Sunday Sermon: One Body, Many Parts (Romans 12:3-5)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Seeking God’s Gifts in Mercy and Grace

I came across this quote this week from A .W. Pink, who said the following, God requires that his gifts should be sought for. He designs to be honored by our asking, just as he is to be thanked by us after he has bestowed his blessing.

So let's embark on this passage together and desire that we would be shown by God how we may serve him and his body. In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand? We're going to read again verses 1 and 2, and I'm going to keep going all the way through verse 8.

Romans 12, verses 1 through 8. Hear the word of the Lord. 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, and that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace that is given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but 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 of one another. 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.

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come into the passage that we're studying today and we are going to invest ourselves in over the next several weeks, we desire that your spirit would truly guide us.

We ask every Sunday that your spirit would guide us into all truth. As we open up the scriptures, we desire with spiritual eyes and spiritual ears to discern spiritual things. But here, even as we come into this particular section, we desire to understand spiritual gifts.

What would that mean beyond even our natural ability to do certain things? How would the spirit bestow upon us an ability to do something that is in service and praise to our God and is in service to your body?

So we desire to understand such things. And if such understanding doesn't come to us today, may it be over these next several weeks as we are sanctified by the word of God, as our hearts and minds are washed with your teaching, that we may understand even more fully that imperative that was given here in chapter 12, verse 1, to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

How may we do this and fulfill your purpose for us in your church? We ask that you would show this to us all the more and that Christ would be honored and glorified in our serving. It is in his name that we pray and all God's people said, amen.

Thinking with Sober Judgment

Now, over the last couple of weeks, we've come into Romans chapter 12, reflecting upon this opening verse. We've looked at this verse now for the last two weeks. 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.

And in reading the mercies of God, we went back and reviewed all those wonderful mercies that we have studied now for the last year and a half. So today, as we come into verse 3, we hear of God's grace.

By the grace that is given to me, Paul says. So we have this phrase, by the mercies of God, and then by the grace that is given. And these are certainly wonderful words, mercy and grace. We sing about them a lot in the hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy.

We sing that God is merciful and mighty. Of course, there are many beloved hymns about grace. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, and grace that is greater than all our sin. But while we certainly consider these words to be very uplifting, how often, though, do you stop and reflect upon just how wonderful those words really are?

When we think about mercy and grace. When you know what you deserve is the judgment of God because of your sin against God, but He sent His Son to die in your place, and He has had mercy on you, that you may know His Son and be saved.

Only then can you understand amazing grace that saved a wretch like me. As the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs has said, When saints hear threats of the law out of God's word against sin, consider what His mercy is in delivering you from what is deserved.

And so we are still thinking about God's grace and His mercy toward us when we enter into this section on spiritual gifts. We deserve to be labeled enemies of God because that's who we were. Instead, He has brought us to Himself.

He has called us friends. He has called us His children. And as the children of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, He has bestowed upon us as our Father in Heaven, gifts that we may therefore give back to Him in our serving and in our doing to the praise of His glorious grace.

You, each one of you who is in Christ Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in you. We don't believe as the Pentecostals do that you have come to faith in Jesus Christ, and so now you're just waiting for that second washing of the Holy Spirit to come upon you.

No, the moment you came to Christ, before you even understood the Spirit was there, the Holy Spirit was living and dwelling inside you. And it was the Spirit that washed the inside of you to make your heart a dwelling place for Him.

And so every one of us having the Spirit, we've also been blessed by the Spirit who empowers us for His service. And as I've said to you, we're going to take the whole month of July to study about those gifts that the Spirit may bless us with.

And I hope by the end of this study, maybe you won't even know yet exactly what your gifting is, but you will have a better idea of how to know what your gift may be and how you can find it and how you can use it.

Today is going to be like a primer into spiritual gifts. Next week will be the sermon that no doubt most of you will be looking forward to anytime we talk about spiritual gifts. You want to hear about the supernatural gifts.

