God's Gifts United

Good morning. If you're new with us, we have a couple things that we like to be consistent with. First of all, I try to be the most dressed down or the least dressed up of anybody on the stage. So number one, accomplished. Number two, and much, much more important, we open up the Bible. We believe God's word has to direct what we think, how we desire, how we live. And so each week we try to open the Bible and we try to just keep consistent. So we want to open the Bible and we want to keep going through the same book. And so if you're new with us, we've been in Romans for a while. And if you don't have a Bible or you want to look on with us as we study, please take the Bible in front of you. We'd love to make that our gift to you. This is God's Word. It contains the words of life. We're in Romans chapter 12 and we're on page 948. Romans 12, 948. What our desire is is that we who believe in Jesus Christ would regularly hear from him. We're going to be conformed more to His image, be more united in His body. That is our desire. So if you're new with us, if you're visiting as a Christian, we're thankful you can come and hear a bit of how we actually try to practically live out these commands. If you're not a Christian, we're thankful you're here. You kind of get to sit in on an in-house discussion. You will hear the truth of what God says to His church. And I just want to be very clear, you're going to sit in and you're going to hear a really high calling on the church. And you will be right to say, I don't ever know of a church that's actually lived up to what God has said. We're striving. Don't judge Christ by His church. judge Christ by what he says he can do for you and what he says he has done for you. So church, we need to look at this. We need to see that being obedient is a way of witnessing. Being obedient is a way of worshiping. And so we're looking to Paul's now prescription, the declarations of what it looks like to worship the God of mercy. The God who looked upon us and who we, refusing to give honor or give thanks, chose to show us mercy. Chose to send Jesus Christ his son to die on our behalf, to be risen again, to now give us the Holy Spirit so that we could be a united body in him. So we're being called to worship the God of mercy. If you open up your bulletin, I believe it's on page 10, or on page nine, You can see an outline, and if you were with us last week, we're not going to go through 1 and 2 all over again. But I want to continue to remind us of 1 and 2 as we walk through this series, because 1 through 11, that's the great theological truth. 12, 1, and 2, that transitions us now to live the life of worship that God has saved us to. And so we have to continue to remember 1 and 2 as we think about all these other particulars. And the particular thing we're thinking about today is being a church member. Verses 3 through 8 of chapter 12. Hear with me the word of Christ from Romans 12. I'll begin in verse 1 and end in verse 8. I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 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. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that defer according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy, in proportion to our faith, If service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. If you're looking at the bulletin, you can see the outline there, and I hope you can see the order of what Paul is doing in that he's calling yourself to present yourself for worship. This is the proper response to receiving mercy. Present yourself for worship. And then we really see three different ways in which we worship, and we have to have the right posture of worship, not thinking too highly of ourselves. We have the right position of worship, being a member of the body. And then the practice of worship. And notice how that really does need to be the order, the right posture, leads to the right position, which then leads to the right practice, and repeat. We have to have that posture of humility in order to put ourselves in a position with others, united in Christ, and then we get to practice. We get to practice worship. Let's just review very quickly verses one to two. If you look to one and two, you'll see three basic commands. Present your bodies as living sacrifices. Sacrifices usually require death. In order to be a living sacrifice, you have to believe Christ died on the cross for your sins. He is the sacrifice that allows us now to worship. The second command and the third command are united. Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed in your mind. And really, I want to point out that the most important part of this passage is really the first verse. I appeal to you by the mercies of God. That's why and how we worship. We can only worship the God of mercy because of his mercy. If you're not a Christian, this is the most important thing you'll hear today. You need God's mercy. Everybody in this room has sinned against God. We've all decided that we didn't wanna thank him. We've all decided we're not gonna worship him the way he deserves. We've all actually decided we're gonna worship ourselves at some level. We're gonna worship other things. And this brings God's right judgment. His righteous wrath. And if we haven't believed in Christ, there's a forever judgment. We call it hell. To be