May 6, 2007: Romans Serving
Romans M 11 Serving
Text: Romans 12:1-8
Big Idea: When use our gifts for God and others we develop our gifts, bless people, and honor God.
Introduction
John Ortberg, a pastor in the San Francisco Bay area, tells about the time after his grandmother had died…
His grandfather called his mother and said "I found this old box of dishes in the attic. Would you like to come and take a look at them? If you don’t want them, I'll give them to the Salvation Army." When his mother came to look at the dishes, she was taken aback.
Here was the most exquisite set of Bavarian china she had ever seen. Each piece had been beautifully hand painted and the cups were rimmed with gold. The plates had been inlaid with mother-of-pearl. They found out later that the factory in Bavaria had been destroyed during the war and so these pieces were irreplaceable and priceless.
John said his mother had never seen this set of china. Eventually they found out the story of the china. It seems that when his grandmother was very young the family would give her a piece of this china for special occasions like birthdays, graduation, her confirmation in the church. And because they were so expensive his grandmother who was not from a wealthy family would carefully wrap them up and store them in a box in the attic waiting for a special occasion to use them. Evidently that special occasion never came and so his grandmother went to her grave with the greatest gift of her life never having been used.
Some people are like that with the “gifts” and talents…that God has given them… They remain un-opened and unused…
I have a hunch that on judgment day when we stand before God and give an account for our lives the biggest deal may not be some indiscretion we made in our youth, God may be more concerned about the fact we did not use the gifts and opportunities, that we did not use our potential…
If we really take to heart the Gospel and understand and respond to God’s mercy, it will be hard for us to not realize our potential… as Paul points out in Romans 12:1
Into the Central Message
The apostle Paul in Romans 12:1-2 says:
A Living Sacrifice
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship.
In the first 11 chapters of the book of Romans Paul has explained how God, in his great mercy, has become a human being in the person of Jesus Christ and has absorbed in his body our sins, so that we could be forgiven, welcomed into God’s living room, receive the very spirit of God, and, as a result of that, new life… Paul says in view of this mercy of God, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is true worship.
When Paul says offer your bodies as living sacrifices to God, he is urging us to offer every part of ourselves to God.
And then, as we focused on last Sunday, Paul says that we are to offer our minds to God. He says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
When Paul talks about the fact that we are not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, as we saw last week, the Greek word that he is using here can be literally translated “don’t be conformed to this present age.” Paul don’t be conformed to the temporal, fleeting values of this passing age…. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind… last Sunday we talked about how we can do this by taking on an eternal perspective… by living for the “line of eternity,” rather than the “dot” of this temporary existence.
Paul says in view of God’s mercy offer all of yourselves to God as living sacrifices, your mind, and then your gifts and talents.
Notice what Paul says in verses 4 and 5, he says:
4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your [a] faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give
encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, [b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. (Paul also lists gifts in 1 Cor.:12, as well as in Eph.4.)
Paul is urging the church at Rome and us to offer all of ourselves to God, including our body, mind, and gifts and talents to God.
Paul is urging us to unwrap our gifts and then to use them, recognizing that we don’t own ourselves or our gifts, but we, along with our gifts, belong to each other in the body (community) of Christ… God has entrusts you with certain talents at your birth, certain spiritual gifts when you are reborn into God’s family… their yours, but their not yours, you are called to unwrap them and use them for the community, the common good.
My wife recently gave me a copy of the book Bushido a book on Samurai ethics…
Part of what it means to live in a community of Samurai is to live a life of service and compassion… Part of my own family heritage--if I trace it back far enough is one of one where people use their gifts in the service of the larger community…
If you are a part of God’s family, to use Paul’s metaphor part of the body of Christ, you also have part of great family heritage tracing back to Abraham of service in the community…
Paul urges us here in Romans 12 to discover what our gifts are and use them to use them in service of the common good…
Is it telling the Word of God? Is it serving? Is it teaching? Is it encouraging? Is it giving? Is it showing mercy? (Paul also lists gifts in 1 Cor.:12, as well as in Eph.4.) If we are not sure what our gift is, we do well to experiment with all kinds of service and through that discover what one or two areas we might focus in on… (gifts assessment surveys can be helpful, but the best way to discover your gifts is to experiment and to discover what how you can bless others and what you’re passionate about).
What will would happen if and wrap and used our gifts?
At least three things happen: it develops us, blesses the world, and honors God.
In our small group the other Tuesday night in our home, we were discussing this passage, and someone talked about how when we use our gifts, we are able to develop our gifts.