That'll be next week when we get into verse 6 and we read about prophecy. After that, weeks 3 and 4, we're going to consider each one of the gifts that are listed in verses 7 through 8 and understand on a more practical level how you can know what your gifting may be and how to use it.

But this morning, we're going to come back to verses 3 and 5, which we're going to outline this way. Number 1, in verse 3, we are charged to think with sober judgment. So first of all, thinking with sober judgment, and what does that mean?

Number 2, we have in verse 4, we are one body with many parts. And then in verse 5, we consider how we are members of one another. So we're thinking with sober judgment this morning, considering how we are one body with many parts, and we are members of one another.

And that being the theme of this message today, how we are one body with many parts. So first of all, let us consider looking at verse 3, thinking with sober judgment. The Apostle Paul says here, 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.

Now as mentioned, Paul starts here by saying, by the grace given to me. At the very start of the letter, back in the introduction, this was in Romans 1 .5, Paul mentioned the grace of God shown to him when he was called to be an apostle.

Now elsewhere in his letters, he refers to himself as the least of the apostles. And he calls himself the least, not because he was trying to be more humble than all the rest of the apostles, but because he persecuted the church of God.

None of the other apostles had done that, but he had persecuted Christ's body. So Paul knew as well as anyone how gracious God was to him, not to strike him down, but to actually call him into that body and be a servant to that body.

But more to the point here, in Romans 12 .3, Paul is referencing his authority as an apostle when he says, by the grace given to me, which at the start of the letter, again, was tied to his apostleship.

And he's not trying to lord himself over this church in Rome. He's not coming in here saying, hey, I'm an apostle, so listen to me, what I have to say to you. Rather, he says, by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you.

And he's been shown this grace, so he is extending that grace to this body that he is addressing. And as Paul doesn't think of himself more highly than he ought to think, Paul certainly could have. He was an incredibly intelligent man, one of the smartest men on the planet.

Now, it's often said of the rest of the apostles, like, for example, in Acts 2, at Pentecost, when they go in and they're preaching the gospel, they're speaking other languages because of the gift of tongues that has come upon them by the Spirit.

And there are people looking at them going, how do these guys speak these languages? They're just common Galileans. But with the apostle Paul, that actually was not the case. He was a very educated, intelligent man, and somebody who was so committed to understanding God's law and teaching it that he had even surpassed the men who had taught him.

And so Paul certainly could have thought of himself very highly, but he does not. Always very humble, even boasting in his weaknesses, which he says, I do like a fool, in 2 Corinthians 11. But he says, even humbly to this church, charging them, not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.

Now, the wording of this phrase is very interesting. Listen to it again. I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment. There's this Greek word that's being used here, phroneo, and some variation of that word comes up four times in this one phrase.

Phroneo can mean to set one's affection on, or to have the attitude of, or to think about, as it's used here. So another way to where this phrase would be, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but think with right thinking.

Or like this, do not estimate yourself more highly than you ought to estimate, but estimate with right estimation. Are you getting the gist of this now? And this is right after what we had studied last week.

Paul had instructed these Christians not to be conformed to the pattern of the world. Remember that in verse 2. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. What do you do with your mind? You think.

So coupled with verse 3, the instruction then is to not be conformed with the world's way of thinking. Instead, you need to think with the spirit's way of thinking. Now the world will tell you, this is what it means to be a man, or this is what it means to be a woman, or the trajectory of the culture lately has been, there is no man and there is no woman.

We are all just genderless flesh bags. This is the logical outworking of Darwinian evolution. There is no real reason for you being here. Even your identity as a man or as a woman doesn't mean anything since we're all just purposeless sacks of meat.

But as we're studying here about spiritual gifts, even here in this study in Romans 12, there is very obviously a reason for you being here. You are meant to glorify God. And He has saved you and shown you mercy for His glory.

