Sermon: "Gifted Children"

3rd in the "What is Real Spirituality?" series.
Delivered May 27, 2007 by Rev. George Antonakos.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3

The audio file of this sermon is available for download and listening in MP3 format.

Click to Download & Listen (4.0MB)

Well good morning again. I am so glad that you are all here this morning. I am so glad that the air-conditioner is working today. We can give thanks to God for all things, right? As Andy has already mentioned we are in the third week of three messages regarding things spiritual; spiritual gifts, what does it mean to be spiritual? And by way of review for those of you who may have not been here for the last week or two, two weeks ago we looked at 1st Corinthians 13 and focused in on the fact that unless we have a loving sense towards other people, our gifts and all the things that God gives us spiritually really are useless. We said last week that every person in the body of Christ is very important and has a gift from God and its important to exercise that gift so that the whole body is built up and encouraged. So up to this point we said that the loving encouragement of others in the church is really what spiritual is about so that the whole world can be blessed. We value each person so that the whole world can be blessed and that's where we are today in 1st Corinthians 14. It's a good text for Pentecost Sunday, because we get to see how God's desire for healthy balance in the church can quickly go south many times because of our sinful nature.

In Acts 2, which we have already read, a gift that God gave to bless and to save in 1st Corinthians 14 becomes a hindrance to the health and the wholeness of a church. In Acts 2, unbelievers hear the proclamation of the wonders of God in their own language and they come to Christ. In 1st Corinthians 14, Paul suggests that if any believers were to come to the first church of Corinth they would be blocked from coming to Christ. In Acts 2, an experience of anticipation occurs where people are hearing in their own language the wonders of God and they say there is a question at the end of that text that Andy read today. What does this mean? And they want to know more. In 1st Corinthians 14, potential converts would experience confusion and they would ask the question this way; what does that mean? From what does this mean to what does that mean? That is the contrast of Acts 2 and 1st Corinthians 14. See Peter and Paul both had the same goal. Moving people towards Christ; does that sound familiar? Salvation, a salvation is not just getting a ticket punched and getting to heaven. A salvation that brings wholeness to the individual and to the body collectively.

Let's look at Acts 2: 37 and 39. That's really the end of what happens in this passage when Peter is preaching on the day of Pentecost and it says,

"When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" See, when God's spirit is working that's the question, what shall we do? What response should I have? And he says, Peter replied "Repent and be baptized. Every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off. For all whom the Lord our God will call."

See Paul teaches in 1st Corinthians 14, which is what we are going to look at in a moment that if the Corinthians don't understand that goal of moving people towards Christ, of calling them to repentance so that they might call upon God, then they missed the spiritual boat that sailed at Pentecost.

Now let's turn to 1st Corinthians 14, we can't read the whole chapter. I can't unpack the whole chapter, but we are going to look at Verses 1-5 and then we are going to skip over to 18 to 25 to get the flavor and the sense of what Paul was saying 2000 years ago. So let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your Word and we pray that your word would be accompanied by your spirits, presence, and power, and understanding so that this word might not just be something that we come to know and understand, but something that moves us deep within and changes us and touches our will. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.

1st Corinthians 14:

"Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified."

Now skipping over to 18:

"I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. In the Law it is written: "Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me," says the Lord. Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!""

That is exactly what happened at the end of Peter's sermon. That is just a description of somebody being convicted, repenting and saying I need God. God is really here in your midst. And Paul's point is no intelligibility, no conviction of sin, no understanding, no salvation. Do you remember the scene from "Back to the Future, Part 1" I think there may be somebody who has not seen "Back to the Future, Part 1", but if so let me remind you what it was about. Marty McFly goes back in his DeLorean to 1955 from 1988 and he's got to make sure that his parents kiss at the enchantment under the C-dance and during that dance one of the guitar players hurts his hand and Marty McFly who is played by Michael J, Fox gets up there and with the guitar he starts to play Johnny-B-Good and you know it's kind of the emphasis that he just introduces the world to the 50's through rock and roll. But after that is all done and his parents kiss and everything is great he starts going into this heavy metal rift; I don't know if you remember this where he is cranking on the guitar, he like gets these people in 1955 to accelerate and they can't make the jump and he's playing and he's going on the floor with his knees and he's kicking over the speaker and its this Ozzy Osborne thing and he's going crazy and at the end of this thing with this high pitched squeal on the guitar you get a picture of all of the people out in the audience looking like this; jaws on the floor like huh, what's that? Even the musicians are looking at him going what? What is that?

