Gifted

1 Peter 4, 10-11 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's very grace. Whoever speaks is one who speaks oracles of God. Whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Last week we talked about how Peter began this section where he says the end of all things is at hand and you be self-controlled, sober-minded in verse 7. and then loving one another in verse 8. And then verse 9, hospitality, which is a form of love. And then in verse 10, Peter starts talking about gifts. And so we have to ask ourselves, what are these gifts?

What is he talking about when he says each has received a gift? And what Peter is talking about is the gifts of the Holy Spirit, I believe, most certainly. These are the things that every believer has when the Holy Spirit saves them. It's a special, at least one gift that they receive from the Holy Spirit that they are to minister to others with. The Greek word, so this is from all my Greek students in here, we've got a whole gaggle of Greek people here now.

The Greek word is charisma. And so when you talk to people who say they are charismatic. It's actually really interesting because what I say is, yeah, I'm charismatic too. I believe in the Holy Spirit's gifts. I just happen to believe in the cessation of a few of them that the modern day people who are called continuationists don't believe in the cessation of.

So we're not going to get into a detailed discussion of the gifts that have ceased, the prophecy, tongues, and healing. These are the miraculous sign gifts that were given to the first century church to authenticate the apostles and those who were ministering to the church while the canon was still being developed. So if you imagine the church at Corinth, if you go to, I think, like Acts 18, they start this church.

They needed revelation that they didn't have because all of these Bible books we have hadn't been written yet, the 39 New Testament books. And so we're not going to get into the details of what those are and why I think they ceased, and that's part of our confession. It's actually the very first chapter of our confession. But what I do want to talk about is the gifts that we do have.

And I want to talk about how God has told us we're to steward them. It's an interesting word, steward, when we talk about gifts. the first thing we learn about the gifts is that they didn't originate with you. The fact that it's called a gift means it was given to you. So if you have a gift, which if you're a believer, you have at least one, what it means is that God granted something to you that you could not have mustered by your own strength.

This is very important to our humility. Turn to 1 Corinthians 12, verse 4. Through 11. Let's just look a little bit about these gifts. And how they were being used. Last week we read 1 Corinthians 13.

Now we're going backwards into 12. Because Paul actually had to develop his theology of love in Corinthians. It develops out of the misuse and abuse of gifts in the Corinthian church. In verse 4 Paul says. Now there are a variety of gifts. but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of service but the same Lord.

And there are varieties of activities but it is the same God who empowers them all and everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom. And to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit. to another faith by the same spirit to another gifts of healing by the one spirit to another the working of miracles to another prophecy to another the ability to distinguish between spirits to another various kinds of tongues and to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are empowered by one and the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills. So the first thing we need to note is that there is one God, one Holy Spirit. He's the giver of all of these good gifts. And so he has decided that he is going to divide up all of these gifts that he gives to his people. And he divides it in a very perfect way.

Like a perfectly perfect. There's not enough superlatives to describe how perfect God distributes anything that he chooses to distribute. But the point is this. the scripture is telling us that not any single one of us will have all the gifts. It's God the Holy Spirit who possesses them and who gives them out. He's the perfect one. You may have a gift that's different from someone else.

You may also have the same gift as somebody else. And many people have some of the same gifts. The point is that your gift is given by God and you are to be humble about it, even if somebody doesn't have the same one. And you to recognize that God the one who decides who going to get all the gifts So you also don get angry at somebody else that doesn happen to have maybe a gift that you wish they had that day It's not owned by you, and it's not dependent upon you.

It's given to you. Thus, because it's been given to you, you should be a good steward of that gift. Turn to 1 Corinthians 4, 1 and 2. Paul says this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God moreover it is required of stewards that they be found faithful the point of going to that verse wasn't so much about gifts but about stewardship you're to be faithful with what you've been given if God has given you a gift and I say if God has given you a gift But that's almost a rhetorical thing because God has given you a gift if you're a Christian.

So if God has given you a gift, you are to be a good steward of it. This means you're to share it with all those who need it, especially in the church. Turn to Acts chapter 4, verse 33. One of the gifts that we'll see is generosity. I'm not going to try to define all the gifts. You can probably spend a week on each gift easily.

