So this morning we're continuing in our study of the Book of Romans. The first part of Paul's letter presented the doctrine of the gospel of our salvation, the facts concerning our past justification and our present sanctification and our coming glorification. Now we're in the second major division of the book. Beginning in chapter 12, we've entered into the practical outworking of the gospel. This part began with Paul's plea for us to present ourselves to God as living sacrifices. By submitting our whole being to God, we worship him with our bodies and our minds. Last time we were together in the Book of Romans, we began to look at this practical outworking of submitting to God. We saw that each of us has a crucial role to play in the body of Christ through the gifts that God has sovereignly given to each one of us. The requirement for the proper use of gifts is that they be exercised in humility. They're used for the benefit of others, not for ourselves. So today we continue to discuss the use of spiritual gifts and how you might open your gift. The Lord is serious about us using our gifts. This is stressed in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. That word talent originally meant a measurement of weight of gold or silver. Talent, a talent was worth a lot of money. But because of Jesus teaching in the gospel, this word has developed the meaning that we have for it today in English. That is a person's unique gifts and abilities. In the parable, there were three slaves. They were given differing amounts of money by their master for them to invest while he went away on a journey. He gave five talents to one, and two talents to another, and one talent to the third. Each was given, it says, according to their ability. Well, the first two slaves doubled their master's money, but the third guy just buried it. He buried it for safekeeping and just gave him back the one talent. Well, upon his return, the master was very angry with that guy for his lack of initiative. And he took back his investment, gave it to the one that had the 10 talents, and banished the guy from his presence. The bottom line of that story is that God has given each of us certain abilities, and he expects us to use them in return. So in a secular world, when we refer to someone who is gifted, we usually mean that they have a particular talent. A person may be gifted as a musician, or as an artist, or as a chef. There was one former Reno resident who was particularly gifted in investing in the stock market and in real estate. His name was LeVere Redfield. You may have seen his mansion on Mount Rose Street. So Redfield came from a poor farming family, moved to California in the 1920s, and became a millionaire in the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930s. He had a knack for investing in cheap bonds that regained their value, and then he bought real estate with the money that he made. He moved to Reno in 1935 to avoid California state taxes. People are still doing that. And then he continued to build his financial empire here. He became a Reno legend because of his eccentric ways. He was notoriously cheap. He dressed in flannel shirts and jeans and old boots, and he drove an old beat-up pickup truck. His one indulgence was gambling. He would regularly walk from his mansion to the casinos and drop huge amounts of money. And he didn't walk for his health. It was because he didn't want to pay for gas. And he didn't trust banks or paper money. So instead of depositing his earnings, he bought silver dollars from banks all over the country, thousands and thousands of them. And he stored them himself. He became known as Reno's Silver Dollar King. But when the IRS charged him with tax fraud, he served as his own counsel. He didn't want to pay for a lawyer. And he lost his case, and he went to jail for three years because of it. He had a gift for making money, but he certainly didn't know how to spend it well. But that's not the kind of gift that we're talking about here today in Romans. The gifts in Romans are supernatural abilities, and they're exclusively designed by God to build his church, the body of Christ. So we begin in verse six. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If you had the millions of dollars that LeVere Redfield had, what would you do with them? How would you use them? Well, you have something much more valuable. Money is only of use to somebody while they're alive on this planet. The gifts that you and I possess, they have eternal value. This verse strongly suggests that since we have gifts, we should use them. It's hard to argue against that, isn't it? Now, this verse says that the gifts we have differ. Remember in the previous two verses, he made the point that we are one body, yet many members, and each member has a different function. So what are those functions? Well, what follows here is a list of seven spiritual gifts. It's not a comprehensive list. We see others elsewhere in scripture. In 1 Corinthians 12, he gives us 13 of them. In Ephesians 4, there's five of them. And then there's a few others scattered around the New Testament. But gifts can be put into three basic categories. There are the sign gifts and the speaking gifts and the serving gifts. There's no sign gifts here in the book of Romans, only speaking and serving gifts. The five in Ephesians, they're all speaking gifts that are used in the leadership of the church. And at this point, I want to take a slight detour to discuss those gifts for a moment because there's a lot of confusion over one of them. The confusion is over the issue of whether there are apostles around today. I think I can show you that the apostolic gift mentioned here in Ephesians 4 was only for the initial 12 apostles and it died out with them. So let's look at first Ephesians 2 19 and 20. