Charisma

Well, happy Sabbath! Huh, I am's a tiring week. First the Sabbath comes, you think, oh good, I can rest, but sometimes we won't get home till probably ten o'clock tonight, so it's a long day. So it's not a restful day. Maybe we'll take some time off tomorrow.

I'll be headed up to the home office to do some TV this week, so it's another busy week. A couple good announcements from the Nashville congregation. Earlier this week Cheyenne Samino was baptized, and tonight I'm going to be baptizing Brian Steyer. So that's two young people. They're in their twenties that are being baptized. There's some others that are talking about baptism, so it's nice to see that happening.

Also, we have our Bible study on January 18th after services, and we're going to do a little different format. We're going to have the services take a ten to fifteen minute break, then do the Bible study, and then go down and eat. That way there's not a lot of going up and down the stairs and it won't make much difference in time. Although we were able to work out being able to use this hall for another year. I signed another contract for another year this week. One of the things that we talked about was getting out by two o'clock is almost impossible on those holy days, or Bible study Sabbaths.

So he stayed a little later and always going to care. We were able to expand that time a little bit. There were some other things we were able to work out. It's nice to be able to have this for another year. It's a blessing from God. We can just always look for someplace else, too.

We do have the option. There's a small penalty to get out of the contract, but we do have to pay a little bit of a penalty for it. But it's not like we're committed that we have to pay the whole year. If something else came along, we could change. But this does work out really good for us, and we're glad to be here.

They do treat us well. I enjoy working with the pastors. So it's a good thing for us. There is a Mid-Atlantic Women's Enrichment Weekend coming up in Baltimore, Maryland. If you're interested in that, all the information is back on the information table and the forums you can fill out.

If we run out of forums, if there's just this group, gaggle, I know, this is a bunch of women, whatever that's called, you run back there and you decide to go, let me know, I'll get you some more forums. We do have an unusual amount of prayer requests coming out of Nashville this last week. Not only from Nashville, Mike and Debbie Kelly, see, they're in Alabama?

Their daughter died, so we have that in the pastors' update. Tim Duncan, they found more cancer on his face. Cheryl Bean is continuing to go through her chemo and struggling with that. Lori and Ray Breedlove had a grandchild almost died this week. And then Ray went in. In fact, I called him Thursday morning to see how the grandchild was doing, and he said, well, I'm in the hospital right now because they're checking me because he had cancer in the past.

And he got out from that and found out that the cancer had come back. So he's going through that. Lou Faccori, some of you might know him. He was an elder in the church for many, many years, and he has not been able to attend services now for a couple of years. He's in a nursing home. He got sick, had some trouble in his lungs. He was having trouble breathing.

They gave him some antibiotics, but he had some hospitalization this week. Angie Hendricks had to be taken to the hospital this week for some serious issues. And then Apollo Wood, I don't think many of you would know her, but she was taken to the hospital.

She had a problem with her pancreas. In fact, the pain was so bad she thought she was having a heart attack. But they got in there and found out it was her pancreas. She was supposed to be sent home this morning. I'm not sure if she was. I talked to her last night. But Mr. McEller didn't go into the hospital and was able to anoint her. So he's just a few of the many problems.

I mean, there's a lot of people that have been hospitalized in the last week up in the national area. So continue to keep those people in your prayers.

It's common when we meet somebody that has a very outgoing and attractive personality, we'll say, well, that person has charisma. There are people just drawn to certain people. We all are. There are certain people drawn to because they just have charisma. There's just something about them and it just draws people to them. What's interesting, the word charisma actually comes from a Greek word. And the word charisma is found in the New Testament. But the Greek word charisma doesn't mean a great personality. It means it has a different meaning. The Greek word charisma, where we get the English word charisma, but just over the centuries, it's changed definitions. It literally means someone who has been given divine favor or a divine gift. They've been given a gift. And so a person who had charisma had a special gift. So if a person was a just an incredible wooden worker and he was able to do things with wood that nobody else could do, he had charisma. He had a gift. If a person was a remarkable singer, that person had a gift.

Now, interesting in the New Testament, which was written in Greek, charisma is used most often to denote that someone has received a gift from God. But it's a personal gift. It has to do with their personality, their talents, their abilities, and what God is doing in their lives. I want to talk about charisma today, not in the way that it's used in English, but the way it would have been used in the New Testament. Charisma. And what we find in the New Testament and even in the Old Testament, we find that charisma, of course, the charisma wasn't the word in the Old Testament because it was in Hebrew, but this guinea-gum gift of God's spirit is very much part of what God does with human beings. And he tends to do it in two different ways. One is that the person just has natural abilities. All of us are born with natural abilities and talents. And God enhances those abilities and talents in order to fulfill his will. An example of that is in Exodus 31.

Exodus 31. Here we have, this is part of the instructions to...

This is what I want to be looking at. I'm probably looking at... Anyways, in Exodus, there is a... in the instructions of how to build the...

Yeah, Exodus 31. Let's go there. No wonder I was looking at Exodus 32. Exodus 31. I told you I was tired today. Just...

