1 Corinthians 12:1-11

[0:00] Well, good morning.

[0:22] As if you are visiting here this morning, you may know, may not know that we typically preach through books of the Bible. And we are in the middle of the book of 1 Corinthians.

[0:33] We're actually at chapter 12. If you want to turn there in your pew Bibles, it's page 959 in those Bibles. And we will be looking today at the first 11 verses of chapter 12.

[0:49] And so let me give you a moment to get there. And as you look, I want to say again to all of you who are celebrating either this weekend or some other weekend before or after celebrating some kind of graduation or commencement, we are so glad to celebrate that with you.

[1:11] 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 1 through 11. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed.

[1:21] You know that when you were pagans, you were led away to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed.

[1:35] And no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are varieties of service, but the same Lord.

[1:49] And there are varieties of activities. But it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

[2:03] For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom. To another, the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit. To another, faith by the same Spirit.

[2:13] To another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit. To another, the working of miracles. To another, prophecy. To another, the ability to distinguish between Spirits. To another, various kinds of tongues.

[2:25] To another, the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit who apportions to each one individually as He wills.

[2:38] Will you pray with me as we consider this passage. Lord, we this morning invite this one Spirit who you have told us in this passage is at work among your people.

[2:51] Oh Spirit, will you work in us this morning. Lord, open our hearts. Lord, to your work in our lives. To encourage us. To strengthen us.

[3:03] To challenge us. Lord, open our minds that we may understand you rightly. And so worship you rightly.

[3:17] Lord, this morning use this passage in our hearts, in our lives, we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So, one of the things I love about having little kids is the way they interact.

[3:34] Particularly in a city like New Haven. Last year, my kid went to, my oldest one went to a school with 17 children. He was the only Caucasian in the class.

[3:45] And he didn't know it. And it was a beautiful thing. And by that I mean, it just didn't occur to him that his classmates had a different color skin. Or a different kind of hairstyle.

[3:56] Or a different kind of. He just experienced the diversity of his friends as other people that he knew. And he cared about them and played with them. And it didn't make a difference.

[4:07] And I love that about little kids. I love the way they don't see those things. But of course, as a normal course of developmental psychology, as we grow up, we begin to notice these things.

[4:22] We begin to notice these differences. And interestingly, so easily at that point, we begin to take those differences.

[4:33] And rather than exploring them as wonderful things that God has created. We explore. We instead end up using them.

[4:43] They become a pretext for separation between me and you. We find ourselves walking into a room and thinking, who are the social groupings?

[4:56] Where do I fit in? Where do I fit on the pecking order in this room? Who are the people like me? Who are my people? And who are them? Who are the other people in this room?

[5:08] We admire some. We disparage others. And in fact, one of the things that is exposed in our hearts is that we're actually uncomfortable with who we are.

[5:20] We walk into a room and we think, I don't know how I fit in. Am I going to be accepted? Am I going to be loved? And so we find, we gravitate towards these things. These people who are like us.

[5:31] And we create these barriers around people who are different than us. Because we feel insecure. And in doing so, we also become unable to accept others as they are.

[5:46] And to value them. This is a common dynamic. Our sermon this morning is not about race relations or things like that. Our sermon is about spiritual gifts.

[5:57] And isn't it true that as we think about our spiritual lives, we do the same thing? Last week, Pastor Greg talked about the problem in the Corinthian church where they gathered for the Lord's Supper and yet separated and divided according to socioeconomic class.

[6:18] Around here, we might do it for education. For race. For all sorts of other reasons. We might do it for what is perceived to be spiritual maturity.

[6:35] Oh, he's really smart. I think he's really spiritual. I'm not very spiritual. I don't know where I fit in here. It seems like this is what was going on in the Corinthian church too.

[6:51] Way back when, when we preached through chapters one through four, we saw that there were divisions among them. They were connecting to particular kinds of leaders. They were exalting particular kinds of spiritual wisdom that would separate some from others.

[7:08] They were exalting spiritual experiences. And their apparent triumphalism looked down on those who were weak. Those who were needy.

[7:21] Those who were less in the eyes of the world. And these divisions created this competitive community in the Corinthian church. It was characterized by arrogance, disunity, disarray.

[7:38] I think maybe it sounded like, I don't know if you were ever in a high school rock and roll band. I wasn't, but my brother was. And I saw them practice. And when you get four teenage kids together to worship, do you know what they all want to do all the time?

