Party Line

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ATTENTION

I spent a couple of my childhood years in Columbia, N.C. If you’ve ever been to Nags Head, down 64 east, you know where it is, although if you blink, you might just miss it. It is or at least it used to be, one of the most isolated towns in the state. It will come as no surprise, then, that back in the middle ‘60's we used to be on a “party line.” We lived sort of out in the country and they didn’t have private telephone lines for everyone but we, and several other folks who lived down our country road, were on the same telephone line. I know, some of you are out there going, “What! That’s unbelievable. How could you tell whom the phone was for when it rang?” Well, each person on the line had their own certain “ring.” Your’s might be three short rings, while your neighbor’s might be 2 long ones. Of course, hearing your neighbor’s ring might actually attract you to pick up the phone. You see, if you wanted to know your neighbor’s business, you just picked up the phone, and eavesdropped on their conversation. When you wanted to make a phone call, you had to pick up the receiver and make sure that no one was already on the line. I’m sure I’m not the only oldtimer in here. How many of you remember “party lines?”

As you can imagine, this led to many hilarious incidents. People who liked to listen in would often give themselves a way, and, let’s be honest: Party lines had a way of bringing out the “nosy” in all of us. Ruth Irwin, who grew up in Mississippi, was on her party line one day describing what had happened in a ballgame when a male voice suddenly cut in on the conversation and said: “No, you got it all wrong. That’s not what happened!”

Another woman told the story of attending a 4-H meeting at the home of another family on the same party line. Now she suspected that someone in that family had been listening in on her conversations, but she had no proof. While the meeting was going on, however, the phone rang her family’s ring. When it did one of the neighbor’s boys jumped up and headed for the phone to answer. In midstride, he froze, realizing he had just given himself away. The look on his face was priceless! He’d been caught!

I guess we were all glad when party lines were replaced by private ones. Now we can have our conversations without telling the neighborhood, but there is one party-line, you might say, that still exists. It’s the church. We’ve all received the same call of God to love him, serve each other, and reach the world. We’re all interconnected, interdependent, and expected to pull together to serve His Kingdom. We’re not to be islands to ourselves; we’re not in silos. We’re expected to work together. We’re on a party line, you might say. We are expected to blend ourselves together to to serve God faithfully. But in the process of this blending, sometimes problems arise.

BACKGROUND

That’s what had happened in Corinth. This busy church took their gifts and their calling seriously, so seriously, in fact, that they were willing to run over one another in order to exercise them. This 16 chapter epistle, tied with Romans as the longest in the New Testament, begins with an appeal to unity and spends much of its time dealing with the issue. The cause of their disharmony had much to with how they exercised their gifts and their calling. They were gifted and they knew it. What they didn’t know, however, was how to blend their gifts in the body to achieve the purpose God had for them. That’s why Paul writes in 1 Cor 12:27:

Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. 28 And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way

Paul tells these Corinthians that it is not enough to know their gift or even use their gift; they must blend their gifts and callings with the gifts and callings of others. You might say, “Well, so what? What does that have to do with me?” Well, plenty!

NEED

In the first place, you may be here this morning and you are new. You’ve either just come to Christ or you’ve not been here in this congregation long and you are wondering how you fit in to the picture, how Christ may want to use you here. You’re just not sure. I think God may want to speak to you today.

Or you may be here today old and uninvolved. Now when I say, “old” I’m not talking about your physical age, I’m talking about the fact that you’ve been in this church for years, but you have never really connected with some ministry that God has for you here. Yet, you know that sitting and soaking isn’t God’s will for you. You know He’s got more for you that that. Listen to His voice this morning.

Or you may be here and you’re involved, but unbalanced. You’re doing ministry, maybe even a lot of ministry here, but you really don’t like it. Or maybe you do like it, but you’re doing it for the wrong reason. To this point, your ministry has been all about you and the importance or satisfaction it brings to you. You may be doing ministry but its been for the wrong reason. God may want to do some work in your heart today.

I believe that learning to blend our calling and our gifting with the call and gifts of others is what being a part of a growing body is all about. Despite the dismal failures of other churches, or the past inadequacies here, I am absolutely convinced that this giant “party line” we call Peace Church can work together to achieve God’s purpose! The how is right here in this passage. We can work together when we

DIV 1: UNDERSTAND THE BALANCE.