So here, artisans are being picked by God, selected by God, to build the tabernacle. It says, And this goes on through verse 11 and explains other men that God had called that obviously had abilities. But he said, his spirit now worked with those people to give them added abilities. They were selected to work on the tabernacle and God would guide them in that work. So that's... That is a gift from God. Of course, we have other examples where the gift is given that God gives somebody a gift they just don't even have. It's something that they didn't possess beforehand. It wasn't enhanced. It comes out of nowhere. We see that in Acts chapter 2. Where in Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit is poured out on the church, people just start speaking in different languages. They didn't know those languages. It's not like they already knew them and there was an enhancing going on. They just suddenly had the ability to speak in another language. And in the New Testament, you will see that there were gifts given to the church that were obvious gifts like speaking in tongues. But there's a lot of other gifts that are given to the church that are not so obvious. That are not so obvious and that it's not some miracle or something we all could speak in Swahili. We don't see that happening. But every person here, when you receive God's Spirit, you are given the ability to develop the fruits of the Spirit. All of us develop the same fruits. Remember, I gave a series of sermons on the fruits of the Spirit. We all develop those same exact same fruits. Gifts, though, are something that can be stronger in one person than another person. Or one person can have a gift that another person does not have. But they are gifts from God.

Charisma, these gifts are given by God to every member of the church, as we're going to see. Now, sometimes there are various degrees. Some people have a gift in which they have a great abundance of talent in that gift that's given to them. Others don't have as much. Some people can have more than one gift. Not everybody has the same gift.

But when we go through the gifts of the Spirit, we have to recognize that we're not talking about the fruits, which everybody has. Gifts are something that are more individual, and that every person in the church has gifts given by God.

Every one of us. And our gifts can be different than each other. Let's start by going to Romans 12. Romans 12.

The first couple of verses here in Romans 12 is a section of Romans that is read quite often. It's sermons and sermonettes. We'll find these verses. And these verses are very important. They have an important message to them. I want to look at these verses, though, in the greater context of chapter 12. Because Paul makes this dramatic important point that we can pull out and use this anytime. But he's using it to lead into something else in what he's writing to the church in Rome. So notice verse 1.

Okay, so he's talking here about service.

All of us are to serve God. And in that service, we serve each other in the church. We also serve others outside the church. But we have a very specific responsibility to serve each other in the church. That can't be all that we do. I mean, it has to be to God first to each other. And then it has to extend out to others. It's a great danger to a church when its only purpose is to serve each other. I was reading a summation of a book this week on 11 reasons why a church dies. It was very interesting. It was just a man who traveled around for two decades and has gone to help churches that were dying to revive them. And he had a list of why churches die. And one of them is, all they do is care about themselves. They just care about themselves. They never get outside themselves. And the church usually gets smaller and smaller and smaller. So I thought that was very interesting. That another is, they don't care for each other. So we are supposed to care and serve each other. That's because we are the family of God. But that has to extend out to others. But we're going to talk specifically today about gifts given to us by God so that we can serve each other. So we are all to be a living sacrifice. He says, and do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God. Now these two verses are so strong and so meaningful that you'll hear them all the time. And yet this isn't everything that Paul was talking about. This was a lead-in to something else.

So verse 3.

He says, For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. So he starts with, we all must be a living sacrifice. And that's a whole sermon in itself. I will give a sermon sometime in the next, who knows, I have it on my list to give on just verse 1 and 2. Whole sermon just on verse 1 and 2. But let's look at what it's leading into. He starts out where we have to be as living sacrifice to God, which is an oxymoron. You kill a sacrifice. So we're a living sacrifice. We're living while we're dying. Part of us is dying so that we may live. And in this presenting this sacrifice and being transformed from the world, we are not to get too prideful. So we begin to talk about pride. Do you think, well, that's a weird transition. Be a sacrifice, but don't be too prideful. Well, we're going to see where he's going to go here. So he goes on. He says, first we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same functions. So he's talking about functions in the church.

In 1 Corinthians, he had to deal with this in a grand scale because that church was just a, was chaos. Just chaos. He said, so, okay, we're all members of one body, but, you know, just like a human body, not everybody has the same function. So we being many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. Having then charisma, okay, having then gifts differing according to the grace that had given to us. Let us use them. Let us use them. Now I'm going to stop there because he's going to go on and start listening them. So he says, we all have to be a living sacrifice before God. We all have to be transformed for the world. We must fight pride and we must function in the gifts that God has given to us. And then he lists a series of gifts.

He goes on. He says, if prophecy let us prophesy in proportion to our faith or ministry, let us use it in our ministry. He who teaches and teaching, who exhorts and exhortation, he who gives with liberality, he who leads with diligence, and he shows, who shows mercy with cheerfulness. Now, these are a set of gifts. Now there's other places where he lists other gifts. I just want to go through these gifts. These are gifts that have been given to the church. This body of people right here, this congregation, has these gifts. Not everybody has the same gifts. Some people have a big gift. Some people have a little gift. Some people have more than one gift. But these are gifts that are part of the congregation. We don't just come together, every Sabbath, to hear a sermon, go home, and live our lives, and come back the next week. That's not what this is. If we are one body, the gifts given to us by God are there so that we interact with each other with these gifts. And I know there's people saying, I don't have a gift. Yes, you do. Every person has the fruits of the spirit, and every one of us has given gifts, or a gift, from God. Our problem is, in our society, how we define gifts. We prioritize gifts to the less important ones, or we prioritize functions. Because when we look at gifts, we'll see that there's a formal function of gifts, and an informal function of gifts. That's the way I put it to explain. Let me give an example. Elders are ordained, so they have certain functions, like anointing.