That was his point. He is saying spirituality that just does it own thing becomes an obstacle to the purpose and mission of the church. Have you ever seen that happen? I have seen it happen. I have seen it happen where people get so focused on their own flavor of spirituality that the great commission goes out the window. It is how Nicholas Von Zinzendorf born 307 years ago yesterday; a leading figure of evangelical mission eventually disconnected from the dry orthodoxy of the state church and he taught this. He said, "Every person needs three conversions. First we need to be converted from the world where self and we are in control doing our own thing, from the world to Christ. Then we need to be converted to the church, to be growing vibrantly in the body of Christ and then we need to be converted back to the world." He said that unless those three things happen we will not fulfill the call of God on our lives. And we will miss the spiritual boat that sailed on Pentecost, just like the Corinthians.

Now I would like to show a graphic that demonstrates the need for Christian balance in our spiritual growth. We are talking about what's true spirituality and this is as it is described by natural church development founder Christian Schwartz and I want you to look at that for a moment and notice that God is right in the center and notice that its white; that white light, white is pure. It's just when white light goes through a prism that it reflects in to colors and the closer we get to the center the closer we get to God, the more we become like God. Now around it you see the members of the trinity and you remember last week when we were looking at 1st Corinthians 12 it said that there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. There is different service, but the same Lord; the Lord Jesus and there is different working, but the same God, God the Father, the Creator. Now that looks, but you can't hardly tell it, that is supposed to be green up there, okay? God the Creator is the one who put it all in to motion by wisdom. By wisdom God created the world the Bible says.

Jesus demonstrated a humble servant attitude and was committed to God all the way to the cross. Notice the outside words. And the Holy Spirit came in power to not only be in the midst of the church, but to empower and birth the church into being. Now Christian Schwartz and for those of you who are liturgically sensitive you could get really confused about this because we think of red as the color of Pentecost. Get that out of your mind for just a moment, okay? Blue, the coming of the Holy Spirit like a dove is Pentecost. Now, if you were to add one more circle you might say that those who are in the green area are folks that we might sometimes refer to as those who are more liberal in the Christian church; they are focused on things like social justice, human rights, peace, the environment. And the red we would say evangelicals; folks who want to extend the claims of Christ to whoever will listen, discipleship, following Jesus, in the word, in prayer and then the blue area where maybe we would label charismatics are people who want to experience the power of the Holy Spirit, not just the presence of the Holy Spirit, they want to experience the power of the Holy Spirit, because it's for today.

Now the goal is not to covert people to our flavor of Christianity. See that's where the Corinthians were. They thought they were all powerful, all blue and they thought they had a certain kind of wisdom from God. In fact, Paul mocks their wisdom in a way. He says, "What you guys are lacking is commitment to the body. You are so focused on yourself that you lack commitment and you missed to boat on building up the whole body of Christ." See power without commitment is useless, but there are other variations. Like there are churches that are like there is not much green. They have a lot of power. They have a lot of commitment, but there is not a lot of wisdom. Peter was like that. He had a lot of power and a lot of commitment, but many times he lacked wisdom and he was always stepping in the wrong place. And then there is churches where the blue is not as prominent and there is a lot of wisdom and people are concerned about social justice and that sort of thing and there is a desire to see people come to Jesus, but that combination might be what burned out believers experience.

See one of these things is isolated in favor of the other two. There is an imbalance. There is even a danger. Christian Schwartz says, "Heresy is not necessarily the absence of truth. Heresy is much more subtle. It's about having partial truth." I mean think about it. We all would say community is critical, but if community is taken to its extreme it becomes cultish. And many people like lemmings go to their literal death because they emphasize one aspect of spirituality. Now one way to detect a wobble is when we criticize one of the other colors in order not to consider what might be lacking in our life and in our experience. You see, it's really easy for red churches to put labels on churches that emphasize green and blue. I mean there wasn't a time too long ago where the term social justice and charismatic was a dirty word and it still is in some churches that are extremely red.

So, I have a question for you. Where are we? Where is Central Presbyterian Church? I think we have all the colors to some extent, but I think we are mostly red and green with not so much blue. We have talked about that over the last year, as we talked about the natural church development process. It's not that there isn't any blue; I mean we are doing prayer emphasis and we now on communion Sundays we are inviting people to experience the power of God through healing as they come for communion or for any need that they have. But we are kind of like Moses; we are wise. There is a lot of wisdom here. There is a lot of smart people. There is a lot of God given wisdom and there is a lot of commitment. But like Moses, we are kind of in need sometimes for someone to hold up our arms, not just because we don't want to raise them when we worship, but because sometimes we just lack power. And I admit it; that is how I tested in the gift assessment when I did this. See, we can be like a guy who I heard was shopping at the supermarket and he had a screaming baby in his cart. He was going up and down the aisles saying things like, "Easy Freddy. Calm down now. Everything is going to be alright. Don't get upset buddy." Now a woman overheard him and said, "Boy you are really patient with little Freddy." And he looks at her and he goes, "Lady, I'm Freddy."