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone. So the foundation of the church was built on the apostles and prophets. How many foundations does a building need? One. So they began the church. They laid the foundation for it. Now look at chapter 4, verses 11 and 12. And he, Jesus, gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry for building up the body of Christ. So it began with the apostles, and then he gave these other gifts so that the church might continue to grow and be built up on that foundation. There's a movement today called the New Apostolic Reformation, NAR for short. And they take this passage for the basis of what they call the five-fold ministry. You notice there's five gifts there listed in Ephesians chapter four. They believe that all five gifts are active today. Bethel Church in Redding, California is the most well-known of these NAR churches. Their pastor Bill Johnson carries immense authority as an apostle of Christ. But a quick search of the internet will expose how far off these folks are from historical biblical Christianity. It's truly dangerous stuff, and that's why I'm telling you about it. If you want to know more, talk to me later. So the NAR is also one of the groups that teach that the sign gifts are continuing to be active today. So let's go over the gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 to see that list, which does include some of the sign gifts. Verse seven says, 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, 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, workings of miracles, to another, prophecy, to another, the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another, various kinds of tongues, to another, interpretation of tongues. And then down in verse 28, and God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. So in this list, there are several sign gifts, which are supernatural manifestations designed to validate the message of the gospel. The five that are indisputable here are miracles, healing, distinguishing of spirits, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. Some people would add utterances of wisdom and knowledge to that supernatural list, but that's debatable. So this is another big area of controversy among Christians today. There are those who say that the signed gifts have ceased completely. They're called cessationists. Guys like R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur teach that. There are some who say that all of them are active and are in common use today. And there's others who hold various positions in between. So I'm one of those. I believe that God does do miracles. He still does them today, but I'm not convinced that there is an active gift of miracles, that someone has a gift of miracles. I know that God heals supernaturally today, but I've never heard of anyone claiming to have that gift that I found to be credible. I do believe that 99.9% of today's practice of the so-called gift of tongues is simply learned behavior and not a supernatural gift. I believe that tongues are possible, but it would have to be in a known language and there would have to be an interpreter according to the scripture. So if there are sign gifts active today, they're not very common. These gifts were prevalent in the early church. Just like Jesus' miracles gave credibility to his ministry, God validated the early church with miracles. But for the majority of church history, miracles have been few and far between. So for all practical purposes, we're left today with the speaking and the service gifts. So let's go back to our passage. And Paul is going to give us seven examples of gifts in the church. Here's the first one. If prophecy in proportion to our faith. This, like all seven, is an active gift in the church today. Prophecy is not limited to foretelling the future. The Old Testament prophets often spoke for God in the present circumstances of Israel. Most of what they did was call Israel back to repentance. The word itself can mean either foretelling the future or forth telling the truth of God. This is actually the gift of preaching. It is the spiritual enablement to proclaim the word of God with power. Those who have this gift must use it, it says, in proportion to our faith. That is, only according to the faith that has been revealed. Not the faith that we exercise, but the body of truth that God has given us. Jude 3 uses faith in that way. It says, I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints. In Paul's day, they had word of mouth testimony. They had oral transmission of the gospels. But today we have the completed Bible. This must be the basis for all preaching. So let's look at the next gift. If service in our serving. Now this is the same word where we get the word deacon. A deacon of the church is a servant of the church. Now there's an office of deacon as outlined in First Timothy three, but you don't have to be appointed to the office in order to exercise this gift. There are many people who have this gift. They're the backbone of the church. And the church would fail without them. I think this is probably the same gift called helps in 1 Corinthians. Let's