You are to present your body. And my friends, when you hear that imperative in Romans 12, 1, present your body, you have a body as a man, or you have a body as a woman. And there will be unique giftings to you as a man or as a woman, or as a child or as an adult, or someone in the twilight years of your life.

You are still being told to present your body to God as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to Him. And there is a very intentioned purpose for each and every one of you individually to have a specific gift for a particular cause, but in service to God and to His church and for His glory.

Paul describes being part of one body. Now, when we read about that here in Romans 12, this does not mean that we're all like of some hive mind, right? We're all just like worker bees, just buzzing around each other, but we all are supposed to think like lemmings or like sheep, you know, as the world would dictate.

Christianity is all just the people thinking the exact same way. But on the contrary, we're made up of different parts. So we are of one body, that is true, but each part, just like a body, has parts that function for different purposes, so it is within the body of Christ.

So we are of one body, but there's a unique and specific intention that God has for you that He does not have for everyone. There is a gift you've been given, and that gift is not meant for yourself. It's meant to serve Christ's body or your fellow saints.

Listen to what Sinclair Ferguson says about this. When we exercise the gifts which God has given us, we are really saying to our fellow Christians and to others, see how much the Lord Jesus loves you and cares for you.

He has sent me to serve you in this way. He is using my hands and my feet, my lips and my ears to show His love for you. It is a tragic mistake if we think that the message is, see what a superb Christian I am.

See the wonderful gifts I have. Gifts are for service, not for self-advancement. So again, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but think with sober judgment. Now, what does sober judgment mean?

Let's clarify that term before we move on. The Greek word phroneo means to think. This is the word sophroneo, which means to think soundly, to think sensibly. If you think of yourself too highly, you're boasting in yourself, you're bragging of yourself.

Maybe you have this idea that's like, this church would not survive without me. That's not good judgment. That is not sound thinking. You are not in your right mind if you are thinking that highly of yourself.

But likewise, you should not think too down about yourself either. There's pride in that as well. When a person says, oh, I'm just a worm in the dirt. I'm nothing. I'll never amount to anything good. Listen, that's nonsense.

If you are in Christ, you would be saying to God that not even he can do anything good with you. If you come to me after service and you say, Brother Gabe, that was a wonderful sermon. Thank you for sharing that with us today.

If my response was, nah, that was terrible. I don't even know why God has me doing this. That was so unworthy of even being called a sermon. Listen, if I were to say that, that would be a bad thing. Like why am I even preaching if so unworthy for this to be called a sermon?

That is not being humble. That's actually being an overly pious nincompoop. I don't know if I've ever used nincompoop in a sermon before, but today was the first day. In Matthew 6 .16, Jesus actually warned us about the hypocrites who disfigure their faces with the intention of being noticed by others.

Oh, look at how humble, how humble that guy is, how he debases himself and lowers himself. This is a false piety. And like I said, even that can be driven with pride. Look at how humble I can be. That's exactly contradictory to what humility really is.

It is not wrong for you to know that you're good at your job. There's nothing wrong with that. There is a healthy balance of confidence that we can find there. And Paul says that we find it, though, looking not to ourselves.

We find that healthy balance of confidence because our confidence is in Christ. Consider the rest of that phrase. Think with sober judgment, each according to what? The measure of faith that God has assigned.

Not because, look how great I am, but look how wonderful God has been to me. And in this, we fulfill what Paul said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1, let he who boasts, boast in the Lord. It is God who has designated you for this, so there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that God has blessed you with a certain gift.

It is through our faith, through each measure of faith, specifically the way that Paul words it here, that God bestows his gifts and his graces upon the faithful. Now, some will have a greater responsibility in certain things, and some will have less responsibility in certain things, hence why it's worded here as a measure of faith.

But whatever measure or portion that you have been dealt, use it faithfully. So this is thinking with sober judgment, as we've read about here in verse 3. Let's go on now to verse 4, and we consider how we are all part of the same body.