I'm not going to try to tell you how to take a test so you know what your gifts are I will tell you don't go on the internet and take a test to try to figure out what your gifts are I've seen those and I took one for fun and I have gifts to the sea so I don't know how that works according to the quiz but I think that sometimes those personality tests probably get some things right because we're not all that different from one another. But where your gifts are actually supposed to be practiced, recognized, encouraged, and grown is in the church. It's actually one of the most exciting things about adding people to the church.

It's starting to think, well, God has gifted these people to bless our church specifically. I know there's things that he's gifted them with. But in Acts 4.33, speaking of money, it says, And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. Grace is a gift. 34. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. sharing with others is a principle in scripture that doesn't only apply to our financial contributions but generosity is actually a gift of the Spirit.

So it's actually one of them. Because your gift was given to you by God the Holy Spirit because other people's gifts were given to them by God the Holy Spirit you should encourage others to employ their gifts in like manner as yourself. So as much as you want to know what your spiritual gift is and I'm with you here. Like I was a new Christian for however long you're new.

I don't know what the cutoff is, but for several years I just wanted someone to come up and say, hey, let's figure out your spiritual gift. And I wanted somebody to help me with it. And I never was in a situation where anything quite that formal occurred. And I think it's something we should talk about more. And one of the reasons is because when you're exercising your gifts, it actually edifies you and encourages you and helps you.

It'll increase your faith even to know that God is using you through a gift he gave you that you only have as the result of the indwelling of the Spirit. And so I think we want to encourage this. But you also want to encourage others then. So even while you may not be completely sure of what your gifts may be, or maybe you think you have one that isn't able to be exercised as much because it's not something that's used yet at your church.

So, for example, you could have multiple people with the gift of teaching, and there's only one person teaching at any one moment, right? This was the big problem in the Corinthian churches. They all just wanted to show up and they all wanted to use their gift of tongues, basically. That was their big problem. They all wanted to show up and they all wanted to speak in tongues because that was considered to be a super exciting thing that could happen.

It was titillating to them. It titillated their senses to think that God was using me in this really miraculous way where I'm able to speak in a language that I never knew before. and to them that was way more exciting than showing up at church and having the gift of helping others. It was way more exciting than being able to go up to somebody and discerning that they were having a tough time and saying an encouraging word that only maybe one person would hear and be affected by.

They wanted what would be considered the preeminent gifts, the exciting ones. And that's why Paul follows up 1 Corinthians 12 all about the abuse of the gifts with 13 about love, which we read last week. And Peter does it in the other order. He says love people above all, and then he starts talking about gifts. But encourage others to employ their gifts.

So you can be looking at others too and trying to help them to know what their gifts are. And don't despise your own gift either. If you don't happen to like your gift because something in you really wished you had a different one, like that's not okay. God has given you the gift that he apportions to you. Turn to Romans 12. God has decided what gift you're going to have.

And it sounds silly. I remember when somebody first told me, don't despise your gifts or your gift. And I remember thinking that really weird Why would I And then over time I started to realize sometimes you kind of want to be gifted like other people There's people who have some gifts that they really get praised for, and then some part of me wants to be praised also, and then I want to have that same gift as somebody else.

And I think people can get to a point where they're actually unhappy with God's sovereign apportionment of gifts to them. In Romans 12, 3, this is right after being told how to not be conformed to the world. Paul says, For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Again, it's about humility. Don't think more highly of yourself than you ought. Be sober about it and keep in mind that if you are doing anything well, the greatest Christian whoever lived with the greatest virtues of Christianity and the most powerful working of the Spirit in his life was nothing more than a wicked hell-bound sinner who God decided to save by His grace through faith in His Son and then He granted him these gifts.

And I'll be so bold as to say the greatest Christian who ever lived is probably not in this room. so you're not even as good as the greatest Christian don't be proud of what you do well there's a whole different argument I'm going on a rabbit trail we're like the most devolved humans that have ever lived so when you think about it from the perspective of Adam was perfect and we've just been really getting dumber for 6,000 years you may not be so proud of yourself anymore when you realize that most of us can't find our way down the street without an iPhone telling us where to go and people traveled across oceans before we had electricity that we could harness. So some of the people that came before us were pretty smart and I bet you they were smarter than sometimes we give them credit for because we stand on their shoulders and look farther than they could. But Paul says, for as in one body we have many members.

So you've got fingers, toes, arms, nose. You've got all these different body parts that do things. Some of them we don't talk about in public, but those are actually the most important ones. And if they failed, you'd go straight to the ER. And some of them, you know, you don't mind showing people, hey, my finger hurts. It's really not that important and it's not that ugly to show people.

