You Matter! : The Three-Kick Rule

You can view the video version of this sermon here.

            Greetings and welcome back to another week here at Making Waves! We are thrilled to have you back with us once again today. If you missed last week’s sermon, feel free to click back or scroll down in the blog to check it out first, as this is part 2 of a new sermon series we are taking under our wing.

This new series is called, “You Matter!” I feel like now, more than ever, we are being beaten down in our lives. With the rise of technology and advance in communication, it can be hard to stay relevant. Especially in this political season, it’s hard to feel like our voice is being heard and that we matter. But, for whatever it’s worth, I’m telling you –right here, right now- YOU MATTER! Now, I’m no political analyst, so I can’t make any guarantees there… but I know that you matter in one of the most important ways imaginable: you matter to God and His purpose for this planet.

We will get more into all this in just a moment, but before we go any further into this message, let’s dive into the Word. Today, we’re going to be reading from one of the letters of Paul, 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, starting in verse 2 and reading to verse 11. Will you join me?

“11 Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. ² You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. ³ Therefore I want you to know 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.

⁴ There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. ⁵ There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. ⁶ There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

⁷ Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. ⁸ To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, ⁹ to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, ¹⁰ to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹ All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.”

                                                                                      -1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Will you pray with me?

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be acceptable and glorifying of You here today, God. You are our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Once there was a young man from Illinois who was a big-time game hunter. He had always wanted to go duck hunting in good, ol’ Pelham, NC, and, after some insistent irritation, he convinced his wife to let him go out to cheese-country and do a little hunting.

It really couldn’t have gone much worse. He wasn’t having hardly any luck. Finally, he got his opportunity and he shot the duck down. Elated by finally getting some game, he rushed over to the downed fowl. When he gets to the duck, he finds that it landed outside of the boundaries of the woods, on the other side of a fence.

Stubborn and fed up with his luck, the man climbs over the fence to retrieve his prize. Nearly as soon as he gets over, an old farmer pulls up to him on his rusty tractor. The farmer asks the man, “What do you think you’re doing?

The young man explained to the old farmer that he was retrieving the duck that he had shot down, but the old farmer said that the duck was on his property and the young man couldn’t have it.

Frustrated beyond belief, the young man begins to yell at the old man and they argue and bicker back and forth until the young man mentions that he travelled all the way from Illinois for this duck.

Upon hearing this, the old man says, “Well, it sounds to me like you aren’t from around these parts, so you wouldn’t know. But here in Pelham, we settle things with the three-kick rule.”

The young man cocks his head in confusion and asks the old farmer what the three-kick rule could be. The old farmer explains that they each kick each other as hard as they can three times back and forth until someone gives up and the other gets the object that caused the disagreement.

The young man agrees, knowing whole-heartedly that he could best the feeble old man. The old farmer climbs down from the tractor and kicks the young man three times, as hard as he can, knocking the young man to the ground.

The young man gets up, in great pain, and says to the old man, “Alright, you old coot, now it’s my turn.”

The old farmer climbs back up on his tractor with a smile and says, “Nope, I give up. The duck’s all yours.”

Now, this is clearly a silly example, but this story shows how all people can be stubborn. It’s our natural human condition to divide over our disagreements. No matter how petty the issue, duck or not, the story stays the same. Our selfish nature takes over and we inevitably end up dividing from one another.

Side note: I did just realize that this is second week in a row I’ve talked about water fowl in my sermon. Okay, back on topic.

Let me tell you that this selfishness didn’t start with us. It has been around since the days of the people of Corinth (and beforehand, too). If you read through the letters of Paul to the several small churches across the region, you will find that people liked to disagree about things. These disagreements spawned from a similar place to this silly story that I told earlier. We can be uninformed, as Paul warns the people of Corinth of in his first line of this chapter.

So, how does this relate to us here today? Well, I’m not so sure we are in too different of a place than the people of Corinth were back then. Many of us may be uninformed about these spiritual gifts. We may not know exactly where they come from, or how we get them, or what’s the difference between a gift and a talent, or how do I even use this gift? Well, that’s what I’d like to talk about today.

So, let’s start by first defining what these gifts even are.

^“4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. ⁵ There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. ⁶ There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.”

Paul mentions earlier this idea that there ARE, in fact, different kinds of gifts. Like we discussed last week, each part of the body isn’t identical, but they are all necessary. In the same way, not every person has the same gift, but all are used for the same purpose: glorifying God. The word “gift” in this context spawns from the Greek word “Charismata” which directly translates to the word “grace.” If there is one thing you’ve heard me talk about here at Pelham, it’s this word “grace.”

These gifts that we are given are gifts from God, but if the word gifts can also be read as the word grace, then these gifts of God are actually grace that we have been given by God. So, we know that these gifts in particular are gifts given to us directly from God in order to fulfill His purpose and calling for us in our ministry. Remember last week, we talked about how we are ALL called to ministry (granted, we may be all called to a different form of ministry, but all are called to serve.)

