I would like to call your attention this evening to the words found in Paul's epistle to the Romans in chapter twelve, reading verses three, four, and five. For I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man, the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Now, you will remember that last Friday night we gave a kind of general analysis of the contents of this chapter from verse three to the end of the chapter. The apostle deals here with two great matters, the Christian, first of all in the life of the church, verses three to eight, and then from there on, verse nine to the end of the chapter, the Christian in his relationship to other people, both inside the church and outside. Now we are dealing with this first section, and here we really have an account of the Christian exercising his gifts in the church. Not merely the Christian in the church, but the Christian in particular exercising his gifts in the realm of the church. Now, as we've already indicated, the apostle takes up this matter here, as he does elsewhere, as we've just seen in reading the 12th chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, and as he does in other places also, the apostle takes this up because difficulties had arisen, obviously, with regard to this question of the exercising of the gifts. It has been throughout the centuries one of the causes of trouble in the christian church. Hence the instruction concerning it, for which we should all be so profoundly grateful. Now then, how does the apostle deal with it? We've seen that he starts by putting his own case before them. That's a wise thing to do. In a sense. He takes the ground from beneath their feet by putting himself in with them. He's not preaching down at them, he's just giving them the instruction, and it applies to him as well as to them. But his own case is a particularly valuable one, because, as he says, though he's writing to them as an apostle, he's got nothing to burst on. He hasn't made himself an apostle. I say, through the grace given unto me, never have been a Christian at all, would never have been an apostle and a teacher were it not for God's grace. He is what he is by the grace of God, and then what he goes on to show them is that as this was true of him, it is true also of all the other members of the church. And you remember I pointed out how he now lays down two principles, and then having laid down his two principles, he just illustrates how these two principles should be operating in practice in the life of the church. And the first principle is that all that we have as christians is the result of grace. It is all of grace, as it was in his case, so it is with all of us. And the second principle is the doctrine of the church as the body of Christ. Now then, let's work this out together. We began doing so last Friday night and dealt chiefly with the question of the apostle himself. How, as I say, that it is all the result of grace. He does speak with authority, he speaks as an apostle, but it isn't his own. It isn't based on his own ability, it isn't based on anything in himself or anything that he has produced. It is all the result of grace. And you may remember that at the very end we drew out some principles from all that, pointing out how the christian church obviously and patently has departed from the apostolic and the New Testament teaching in this matter. While the New Testament does indicate a division of offices and of labor, there is no such distinction as has since then been developed in the church, with a great hierarchy leading to a kind of super authority called a pope, or whatever else you may choose to call him. All that is foreign to what you find in the New Testament. But I think we must recognize this. The history of the church shows very plainly and clearly that there is always this tendency in men to elevate themselves. And the most obvious way, and the easiest way of doing that always, is, of course, to establish offices. And then when you enter into the office, you are correspondingly elevated. And so the humility which is so characteristic of the great apostle and of all the other apostles in the New Testament, you remember how we saw that Peter says that he's an elder, he's a teacher, but he says not as lording it over God's heritage. Now, there's nothing like that at all in the New Testament. But I'm calling attention to all this because we are confronted by a situation in which we are being compelled to think of the nature of the christian church. It's almost true to say that not a day passes now, but that you'll see some reference somewhere or another in the press to this matter. There was one this morning again, Archbishop of Canterbury is going to visit the pope and so on. And it's all about this question, what is the Christian Church? How should she be organized? How should her work be conducted? And every one of us, whatever church you may belong to, you'll be compelled and forced to face these questions during the next months and years. And therefore it is very vital that we should have our ideas clearly in our minds with regard to all this. How have all these exalted offices come into being and all this reverence of men calling a man your holiness and so on. There's nothing like that in the New Testament. And our object and ambition always should be to have christian churches which approximate as closely as is possible to the New Testament pattern and illustration. I'm about to say something. I hesitated whether I'd say it, but I'm saying it purely as an illustration. I'm saying it not to amuse you, though it is very amusing in many ways, but this extraordinary tendency in the christian church to elevate offices so that men through them can be elevated. I had an experience from two and a half years ago that put this very forcibly before me. I was very conscious of the tendency before, but I found myself involved in the thing quite unexpectedly. I used to belong to the Presbyterian Church of Wales and I was asked on that occasion to preach at the centenary, if I remember rightly, of a particular church. And I'd gone there to do so and had preached in the afternoon. Then by the evening service, the then moderator of the whole association for South Wales had arrived, of course, because of this centenary occasion and to represent the whole denomination officially. He was a man I knew well. We'd been fellow ministers in the same area. I'm saying nothing wrong or disrespectful about the men, but he was a man who'd. Well, he'd never been outstanding for his preaching nor for any other gifts and had just struggled along in his churches. But in mere terms of seniority, because of his age, had now been made the moderator of this whole section of churches in south Wales. And this is what I discovered was happening when we were going to go in for the evening service. I was amazed to find the following procedure. I'd known men made moderators and they'd presided