You could live without a finger if you had to even. But Paul says we have many members and the members don't all have the same function. So he's using this analogy that in a body, we have different members that do different things. And in fact, we're happy about that. And he says, we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another.

We are united in a very special way. So whereas one person may be good at one thing and one good at another, these things are all actually necessary. All right. It's not up to your toe to be angry at your nose because it's not a toe. That's the analogy Paul gives us in Corinthians. The eye shouldn't say to the hand, why are you not more like me?

We're all different because that's how God has assigned the body to function. We are in the body of Christ. And so Paul says, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. So Paul says the same thing as Peter. We have varied graces that have been given to us, use them. And he says, if prophecy in proportion to our faith.

Maybe we're going to mention some. If service in our serving. Well, that's a boring one. I mean, seriously, who just wants to show up and serve? Maybe not even be thanked? Maybe after 30 years get a little reward for it?

Maybe a watch, thanks for serving? These are the things that are not exciting to our flesh. But God, if He has called you to serve, and in fact if He's gifted you to serve, that's actually where you're going to find the most happiness. This was the prayer that I read. Happiness, if you look in the Valley of Vision, it's called happiness. And it talks about how you will only find happiness if you're actually living in God's will.

That's actually where true joy is found. He says the one who teaches in his teaching. So use your gift to teach if that's your gift. The one who exhorts in his exhortation. The one who contributes in generosity. We have missionaries all over the world right now.

Trying to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. And most of them are in places where they can't just show up and get a job. They require the generosity of those of us that have. In Acts 4 we saw that some of the people needed others to sell their property so they could actually eat and live. The one who leads with zeal. You can remind me of that one once in a while.

You start seeing me putting my head down. when you lead you're supposed to do it with zeal don't grow weary of doing good the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness there's a lot of gifts and these gifts are to be used and I'm not going to define what each one is there's a few different lists in scripture and going through the lists is helpful and I think it's good for us to try to think about practicing these things there's no excuse in scripture for not exercising something just because it's not your gift. So if you don't particularly feel like you're gifted with acts of mercy, it doesn't mean you aren't required to be merciful. It's just that some people are going to be much more natural at it in their Christianity than others.

And we're to recognize that and encourage it. In 1 Samuel 2.7, Hannah's praying. She says, the Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and He exalts So if you have money It because God gave it to you So don hold on to it like it yours Like you earned it and it all yours necessarily to do what you want with Now in verse 11 of 1 Peter 4, Peter divides all the gifts into two categories.

In fact, the second category may actually include the first. But he divides them into two categories. It's the speaking gifts and then serving gifts. And I've heard preachers say that some things are the speaking gifts and some people in the commentaries that I looked at just said, well, the speaking gifts are a specific gift he talks about and then that's also a serving gift.

And I agree with that. But we're to be good stewards of these gifts. He says, whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God. In Isaiah 8.20, we have one of the supporting verses that comes out of the first chapter of our founding document, the 1689. And this whole section is extremely chilling, actually, for me. The responsibility to stand in front of anyone, even on the street, but in particular the people of God, and to deliver the oracles of God to them is utterly serious.

And it's not something to be joked about or trifled with. God says in Isaiah 20, to the teaching and to the testimony, if they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. 1 Corinthians 4, I'm going to jump around a couple here to talk about this. I'll be honest, it strikes. Sorry, 2 Corinthians 4. In 1 Corinthians 4, it talks about being a good steward and being found faithful.

In 2 Corinthians 4, verse 1, Paul says, Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, it's a speaking ministry, a teaching ministry, spreading the gospel. He says, we do not lose heart. He says, but we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God when you're preaching God's word when you're teaching God's word some of you men that we just added to the church when you come up here maybe even next week and you do the call to worship or you read from the book of Genesis or you read from even the confession, we're doing something utterly serious up here.

It's not to be tampered with. In the 21st century, we don't have what we would rightfully call prophets. The addition of new revelation has ceased. The completion of the canon is our evidence of that. the sending of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is what has brought about the fact that we don't need anymore. He is our revelation. But when you stand and you preach God's Word, whether it's on the street corner at Ohio State, at an abortion clinic, or in a church building, at a conference, at a Bible camp, or whether you're doing it in your own house, with your own wife and your own kids, whoever speaks is one who preaches the oracles of God, who speaks the oracles of God. it's not a time for joking around it's not a time to make up stories it's not a time to tell people about all the successes that you've had in your Christian life it's a time to exalt and magnify the Lord Jesus Christ and to tell people what his word says so that they may have an encounter with God themselves and that's not going to happen through your cool delivery your fancy stories I'm not opposed to an anecdote once in a while or an illustration or some kind of analogy.