One Body with Many Members

So look at verse 4. This is very simple. For as in one body, we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. That's a wonderful analogy. So again, we're the same body, but that doesn't mean we all function in the same way.

Just as each part of your body has a different function, so it is within the body of Christ. This analogy of the church being like a body, this comes up quite often in the New Testament. You know you've heard this before.

You probably even think of other passages where Paul cites the body of Christ. It comes up 30 times in the New Testament that we're referred to as being a body. It's such an apt analogy. Consider the way that Paul puts this in 1 Corinthians 12.

I'm going to read a pretty good chunk here. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For the body does not consist of one member, but many.

If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I'm not an eye, I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as he chose.

If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet there is one body. That's pretty straightforward, right? And as I've said regarding this analogy, I've talked about this before, but if your desire is to go to a church where everyone is doing the exact same thing and everyone has the same gifts and the same desires and the same ambitions as you, then your desire would be to attend a dysfunctional church.

That's where you want to go. Let's say you were to equate missions with being feet. You are a missions-minded person, and you want to go to a church where everyone else wants to do missions. You want to go to a church with other feet.

Well, if that's where you're going, then you're going to end up in a very smelly church. If everyone goes on mission, then who's sending you? Who's supporting the missionaries? Sure, there needs to be someone who goes, but there needs to be a church that sends, and that church needs to be a diverse body that is made up of many parts working together in order to function.

Now, in saying that we are one body with many parts, be careful not to focus on that many parts too much, that you miss that we are one body. One body implies that you are therefore part of a body. You are actually part of a group of believers, and you are committed to that group that you may grow with them, and they may grow with you.

That's exactly what Ephesians 4 talks about us doing, growing together into the head who is Christ. If you are not in a body, then you are not a part of a body either. That's just common sense. How can you be a body part without a body?

That part, if not connected to a body, is just going to shrivel up and die. It's just going to rot. Ephesians 4, 15 -16 tells us this. We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, who is Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

And your spiritual gift will be used for that purpose, building the body of Christ and growing it up in love. Now, some of you are probably familiar with my YouTube ministry when we understand the text.

I've done hundreds of videos. So hundreds of videos over a wide variety of topics. And some of those topics have been pretty controversial. I mean, whether I'm addressing abortion or gender or marriage or saying that women cannot be pastors or even just reciting the law and pointing people to the gospel.

There are a plethora of topics that I'll hit that will make somebody mad. But honestly, of all the different controversial videos that I've made, the one that I think has stirred the most ire, and I'm still getting comments about it to this day, is the one where I started like this.

If you call yourself a Christian, but you don't go to church, you're probably going to hell. I think you can probably understand why there are people who did not like that. The most common criticism that I receive on that statement is, you're saying that you have to go to church in order to be a Christian.

And my response is, no, I'm saying that a Christian will go to church. Whether or not you go to church is a pretty good indication of whether or not you're in Christ. To be separate from the body of Christ is to be separate from Christ.

And if you don't want to go to church and be part of his body, then it's probably because you're still dead in your sins and you are not saved. Now, this is not a lecture on formal membership. I'm not saying that you have to have filled out a membership form, or else you're going to hell.

Tempting, but that's not my argument. But the logic here is just simply this. If you say you are a part of Christ, then be a part of Christ. You must be in his church. If you are not in his church, then how are you a part of Christ?

It's still imperative to have some kind of commitment to some body of believers. A person who church hops may be in Christ. I'm not saying that people who will hop around to different churches are not Christians.

I'm not saying that. But I would question as to whether that person is really growing. How are you growing others and how are they growing you if you're not allowing those relationships and that fellowship to happen?

So, yes, we're many parts, but we're also one body, even across denominations. We're not looking at our Presbyterian brothers going, I wish they would join the body of Christ one day. We can still be that body.

But this is very obviously a relational argument that Paul is presenting here. We are one body with many members, and the members do not all have the same function. So that leads us into verse 5. So number 3 here, we are members of one another.

