Father, I pray that the words of my
mouth and the meditations of my heart will
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our
rock and our Redeemer, in the name of
the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit.
Amen.
May be seated.
Let's look at Romans 12.
Today, what we want to do is consider
something called the complementarity of the gifts today.
So this won't be like a blow by
blow analysis of all the seven gifts there.
We won't have time for that, but we're
going to see how they work together a
little bit.
The church is to be a symphony.
The church is to be a symphony of
gifts harmonizing together in the unity of the
spirit.
Who is the conductor?
Right.
The Holy Spirit is the conductor.
We're being led by the spirit.
Those who are led by the spirit are
sons and daughters of God.
And so the church is to be a
symphony of gifts harmonizing together in the unity
of the spirit, that unity of the spirit
causes the harmonization, a unity of great complementarity,
a complementarity in a great diversity.
Only the Holy Spirit can pull this off.
Last week, we considered first Peter four, 10,
which says, as each one of you has
received a gift, a charismata is the word
there, has received a gift, employ it in
serving one another as good stewards of the
manifold grace of God.
So we said in our community, no one
should be unemployed.
If you have a gift, we've hired you.
Don't worry about being unemployed.
The thing is, is that these gifts come
from this fountain of the manifold grace of
Jesus Christ that we don't have to serve.
We get to serve.
You know, it's that kind of spirit that
we're eliciting.
Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before his presence.
And we looked at the paradigms of Mary
and Martha in the house where Martha was
getting all upset in her serving.
Yeah, exactly.
And so we've got this Mary Martha paradigm
where Mary's sitting at the feet of Jesus,
just soaking in his presence and adoring him.
Really a good model of contemplation and Martha
trying to learn maybe how to serve.
We we concluded that we don't know if
Martha has the gift of serving, but it
doesn't look like it.
But we said in order for our gifts
to fully mature and manifest well, we have
to exercise them.
And sometimes they squeak when we first start
using them.
Right.
They need oil, they need oil.
And so we need an environment where we
can begin to exercise those gifts so that
they can mature and flourish and flower amongst
us.
And so we don't do things.
We don't do anything perfectly.
Right.
As each one of us has received a
gift, it's grace.
Employ it in serving one another as good
stewards of the manifold grace of God.
And then in Romans 12, 6, it says,
having gifts there again, that word is charismata.
Having gifts, charisma, charismata that differ according to
the grace, the chorus, it's the same root
out of charismata gifts and chirus grace.
And so we're talking about the gifts of
grace, which are called the gifts of the
Holy Spirit, but they're gifts of grace.
It's the same word having gifts that differ.
There's the diversity according to the grace given
to us.
Let us use them.
OK, let us use them.
So we just want our church to be
a context where you actually can use them
and you get to use them.
You don't have to use them.
You get to use them.
Right.
Do you want to use them?
Yeah, I know you do.
And you are using them.
And so out of that, we said that
every Christian is grace gifted.
Right.
And that means that every Christian from a
biblical point of view is a charismatic.
OK, and we talked about, you know, we
almost went into Jeff Foxworthy last week.
You may be charismatic if and boy, we
could have fun with that, but we're not
going to go there.
I love that.
I could really, really grieve the Holy Spirit
by doing that.
Oh, man, I'm not going to do that.
Holy Spirit.
But you may be charismatic if you have
the spirit of God dwelling in you.
In fact, you are from Paul's perspective and
all of his communities, there are charismatic communities
employing their gifts.
And so it has nothing to do with
some of the things that you may be
turned off by today in the various movements
called charismatic movements or charismatic churches.
We're going back to the root, the biblical
source of what we're talking about here.
And so we just kind of want to
re-explore what it means to be charismatic
in St. Aidan's.
Yeah.
Yesterday, we completed our fourth membership class.
It was awesome.
We just had a great time.
And the last session, the last thing we
did is we took a ministry assessment.
It's about 18 pages.
So we didn't even finish it yesterday, but
we got started on it.
And basically, you know, ministry assessments, tests, personality
tests, all these kind of things are just
relative guides to get conversation going and maybe
turn the light on here and there.
So we don't we don't put a lot
of stock in ministry assessments or personality tests.
We know we know the relative standards.
Now, Chris, the sticker would just poo poo
them all the way down because he's a
psych major.
So, yeah, it's an inside joke.
OK, sorry, Chris, we won't have you take
that.
Some people don't like taking tests like that,
you know.
And so anyway, we took that assessment and
we're in the midst of finishing it.