It doesn't say, the Scripture says, that when you are sick, you go to an elder to be anointed. That's a function. Anyway, it's a gift, too. Although God does the healing, so no elders ever heal anybody. God heals people. But it is a function. We look at those functions, and we confuse that with gifts. Well, to do certain functions in the Church, you have to have certain gifts. If you are going to sing a solo for special music, you must have some gift. You really do.

Now, you say, oh, I wish I had that gift. I guarantee you, here's the funny thing about gifts. Every one of us, I've done this, I've looked at people with that obvious gift and said, oh, I wish I had that gift. We all do that. We prioritize, oh, that's a better gift, that's a greater gift. Instead of recognizing that God gives each of us gifts for His purposes, and we are to receive that gift with thankfulness, and then we are to spend our lives developing those gifts. But they're different. They're different with each of us, and we don't necessarily realize that. So what we do, we sort of look at informal gifts as we would consider them.

It's not being that important. Well, we're going to go through these gifts-y lists. Some of them have formal functions and some have informal functions, but they all have functions inside the Church. And all it did... this is, once again, this isn't the only list of gifts, by the way, but it's a very interesting list of gifts that God gives to the Church.

In fact, as we'll see, one of the purposes of the ministry is to help people develop their gifts. Now, here's the problem. I mentioned it briefly, but I want to just mention a little more, because I think since all of us have gifts from God, but I believe that none of us have reached the potential of the gifts God has given to us. We're all sort of underdeveloped in the gifts that God has given us. And there's a number of reasons why. One is that for gifts to be developed in us, we can't take pride in our gifts. Now, we can feel good about the results. You can feel good, oh wow, I have this gift. I can help somebody. But once we start saying, oh look at me, I have a gift, we've now begun to not allow God to develop the gift, the pride's in the way. That's why, remember, he just started this with, don't get too proud about your gifts.

You're a sacrifice to God. Don't feel too proud about your gifts. Now, let me tell you about gifts. So Paul backs into this because he wants people to understand where he's going. We get so proud about our gifts that God can't develop them.

Because we're not acknowledging God, and we're not using the gifts that God gives us to help other people. Also, and we see this sometimes, somebody can want somebody's else's gifts so much that they will counterfeit it. They will try to present themselves as having a gift in order to get something for themselves. We'll talk about that in a minute. There are people who try to counterfeit a gift so that they can say, oh, that gift's more important. That's my gift, even though it may not be their gift. And we do that with functions sometimes. So that's my function, right? But we all have to submit to other people's functions. I mean, if the head of church administration calls me and says, hey, I want you to do something, I can't say, no, boss, I don't want to. I mean, it's against God. I've not been asked to do anything against God. That's since 1995. So, yeah, boss, and you do it. Sometimes you say, you sure? Okay. Because functions are functions. You know, not everybody has the same function either. We have to understand our functions. So let's go through the seven gifts that Paul lifts. I'm going to go through a couple of them more than others as far as time dedicated to them, because I want you to think about these gifts. You say, I don't have any gifts, then you need to ask God to show you what your gifts are. He's given you gifts. He didn't give you his spirits, not to give you a gift. So go ask him, what am I supposed to do? What are my gifts? You may be surprised by the answer. The first one he says is the gift of prophecy. He said, well, okay, I don't know any prophets today, so there must not be the gift of prophecy. We have to understand the word prophecy just doesn't mean to predict the future, although that's part of it. The word that's translated prophecy literally means to give the mind and counsel of God. In other words, it's to understand God's plan and be able to articulate what God's doing.

So we can all articulate God's plan if you talk about the plan of salvation. Every time you explain somebody to somebody how God's plan of salvation is outlined in the Holy Days, you are prophesied. Now, you're not being given specific prophecy. That's a whole other gift. And believe me, you don't want that one. Bad things happen to prophets in the Bible. I mean, they're in trouble all the time, lying naked in the street, getting beat up, getting stoned, getting pulled apart by horses. I mean, bad stuff happens to prophets. You really don't want to get that gift. But the gift of prophecy is talking about here will be the gift of being able to articulate God's plan. Now, that would include the future, wouldn't it? The return of Jesus Christ. That's prophecy. Setting up God's kingdom on earth. That's prophecy. It's being able to articulate that. So he says there is a gift of prophecy in the church.

Now, he doesn't seem to be talking here about the function of a prophet. Because there's other places where he says God puts prophets in the church.

There's other places where the word prophecy just means, hey, there's folks that are really explaining God's plan, God's future for everybody. So it means to take this divinely inspired information to be able to share it with others. Let's look at Ephesians 4. Here we have the function of the eldership. Now, I want you to notice what the elders are supposed to do.

