Merry Christmas and welcome to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd. It's been said the best picture God ever took is Jesus, and as we celebrate His birth today on Destined for Victory, we want to take an in depth look at that picture and learn how we with God's help can start looking more like it. But before we kick off, I'd like to share just a part of a conversation I had with Pastor Paul about our responsibility to share the hope of this wonderful day with those around us.
Well, I think it's really important that we who are followers of Christ. Allow Ourselves to be bold as we share with the world, Jesus is the reason for the season. I know that many people practice many faiths in our society, and it is not our job to hate others or the faith they practice. It is our job, though, to love the Lord and to realize that He is the reason why we have Christmas. You can't even say the word without Christ.
And so, we need to boldly proclaim this season is not just a quote-unquote holiday season. This is a season where we celebrate who Jesus is, why He came, and what He did for us on the cross and through the resurrection.
So, let this season be a season of proclamation, as the song said, Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills, and everywhere that Jesus Christ is born. Born. And as you walk that out in your life, I think we can be a great testimony and a witness to Jesus Christ throughout the world. Uh When you look at Jesus, you see how God thinks about you. And what did Jesus do?
He healed the sick. He raised the dead. He spoke life to people. He forgave the sins of those sinners who said, I'm tired of living the way I'm living. And he did the most important thing, which is he went to the cross and died for your sins and mine.
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. With those words in Mark 8:34, Jesus invited us to spend time with Him, to observe Him, and if willing, to mimic Him. On today's Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepard, an important reminder about what it means to follow in the steps of Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate today. The message is called Unwrap Your Gifts and Give Them Away. and it starts right now.
We are looking at. The section of this letter where I've entitled Our study guidelines for effective corporate Worship. In the 11th chapter in the previous. Service, we took a look at the 11th chapter and discovered that as Paul continues to answer questions that had been submitted to him. By members of the church at Corinth.
He dealt With a custom, and he dealt with an ordinance. The custom of his day was the custom of head coverings for women as they prayed and prophesied in worship. And he said, it is proper in our churches, it is our custom to have their heads covered when women pray or prophesy in church, and for men to uncover their heads when they pray or prophesy. And we discussed the origins of that custom and discussed the fact that although the custom was not binding upon the church throughout all ages, the principle behind it is worth noting. And we took some time and looked at the first guideline, which is to demonstrate humility and submission to authority when we come together and worship the Lord.
And I talked about the fact that these are days when people are entirely too irreverent. People will just kind of bring their ego and refuse to check it at the door of the house of God. But the fact of the matter is, we need to understand that there are some things that still deserve reverence and respect. And these are days when God's people ought to set the standard and set the pace, because we live in a society where people have very little reverence or regard for anything other than what they want to do. We celebrate independence, and in so doing, we disrespect holy and sacred things.
And so I talked about that, talked about the fact that we've got to learn that all of us live under authority, and we just have to make the decision that we'll do it with regard to holy things. You live under authority every day of your life. You live under authority when you stop at a red light. Nobody told you to do it, but you have better sense than to keep going. And you stop, and because you submit to that.
Traffic standard. You might be fussing while you're sitting there, but you stop and submit. We do it in a courtroom. We do it in various settings. And so we have to learn that when it comes to the things of God, that there is a humility and a submission to authority that we need to come to live by.
And then we saw in the latter part of chapter 11 that Paul talked about the ordinance of communion and their practice of love feasts. In the early days of the church, first century church, they wouldn't just have communion service, but they would have an entire love feast. And communion was at the end of the feast. And Paul said in the latter verses, beginning at verse 17 of 1 Corinthians 11, that you all are not to be praised, but rather rebuked, because when you come together, you are not honoring the Lord's table.
Some folks are eating to the full, and then the poor people are being left hungry and are not being cared for.
So we talked about not only demonstrating submission to authority and humility, but we talked about demonstrating love and compassion toward other people when you come to the house of God. Understand that when God has blessed us, He wants to bless us all together. He doesn't want to bless a few of us who are the lucky ones and other folk are left out. That when you come to the house of God, God cares about everyone. And I ended the message by saying there ought to be one place in society where everybody knows if I can just show up there, somebody's gonna love me.