And basically it deals with trying to flesh
out for the person taking the exam, what
exactly are my gifts, what are my skills,
you know, where you just kind of list
your training and your experiences and your own
personal vision.
You get that on paper.
And then what happens is that is followed
up by a one on one with me
where we can actually talk about where you
would desire to serve and where's the best
place for you to serve.
And so we're just going to continue to
do this as people come through membership class
or it's followed up at the end by
a one on one, many one on ones
if needed with me to help activate you
and your spiritual gifts.
OK, so it's not just talking about spiritual
gifts and a homily.
That's really incomplete.
What I'm doing today, I'm just sort of
stirring the pot a little bit.
That's all it is.
Fanning in the flame, perhaps what is in
you.
And so we want to consider ways of
clustering the gifts mentioned here this morning.
And there's seven of them.
And as I said all along, I'm going
to deal with prophecy more fully when we
get to First Corinthians.
The speaking gifts in the cluster would be
prophecy, exhortation and teaching.
And then what I would say is gifts
of caring, the caring gifts, the gifts of
welfare, James Dunn calls them, who is a
New Testament scholar.
I'm using a lot in his commentary on
Romans.
The caring gifts, the gifts of welfare would
come under serving and he calls giving, sharing,
serving, sharing and caring.
He calls and we'll talk about this a
little bit later, but that word translated leadership
by most people, he translates that caring and
he's got reasons for that.
So I'm going to go with that for
this paradigm.
And so serving, sharing, caring, and then the
last gift showing mercy, showing mercy.
When you start thinking about all of that
surrounding you and the people in your spiritual
family and all of that coming forth, it's
very comforting.
Hopefully to me, I feel cared for just
thinking about it.
It's just like, wow, that's good.
I want to be.
And I am.
You know, our initial planting team had all
of those seven gifts.
And so there you go.
And we'll be getting examples of how that
manifests later on in some of the teachings.
Prophets, exhorters and teachers, you could break that
down where prophets tend to guide, exhorters goad
and teachers ground.
Now, these three gifts travel together in Paul's
apostolic teams, among other gifts.
But if you'll recall, Paul and Barnabas in
the book of Acts, it says that Barnabas
was a prophet and that Paul was an
apostle, but he was also a teacher par
excellence.
Right.
I mean, he gave us the New Testament
pretty much.
And so Paul and Barnabas travel together.
And if you'll read carefully throughout all of
his letters, he's mentioning, oh, I'm bragging on
my team.
And he mentions them in the beginning or
he mentions them at the end.
Read the end of Colossians.
And he's just listing a ton of people
that traveled with him.
So Paul was no solo Christian.
Paul was no independent dude.
I'm an apostle.
I'm going in planning churches by myself.
No way.
It's just all throughout his writings where he's
just bragging on his team.
And they were all like, look at this.
He's always praying for you.
You know, just little you got to catch
those little phrases.
Those are important things.
You know, I can name people here that
are always praying for you.
They got a list of names that are
always praying for you.
I handed out a full list of your
names to those in the membership class yesterday.
And I said, pray.
Pray for this church, pray individually, right, guys,
if you were there.
Right.
We believe that the church is built upon,
you know, connecting with Jesus in prayer.
And without that, we don't go anywhere.
But we've been doing that for four plus
years.
And and it's and it's paying off.
It really is.
And so these these guys travel together.
And so Barnabas, the word means son of
encouragement.
That's what his name means.
Son of encouragement.
And when you look at the effect of
prophecy that Paul will lay out in First
Corinthians, he'll say that prophecy.
Actually, the effect of prophecy is encouragement, exhortation
and consolation.
Rarely has anything to do about predicting the
future.
It's an effect of transitioning a person from
discouragement to encouragement, right?
From inactivity and passivity to activity, he activates,
he encourages, he puts courage in you.
It's the grace that does it.
And you can do all of this and
say the same thing without the grace and
the effect won't be there unless you're a
prophetic person.
That's the grace of a prophetic person.
And we'll get into this later on, but
that's what an encourager does.
And teaching has a lot of those components
in it from a New Testament perspective.
OK, so prophets, exhorters, teachers help activate the
grace within others.
Let me give you some examples.
First, Timothy four, 14, Paul is talking to
Timothy, his young disciple, who has also been
ordained as a bishop in Ephesus.
And Paul is translocally looking at Timothy and
his work, and he's saying, do not neglect.
He's saying this to Timothy, a bishop, do
not neglect your gift, which was given you
through a prophetic message, through a prophetic message.
Timothy received a gift through a prophetic word,
right?
This is New Testament.