So, okay, now we know that these gifts are from God, but let’s be more specific, what gifts does Paul describe here. And what do all of these fancy words really mean?

Well, in this passage alone, there are the gifts of administration, apostleship, discernment, exhortation, faith, healing, help, knowledge, miracles, prophesy, teaching, tongues, interpretation and wisdom. If you look in some other passages where gifts are mentioned, you can find exhortation, leadership, mercy, teaching, giving, pastoring and even more. 

I can look at a lot of these words and my eyes just go crossed, mainly because I am a very visual person, I need to understand things tangibly. So, let’s see if we can illustrate these gifts to better understand them.

First, here’s a situation. We have our homecoming here in the next few weeks, let’s say that while we are at homecoming, I make my way over to the dessert table, before anyone else gets a chance, of course. I might see some delicious coconut pie, warm bread pudding, cakes and more. Using the excuse that I will share with my lovely wife, I fill my plate to overflowing and, inevitably, the plate bends and all of my dessert falls to the ground.

Now, those of you with the gift of prophesy, you knew that was going to happen. So, you apply it to the future, you explain to everyone that, “That’s what happens when you’re not careful.”

But those of you with the gift of service would stand from your seats and come over to help me, saying, “Oh, let me help you clean it up.”

The teachers in the room might logically seek to explain the situation, “Well, the reason it fell was because it was just too heavy on one side. Nathan should have balanced the coconut pie out with the bread pudding instead of balancing it with cream puffs.”

Now, those with the gift of exhortation, otherwise known as encouragement, might pat me on the back and smile and tell me, “Maybe next time you should let someone else carry it.”

Those with the gift of giving would offer up their own dessert in replacement.

Those with mercy would tell me, “Don’t feel too bad, that could have happened to anyone.”

The administrators might start getting into action mode: “John, would you get the mop? Alan, come help get this up. Logan, make your husband go on a one-dessert-at-a-time diet.”

Now, I could go on and on all afternoon about the various gifts and the ways to apply them, but I wanted to provide at least a few them and show you how each of those people in that situation helped in their own special way. None were unimportant.

Once we’ve defined what these gifts are and where they come from, what next? After that, we take active steps to discover our gifts. Last week, I stated that we were going to be taking a spiritual gift survey today, but then I decided to wait until to next week and instead to encourage us to do something else this week. Before we start answering all these questions about our strengths and weaknesses and where we are gifted, we should turn to the Holy Spirit first.

When one desires to pursue discovering his or her spiritual gifts, you need to remember what we mentioned earlier. Where do these gifts come from? These gifts are not your own raw, natural talent. These gifts are grace that is given from God through the Holy Spirit. So, the first recourse we should turn to for our gifts is the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? Turn to the Bible, turn to prayer. Seek answers from the Holy Spirit about where you are being led.

But don’t stop there; sometimes we can sit on those gifts. The Holy Spirit may tell us that we are called to serve in administration, but we may have never done a single thing in our lives that prepared us for that, which is scary. So, we hide that gift, even though the Spirit is pushing us towards it. When it comes to those kinds of things, we turn to others around us. Ask people you know and trust what they see in you.

Let me tell you a story. There was this piano player who was incredibly skilled on the piano. He would play at piano bars and he had quite the crowd that would follow him around just to hear him play the keys. Finally, one night his crowd wanted to hear him sing a song. The piano player told the crowd that he doesn’t sing. Well, the crowd demanded it. When the crowd threatened to leave, the bartender told the piano player that he may not sing, but if he wants to get paid, he better learn – fast.” So, the piano player sang a song. He never sang in public before that, but now he had done so for the first time.  It was also the first time the public heard the song “Mona Lisa” sung by Nat King Cole on that very night. He had this talent that he was sitting on, and he may have just remained a talented, no-name piano player in no-name bars had he not been encouraged to sing. Because he HAD to sing, he went on to become one of the best-known entertainers in America.

So, during this week I challenge you to pursue these steps: actively pray and ask the Holy Spirit what your gifts could be, come up with a few possibilities. Ask those around you who care and love you. Then come back next week and we will take the quiz and see what your personality says about your gifts.

So, finally, we’ve defined what gifts are, we’ve dabbled in discovering what our own gifts are, what’s next? We now prepare to deliver these gifts.

A well-known college football coach was once asked by a reporter, “How much does college football contribute to the national physical fitness picture?

“Nothing.” the coach replied shortly.

Startled, the interviewer asked, “Why not?”

“Well,” the coach explained, “the way I see it, you have 22 men down here on the field desperately needing a rest and 40,000 people in the stands, desperately needing some exercise.”

God isn’t calling us to a life in the sidelines, folks, and He certainly calling us to a life in the bleachers. You matter. God wants YOU to serve and to use your spiritually given gifts to better serve and further His kingdom here on earth.

Think about it.