Ephesians 4.

And let's just look at verses 11-16 here.

So it says, he himself gave some to the apostles.

So it's talking about Christ as the head of the church. He's given some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. So now he's talking about what we would call positions. But there are functions within the church. People that give specific functions to do. Why do they do them? And this is very important.

No one has any of these functions. You can forget this because when we do, we begin to fail for the equipping of the saints. These functions have a purpose. That is to equip the saints, and the saints aren't as Catholicism teaches. It's just a special group of people that are in heaven that you can pray to. The saints of the New Testament is everybody that has God's Spirit.

I've had some people ask me if to do some... I make a whole list from the meeting we had here about sermons, our congregational meeting. And of course, I have this evening in Nashville. I started to make a list. People have started emailing me. I got an email this morning with somebody with some ideas. So I now have, basically now through the end of June, filled with ideas. But some of the ideas were about prophecy. And one of the things I want to do is I want to go through Rome in prophecy. And to do that, you have to understand a little bit of history about Roman Catholicism, too. This idea of saints and things. So we'll be doing some sermons on that. He says, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, he says, oh, for the equipping of the saints and teaching the ministers. Remember, ministry, the Greek word simply means service. So there are people who have the function, an ordained function of a minister or an elder. They're called bishops and elders, and sometimes they're called ministers. Ministries. Basically, these elder bishops elders' relationship with people. Bishop is function. They are servants. So sometimes they're called ministers. But the saints are called ministers. So ministry, service, is what everybody does. Now, they're different functions, but everybody does this. So the reason for these functions, pastors and teachers and evangelists, is why? To teach and equip the saints for their service. It's to teach the saints their service towards God and towards each other. For the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, with the trickery of men and a cutting craftiness of this equal plotting. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into all things, into him who is the head Christ, from whom the whole body joined and hid together by what every joint supplies according to the effect of working, which every part, that's every saint, every member does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Now, I gave a whole sermon about three years ago, and just on that, some of you might remember that, just on that. We started with that passage and tore it apart piece by piece. So, the equipping of saints for their service. Now, part of the function of the ministry, ordained ministry, is to do that so that you can do your service.

Now, in Romans 12, though, in Romans 12, Paul doesn't seem to be talking about ordained ministers. Romans 12 is talking about just gifts that are given to different people in the church. Some people, we've all met people who have, they inspire us. They have this ability. They see what God is doing. They talk about it. They talk about the return of Jesus Christ. They talk about what the kingdom is going to be like. They talk about what it needs to be part of the church today. They're just inspired by that, and they inspire all of us. Men, women, old, young.

That's the gift of prophecy. It's this inspired understanding of what God is doing and sharing it with others. Now, the gift of prophecy can include somebody who gets up and tells you, God has given me a vision, and I'm telling you the vision from God. I would be very careful about anybody who tells you that. But in Romans 12, he's not talking about the functions as he is in Ephesians.

So part of our job as elders is to teach you all so that those who have that, now some of you say, well, I can't talk to anybody. Well, maybe that's not your gift. Some of you go tell everybody about God's way until nobody likes you anymore. Okay, that's your gift. The price of your gift is nobody likes you. Now, we have to be careful. There are people who do counter-grip this. He finds out about the New Testament. Peter talks about it, John talks about it, who's established themselves as prophets. And they're not. Ancient Israel had that problem. People who established themselves that they had been given special insight by God, and they hadn't. So we have to be careful about someone declaring, I have special insight. God talks to me. I understand. I make visions. That's not what Paul's talking about in Romans 12. He's talking about that there are people in the church who just have this ability to share God's truth with others. Whether it's in a coffee shop or at work or a neighbor or someone's sick, they just share it. That's a gift. That's a gift. Now, understanding how to use that gift is the difference between wisdom and foolishness. Because you can foolishly disrupt your whole life by trying to cram things down people's throats or trying to evangelize to everybody. But this is a gift. Now, what he's talking about in Romans is those who have that gift edified the church.

They're the ones that we all just like listening to, that they talk, they help us, they keep us focused because they have prophecy or this ability to pass on. But we understand it, but they can articulate it and they inspire us. That's a gift. The gift of ministry. Remember, that means service. Now, it's interesting. Some people say, oh, I want this gift of prophecy. You don't hear a lot of people say, I want the gift of being everybody's servant.

And yet one of the great gifts that God gives, and you see it at every congregation, we're all to be servants, but there are some that are just remarkable servants. They have a gift. They're remarkable in the way that they treat people. They're remarkable in the way that they're always looking out for helping others. And what we can do is we can look at this and say, well, that's not a really important gift. You know, the person who is always there to open up the building, close the building, the people that, you know, set up the potluck, the people that we don't even know what they're doing. You clean the toilets, right? And we say, well, that's not okay. That's not important. Like prophecy, you're one of these other big gifts. It is the God.

It is the God. Paul listed here all together.

