“Greater Gifts?” // Message @ JRCC – Sunday, May 22, 2011

Text: I Corinthians 12:27-31 // Series: “Ambition: The Good, the bad, the Holy”

Thanks, Kara, and team for leading us in that song.  I’m not sure if you caught the implications of it – sometimes we just sing stuff and our minds go onto auto-pilot - but that song is written as a prayer.  You just invited God to use you in a significant way this week…  Take my hands, take my feet and use them as you choose.  Take my money & my material resources (silver and gold) and my powers of intellect and use them for your purposes in the world.  It’s a powerful song with some powerful implications.  Most notably the question that comes to my mind is ‘do I really mean that?’  Do I really want to take an inventory of my life and invite God to use what He finds there for the good of others and for God’s glory in this world?  Maybe super-spiritual people do that but do I really want to do that?  And if I do, the next question is what is God going to find in my life that He desire to use?  Some of you work in professions that require to do inventory from time to time – how many of you LOVE taking inventory?  Norm?  Aiden?  Yeah, I thought so.  But the purpose of taking inventory is to rightly assess what resources you have at your disposal. 

And the same thing is true of the spiritual life…  Every now and then, it is helpful to pause, take an inventory of our lives, ask the question ‘what resources has God given to me and how am I stewarding them?  This flows out of two of our core values here at Jericho Ridge:

Firstly, Glocal Service

“…We walk in obedience to God, actively looking for opportunities to use our time, talents and treasures for Kingdom growth and impact.”

 And secondly, Generous Living:

“We commit to living as faithful stewards, willing to cheerfully share what we have with others... Generosity touches all aspects of our lives: our friendships, our service, our time, our gifts and abilities, and our material resources”

Last weekend, Pastor Keith referenced a story that Jesus told in Matthew 25.  It’s known as the Parable of the Talents and in it are two principles

Of Good Stewardship:

1. Assessment: I can’t manage something well if I am not actively aware that I possess it
2. Accountability: God will ultimately hold me accountable for everything  He has given me (see Matt. 25:14-30)

In retail or wholesale, this is also the purpose of an inventory.  You can’t sell it and track it unless you know that you have it in your inventory.  But once you possess, this knowledge, there is a second principal that comes into effect:    

  To whom much has been given, much is required.

This has lead in evangelical world, to the development of a kind of “Three Tiered Thinking” around the topic of spiritual gifts. Follow the logic with me and see if you haven’t heard this kind of discussion:

1. God gives everyone gifts (James 1:17; Matthew 5:45)

Every good and perfect gift is from above…  The rain falls on the just and the unjust.  God gave everyone here the gift of May 22, 2011 – surprise, surprise, the world didn’t’ come to an end yesterday!  The second tier is gifts that fall into that category which have traditionally been called “spiritual gifts”…  The New Testament teaches us that in the age of the Holy Spirit in which we live, that

1. God empowers believers with spiritual gifts (I Cor. 12; Rom. 12; Eph. 4)

This led in the Evangelical world in the 1970s and following to a resurgence of interest in systematizing these gifts.  Step 1, isolate & compile the gifts listed in I Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and I Peter 4.  Step 2; create an assessment test that guides people towards choosing their gifts off this list.  Not a bad idea, except that these tests have some flaws built into them:  the questions they ask (Do you often have people in your home?”  Hummm…  If wonder if that’s about the gift of tongues or about hospitality? J.  So, because it’s a little obvious (yes / no), I check the boxes that I want to have and leave the other ones blank.  The end result?  Over 80% of people who take these tests end up with the gift of helps – the ability to help others.  No duh! 

So yes, God empowers those who are filled with His Spirit with the abilities that the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity gives us.  But there’s a third tier that has developed in the Christian world. And it’s a little more subtle but also a little more sinister.  And that is either explicit teaching or implicit operational strategies within the church that 

1. Some spiritual gifts are greater than other gifts (I Corinthians 12:31)

We’re in a series on Ambition currently and so when you look up the word Ambition in the New Testament, one of the places that it pops up is in I Cor. 12:31, right at the end of a chapter on gifts that the Spirit gives.  And we are invited to be ambitious for gifts.  And, depending on what translation you have, the NIV says “eagerly desire the greater gifts”.  So the title of the message today is an attempt to balance and ask some probing questions about those realities.  Yes, we are to eagerly desire to discover, develop and deploy our gifts, but the question is ‘are there some gifts that a greater than other gifts which we ought to be more ambitious for?”  That’s the question that we’ll wrestle with today in I Cor. 12.

Let me share some of my own personal journey with you as we get started…  I grew up in a very conservative bible church movement.  But in High School in Ontario, I was attending a more charismatic school who believed in the full manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit.  This was new to me.  I had mostly seen things like tongues or miracles on TV but now I was travelling internationally and seeing gifts of faith and healing and experiencing God pouring out some of these gifts into my life.   

But I also began to notice something else.  That there was a certain kind of status associated with certain kinds of gifts.  There were regular type gifts, and then there were like super-gifts.  Some people called them ‘sign’ gifts.  I was never quite sure what they meant but they always seemed to be reserved for people in leadership positions and they were always very public very demonstrative gift sets.  I asked around and I was pointed to the end of I Cor. 12, where there was a set of gifts listed and the verse that finishes it, which was pointed out to me was 12:31, “eagerly desire the greater gifts”.  I was told that if I didn’t have them, it was likely either an issue of my faith (that I didn’t want them badly enough) or it was that God hadn’t placed me in a position of leadership or spiritual authority where I needed any of those greater gifts.  So I should be content with the gifts that I had.  It sounded very spiritual but something about it didn’t sit right with me.  I knew I wasn’t’ a ceaseationalist, but something bothered me about this third tier thinking that some gifts were greater than others.        