Members of One Another in Christ’s Church

Verse 5 says, We belong to Christ, but brethren, we also belong to each other. And I tell you, if I haven't said this in a while, I want to say it again, and now is as good an opportunity as any. I love being a member of, I was going to say Protestant Reformed Baptist Church, of Providence Reformed Baptist Church.

Protestant too, but Providence Reformed. I love being a member here. Yes, I'm a pastor, but even more than being a pastor, I love being a member here. I love the fellowship with this body. Hanging out last night, firing fireworks over at the Lee's.

Guys, thank you so much for hosting that. Getting together for potlucks, which we haven't done in a while, but praise God if we get the chance to do that again soon. People hosting small groups at their houses.

People inviting others over for dinner after church. Just calling somebody up and going out to lunch in the middle of the week. I love this fellowship. I would not even begin to tell you the blessing that it has been on my life.

Sunday is my jam, y 'all. This is where I want to be. I want to be with God's people praising the Lord. One of the things that I dislike about being here in the middle school, I was just talking with Rob about this before church this morning, but what a blessing that Villago allows us to do this.

We have a large room, a large space. We're not as tightly cramped like sardines as we were over on Woodruff Road, and we have space in order to grow to be over here. But what I dislike about being in this space is we're on a time constraint.

We have to be out by a certain period of time. It doesn't allow us a lot of extra time there at the end where we can fellowship and talk with one another, and I love seeing that happen. It's been for 16 years that I've been a pastor now, this being my 16th year, I've always had those moments where I'm hanging out after church and people are talking and whatever, and I may not even be part of the conversation, but I'm still there.

And somebody will look over at me and go, Oh, Brother Gabe, you probably want to go home. You probably want to go eat. We're sorry that we're holding you up. And my response is, You are not bugging me.

This is what I want to see happen in God's church. Please fellowship, and don't feel like that I'm pushing you out. And so I hope that God would bless us with being able to have our own facility again so that we're able to have that extra time again for fellowship and using that facility to grow and make it feel like another home for us.

My desire that our church would do that more and more keeps me motivated to keep looking for a place where we can do that every Sunday. And whatever gift that God has given you, it helps to facilitate that more and more in the body of Christ.

You have a gift, and the purpose of that gift is to serve. It is to edify and to build up. It's not about building you up, although you certainly will grow as well, but it's about building up one another.

Whenever we bring 1 Corinthians 14 into this conversation about spiritual gifts, what that chapter is most known for is an argument concerning speaking in tongues. But really, 1 Corinthians 14 is where we get the most point-blank statement regarding the purpose of spiritual gifts.

They are for building up the church. That's said in verses 4, 5, 6, 12, 17, and 26. Verse 12, strive to excel in building up the church. Verse 26, let all things be done for building up. This is why Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 14 that speaking in tongues is not beneficial for corporate worship because no one knows what you're saying, and it doesn't edify or build up the church.

As my brother Chris has said, sometimes spiritual gifts are treated like the Christian version of a personality test. What is your gift? Maybe we need to do some kind of quiz to help you find your gift.

And sometimes we might mentally be assessing a person's personality to help them figure out what your spiritual gift might happen to be. Your spiritual gift could be connected to your personality, but may not necessarily be.

Your gift is also not about how you can gain recognition or be included in the talent show that you want to put on at church. It's about how you can serve. Here is what Donald Whitney says in his book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.

God has given you a spiritual gift, and it's not the same as a natural ability. That natural talent, rightly sanctified for God's use, often points toward the identity of your spiritual gift. But you should find out the special gift that God has given you while you are serving as diligently as you can without that definite information.

In fact, in addition to the study of Scripture, the best way to discover and confirm which spiritual gift is yours is through serving.". So if you're trying to find out what your gift is, but you don't know where you belong, like I don't even know what church I belong to, and yet I'm still trying to find what spiritual gift I have, let me tell you that I want to suggest you're doing that out of order.