Look at Acts 9. What does it take to be put in the Bible? You know, if there's a further writing about the Bible in the future, you know, in the millennium, the Bible is eight volumes because God adds everything that happened from revelations at the time of Christ's return. I don't think any of us are going to be mentioned in it, okay? We're not that poor. What does it take to be put in the Bible? Well, you have to be really, really special, right? Well, let's look at verse 26.

At Joppa, there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. The woman was full of good works and charitable deeds, which she did. She simply was a servant. This woman's story is in the Bible not because she walked around healing people, not because she was given this great ability to speak, not because when she rolled through the temple like Peter did and everybody ran up to him and wanted to know what was going on, not because like Paul went around and formed churches wherever he went, or Barnabas, who was so encouraging to everybody that, you know, they changed his name to the Son of Encouragement. Why is this woman famous? Why is she into Scripture? Why is this story here?

Because she served the people in her congregation. So some of you may be in the Bible, because she serves the congregation. This woman was full of good works. But it happened to those days that she became sick and died. And they had washed her. They had laid her in the upper room. And since Lydia was near Job, the disciples had heard that Peter was there. They sent two men to him imploring him not to delay in coming to them. Peter and Rosa went with them, and when he had come, they brought him to the upper room. And all the widows stood by weeping, showing the tunics and garments which Dworkus had made while she was with them. But Peter put them all out, knelt down, and prayed. And turning to the body, he said, Tabitha, arise. She opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she set up. Then he gave her his hand and lifted her up. And when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. So it was that he stayed many days in Joppa with something with a tanna. Now, God's will was to resurrect her to do this miracle to spread the gospel. But it's interesting who he chose to do it with. It was a servant.

This is a gift that is very important to the health of any congregation. But it's a gift we can say, that's not that important. Well, if I do that, I have to give up some of my time. I have to give up some things I want. And yet, the more you serve, in the right attitude, the more you want to serve. It's a gift. All of us, by the way, have some of these gifts. I think, actually, we all have a little bit of every gift. Some people just have more than others of certain gifts. Because all of us are prophesied. All of us are disturbed. There's others that just, like Dorcas, there's a woman who's famous because she simply was a servant. He then talks about the gift of teaching. Once again, you know, there are formal teaching, and there are those who have a function of formal teachers. Elders, in order to be ordained, are supposed to be apt to teach. They must have the ability to teach.

But all of us can teach in one way or another. All of us, actually, can use this gift by what is called mentoring. When you look through the Scripture, you see that Jesus didn't teach the disciples just by sending them to school. He lived with them. And you will find, throughout the Scripture, that mentoring was how people came into the church. Other people taught them, brought them along. Sure, the elders did, you know, the local pastor, all these people are involved, but everybody's involved. Everybody's involved. Not in, I mean, we can drive off people, too. Oh, 50 people are going to run and teach them. That's not going to work. Mentoring isn't just, let, sit down and let me teach you. Mentoring is creating a relationship. In which they learn by your example. It's creating a relationship by which people learn by your example. It's not by saying, what questions do you have? It's when they come to you and say, I have a question because I've been watching you. Because I think you know something about this Christianity. Because I think you've been through some of the things I have, so I have a question. That's mentoring. That's the gift of teaching in the informal sense. All of us can teach. You know, one of the greatest examples of mentoring in the Bible is Ruth in the Old Testament.

Ruth is an Israelite. She marries the man who's not an Israelite. She leaves the nation. She lives in a foreign land. She has two sons.

Two, these Midianite women marry her sons. Her husband dies. Her two sons die. She says, I'm going back to Israel. Let's pick up the story here in Ruth 1, 1 chapter, verse 8. Ruth chapter 1.

So, Naomi now is going back home. She's lost her husband, her sons.

Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, go return each to your mother's house. The Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord granted you may find rest each in the house of her husband. The Lord said, go remarry. Have a life. You're young. So she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. And they said to her, surely we will return with you to your people.

They had built such a relationship with her that they saw, following the true God, and being with Naomi was more important than being with their own people. But Naomi said, turn back my daughters. Why do you go with me? Are there not still sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? Turn back my daughters. Go, for I am too old to have a husband for you. If I should say, I have hope, if I should have a husband tonight, and should also bear sons, would you wait for them until they were grown? Would you restrain yourselves from having husbands? Know my daughters, for it grieves me very much for your sakes, that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. It just grieves me that I'm having such difficulty in life. My husband died, my sons died. What Naomi did not understand, and what of course we see through the book of Ruth and later the New Testament, that God was creating the lineage of the Messiah. And the book of Ruth is all about creating the lineage of the Messiah.