Through a prophetic message, when the body of
elders laid their hands on you at his
ordination, he received prophetic words.
And he's saying, hey, don't neglect those words.
Apparently, he was.
And it's so it's so easy to do
this.
I mean, I've had prophetic words, you know,
I got prophetic words through my bishop and
I got prophetic words when I was 16
and I met with a guy and some
personal prayer and he just prophesied over me.
And that's why I went to Bible college
and ended up in seminaries because of a
prophetic word opening me up to ministry.
Second, Timothy one, six.
Fan into flame, the gift of God, Timothy.
Fan into flames, what is other translations?
Stir up the gift with a poker almost
in those coals, those embers that are almost
going out.
Fan into flame, the gift of God, which
is in you through the laying on of
my hands.
For God did not give us a spirit
of fear.
OK, he's giving reasons why he needs to
exhort, this is exhortation, this is encouragement, this
is an apostle exhorting another leader, Stuart does
this all the time, his priest in the
diocese.
Fan into flame, the gift of God.
I mean, he's huge on that.
Fan into flame, the gift of God, which
is in you through the laying on of
my hands, for God did not give us
a spirit of fear, but a spirit of
power, of love and self-discipline or sound
mind is another translation.
So that's just an example of of how
gifts get imparted through prophetic messages sometimes.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's been my experience.
For almost 40 years.
This is not new, this is this is
like, yeah, I totally get that, I've seen
it again and again and again.
Teaching, teaching is not just a download of
information, is it?
From a New Testament perspective, right?
And a lot of times it can be,
but it's intended to be.
The grace of teaching is different than the
guy in the academy who's got the Ph
.D. That's a different gift.
But teaching in the church and I can
be applied in the church.
But they need grace because just because you
can do it in the academy doesn't mean
you're going to have the same effect in
the church.
Ask me how I know I've been to
seminary.
I've had a lot of Ph.D.'s and
wake me up when it's over, you know,
so you know what I'm saying?
Wake me up when it's all over.
Yeah.
So not just a download, but it's and
it's not just to boast our IQ, you
know, I know more than you do.
Just a few things about the gift of
teaching.
Jesus says this.
Learn from me, OK, I want you to
learn something, that's the gift of teaching.
For I am meek and humble.
What?
Learn from me because I want you to
buy this book and we're going to discuss
it.
Well, that's good.
That's that's a form of conveying knowledge and
I'm not you know me, I love books.
Come to my office, but no, that's not
it.
If that's where it ends, learn from me
for I am Jesus is saying you're going
to learn from who I am, not what
I know.
Right.
Learn from me for I am meek and
humble.
Matthew 11, 29.
Jesus surely taught the scriptures in the synagogue
and almost got him thrown off a cliff
when he came out in Luke for 18.
He taught prophetically this day, the scriptures are
fulfilled in your hearing.
They loved him.
Yeah, no, they wanted to kill him.
They wanted to kill him.
That's the prophetic ministry of Jesus.
There it is.
He taught the scriptures prophetically, it wasn't just
boring, you know, Hebrew or Aramaic renditions.
And then he allowed his life to provoke
deeper learning.
He allowed his life.
So we're talking about communicating now, communicating gift,
whatever that is.
There's a lot of gifts, right?
Communicating the gift and the character and in
the charismatic group, a lot of times character
is laid aside because we want the superstar
charismatic gift guy who has the hot hands
and can get people healed.
But he's living in adultery.
Character, character, character, and I can just go
through my 40 years of being a Christian
and just I'm not going to do it,
but I can just name so many people
that have just bitten the dust that were
amazing in the spirit.
Charisma.
But their character was really, really questionable, and
yet they continue to be promoted.
That's just not good.
I mean, you know, I think Bob Dylan
today would be a more outspoken Christian had
we not made him the big Christian hero
when he came out with with an album
called Saved.
I mean, you can't get any more out
than that.
And they would throw tomatoes at him in
San Francisco.
Yeah.
And so what we do with gifted people
is really, really it's reprehensible sometimes because we
all like to worship heroes.
So remember that charisma, yeah, but where's the
character?
And we're not talking about legalistic judging of
perfection here, but there are certain standards for
eldership and all of that.
Just read it in First and Second Timothy.
There are standards that we have to live
by.
And if I don't live by those standards,
my plug gets pulled right by my bishop.
I won't be allowed to continue on.
Like so many others who are unaccountable, unaccountable
with no authority except their own spiritual authority,
that's dangerous, brothers and sisters.
I don't listen to people like that if
they're not under authority.
I don't listen to them.
I don't care how charismatic they are.