When we recognize that when use our gifts, we are not just doing what we are doing for other human beings, but when we use our gifts, we are doing them for God. That provides the greatest of all motivations to offer our best, because what we do is done unto God and when happens we also grow our gifts.
You might have a gift, for example, in the area of teaching. You may have an opportunity to teach a small group of people. If you do your best and unto God, not only will you bless people if you have the gift, but you will also develop that gift. If you think your gift may be listening to people and helping them gain clarity by your listening people into speech…if you give your people your best attention, not only will you bless them, but you will develop your gift in helping bring direction to people by helping them hear their own voice.
Sometimes people will ask me how does a person learn to do what you do—pastor a church? How did you learn to do what you do? Where did you go to seminary?
I’m very grateful for my seminary education…
But as I look back I learned to do now what I do through “needs” and opportunities to serve.
When I was a high school student and new Christian, the youth pastor at our church went to Africa to serve as a missionary… There was no pastor to lead our group…there was a need, so a friend and I volunteered to the lead the group. I had no idea that one day, I’d be a pastor then. But I saw a need and wanted to help fill it and I guess looking back I “developed” through that experience.
When I was working for the SONY group in Tokyo in my early twenties, I started going to a church in Northeast Tokyo with about 20-25 people at their main Sunday service. The pastor was about 80 years old. He needed a relief hitter (preacher/teacher)… and so though I had majored in economics and philosophy as an undergrad… and had not been to seminary at the point in my life, I began to speak to usually the afternoon service which sometimes only had 10 people attending… I was shaky preacher…. (arguably still am!) But I did my best as unto God… I developed… that’s were I cut my teeth… I didn’t know then I would be a full-time pastor one day… but the helping to meet the need helped me to grow…
Perhaps most important of all, at our little church once a month, we’d have lunch after the morning at the church… curry or something like that, and after lunch I’d enjoying going into the kitchen to do the dishes… mostly because it would provoke people. The Japanese older traditional women would freak out (at first), objecting saying, that as a man I should not be doing the dishes… (sometimes it’s to good to break cultural stereotypes that aren’t helpful)...
Some times I go down to the kitchen here at Tenth… and do some dishes … and once in a while someone older and more traditional, will say half-jokingly, half seriously the pastor shouldn’t be doing the dishes!
Doing dishes with those older Japanese women helped shed in me a sense of entitlement that males can become afflicted with in Japan and grow in some needed ways…
Offering your gifts to God not only enables you to grow, but enables you to impact the world.
There are so may examples I could give from this community. Last Sunday in between services we honored Linda Wirch… one of the women here at Tenth in her senior years--who volunteers so much of her time and energy in the service of others in this church… and has done that for many years. Now that the kitchen is being closed for the rebuild she’s taking this transition as an opportunity to step back from some of her volunteering and to create space to care for her husband Art who’s suffering from Parkinson’s disease…
Linda’s been so faithful… Among the many other things each Tuesday she’s been cooking and loving the people of Oasis, some of whom are homeless or un or underemployed…
They call her mom… She’d been a mother and incarnation of God’s love the people at Oasis.
Her life has been well lived in service for others… It has been lived well.
According to yesterday Vancouver Sun the average life expectancy for a person in Vancouver is 81.9 years. We tend to emphasize physical healthy and longevity in our city, but what really matters to God is not so much the duration of our life, but the donation of it.
When I was first getting to know Sakiko, the woman I would eventually marry, one of the things she shared with me was that the Lord had told her that she was like Isaac. She did not know exactly what meant, but as she read about Isaac in the book of Genesis 26 was that Isaac’s crops increased 100-fold. And Sakiko said that, like Isaac, she wanted to live a life that would be used 100-fold for God’s glory.
I don’t know if you have ever thought about what you would like to have written on your tombstone. I know of someone who wants to engraved on their tombstone the words I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK.
I know of someone else, a business man named Bob Buford, wants simply 4 characters: 100 and then the letter “x” as a statement that he has lived a 100-fold life, meaning that the gifts and the opportunities that God had given to Bob were multiplied 100 times to bless people and to the glory of God. When we use our gifts to the glory of God, we can lead lives that are 10-fold, perhaps 20-fold, perhaps 50-fold, perhaps even 100-fold…and that is a great life…
And finally, and most importantly, when we offer our gifts to God, we worship God. In a story from the life of Moses, which doesn’t come from the Bible, but comes from Hebrew folklore. But it is a beautiful story and I want to share it with you.