under God's righteousness without grace. But here's the good news. Right now, you can receive grace. Right now, God has been gracious enough to let you hear the words of grace, and that is that he sent his son to die on the cross. His son was perfect. His son was perfectly righteous, but yet he died as if a sinner, so that everybody who believes in him would be forgiven, because Christ, being righteous, died the sinner's death to satisfy the wrath of God. So if you believe in Jesus Christ, God doesn't look at you as a sinner anymore. He looks at you as if his own child, forgiven. He declares you righteous. But you must believe you're a sinner in need of forgiveness. Christ alone provides that forgiveness on the cross. He's risen again and now he calls you to live a new life. If you're not a Christian, repent and believe. Do not leave here without talking to somebody who's either been up here in the front and taken up the offering, or most likely just right next to you. Tap them on the shoulder and say, I want to talk to you right after the service. Christian, I want you to see that the immediate application of the mercy is to worship. God calls us out to push us forward. And the immediate context that he directly goes into is being a church member. God's will is for us to worship according His Word, and His Word directly points us to being a church member. Now, I want to point out something. His Word tells us, be a faithful member of a church so that the church is healthy. This is an important distinction from Be a healthy member or a faithful member of a church when the church is healthy. Do you understand the difference? If God only calls us to be faithful when the church is healthy, the church will never be healthy. God calls us to be faithful so that His church is a light to the nations, so that His church is built up to glorify Christ. Now last week, this glorious passage yourselves a living sacrifice. It is your spiritual worship. Renew your mind. This will let you discern the will of God. My application, be present. To worship, be present. And the reason I left it there is that I believe Paul is now going to add on to that particular point. be present so we can discern the will of God and therefore have the right posture, the right position, and the right practice. So let's go to the right posture of worship. Let's look at verse three. The right posture. 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 the faith that God has assigned. Now Paul appeals to them by the grace given to him. I don't know if this is Paul appealing to the grace that's been given to him so that he's an apostle to the Gentiles. That's possible. I believe what we need to understand at the most basic level is that Paul's saying this isn't what I've come up with in my own cleverness. Paul's saying this has been given to me to give to you so that you can now live as a worshiper of the one true God. Now, the meat of this verse, it's actually a play on words that our translation doesn't really let us appreciate. It's quite a clever play on words. Really, the best translation, a more literal kind of translation from the words is, now, do not think more than you should think. Think with good thinking. That sober judgment is actually the same word used for thinking. It is a good translation, but Paul's putting a play on words. When you think, do not hyperthink. That's literally what he says. Think with sanity. When you think, do not hyperthink. When you think, think with sanity. Now, he's warning somebody not to think too much of themselves. But rather, instead of thinking too much of ourselves, think with sanity, sober judgment, the right measure. Now, we've talked a lot about thinking God's thoughts after him as we've walked through Romans, because Romans is all about us not thinking inappropriately about God, but thinking God's thoughts after him. If we're sane, We think God's thoughts after Him because we're going to let God's Word tell us who He is. If we're going to think with sanity about ourselves, we have to think about ourselves according to what God's Word says about us. True wisdom is this, to know God and to know yourself according to God's Word. Now before we go too much further in sanity and thinking too much about yourselves, let's first think, all right, who is he talking about? Who does he want to receive this? Verse three, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you. There's no tricky word behind everyone. It literally just means everyone. Each one. It doesn't exclude anyone. Now he's speaking to the church, everyone among you. Every Christian should not think more of himself than he ought to think. Now, here's the warning. If you're thinking of somebody else while I'm talking about thinking not too much of yourself, you need to just be guarded. And Paul, I think, especially wants you to think about yourself. Everybody is supposed to be called to self-reflection right now, not to be thinking about somebody else. So how do you think more sanely? How do you not think too much of yourself? Because I think if we're all honest, this is everybody's self-tendency. And there's an interesting thing because whenever we think, all right, I know I think too much of myself, there's usually an opposite unhelpful extreme. I'm not going to think of myself highly at all. I'm gonna deny anything good about