I think that's part of teaching. But we all know the difference between somebody that gets up and tells you all about his life and what a great guy he is and somebody that tells you all about Jesus Christ and what a great person he is. We all know the difference between somebody who practices cunning or tampers with God's word. And maybe you don't know the difference.

Maybe you need someone in your life who has the gift of discerning spirits to help you know the difference. but we should know the difference between somebody who tampers with God's word somebody who twists it for their own ends and so this is utterly serious in the Old Testament if you prophesied falsely you didn't rename your ministry and start it three months later in another city you got stoned to death I've never watched a stoning I don't want to I can only imagine if you understand stoning correctly that it would have been a long and somewhat painful death and it would have taken a little while and this is what God prescribed for people who raped others and people who murdered others and for somebody that spoke in his name and spoke falsely it's serious and you guys should take it seriously you guys should be coming up to me after the service even if I just misspeak and you should tell me not in animosity I mean you may say hey I think you maybe made a mistake you know what I mean not saying it has to be an argument but if I say something incorrect I'd like to know I'd like to be able to correct it what if somebody heard it and didn't discern that it was just maybe a mistake or what if I really have a mistake what if I have bad doctrine what if I've contradicted scripture tampered with it it's people that sit in the church that prop up false teachers for themselves Teachers have nowhere to go unless somebody's listening. You understand that? There's no false teacher that goes into a room and just tricks people.

They keep up for themselves, false teachers, people who will tickle their ears. So it's incumbent upon us as listeners to really understand the Word so we can keep an eye on that. so Peter says whoever speaks is one who speaks oracles of God and whoever serves is one who serves by the strength God supplies I agree with the commentators I read who said that if whoever serves who serves by the strength God supplies that teaching and preaching is actually underneath that umbrella so although it was treated separate because it's a special way to exercise a gift it's also subject to the same rule as the end of 1 Peter 11 or really the middle, that's a very long verse. If you're a memory verse person, don't start with that one.

It's a hard one because it feels like you're done and then you're not. And then it feels like you're done and then you're not. But Peter tells us, whoever served by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. and the strength that God supplies applies to all the gifts and one of the things to understand is that God's the one who supplies it let me tell you what if God supplies something you're not going to run out I think that we're afraid sometimes and I apply this one a little bit to money because I think we have a money problem and a greed problem and a covetousness problem in our culture I think some of us don't actually understand how covetous and greedy we really are because we live in a culture of such affluence and comfort that we're just surrounded by it.

We live in a culture of such immodesty that Christians can be pretty immodest by most standards and look totally non-worldly because the world's so bad, right? And I think we have the same problem with money in our culture. I think that because we have been gifted with so much money And there's so many really, we'll say really rich people in the United States that we look at them and think, well, we can't be greedy because we're not like that guy.

He's got so much money. He should be giving it all away, we think, you know. We're all little socialists at heart, like when we're looking at the richer guy. And so what I want you to think about is that when God is supplying your gift for you, when he's supplying you with the strength to serve, with the strength to be generous, with the strength to do acts of mercy, if God is the one supplying it, you're not going to burn out.

When people have what's called ministry burnout, or work burnout, it can happen anywhere, your marriage burnout, when people have these things, the problem is not what you see at the moment, The problem is the motivation that led up to it. So you can get up and you can work really hard to preach every week. And you can say you're doing it for God. And I'm not saying this about every single person that's ever had a tough time as a pastor.

But if you're doing it for the right reasons. If you're doing it by the strength that God supplies. I don't think you're going to hit that burnout. If you're donating money because you have money. And God has blessed you. if you're doing acts of mercy, acts of service the helps, the administrations if you're doing all these things teaching, exhorting one another if you're doing it by your own strength it's going to get hard and so you work backwards and you say to yourself why is ministry hard why is waking up and we have church in the afternoon so it's like if waking up and going to church here is hard you've got a real problem maybe why is getting up and going to church hard Why is it hard to wake up and read your Bible in the morning before you go to work if you know that's the best time for you?

