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Sermon - The Gifts of God Published by The
Bible Study In Acts 2, we
read the account of the Day of Pentecost
when all the apostles received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and in v38
Peter is
saying ‘Repent and be baptised, and you will be forgiven your
sins and receive
the Holy Spirit - you, your children and future generations’. While the
promise of forgiveness of sins is available
throughout the generations, including up to ours, we also know that the
Holy
Spirit could only be passed on by the original receivers of the gift,
and so
would be available only to the 2nd, maybe 3rd
generation
after the apostles. This got me thinking. If the gift of the Holy
Spirit is not
available anymore, then what gifts can
we still expect to receive? I won’t actually be using Acts 2
any further this
morning, but rather using it as a springboard to dive into our theme
for this
morning which is going to be the ‘gifts of God’. Let us start by
considering what constitutes a gift.
The general rule is that it is something given
to you, without condition, as opposed to something that has to be
earned. How we respond
to the giving of that gift is also
something worth considering and there are two factors which are largely
at work
here – Firstly, who gives us the gift, and secondly is that
gift of any
practical use to us? Let’s
expand on this by using a hypothetical example. Imagine
the caring husband who is buying her wife a birthday present. He spends
the
usual long time thinking about the gift, considering all the usual
ideas like
chocolates, flowers, jewellery, but eventually finds something that he
thinks
she will like. On the morning of her birthday, the wife unwraps the
present and
from amongst the multitudes of wrapping paper emerges a garden spade! Yes, a spade! A
rather risky gift to give you might
think – and normally you’d be right, but in this
instance, the wife is a very
keen gardener and the handle of their current spade is just about ready
to snap
off. What seems to
be a poorly thought out gift turns out
to be a well thought out gift that the wife values greatly. So you see,
the
gift doesn’t have to be expensive or have a worldly appeal,
but only has to be
of value to the receiver, like the spade was – and some of
that value may come
because of who it is giving the
gift,
in this case, the caring husband. Obviously some
gifts, while expensive and from
someone we love, can be poorly
thought out, and for
example if my wife were to give me a vacuum cleaner for my birthday
– well, not
being all that domesticated, I’m sorry to say, I
don’t think it would hold much
value for me! So, the
question is – do we really need the gift we
are being given, and how much do we value the person giving the gift?
What we
are going to do now is unwrap some of the gifts that God gives us and
I’d like
you to hold these questions in your head as we look at them –
do we need it? Do
we value the giver? Let us start in
the book of Ecclesiastes and chapter
3. This is a rather unusual gift, not one that you would immediately
connect to
being a gift of God, but one that is available to all mankind. v12
– 13. It’s
the gift of God! He gives it to all men. What’s this gift
about though? v12 –
says that it is to rejoice, to do good in life, v13 – to eat,
drink and enjoy
the fruits of your labour. It’s all about finding
satisfaction in our life,
being happy with what we’ve got and what we do.
It’s the simple things in life
like being able to eat and drink, being able to share that with our
friends and
enjoy the work we do. Ecclesiastes is telling us that all this is a
gift of
God! We look around
us today and see so many unhappy people
in this country, they haven’t got enough money, they want
more, they want
bigger and better things; they are unhappy with the way life is
treating them
and they are the ones who are missing out on this gift of God
– the gift of
enjoying the fruits of our labour. The challenge is to recognise that
it is a gift – but how
often do we look upon it as a gift?
We must be
happy with what we have rather than acting as the rest of the world
does in
looking for bigger and better things. Let us move on
to our next gift. John 4. Jesus is
travelling through Here we have
Jesus talking about the gift of God, but
what is this gift he is talking about? It doesn’t seem to be
that he is
referring to himself for he says ‘If thou knewest the gift of
God, and
who it is that saith to thee’ – he talking about
two things which are separate
- and goes on to say that he would have given her living water had he
been
asked. The gift here isn’t Jesus, but the living water, or
rather the words
spoken by Jesus, which is the Word of God. v13 –
so you see that the gift of God is the word that
he was speaking through Jesus. How often do we think of the words of
Jesus as a
gift from God and as a gift that we really need? Do we value this gift
or do we
just leave it on our bookshelf gathering dust? v15 –
the woman of 2 Cor 9. Here
is another gift that God has provided
for us. Notice what Paul says about this gift, that he struggles with
it – v15.
It is an unspeakable gift, Paul can’t describe how wonderful
this gift is, but
what gift is he talking about? v14 –
We see that it is the grace of God, and in v15
he can’t begin to describe how amazing this gift is,
it’s indescribable, it’s
so valuable that words are not enough. v8 –
note the use of the word ‘all’ in this verse, all
grace, always, all things – it is so apparent that this is an
overflowing gift
from God that is given in abundance. Also, in
speaking to the Corinthians Paul says at the
end of v14, ‘grace of God in you’. That little
word, ‘in’, not
‘towards’ as you’d perhaps expect to
find, but ‘grace in you’. The gift of
God’s grace was working in the Corinthians and we can see the
effect of this in
v6 – 7. Having received the grace of God they had modified
their behaviour in
giving to others. End of v7, ‘God loves a cheerful
giver’ – the Corinthians
were reciprocating what God had given to them by likewise giving to
others. What about us,
do we v6, sow sparingly, or do we v7
give grudgingly or out of necessity? We can
be like that, but if we recognise that the gift of the grace of God
abounds in
us, then it often translates into behaviour where we respond to the
grace of
God and give graciously unto others. v9 –
this does indeed describe God for he is a
cheerful giver, but v9 is a quote from the OT, Psalm 112 and
I’d like to look
at the context there as it’s useful to see how it is used
here in Corinthians. Ps 112
– v9. This is the quoted verse, but is it
talking about God? Who is the ‘he’ mentioned in v9?