And that ought to be the house of God. When you come to God's house, you ought to know that here is a place where somebody will smile. They will enjoy the fact that I have come to the house of the Lord. Why? Because this is a place where a God who has given us his very best gift in Jesus Christ has brought us together under the banner of his love.
And he says, Come, no matter who you are, no matter what you've done, no matter how life has beaten you up, when you get to God's house, there you will find grace to help you in your time of need. And I want to remind us that we need to demonstrate love and compassion when we come to the house of God. There shouldn't be mean Christians in God's house. That ought to be a contradiction in terms. But unfortunately, we all know it's not.
Have you ever run into mean Christians? I mean you got some folk who look like they were baptized in lemon juice. Their face looks sour. They look like they have a holy disdain for everything in the world. And that does not reflect the glory and the character of God.
God is love. God sent his son because he loved us. The cornerstone of the gospel is John 3:16. For God so loved the world. Jesus didn't come because he hated us.
He came because he loved us. Verse 17 says, God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world. It said, but that the world through him might be saved.
So when you show up at church, you ought to find love and compassion. for your life. And we need to demonstrate that.
Now, as we get to chapter 12. I want to make a third point that will serve as a guideline for effective corporate worship. And that is this, unwrap your spiritual gifts. And give them away. Unwrap your spiritual gifts and give them away.
Now, Paul is answering their third question in this section, and it has to do. With spiritual gifts.
Someone said, All right, Paul, help us understand what these gifts are about. We see certain people operating in certain ways in the church. We see them speaking certain words and praying certain kinds of prayers, ministering in certain ways, and we don't understand it. Can you make sense of it for us? Paul's answer is here in chapter 12, verse 1.
Now, about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to to be ignorant. And he says, I want to begin to teach you what those gifts are about, how to operate in them, and what the standards and guidelines are that will allow them to operate effectively. And so he tells us, in essence, to unwrap our spiritual gifts and to give them away.
Now, look with me at the first few verses here, and we'll begin to unpack this theme. He says: You know that when you were pagan, somehow or other, you were influenced and led astray by mute idols. What he is saying is when we lived in the world, we followed idols. We all had idols of some sort, things or religions, whatever it is, that we idolized, and they were counterfeit. They were not genuine.
He calls them mute idols, people who were literally involved in idol worship. He wants to remind them those things that you worshiped had no life in them, therefore they could not speak into your life. He says, by contrast, But when we are talking about God, we're talking about one who speaks into our lives. And that's why he gives us verses 3 and the subsequent verses. He says, I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, Jesus be cursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.
He says, you will know that someone is speaking in divine order because they will glorify Jesus Christ. He says, You'll also know when someone is not used of God because they will curse Jesus Christ.
So he is helping us understand, first of all, that the Holy Spirit wants to speak to us and through us. That's the first thing I want you to know as we talk about unwrapping our spiritual gifts. I want you to know that the Holy Spirit plans to speak to you and through you. Because God has things to say about our lives. God wants to speak to you about what's happening in your life.
God doesn't just want to give you a religion to follow blindly, but He has given you His Spirit to lead you daily. Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, and it is initiated by a loving God who came to us because He knew we could never get to Him.
Now don't go away just yet. We'll be right back with more of today's message featuring Pastor Paul Shepard. But if you're running short on time today, if you want to share this message with a friend, be sure to visit our website, pastorpaul.net, where you can listen to any recent message on demand. And when you stop by, you're invited to check out our online store where you'll find books and video messages that feature the teaching and preaching ministry of Pastor Paul Shepard. That's masterpaul.net.
Now, let's get you back to the rest of today's Destined for Victory message. Unwrap your gifts and give them away. See when you come to Christ, this is a living experience. It's not a religion. Christianity, in its essence, is really not religion, because religion is often man's attempt to reach God.
