1 Corinthians 12:1-12

 

I.        What is the first thing you do with a Gift? [pause]

A.       One of the best Christmas stories I have read is  “The Christmas Box,” written by Richard Paul Evans. A true story he wrote for his children.

1.    Rick and Keri Evans and their 4 year-old daughter Jenna answered a want ad by a lonely widow, Mary Parkin. In exchange for taking care of her and her very large estate, they are given the full use of this lovely mansion. This character Mary Anne Parkin reminds me so much of Rebecca Stowers, her faith and her lovely home. When Rick goes through things in the attic one day, he finds an antique Christmas box, a box designed to hold important Christmas items the owner wishes to save. He notices some letters inside the box but he does not read them until the end of the story.

2.     During the Christmas season this elderly woman Mary Anne Parkin challenges Rick to tell her some of his ideas about Christmas. She senses that something missing in his life and in his marriage. Mary asks him if he knows what the first gift of Christmas was.

3.     It does not take very long before the four people in the large mansion become very close. Mary discovers she is dying from an inoperable brain tumor..

a.       She gives this family her Christmas box. From reading the letters inside the box Rick and Keri learn what the first gift of Christmas was. [PAUSE]

 

B.        The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 wants to know what do we do with the gift we have been given?

1.       It is a more basic question, a foundational question of life.

a.       The individual gifts of the Spirit are secondary

b.       Often all that we concentrate on is the question: what do we do with our individual spiritual gifts?

2.       But first we have to understand the nature of the gift God has given us, why the gift is given, and how are we to use it?

3.       We have been given two important gifts. Abd each has been specifically identified as a gift in the New Testament.

a.       You and I have been given the gift of Jesus Christ.

b.       And we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

 

II.       God is thereby identified as a giving god.

A.       God’s own nature is One who gives, and we who are made in God’s own image must be giving people ourselves.

1.       In the story one of the things missing from the father’s life is that he was not a giving person. He was a “receiving” person, all wrapped up in getting his new business in town up and running.

2.       I told you once that I found two giving words in the pages of the Bible, and these two giving words are inseparable; each has their meaning intrinsically tied up in the other word.

a.       These two words are “forgiveness” and “thanksgiving.”

 

B.       There are many things God gives us.

1.       A name, which describes who I am created to be, how I am to relate to others and my God.

2.       God gives you and me love.

 

2. 

a.       There is a special Hebrew word that describes the love which only God gives: KHESED, “lovingkindness” or “steadfast love.”

3.       God also gives us grace.

4.       All these gifts are undeserved, freely given from God’s nature, and God’s gift-giving always gives God joy and happiness.

a.       The name “Dorothy” comes from a Greek word for gift; it means “God’s gift”  [“dora” for gift and “Theo” for God]

b.       A second word for gift in the New Testament, I was surprised to learn just this past Thursday,  is “charisma.”

 

C.       God’s two greatest gifts are Jesus Christ and the gift of the Spirit.

1.       Like the two giving words, these two gifts are inseparable.

2.       In the Trinity we affirm that they are of the same person as well.

                                                3.       Isaiah’s prophecy identifies the Messiah as a gift “unto us a child is given.”  a.     And Luke 2 repeats the gift theme in the angels’ announcement to the shepherds.

 

III.      Back to Paul...

                   A.         At the start of every letter, Paul praises God’s giving.

                                                1.         In 1 Corinthians 1:3, “I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus.”

                                                2.         And in chapter 3, where the church members are already arguing jealously over their personal spirituality, Paul tells the members,

                                                          a.       “I fed you...I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

                                                          b.       “Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything,” it all comes from God alone “who gives the growth.”

                                                          b.       Paul is thus able to lay the foundation of our spirituality only out of the gift of God’s grace.

                                      3.       This understanding is foundational for God’s  singular gift of the Spirit.

                                      4.       Writes Richard B Hays in the “Interpretation Commentary” for 1 Corinthians, “There is no ground for boasting about being spiritual...but of the sheer grace of God” alone.  Dr. Hays is the professor of New Testament at Duke University Divinity School

         

                   B.       How is that gift of the “charisma,” the Spirit received

                                      1.       Through our baptism in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.       

                                      2.       It is always about God’s gift-giving activity in Christ, and not about how we receive the gift.

                                                          a.       It is not about how you use our particular gifts, but rather about the purpose of the giving the Spirit.

                  

IV.      I think this is a pivotal difference between a gift in the Bible and traditional gifts in our generation.

                   A.       Whenever you receive a present, the first think you think about is what?... how am I going to use this how am I going to enjoy it?