myself. That's not actual humility. That's what we're talking about right here. Paul's saying don't be full of hubris, but be humble. Humility is not denying there's anything good about you because God has said, you're made in my image. You have dignity and honor. If you're a Christian, God has given you the Holy Spirit. You're now the temple of God. If you're a Christian, you have now the power to praise God. You have to think something good about yourself because of all the good things God says about you. So let's not go to the unhelpful extreme and say, oh, I'm just horrible, because really, self-pity is just another act of thinking too much of yourself. Think properly. Thinking properly starts by saying, God, what would you say about me? And I believe this is what Paul is giving to that unusual phrase at the end of verse three. Each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. I believe when we have faith, what we do is we see, all right, God, whatever I have good, it's given by you. I'll give you honor, I'll give you thanks, and I'll use it according to your plan. For those who have faith, they are always moving past hubris and moving into humility because the more faith we have, the more we realize how much we need God and his grace and his gifts. So as you think about this, and this is hard self-reflection, how do you assess yourself? Another word for that word thinking would be don't measure yourself inappropriately, measure yourself with sanity. We all measure ourselves, right? I'm the shortest staff pastor. I'm fully aware of that. We all have measures, right? We have different ways of measuring ourself according to what we think is good and right. And so I ask, what is the measure of what you think is right and good and true? So we'll have this proper thinking If we believe in what God has given us, we believe what God has said about us. Here are just some basic truths that all have to inform who we are. One, I am made in His image. Just by being a human being, everybody, there's a dignity and there's a value and there's a worth. Now a little more specific Christian truth here with someone who believes I'm a sinner, I'm a saint, I'm a servant. Those three things are all simultaneously true. I'm a sinner, I'm a saint, I'm a servant. We could even go a fourth one. I'm a son. All four of those things must be true together. Next list. I'm loved and I'm called to praise him. This is a proper view. So let me encourage you, these are ways you can promote humility in yourself. These are ways we as a church can promote humility. And I'm focused on what we can do to ourselves first because that's what Paul wants us to do. First, trust God's word. What it says is true. Let this define how you view yourself. Let this tell you who you are over against all the other lies out in the world that it's trying to shape the way you think of yourself. Second, let other members and trusted Christians speak truth into your life. I don't believe God intends us to be independent and isolated as we have this reflection. Third, be renewed in your mind. As you hear God's Word, as you speak to other brothers and sisters, let God's Word and His truth that He's speaking through other Holy Spirit-inspired brothers and sisters, let that renew your mind, change your values. And then finally, following from Philippians 2, consider others more important than yourself. Consider others' interest more important than your own. Humility isn't thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking more of God and others. Humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking more of God and of others. So what does this look like? Find somebody in the church who you would not normally spend time with, ask them their testimony, ask them what God is doing for them, and then encourage them, this is how I see God demonstrating grace in your life. Be willing to be taught by any and all Christians. Be willing to be taught and encouraged and challenged by the different ways God manifests his grace among all his believers. Pursue God's grace in others. Now, another warning here. Be careful in considering yourself the sober judgment police. This isn't an office of the church. There's not a command to everyone's church in scripture, make sure everybody else understands how lowly they should be. It's always a self-reflection. No, what I see in scripture is build up the body. Serve the body. The folks who want to be the sober judgment police, just be careful in how much you're having a tendency to think, I'm going to be able to stand over them and help them go back down the totem pole. No, no, no. The purpose of the believers of the church is to help brothers and sisters raise up in the church of Christ. That is what we're called to do. So how do we promote humility among ourselves? This is the most practical and basic way. Pray. Pray for others. Pray with them, pray for them. There is no way hubris remains when prayer is taking place in the church. That is the solution, that is the anecdote. Second, serve other members. There's nothing more humbling than to have somebody come and pray over you. or to come and serve you. Let others serve you. And then make sure we're reminding others, this is how I see grace manifested in your life. Let's be a church that's encouraging one another, building one another up. This is how