Moses finds a shepherd in the desert. He spends a day with the shepherd and helps him milk his ewes. At the end of the day he sees that the shepherd puts the best milk that he has in a wooden bowl and places it on a flat stone some distance away.
So Moses asks him, “What is it for?”
The shepherd replies, “This is God’s milk.”
Moses is puzzled and he asks him, “What do you mean?”
The shepherd says, “I always take the best milk that I possess and I bring it as an offering to God.”
Moses, who is much more sophisticated than the shepherd with his naïve faith, asks, “And does God drink it?”
“Yes,” the shepherd replies, “He does.”
Then Moses feels compelled to enlighten the poor shepherd and he explains that God, who is pure Spirit, does not drink milk. But the shepherd is sure that he does so they get into an argument which ends with Moses telling the shepherd to hide behind the bushes to find out whether, in fact, God comes to drink the milk.
Moses then goes out to pray in the desert. The shepherd hides. The night comes…and in the moonlight the shepherd sees a little fox that comes trotting from the desert. Looks right…looks left…heads straight to the milk which he laps up, and then disappears into the desert again.
The next morning Moses finds the shepherd quite depressed and downcast.
“What is the matter?” he asks.
The shepherd says, “You were right. God is pure Spirit. And he doesn’t want my milk.”
Moses is surprised. He says, ‘You should be happy. You know more about God than you did before.”
“Yes, I do,” said the shepherd, “but the only thing I could do to express my love for him has been taken away from me.”
Moses sees the point. He retires into the desert and prays hard. In the night, in a vision God speaks to him and says, “Moses, you were wrong. It is true that I am pure Spirit, nevertheless, I also accepted with gratitude the milk which the shepherd offered me, but since being pure Spirit, I do not need the milk. I shared it with the little fox who is very fond of milk.”
When we offer our gifts to God we not only develop our ability to serve, not only do we bless people, but most important we bless and honor the God…
Why do we do this?
As for Paul rightly says, “In view of God’s mercy to us, his great mercy in Christ… offer yourselves your mind, soul and gifts to God as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God this is true worship…
And how did show his mercy to us? 2000 years ago… Jesus on the night before he was betrayed took bread… and broke it and said this in my body given for you…
The next he was crucified on a Roman…
Whether you’re a member here or not…
So take his body offered for you and respond by giving your body to God, your whole self…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
Text: Romans 12:1-8
Big Idea: When use our gifts for God and others we develop our gifts, bless people, and honor God.
Introduction
John Ortberg, a pastor in the San Francisco Bay area, tells about the time after his grandmother had died…
His grandfather called his mother and said "I found this old box of dishes in the attic. Would you like to come and take a look at them? If you don’t want them, I'll give them to the Salvation Army." When his mother came to look at the dishes, she was taken aback.
Here was the most exquisite set of Bavarian china she had ever seen. Each piece had been beautifully hand painted and the cups were rimmed with gold. The plates had been inlaid with mother-of-pearl. They found out later that the factory in Bavaria had been destroyed during the war and so these pieces were irreplaceable and priceless.
John said his mother had never seen this set of china. Eventually they found out the story of the china. It seems that when his grandmother was very young the family would give her a piece of this china for special occasions like birthdays, graduation, her confirmation in the church. And because they were so expensive his grandmother who was not from a wealthy family would carefully wrap them up and store them in a box in the attic waiting for a special occasion to use them. Evidently that special occasion never came and so his grandmother went to her grave with the greatest gift of her life never having been used.
Some people are like that with the “gifts” and talents…that God has given them… They remain un-opened and unused…
I have a hunch that on judgment day when we stand before God and give an account for our lives the biggest deal may not be some indiscretion we made in our youth, God may be more concerned about the fact we did not use the gifts and opportunities, that we did not use our potential…
If we really take to heart the Gospel and understand and respond to God’s mercy, it will be hard for us to not realize our potential… as Paul points out in Romans 12:1
Into the Central Message
The apostle Paul in Romans 12:1-2 says:
A Living Sacrifice
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship.
In the first 11 chapters of the book of Romans Paul has explained how God, in his great mercy, has become a human being in the person of Jesus Christ and has absorbed in his body our sins, so that we could be forgiven, welcomed into God’s living room, receive the very spirit of God, and, as a result of that, new life… Paul says in view of this mercy of God, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is true worship.
When Paul says offer your bodies as living sacrifices to God, he is urging us to offer every part of ourselves to God.