That's what the book is about. That's what this whole thing is about. Now, of course, Naomi could have known that. All she knew was, God has not blessed me. Of course, when we read this, we think, wow, Naomi was such a blessed woman. She's so important in salvation history. We didn't know that. I mean, she didn't know that. All she knew was, my life has been a catastrophe. My husband died, my sons died. Now, I have these two women, these young women who have followed me. I have taught them. They've given up their families to be part of my family. They believe God the way I believe in God. I need to go back to my land, and you need to stay here with your people. Then they lifted up their voice, and went again. And Oprah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And she said, look, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. Go back. Why are you coming with me? And here's what Ruth says. This is the effect of Naomi on her. This is called mentoring. This is when a person sees your life and sees your example and says, they're not perfect. They make mistakes. They struggle, but they're heading in a certain direction, and I want to go where they're going. That's why we can't pretend to be perfect. A good mentor can't be perfect. A good mentor says, been there, done that. Let me tell you why it doesn't work. He says, now Ruth said, and treat me like I'm a man. Ruth said, and treat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you. For wherever you go, I will go. And wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God my God. And where you die, I will die. And there I will be buried. The Lord so do so to me, and more also, if anything but death, parts you from me. That's a remarkable couple of verses there. That may be one of the most incredible expressions of love in the entire Bible. Just from what you have been told of. Now, your God's my God. Your ways are my ways. Your people are my people. And may God curse me if I don't take care of you and be with you until you die. That's remarkable. Where did she learn that from? There. We are to mentor other people. You know, it's interesting that I was reading that article on why churches die. And another article, actually it was a research sent by Barna that was sent to me from someone at the home office. But it was about why people under 35 are leaving Christianity. And why some of them stay. And why some of them come back. And the number one reason, well there were two main reasons. One had to do with strong biblical teaching. Okay, the Bible means something to them. And there's just not a lot of strong biblical teaching in Protestantism anymore. But the second was, there were some older people that basically had a relationship with enough, enough of a relationship with them, that they could see how it worked. So if you're over 35, then we all have responsibility to work with people under 35. To show them how this works. That doesn't mean you preached it. It means you have a relationship with them. We have never a relationship with them. Now, all of us can't have a relationship with everybody. So, you know, some of you take a relationship with some person, some with another person. But that's part of what we do. We share our lives with other people. Now, some of you have a special gift at that. That's what's amazing about all these gifts. We're supposed to, all of us are supposed to do all of it. Some of us are just going to be really good at it.

Some of us are going to be really good at it. But we should be looking at all these gifts and saying, I want some of that charisma. I want some of that charisma. Now, you may find out that you have a big charisma. You may have a big gift in one way or another.

But it's interesting here. What we have is one of the prime examples of mentoring. When we say the gift of teaching, we always think in the formal sense.

Well, I always think in the formal sense.

Few people teach formally. Few people are going to get up here and give us her approval. Everybody teaches. Everybody. And some of you have a great gift of mentoring.

But how do we do that if we don't know each other? Now, the next gift is the gift of exhortation. Exhortation is a fascinating word in Greek because it means, literally, that you call a person to try to convince them to pursue a course of conduct.

Exhortation, though, isn't the famous correction. It can involve a correction, but exhortation has a positive meaning to it. You call somebody to you to try to encourage them towards a future.

It's future-oriented. It's future-oriented.

So you exhort people by sitting down and saying, Hey, come here. Guys, I've got a future for you.

There is a gift of exhortation. I've met a few people that have that gift in a great amount.

And I was always amazed because I always walked away from them. Anytime I spent with them, I walked away with more faith.

I just walked away with more faith because they were always zeroing you in on what God is doing. They were always zeroing you in on God has an outcome.

And all this other stuff that just invades our lives, all of a sudden sort of felled away. Oh, yeah. We're moving towards a place. We're moving towards what God is doing.

Exhortation. All of us are to exhort each other. Some of you just may have a special gift beyond what all of us are supposed to be doing. So don't go say, oh, look, which one of these gifts I have? Actually, you're also supposed to do all of them. It's just some of you are going to have more gift in one area than everybody else.

But we all are supposed to use at least some of these gifts. Some were also supposed to participate in this at some level. This I guess, you know, when you think about exhortation, it really comes down to inspiring people. You inspire people. You know, all of us can think of some point in your life where someone came in contact with you, someone spent time with you, someone said something to you, and it changed you in a positive way. Whatever it was, all of us can think of those times when someone just pushed us forward. We are to be looking at each other and saying, how do I help exhort? How do I help push each other forward?

Exhortation is very—the word itself is very active.

So, I mean, someone may have given you exhortation that made you stop smoking. They just said that and said, hey, you can't do this. This is going to destroy you. This is what God wants. Come on, I'll help you.

It's like the man I knew that knew an alcoholic, and he knew that the alcoholic's triggers. So, he called him every day at the time of day that that would be a problem for him. Month after month, he did that. As exhortation, exhortation, I'm going to keep pushing you towards the future that God wants for you, and I'm going to inspire you to go there.

The gift of giving—I find that interesting—the gift of giving. Now, all of us are supposed to give. See, once again, I can't go through these and say, oh yeah, some of you don't have this gift at all. All of us are supposed to have this gift in some measure, but some are going to have other gifts more dramatic than some others. The gift of giving—this isn't just monetary giving. In fact, what we can use in our society—because all of us are fairly wealthy. I mean, compared to the rest of the world, we're all wealthy. What we can do is pay off. The gift of giving is, here, have a buck.