So as persons in communication, we not only
impart what we know.
We impart who we are, and that's very
important.
A person can talk about the peace of
God.
And make people nervous, there it is, words,
but then on the inner life of the
person, the effect they have talking about peace
is agitation.
The incongruity of word and character is coming
forth there, and so what we're attempting to
do and growing in maturity in Jesus is
that our words reflect our being and our
being reflects our words.
And, hey, there's always going to be somewhat
of a disconnect there with the holy word
of God and what we're attempting to live
up into.
So, but if that intention is there and
that desire is there and that accountability is
there, it doesn't have to be perfect to
impart something like giving.
So Jesus says that who I am and
what I say agree.
And Paul just in 1st Timothy and 2nd
Timothy just specifically nails all of this with
Timothy.
And so we've heard it said, well, that
people don't care how much you know until
they know how much you care.
Yeah.
There again, that's another illustration of, you know,
where I'm preaching the truth, man, come on,
you know, it's kind of like, yeah, but
you really don't care about me.
The goal of teaching is to communicate Jesus
Christ, that you would have an encounter in
an impartation of Jesus Christ now, present tense,
the risen Lord feasting on him through these
words.
And if that doesn't happen, brothers and sisters,
it's not a sacramental action.
Needs to be the grace flowing through me
and flow flowing through you to impart Jesus
Christ to other.
That's the only way to preach and teach
and encourage and prophesy, because if it's not
Christ, we're ministering.
We're not ministering in the spirit and we
can minister a lot of things.
We can.
There's spirits of divination that can read your
mail.
The slave girl in Act 16.
This is a servant of the most high
God, this is a servant of the most
high God, she's prophesying and it's true.
And Paul went for days and then it
said he got agitated in his spirit and
he spoke to Python.
That's the name of the spirit, the spirit
of divination.
It's Python in the Greek come out Python
in the name of Jesus.
And she lost her ability to tell the
future.
And then Paul got locked up because they
were making money off of her.
This is real.
Well, it happened in the Bible.
No, it's happening now.
It happens all the time.
And we need to be a church that
can set people free.
This is what the three streams are all
about, Catholic, charismatic and evangelical.
We can't choose one of them.
We have to have all three, because that's
what biblical Christianity is.
It's not some upper Midwest diocese slogan.
It's biblical, right?
It's biblical.
Fortunately, what's missing in my life was not
the charismatic dimension.
It was the Catholic dimension.
And it's about team ministry.
And that's why Paul traveled with Barnabas, Silas
and all these other people, because gifts are
complimentary.
We can't do it alone.
But teaching like prophecy and the other gifts
is an encounter with Christ and get this.
OK, the translators of Ephesians 421, if you
have your Bible turned in, I'm going to
quote the NRSV and then I'm going to
quote the NASV, too.
So this is not the way you learned
Christ, Paul is saying to the Ephesians.
For surely you have heard about him.
About is not in the Greek text, but
the translators in the new RSV couldn't get
their heads around that Jesus is still speaking
today.
So for sure, you have heard about him
and were taught in him.
Yeah, that's right.
You were taught in him.
Get that.
You were taught in him as truth is
in Jesus.
That's communion language, you guys.
It's not an encounter with information.
It's encounter with a person.
Translators didn't know what to do with that,
though.
And here it is.
Here's the correct translation of the literal translation.
Because translations have interpretations in them to make
sense sometimes.
But you did not learn Christ in this
way, if indeed you heard him not heard
about him.
That's not true to the Greek text.
If indeed you have heard Jesus, does his
sheep know his voice?
He said my sheep know my voice.
But we do church a lot of times
like God is not saying anything, you know,
and we have to not figure all this
stuff out alone.
No, this church was birthed in listening prayer.
And it continues to survive by listening prayer,
and it's scary for some people to come
to a church like this.
What I'm saying scares people sometimes.
It's just Christianity.
It's biblical.
But you did not learn Christ in this
way.
If indeed you have heard him and have
been taught in him, I want you to
be taught in him, not about him.
Information about Jesus won't transform you.
It must be it must be taught in
him.
You get that.
I mean, it's not a subtle difference, really.
You understand communion.
I'll be with you always, even till the
end of the age.
That's the promise that Jesus gave us.
We have to remember that the writer of
Hebrews exhorts, see to it that you do
not refuse the voice that warns from heaven.
The ascended Christ still speaking through his spirit.
Hebrews 12, 25, that's where that's from.
See to it that you do not refuse
the voice that warns from heaven, exhorts Christ
is still exhorting.