I see grace being manifested in your life. Now, before we move on, I feel the need to address another kind of person that I'm not sure Paul is actually thinking of here directly. I want to talk to the person who says, I never think too much of myself. I'm constantly beating myself up. I'm prone to despondency. I'm prone to consider myself nothing but a failure. And being one of these people, I want to challenge us to think, I think this is a way of thinking too much of ourselves. See, we beat ourselves up when we think I should be as successful as somebody else. We beat ourselves up when we are measuring ourselves not according to God's Word, but what we think we're supposed to be doing, or who we think we're supposed to be. See, the key here, have the right measure. It's God's grace according to His Word with God's people. A third point, the right position of worship. So when we have the right posture, not to think too much of ourselves, now we have the right position. For as in one body, we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. That's just making the analogy that here I am a body, and I've got different members, and they have different functions. So we, though many, speaking of the church, are one body in Christ. This last phrase is really the punch. Individually members, one of another. He uses this analogy in many places. We just read it in the first Corinthians passage. I believe he has to be focusing primarily on the local church, because the only way this makes sense. There's actual little parts of a body that are functioning together for the unity and the purpose of building each other up. It certainly has its most clear manifestation in a local church where you know one another, you know your gifts, you know who you're serving, you know who you're united with. So notice here the necessary connection. Individually, members, one of another. Christ calls us to himself. And by calling us to himself, he calls us together. Now, you all chose where you drove to church this morning. But when we're here, and if you've committed to be here as a member, you don't really get to choose who God calls out of the darkness. And whenever they say, I'm a Christian, I want to agree with you, I want to align with you, we join with them. And it makes it kind of interesting business here because God calls all different kinds of people out of the darkness. And then the beauty of it, he calls us all together. And this is good. There's supposed to be a great amount of diversity in Christ's body. It has to be the right kind of diversity. You see, we're supposed to be united in diversity, not uniform, united in diversity. And we all come in, we all come in knowing we're sinners, we need grace, we're going to submit to his word. That's the only way we're going to be united with all the different diversity, because that's what we have to do. We have to all agree we're headed in the same direction, and we agree to the same expectations. We have to all agree with all the diversity, the different ages we have, the different backgrounds we have, the different nationalities, the different opinions, all the different kinds we have diversity on, we have to say, no, whatever God's word says, we are going to head that direction, and how God tells us to do it, we're going to make those our expectations. Again, God's word is what directs us to be the church he calls us to be. The only way we're going to actually be the people of Christ who love Christ is not to have the same feeling about Christ. Because Christ says, if you love me, you're gonna keep my commandments. The only way we're gonna be the body of Christ in Christ is to agree to what he has said. If we're all united about a feeling, that's gonna change and we're gonna be diversified. We're gonna be different. We're gonna be in different directions. We're gonna be divided. No, we agree with what Christ has said. Now, I wanna clarify something, church. The reason we have membership is because this word member means member. We didn't come up with a new word. It's a word that we took out of scripture. We could have taken others, but we thought member was the most helpful. And members were united with one another. This is why we take membership seriously. This is why we have new members share their testimony so that the members can hear the confession of Christ, can hear the confession of faith, and agree and affirm and say, yes, I want to be united with you. This is why when we see somebody denying Christ with their words or actions, they are removed. A little leaven leavens the whole lump, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5. When we're all united together, we're all influencing one another. And if a non-Christian or an unrepentant Christian is part of the body, they can easily redirect us from the purpose of Christ and the expectations of Christ. Membership, it's a declaration of solidarity. It's a high calling of solidarity. We are going to serve one another, love one another, care for one another, endure one another in joys, endure one another in sorrows, forgive one another, all for the purpose of Christ. So what does this look like? I don't know if we should really get past last week's application. Be present. You came back. You're still obedient. You're present here on Sunday morning to hear God's word together, to sing to one