Hold Nothing Back
As we continue to look at spiritual gifts, I want to talk today about discovering and developing our gifts.
Our text is from Matthew 25: 14-30. One day while Jesus was talking about the Kingdom of heaven, he was using parables to describe what it was like.
He said, “It’s also like a man going off on an extended trip. He called his servants together and delegated responsibilities. To one he gave five thousand dollars, to another two thousand, to a third one thousand, depending on their abilities. Then he left. Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master’s investment. The second did the same. But the man with the single thousand dug a hole and carefully buried his master’s money.
October 14, 2010: Hold Nothing Back
Mary Scheer, Brewster Baptist Church
“After a long absence, the master of those three servants came back and settled up with them. The one given five thousand dollars showed him how he had doubled his investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’
“The servant with the two thousand showed how he also had doubled his master’s investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’
“The servant given one thousand said, ‘Master, I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, that you demand the best and make no allowances for error. I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent.’
“The master was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest.
“‘Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And get rid of this “play-it-safe” who won’t go out on a limb. Throw him out into utter darkness.’
This is the story about trust. The master entrusted his servants with talents and they demonstrated their trust in how they handled what he gave them.
In those days, the word talent was used for money, but it is also used to describe the word abilities.
The story contrasts faithfulness and faithlessness. Each person received talents in keeping with their abilities. Two of the servants were faithful. It took risk on their part, but they were able to grow what God gave them through investment.
Even though the master trusted the third servant with something, he was scared…maybe he was really scared of the master as he said, or maybe he just lacked the confidence to take a risk and try something new.
Ultimately, there was no answer he could have given that would have been ok with the master about why he hid his talent.
The scary part of the story is the reaction of the master to the servants’ unwillingness to use his talent. He was called wicked, slothful and faithless and sent out of community into the darkness.
Jesus told another story about “the shrewd business manager” in Mathew 18, who through his mismanagement lost a huge amount of money for his boss, yet he went unpunished. (Matthew 18:21-19:1) The man in this story didn’t loose any money, in fact kept the same amount he started with, yet he was punished.
He didn’t do anything against his master, he just didn’t do anything. This parable treats doing nothing the same as doing harm.
His hiding his talent in the earth is symbolic of shutting up our gifts from active service.
It’s a personal denial of who God made us to be. Since the church is his body, if the people that make up the church don’t develop and use our gifts to help the body, we limit what God can do through us to glorify his name.
Before Jesus left the earth, Eph. 4: 8 says that when he ascended on high, he gave gifts to people. Christ is like that man travelling into a far country and he knew he would be gone for a while.
But he took care to give the church everything it would need while he was physically absent. He sent his Holy Spirit for power, gave us his Word to guide us in truth and filled his church with spiritual gifts to glorify himself and build up his body.
Explaining this further, the Apostle Paul said, “You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body.
It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives.
We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.)
Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink.
The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together.
If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so?
If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body?
If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance.
For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster.
What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own.
Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”?
As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary.
You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower.
You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher.
If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t.
If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this.
Only as you accept your part of that body does your “part” mean anything. You’re familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his “body”:
Apostles, prophets, teachers, miracle workers, healers, helpers, organizers, and those who pray in tongues. (1Cor. 12:12-30)
ILLUSTRATION: Christians under the Guillotine
During the French Revolution, there were three Christians who were sentenced to die by the guillotine. One Christian had the gift of faith, the other had the gift of prophecy, the other had the gift of helps.
The Christian with the gift of faith was to be executed first. He was asked if he wanted to wear a hood over his head. He declined and said he was not afraid to die. “I have faith that God will deliver me!” he shouted bravely. His head was positioned under the guillotine, with his neck on the chopping block. He looked up at the sharp blade, said a short prayer and waited confidently. The rope was pulled, but nothing happened. His executioners were amazed and, believing that this must have been an act of God, they freed the man.
The Christian with the gift of prophecy was next. His head was positioned under the guillotine blade and he too was asked if he wanted the hood. “No,” he said, “I am not afraid to die. However, I predict that God will deliver me from this guillotine!” At that, the rope was pulled and again, nothing happened. Once, again the puzzled executioners assumed this must be a miracle of God, and they freed the man.
The third Christian, with the gift of helps, was next. He was brought to the guillotine and likewise asked if he wanted to wear a hood. “No,” he said, “I’m just as brave as those other two guys.” The executioners then positioned him face up under the guillotine and were about to pull the rope when the man stopped them. “Hey wait a minute,” he said. “I think I just found the problem with your guillotine …”
Usually though, our spiritual gifts work together in ways we might not be conscious of.
ILLUSTRATION: The Parable of the Spilled Coffee
A Bible study group met in a home to study how various ministries should work in the body of Christ. One member commented, “I don’t understand how different gifts can work together.”
At that moment a woman accidentally dropped her cup, which broke and spilled coffee all over the floor. Each group member responded differently to the mishap, according to their spiritual gifts.
The teacher advised, “Next time if you will put your cup on the coffee table, that won’t happen again.”
The administrator responded by organizing a clean-up committee. “Bill, please go find a mop. Sally, could you help him with a towel?” Bill, who had the gift of service, hurried to get the mop. Sally, who had the gift of helps, followed Bill and said, “I’ll help you!”
The person with the gift of exhortation said, “We all make mistakes so don’t let it get you down.” he person with the gift of mercy put her arm around the woman, patted her hand and said, “I feel so badly for you.”
