Gifted in Kind

Matthew 5-7; John 2:1-11; 1st Corinthians 12:1-11

Central Baptist Church, Lowesville, VA

14 January 2007

What do you want to be when you grow us? I remember half a dozen answers I gave as a child. I would be a carpenter, an eye surgeon, an architect, a pilot, a scientist, or a mathematician. I looked at all that interested me to determine what I would do with my life. I had little concept of what those words meant, nor did I consider much what God wanted of me. In the meantime, God began fashioning me into the person I was called to become. As God called me into ministry, I had to determine whether I would accept the call, but also if God would equip me to fulfill that call’s demands. If God gifts us for ministry, why do we fear becoming faithful servants? Do we trust God to equip as well as call?

Wine was a symbol of rejoicing. Wine signified for the Jews the fullness of God’s blessing and the fulfillment of God’s promise. A wedding feast should have plenty of wine for the guests as they rejoiced over the bridegroom’s marriage. In Jesus’ first public sign at the wedding feast in Cana, wine as a symbol of rejoicing takes on a special connotation. As Mary tells the servants to follow whatever instructions Jesus gave, her words contrast Jesus’ instructions with the established manner of interpreting God’s instructions.

As the servants carry out Jesus’ seemingly ridiculous instructions, new celebration flows out of a symbol of legalistic ritual. What was water for ritual purification is now transformed by Jesus’ instructions into a fuller reason for celebration. Wine was a reminder of God’s promise being fulfilled. It spoke of entering the Promised Land, planting vineyards, reaping their fruit, processing the grapes, and partaking at leisure of the fulfillment of that process. It spoke of peace, prosperity, and enjoying God’s faithful provision—the Jewish characterization of entering God’s rest.

Jesus’ fulfillment shines as greater than a ritualistic legalism. Jesus’ provision is recognized as higher in quality than what the people had accepted as normative. Jesus met the needs of the celebrating party, but also began teaching a distinction between life under legalistic observance and the fulfillment of God’s grace and blessing. God’s gifting was of a higher order than what the people had come to expect. If one submitted to Jesus’ instructions for living, the results might be unpredictable, yet surpassing our expectations. Are we willing to allow God to use us without reservation?

As I began my senior year in high school, Dad asked me to serve as minister of music at a small church where he was interim pastor. I had sung in various choirs and vocal ensembles, studied a little bit of voice and played in a junior high band, but I didn’t feel qualified to direct a choir. Mom at least played piano, but the church didn’t even have a keyboard. In fear and trembling, I accepted—not because I felt comfortable with it, but because there was a need. I was insecure about my abilities, but God called me to trust Him to fill my lack.

We are studying Matthew in our Annual Bible Study. Tonight we focus specifically on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Here Jesus set’s out the core of life’s essence and basic parameters for our conduct and relationships. Christians and non-believers alike have held Jesus’ life ethic with esteem, though most have determined some way to ignore applying his words to daily living. Living according to this ethic of placing others first requires deep commitment to trusting God for a fuller definition of fulfillment and blessing than the world understands—than we understand. Are we willing to set aside our anxieties aside to serve God?

The Sermon on the Mount was not a call to career choices or recognized positions of service. It was the heart of Jesus’ gospel message on how to live in relationship with one another as believers and with the larger world, as well. A Joe Diffie country music song speaks to living according to this higher ethic that Jesus lived as well as preached. A boy comes home with a bloodied nose to grab a bat for revenge. In response, his father tells him of the toughest man he knows: “They hit him and he just turned the other cheek, but don’t think for a minute he was weak. In the end he showed them he was anything but frail. They hammered him to a cross, but he was tougher than nails.”^[1] The question behind the song is whether we are willing not only to see Jesus’ example and hear his words, but live in kind.

Many voices today echo an understanding that the focus of the Christian life is worship, where worship is defined as singing praise to God’s majesty. That is indeed an aspect of worship, but it misses a large part of Jesus’ message regarding true worship. The Greek and Hebrew terms we translate as worship are perhaps better translated as service. Worship is what we do to honor God, not in our songs and services of praise alone, but in our daily actions as well, if not more so.

Jesus did not teach singing, nor do we have record of praise services as central to his ministry. He did, however, teach us to serve and minister to the needs of others, living God’s grace and mercy as poured into the world through our words and actions. This is what Paul was getting at in the letter to the believers in Corinth. He wanted them to rest assured that God had equipped them for action of service as God deemed fit. The purpose of this equipping was not to single out some over others, but that all might serve together to fulfill God’s graceful will for their community.

Issues surrounding special gifting for service were tearing apart the fellowship in Corinth, along with other issues. Paul reminds the believers that they were each and every one equipped by God in order to carry out service for the whole of the body of Christ, together expressing God’s grace before the larger community. It is the good of the other for which God gifts and equips us as believers. We are equipped, not for our own benefit, but in order to benefit others. Corinth was too concerned with self to understand that self was not the point. God’s gifts and grace are given in order that we might grace the world with the blessings God has granted freely in Christ Jesus.

I have been in many places where people were looking to discover their spiritual gifts. Most often the process has centered on defining one’s skills and abilities, rather than true gifts. The process always included some who were most concerned with determining which gifts they did not have, as though to clear themselves for responsibility for service in one or another area. Such was hardly Paul’s point at all. Paul’s concern was that believers understand that as God calls us to faithful service, God is also faithful to equip us for the task at hand. Do we trust God to equip us, whatever the task? Are we willing to be used?

We have been called to live according to the life of Christ Jesus. We have been called into service by a God who guarantees to equip us for fulfilling his claim on our lives. We are called to serve and to live in the same manner that Christ Jesus exemplified before us. When God calls us to serve, he equips us in kind. We have been gifted to become useful in God’s kingdom. Can we trust God to use us beyond our insecurities? Are we willing for God to take us into uncharted waters, learning to trust Him?

—©2007 Christopher B. Harbin

¹ Joe Diffie, "Tougher Than Nails." http://www.anycountrymusiclyrics.com/lyrics/133250/Joe_Diffie/Tougher_Than_Nails.