Now, there's time to give money, but giving of ourselves and of our time is one of the greatest gifts of giving. I mean, remember the Sermon on the Mount. We read this so many times, but let's go there. Matthew 25. Matthew 25. Because the gift of giving—we all give. We have also met people that have a gift of giving. They simply give more than others. They give to their own detriment, and they still give. Just because they like giving. Okay, they have that gift. But all of us must do this, too.

All of us.

We know in verse 31, one of the parables of Jesus. When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, and He will sit on the throne of His glory, and all the nations will be gathered before Him, and He shall separate one from another as the shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on His right hand by the goats on His left. And then the King will say to them on His right hand, Come, you blessed of my Father, and here at the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me. It's just not paying off things. Yes, you might give someone food. You might give someone money. But notice here, giving comes from the absolute concern for the other person.

Absolute concern for the other person. Now that should extend out to everybody, our neighbors. Everybody we meet. It starts in our own families, and then in the Church. If we can't do this with our own family members, or if we can't do this with other people in the Church, then how are we going to do it outside? And we have to be careful. Sometimes churches will do an activity, a quote-unquote service project, which I think we need more service projects. But if we're not careful, a service project is just a way of feeling good about ourselves.

Companies do this all the time. Companies have a day where everybody goes and works at some service project in the community, and everybody feels good about it. The next day they go back to work and forget about it. We as a Church can't do that. Oh, good. I need some service to feel good. Then you didn't do service. We don't do service when we just do it to feel good. We have to do it because we are concerned for the others, or for the people that we're doing it for. And here Jesus said, Look what you did. Then the righteous will answer Him saying, Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You? We're thirsty and give You a drink. When did we see You as a stranger and take You in or naked and clothe You? When did we see You sick or in prison and come to You? And the King will answer to say to them, Surely I say to You, Inasmuch as You, You did it to the least of these, my brethren, You did it to me.

You did it to me.

Service can be a gift, but service is something all of us are to do. I find it that—this is why I use this list.

You can't separate and say, Oh, all those with the gift of giving line up here, and all those with the gift of prophesying line up here. Okay, oh good. We have seven different categories in the Church. We're all supposed to be doing all of these, but some of us are going to have more talents or more gifts than others. But we're all supposed to be doing all of them.

This is part of what God's Spirit is to do in us. This is why Paul starts with, Be a sacrifice to God, and two, don't be prideful.

Or your gifts will be developed. The more pride we have, the more—we'll do things, but we resent it. We resent doing what we're doing, because everything's in position to what else we really want to do. But we understand these. These kinds of things are things we should want to do.

This should give us the fulfillment in life, instead of saying, Oh, let's hurry and get the service number so I can go do this. Then we're missing the point. Then it's the gift of leadership.

Now we know that leadership is a function of elders and deacons in the Church. We say, Oh good, that means them. No? Well, yes it does, but it means more than them, because leadership simply means influence.

Every one of you has—I don't care what your age, I don't care whether you're male or female—I don't care— every one of you has from God a responsibility to have positive, godly influence on each other. That's leadership! Position or function is just an opportunity to exert that in a greater way. But all of us have seen over the years, you may have known someone who was ordained and exerted very little leadership. And yet all of us know people in the Church, maybe some widow, that has exerted great leadership simply by having positive influence on everybody else. Simply by having positive influence on everybody else.

So yes, there is a leadership function. We zero down on that so much that sometimes we don't exert our positive influence on other people.

Part of our function as elders is to equip you in your leadership. Oh good! He's going to equip me to someday be an elder and have my own Church. That's not what that means! That's a function God gives. It means to equip you to be a leader in everyday life by the way you influence others.

Because that's all leadership ends up being. It's influence.

How much influence you have, or whether it's good or bad.

So, once again, we can look at this gift to say, I've met elders, I've met pastors who have this great gift of leadership. I've met people in the Church that just grew up how we define leadership. They ran some business that is great gift of leadership. Hundreds of employees and inspired all of them. Great gift of leadership. Okay, that's a function in the Church.

But when the gifts come around, we're all supposed to be involved in it.

We all do it. But once again, you have to be careful. You will find people, and John talks about this in 1 John. He talks about a man who just said, Hey, I'm the new leader of this Church throughout the elders. And when someone came from John to talk to him and said, I don't accept John as the Apostle anymore. Get out of here. That's not godly leadership.

It can be counterfeited, you see? Like all these things, it can be counterfeited.

But it doesn't erase the fact that all of us should be involved in it.

The last point he brings out, in some ways, is one of the most important gifts. But I'm not going to spend as much time on it, because I want you to think about this one. The gift of mercy. And he says, do it cheerfully.

Having mercy, having loving kindness on others. Oh, man, I'll be kind to you, but I hate it. He says, no, loving kindness, and you're cheerful about it. Now, some people have the gift to do that. The rest of us struggle with that, right? And that's why I think this is a great gift that the Church needs. Loving kindness with cheerfulness.

If you want to actually go pray for one of them, pray for that one.

Loving kindness with cheerfulness. Empathy towards others. Understanding towards others. Go pray for that one.

That may be the gift we need the most.

That may be the gift we need the most. So when you start through these gifts, you see that all of us are supposed to be involved in these gifts. This is part of what we're developing into, but some will have more of the gift than others. That's not bad. That's good, right? We're glad that some people have the gift of music. And when God enhances that, and we see Him enhance that, we're glad.