And then, as we focused on last Sunday, Paul says that we are to offer our minds to God. He says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
When Paul talks about the fact that we are not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, as we saw last week, the Greek word that he is using here can be literally translated “don’t be conformed to this present age.” Paul don’t be conformed to the temporal, fleeting values of this passing age…. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind… last Sunday we talked about how we can do this by taking on an eternal perspective… by living for the “line of eternity,” rather than the “dot” of this temporary existence.
Paul says in view of God’s mercy offer all of yourselves to God as living sacrifices, your mind, and then your gifts and talents.
Notice what Paul says in verses 4 and 5, he says:
4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your [a] faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give
encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, [b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. (Paul also lists gifts in 1 Cor.:12, as well as in Eph.4.)
Paul is urging the church at Rome and us to offer all of ourselves to God, including our body, mind, and gifts and talents to God.
Paul is urging us to unwrap our gifts and then to use them, recognizing that we don’t own ourselves or our gifts, but we, along with our gifts, belong to each other in the body (community) of Christ… God has entrusts you with certain talents at your birth, certain spiritual gifts when you are reborn into God’s family… their yours, but their not yours, you are called to unwrap them and use them for the community, the common good.
My wife recently gave me a copy of the book Bushido a book on Samurai ethics…
Part of what it means to live in a community of Samurai is to live a life of service and compassion… Part of my own family heritage--if I trace it back far enough is one of one where people use their gifts in the service of the larger community…
If you are a part of God’s family, to use Paul’s metaphor part of the body of Christ, you also have part of great family heritage tracing back to Abraham of service in the community…
Paul urges us here in Romans 12 to discover what our gifts are and use them to use them in service of the common good…
Is it telling the Word of God? Is it serving? Is it teaching? Is it encouraging? Is it giving? Is it showing mercy? (Paul also lists gifts in 1 Cor.:12, as well as in Eph.4.) If we are not sure what our gift is, we do well to experiment with all kinds of service and through that discover what one or two areas we might focus in on… (gifts assessment surveys can be helpful, but the best way to discover your gifts is to experiment and to discover what how you can bless others and what you’re passionate about).
What will would happen if and wrap and used our gifts?
At least three things happen: it develops us, blesses the world, and honors God.
In our small group the other Tuesday night in our home, we were discussing this passage, and someone talked about how when we use our gifts, we are able to develop our gifts.
When we recognize that when use our gifts, we are not just doing what we are doing for other human beings, but when we use our gifts, we are doing them for God. That provides the greatest of all motivations to offer our best, because what we do is done unto God and when happens we also grow our gifts.
You might have a gift, for example, in the area of teaching. You may have an opportunity to teach a small group of people. If you do your best and unto God, not only will you bless people if you have the gift, but you will also develop that gift. If you think your gift may be listening to people and helping them gain clarity by your listening people into speech…if you give your people your best attention, not only will you bless them, but you will develop your gift in helping bring direction to people by helping them hear their own voice.
Sometimes people will ask me how does a person learn to do what you do—pastor a church? How did you learn to do what you do? Where did you go to seminary?
I’m very grateful for my seminary education…
But as I look back I learned to do now what I do through “needs” and opportunities to serve.
When I was a high school student and new Christian, the youth pastor at our church went to Africa to serve as a missionary… There was no pastor to lead our group…there was a need, so a friend and I volunteered to the lead the group. I had no idea that one day, I’d be a pastor then. But I saw a need and wanted to help fill it and I guess looking back I “developed” through that experience.
When I was working for the SONY group in Tokyo in my early twenties, I started going to a church in Northeast Tokyo with about 20-25 people at their main Sunday service. The pastor was about 80 years old. He needed a relief hitter (preacher/teacher)… and so though I had majored in economics and philosophy as an undergrad… and had not been to seminary at the point in my life, I began to speak to usually the afternoon service which sometimes only had 10 people attending… I was shaky preacher…. (arguably still am!) But I did my best as unto God… I developed… that’s were I cut my teeth… I didn’t know then I would be a full-time pastor one day… but the helping to meet the need helped me to grow…
Perhaps most important of all, at our little church once a month, we’d have lunch after the morning at the church… curry or something like that, and after lunch I’d enjoying going into the kitchen to do the dishes… mostly because it would provoke people. The Japanese older traditional women would freak out (at first), objecting saying, that as a man I should not be doing the dishes… (sometimes it’s to good to break cultural stereotypes that aren’t helpful)...
Some times I go down to the kitchen here at Tenth… and do some dishes … and once in a while someone older and more traditional, will say half-jokingly, half seriously the pastor shouldn’t be doing the dishes!