[7:52] They want to do their solos. They want to do their thing. And so the four of them are not playing together as a band. They're playing four of them all wanting to be lead at the same time.

[8:05] And that kind of competition, I think, is what so easily infects our society and what so easily infects the church of Jesus Christ. This kind of things.

[8:19] And it's not what God called us to be. It's so easy for us to exalt the service we do and to begrudge others who don't do the same thing. It's so easy to resent the people who don't help in the ways that we do and to look down on the people who don't have the gifts that we do.

[8:38] And rather than rejoicing and valuing the differences, we can ignore or dismiss them. We'll see as the book goes on.

[8:52] For those of you who will be around for a while, when we get to chapter 14, we'll see the real issue has to do with speaking in tongues and the place that speaking in tongues played in that church.

[9:02] But we won't get to that today. Because as we see in 1 Corinthians, as we saw in chapters 8 through 10, there's this structural move that Paul does. He begins to address an issue and he instantly jumps not to the answer to the question that's being asked, but he jumps to a higher principle.

[9:21] And so all of chapter 12 is about spiritual gifts, the broad category of speaking in tongues. And all of chapter 13 is about love, which is about the character of how we hold our spiritual gifts, before he gets to chapter 14 and before he actually answers the question that the Corinthian church has asked.

[9:42] And the question that they're really asking is, what does it look like to be truly a spiritual person? What does it look like to really have the Spirit of God working in you?

[9:53] Does it have this competitive one-upness, this I have this gift and you don't kind of characteristic or not? In fact, that's what we see in verses 1 through 3 of our passage.

[10:08] As we're launching into it, look with me with that just for beginning. He begins, Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, and I want you to look down at the bottom of the page, if your eyesight is better than mine, you can read that footnote without glasses.

[10:25] And that footnote says, Spiritual Persons. It's unfortunate that the ESV titled this as Spiritual Gifts, because I think that Paul is actually saying something more profound than just what is the gifting that we have.

[10:40] He wants them to understand what it means to be a person of the Spirit, a person who has the Spirit of God working in them. So in verse 2 he says, You remember what it was like when you worshipped other gods, and you didn't have the Spirit.

[10:58] Those other gods were mute. They couldn't help you. They couldn't gift you. They didn't actually do things for you, did they? And then in verse 3 he says, But, here's what you need to remember.

[11:13] If you claim to be a Christian, if you claim to profess Jesus Christ as Lord, then you have the Spirit of God in you. It is not these gifts, it's not all these other things, it is simply that appropriation and reception of the gospel that Jesus is Lord.

[11:35] He's recalling what he said in Romans 14 about, or Romans 10, where he says, If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

[11:48] This is the core message of the Christian life, is it not? That we who, in our sin, are helpless before God to ever be righteous enough to earn His acceptance, have had God do something amazing for us.

[12:04] He has sent Christ, and Christ has lived the life without sin that we ought to have lived. And He died the death that we deserved because of our sin. And He rose from the dead to new life so that He might show that He has conquered sin and that our sins can be forgiven.

[12:22] And He has conquered death. And now He offers us a new spiritual and eternal life that is always His. And He says, If you confess Jesus Christ as Lord, then the Spirit of God is in you.

[12:38] If you reject Him, if you curse Jesus, then you don't. But He's saying, being a spiritual person is fundamentally having the Spirit of God.

[12:52] And then He goes on and He talks about how the Spirit of God works in His people. And that's what I want to focus on for the rest of our time this morning.

[13:04] The main thing that I want us to learn, the big idea of this passage, is that God has given various gifts as manifestations of His one Spirit for the good of all people.

[13:19] And we're just going to go through that one at a time. God has given various gifts because of one Spirit for the good of all. So let's look at those things in turn.

[13:31] The various giftings that God gives to His people. I want to step back briefly and try to give a bit of a context for this.

[13:41] Because one of the things that I think we struggle with in the Christian church as we're talking about spiritual giftings is that we come here day after day, week after week, year after year, and we think about what are we about?

[13:53] We're about the gospel. We're about the work of God's work in us, transforming us to be like Christ and God's word going out from us to bring light into the darkness of the world that we live in.

[14:07] Right? And often, we do all these things and we're learning about Christian growth and we're learning about mission and all these things. And then, then we get to Christian, to spiritual gifts and it's like we step out of the main room and into this little side room.