another, to pray with one another, to hear his word read together. Well done. But I wanna tell you, there's two things we do on Wednesday night that I think are especially uniting for the body. One, we pray together. It isn't a led prayer like Andrew did earlier. The body prays one for another. Again, I don't know if there's anything that would unite us more clearly, more strongly, than being together and praying for one another. The second thing we do on Wednesday night is we hear testimonies. If you want to know the new members as they're coming in, be here on Wednesday night to hear the testimonies, to hear God's grace and how he works and what he's done in these folks' lives that want to come and be united with you. It comes down to this. We have to spend time with one another. Reading His Word and praying. We have to serve one another. This is what worship looks like. Finally, the right practice of worship. So we have the right posture. We have to be measuring ourselves according to God's Word. We have the right position. We're in a body. Now we get to practice. Verse six, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them if prophecy, and I want you to hear, there's actually a pattern here. Prophecy is one, then there's a set of three and a set of three. Notice the first one is qualified, if prophecy in proportion to your faith. The next three are qualified with the same word, if service and serving, if teaching and teaching and exhortation, then exhorting. The last three are qualified with a new word, contributes generously, lead with zeal, acts of mercy with cheerfulness. So it's a pattern like a proverb, 1-3-3. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them if prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. Now if we have a sane view of ourselves, we have the right position are ready to practice. And notice in verse 6, God gives gifts that differ. God gives gifts that differ, and notice what Paul tells us to do with them. Use them. So I have a lot of people ask, you know, how can we serve the church? Here's the answer, and I've checked this with the deacons. Any way you can is how you should use those gifts. How can I serve the church? If you have a gift, you should use it to serve the church. Gifts have been given to you to be used. We just came out of Romans 9 through 11, a heavy section of scripture that talks about election and predestination and being chosen and being called. What's amazing about God's Word is that anytime you have these high and heavy great words of what God does for us, they're always applied to then what we do afterwards. We're called to fulfill a purpose. We're chosen to serve. We're predestined to perform worship. Jesus, our head, came to serve. He now calls us to serve. We can look at Paul's exhortation in Ephesians 4. If every member works properly, The whole body grows up. I don't know what our church's rule is, but I hear from my friends who are pastors elsewhere that the rule is typically the 80-20 rule. 80% of the work's done by 20% of the people. 80% of the giving is given by 20% of the people. That's not every member working properly. That's being conformed by the world, not letting our values be changed. I wanna set before you that Think about how glorious a church would be if everybody said, I'm going to use what God's given me for the well-being of all those other members so that the glory of Christ would be manifested. The church, this is an evangelism tool. The church is called to be that city on a hill that if we actually all considered one another more important than ourselves, if we consider others' interests more important than our own, having that mind of Christ we sang about earlier, Imagine how much happier we would be at church if we all came to serve. Now, my fear is this, we're waiting to see if others are going to serve before we serve. This is the constant sinful pattern of thinking, well, I'll do something once I see something that I want to do or once I see other people doing it. No, we have to be committed. We have to see that this is what God calls us to and do it. This is being a living sacrifice. See, worship is not what you do in your free time. Worship is what you do all the time. Worship is what we're supposed to be doing all the time. Worship while you're working, by the way you work. Worship when you're parenting, by the way you parent. Worship by the way you're studying, by the way you study. And it's not only what we do, it's not only how we do things, it's what we do. Worship is how you prioritize your life. Now let's walk through these different gifts, prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, and let's just step back real quick and make sure we understand, we don't want to confuse gifts with the fruit of the Spirit. This is important. Because the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, that's fruit of the Spirit that every believer is supposed to have. So you can't say, I don't have the gift of self-control. No, you have the Holy Spirit who gives self-control, okay? So don't use this kind of, different people have different gifts to excuse sin. So that's our first warning. Secondly, there is no exhaustive list in scripture of all the different gifts. We have two different lists and they're actually quite different. So don't assume that there's some exhaustive list or that