Scrolls Unroll Gradually (Part 1)

9/26/1999

You hear different stories about various things about gifts and other things, and somehow we always want to believe it always has been. It’s just been hidden some place in aboriginal countries somewhere and no one really knew about it, but it was always here. I don’t see any requirement from God’s Word that everything always be here.

For example, He gives various gifts. In the book of Isaiah, you see that people were unfaithful. He planted a vineyard and that vineyard had the choicest vines planted in it and a watch tower and a wine press. Everything that could have been done for that vineyard was done.

Yet because it didn’t bear the fruit that God had called it to bear, God’s judgment on that vineyard was that He would take away supply and support. He would take away the captain of the fifty and the wise men. He would take away because Israel wasn’t bearing the kind of fruit that God called them to bear. He was going to take away supernatural leadership, and He went on to say that babies and women and the immature would rule over them.

A man would say to his neighbor, “You have a cloak, you be our leader. You’re rich, you’re worldly-wise, you can be our leader. You can administrate as well based on worldly principles. At least we’d have some kind of leadership then.”

And you can see that’s happened in the church over the generations. The immature and those that are unqualified spiritually, but perhaps from a business or intellectual standpoint have something.

In India one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen is not totally unlike what happens in the western countries and that is, that the person that could read got to be the “pastor.” Since when?? When it takes in order to wait on tables that a man has to be full of the Holy Spirit and full of wisdom. Since when does reading -- “the ability to read” make a person a leader? “You have a cloak. You can read, so you be our leader.”

But even to wait on tables -- full of the Holy Ghost, of good report, full of wisdom. That supernatural life has to be manifested to wait on tables according to the Scriptures -- in the New Testament church that is. But in the one that has evolved over the generations the person that goes and gets a degree or has some interest in this “topic” rather than science or accounting. Or a person who has a charismatic personality or eloquent speech, they get pushed into that position.

By the time I was about two weeks old in Christ, they had me as editor of the “church bulletin” in the denomination I was in. Why? Because, “You have a cloak, you be our leader.” It was amazing to me! I was shocked. I didn’t even know why it was wrong exactly, but it just didn’t seem right to me that I was a brand new baby, and they were asking me to do something that was actually a very, very important task in a lot of ways. Was it to keep me busy so that I wouldn’t leave? Was that it? Was it psychology? “Keep them busy, keep them happy?” That’s nonsense. That’s not Christianity. Full of the Holy Spirit and full of wisdom, I was not. :)

Our measuring rod, and the way we’ve handled things has been so poor over the years. For the most part, just as Jesus looked at Jerusalem and said, “I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks, but you wouldn’t. You didn’t know the time of your visitation. I came to you and you received Me not. You wouldn’t bear the fruit that I intended you to bear, so I’m going to take it away from you and give it to others who will bear its fruit.” And that’s always been God’s way. He takes stuff away from us to get our attention.

So back to Isaiah…because the choicest of vines were planted and they were leadership. He took away Wisdom that was beyond what man had learned. “This man has great learning. Where did he learn these things? How did he have this great understanding, this great wisdom without having gone through Gamaliel’s school? How could it be?”

Well, the nature of supernatural life is that God deposits things that can’t be explained by experience or maturity or learning. It didn’t come from a book. It was revelation that flesh and blood did not reveal. It was a gift and an insight and wisdom and power that did not come from charisma or learning or education or any such thing. But it was a part of Jesus that was deposited. It was grace. It was without merit, it was unearned. It was unearned. It was something that was just because of the kindness and goodness of God He deposits things that are supernatural.

You see with the building of the temple, that God deposited the ability to be a craftsman. He deposited the wisdom in the building of His House. And that was a shadow of what has happened in all of God’s people’s history. He gave supernatural wisdom and gifts and leadership in various areas, in music and so on. He deposits it, but He can also take it away. You might say, “Well, I read in the scriptures that we’re supposed to have this gift and that gift.” Well sure, they had it then. But that does not mean God is obligated to always give it. It’s always been His way to take things away from us at times, to get our attention.

So because it’s always been in the Bible, I don’t necessarily believe that there’s always been the grace or the wisdom or even the knowledge that’s even in there, to be able to carry it out. How many generations went by before the gifts of God were discovered in the Scriptures? Millenniums went by.

So many things that had always been in the Scriptures and you read right past it and you don’t even see it. It has happened to you individually, I’m sure. You read the same Scripture a thousand times and then one day you read it and it just pierces your heart. You fall on your face in tears and say, “God, help me! Son of David, have mercy on me.” And all of a sudden you’re changed. And your world is different. But you’ve read it a thousand times! What happened?

The difference was that the Holy Spirit put His finger on it and said, “This is that which was spoken of, and it is yours. If you’ll worship Me, if you’ll obey Me, this now is yours. Before it was in your mind, but now it’s become part of you.”

And so, the gifts have always been that way, as you read in Isaiah and numerous other stories I could tell you, but it has always been that way. Because they’re gifts, He can give them or not give them. If we could demand them, they wouldn’t be gifts, would they? “I can read about that gift, therefore it’s mine!” Well, it’s a gift that the Holy Spirit gives as He wills, not as we study. He gives it as He wills.

We spoke the other night about the nature of gifts being, if God has a task for us to repair a broken door, He probably is not going to give us a chain saw. He gives us a task and then He gives us a gift that’s associated with that task. “Well, I read about it in the Bible, the gift of chain saw. Therefore, oh God, give me the gift of chain saw.”

“You don’t need a chain saw. I asked you to fix a door. You need a screwdriver, and you need some oil. I’m going to give you the gifts that are associated with what I’m calling you to do right now.” That’s always been His way, and it’s a little different understanding than what most of us grew up with. If we grew up understanding or even considering the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives…if we were allowed to even think about that in our environments, we probably thought of it more as a spiritual inventory. “You have a gift, now find a way to use your gift.” And frankly, there’s a better way to look at it -- a more biblical way to look at it.

And that is, He gives gifts that everything should be done for the edification of the Body. That is the context of giftedness. “The hand can’t say to the eye, ‘I have no need of you.’” That’s the context in Corinthians for the discussion of giftedness. Right smack in the middle of that is all about love.

“You can move a mountain and I don’t care,” saith the Lord. “You can give your body to be burned and all your money to the poor, and I don’t care,” saith the Lord. “All I care about is, “Do you live these things out of relationship with one another, or are they some way to advance yourself. Those things perish. The things that really matter are the things that are lived out of relationship in order to help one another.

Guess what? Chapter 13 is right between 12 and 14 and that’s not by accident, because the gifts are for relationships. The gifts are for the edification of the Body of Christ, and for the building up of the glory of God in the nations. It is for a purpose. God gives gifts for a purpose and for a time for what you need for the task that He has assigned for you. It’s not, “I read it in the Bible, so I get a chain saw, okay God?”

“No, I called you to fix a door. You get a screwdriver and some oil. That’s what I need you to do for My House.” That’s the nature of gifts. It’s not some random dispersion we run after. But instead, “What can I do to serve you best, God? And by the way, I have no idea how to fix that door.”

“Fine. I called you to do it and you can’t do it; that’s a good place to start. Now I’ll give you what you need, and now you’ll be grateful to Me rather than get a big head out of it.” Okay?

So in short, that’s how some of these kinds of things work. He gives us what we need and if we’re faithful with what we have, He gives us more.