Find the church where you know you belong, serve there, and through your serving, you will find your spiritual gift. As we read in 1 Corinthians 12, 4 -6, now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.

What a Trinitarian approach to spiritual gifts. We are of the same Spirit, the same Lord, the same God who empowers them all in everyone. And so we have considered here as we've been reading through this section of Romans 12 to think with sober judgment.

We have considered how we are one body with many parts, and though many, we are one body in Christ, and we are individually members of one another. And so as I wrap this up for today, I want to give you a few things to think about regarding spiritual gifts.

These are things that you might think about maybe between this week and the next or as we continue to go through this series. Keep in mind this is just one lesson, there's more to come, but here are three things to consider.

Number one, the lists of spiritual gifts that we are given in Scripture are not comprehensive. So what do I mean by that? Well, we have four main lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament. There's this one here in Romans 12.

There's another one in Ephesians 4, 11 to 16. There's a list in 1 Corinthians 12, 7 to 11, and then it's repeated in verses 26 to 31, and a few of those are mentioned again in chapter 14. And then there's a very brief list in 1 Peter 4, 10 through 11.

And all of those lists are different. The same spiritual gifts are not mentioned in every list. So therefore, these aren't comprehensive lists. Every potential spiritual gift that you may acquire will not necessarily be found in these lists that we're looking at, or even in this list here in Romans 12.

Does that make sense? So even if you don't see your gift here in Romans 12, don't despair. We may still find it elsewhere. Consider that when we study through Exodus, we heard of Bezalel and Aholiub, who were skilled craftsmen.

They were gifted by God in the construction of the work of the tabernacle. Well, craftsmen is not one of the gifts that's listed here in Romans 12. And yet we know that God specifically gifted them for this work because the text says He gave them this gift.

Likewise, we read of men who were gifted in music, who served in the court of David. Music, whether playing an instrument or singing, is mentioned as a gift that is granted by God. So there are a number of places in Scripture to draw from regarding spiritual gifts.

It doesn't have to be from this list that we find in Romans 12. So that's first. Secondly, be willing to admit your own personal assessment might be wrong and let others help you in finding your gift.

When I first became a pastor, when I became the senior teaching pastor at the first church that I served in, there was a couple. The husband's name was Ben. I can't remember the wife's name. But they came to me and they said, we have a problem with the direction that the church is going.

And I said, okay, well, what's the problem? And they said, we don't feel like we're getting the chance to use our spiritual gifts. I said, okay, what do you think your spiritual gifts might be? And they told me, and I remember thinking, that's not your gift.

I didn't say that, but that was what I thought in my head. They told me they were certain that that was their gift, though, because at their previous church, all the people laid hands on them and told them, this is now the gift that you have received.

And so now there's nothing that I can do to persuade them that that isn't their gifting because they are sure the Holy Spirit himself gave us this gift. So be careful about that. Be careful about your own personal assessment about your gift and let others help you in finding your gift.

And then number three, you may have more than one spiritual gift. Let's say you figure out that you have a certain gifting, but there's no opportunity in the church to exercise that gift. Maybe it's because somebody else is already fulfilling the role.

Maybe we're in a season right now where the church just doesn't have that need. But don't be discouraged, and don't feel like you're going to languish because you can't use your gift. It may very well be that you're gifted in another way, and maybe in that other way you can serve, and you just don't know what that way is yet.

And consider, again, Donald Whitney's suggestion that you find your gift through serving, so maybe serving in another area where you see there's a need, and through that process you will find that there's another way that God has gifted you in service to his church as well.

There are many other ways that we can go about this regarding spiritual gifts. These are conversations that we can have even beyond the sermon this morning, and I hope that we do. And there are more things that we're going to consider as we continue in this study in Romans 12.

But once again, I want to implore upon you, believer, that you, being a follower of Christ, are indwelt with the Holy Spirit of God, and you have been given a gift for his service and for the service of his body.