go to the next one. The one who teaches in his teaching. Another speaking gift. Teachers focus more on the explanation of the word of God than preachers do. The Christian who teaches is divinely gifted to interpret and to present God's word in an understandable way. James has a serious warning for teachers. It says in James 3.1, for not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. And in the next verse, James talks about bridling the tongue. Teachers have to be very careful what they say. And like the prophet, everything must be grounded in the Word of God. And the next is another speaking gift. The one who exhorts in his exhortation. I love this gift. because I've been the recipient of this gift of exhortation many times in my life as a believer, and I don't know where I would be without the exhorters that God brought into my life. The word here is parakaleo. It's the verb form of one of the names of the Holy Spirit, the paraclete. It means to comfort, to encourage, to urge someone on. How many times have you been in a place in your life where you were ready to quit? Did you have a paraclete? Someone who came alongside you and encouraged you? If you have this gift, then you notice the way God is at work in the lives of believers around you. and you point it out to them. If you have this gift, you can't stand to see people discouraged. You wanna tell them that it's gonna be okay. You wanna tell them that they can make it. You desire to point out the good things about them and the good things that God has in store for them. Now, I said the church couldn't survive without the helpers. Well, it can't survive without this next gift either. the one who contributes in generosity. This gift identifies and meets genuine physical needs, both inside and outside the church. It can be someone who gives of their own resources or someone who is administering the church's resources to others. If a church is blessed with such a person, they should put them in charge of the Benevolence Fund, Why? Well, some people give out of a need for recognition. And some people give out of a sense of superiority and control. But the person who has this gift does neither. This person does it with generosity, it says here. Generosity is an attitude. It's an attitude of sincerity, and it has no ulterior motives. And they do it with wisdom. They're sensitive to genuine needs versus the so-called needs of some scam artists. And of course, as with all of the gifts, just because you don't have this particular gift doesn't mean that you don't need to ever give. We're all called to give. It's a part of worship. It's a regular part of worship for every believer. Each believer is given a specific, a particular gift or gifts. That's their main contribution to the body of Christ. But we can all do all the gifts sometimes as the needs arise. We're all called to preach at times. We're all called to teach at times. We're all called to exhort at times. So let's go to the next one. The one who leads with zeal. This, I believe, is the most important gift for anyone who's going to serve as an elder. Elders set the direction of the church. They lead. And leaders lead by keeping on the right path. And they're called to do it with zeal, which means diligence. It means to do it with great care. In other words, they must be good shepherds. Leadership is the gifting of a pastor who cares for the sheep. A careful study of eldership in the New Testament will reveal that elders and pastors are the same thing. All elders are called to be pastors. Peter says that elders are to pastor the flock. So beside meeting the character requirements for this office, elders must do several things. An elder, according to 1 Timothy 3.2, must be able to teach. There's lots of gifted leaders in the world, but the spiritual gift of leadership is focused on the written word of God. It is only through that light that we can see the path. Just because a man in church shows strong business leadership skills, it doesn't mean that we should put him in the position of a leader, of an elder. In Titus 1.9, it says, he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also rebuke those who contradict it. So spiritual leadership, again, is first and foremost biblical leadership. But leaders can't lead if nobody's following them. So look at Hebrews 13, 17. Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls. as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you." Does this mean that you owe leaders blind obedience? Well, no. The word here, obey, means to allow yourself to be persuaded. Don't just be ornery for orneriness sake. It's hard enough to lead without resistance. So don't give your leaders unnecessary cause for groaning. And besides that, it says here, it doesn't do you any good either. No advantage. So Paul instructs in another place, people to follow him as he follows Christ. So if leaders display godliness in their lives, then follow them. If they're keeping watch over your soul, trust them. If they don't, they should be removed from that office. But you don't have to be an elder to lead. Elder is a position that should be accompanied by the gift of eldership, the gift of leadership, that is. But there are many others who also are gifted with leadership in the church. If there weren't men in the church with this gift in the first place, then how would we appoint them as elders? And while God has restricted the eldership to men, gifted women lead in the church in amazing ways. And