[14:23] And we sort of talk about it like it's this, its own little category that's completely disconnected from the rest of spiritual, from the rest of our normal church life and Christian life.

[14:36] But Paul is trying to say, no, no, no. Do you see, even from the very beginning? Right? It is those who profess Jesus as Lord who have the Spirit. And the thing about the spiritual gifts is that it is the Spirit who is giving God's people the ability to do spiritual good to other people.

[14:56] Look with me at verses 4 through 6 again. There are variety gifts but the same Spirit. Varieties of service but the same Lord. And varieties of activities but it is the same God who empowers.

[15:08] them all in everyone. The emphasis here is that it is God who is working in the midst of these people to do things.

[15:19] It is not like it is not some special thing like an add-on package to your software. It's not an optional side thing.

[15:32] It is actually an integral part of how it is that God wants to work in His people. Now what are these giftings? What do they look like? Now here again we run up to a whole host of really difficult questions or misunderstandings maybe because one of the things is we think well you know these gifts here seem pretty supernatural.

[15:54] when you look at the list when you look at the list in 7 through 11 a lot of them seem pretty like healing and miracles and prophecy like wow these are really special.

[16:05] These are somehow really different than our normal everyday lives. But friends I want to want to just point out to you that chapter 12 and chapter 13 are next to each other and we'll dive into it later.

[16:19] But let me ask you this is it more supernatural to see someone healed or to actually love your enemy?

[16:31] Is it more supernatural to speak a spontaneous word from the Lord or is it more supernatural for you to be patient and kind with someone who is hard to live with?

[16:53] As we'll see Paul sees all of this as the work of the Spirit in our hearts. So we need to make sure we don't exalt gifts to some special place that isn't a normal part of the Christian life or somehow separate from Christian character and conduct.

[17:09] It's not a separate room whereby we do ministry according to gifting differently than what we do on a day-to-day basis. It's meant to be integrated. And you see this when you look at the other list of gifts in other places in the New Testament.

[17:23] There's one at the end of 1 Corinthians 12. There's one in Romans 12. There's one in Ephesians chapter 4. There's one in 1 Peter. These are the normal... And when you look through these lists you will see more broadly that those lists include some things that seem very supernatural or paranormal as one of the commentators use.

[17:44] But some of them seem very mundane. The gift of giving. The gift of administration. The gift of service. But friends, the only reason why we stumble over those is because we have in our mind the idea that gifting is something else other than the Spirit of God helping people to serve others for their good, for their spiritual good.

[18:10] and it may look more or less spectacular but it is good. Sometimes I think we think of spiritual gifts as like superheroes.

[18:21] You know? I want to be Iron Man. I want to be Spider-Man. I want to be Thor. You know? And I have this particular gift that I can do that nobody else can do.

[18:32] And instead God is saying no, no, no, no, no. Look, you're all on the same team. And God is going to give you particular ways in which you can serve one another.

[18:51] What are some of those ways? What about the gifts that he lists here? I'm going to try really briefly to give a definition for each one of these gifts because he blows through them really quickly.

[19:05] Right? He just says oh yeah, an utterance of wisdom and an utterance of knowledge and prophecy and tongues and you think what in the world does that mean? Let me try.

[19:17] Let me try. And as we look at it I want to say two things about it. One is that the gifts may or may not be spontaneous. By that I mean some gifting may exert itself in the moment without preparation.

[19:35] Some gifts may exert themselves with preparation and forethought and planning. Some gifts may be work in both ways at different times or in different people.

[19:47] So let's make sure that we don't think that it has to be spontaneous. The other thing we need to see and we'll explore this more in chapter 14 is that spiritual gifts are not infallible. And so one who might have the gift of healing I don't believe will always heal someone that they pray for.

[20:05] And someone who has a gift of prophecy will have that gift of prophecy weighed by the elders in the corporate setting. It is not that these giftings are again like super powers that are infallible.

[20:20] They are the spirit's enabling of us. And we know that we don't always do it right. That we don't always get it right. We don't always handle it right.

[20:32] So as we explore this thing we recognize that with humility we recognize God may use us graciously. We never take a sense of ownership of these gifts as they are for ourselves.

[20:45] Alright. So here we go. You ready? If you're taking notes we're going to go through this fast. The utterance of wisdom is the ability to give guidance that is consistent with Christ's stress on self-sacrifice and the well-being of others.

[21:06] The utterance of knowledge is a message or a word spoken marked by theological understanding or insight.