The person with the gift of giving exclaimed, “I’ll buy a new set of coffee mugs to replace the broken one!” They all used their various gifts together to resolve the situation. (Kent Crockett, www.kentcrockett.com )
It would be nice if everyone in the body of Christ knew their spiritual gift and could easily name them, but that’s not always so.
Some folks go their whole lives without knowing what their spiritual gifts are. We have tools like the Network Class Pastor Dave and Pastor Doug are leading and the S.H.A.P.E. Inventory that folks in the New Member Class take to help people discover their spiritual gifts.
Some of the challenges the church has faced in helping people to discover their gifts was the churches own fault because of the way various traditions have understood the passages in the Bible that talk about the various gifts given to believers.
The church hasn’t always taken seriously the fact that the Bible says that the Holy Spirit gives every believer spiritual gifts and made it a priority to help its people learn and grow in their gifts.
We know from experience that churches who do, are blessed with a fullness and richness of ministry that can only be experienced when the whole body works together.
Even when the church affirms believers gifts and offers opportunities to use and grow in them, there can be other challenges around the area of spiritual gifts.
- Based on background and upbringing, some folks doubt there are such things as spiritual gifts
- We may spend years developing our hobbies and building our professional careers, yet not invest the same time and energy in developing and using in our spiritual gifts.
- This may be especially true if we don’t believe or embrace our role in the body.
The Bible has stories of God’s people who were called to serve a function in a way they may not have felt ready for. And that can be true of us as well. What if we are gifted to serve an area that’s outside our comfort zone?
ILLUSTRATION: That’s what happened to me. I felt a passion for the Bible from a very early age. I couldn’t wait to read its stories and have my friends over to share them.
However, I was being raised in a home and a religious tradition that did not affirm women in ministry, so I was always discouraged from my neighborhood preaching.
When my parents realized they couldn’t shake my growing passion for ministry, they encouraged me to marry a missionary when I grew up and seek a role in ministry outside the country.
I did not actively pursue ministry for a long time. It was a pastor who revived that calling during a Bible study I attended at his house.
He pretty much took me by the shoulders and said, “you’ve got gifts for pastoral ministry, you’ve got to pursue them.”
The problem was that he was also part of a religious tradition that did not affirm women in ministry. So, he took me to a place that did, the Baptist Seminary down the road.
Now, while the gifts for pastoral ministry were affirmed, I still had some challenges to overcome, the largest of which was a phobic shyness.
My level of passion for sharing God’s word was matched by my level of fear of public speaking…..eventually, my fear of not answering God’s call was greater than my fear of being in front of people. And here I am. //
There’s a reason why Jesus acknowledged in the parable that the servants investment took risk. Accepting your gifts and agreeing to use them can mean risk, but God will honor that risk.
Even though some of us may start with shaky first steps, when you’re serving in your area of gifts and you feel that satisfaction, you want to know more and to do more and those good feelings grow and the cycle continues and the better you get at what your doing, the more you enjoy it.
Being preoccupied and busy in our own lives and not understanding how important using our gifts are to God can be another area of challenge for the church.
When the Israelites were forced out of Israel in 587 B.C. and taken into exile. Jeremiah recorded the destruction of the temple (ch52:12-16.) When the exiles returned to Jerusalem 70 years later, they quickly laid the foundation for the temple. But then they got so busy in their own lives that they got distracted and 18 years passed and they still hadn’t started building the temple.
So, God sent the prophet Haggai to motivate the people to get to work. He reminded them that repairing the building where we worship is an act of obedience every bit as important as praying in that place of worship. (The Message pg1395)
God told him he was upset that the people had time to work on their own houses but not his, that they had ambition to develop their own interests but lacked enthusiasm for building up the temple.
He said stop with the half hearted, job you’re doing and do this for me, honor me, for I’m living and breathing among you right now. So don’t be timid and don’t hold back.
In those days, it was a physical temple that God wanted built, today, it’s the spiritual temple.
Paul told the Corinthians that believers are the temple, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?
If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and all of you together are that temple” (1Cor. 3: 16-17; 2Cor 6:16).
We continue to build up the temple and honor God, as we discover and develop our gifts.
Finally, it might also be that we fail to see our spiritual gifts as a part of the fullness of who God made us to be.
Our gifts are part of the way we are made and part of what makes us beautiful for God.
Designed and created for his glory, we can get distracted and confused about what makes us special or attractive to others and focus our whole lives trying to transform ourselves to meet the expectations of those around us.
Yet, we are already all we will ever need to be for God, nothing more, nothing less.
The gifts placed inside us by the Holy Spirit are part of God’s gift to the church as we use them to help each other, but they’re also special to him because he takes delight in watching us discover who we are and what we are capable of.
This is how we glorify him, how we honor and bless the one who made us.
In the parable Jesus told, the message from God is, don’t hide, discover, develop, take a risk, hold nothing back.
It’s an attitude of willingness. What God wants from us is a heart that’s captivated and captivating.
If he could, he would say to you, “Everything about you is incredible. You should have seen me smile the day that I made you, beautiful for me.”
There are many blessings in discovering and developing our spiritual gifts;
- We bless God building up his body and investing ourselves in his kingdom we join him as partners in his work in the world.
- We bless each other as we use our gifts to help each other,
- And bless ourselves by journeying through the process of greater self discovery and growing in the fullness of who God made us to be.
These blessings are available to all of us. Wouldn’t it be nice to be like the first servant in Jesus parable and hear his affirming words, ‘Good work, you did your job well.’