believe it or not, everyone, whether they're gifted or not, is called to lead in some way. Because leaders are influencers. And unless you're a hermit, you're in contact with people. And your speech and your actions are having influence on them. When we walk in the flesh, that influence is negative, and we are leading people towards hell. But when we're walking in the spirit, we're influencing them towards heaven. And finally, the last gift in Paul's list here is mercy. The one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. This is hands on ministry. Notice it says acts of mercy. This is tending to people who are in suffering. This is visiting the sick and those who are in prison. It's ministering to the homeless and the handicapped to anyone who is suffering mentally or physically. And it is to be done cheerfully. The attitude of the minister of mercy makes all the difference. Have you ever been helped by someone who obviously did it grudgingly? How'd that feel? They may have helped you, but you probably wish they hadn't. I mean, have you ever had to collect unemployment? How cheerful were those people? You get that kind of look. Our culture is increasingly looking to the government to meet their needs. But that kind of help does not come with the cheerfulness that Paul prescribes here. The church used to fulfill this role in society, and it still does in many circumstances. Whenever there's a natural disaster, it's Christian agencies that are the first to respond. Samaritan's Purse is one of the largest and most effective of these organizations. And it's Christians who make up the majority of volunteers in the organizations that aren't overtly Christian. And I'm sure a good percentage of all of these volunteers have this gift of mercy. So, there are the seven gifts that Paul gives us in this section. But as I said, this isn't an exhaustive list. There are many more. The exact identification of gifts is not nearly as important as your attitude. The believer should be ready to serve in any way that God calls him or her to serve. If you have that attitude, your gifting will emerge and you'll find your place in the body of Christ. So by the time that LeVere Redfield died in 1974, he had accumulated over $100 million with all of his real estate holdings and his business interests. And in that way, on a purely human level, he was like that first slave in the parable of the talents. He invested his money well and he made lots more. But ironically, in a spiritual sense, he was also like the slave who buried his talent. Throughout his whole life, Redfield hoarded money for himself. He didn't use his talents to serve the Lord. After he died, they found a false wall in his mansion with over 400,000 silver dollars in bags. Most of those were uncirculated coins worth a lot more than the face value. They were eventually sold at auction for $7.3 million. So what good did it do Redfield to accumulate all that? Like Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 5.10, he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This also is vanity. And remember Jesus' question for the rich fool. In Luke 12, he asked, the things you have prepared, whose will they be after you die? I'll tell you who got the Redfield millions. His wife, Nell, took the bulk of that money, and she formed the Nell J. Redfield Foundation. You see that name all over the place in Reno. And it's not just in Reno. It's all around the country. That foundation continues to give to this day to philanthropic organizations, causes like hospitals and schools, and homeless facilities, and they give to the tune of $5 million a year. So like Redfield, you and I can never be satisfied if we hoard the riches that God's given to us. Your spiritual gifting has eternal value, but it must be spent in this life. So let's end this morning by pulling together what we've learned so far in chapter 12. We began with the command to offer all that we have to God as living sacrifices. Then we went immediately to this treatment of spiritual gifts. This is what to offer yourself means. It means serving God through your gifts. And don't miss the context in which we serve here. We must exercise our gifts in the context of the body of Christ. They're not just for general use out in the world at large. None of what is taught here makes any sense outside the context of the local church. People who think they can be Lone Ranger Christians are just plain wrong. They are deceived by the devil. You can't function as a part of the body unless you're in a body. If you cut off one of your fingers, it no longer functions as a finger. We're called to love one another within the body through the use of our gifts. And you can't love one another unless you're with one another on a regular basis. It's impossible. So, open up your gifts in order to edify your brothers and sisters. In doing so, you're gonna be amassing eternal riches. You'll be storing up your treasures in heaven. And we can only imagine how God is gonna use those riches in eternity. Let's pray. Oh, thank you, Lord, for all that you have given us. Lord, help us to be faithful in returning to you those things, to using the tools that you've given us, the blessings that you've given us in order to build your kingdom, in order to draw men and women to you, that they might know you and you be glorified. We ask it in the name above every name, Jesus Christ our Lord. So today is communion Sunday. So if the guys will come forward and help me with this.