[21:18] The gift of faith is not the gift of faith that is given to all believers on the basis of their trusting in the work of Christ for their salvation which is the fundamental faith that all believers share.

[21:36] The gift of faith is an extraordinary God-given confidence in his saving power and presence and that he is now presently acting. so it's someone who has the ability to see and discern and believe that God is at work in something.

[21:56] Healing is a privilege of being the channel of physical healing in someone else. Miracles the privilege of serving as a channel for the in-breaking of God's final rule his eschatological rule into the present age in a particular way that overcomes sin or the fall.

[22:27] I was, well, did you get that? What it means is that God is going to use a particular person to bring in the power that he will ultimately exert over all the world when he returns and establishes his kingdom fully where all things work according to his will.

[22:49] So it might be he has power over nature. It might be he has power over, he can stop the sun in the sky. He can stop an army in its tracks. He can do all of these things. He doesn't do it all the time but there are times when he does it and he does it sometimes through people.

[23:08] Prophecy. We looked at this last week. Nick mentioned it in chapter 14 verse 3. There's a really good definition of it. One who speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.

[23:20] Not foretelling, although that's possible, but that's not the heart of it, but telling forth what is true about God in a way that helps other people.

[23:32] the distinguishing of spirits is the special ability to evaluate the origin, authority, and application particularly of prophetic messages.

[23:48] Speaking in different kinds of tongues, I'm going to punt on this one a little bit just so you know because we're going to deal with it in chapter 14 in a lot of detail and so we'll get back to it, but tongues is the ability to speak in an unlearned human, possibly angelic language.

[24:11] I know that begs all the questions if anyone's been exposed to it and I'm just going to punt on it. Hang in there, come back, listen to the sermon in four weeks, we'll get to it. And the interpretation in tongues is the ability to translate or interpret what was said to God through the gift of tongues.

[24:30] So it's related to that. Alright, so that's what those mean. Okay? What I want you to see is that as you pull them together, what are they?

[24:41] They are, in this particular list, focusing on there are words spoken to the congregation for their good, for their spiritual good, or their actions that display a confidence in or a work of God as he continues the work in his world of building his kingdom.

[25:11] That's what's happening with spiritual gifting in this list. This list doesn't have some of the other ones like administration and service and mercy. When we preach through Romans, we'll get to those. But a few other things you want to see is that the emphasis here, as you see Paul talking through it, is that there's a variety of gifts.

[25:32] To one is given this, to another is given this, to another is given this, to another is given this. The gifting is going to be different among us. And the way that we find ourselves in this is not a checklist.

[25:45] It's not a closed list of which one do I have? There are 14 gifts, there are 17 gifts, there are 18 gifts in the New Testament. Which one do I have?

[25:55] I actually think that that's not the right way to see them. But in fact, we need to recognize that these are gifts that are sovereignly given by God. And as they're sovereignly given by God, we want to seek to simply recognize where God is working in us and where God is working in others and to rejoice in both of them.

[26:20] And to humbly receive them and to see the difference among them. And to be thankful for that. Part of what I want you to hear is that God has given each of you who claim Jesus as Lord, he has given you his spirit.

[26:43] And his spirit has gifted you for service in his church and in this world. world. And to not be like the rock and roll band competing with one another, but to see what's my part to play and how do I value all the other gifts that all these other people have.

[27:07] Because otherwise we end up dividing ourselves, don't we? the differences become divisions. So, the first thing I want you to hear this morning is that God has gifted you by his spirit in various ways.

[27:23] second thing, he's gifted you by his one spirit. You know, it's interesting. Did the Corinthians really believe there were different spirits empowering different people in the church?

[27:37] Or that some had the spirit of God and others didn't? Probably not quite that extreme. My guess is that some of them thought they had more of the spirit of God than others and that they were using their spiritual gifts to puff up their ego and their place in the body?

[27:58] And Paul says, don't you know, you all have one and the same spirit. Do you see how often he says it? The same spirit, the same Lord, the same God, in verses 4 through 6.

[28:11] Then in verses 7 and 8, or verses 8 and following, through the spirit, the same spirit, and the same spirit again, and the one spirit, and the same spirit again, every time he mentions it, he says, you all have the same one.

[28:30] Brings to mind what Paul said in Ephesians chapter 4 as he encouraged unity in the body. He said, there is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is over all and through all and in all.

[28:49] The unity of God's people is based on the unity of worshiping one God.