Doing dishes with those older Japanese women helped shed in me a sense of entitlement that males can become afflicted with in Japan and grow in some needed ways…
Offering your gifts to God not only enables you to grow, but enables you to impact the world.
There are so may examples I could give from this community. Last Sunday in between services we honored Linda Wirch… one of the women here at Tenth in her senior years--who volunteers so much of her time and energy in the service of others in this church… and has done that for many years. Now that the kitchen is being closed for the rebuild she’s taking this transition as an opportunity to step back from some of her volunteering and to create space to care for her husband Art who’s suffering from Parkinson’s disease…
Linda’s been so faithful… Among the many other things each Tuesday she’s been cooking and loving the people of Oasis, some of whom are homeless or un or underemployed…
They call her mom… She’d been a mother and incarnation of God’s love the people at Oasis.
Her life has been well lived in service for others… It has been lived well.
According to yesterday Vancouver Sun the average life expectancy for a person in Vancouver is 81.9 years. We tend to emphasize physical healthy and longevity in our city, but what really matters to God is not so much the duration of our life, but the donation of it.
When I was first getting to know Sakiko, the woman I would eventually marry, one of the things she shared with me was that the Lord had told her that she was like Isaac. She did not know exactly what meant, but as she read about Isaac in the book of Genesis 26 was that Isaac’s crops increased 100-fold. And Sakiko said that, like Isaac, she wanted to live a life that would be used 100-fold for God’s glory.
I don’t know if you have ever thought about what you would like to have written on your tombstone. I know of someone who wants to engraved on their tombstone the words I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK.
I know of someone else, a business man named Bob Buford, wants simply 4 characters: 100 and then the letter “x” as a statement that he has lived a 100-fold life, meaning that the gifts and the opportunities that God had given to Bob were multiplied 100 times to bless people and to the glory of God. When we use our gifts to the glory of God, we can lead lives that are 10-fold, perhaps 20-fold, perhaps 50-fold, perhaps even 100-fold…and that is a great life…
And finally, and most importantly, when we offer our gifts to God, we worship God. In a story from the life of Moses, which doesn’t come from the Bible, but comes from Hebrew folklore. But it is a beautiful story and I want to share it with you.
Moses finds a shepherd in the desert. He spends a day with the shepherd and helps him milk his ewes. At the end of the day he sees that the shepherd puts the best milk that he has in a wooden bowl and places it on a flat stone some distance away.
So Moses asks him, “What is it for?”
The shepherd replies, “This is God’s milk.”
Moses is puzzled and he asks him, “What do you mean?”
The shepherd says, “I always take the best milk that I possess and I bring it as an offering to God.”
Moses, who is much more sophisticated than the shepherd with his naïve faith, asks, “And does God drink it?”
“Yes,” the shepherd replies, “He does.”
Then Moses feels compelled to enlighten the poor shepherd and he explains that God, who is pure Spirit, does not drink milk. But the shepherd is sure that he does so they get into an argument which ends with Moses telling the shepherd to hide behind the bushes to find out whether, in fact, God comes to drink the milk.
Moses then goes out to pray in the desert. The shepherd hides. The night comes…and in the moonlight the shepherd sees a little fox that comes trotting from the desert. Looks right…looks left…heads straight to the milk which he laps up, and then disappears into the desert again.
The next morning Moses finds the shepherd quite depressed and downcast.
“What is the matter?” he asks.
The shepherd says, “You were right. God is pure Spirit. And he doesn’t want my milk.”
Moses is surprised. He says, ‘You should be happy. You know more about God than you did before.”
“Yes, I do,” said the shepherd, “but the only thing I could do to express my love for him has been taken away from me.”
Moses sees the point. He retires into the desert and prays hard. In the night, in a vision God speaks to him and says, “Moses, you were wrong. It is true that I am pure Spirit, nevertheless, I also accepted with gratitude the milk which the shepherd offered me, but since being pure Spirit, I do not need the milk. I shared it with the little fox who is very fond of milk.”
When we offer our gifts to God we not only develop our ability to serve, not only do we bless people, but most important we bless and honor the God…
Why do we do this?
As for Paul rightly says, “In view of God’s mercy to us, his great mercy in Christ… offer yourselves your mind, soul and gifts to God as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God this is true worship…
And how did show his mercy to us? 2000 years ago… Jesus on the night before he was betrayed took bread… and broke it and said this in my body given for you…
The next he was crucified on a Roman…
Whether you’re a member here or not…
So take his body offered for you and respond by giving your body to God, your whole self…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
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