I think sometimes that's us. We just all go along self-sufficient trying to crank ourselves up, right? Acknowledging the spirit power, but not always tapping in to it. Why? Why is that? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe its that we are afraid of being out of control. Maybe that blue area just looks unsophisticated. Have you ever noticed what people were like before Jesus' power was unveiled? They didn't care who thought anything about them. Some of them were the most unsophisticated people that were ever, "Jesus, help me." "Shut up" "Jesus, help me please." Some are stealth tapping in to the power like the lady who just wanted to touch the cloak of his garment. But at least they did something, they went toward Jesus where the source of power is. Usually there was a risk; there was a willingness to be unsophisticated. They didn't care what they looked like.

You see, Pentecost, the spirits coming is about power. In Luke 24:49, again it has already been mentioned this morning. Jesus said, "Wait." He says, "I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city but stay, wait until you have been clothed with power from on high." Acts 1:8 he says, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judah and the other most parts of the earth and Samaria as well." In Luke 5:17 the scripture says the power of the Lord was present for Jesus to heal. Are we to presume that there are times when it wasn't present? In Mark 6:15 it seems to indicate that Jesus could do no mighty miracles there, because of their unbelief. It appears that power is not a static possession.

So for Central Church, for us to say, "Okay you guys come on. We need more commitment. We need more wisdom" might be counterproductive. But if I said we need more power would anybody say Amen? My friend Dave loaned me a video about John Wimber. John Wimber is kind of one of the founders of the Vineyard church and got things going there and Dave gave me this tape maybe one year ago. It's been sitting on my shelf for that long. I am so embarrassed. You know I say, "Yeah Dave I will watch it. I will watch it." Finally, two weeks ago I put it in. It's called, "I'm a Fool for Christ" and the subtitle is "Who's Fool are You?" And he was talking in his testimony about being burnt out. He had gotten in to church consulting. He worked with Fuller Seminary about the evangelism church growth and he said he found himself in Detroit in a motel room like the 200th day in the year that he had been traveling, talking to churches about church growth, but they didn't really want to grow. And he was just burnt to a crisp; burnt out. And he said there is one question that God will always answer. There is one prayer that God will always answer and it's in the form of a question. God what's wrong with me?

And God told him you are just cranking it out. You are not tapped in to my power. And he said he wept for hours on end. He got up from that experience and he knew God had touched him and he wasn't sure what it meant, but he felt God prompting him later on in the church to emphasize healing ministry and he says that as he is emphasizing this, nobody is getting healed; people are leaving the church because of the emphasis. And then a powerful healing occurred that can only be described as the Holy Spirit at work. He says that as he was coming out of the place where this happened he was driving down the street and he had this like vision of a honeycomb in his mind. He wasn't in a trance or anything, which was good because he was driving. So he had this like honeycomb vision and he saw this honey dripping down on people and he some people were like "Oh Lord, thank you for this honey. Thank you this is so great." And he saw other people going, "Yuck. Get this out." And he heard God speak to him and he said, "John, I want you to know that the problem is not on my end. The power, the sweetness is always available."

Do you ever get invited to take a step of commitment and then hold back? Are you afraid of something as simple as when we, like next week we will do it again when we have communion and people will be invited; if you need prayer just come up and have prayer and we will; something as simple as that, have you ever in your mind say you know what I really need prayer, but I am not going up because I don't know I just feel unsophisticated? I am not saying that if we lean more to the blue area that everybody is going to get healed that needs it. And there are some of you here today that you are blue at heart. You are in that blue area of heart and you are going "Hey man, preach it." And then the red and green folks are like "Whoa, pastor. Hold the reigns." Hey when it comes to not wanting to appear weird, I stand at the front of the line. But for our mission fulfillment, for our Central Presbyterian Church, for us collectively to be more centered, to move people toward Christ in a stronger way, we must go beyond enthusiasm for the gifts and cry out to Jesus for the gift of the Holy Spirit in new ways.

What does that mean for us? It probably means more waiting. It probably means more being. It probably means more confessing to each other. It probably means more retreating, humbling admitting that we are still so needy and thirsty for living water. When that balance comes I think we will hear more nonbelievers come in and say, "God is really among you." And they will be convicted of heart and they will come to Christ. I know that those who are saying "Hold the reigns" are afraid that some big pendulum swing is going to come over. That happened in the history of the church; you know that in this church? We are so afraid that everything was going to get charismatic back in the 70s and 80s. I think we got too much red and green to worry about that, okay? I just think we need more balance; that is what God is calling us on this Pentecost Sunday to consider in our own lives and as a church. So let's pray for that.

Lord, we ask you that you would bless and convict us as your disciples. We thank you for the Holy Spirit. We again ask your forgiveness for an attitude that says Holy Spirit who? We pray that we would have more balance in our lives, as a church, so that others might come to know you and might be more whole as we follow Jesus. We ask it in His name. Amen.

© 2007, Rev. George Antonakos
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org