these are the only gifts. I believe he's patterned these as prophetic and then teaching gifts and then serving gifts, helping the poor. I'll explain that a little while later. Third, don't think you just have one gift. Recognize you have to have at least a gift, but don't assume you only have one gift. So how do you know what your gifts are? Well, we're not going to email out an online test. I don't think that's the most helpful way to understand what your gifts are. Here's, I think, the most practical, helpful way to understand what your gifts are. Serve in every way you can in the church. And when people tell you, God is using you, you discovered your gift. Serve every way you can. When I was trying to figure out what kind of ministry I might go into, I got wise advice. A guy told me, serve every way you can until you're 40, and then do what you're best at. I was like, 40? I'll be old. I'm still looking forward to that day. It was wise, because he was saying, look and see how God's going to use you, and then hone in and focus. See how God's using you. and then commit to being faithful to encouraging that gift and growing it. So let's look at these gifts. One, prophecy. Now, I don't think prophecy here is preaching. Some interpret it that way. Prophecy here, it is not foretelling. It's not telling the future. It's foretelling. I believe here Paul is speaking to that gift to speak clear truth into a particular situation. So a prophet is someone who's able to take God's word, they're able to prophesy in proportion to our faith, and I believe that's referring to, this is the measure by which you judge a prophecy. A prophet is able to understand, here's the problem, I'm going to diagnose it properly, I'm going to give the right prescription. A prophet is able to speak truth into a specific situation. Now, prophecy is something that we need to be careful of because it is a gift. I believe God does give certain individuals the ability to diagnose and prescribe with great clarity. But when we think about prophecy, we also want to make sure we're not giving way to false prophecy. This is why John tells us to test the spirits, I think. When someone is trying to speak a specific truth into a specific situation, we need to always say, is this grounded in Scripture? We need to measure it. So prophecy, I believe, is speaking truth into a specific situation. Now, the next three, I've already said, they're grouped together. They're qualified with the same word, you know, in teaching, teach. Serving, serve, and exhorting, exhorting. Well, thanks, Paul. What does that mean? I wonder here, if there's something we can take away from this, is most of the time when we're given one gift, we oftentimes wish we had another. Paul may be saying, this is what you're gifted with, this is how you could serve, yeah, but I really like so-and-so's gift more. No, Paul's saying, if you're gifted to teach, teach. If you're gifted to serve, serve. Now, these are all qualified with the same exact word, and let's look at the word service. This is the same where we get deacon from, but I don't think this word is focused on physical care or work. This word, serve, it's grouped with teaching and exhortation. In Acts 6, the apostles say, let's set aside some men to deacon tables so that we can deacon the word. Those who are taking the word and teaching, exhorting. It's a service. You serve the Word. You don't serve opinions. You don't serve yourself. You serve the Word. So I believe this is actually speaking to somebody who would have a spiritual authority in presenting God's truth. Because of who it's grouped with. Because this is the way the word is used in some biblical context. And it's important because if you're a teacher, if you're an elder, if you're a pastor, if you're seeking to lead others here, you're serving them Christ and His Word. I must decrease. He must increase. The next two, teaching and exhorting, I think they're best understood as side by side. Teaching is studying in preparation so that people better understand Christ and how to grow in Him. This is what we do in Sunday school. Usually this is what we're doing in Sunday school. It's teaching. It's opening up the Word and somebody is helping you understand what God has said about the book of the Bible or the topic. Now, over against this, exhortation is pushing and encouraging. It's speaking that truth in a way that's trying to motivate you. I would say this is more what we do in home groups. There's teaching in home groups, but home groups are trying to encourage you to believe what we've already heard so that you live it out and to think about what that looks like. So teaching is informing, exhortation is motivating, or what Luther said, the teacher transmits knowledge, the exhorter, he stimulates. The next gifts, they're qualified differently. contribute generously, lead with zeal, be merciful with cheerfulness. These things all seem to be very deacon-like, and they all seem to be caring for those who are in need. The contributor, I don't think he's thinking of the people who are gifted with a unique gift of tithing. That seems to be a universal command. In 2 Corinthians 9, 6, we're all committed to be cheerful givers. So, I don't think being a spiritual gift is being a penny-pinching curmudgeon. Just throwing that out there. Some people want to think, no, the