EXPLANATION

V. 27 clearly states that balance. It says “Now you are the body of Christ . . .” That speaks to our family side. That’s our “all in this together” side. We are a body. We are a family and as a family, we must work together. But it doesn’t stop there, it goes on to say, “Now we are the body of Christ, and (watch!) Members individually. That’s the balance! WE are unified as a body, but we are diversified as individual members. We are one as a family, but we all have different gifts and callings that we bring to the table. We are to follow one mission, but we are to follow that mission using the different skills and talents that God has given us. We are to blend ourselves together to achieve God’s purpose for His church here in Wilson.

APPLICATION

What exactly does that mean? What does it look like to blend ourselves together as the body of Christ? Well, in the first place, it means that if we are to be healthy as the body, we must diverge. To be healthy we must diverge. What I mean is we must celebrate, appreciate and appropriate our differences. God has given us all different gifts. WE are members of the body individually. That means we must employ our gifts in His service in the way He has called us to use them. If He’s called you to sing, sing! If He’s called you to teach, teach! If He’s called you to help others, help! He’s gifted you and called you, and you are to put your gifts and talents to work the way He has wired you to do that. You are a member individually.

But if all of us simply showed up and did our own thing exactly the way we wanted to do it we wouldn’t have a church, we’d have a train wreck! That’s where the unity part comes in. You see, not only is it true that, to be healthy, we must diverge. It is also true that to be unified, we must submit. Your gift of music is to be used under the authority and direction of the man that God has put here to oversee the music program. You can’t just interrupt the service one Sunday and say, “Pastor, the Lord just told me to come up on stage and sing a solo and if you want to obey God, step aside!” By the way, that’s pretty much what was happening in Corinth. The people were following their gifting and refusing to submit themselves and the result was a very divided and ineffective church. To be unified we must submit; to be healthy we must diverge and then:

To be effective we must commit. The willingness to limit the free exercise of our gift and to channel it the way the leadership would have it channeled flows out of one very simple commitment: The vision God has given for the ministry. You see, when I really buy into the vision that God has established for Peace church, for instance, it becomes my desire to take that gift He has given me, submit myself to the leadership He has placed over me, and channel that gift in the way that will help to accomplish the vision He has established for this ministry. So, if my gift is music, I am asking the question, “David, how can God use this gift He has given me to help you accomplish the vision He has given you for this ministry.”

If my gift is teaching, I am asking Brian or Rae, “How can God use my gift of teaching to help you achieve the vision He has given you for the children or the adults of Peace Church.”

If my gift is serving through construction, I am asking Tony, “Tony, how can God use the skills He has given me as a Building Contractor to help you achieve the vision He has given you for building Churches in Mexico.”

And when the church begins to diverge, and submit and commit it’s gifts and callings get blended together and that church not only begins to see the vision God has for her, she begins to be able, through His strength, to accomplish it, because that church understands the balance between individuality and unity. We are diversified, but we are unified.

ILLUSTRATION:

Want some scriptural support? Ok. Turn in your Bibles to Hezekiah 6. Hezekiah 6, verse 14. I’ll give you a moment to get there because I really want you to see this. Hezekiah 6:14 . . . What’s the matter? Can’t you find it? What’s wrong? That’s right! There is no Hezekiah in the Bible. You know, it sounds right though, doesn’t it? Sounds like it ought to be in there, doesn’t it? In fact someone wrote the following poem titled, Hezekiah 6:14

“The reason mountain climbers

are tied together

is to keep the sane ones from going home.”

I don’t know who said it,

or when, or where,

but I’ve chuckled over it,

thought about it, and quoted it, too.

With a mountain of mercy behind me

and a mountain of mission ahead,

I need you, my sister, my brother,

I need to be tied to you,

and you need me, too.

We need each other …

to keep from bolting,

fleeing in panic, and returning

to the “sanity” of unbelief.

Wise words, whoever said them;

I’ve placed them in my “bible”;

they are my Hezekiah 6:14.

