John K. Jenkins Sr - Spiritual Gifts

Father, we thank You for the privilege that You give us to be in Your house of prayer. We are grateful for every person present. We pray that in these next few moments, You speak to our hearts and help us to be at the center of Your will. Let Your name receive all of the glory and honor. In the name of Jesus, we pray, amen.

Please open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4. I’m just going to speak for about five minutes, okay? Can I have five minutes? Just kidding, maybe ten or fifteen. I want to thank you; I appreciate it, thank you very much, sir. The book of Ephesians is powerful and profound because the church in Ephesus was a church that accomplished great things. If I were pastoring in that day, I would want to have the kind of church that the Church of Ephesus was. It was a church that impacted its community and changed the lives of many people. So much is packed into the epistle-the letter that Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus-that it is important for us to learn from them as best we can. Today, I want to zoom in on just a few verses here and highlight some things I think are important at this stage of our church 's history. I want our church to be healthy.

I have been to many churches in the course of my life. I grew up in church; I’m a church boy. I’ve been around churches, and I can say that many of them are not healthy. But I want the First Baptist Church of Glenarden to be healthy. Much of what Paul says to the church in Ephesus contains guidance that helps to make a church healthy. Ephesians chapter 4 starts, I want to begin at verse 11: «And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers .»

Let me start off with that. Can I walk through this for just a moment? Let’s focus on verse 11. My very first point is the significance of understanding that God gave spiritual gifts to the church, and that’s what verse 11 talks about. Those gifts are not only listed in Ephesians 4; you can find them in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. The gifts God gave us are throughout various places in Scripture.

What I love about the fact that God gave us gifts -because that’s exactly what they are -is that you don’t work to get them; you don’t earn them. God just gives them to us. As a matter of fact, when you got saved, when you accepted Jesus, and the Holy Spirit took residence in you, He brought along with Him the gifts that God had assigned for your life. Yes, praise the Lord! Thank you, all five of you!

God placed His gifts in the church to accomplish His will, so we can function and be everything God wants us to be. He gave you gifts! I’m excited about that because when I got saved as a teenager, I didn’t know then-nobody taught me-that there were spiritual gifts inside of me. So when I felt something yearning inside me, a pull or desire, I had no idea that when I was on the corner talking to my friends and singing the Gospel, we teenagers were having Bible study and that my pastoral gift was beginning to show up at that time. I can look back now and see that God was preparing me. Some of you need to understand that God is preparing you from the moment you were saved.

Hold up, let me back up. God already knows what your future holds long before you even got saved. He knew how He was going to use you and what His assignment for you is. You 're just discovering, learning, and gaining insight. God is bringing that into place in your life. He gave us gifts; they’re free! We don’t earn them, work for them, or pay for them. You don’t get them because you paid your tithes and offerings, nor because you served in a specific area. That 's not how you get them. You obtained them when the Holy Spirit took residence in you, and He brought the gifts assigned to you.

Now the question is: Why would God give you these gifts? He has purposes for the gifts, and He tells us why in verse 12. Here it is right here: He says, «for the equipping of the saints.» Somebody say, «To equip the saints!» He wanted us to be equipped. He gave us the gifts so we could equip the saints for the work of ministry. God wants to bring us...