Well, we can see the
context from v5, v7, v8 ,v9a – the ‘he’
is the good or godly man, and if we
take this context back to 2 Cor 9 v 9 we can see that it is talking
about the
person who in response to the gift of grace that he has received from
God has
changed his behaviour, not just through his words, but also in the form
of graciousness,
kindness, thankfulness to others, dispersing it abroad, to the poor and
to
everyone. A wonderful
gift indeed – the gift of grace. Romans 5. These
gifts are really starting to pile up
now – grace, the word of God, fruits of our labour and here
is another one in
Romans 5 v 17. We see one gift we have already looked at in there,
grace, but
here also is the gift of righteousness. What’s this one about
then, this gift
of righteousness? It’s the being able to declare us righteous
even though we
have sinned, so what we have here is the gift of forgiveness. And how
did that
gift come about? – v18, this gift came to us through the
actions of one man,
the one we remember this morning. Forgiveness is closely related to
grace, but
through the death of Jesus we have another gift we can add to our list.
Do we
see a need for this gift in our lives, do we value it, do we value what
had to
happen before this gift became available to us – which was
God sacrificing his only
begotten son upon the cross. Our challenge is to see the need for this
gift in
our lives. v21 –
see grace linked here with eternal life and if we
move into the next chapter (ch 6) then we see another verse
concerning
eternal life. v23 –grace, forgiveness of sins and another
gift, eternal life
all closely linked together. 2 Cor 1. this
is not the sort of gift that we perhaps
think about, but still a gift of God nonetheless. v8 – we
have it appears, Paul
and Timothy, going through a tough time in Asia believing that their
life was
in danger, v9 – there was a terrible threat to their lives,
but they believed
through God’s grace they would be delivered from that danger.
v10, v11 –
another gift. What is this gift that Paul is referring to? It is in the
context
of prayer as brethren and sisters had been praying for Paul and Timothy
to be delivered
from the danger they faced and those prayers had been answered
– the gift here
is the gift of prayer being answered. Not so much the prayers of Paul
and
Timothy, but the prayers of other brethren and sisters made for them
– and
those prayers were answered. Paul says ‘That’s a
gift of God!’ Sometimes we
don’t always think of prayer like that,
we don’t always think that when we offer a prayer for someone
else, that the
answer for that person is a gift from God. Paul acknowledges this gift
saying
it was their prayers that allowed his work to continue. We should never
underestimate the value of prayer and the gift that God gives us when
answering
our prayers. We find another
gift in Philippians 1. It’s fair to
say that we would not really consider this to be a gift of God, but I
present
it to you with the suggestion that it is indeed a gift. v29. Nothing
immediately suggests gift, but the idea of ‘given’
speaks to us of a gift, the
gift to believe on Jesus Christ, but also the gift of suffering for his
sake.
How can that be a gift? Well, it can help us to appreciate a little of
what he
went through to make all these other gifts available to us, which are
all
obtainable because of Christ’s suffering. But sometimes
suffering in Christ’s
name is something that we need, to help us realise the true value that
can be
found in the gift of eternal life. If life was perfect would we still
feel a
practical need for some of these gifts? We’ve
had a look at quite a few gifts this morning,
there are more we could have looked at but our pile is quite big enough
– we
have the gift of finding contentment in what we have, the gift of
God’s word,
the gift of grace, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, the gift of
answers to
our prayers. All these gifts and more God given to us. What do we have
to do,
what are our responsibilities? Deut 30, and in
v19 we have the words of Moses spoken
to the people of How does God
view these gifts he has given? Rom 11.
For us, we have a choice whether to accept these gifts or not, but God
has told
us this in v29 – the NIV uses the word irrevocable
– this shows us where God
stands, he will not withdraw his offer of gifts, he will not change his
mind.
When Jesus died, God gave us forgiveness of sins, he will never take that away from us. God has
placed these gifts before us
and they will always be available to us, God will be faithful, he
doesn’t
change – you see, it is for us to simply reach out and take
what we want. Now we turn our
attention to the emblems of bread and
wine on the table before us, and think about the great gift that we
have not
spoken so much of this morning – the gift of his Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Through the giving of his life all these gifts are made available,
irrevocable
in the eyes of God. So it is now we can offer our sincere thanks to God
for all
the wonderful gifts he offers and indeed also for the grace and love he
has
shown us in giving us his Son. Sermon written by Dave Edmonds |
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