Why is it hard to get everybody gathered around for family worship? Sometimes it's hard because you're trying to do it in your own strength and not truly for the glory of Jesus Christ. That's the key. And how do you fix it? Well, you go back to that basic. And you want to do it by the strength God supplies.

You want to ask God to give you the strength. I've noticed that in my times of greatest difficulty in my Christian life I can look back personally and I can see a time of least prayer I've always been like a Bible reading kind of guy I don know why I like that it natural for me but in my life I have noticed that when things get hard when things are difficult with the wife even when my kids are starting to act up she looked she heard wife she knew it was about her When the kids are acting up, when I find myself irritable at work, every time in my life that I find that I'm starting to have what I would consider to be difficulty and burnout, I almost always can look back and realize, well, wow, I haven't prayed as much, or I missed a day, or I prayed, but I wasn't that serious about it. I was distracted.

So find what the thing is for you. How do you minister by the strength that God supplies? In Ephesians 6, 8, there's a little verse about bond servants and their masters, but there's an applicability here that I want you to understand that should bring you joy in your service. Knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord.

Galatians 6, when we're told how to treat some people in the church. Galatians 6, 6, it's an interesting verse. Let the one who has taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. It's almost difficult to read and teach that from up here. Because it sounds self-serving. But it's the word of God.

Let the one who has taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. Well, why? Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, that he will also reap. Well, there's the principle in mind.

This isn't karma. This is the principle God has given us. Like we read in Ephesians 6, whatever good anyone does for the Lord, this he will receive back from the Lord. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And so your gifts are to be exercised for the benefits of others. and let us not grow weary of doing good Galatians 6.9 for in due season we will reap don't grow weary if we do not give up so then as we have opportunity let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith your gifts are to be exercised throughout your life but especially at church especially with your local church in James 2 James is deriding the Christians of the time for their abuse of God's grace he says in verse 15 if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them go in peace, be warm and filled without giving them the things needed for the body what good is that? in 1 John 3.17 God tells us that if we don't help our brother who's in need how does God's love even abide in you?

I'm not saying that we have to give everybody everything they ask for I'm not saying that every Christian that ends up poor is not poor because of maybe some of their own doing and needs a little counsel too but part of how you love others is by trusting God to supply your every need and if you believe God's going to supply every need you won't hold so tightly to the things that you think are yours particularly your gifts in Proverbs 19 verse 17 this is a neat little chapter about if you're thinking about money though the whole chapter but he says whoever is generous to the poor lends to Yahweh and he will repay him for his need there's a principle in scripture that you will be paid back by the Lord himself for the deeds done to the poor turn to Ecclesiastes 11 we're going to finish there and for the sake of our communion message is going to also relate to to this when we go to Luke 16 for communion but Ecclesiastes 11 it's a verse section that has always somewhat escaped me what it means and I think it applicable to what we talking about here we talking about giving and in particular some of the giving we talked about was monetary giving And that's certainly in view, but I also think that we should understand the spiritual aspect of that you have gifts. You have skills and talents God's given you, and you're to share them with everyone. in Ecclesiastes 11. Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.

Give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you do not know what disaster may happen on earth. If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth. And if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap. As you do not know the way the Spirit comes to the bones and the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. Cast your bread upon the waters. It sounds like a weird thing. Like you've got a loaf of bread and just throw it out to sea. I have this picture of a guy holding Ecclesiastes 11 and tossing out bread.

And it says it'll come back. You'll find it after many days. Like he's going to have this soggy bread and salt water. The whole thing seemed really weird to me. And then we think about it. He's telling us to go ahead and give of ourselves.

Give of what you think you need to nourish you even. Give of what has been given to you. And one of the purposes of doing that is the trust that the Lord will somehow return it. And verse 6 tells us, no it was verse 5, you do not know the work of God. You don't know how it's going to happen. You don't have to have a logical plan for how giving to poor people who cannot help you is going to somehow help you.

To know that the Lord is going to watch out for you if you do so. This is why there's a phrase, it's I think even a secular phrase, that how you treat people who can do nothing for you tells us about your character more than how you treat people who can do something for you. Jude, talking about false teachers, says they're grumblers and malcontents and that they show favoritism in order to gain an advantage.

But what the Christian is called to do is to actually show favoritism to those who he can gain no advantage from. is to do good to those who cannot pay them back in any rational sense, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord. That those who lend to the poor actually are lending to Yahweh himself and he will pay them back. And I'll warn you, it may not come until you get the glory.

