PvBibleAlive.com Parkview Baptist Church 3430 South Meridian Wichita, Kansas 67217
Church survey sermon part 3
Scripture Reading
Ephesians 4: 11 And He Himself gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the [d]saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the [e]full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature [f]which belongs to the fullness of Christ,
Well, this morning we continue with what I think is an exciting study around the spiritual gifts. And it is exciting to me because we are going to begin describing and defining the gifts that are listed in Scripture. And after we have defined them, I am going to give you a spiritual gift survey that can help further define your giftedness.
And, as I’ve said before, we are not doing this so you can have a permanent sticker added to your church membership file. “Billy Bob has the gift of helps.” But we are doing it to help you with setting a direction for your spiritual journey. If the results of the survey come out clearly in one direction or another, then we would encourage you to look for ways to do what you are gifted to do.
If the survey results are not clear, if your giftedness seems to be all around the board somewhere, then we would advise that you seek some other means of determining your spiritual gifts. What other means are there? Ask other people what they think your spiritual gifts are. Ask yourself, what are some things I have done that God has blessed? People have been encouraged when I did thus and such. Learn by doing. Start doing some things that relate to the spiritual gifts. Just join in on some sort of ministry either inside or outside of the church. If you find your niche, wonderful. If you discover that it’s not a good fit, move on and try something else.
So today, we want to start looking at the gifts. And I wanted to give you some sort of resource as we study these gifts. Because I believe that you are going to be the key to your discovering your spiritual gifts. I can’t stand here and point to each of you and say, you have this gift, you have that gift. Some of you who I know pretty well, I could give some insight to. But ultimately, it is not until you decide that you want to start doing what God has gifted you to do, and it is not until you start searching for what that is, that you will have success in discovering your spiritual gifts. So I have given you a sheet that gives a short description of each gift. I gave you that because if you are going to discover your gift, you need to understand what they are.
Now, we are going to go through these gifts one at a time. But you may have noticed that there is some overlap between the lists. So, what we are doing is combining the lists to look at these categories of giftedness. And we are going to divide them into categories; sign gifts, speaking gifts, and service gifts.
Read through highlights
Offices of the Early Church These are individuals who lead by the application of the word. Their title is not the description of a gift. They may exercise their office using several gifts. Apostles 1 Corinthians 12 Ephesians 4 An apostle is one who is “sent.” The original Apostles were the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Prophets 1 Corinthians 12 Ephesians 4 To prophecy is to speak the Word of God. It is setting before people the Word and wisdom of God persuasively. Evangelists Ephesians 4 Communicating the gospel to lost people with power and persuasiveness. Pastor-teacher 1 Corinthians 12 Ephesians 4 Communicating the gospel to saved people in their life-long spiritual journey. Sign gifts Healing 1 Corinthians 12 Instantaneous curing of sickness Miracles 1 Corinthians 12 Manifestations of supernatural power Tongues 1 Corinthians 12 Speaking in a known language that you did not know previously Translation of tongues Translating tongues Speaking gifts 1 Peter 4 The word of wisdom 1 Corinthians 12 Locating formerly unknown principles as well as combining known principles of God's Word and communicating them to fresh situations. The word of knowledge 1 Corinthians 12 Arranging the facts of Scripture, categorizing these into principles, and communicating them to repeated or familiar situations. Teaching Romans 12 laying down in a systematic order the complete truth of a doctrine and applying it incisively to life. Exhortation Romans 12 Encouraging people in their spiritual journeys Prophecy 1 Corinthians 12 Romans 12 To prophecy is to speak the Word of God. It is setting before people the Word and wisdom of God persuasively. Service gifts 1 Peter 4 Leadership Romans 12 (executive ability): Standing before people and inspiring followers by leading them aggressively but with care. Administration 1 Corinthians 12 (legislative ability): Standing behind people to collect data, set policy, and develop plans which will guide a course of action with wisdom. Faith 1 Corinthians 12 Seeing through any problem to the Ultimate Resource. Distinguishing of spirits 1 Corinthians 12 Detecting a genuine or spurious motive by distinguishing the spirit-source behind any person's speech or act. Service (Helps) Romans 12 1 Corinthians 12 Seeing tasks and doing them for or with someone in order to lift external burdens. Giving Romans 12 Giving most liberally and beyond all human expectation. Mercy Romans 12 Being sensitive or empathetic to people who are in affliction or misery and lifting internal burdens with cheerfulness.
Now, from the paper I’ve given you, you can kind of see where we are going. The paper starts with the Ephesians 4 passage of Scripture.
Ephesians 4: 11 And He Himself gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the [d]saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ,
It then moves to the sign gifts that we will study briefly. During that time, I will give you a Scriptural argument for why I believe the sign gifts are no longer active today. Then it proceeds to the remaining gifts, the speaking and service gifts. That where we want to spend more time. So, let’s start with the offices of the early church.
So, these were those first offices of the church; Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastor/ teachers.