That shouldn't cause competition. Or whatever gift. I just use that one because it's such an obvious one. So whether it's prophecy, speaking, the plan and ways of God to others, being able to help them see it, be able to share that with them. Whether it's ministry or service, or whether it's the gift of teaching, which really comes down to mentoring, having a relationship with each other, and how important that is in generational development in any congregation.

And that's why, by the way, if you're a younger person, you should seek relationship with some of the older people. You can't isolate yourself from them. You have to be available for mentorship.

That doesn't mean that someone's going to walk up to you and say, hey, you need to be mentored. You know, you know what you're doing. Why don't you come over my house so I can mentor you? That's not what it's about. It's a relationship where something happens naturally.

The gift of exhortation, where we actually drive each other forward. We should be doing this all the time. All of us need all these gifts. The gift of giving, which doesn't just mean monetary. It doesn't mean buying off. It means your whole being, your heart, your mind, your time is used in serving others. The gift of leadership, influencing others, and the gift of mercy with cheerfulness.

I thank God every time I meet somebody that has a special gift in all these areas because they all make a big impact. Now, I want to develop all these, just like you want to develop all these. But boy, it's great when someone comes along and you know this person has that gift and an abundance.

We can't have enough gifts of the Spirit. If we're prideful, we'll end up like 1 Corinthians, and we'll end up an absolute mess.

So what's my gift? Well, all of them. If it was my special gift. I don't know. You don't have to go ask that one. I don't know.

You have to go ask that one. But we're supposed to have all these things being developed in us. Let's look at Romans here, chapter 12. And let's look at the result of this. Because Paul then just sort of unleashes here. This is what sort of happens when we do this.

Now, he finishes up here in verse 8. He who exhorts and exhortations, he who gives with liberality, he who leads with diligence, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness. Okay? So we get this. There's these formal functions. There's these informal functions. We all have to grow in all these areas, but some of us are going to have more gifts in some areas than others. So we need to really grow in the areas where God gives us that special gift. Here's what happens. Let love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil, cling to what is good, be kindly affectionate to what is good. He just starts listening. He's just like rattling off things here.

He starts with, everybody has to have this service attitude towards God. Don't let pride get in the way of your abilities. Here's the abilities everybody has to be working on, and some people are going to have more gifts than others. Don't kill. And when all this works together, this is what happens.

Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherhood and love, and honor giving preference to one another. It's not like, boy, I've got a better gift than you. At that point, you don't have the gift anymore.

The gift's gone. The moment we look at somebody else and say, I've got a better gift than you, you don't have the gift anymore. You've just ruined it.

Giving preference to one another. Not lagging in diligence, firm in the spirit, serving the Lord. Rejoicing in hope, patience in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, and given to hospitality. Actually, the rest of this entire chapter is just him continuing on. This is what happens in a congregation. This being a sacrifice to God, not being prideful, and using these gifts to serve each other. This is what happens. This is part of our goal. Now, this is an ideal.

There's no congregation in the New Testament you find that reached that ideal, but it's what they strove for. It's what Paul taught them to do. It's what we are to strive for.

It's what God is teaching us to do.

Everyone is called in the Church, is given a measure of all these gifts.

Therefore, all of us are to strive in these things. Some are given a much greater measure than others. I mean, people who have exhortation in that great gift are amazing people. People who inspire us. I just admire that gift.

The funny thing about people who are really good at their gifts, they don't know they have a gift.

They just do it.

They never think, they never think, oh, look at the gift I have. They're just doing it. The person who gives liberally because they're a giver, they don't say, oh, I have a gift for the giving. They just give.

The person who is a real servant, they don't say, oh, I'm a better servant than everybody else. I mean, the moment you would say, oh, look around, I'm a better servant than everybody else, you're not a servant anymore. You're a Lord. Because I'm better than the rest of you.

The person who has that servant, I mean, we all serve, but the person who's that gift of service beyond the rest of us, they just do it. In fact, if you said you're a real servant, they'd be embarrassed by it. They would actually be embarrassed by it because, well, that's what I do. That's who I am.

Weirdly how these things developed in us, too. It's just who we are.

We don't think about it. It's just who we are. It's what we do.

We wouldn't know how to live life any other way because that's Christ in us. So it's how we learn how to live life.

Ask God to help you develop all these gifts. But ask God to help you also find, if there's some special gift He's given to you, that you can really do that.

And it might be just... It might be just going and visiting and helping the sick.

It might be like Dorcas.

We say, well, I don't know. I want a big gift. I don't know. When you end up in the Scripture, that's a perfect gift. See, we don't see this the way God does. That's a big gift. Get a Scripture as an example. As an example.

And be careful not to become prideful in the gifts that you have or the things that you do. These are our duties. These are what we're supposed to do.

This is what we're supposed to be as Christians.

And so we can't take pride in it. And through the interaction of these gifts in our relationship with God and with each other, God will bind us together. And as we read in Ephesians, God will then carry out His purpose in His Church.