Dr. Ron Sumners
March 7, 2010
After World War II ended, a group of German students volunteered to help rebuild an English Cathedral in London. It had been severely damaged by German bombing.
They did well with most of the Cathedral, except one statue that had been shattered into many pieces… a marble statue of Jesus Christ. It once stood, with Christ standing with outstretched arms. The inscription under it read, “Come unto Me.” They were able to find and reconstruct the entire statue, except for the hands, which had been completely demolished.
And so, when finished, they had a statue of Jesus with outstretched arms and no hands! They couldn’t decide what to do… make new hands? Leave it as it was? They decided to leave it as it was. You can go there today and see that marble statue of Jesus standing with no hands, but those young men did change the inscription. It now says, “He has no hands but ours!”
That is the truth that is taught in Romans 12. When Jesus was here on earth, He ministered in a physical body, but since He has returned to heaven, He has ministered through a spiritual body…the body of Christ…the Church!
In verse 5, we are called “members” of the same body. Each of us has gifts from the Lord that enable us to function in the church even as the different parts of our physical body function together. So, the message from that statue in England speaks to us loudly: Christ has no feet but our feet; no hands but our hands; no audible voice but our voice!
The first obligation to the Lord is not the use of our gifts for His kingdom. The first obligation to the Lord is complete surrender of our heart, our will, and our life. That is why verses 1-2 come before verse 3. Those first two verses are about complete surrender of ourselves to the Lord. God cannot use us as individuals or as The Body until we completely surrender to Him. After that we can surrender our gifts to Him and His service. He will not have what you can do until He has you! This means several things for us.
Total dedication
Verse one is language of the Old Testament. It talks about a sacrifice. We are to be living sacrifices to the Lord. The priest would lay the sacrifice on the altar; whether it be an animal or a drink offering. That is what we are required to do; to lay our lives on the altar. We are to live a sacrificial life in service of God. It is all offered to Him!
Radical separation
Verse two tells us not to squeeze into the world’s mold. That does not mean that we are world denying or that we have to be a religious weirdo to be acceptable to God; it simply means that we are not to conform to the standards of the world. We are to have a different mind and a different allegiance than the world. We are a “living sacrifice” to God!
That is why the media, that knows little and understands less about evangelical Christianity; refer to us as “right wing radicals.” They do not mean it as a compliment, but we should take it that way. In a perverse way that title acknowledges that Christians have a different loyalty and standard than the world, and the world cannot understand it!
Inner transformation
Verse two tells us that salvation begins as an inside job. We will never change outwardly until we change inwardly. Your behavior will not be altered until your thinking has been altered. Your appearance and countenance will not attract people to the kingdom until there is a change beneath the surface. I hope that is what we focus on here at Meadow Brook Baptist Church. We encourage you to go and do, but you can’t do that until the inner man is changed!
It will do us no good at all to deal with Spiritual Gifts until we have grappled with this issue of complete surrender! Surrender and sacrifice always go together. The two cannot be separated.
It’s like “love and marriage,” you can’t have one without the other. If you have surrendered to God, you will be busy serving Him and using your gifts for Him. You cannot be a “living sacrifice” and be lazy and indifferent toward the ministry of the church. Talk is cheap. We can talk about total dedication, radical separation, inner transformation, but the proof is in the service; the ministry that comes from your life. If it doesn’t lead you to service and ministry; it is not real!
We all have spiritual gifts, given to us at salvation. I have heard people say that they have no spiritual gifts. I have discovered that many of those people are simply making an excuse for doing nothing in God’s service! Or they have never discovered those gifts because they have never completely surrendered to God.
After the initial talk of surrender, verse six talks about spiritual gifts. This passage completely destroys the notion that a Christian can be committed to Christ but not active in the work and ministry of the Church.
We all have different gifts, but our obligation is the same; to be faithful to use our gifts for the glory of the One who gave them to us. If you are one of those people who claim that you have no gift, listen to verse three: “…God has allotted to each member…” Verse four tells us that these gifts are given to “all members.” Verse five says it is, “Every one.” The Lord makes it abundantly clear that we are under the same obligation. No one is excluded from serving God with their spiritual gifts.