And that's okay too. Because once you have that eternal perspective where you understand that God is going to take you to glory and that everything that you receive there is far more than you ever deserved? That it's absolute mercy to just not be in hell already? You don't cling so tightly to your worldly goods. He says, give a portion to seven or to eight in verse two, for you do not know what disaster may happen on earth.

There's a principle involved in here where you're helping others. And part of it is that you're actually setting yourself up to maybe have a few more friends in life? So that when something bad does happen to you, maybe there's somebody that wants to help you. Maybe there's somebody who will actually have pity on you when you hit tough times, if they knew that you were the kind of person that had pity on them.

Maybe they'll remember your name. Verse 3 says, If a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. A couple of interpretations of this verse. One of them is that when a tree falls, it's dead, and that wherever it is, it is. And it's applied to the fact that once a believer or a non-believer dies, there's no second chance.

But another way to think about it is this, that if a tree falls to the south or to the north, and I don't hear it, you know, it still happened, right? I don't know why a tree fell somewhere else. There trees falling right now And those trees had a significant impact on the area where they fell And so you may be one person with just a little bit of money You may be one person with what you think is not a lot of faith, not a lot of these exorbitant gifts.

You don't have the gifts that are ever going to get you on a stage at a conference like Votie Bauckham, and you're never going to have a book that gets published, and you're probably not going to have a biography written about you and your wifeliness. No one's going to come to you and say, can you make a homeschooling curriculum because your kids turned out so great. And even if they do, it's probably not going to happen.

You may be, in your mind, terribly insignificant in the grand scheme of things because we have a world with 9 billion people and you may be able to have an impact on 12 or 15 or something like that. But when a tree falls to the south or to the north and the place where it falls there will lie, The person who you help with your gift, it's going to mean something to that person, and it means something to God. There's that old, there's an old story, I don't remember exactly where I heard about that.

The waves washed up a bunch of starfish on the beach, and there was just hundreds of thousands of starfish that were washed up, and they were all going to die in the sun. And there was this little boy that was throwing starfish starfish into the water to help them. And this guy comes up to him and says, what are you doing? You can't possibly help all these starfish.

And the little boy says, well, it meant something to that one, though. And that's what each of you has, a chance to have an impact on somebody. Even tonight at dinner. All throughout the week. Everywhere you go, the post office, Chick-fil-A, Raising Cane's, Roosters, you know the kind of food I eat, fried chicken, right? All the places that come to mind.

But that's the significance of you being a child of God with a gift of the Holy Spirit. You will receive back from the Lord, but it may not be in the way that you expect. And it may not be in the time that you hope to receive it. But He doesn't forsake His own. and the peace that surpasses understanding that is promised in Scripture to those who are praying to Him and trying to do things according to His will and meditating upon all that is good and lovely and honorable and pure and just and anything that's excellent and all that kind of stuff that it says in Philippians 4.8 which really is nothing more than saying meditate on the person and work of Jesus Christ.

That peace that comes when we're trying to walk in His ways is greater than all of the accolades and all of the praise and all of the riches that this world could ever offer any of us. And if our Savior wasn't worthy of those things when He walked the earth, we're not worthy of them either and we should be glad to suffer with them at all. And if He lets us have a little joy while we do it because we're sharing the gifts He's given us, then more glory goes to Him.

And that's how Peter ends this section. He says, To Him belong the glory and dominion forever and ever. It's all about Jesus Christ. all your gifts, all the stuff you have it's all his he could take it away tomorrow like he did to Job and Job worshipped God and the question is will you? will you worship God? so maybe we should practice being a little more giving some days than we already are we should be thinking more clearly about how should we exercise our gifts, where should we exercise them, how do we help others exercise them always considering that God has a purpose in everything that he's called you to do let me pray Father in heaven we thank you that your gifts and calling are irrevocable that we can have perfect hope because we have a perfect savior so what we want Lord is for you to bless us with wisdom you see if anyone lacks wisdom let them ask so we ask for wisdom to know how to use the gifts that you've given us to know how to love one another with brotherly affection, to outdo one another in showing honor, to have patience in tribulation.

This is our desire, Lord, that you would bless us with increased faith, that by your grace we would live out a faith that shows that we truly trust that you are the sovereign one, that you are the Lord, and your kingdom will have no end. Help us not to cling to this world, but to cling to Jesus Christ and Him only. In His name I pray. Amen.