at the meetings dressed as I'm dressed, in their ordinary dress. And though they were moderator, there was no fuss and no ceremonial, no pomp and ceremony. But I had heard that since then that it had been decided that the moderator should always wear a gown when he was presiding. Well, that's all right, but it was obviously a step. Then he went on and began to wear the bands in addition to the gown. The process is developing, you see. But this is what I found that night. I was expecting to go into the service from the vestry as usual, but I found that we were suddenly being formed into a procession. And in this procession I was to walk immediately behind the moderator. I was in that position because I happened to be the preacher on the occasion, and other ministers and elders and deacons and so on were at the front of the procession, and, well, I felt no objection so far. But then we began to move in to the chapel, and suddenly we were stopped. And a man, when one of the elders went forward into the chapel, and there, with a loud voice, he commanded the whole congregation to stand. He said, let the congregation stand. The moderator is about to enter. And of course, they all stood. Well, you're quite right. The thing is rarely quite laughable. The only little protest I could make on that occasion was to go out to the procession, and I allowed them to go in and to sit down, and then showing my disapproval by not being a part of the procession, I just walked in quietly and the service proceeded. But that's the kind of thing to which I'm referring. You see, there's nothing like that in the New Testament. It's remote from the New Testament, but that is the tendency in the christian church. As spirituality goes down, offices go up, ceremony and pomp and ritual go up and are elevated. Now, I could illustrate this to you at great length. You are familiar with what's called Anglo Catholicism, which began as what was called the Oxford movement of the 1830s with Cardinal Newman and people and pusy and keeble and people like that. Now, that was rarely what was behind that movement. You see, they began to feel that the church wasn't counting, as she should count. Now. How can you get back, they said, how can you get back authority to the church? And they said, the only way to do it is this. They said, the Church of England has become too ordinary. You must elevate the priest. You must begin to call the minister a priest, and you must take him away from the people, and you must dress him up in certain clothing and vestments, and you must call the communion table an altar and so on. No, that's the idea. It's a substitute for spirituality, for spiritual power. It's a substitute for the grace of God. Now, what the apostle, you see is saying here is this, that he speaks like this with authority, solely because of the grace given to him. He's not putting it in terms of his office as such, but rather in terms of the grace that has put him into the office, the grace through which the revelation and the knowledge have come to him, the grace with which all his powers and his faculties have come to him. So you get, you see, in the New Testament this essential simplicity, this extraordinary contrast with what the christian church has become throughout the centuries. My friends, we are living in days when it seems to me that you and I have an opportunity, if we want to be biblical, of restoring again the primitive practice, the primitive idea of the christian church and God. Grant that even through a word like this, in passing, that some of us may be stimulated to think again along those particular lines. Don't start with what you see. Start with the New Testament, and let us order all things according to this, which we have as the sole authority in all matters of faith and conduct in the church as well as in general. Very well, we leave it at that. And we go on, because the apostle goes on, you see, to say that this is not only true of him. He says, I say, through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you. Now here again is the most important point. It means everyone. There are no exceptions. What he's saying is not to be true only of the offices of the church. It is to be true of all the members of the church. Again, I can put it in this form. The distinction between clergy and laity, which came in about the second century of the history of the Christian Church, is again a violation of the New Testament teaching. You've got to get distinction of offices. The apostles make that perfectly plain and clear. But you are not to have a rigid division as between separate people called clergy and laity. That's not here at all. There is a commonness of the position of all the members of the church, but some, because of the gifts given to them, are called upon to exercise certain functions which others are not called upon to do. But the apostle says that the principle of grace and the distribution of gifts is common to all. We must learn to think of the church, then as a living community of people. Each one has faith, each one has life from God, each one has a gift which has been given to him, and each one is the function in the total life of the church. Now these points are all of them of extreme importance and significance, it seems to me at this present time, because more and more the idea has been creeping in that the vast majority of church members really are not meant to do anything but to sit and listen, and that the only people who function in the church are certain special people. Now let's be quite clear about this. You've often heard criticism of what is called the one man ministry, and it is perfectly right. I would argue that it is right that certain men be set apart for the work of preaching, but that doesn't mean that they alone function and nobody else does anything at all. That's not the picture of the New Testament Church. The picture, rather, is what we've got here, every man that is among you. This is applicable to everybody, not only to apostles, not only to preachers, pastors and teachers. It is applicable to every single member of the christian church. When we come on to the figure of the church as the body of Christ, we shall see this yet more clearly. But now here it is put in this way at this point. But then we come to this most interesting and fascinating phrase. I say, through the grace that is given unto me, to every man that is among you. Then I go on to the end of the statement, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. Now this is clearly the crucial point and part of this whole statement. You notice once more the emphasis on every man, everyone, as God hath dealt to everyone the measure of faith. The word dealt isn't difficult. It means divided. It's the idea of dealing out, doling out, if you like, dividing, as God hath divided to everyone the measure of faith. But what is the meaning of this phrase, the measure of faith? It's important that we