[29:00] And the diversity of God's people in its beautifulness, in its beauty, in its majesty, is to display the diversity of the triune God.

[29:12] This is what we see in 4 through 6, right? God is gifting them, but then he makes an explicit appeal to see. Do you see? It's the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit who are all working in this gifting and in this manifestation.

[29:27] It is one God who's at work in you in this variety of ways. So do you see how the unity and diversity of the way that we hold our spiritual gifts is an incredible gift and incredible stewardship because it is how the church displays the very nature of God.

[29:53] It is parallel to what Paul said at the beginning of chapter 11 about how gender is a way to display the diversity and the beauty of God.

[30:05] And yet it's the same reason why in the second half of chapter 11 Paul rails against them for their divisions according to socioeconomic lines.

[30:16] This unity and diversity is a part of the high calling of the church to display the character of God in the world. And friends, we just need to see it for what it is.

[30:32] We don't need to make this up. We don't need to create unity out of something else. The beauty of it is that God has said the unity exists.

[30:43] The unity is there because God is one and because God has now gifted you as his people. We don't have to make up the unity.

[30:55] We simply have to acknowledge it and live in light of it. Friends, when we do this, it makes all the difference.

[31:08] when we don't do this, when we fight and backbite, when we compete and compare, when we divide and disparage one another, we look a whole lot like any other human organization in the world.

[31:23] And there's no difference. But when we do this, when we live out this unity and diversity, when we do it well, then God is in our midst.

[31:42] And God is at work. And not only will we see it and be encouraged, but the world will see it. And we'll be drawn to ask why. How could this be?

[31:55] And that's why spiritual gifting isn't this extra room on the side, but it's woven into the warp and woof of how we're supposed to live. Because as we hold it properly, we display the nature of God.

[32:16] Third thing is that not only do we do it, not only are there diverse gifts, a variety of gifts, not only is there one spirit, but that there's a purpose for this.

[32:26] We do this for the common good. God, in his great wisdom and in his great power and his gracious work in our lives, has given us gifts, but he's not given them gifts to us for our sake.

[32:44] We are not the terminal end point of the gifting so that we can think highly of ourselves about what our wonderful gifts are, or so that we can think, well, now I know what my gift is, so my job is simply to exercise my gift without any concern for the people of God.

[33:01] instead it is this. Look with me in verse seven, you'll see it again. Each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.

[33:12] And the common good is the goal that God has given for all of these things. The spirit is at work in us, not for our sake, but for others' sake.

[33:23] We will see this as we go through the rest of chapter 12 and chapter 13 and chapter 14. It is the subtext of it over and over and again. How is it, brothers and sisters, that you are loving others by your gifting and by your service?

[33:43] This is the goal. So how do we do this practically? How do we live this out? How do we respond to this idea of try to give in a few minutes, just a few minutes, a few practical ideas?

[33:57] First, how do we discern our spiritual gifts? I hate to say it, I don't think the inventories are that helpful. You can go online and take a test. I think they tend to be self-determining.

[34:09] You tend to end up having the gift that you think you have or the one that you want to have. You can still look at them, they're still helpful for you to think through them. But you know the best way to discern what your spiritual gift is?

[34:21] Go serve. Go serve others. Be obedient to the opportunities that God gives you to love one another. Don't wonder if I don't think I can do that, I don't have the ability to do it.

[34:34] Try it anyways. Often, the Spirit of God seems to work through people who don't think that they can do it. Like Moses, I'm not very eloquent. Well, I'm going to send you to be my spokesman to the people of Egypt.

[34:47] That's often what God does. So go serve. Go find a place. Get over yourself. If you feel like you have to perform perfectly or be completely competent something before you try it.

[35:02] Because when you do that, you don't leave room for the Spirit to actually enable you and to see God work. Recognize that as you keep serving, and as you keep asking your brothers and sisters, where do you see God using me?

[35:21] That's the best way that you will know how you are gifted. If you're wondering that, ask the people who know you best. Ask your small group.

[35:33] Ask your roommates. Ask your husband or wife. Come talk to the elders. We probably have less view than many others, but we'll try. We'll try to help you think through it, if that would be helpful.

[35:46] Trust and believe that God will use you, and that he has gifted you, and then go serve. Secondly, what about our attitudes and spiritual gifts?