way I am is the way God's made me. No, that's not the way God's made you. It's the way you've chosen to be. So what are these contributors? I think these are folks who are set aside to have the particular responsibility of supplying the need for the poor. The contributor is the one who sees the needs for the poor, and they're supposed to be generous. They're supposed to be caring for those who are in need. The next one, the leaders should have zeal. Now usually we think of zeal, we think of somebody energetic, someone tigger-like, they've got too much bounce. That's not really what this means at all. The word is better, someone who's diligent, someone who's trustworthy, someone who's committed to a cause and they are going to take responsibility for that cause. A leader must say, I'm going to be committed to this work, I'm going to do this work, I'm going to stay the course with this work. They're not confused by it, they're not being turned here and there by different ways, they're diligent to the task. Finally, those who show mercy. Show mercy, cheerfulness. You're supposed to be acting with mercy, not begrudging. Oh, you got yourself in trouble again. No, with cheerfulness, you go and help those who need help. Now, as we've talked about worship, we've been talking about worship, the key word is serve. This is Romans 12.2 or 12.1. I believe that that word is better translated, reasonable service rather than spiritual worship. I believe the King James Version has a better translation there. And the challenge for us is to say what God has described here, it's pretty simple, isn't it? Have the right mind, be with the right people, do the right thing. Posture, position, practice. I'll share my sinful tendency in that I don't always like doing simple. I really prefer spectacular. I really, I don't like the mundane. I want magnificent. And the fear there that I have to warn myself against is that God's word tells us just to be simply faithful. Faithful in the mundane. Because I want to warn us that if we really only want to do is the radical, the magnificent, the spectacular, I fear we may get to that judgment seat where Christians will have to give an answer for that redeemed life they've been given. Christians will have to give an answer for the way they use their time and their gifts. And then while we've done the radical but not the faithful, we're expecting to hear well done and good and faithful servant and we're gonna hear Why did you spend your time like this? Where were you a faithful servant? So I want to encourage you, church, look what Scripture says and ask, how can I be just a faithful servant? To give an analogy, every good professor on the first day of class always gives a syllabus. First day of class, a good professor, you always give a syllabus. That syllabus tells you exactly what's expected of you, what you need to do as a student to pass that course. Inevitably, students show up, they haven't been to class all year, they haven't turned in a single assignment, and they ask for what? Extra credit. I didn't do anything you asked me to do, but can I have a special assignment so that I can pass your class? I believe this could be the judgment scene. We go to God, and I did all these special things, God. Yeah, but my word, your syllabus. My word laid out what was expected of you, and instead of being faithful to the simple, you wanted to do something special. And the only people who think they should do something special are the people that think they're special. That's not having the right posture. to be in the right position, to have the right practice. As a Christian, this is a call, a call to faithfulness, knowing that the most simple things you can do, that what may feel like the most mundane things you can do, over and over and over again, that's actually God's wonderful call in your life. That's how God's going to protect you. That's how God's going to build you up. That's how God's going to use you. Because you never know, as you're teaching these children in Sunday school over and over again, what kind of disciple you're going to make and what they're going to do. It's not the one who shows up and does something spectacular. It's the one who's always faithful to everything that's simple and clear. It's glorious. It's glorious. To do that which is simple for the purpose of glorifying Christ and building up the body, it's glorious. Will you pray with me? Father, I pray that you would show us mercy to receive this call to be measured according to your word. with faithful brothers and sisters who will apply the word well, with grace? May we be a body built up? May you give us the strength and the courage and then the boldness to be servants, to trust that even though it may not feel like we're accomplishing anything by just coming to what we may think is a simple task, By just being present, Lord, I pray that we would see that this is an encouragement to all. This is a way You've designed for us to grow. I pray that we would be a body, committed to doing what You've called us to do, and that Christ be glorified. That by doing so, we would see more and more of Christ, and the world would see more and more of Christ. And we would get to see that radical grace that changes lives, change us more, and call sinners out of darkness. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.