Let’s look first at Apostles. When we think about the word apostle, we usually think of the 12 capital “A” apostles. These are apostles described in Scripture as “the” apostles. They are the original 12, and we can add Paul who was also called by the Lord to be an apostle. The word apostle means, messenger, or one who is sent. And they are the apostles, capital “A” in the sense that they were sent with a special message, to the world, to be the witnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. They saw it. So, they can give personal testimony to those events. So, in that sense, there are only 13 apostles, capital “A.” There will be no more capital “A” apostles because there are no more living eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
Now there were other “sent ones” or messengers mentioned in Scripture. You could call them apostles with a little “a.”
Philippians 2:25 But I regarded it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, who is also your [a]messenger (apostle) and minister to my need;
Now this is an important distinction for us to make, because strictly speaking, outside of the verse I just read in Philippians 2:25, and a couple of other verses, the word apostle and apostles refers specifically in the New Testament to the original 12 apostles, plus Paul. I think the title itself has been retired, and I think some today who call themselves apostles are just trying to elevate themselves in the minds of their audiences.
So, is there a gift of apostleship today. The basic meaning of the word apostle is one who is sent with a message. So, in the broad sense, we are all apostles because Jesus told us to “Go into the world” carrying the gospel. But I think the closest thing that we have today to an apostle is a missionary. Someone who feels a special calling to take the gospel into the world. If someone were to have the gift of apostleship today, it would be someone who feels a specific compulsion to take the gospel out, as Paul said, to places where it has not been heard. I do believe that God lays that burden on some individuals hearts.
Now, let’s talk about prophets. You could say that there are also two different classes of prophets. When we think of prophecy, we often think of people who have foreknowledge of future events. They tell about future events. But the word prophecy actually just means, a message from God to humans. So, a prophet is someone who delivers that message. So, in that sense, anyone who preaches or teaches the Word of God is delivering prophecy. But, prophet, with a capital “P” would be those who were inspired by God in an extra special way, and their words became a part of the canon of Scripture.
And in the New Testament era, there were men who prophesied in a way that we are not acquainted with. There were individuals who received from God some special revelation that applied to immediate circumstances. Agabus, in the book of Acts, for example, had God reveal to him that there would be a great famine over the Roman world. And the church responded to his prophecy by sending relief to Jerusalem. He was also given a revelation about Paul on his voyage back to Jerusalem, that he would be bound and delivered to the Gentiles for trial.
But, in the same way that capital “A” apostles ceased after the first century, I believe capital “P” prophets did the same. Does that mean that there are no more prophets today? Well let’s go back to our definition of the gift of prophecy.
To prophecy is to speak the Word of God. It is setting before people the Word and wisdom of God persuasively.
By that definition, is anybody prophesying today? I hope you say yes, because I feel like that is what I am doing in the pulpit today. To prophecy is to preach the Word of God. The difference between what I do, and what Paul, or Agabus, or Peter did is that they spoke words that became a part of the canon of Scripture. The words in their revelations that are now in our Bible, came directly from God, and are now the Holy Word of God. I, on the other hand, just take their words, and repeat them, explain them, and exhort you to follow them. My words are not Scripture.
So, are there prophets today? There are no more individuals given a message from God that will become a part of our Bible. And I believe those who claim to be given direct incite from God predicting future events are playing a dangerous game. Because if you look at the Old Testament standard for a prophet, they had to be right 100% of the time, and they were to be put to death if they weren’t.
To summarize these first two items let’s read
Ephesians 2:19-21 So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the [a]saints, and are of God’s household, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, 21 in whom the whole building, being joined together, is growing into a holy [b]sanctuary in the Lord,
We are going to look in more detail at the gift of prophecy later in these messages, because it is listed as one of the speaking gifts.
Let’s talk about evangelists. Evangelists are proclaimers of the gospel to the unsaved. They are principally concerned with getting the gospel message out to the lost. Somebody defined an evangelist as someone who presents Christ where Christ is not known. Let me read this quote from John MacArthur to clarify further.
“an evangelist is not a fancy guy who blows into town, fires away five times, and blows back out of town, not biblically. A biblical evangelist was somebody who went to a place where Christ wasn’t named, won people to Christ, stayed there till he had built a church, ordained elders in that city who could take over their leadership of that church, then he moved to a new area. Listen, God never put a premium on biblical ignorance. He never puts a premium on doctrinal ignorance. It never says in the Bible that an evangelist is a guy who knows twelve great sermons on how to get saved and that’s the end of it.”
“Evangelism is the ability to go in establish and build a church. Or in where a church already exists, an evangelist is one who wins people to Jesus Christ, integrates them into the church, and is a part of the maturing process.”
So, the original evangelists, were people gifted in the area of taking the gospel to an unchurched area, and building an assembly, training leaders, so that he could go on from there to another unchurched area. Paul had the gift of evangelism. And he spent sometimes years at a church before he moved to a new place. And even then, he returned to those original churches when needed to set things straight.
