don’ts of Sabbath-keeping, and I want to draw out a point here
with you. Here’s the point – God gives us two major things to avoid doing on Sabbath in
order to honor Him, and that is first, to not do our regular business and second, to not do
your own thing. Now your own thing – let’s qualify that. That’s doing activities as
though God doesn’t matter – as though He’s not part of it. Now, I don’t want to start
writing permission slips – that’s not what this is about. We get all hung up on the dos
and the don’ts – primarily we get hung up on the don’ts. Friends, what I’d like to submit
to us as a revitalizing community of faith is that we spend less time focusing on the
don’ts and start establishing what it is we actually are called to do on Sabbath. I believe
that an immature faith focuses on the don’ts, whereas a mature faith is planning ahead
and thinking Sabbath is coming, what shall we do? Now you may have children in your
family and you may need to think about those values and purposes because you have
little ones or teenagers or highschoolers, you see. And your do list might look different
than others whose children are grown, or maybe have no children, you see. But the point
is, I’d like to have us focus less on the don’ts and more on the possibilities of what God
would call us to do. Now some of us need some rest – I mean rest! But think of the
possibilities friends if we don’t focus so much on what not to do and we start thinking
more along the lines of – “You know we could prepare a bunch of food and maybe get
together with another couple and then pray, and then go to church and see who God
inspires us to invite home for dinner.” Imagine the possibilities. And then maybe, think
about the kids and their need to be active, and start thinking along these lines -- “I’m
going to take it easy on Friday so I’ll have enough energy so I can take those kids out and
show them God’s nature, and we’re going to crawl around over at the beach, and we’re
going to dig up some shells and find some shark teeth, we’re going to –“ whatever it is,
you see. Let’s not focus so much on the don’ts, but if we’ll focus on the do’s and if we’ll
build relationships, it becomes an open door to invite someone into that relationship and
people see more about what we do to honor God on Sabbath than what we don’t do. Do
you see the difference? May God be praised.

The last point in this passage is that we become mature. The gifts are given so that the
church will become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ --
becoming all that Christ has created us to be, all that He wants us to be, in every way.
Friends, here’s the key question -- whose responsibility is it for your spiritual maturity?
Whose is it? Is it yours or is it Pastor John’s? Or is it the visiting evangelist? Whose
responsibility is it? Now one of the challenges here is if we’re not focusing on our own
maturity and growth, if we’re not making decisions, being on a journey with God and
growing, we get ourselves trapped and we’re stagnant. And we don’t grow. I want to
show you these little gems that my wife has cultivated over the years. These are her
children – beyond our other two kids. These bonsai trees are fantastic. What they do is
they take a tree and they cultivate it and they cut the taproot -- the main root -- they cut it
so it gets barely any nourishment, and then they trim all the other branches while this
thing is still small and they stick it in a pot and they hope it survives. They give it just
enough food, just enough water, appropriate sunlight to keep it green and growing and it
doesn’t get much taller, it doesn’t get any bigger. This is like you and I when we’re not
on the journey of growing with God. We’re trapped in a container, our taproot with God
is too small, and we’re just not going anywhere. We can’t grow -- there’s stuff in the
way. And it may be personal, it may be struggles, I don’t know what it is -- but there’s
stuff that’s keeping us from growing, when God has created you to grow and be tall and
be big and healthy and strong and able to provide shade and produce fruit. The amazing
thing about this tree right here is that if I had planted it in good soil, with good light, this
tree today as old as it is, would be about 15 feet high.

But you see it gets worse, it gets more challenging friends. We say that spiritual maturity
is a personal responsibility – it’s not just a personal responsibility. It’s also the
responsibility of the body of Christ using all the gifts of God, all of those gifts that we’ve
just read about – pastors and teachers and apostles and gifts of mercy and compassion
and so forth, all blended together to fulfill His purpose, you see. If that’s not happening,
if we’re not engaging, if we’re not discipling, and if we don’t have a process, guess what?
We end up with a congregation of small trees. Now these trees right here are 15 years
old, and if they were let go to just grow normally they would be about 20-25 feet tall
right now. But the taproots are cut, the nourishment is diminished, the branches are
whacked off, and unfortunately friends, that’s what can happen in a church if collectively
we are not intentionally discipling our brothers and sisters. We have a personal
responsibility for our own maturity, we have a collective responsibility for all of our
maturity, and so it begs the question – where has God called you to serve? How has he
called you to serve? I’m excited about where our congregation is headed. I’m very
excited about this. There are more opportunities coming your direction. For our church
family to engage in the importance of small groups cannot be overstated. It’s the
laboratory where hearts grow and faith matures. The message of Christ is given through
a struggling but faithful community to a broken world. Let us get real in faith. Let us get
real and be that community. Let’s get out of neutral.