We cannot forget the importance of humility. Paul tells us that we are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. There can be a temptation to take pride in our gifts and to compare our gifts to others. We must resist that and humbly seek to use our gifts. Charles Billingsly and Ed Cleveland are talented and gifted singers. I would love to sing as they do, but that is not my talent or gift. They would be wrong if they somehow thought that their gift was more important than someone else’s simply because it is so beautiful and noticeable. I can’t speak for Charles Billingsly, but I know Ed Cleveland sees his talent and giftedness as his way of serving the Lord!
Magnifying our gift
There may be people who feel that their gift is the most important. A pastor may feel that his spiritual gifts that equip him to do the ministry are more important than the gifts of those who serve as laymen in the Body of Christ. If so, that pastor has lost his ability to successfully lead. It takes his gifts and the various gifts of each member of the body for the work to be done. If you get to the place that you think you can do without the other parts of the body, you will accomplish little for the kingdom. Each talent; each gift is important to God’s Church!
In 1 Corinthians 12:20-26, we have a parallel passage that speaks of the church as the Body of Christ working together just as a human body. Every part has its function and is important; they all work together so that the body can function as God designed it to function.
Have you thanked God today for your pancreas? Do you understand how important it is? Mine no longer functions as it once did. So, you can enjoy a delicious brownie all sweet and gooey and chocolaty. I cannot. Actually, I can if I want to be extremely foolish! When you eat that brownie, the pancreas produces and releases insulin which breaks down the sugar so it can be used by the body. My pancreas just sits there and says, “Do the best you can, big boy. I’m on strike!” The best I can do is an insulin pump. I have to use it, but it is not what God designed. In the church, we are forced to do some things differently than as God prescribes because many of you are not doing what God gifted you to do. You may be the church’s pancreas!
You should not magnify or minimize your gifts. The person who constantly belittles themselves is effectively saying that God does not know what He is doing! The person who belittles themselves, which is false humility, is guilty of pride. Some people do this because they are fishing for compliments.
A pastor, who was a very prideful man, asked his wife after a very successful sermon, “Honey, how many great preachers are there in the world?” She replied, “One less that you think!”
However, there are some people who simply don’t believe that God can use them. If you are that person, look at me! You are wrong. You would not be a part of the Kingdom of God if He could not use you! You may not be the beautiful voice or the articulate speaker or the gifted administrator.
You may be the big toe of the body. But without you the whole equilibrium of the body is thrown off and it cannot move! You may find that your gift is behind the scenes. But don’t minimize it; God gave it to you!
In my seminary church, I was the staff. Whatever needed to be done was “my” job. From preaching to cleaning the toilet was my job. I was often tempted to have a bad attitude about it. But then I would realize that God was preparing me for a lifetime of doing what needed to be done; using my gifts and sometimes just toiling in God’s service because the one with the gift was not doing their job. That is still the case almost forty years later!
Humility will also help us from misplacing our gifts.
There are some people who insist on being used in an area where they have no gifts. They want to sing or teach or serve as chair of an important administrative committee, but they do not have the talent or the spiritual gifts to do so.
Some people ask the choir director if they can sing a solo. It is obvious that they do not have the talent or gift to do it. They might even get angry enough to leave the church when they are refused. It is interesting that I have never had someone leave the church because they were not asked to drive the van, or go on visitation, or attend a work day. Or work in the nursery!
True humility will keep us from magnifying or minimizing our gifts.
In verse 3 of Romans 12, the word “soberly” means “sane” as opposed to “insane.” A man visited an insane asylum. The guard said, “I know you come here often to visit the residents. Aren’t you afraid that they might come together and decide to harm you?” The man replied, “No, because insane people never come together!”
If we are sane we will completely surrender our lives to God and then we will pour out our self as sacrifice to God. Unfortunately, many churches act insane; they never come together.
God has given this church so many precious gifts. Two of the most precious are Unity and Diversity! We need to focus on who we are, why God put us here, and what gifts He’s given to us, then we need to get together, put it all together, diverse body parts… all put together into the Body of Christ. He has no hands but our hands!
We’ll talk next week about some specific Spiritual gifts. There is no use to do that until we consider the issue of complete surrender!
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