                                      1.       This Christmas Peggy gave me something very expensive and wonderful. The first time I saw it was when we took it out of the box in the new house we moved her into over New Year’s  It is a lovely red leather recliner lined with brass buttons or tacks, with a moving head-rest and a fully extendable foot rest.

      I told my son-in-law Dan, “Don’t put it together; I am going to put it in the back of my pick-up to take back to Russellville.” Peggy said, “No, it

                             (page 2)

 is for the house. You have to use it here. I did not buy it to have you move it all over the countryside and get it torn up.”

                                      2.       God’s gifts are not for our personal private use either.  God gives us a free gift, yes. But the free part of it lies not in its use, but in the freedom to accept or refuse the gift.

                                      3.       Each gift of God–especially the gift of Jesus Christ and his salvation as well as the gift of the Holy Spirit–is for a pre-determined use.

                                      4.       Paul in 1 Corinthians 12, and also in Ephesians 4, says so well what the purpose of God’s gifts are, why God gives them:

a.       In Ephesians 4:  “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain the the unity... and... the fulness of Christ...speaking the truth in love, we are to grow every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint...makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.”   

                                                          b.       The Spirit is the red leather recliner for use in God’s house, for the upbuilding and perfecting of the church, not to put in the back of our truck and take it away.

                                                          c.       My wife gave me that chair because it has a purpose: to build a home together as one in Christ’s perfected love in the Dallas-Ft Worth area, and within Grace Presbytery, where she and I may share in interim ministry in the same congregation!

                                                                             (i)       If you all were a congregation that said, “Amen” to the preacher, this is the place to say it! ...)

                                                                             (ii)      Dana says, in her church, “we call this an ‘anointing moment,’ when we feel that something extra-the anointing of the Holy Spirit.”

                                      5.       Sometimes in Stewardship season I do a children’s sermon that goes something like this: Would some of you take $5 out of your pocket and give the money to me.  I will not tell anyone what I am doing with this money. Then I give each of the children  $5. I tell them that money is theirs to do whatever they want for the church. I would tell you parents not to suggest any ideas unless your children ask you. Then the children have one or two  weeks to use their $5 and report back. 

                                                          a.       I recently read a story similar to this one in our Presbyterian “Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study.” But there adults were challenged to take $100 of their own money and invest it, as in the parable of the talents, to make the money multiply and use it to build God’s kingdom among the poor in their community.

                                                          b.       But what if in the parable of the talents, those people had pooled their talents and worked together? What if our children on their own initiative, or those adults had done the same?  What greater gift they might have given the church!

                                                          c.       This is what the gift/gifts of the Holy Spirit is all about.

 

                   B.         Chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians establishes Paul’s theological criteria “for evaluating spiritual gifts in the church.” Dr. Hays lists four criteria:      

                                      1.       First, the Holy Spirit empowers all confessions of Jesus Christ as Lord.

                                      2.       #2: The various manifestations of the Spirit are from a common source for a common aim.

                                      3.       #3: The analogy of the parts of the body emphasize at the same time the rich diversity of the gifts of the Spirit and their interdependence.

                                            a.       As we use the variety of gifts, one body  comes into being.

                                            b.       In the diversity, these gifts are distributed in several ways:

                                                            (i)       as a variety of services (the diakonia, or deacons)

                                                            (ii)      as a variety of offices

                                                            (iii)     as a variety of activities (called “fruits” of the Spirit)

                                                          c.       These three (services, offices, activities) describe how God works in the congregation.

                                                          d.       Some gifts are simple, others are miraculous.

                                                          e.       None of our lists of gifts may ever be exhaustive.

                                      4.       Fourth: For Paul, the Gentile Corinthian Church through the Spirit “have now been grafted into Israel. 

                                                          a.       They can rightly claim ancestry from the Israel of the Old Testament stories; God’s people of promise.

                                                          b.       This is an important part of his ecclesiology. 

                                                          c.       In the Scots Confession of 1560, John Knox and his fellow pastors have a unique idea of the church, or what they call, “the kirk.”

                                                                             (i)       For those Scotsmen, the Kirk of Jesus Christ began in the Old Testament; it is the Kirk universal, which has two parts: “the chosen of all ages,” and the “particular kirk,” or individual churches in different times and places.  

 

                   C.       In the story of “The Christmas Box,” the first gift of Christmas according to the elderly widow Mary was God’s gift of love for all of God’s children.The letters in the Christmas box were her love letters to her little daughter who had died and how through this beloved child’s death Mary Anne had herself learned the meaning of God’s first gift.      (page 4)