I couldn’t put my finger on it for a long time until I went to college and learned some principles of biblical interpretation that helped me understand I Cor 12:31 in a new light, a light I hope to share with you this morning.  But in order to get to verse 31, we can’t start there.  We have to start back with 12:14, where the image that pervades this discussion begins…  The image of a body.  I’ll be reading from the NLT in I Cor 12:14, when I get to verse 27, the text will come up on the side screens (reminder – bring your Bibles to church while I’m on sabbatical this summer… it’ll fool the guest speakers into believing that you’re paying attention to them J).   READING I Cor 12:14-30 

Scripture Slide 1 – 12:27-28  //          Scripture Slide 2 – I Cor. 12:29-30

And then, we get to this thorny verse, I Corinthians 12:31, where we have a problem of translation:

• KJV – “earnestly desire the best gifts”
• NASB – “earnestly desire the greater gifts”
• ESV – “earnestly desire the higher gifts”

What could a person think other than that there was just a list given – first, second, third, etc… to 8^th.  And the very next phrase says “go after the best, greatest, higher.  Our western minds are trained to think that whatever is at the top of the list is that so boom – I’m off after the gift of apostleship.  If I can’t get there, then I should aspire to prophetic gifts.  If I can't get there then teaching (finally, something manageable!).  Its how we think about lists, isn’t it?  But here’s the translation problem…  That’s not what the verse says.  The third tier is not a biblical category when it comes to gifts.  So I’m going to argue against the third tier. 

Why?  With everything we are discussing in our current series,

• With ambition, it’s healthy to assess our TARGET as well as our MOTIVATION as we move towards any goal...

Ask where is my ambition taking me (the end).  And ask: what is going on in my heart as I move towards that goal?  (the means as well as the motivation.  Why am I after that goal?).  And so here’s my observation: 

• If we live with a practical theology of “Greater Gifts” we can make significant mistakes on both counts!

We have misplaced goals (I want to be an apostle, prophet) AND we have misplaced motivation as we work towards our goal.  Are you with me so far?  Make sense?  Any questions? 

As it relates to our interpretation of I Cor 12:31, Three Primary problems emerge if we emerge with a theology of greater gifts:

1. Wrong Target – Seeing the list as a hierarchy or as positional offices
   1. Apostle                 5.  Healing
   2. Prophet                6.  Helps
   3. Teacher                7.  Leadership
   4. Miracles               8.  Tongues

Does this sound consistent with the rest of I Cor. 12? (No – the image of a body, hidden parts just as important as the public parts.)

2.       Wrong Motive – It’s not about the gift or about the recipient…  It’s about the Giver and the Community

»     “Earnestly desire the most helpful gifts” (12:31)

When we begin to get it into our heads that some gifts are more exciting than others, we begin to let our ego drive the conversation as opposed to letting the Spirit of God do so.  We get ambitious for the public nature of the gift and so we want it so badly, we overlook the good gifts God has already given us.  And here’s where the translation work of the NLT is profound.  “So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts”.  Remember, the purpose of the gifts is not about you or me.  It’s about the Giver and His plans and also about His Body the church and its redemptive mission in the world. 

»     “A spiritual gifts if given to each of us so we can help each other” (I Cor. 12:7)

NOT so that we can look good. 

But all of the confusion around this has led to another by-product…  Some of us just give up and ignore the conversation altogether saying either ‘oh, yeah, I took one of those stupid tests.  I have the gift of helps – whoopee.  So I’ll stack a few chairs once in a while so that the facilities team can get home to the Canucks game faster.  The reason that the grace of God has been poured out in your life is more significant than stacking a few chairs, friend – as valuable as that job is for seeing the purpose of Sunday mornings accomplished.  But because of all the confusion, we sometimes just say ‘forget about it’.  Been there, done that.  Rode that evangelical rollercoaster ride through the 70’s or the last time my church did SHAPE or Network or whatever…  Yawn.  Snooze.  Not particularly relevant for me. 

The problem, as I see it, church, is not that too many of us know our spiritual gifts, but that too many of us don’t.  And we don’t understand the very strong implications…  

3.       Weak Ambition – because you and I will be held to account, it behooves us to discover and develop our gifts

Read these three chapters at home this week and you’ll see that some of the strongest language of ambition in the New Testament is reserved for the discovery, development and deployment of the gifts of Grace that God has poured out in your life. 

»     “Earnestly desire the most helpful gifts” (12:31)

»     “Desire the special abilities the Spirit gives” (14:1)

»     “Be eager to prophesy and don’t forbid speaking in tongues” (14:39)

Some of us have incredible inventory in our storehouse.  And we’re not moving it.  It is sitting stagnant because of our weak ambition. 

So, what do we do about this?  Now that we’ve established I Cor 12:31 doesn’t say what we may have thought it said, but that instead it calls me to desire and get ambitious for gifts that are helpful, what are the implications? 

For those who may not know Christ,

• Acknowledge God as the Gift-Giver

–     What could happen in your life if you surrendered to God and allowed His Spirit to use the gifts He has given you?

For those who are growing in Christ,

• Commit to a journey of Discovery, Development and Deployment

–     Become a student of yourself and of the opportunities that God puts in your path

–     Take-Home Tool: “Stewarding the Manifold Grace of God: A Personal Ministry-Resource Inventory”

For those who are mature in Christ:

• Assess Under- or Mis-used Resources

–     Some of you are sitting on your spirituals

–     What would it look like if everyone at JRCC knew their gifts and leveraged them for the mission of God in the power of the Holy Spirit in the world?

Your unique gifts and talents: Do you know what they are?  Are you using them?  If not, get ambitious to discover, develop and deploy them for God in His mission in the world.  We’re here to help you.