His Gift and Our Gifts, Part 3

If you've given your life to Jesus Christ, the Bible teaches that you've been granted a spiritual gift. In the fourth chapter of Ephesians, Paul taught us that just before Jesus ascended into heaven, God gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to prepare His people for works of service. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll concludes his message on this important topic based on Paul's inspired teaching in Ephesians 4.

Chuck titled his message, His Gift and Our Gift. Please observe, he now amplifies, he gave gifts to men. Remember, it ties in with verse 8. He gave gifts to men, verse 11. He gave some, this is not all the gifts, but he gave to some these four gifts.

Let's look at them since they're the ones that the Spirit of God led Paul to mention. First, he mentions the gift of apostleship. The word apostello, we get the word apostle from the Greek verb apostello, it means to send forth. If I send someone forth, I am, in the words of the Greek, I am aposeling them. Interesting, the Latin term is the word from which we get our word missionary. Isn't that fascinating? Study of words, I'm a word vulture, I warned you about that. You get to the word apostle and it's fascinating.

This would refer to the 12, the original 12. To be an apostle, one must have absolute authority under Christ, possess gifts of a miraculous nature, have great wisdom and devotion, and I would link the word of wisdom to the gift of apostleship. They are spiritual pioneers who found churches. They are those who established the doctrinal truths that shaped the early church and they have seen the resurrected Christ.

Do you get the list? That's why there are no apostles today. I don't care what the Mormon church teaches, I don't care what any of the other cults would teach, there are not apostellos today, apostolos. They were in the first century and were essential for the founding and establishing of the church and he gave some gifted to be apostles. They could, under the authority of Christ, perform miracles at will. And they had gifts and abilities that were supernatural and were essentially so to win the credibility and hearts of believers who needed such to verify the message. And he gave some as prophets. If the apostle is the one sent forth and a prophet is the one who foretells and forthtells, the word means to speak forth, prophets, in the technical sense of the word, were those who served as inspired spokesmen for God. They were the very oracle of God.

You and I don't face the problem the early church faced because we have a completed Bible, but if we did not, we would not know if someone spoke from God unless he spoke without error, ex cathedra. The prophets in the technical sense of the word were the inspired spokesmen for God. Their verbal ministry included exhortation, predictions, warnings, revelations, dreams, visions, rebukes, comfort, encouragement, and a whole list of other verbal benefits. When you were in the presence of a prophet, you knew it. And prophets gave truth credibility. Now we have a Bible to compare what we're hearing with it, but in those days without a Bible, you needed such. I do not believe there are in the technical sense of the word prophets today.

I believe people are given prophetic kind of styles or gifts in the sense of delivery and tone, but I don't believe that anyone speaks today without error. God's word is the inerrant message of God's truth. Now evangelism is one we're more familiar with. Do you know this is the only place in all the Bible where evangelism is mentioned as a gift?

Do you know that? Evangelists are mentioned elsewhere, but not as a gift. Here is the one. He gave some as evangelists. This is the gospelizer.

This is the person who was able to deliver the good news of Christ with ease and effectiveness. They were the itinerant missionaries, if you will, who moved and to this day they're often on the move. Rarely do evangelists have deep roots in one area or one place of ministry.

They're on the move because they're constantly getting in touch with the lost. It's remarkable to watch evangelists at work. Maybe you have a friend who has the gift. Cynthia and I know a lady who happens to have the gift of evangelism. We have seldom seen anyone who can with greater ease and effectiveness lead people to Christ. You give her a 30-minute trip on an airplane, chances are good people on both sides have heard of Christ and one of them has received him.

I do that and they just keep staring at me for 30 minutes, but she does it and it's remarkable. The most famous evangelist of our time would be, of course, Billy Graham. We sit in a stadium and we watch the gift at work. Not the man, it's the gift.

He will be the first to tell you. One of the most humble servants I've ever met in my life is the godly Billy Graham, what a great messenger of the gospel. He'll deliver a message, a rather simple presentation of the gospel, using stories that most of us have heard, pretty simple and delivered rather humbly. I remember leaning over and saying to Cynthia as we sat in the Angel Stadium in Southern California when he was there in the 80s, I said, you know, he just doesn't seem too effective in his delivery. She said, just wait. And I'm telling you when he said, now I'm going to ask that every head be bowed and every eye be closed and if you feel the sense of the need for Christ.

People were climbing all over us to get out of there and they were almost running down to the field and filling the whole infield, in fact, into the outfield and I just set the tears running down my face. I've never seen anything like this in my life. Incredible gift at work and thank your God that you have lived to witness that kind of evangelism with your own eyes. Preach to more people than anyone ever has in the history of time, thanks to the use of television and all of the media that are at work in spite of the flak he gets. He's an evangelist. Now, I think of evangelists as obstetricians in the body.

They help with the birth, push, push, breathe. And there's a new birth. I mean, it is remarkable.

I can't believe I just did that. You got this gifted person who delivers this wonderful baby and then leaves him. Because evangelists don't usually stick around.

That's why God gave us pastor teachers. See the last one on the list? Now, I know a little bit about this one and you do too. Probably the most familiar among the gifts. This is the person who puts down roots in the same place. It's a dual gift. The word and ought to be seen as a hyphen, just a dash, pastor teacher. All teachers are not pastors, but all pastors need to be teachers. It's the gift of pastor teacher.

It's the exercise of that position. And this individual shepherds a flock and in the process also instructs them. He's the pediatrician. He comes along with the new babies and he gives them information. He gives them nutrients. He gives them direction.

He reproves them and guards them and challenges them and equips them and encourages them and helps them grow up in the Lord just as is happening right now. You know more now than you knew before this meeting began because you are being equipped with truth, which is part of my gift. And you know, I love it. I have people say, oh, you've got the burden of Sunday resting on your show. I go, yeah. I can hardly sleep when I think Sunday's coming, especially when I'm not ready. It really keeps me awake.

I really got to go after it. And you see, when you're a pastor teacher, they've heard all your stuff. It needs to be fresh.

It needs to be instruction that makes sense. And it's reasonable and you go to town on it. It's a gift.

I don't know how I'm able to do it. I just know that it's a gift. Part of having the gift is being able to take the flak.

Maybe you didn't know. Pastors are lightning rods. You know, people have us for lunch. And something happens and you're the leader of flak. All kinds of things run about you.

Somebody sent me a cute little cartoon deal and it's just so practical. These are people sitting in pews, one behind another. And the first guy says, my ear kind of hurts, from what he's saying. The next one says, pastor has an earache. And the third group say, the pastor's got a hearing aid. The fourth group behind them, the pastor's having trouble hearing. The next one, the pastor's got a double earring.

The last one shows an old lady walking outside. That does it. I'm out of here. Got to go where a pastor's got a double earring.

What is this? I say to young men for preparing for the pastorate, if you can't take the heat, you really don't want to go in the pastorate. If you don't love people, you don't really want to do this. If you can do anything else and be fulfilled and satisfied, do it. Do it. Like my brother used to say when he was a missionary in Argentina, he said, don't send us more missionaries, send us a few who are better missionaries.

We don't need just more people pouring into pulpits, we need the right people with the gifts for pastor, teacher. Let me tell you something. You haven't been touched by an angel, you've been gifted by God. Gifted. You're on this list and there may be other gifts that aren't even named. Counseling isn't named. Maybe that's part of exhorting.

Music isn't named and I think that is a gift to the body. Maybe that's part of serving. You know what?

You talk about relieving frustration. Wow! Some churches try to make everybody go out and evangelize and lead them all to Christ. Wait, don't do that. You should certainly make Christ known, but let's not force anybody to do something that's outside the area of your gift.

Right? If you don't have the gift of showing mercy, don't visit the hospital. You sick again?

Job's counselors did not have the gift of showing mercy. You see what it does? It solves the frustration syndrome.

Everybody will be doing everything in the church. Nonsense. My lungs can only breathe and filter that blood system and all that stuff. I'm run out of information. That's all I know about the lungs. But they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. And so I'm healthy.

And a liver. I can't spend long on that, but that's an example of a very important function. When it fails, you die. You serve? Serve. You come into a gymnasium that's set up with chairs? It's because gifted people who know how to serve do it.

And they never send us a bill. That is, those who do it in the body. You who are a part of the servants of the church are the ones who make this work.

Breathe and stay healthy. You have a gift of evangelism? Hey, share the Savior. I mean, you're our obstetrician.

Do it. You say, well, I'm not trained at seminary. Well, neither are most evangelists.

Seminary will help equip you to do it maybe with more incisive skills, but you don't have seminary training to be a servant, an exhorter, a leader? An evangelist? Came across a cute little piece. The Springfield, Oregon public school newsletter published an article. It read of a familiar frustration that happens in the classroom.

I thought of the Christian home and the body of Christ today. Once upon a time, the animals decided that they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of the new world, so they organized a school. They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming, and flying.

To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals were required to take all the courses. The duck was excellent in swimming, in fact, better than his instructor, but he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to drop swimming and stay after school, practice remedial running. This caused his webbed feet to be badly worn so that he was only average now in swimming.

But average was quite acceptable, so nobody worried about that except the duck. The rabbit. The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because of so much makeup work in swimming. The squirrel was excellent in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down. He developed charley horses from overexertion and so only got a C in climbing and a D in running. The eagle was a problem student. Severely disciplined for being a non-conformist.

In climbing classes, he beat all the others to the top of the tree, but he insisted on doing it his own way to get there. I read that and I thought, welcome to the church. Chances are good you have burned out, and pretty well checked out because you were pushed in an area of overwork outside the realm of your gift. I think you can be overworked in the realm of your gift, too, but that's beside the point. My point is when you're gifted, it is your pleasure, and it is remarkable what ease and what joy accompany the exercise of your gift. His gift makes it all possible and our gifts become the pool of extravagant power at work in the body and in the world at large.

Sometimes people outside the church see possibilities in us and we need to listen to them. My story is familiar to some of you and so I won't spend too much time on it, but in junior high school I stuttered so badly I could hardly get a sentence out. Terrible struggle with stuttering and with that came a low feeling of self-esteem. I thought the last place I want to be is in front of a group. While trying to hide out in my first year in high school freshman year, our drama teacher found me in the hallway and he said, Charlie, I want you on my debate team. I go, m-m-m-me? You want him? You don't want my me.

He said, no, I want you. And Dr. Dick Neamey poured himself into me and did speech therapy and taught me how to speak. He helped me understand that my mind was running ahead of my mouth. I had to pace that.

I have the opposite problem now, but that's another thing I've got to deal with. But here is a man in the secular world who loved me as a teacher enough to say, you know, there's some gifts there that aren't at work, and he saw that in me and poured himself into me and changed my life. Isn't that great? Thank you, Lord, for him. His picture is on my desk at the seminary.

About every week I look at that picture now that he's gone and I say, thank you, Mr. Neamey, for helping me understand my gift. You may be the one God would want to use to help your child know what her or his gift is. Or you may be a teacher. What a calling. What a calling. And in your love for your students and the time you spend with them with an arm around them, you say to them, you know what? You are one gifted person.

Let me show you. Or a mentor, a coach. You are coach.

What a classic opportunity to be that source of information as a pastor, as a friend. Let's bow together. Just in the quietness of this moment, do a little reflecting on what you love to do.

Just what do you love to do? Chances are good you've just put your finger on one or maybe more than one of your gifts. You're part of Jesus' pool, if you will. You're part of that vast reservoir of power to lead that group, to organize that part of the ministry, to counsel that troubled soul, to introduce that neighbor to the Savior, to teach, to serve, to show mercy, tender mercy to those who are hurting.

There's no frustration there. You're gifted to do it. You can't wait to show mercy. And I can't wait to tell you that there's a Savior waiting at the door of your heart. And being the gentleman that he is, he will not barge in, but he has made himself known to you in this message. And he is sovereignly at work to get that door of your heart opened.

Just let him in. He will not only give you a gift you could never afford and you'll never lose, which will include forgiveness and an inheritance that's incorruptible and undefiled and a set of gifts that will set you free to serve him, but he'll give you peace and the hope of heaven. You can't miss. How we love you, Lord, and thank you for your inestimable presence in our lives. What you take or what you give us shows the Father's love so precious. You've stopped us in our track.

You've said no to what we had anticipated. And of all things, you turn that to good, our good and something for your glory. And I thank you. I thank you for this body of men and women who are a joy to you and such a blessing to me as one of the leaders. Thank you for their commitment to the things that matter.

Thank you for the pleasure of knowing each other on earth and knowing you forever and ever. Use these words as very careful guidelines and checkpoints along the journey to help us understand what you want of us so we might do it with excellence and do it in love. And bring those to your body and your family who this moment are wrestling with that decision. Bring them in, Lord.

We trust you for that. In Jesus' name. Everybody said, Amen. These are the principles we're hoping to instill not only in the churches of North America, but in congregations all around the world. To that end, we're calling on friends like you to join us in the all-out effort to bring God's message of grace to all 195 countries of the world.

We're calling this mission Vision 195. Together, we can implement the Great Commission of Jesus by making disciples through radio, our website, the mobile app, CDs, books, DVDs, the podcast, our live stream feed, and more. Whatever amount He prompts you to invest will truly make a difference. Not long ago, we received an encouraging note that said, Pastor Chuck was the one God used to guide me through my spiritual journey when I accepted Christ into my life, not in America, but way out there in the Pacific Ocean.

Well, you know, it's comments like this one that motivate us to venture forward with Vision 195. To give a one-time contribution today, call us. If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888. Or to become a monthly companion, visit us at insight.org slash monthly companion.

You can also give through our mobile app or directly online at insight.org. Well, Chuck has come across a book he's highly recommending to you. In a day when it's easy to feel fearful and overwhelmed, Take Cover offers a clear path to finding peace in God's protection. It's written by fellow pastor and radio Bible teacher Philip de Courcy. Philip does a masterful job of blending his personal experience as a police officer who served in a dangerous part of the world with the timeless promises of God's protection. To purchase a copy of Take Cover, go to insight.org slash store. Or call us. If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888.

Looking for a healthy church? Be listening Friday when Chuck Swindoll describes what he calls body life at its best here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, his gift and our gifts, was copyrighted in 2000, 2001, and 2009. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.