But rather than try to reach a God we can never reach on our own, God came down to us. When you see Jesus come into the world, John chapter 1 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Later in that chapter it says, And the Word became flesh. And dwelt among us. When you look at Jesus, you're looking at God who said, You'll never reach me, so you'll never be saved unless I come down and do a work that you can't do for yourself.
So Jesus shows up on the planet, lives 30-some years among us. Because he wants to show us what God's attitude toward us really is.
Someone has rightly said Jesus is the best picture God ever took. When you look at Jesus, you see how God thinks about you. And what did Jesus do? He healed the sick, he raised the dead, he spoke life to people, he forgave the sins of those sinners who said, I'm tired of living the way I'm living. And he did the most important thing, which is he went to the cross and died for your sins and mine.
Now here's the glory of it. You can get saved by receiving The gift of salvation. I often say getting saved is as easy as A, B, C. A, admit that you are a sinner who needs to be saved. You know why a lot of folk aren't saved?
Because they think they're all right. They think they're alright. Have you ever heard these folks talk about? You know, there's really nothing that much wrong with my life, and I'm really basically a good person. You are so confused.
The Bible says all of us are unrighteous. There is none righteous, no, not one. It doesn't say there is none righteous except you. Bible says there's none righteous, no, not one. Don't tell me how good you live.
The most harm I've done, I've done to myself. I basically treat people right. You are a sinner. Bye. Co-mission mean you have committed acts that have been unrighteous.
You are a sinner by omission, meaning you have failed to do some things God wanted you to do. You are a sinner by the motive of your heart. Which means there's some things you didn't do, but God sees your heart and it's in there. You might not have killed anybody, but if you hate someone, Jesus said you already have murder in your heart.
Some folks just don't commit that because you're scared of jail. Come on. That's a pretty good deterrent, I admit. If there's any good reason to not kill somebody, yes, you don't want anything jail has to offer you. It's not a wonderful place to be.
I visited folk there. Whenever, over the years, as a pastor, I've had to visit jails. I've always checked my ID twice. I want them to be real straight as to who the inmate and who the visitor is. Don't say, no, no, you got to come back to your cell.
No, you got that wrong. I don't have a cell here. I come to minister and then leave.
So if it's in your heart, It's already counted as unrighteousness.
So none of us passed the holiness or righteousness test.
So, if you want to get saved, A, admit that you're a sinner who needs to be saved. Then B, believe that Jesus Christ died so that you can be saved. That's the glory of the gospel message. The gospel message is: I couldn't help myself, so God came down to help me. And then C is to confess.
Jesus Christ as your Savior. That means I agree with God. Yes, Lord, I need your salvation, and I believe that that is the very reason Jesus came into this world. And I confess that he is my Savior and He is my Lord.
Now, if you do that, the Bible says you are saved.
Now, here's the wonderful thing I want you to understand: when you get saved, God sends the Holy Spirit. into your life. Jesus said in John 14, he was about to leave the world and he was talking to his disciples, and he said, I'm going to go away, but I don't want you all to be fearful or worried because I'm going to send you another comforter. I'm going to send you a counselor. I'm going to send you a guide.
Jesus had been walking with them for a couple of years, and when he started talking about going away, they said, What are you talking about going away? You're not leaving us here. But they didn't understand. He said, I have to go away because if I don't go away, I can't send the one to you who will be in each and every one of your lives. He said, I have been with you.
But when I come again, I will come and get in you through the Holy Spirit. When you get saved, Jesus takes up residence in your life by the power of the Holy Spirit. And here's what you need to know. When he comes into your life, he comes in to use you. He comes in to bless you.
He comes in to grow you and mature you. He comes in to give you fruit. He comes in to make you better than you are. He comes in to smooth out the rough places in your life. He comes to get your messed up head straightened out.
Oh, you don't want to believe that you have some messed up thinking. But I wish I had some honest folk who said, Lord knows there's some stuff that needs to get straight in my head, in my heart, in my lifestyle.
So when the Holy Spirit comes in, he's in to stay. He's not thinking about leaving, he doesn't come in for a weekend trip. Because he knows he has work to do on us. And you know the folk he has the most work to do on? Those of you sitting here thinking there's not a whole lot to be done?
He's got a work to do.
So Jesus comes into your life when you get saved by the power of the Holy Spirit. And he says, I've got a lot that I'm going to be doing. And there's some things I'm going to be talking to you about.
So the Holy Spirit Plans to speak to you and then speak through you into the lives of others. If you are a believer, I want you to understand God has things to say. About your life, and he has things to say to other people. He is not a mute savior. He has something to say.
And if we will learn to unwrap spiritual gifts, God will use us. In a special way.
Now, here's what I want you to understand: that when God plans to use you, that is an awesome responsibility because it means that you are going to become a vessel in His hand. And what God wants you to do is to be a vessel that is sanctified. I've talked about that in recent messages, that is set apart for His purpose.
So that God can say through you anything He wants to say, so that God can say to you anything He wants to say. And so God wants to use each of us. And Paul says, I want you to unwrap your spiritual gifts by understanding, first of all, that God plans to speak. He'll speak about your life, and then he'll speak as he purifies you and makes you fit for his use. He will use you in the lives of others.
I grew up in a church that sang a song that said, To be used by God. To sing, to speak, to pray, to be used by God to show someone the way. I long so much to feel the touch of his consuming fire. To be used of God is my desire. I want to let you know that if you'll open yourself up to God, He's got some things He wants to say to you and that He wants to say to you.
Through you. And so God plans to speak. He will speak by his spirit.
Now, a lot of folks get nervous these days when you talk about God speaking to us because they wonder how subjective it's going to be. I want to clear you up. The Holy Spirit will never speak to you or through you anything that is not confirmed by the precepts and principles of Scripture. The Bible is always going to be our final court of arbitration. The Bible is always going to be that standard by which we can affirm, yes, this is a word from God.
If somebody comes speaking to you something that cannot be substantiated in this book, you have every right to ignore it. Because this book is going to testify to the accuracy and the authenticity of anything purported to be a word from God. But I want you to be comfortable with the fact that God has some things to say about your life. The reason why you want to have a time with the Lord on a regular basis of talking to Him is because when you learn to spend time in God's presence, He will actually show you, He will open up your understanding, He'll give you insight, He'll give you answers, He will give you provision, He will make a way for you. And so you gotta learn to spend time with God.
And unwrap those spiritual gifts and know first of all that God plans to speak to us and He plans to speak through us. Yeah. Thanks for joining us for today's Destined for Victory message: Unwrap Your Gifts and Give Them Away. As you may know, it's been a challenging year destined for victory. We lost our dear friend and teacher, Pastor Paul Shepard, who went home to be with the Lord in January.
We don't always know why the Lord works the way He does, but one thing we do know is that Pastor Paul wanted to keep the media ministry of Destined for Victory going long after He was gone.
So with that in mind, we're asking all of our friends and partners to prayerfully consider sending your best year end gift of twenty five dollars or more to help us close out this year in a strong financial position. When you do, we have a very special thank you gift reserved for you as our way of saying thanks. During the final year of his life, Pastor Paul preached an excellent series on stewardship.
Now we've put those messages together in a hardcover book, and we'd love for you to have your very own copy. It's called Becoming an Excellent Steward. It's yours today as our thank you for your best gift of $25 or more. Your gift will help us fulfill that vision Pastor Paul had for the future of Destined for Victory. Give by phone by calling 855-339-5500.
855-339-5500. or visit pastorpaul.net to make a safe and secure donation online. You can also mail your gift to Destined for Victory, post office box 1767, Fremont, California, 94538. Don't ask him how to bless you this week. Ask Him how to make you a blessing.
Because I'm telling you folks, those who present themselves to be used are those who can expect to be blessed. And that's tomorrow in our continuing message: Unwrap Your Gifts and Give Them Away. But now, on behalf of all of us Destined for Victory, Merry Christmas to you and your family. Until next time, remember... He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.
In Christ, you are destined for victory.