Listen, we don’t have a Hezekiah 6:14, but we do have 1 Corinthians 12:27 - Now you are the body of Christ (that is you are one and are united . . . i.e. tied together like mountain climbers) and members individually (that is, you are each to fulfill the diverse role and exercise the different gifts that God has given you). And listen to me, Peace Church, churches that grow and accomplish God’s vision for them are churches who have learned the balance between that unity and that diversity. You can blend your gifts together when you Understand the balance, but you can also blend your gifts together when you:

DIV 2 - PURSUE YOUR CALLING

EXPLANATION:

In vv 28-31, three distinctions of your calling are evident. In the first place, your calling is providential. What I mean is, your calling is not something you come up with. You don’t wake up one morning and say, “I love Paris. I love French food; I think the Eiffel Tower is neat; I wish I could visit the Louve anytime I want to, so I think I’ll become a missionary to France.” No! You don’t determine your own calling. 12:28 says, “And God has appointed these in the church.” The word “appoint” means “to place, set or assign.” The idea is that God has appointed in the church people to do various job. It is God’s choice and God’s prerogative not ours. It is providential.

But it is also personal. V. 28 says,

28 And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?

Now, the obvious answer to all the rhetorical questions in v 29 is “no.” No, all are not apostles; all are not prophets; all are not teachers or workers of miracles; All do not have gifts of healing; all do not speak with tongues or interpret. God has appointed certain people to do certain tasks. Listen, God’s calling on your life is as personal as your fingerprint or your DNA. No one has the exact calling for the exact place of service that you have. It’s personal; it’s providential,

But it must also be pursued. Now if you’re closely following what I’ve just said, v 31 may cause you a little problem when you first read it, because, in v 31, Paul says that we should “eagerly desire the greatest gifts.” That causes problems on a couple of fronts. In the first place, it seems that Paul is ranking one particular spiritual gift as being more important than another. He says that we are to desire the “greatest gifts.” You must understand how Paul means “greater” here. All you have to do to understand why he calls them greater is to look at chapter 13. The greatest gifts are not those which draw everyone’s attention to myself (as in tongues), but those which edify and build up someone else (as in prophecy or teaching). The greatest gifts are those which display the love chapter 13 extols.

In the second place, v 28 just said that God “appointed” or “assigned” these gifts in the church. If God does the appointing, why am I supposed to desire the greater gifts when I don’t choose my gifts, God does. Well, in this case, you have to understand the verb “eagerly desire”. In the context here, the Greek actually gives the sense of “being busy at what is of deep concern”. So you could translate v 31 like this: But be busy out of your deep concern at the greatest gifts (that is those gifts which show love for others). One commentator offers the following insight on this verse:

“The gifts of God’s grace do not work automatically; they are not in the state of permanent activity.” These gifts are not permanent possessions of individuals that are at their disposal. They cannot be referred to as “my” gift, and they need not be continually active. They also can be neglected or quenched (1 Thess. 5:19). The reminder “Rekindle the gift of God that is within you” (2 Tim. 1:6) and the command “Do not neglect the gift that is in you” (1 Tim. 4:14) warn that gifts can fall into disuse and may need reviving.

Therefore, we must constantly be stirring up the gifts that are in us and using them to minister to others out of our great love for God. We are to pursue our calling with great zeal because that thing God has called us to and gifted us for is important to the body of Christ. We must be tenacious; we must be unyielding; we must be focused; we must pusue our calling.

ILLUSTRATION

W. A. Criswell, long-time pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, used to tell about an evangelist who loved to hunt. The man bought two setter pups that were topnotch bird dogs. He kept them in his backyard, where he trained them. One morning, an ornery, little, vicious looking bulldog came shuffling and snorting down the alley. He crawled under the fence into the backyard where the setters spent their days. It was easy to see he meant business. The evangelist’s first impulse was to take his setters and lock them in the basement so they wouldn’t tear up that little bulldog. But he decided he would just let the creature learn a lesson he would never forget. Naturally, they got into a scuffle in the backyard, and those two setters and that bulldog went round and round and round! The little critter finally had enough, so he squeezed under the fence and took off. All the rest of that day he whined and licked his sores. Interestingly, the next day at about the same time, here came that same ornery little bulldog—back under the fence and after those setters. Once again those two bird dogs beat the stuffing out of that little bowlegged animal and would have chewed him up if he hadn’t retreated down the alley. Would you believe, the very next day he was back! Same time, same station, same results. Once again after the bulldog had had all he could take, he crawled back under the fence and found his way home to lick his wounds.