The exhortation will give is multifaceted, so it
exhortation is translated, exhort or encourage or comfort.
And wow, man, that is a wide palette
of exhortation.
What comes to mind when you think about
exhort anybody, let's think about exhortation, what does
that bring to mind?
You got correction, yeah, there's a sense of
urgency in that, right, speaking God's principle, yeah,
it's like this is the truth now that
can come as a teacher or that can
come as a prophetic exhorter.
Teachers speak God's truth, exhorters speak God's truth,
but it has this sense of urgency like.
I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of
God, Paul's doing it at the beginning of
this chapter, that urge there, that's it.
I urge you by the mercies of God,
present your bodies as living sacrifices.
He's exhorting the church, right?
He's exhorting us.
That's an exhortation.
We need that.
In this very laid back, casual culture called
Christianity, the whole new testament is an exhortation.
Encourage.
What does the word encourage mean?
To impart courage, right, encourage.
Like enthusiasm, what does that mean?
In chaos, that's the word in chaos, in
the Greek enthusiasm in God.
And so all these words can really have
a powerful impact once you start understanding the
difference.
So, but that that word parakaleo is translated,
encourage, exhort, comfort depending on the situation.
And the gift of encouragement knows when to
weep with those who weep and rejoice with
those who rejoice.
Sometimes it's not appropriate to rejoice with somebody.
You have to be sensitive to know when
to weep and to know when to comfort.
That would be that third word comfort.
I need to comfort this person now.
They don't need urging along.
They don't need exhortation.
And a person that comes in with a
primary gift of exhortation and they've not learned
how to hone those three shades, right, of
exhortation, encouragement, comfort can really tear somebody up.
Ruth, you know this.
You're a counselor.
You get that.
You're a Christian counselor, so you really get
that.
And you're a spirit filled Christian counselor.
You really get that.
So we could just go on and on,
Ruth, but we'll stop.
And so that's what exhortation is all about.
Giving, sharing.
Dunn goes on to say that it's better
understood sharing.
And it's probably talking about in this context,
the sharing of food or wealth or possessions.
And so the act of sharing is the
gift.
It's not what you share the way this
word is translated.
It's the act of sharing that becomes the
gift, not what is received.
And then caring, that word is often translated
to leadership and a lot of great commentaries
translate it that way.
So this is it could go either way.
But most people translate it leadership while others
translate it like James Dunn, who is a
massive, you know, he's got the magnum opus
on on Romans.
He goes through all of the options and
he ends up with caring.
But it has the sense of advocacy and
protecting.
And so you get a person who has
great means, great ability, like, say, in a
village and they become an advocate for those
less fortunate.
That's the idea behind this work.
And so that's how leadership takes place.
And that's Jesus, isn't it?
That's the leadership of Jesus.
I want to be a servant.
And so I want to be an advocate
for the poor.
I want to be a protector.
And that's the way I want my leadership
to to evolve.
And it is evolving.
I am growing into this.
It's not there.
OK, so to take advocacy for the vulnerable,
that's what Don is saying.
And then the last one, showing mercy, showing
acts of mercy with cheerfulness, it says.
And this is the only occasion, Dunn points
out, in Paul's letters where mercy is used
of human rather than divine mercy.
Wow.
It's the only occasion in Paul's letters where
the act of showing mercy is not divine.
It's human.
One place.
There it is.
And it's a beautiful gift.
The grace to overcome the reasons why a
person is in need and to show love
and care.
A lot of times, if you don't have
the grace of mercy, you'll think of all
the reasons why you shouldn't show mercy.
Right.
They're valid from a human point of view.
Right.
But the people with the gift of mercy
can overlook the bumbling reasons why this person
is in the place they're in and they
can give that mercy.
That's what Jesus does to us.
None of us deserve mercy, but Jesus gives
it to us.
And so why do we need people who
have the gift of mercy?
Because they show us what it's like to
be merciful when we struggle with it.
That's why I need to be around people
with the gift of mercy.
And there's many in this congregation have the
gift of mercy and leadership and encouragement and
prophecy and all of this stuff.
And we need each other to complement each
other because we're not going solo with each
other.
Right.
We're a symphony of beautiful harmony in the
unity of the Holy Spirit.
And so Holy Spirit, come and continue to
stir up the gifts amongst us.
We pray.
And we ask for your divine enablement and
for you to come and just set us
on fire with the Holy Spirit.
Our God is a consuming fire and we
want to fan in the flame those embers
that perhaps may need more breath.
And so send your breath upon us, send
your breath upon us to glow in the
fire of your love.
In the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit.