“The Gift” By Bob Heirtzler December 2nd,
2012
The
Perfect Gift!! Today we are talking about gifts; speaking
of gifts, we all enjoy gifts. God gives
us gifts in our lives, birthday gifts, anniversary gifts, gifts for no
reason. I received a gift for being at
the company I'm at for five years. It
was a pin with the letter "B" for Broadspire! I like to think the "B" is for Bob,
or Bass Fishing, or Bass Pro Shop! I wanted to be thankful to be here
today, thankful for standing on the Rock, and the Rock is Christ!! Thankful for the Founding Pastor sharing
baptism with me over a game of checkers.
Thankful to the General Pastor, Pastor Paine, for praying with me to
break through and received the Gift of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of
speaking in tongues. Thankful for Pastor
Wilson, for kicking me out of the building and go find something to do for God. Thankful for Brother Kenneth; for me standing
here in his behalf while he is away with his family at Air Force base in the
middle of a corn field in Indiana. Also for telling me if I want to do
something in this ministry, that I needed to get it started and not to wait for
him to start it!! Thankful for Parrish
Lee for standing in the gap while Brother Kenneth is out of town, and Thankful
for all of you for being here!! Before we get started I need two people
to read scriptures from the Old Testament: Isaiah 7:14 …Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear
a son… Isaiah 9:6 …unto us a son is given… Matthew
1:18-2:11 … she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his
name JESUS… Luke 1:80 …And the child grew, and waxed strong in
spirit… Now, Jesus, as a child subjected
Himself to His parents. Joseph tried to
teach Him carpentry, even though Jesus taught Noah how to build the ark… When Jesus was about twelve, his parents
found Him in the Temple teaching the priests, but when they said it was time to
go, He subjected Himself to them, and He went.
This is the One who parted the Red Sea for Moses, but He subjected Himself
to His parents. Philippians
2:1-11 … being found in fashion as a man, he humbled
himself… God loved us so much that He came
down and walked among us, and waxed strong in the Spirit to be our example to
be born again, and to be waxed strong in the Spirit of God. Jesus loved us and walked among us to live a
life. He went through His schooling; He
went through being a teen-ager; He went through all of the stuff that we go
through. But the thing about it, if you
look at chapter 2, He was faithful all the way to the cross. That teaches us that we need to be faithful
to our last breath. The life of Jesus is
already teaching us that we need to be faithful to God until the end. He was faithful to die on the cross; He could
have called down 10,000 angels to rescue Him, but He chose to die on the cross,
so that His blood would be shed, to give us the gift of salvation! So, one of the gifts He gave us was the gift
of salvation. We see now that the
gentiles received the same gift as the Jews, for whom the gift was originally
intended for. Not only that, but, as Brother
Parrish shared a couple of Sundays ago, the Holy Ghost will dwell in a room and
then, all of the sudden leave, when we get baptized in Jesus’ name, that same
Spirit enters our lives, the Gift of the Holy Ghost! (Acts 2:38) So we don’t
have to leave a room to enter the presence of God. I’m thankful for that. We don’t have to go sit in a booth, and
confess to someone sitting next to us, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.” Of course, my list would be much longer than
that. But, anyway, we can go straight to
God. The blood of Christ is applied to
our lives. Jesus’ death, burial, and
resurrection represent baptism in Jesus’ name! Romans 6:3-5 … we
are buried with him by baptism into death… Buried with Him in baptism into His
death, raised into His resurrection; the baptism part. Something so simple, but the world can’t
understand. Water has always been part
of cleansing throughout the entire history of the Bible. Something simple like that, and yet people
will argue about it. Now we come up out
of the water, and our slate is clean. God talks, in His Word, about
talents, and He gave one person five, and one person two, and one person one. Matthew 25:14-18 … he
that had received the five talents went and traded with the same… I looked this up, and the word talent
means a sum of money. That’s why it says
that the one servant traded with the same; he invested it in order to receive
more. I’ll give you an example: I was
learning to cook, and I just learned to make clam chowder, that was one
talent. Because I learned how to do
that, I was able to learn to make beef stew, and because I learned how to do
that, I was able to make chili. And then
pot roast. And then rice pudding. And
then banana pudding. I’m being talented
in one area; I’m investing in what I have. In our job titles that we have, aren’t we
better now than we were when we first got hired? Because we don’t know everything the first
day on our job. God gave us that
ability, and we took that talent that God gave us and we invested it. Better teacher, better mechanic, better computer
geek, you know? It goes on and on. Of course, the servant that only had one
talent went and buried his talent in the earth.
That quickly reminds me of people that God gave the ability to sing, or
be actors and actresses, and they chose to use that talent in the world, and
they’re doing ungodly things with that talent.
They’re going to answer for it, one day.
I get aggravated, because they give God the praise, but they are so
nasty, and they don’t wear proper clothing, then they want to thank God for
their award. Come on. They’re going to answer for that one
day. Me and my house, I’m going to serve
the Lord. It’s ironic that the gift that
God put in our lives, it may just sit idle like that box in the middle of the
room. It doesn’t mean that we’re backslid. It just sits there. I work in the corporate world, and somebody
needed to come up with some kind of program, and right away, they get promoted,
because that gift was sitting in their life, waiting for the door to be opened to
be used. We have gifts in our lives that
are just waiting for the right moment for God to open up and use in our
lives. God spoke a prophecy to this
ministry several years ago, “Take those gifts and talents in your lives, and
give them back to me so that I can use them in you.” And you may be thinking, “God, You gave me those
gifts, now you want me to give them back to You?” “So that I can use them.” Now I want to talk about the gifts in
the body of Christ. I was reading this
scripture, and Pastor Paine talked about this two weeks ago, also. The word gift means: Gift—1)
A favor which one receives without any merit of his own. 2) The gift of divine grace. 3) The gift of faith, knowledge, holiness,
virtue. 4) The economy of divine grace, by which the pardon of sin and eternal
salvation is appointed to sinners in consideration of the merits of Christ laid
hold of by faith. 5) Grace or gifts denoting extraordinary powers,
distinguishing certain Christians and enabling them to serve the church of
Christ, the reception of which is due to the power of divine grace operating on
their souls by the Holy Spirit. God puts gifts in this church so
that they can be used in the body of Christ.
That’s why I put that gift in the middle of the room, because we are the
body of Christ. I didn’t want it up
here; I wanted it in the middle of the room.
There are many gifts in the body of Christ. Romans 12:1-2 …present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God… God gave us a commission to separate
ourselves from the world, to stand out. We
talked a few weeks ago about that mirror—that mirror is the world, watching us
all the time. It’s a reflection of our
ministry; people watch us all the time, what we say, what we do… We’ve got to be that example, that they might
see in our lives—they might need that drink of water that nourishes their
soul. The gifts in our lives might be
the key to getting them to walk over and get baptized, you know? The Bible teaches us, further down in Romans
12 that the gifts that God has given to this ministry are: prophecy (Romans 12:6), ministry (Romans 12:7),
teaching (Romans 12:7), and exhorting (Romans 12:8). That’s already here. There are already people here doing those
things. We need you to continue to do
that, in everything. I use everything to
reach out to people. I used my birthday
to try to reach out to people. I use fishing
trips to reach out to people. We use
things to reach out to people. We all can
do something. Everybody’s always willing
to help each other out here. I’ve never
had anybody tell me no. Everybody helps
out everybody else. This is amazing,
when all of God’s gifts get together, it’s like a big old family reunion. Pastor Paine talked about this two
weeks ago: 1 Corinthians
12:1 Now concerning spiritual gifts,
brethren, I would not have you ignorant. The gifts that are listed in here
are: word of wisdom (1 Corinthians 12:8),
word of knowledge (1 Corinthians 12:8), healing (1 Corinthians 12:9), miracles
(1 Corinthians 12:10), prophecy (1 Corinthians 12:10), discerning of the spirit
(1 Corinthians 12:10), divers tongues (1 Corinthians 12:10), interpretation of
tongues (1 Corinthians 12:10), gifts of healing (1 Corinthians 12:28), helps (1
Corinthians 12:28), governments (1 Corinthians 12:28), and diversities of
tongues (1 Corinthians 12:28). In the second chapter of Acts (Acts
2:4-12), the disciples were speaking in tongues, and there were other people
there that heard them speaking in their own native language. They knew that they were all Jews, but they
heard them in their own language. God
gave those people the ability to speak, and somebody was able to interpret what
was being spoken. When we share the Word
of God, God will revelate their mind in such a way that you feel like, “Wow! I really said that?” How many times have you had it happen that, someone
said to you, “The other day, you said this, and it got me to thinking about
that…” because God had something for them from what you said. Most of us have heard Pastor Paine tell the
story about the time he preached a message, and afterwards, a man came up to
him and said, “That was the most powerful message on baptism I’ve ever
heard. I want to get baptized in Jesus’
name.” Pastor Paine went back through
his notes, and couldn’t find one baptism scripture in his sermon. Our lives are telling a message, a message of
hope to those who are out there. And the
word of wisdom, and the word of knowledge? that's among us. We have to take that gift, and protect
it. People might need a wrench one day,
might need a screwdriver the next day, might need a rolling pin the next day. Ephesians 4:11 And He gave some, apostles, and
some, prophets; and some, evangelists… Every one of those ends in the
letter ‘s’—that means more than one. Our
general pastor, if God tarries His coming, will be going home to meet Him
someday. Who’s stepping up? When us old-heads pass away, or age, who’ll
be taking our place? It’s our job; it’s
my job, to teach the younger people in the church, so that when I go the way of
the grave, there’s somebody there. There
used to be an organization in Waukegan called the Swedish Glee Club, but they
didn’t teach their young, and then their older members died off, and their just
not around anymore. We do teach the
younger, here, but we’ve got to continue to teach the younger people. And the youngers are going to have to teach
the youngerers, and the youngerers are going to have to teach the youngererers.
We know from Acts 2:38 that this message
is for many generations. Not just those
that got saved then, but for many generations.
That message is still alive today.
Now, in Matthew 5:16, my closing
Scripture: Matthew 5:16 …they may see your good works, and glorify
your Father which is in heaven. Here’s this gift. God wants us to shine, so that they see the
good works in us from God. We have this
gift within us. We have the gift of
salvation, of healing, and it’s sitting idle in us. It sits there, and we haven’t been using it
for a while. We need to reactivate that
gift; put in fresh batteries. If it’s
sitting on the shelf, just take it down and use it, but maybe it’s sitting on
the shelf waiting for a certain day.
Another analogy that comes to me is that if you’re going to make a pie,
you don’t get out the ingredients for a beef stew. Or, if you’re going to make beef stew, you
don’t get out the ingredients for a pie.
The ingredients for the beef stew are always there, but you’re making a
pie, you’re not going to use the same thing all the time. It’s there, ready to go. The Bible teaches us that we have to be ready
to give an answer of the hope that lies within us, to anybody, at any given time;
even at 1:30 in the morning. We’re coming into the Christmas season,
where people are going to be thinking about the birth of Christ (they haven’t
thought about it all year long). They’re
going to be trying to buy the best gifts, and we need to be there to share with
them about the best of the best gift.
Sermon notes by Pete Shepherd |
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