“Well,” the evangelist said, “I had to leave for a revival meeting. I was gone several weeks. And when I came back, I asked my wife what had happened. She said, ‘Honey, you just won’t believe what’s happened. Every day, at the same time every morning, that little bulldog came back in the backyard and fought with our two setters. He didn’t miss a day! And I want you to know it has come to the point that when our setters simply hear that bulldog snorting down the alley and spot him squeezing under the fence, they immediately start whining and run down into our basement. That little, old bulldog struts around our backyard now just like he owns it.”

Hey, Christian, you are to be a pit bull when it comes to your pursuit of your calling. You are not to be passive about it.

ARGUMENTATION

You might say, “But wait a minute, Rusty. I thought the gifts came to us through the Holy Spirit. I thought that God was the one who did this in us. How is it that we have to pursue them if they are given to us. Don’t we just surrender and let God do the rest.” Well, that’s not what v 31 says. It says to “be busy out of your deep concern about the greatest gifts.” You also pick that up from all kinds of other biblical passages that talk about spiritual gifts. Let me show you one of them in Romans 12:6. Look at what it says there:

Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; 7 or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; 8 he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.

Do you get the feel of that passage? Paul is saying there, “You know what your gift is, now get busy. I especially like what he says about leading there. He says that he who leads should lead with diligence. We pursue our calling. The church will grow when loving believers with diverse gifts blend their gifts together and pursue their callings with gusto!

APPLICATION

So let’s draw all this together with four principles you can take with you this morning. We can become a “blended” church. If we are to do that, we must

Discover our gifts: We must get a clear picture of exactly what God gifts and abilities God has given us. There’s a wonderful resource to help you with that on our church website. If you will go to www.peacechurchwilson.com, you’ll find a link that says “know your spiritual gift.” If you’ll click on that link, you can take a test which will help you determine just what your gifts might be.

And once we know what they are, we must develop our gifts. We have to be willing to work at it. We must be willing to be discipled in the faith; We must be willing to take Sharing Jesus Without Fear or Teaching Techniques or Upward Training. We mustn’t just sit on our gifts, we stir them up and develop them.

And once they are developed, then we deploy our gifts. That is, we find a ministry and put those gifts to work. I guarantee you that if you want to serve, there is a definite place of ministry for you here. Now it might not be exactly the place you anticipated, but just remember this isn’t about you developing your own solo ministry, its about you blending your ministry into the vision that God has established for Peace Church.

VISUALIZATION

And what can happen if we blend ourselves together as the body of Christ? Charles Spurgeon wrote,

every workman knows the necessity of keeping his tools in a good state of repair.… If the workman loses the edge … he knows that there will be a greater draught upon his energies, or his work will be badly done. Michelangelo, the elect of the fine arts, understood so well the importance of his tools, that he always made his own brushes with his own hands. And in this he gives us an illustration of the God of grace, who with special care fashions for Himself all true ministers.

We are, in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order. If I want to preach the gospel, I can only use my own voice; therefore I must train my vocal powers. I can only think with my own brains, and feel with my own heart, and therefore I must educate my intellectual and emotional faculties. I can only weep and agonize for souls with my own renewed nature, therefore must I watchfully maintain the tenderness which was in Christ Jesus. It will be in vain for me to stock my library, or organize societies, or project schemes, if I neglect the culture of myself; for books, and agencies, and systems, are only remotely the instruments of my holy calling; my own spirit, soul, and body are my nearest machinery for sacred service; my spiritual faculties, and my inner life, are my battle axe and weapons for war.…

Then, quoting from a letter of the great Scottish minister, Robert Murray McCheyne, he concludes, “Remember, you are God’s sword, His instrument—I trust a chosen vessel unto Him to bear His name. In great measure, according to the purity and perfection of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talent God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.”

If that is true for a single minister of the gospel, can you imagine what God can do with a body of ministers like this. You can truly become holy ministers: awful weapons in the hand of God.

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