[35:59] Paul's rebuking the Corinthians for what we see in chapter four, verse seven. He says, what do you have that you did not receive, and if you then received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

[36:11] So easily, we think of spiritual gifts as something that becomes a badge of honor for us. And instead, what we want to do is to see them as gracious gifts from God.

[36:26] One of the ways that this plays itself out, and this is one of the fun things, and one of the challenging things about the co-pastorate model that we live in here, is that we have three of us who are differently gifted, and there are times when we don't always see eye to eye, and there are times when we think, what in the world are you thinking?

[36:49] And there are times when we have to work, and it is in those moments when, by God's grace, I respond well, that I am able to say, what is the gift that that person is bringing to this conversation right now?

[37:05] It's actually been really helpful for me, because in that conflict, instead of saying, I just want to be right, and I just want to win, I start thinking, how is it that this person is contributing something different to the conversation?

[37:18] conversation, and how can I value that? Oh, we still disagree, but we get along, because of that, I think. That kind of humility, trying to figure out how to honor one another, is seeing that the people who maybe most rub you the wrong way around here are the people who have the very gift that you need exercised in your life by someone else.

[37:50] Third thing, we've talked about this a little bit, how does the, how does spiritual gifting fit into our greater calling of the Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations? What does it look like?

[38:01] Let me, let me run it through this grid for you. If the Great Commission is about two things, evangelism, that is sharing the good news of what God has done with people outside the church, and discipleship, developing people in Christ likeness and growth and maturity inside the church, recognize this, if you have the gift of service, your evangelism, your outreach to others is going to look different than someone who has the gift of teaching.

[38:30] But you both can do it. You both can reach out to your neighbor in love. One might start a Bible study, one might mow their neighbor's lawn, but the end goal is still to say, do you know what God has done for you in Jesus?

[38:45] Doing this is not, I know there's a gift of evangelism, and those are wonderful people, we love to see them, and it's someone who God specially uses people to explain and to make Christ known to other people.

[38:58] We praise God for them, but that doesn't let the rest of us off the hook. But we need to make sure we don't think, well it has to look like that for me to be doing it. We need to say, how is it that in the gifting that I have, in the way that God has made me, that I can share this precious message with others?

[39:16] And similarly, with discipleship. What is it going to look like if you have the gift of administration, and you're discipling someone? How different is that going to be from someone who has the gift of mercy?

[39:30] Well, probably wildly different, right? But both of them are going to have great input into the lives of their fellow brothers and sisters. So recognize that spiritual gifts are then run through, maybe this is a way to say it, they are the lenses through which the fundamental and core callings on our lives are lived out as believers.

[40:00] believers. So for us to take hold of that and to think about how does that work? Well, because it's graduation weekend, I want to recognize some of you are moving on.

[40:17] What I want you to hear is this. Know that the Spirit has gifted you, and as you go, go find the place that God wants to use you and the gifts that He has given you for the building up of His kingdom and for the building up of His church.

[40:35] Wherever you go, find a church and serve in it. Bless them by your gifting. Recognize that you need them. Recognize that in the diversity of gifts and in the diversity of the church world, and recognize even that, like, I think denominations sometimes are gathered around certain spiritual gifts.

[40:56] You may go to a church that's going to feel really different than Trinity, but that feel may or may not be an important thing. You may go to a church where you're going to learn all sorts of very different things, but if they uphold the Word of God, if they preach the true gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, if they recognize their call to be a part of the Great Commission, think about how you can invest and learn in a church that may be very different from this.

[41:28] And see how you can bless it and bring what you may have learned here to that church as well. For all of us, the message is actually similar.

[41:41] For those of us who aren't going along, for those of us who are staying here, know that God has gifted you to bless this church, Trinity Baptist Church, to bless this city, New Haven.

[41:58] And take up this call. Take up this call to not be the rock band who competes, but let us be instead the symphony where the woodwinds and the brass and the strings and the percussion all take their role.

[42:19] And as the great conductor plays the music of the gospel among us, may there be this great display of the diversity of our instruments and the unity of our music for the glory of God.

[42:37] Let us do that. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your spirits and we pray that we would today, Lord, be both humbled and encouraged.

[42:56] Humble, Lord, because these giftings come from you and our lives are meant to be about you. And by extension about others, that we would worship you and love others for your namesake in our gifting.

[43:15] Lord, encourage us that you want to use us in those ways. And Lord, we pray that in the diversity and unity of our body, that we would display you for your glory.

[43:30] We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.