There are only 3 passages of Scripture in the New Testament that use the word evangelist. One of them is in the list we’re looking at in Ephesians 4. Another is found in 2 Timothy 4:5
But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
In that passage Paul seems to be telling Timothy not to neglect his spiritual gift of evangelism; taking the gospel to the lost. He was left as an elder in the church in Ephesus, which would have left him with a full list of responsibilities regarding the nurture of that church. But Paul didn’t want him to forget his gift, taking the gospel to the lost.
The other passage that has the word evangelism in it illustrates what evangelism is well. In Acts 21 Phillip is called an evangelist. Philipp was one of those chosen in the Jerusalem church to make sure that the widows were being cared for. But we see from his life that he had the gift and the inner compulsion to take the gospel to people who hadn’t heard it. First, we find him going into Samaria, and he is the first to cross that ethnic and religious barrier. Then we find him being sent by God to an Ethiopian man in a chariot, leaving Jerusalem, who happened to be reading a Old Testament Scripture passage about Jesus. Philip strikes up a conversation with the man, the man is saved and baptized. He ends up in Ceasarea with the title “Philip the Evangelist” no doubt given to him because of his incessant work to get the gospel out to the unsaved.
Maybe evangelism is part of the mixture of your gifts. How will you know? If you have a passion to tell people about Jesus who don’t know him. We had a guy who was a teacher at Marshall Middle School for a couple of years. He was young, late twenties, early thirties. He was a believer. How do I know that? He let me know very early on in getting to know him. He wasn’t obnoxious about it. But he started doing things at school that you are not supposed to do. The principal was asking teachers to start after school clubs for students. He started a prayer club. He was meeting regularly with another teacher for prayer before or after school. I was invited and went a few times. And I could tell that he hoped this prayer group could grow even bigger and make a significant impact on the school. So he was going around finding out whether other teachers and staff were Christians, so they could be invited.
He was teaching Language Arts and got permission from the principal to use the Bible as one of the students’ reading assignments. I was flabbergasted. He was bold, he was undaunted, he loved talking to kids and staff about his faith. Now, the whole time he was there, he was in training to take his family to a mission setting in India. He had a missionary spirit.
What about pastor-teachers?
Let me read this quote to start.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/ephesians_411
“evangelists and pastor-teachers--are concerned with applying the Word to individual lives. The evangelist deals with the beginning of Christian life while the teaching pastor is involved with the development and growth of that life. Evangelists are much like obstetricians, helping to bring new Christians into the world. Teaching pastors are like pediatricians, seeing that these Christians have a healthy spiritual "diet," that their "diseases" receive proper attention, and that they get plenty of spiritual "fresh air" and "exercise." To return to the word picture of the church as a building, the evangelist is the quarryman who digs out the rock, cuts it loose from quarry stone, and hews it to a rough approximation of its ultimate size. The pastor-teacher is the stone mason who shapes the rock, fitting it into the building in its proper place according to the blueprint of the great architect.”
You might notice that the passage says pastors and teachers. So, these can either be taken as two different gifts, or as two elements of the same gift. I take the second view. Since the word for pastor is “shepherd” I compare the role to that of a shepherd and his sheep. A shepherd has some responsibilities. He has to protect the sheep. He has to discipline the sheep sometimes. He has to show them the right way to go. A pastor does the same. He protects from false teaching, from moral failure. He disciplines by confronting moral or doctrinal error. He shows the way by systematically teaching the Scripture. And you can see in that brief description that it is impossible to separate teaching from shepherding. They are interwoven together. Now if we want to think about them separately. If you want to think about the question, “I don’t feel called to be a pastor, but I do feel called to teach, how are they different?” You can think about it like the pastor being the chief under-shepherd, and all the teachers in the church being under-under-shepherds. It’s a hierarchy. The whole church is our flock, but parts of the flock meet in little rooms throughout this building at different times of the week.
Ultimately, it is my responsibility as the pastor to ensure that these little flocks are being properly fed and nurtured. And each teacher also has a grave responsibility to teach the word, not their own opinions, because Scripture says that we will be held to a higher standard.
So, how do you know if you have the spiritual gift of teaching? Do you enjoy studying the Bible? Are you willing to spend the time to do it right? And do you enjoy it and feel compelled to share what you have learned with others? Is it important to you, when studying the Bible, that you get it right? You are not content with just “getting a lesson together.” You don’t want to say anything that is incorrect? Do you have a heart for the church? You want to see its people mature. You them to be pleasing in God’s sight?
Then maybe you have the gift of teaching.
Well, we are going to stop there today. Next week, we will be looking at the sign gifts, so you don’t want to miss that.
Let’s pray,
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the precious gift of your Holy Spirit that not only is our deposit on heaven, but is the power behind our Spiritual gifts. We thank you for all the people in our church who have the gifts that we’ve mentioned this morning. We thank you for all the teachers, whether they are in a classroom, or maybe teaching their children or grandchildren at home. Help us to be faithful to the Word, and to the sheep in the exercise of this gift.
And Lord we pray that you would send us others. Others who have a passion for evangelism, to take the gospel to the lost, and to inspire us to do the same. We pray all this in Jesus’ name, Amen