should be clear about this. What is the faith that he's talking about here? There are some who have tried to dismiss it as just standing for justifying faith, the faith that justifies the thing that the apostle has been laying before us in the earlier part of the epistle, being justified by faith. We conclude, therefore, that a man is justified by faith, not by the deeds of the law. Now there are some who would say that the apostle is here referring to that faith that brings us into the christian life, the faith that justifies us. But obviously it can't be that. And for this good reason, justifying faith is the same in everybody. There is no such thing as a special or a peculiar justifying faith. The faith by which the apostle Paul was justified is no different from the faith by which any one of us is justified. But here he is talking about the measure of faith, which suggests immediately a difference. So it isn't a reference to justifying faith, then. Another idea that people have had is that he means here by the measure of faith what is called in one corinthians twelve and verse nine, the gift of faith. Did you notice that in the list he's giving us now a list of some of these gifts and he says to another faith by the same spirit in other words, he's talking there about a special gift of faith and there are those who therefore think that here in romans twelve three he is doing the same thing. But again, we can easily demonstrate to you that he is not doing that. What he means in one corinthians twelve nine is again, of course, not justifying faith. He's writing to people who are Christians, all of whom have been justified by faith, but he says to some, to one this gift to another faith, the gift of faith by the same spirit. Well, what that means, of course, is that peculiar kind of faith that you see exemplified, for instance, in a man like George Muller or in a man like Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China inland mission. George Muller was a man who was obviously given the gift of faith. Everybody doesn't receive that gift, but George Muller was given that particular gift. That gift was divided or dealt to George Muller and the result was he was able to pray with confidence and assurance and the amazing things happened that we can read about in his story. Now here obviously that is not what is meant and again, for the reason that that is something that is only given to some. But here the apostle's whole emphasis is that this measure or a measure of faith is given to all. So it isn't the special gift of faith. Well, what is it? Well, I come to the conclusion that the best explanation here is this, that if we read instead of saying according as God hath dealt to every men, the measure of faith, we read according as God hath dealt to every men, some gift through faith, for that is really what it stands for. He is saying that to every one of us has come some peculiar gift and it comes of course, to all of us through the channel of faith. Now let me make still more plain what I mean by that. I believe that one corinthians twelve four really says the same thing. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit, that's it. The spirit gives these gifts. He is the one spirit, but there is a great diversity in the gifts that are given. But perhaps the best exposition of all of this phrase is what is found in the epistle to the Ephesians in the fourth chapter and in the 7th verse. You see, it's interesting to notice how the apostle has to keep on saying these same things to different churches. There in Ephesians four he's been emphasizing this great principle of unity, one body one spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling, one lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all, then, but unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Now that's putting it very plainly and very clearly. And that's the thing he is saying in this third verse of the twelveth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, we receive grace. And he goes on to talk about functions. Wherefore he seth, when he ascended upon high, he led captivity captive, and he gave gifts unto men, and he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, and so on for the perfecting of the saints. But here is the point. The grace is given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. In other words, he is ascended upon high, he ascend the Holy Spirit, and through the spirit he now distributes these particular gifts to the members of the church. And it is he who decides the particular measure or the particular gift, or you can even say the particular grace that is given to each and every one of them and to every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Now, that's really what he means here by talking about this gifts according to the measure of faith. It is the gift that comes to us from the Lord Jesus Christ through the Spirit, through our faith. What does he mean by this? Here we are with every one of us in the church, and God, he says, has dealt to every men, every one of us the measure of faith. A measure of faith. It's very important point this. He's not referring to natural gifts. That's the first thing we've got to have clearly in our minds here and in one corinthians twelve, he is not referring to natural gifts. That chapter, as I indicated last week, is, after all, an extended commentary upon this verse. Here it is in summary form. There he works it out. Now we must get rid, therefore, of the idea of natural gifts. Of course we are given natural gifts, and when we become christians and we receive the Holy Spirit, our natural gifts are heightened. They're taken and they're made use of and they're shortened and heightened. But that isn't what he's saying here. He is saying that we are given something new, something we didn't have before. It is not a natural gift. It is a spiritual gift, the kind of gift that is only given to the Christian, not to anybody else. So this is not something that we have by nature. It is not something that we can develop by faith. We can improve the gift, we can increase the gift, but we can never create the gift. You can never produce this kind of gift. The whole emphasis is upon this. As God hath dealt to everyone. Here's the emphasis. His whole teaching collapses. If we are not clear about this, he says, the very essence of this matter is that all these varying gifts are all of them given to us by the grace of God. He deals them out. Now, faith itself, of course, is a gift. By faith. Are you saved by grace? Are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves? It is the gift of God. So that at no point in the christian life can we claim that it is what we have done that determines the thing. In other words, he's making it very clear here that no man has a particular gift in the church because of his faith. That isn't what he's saying. People tend to teach that kind of thing. Sometimes. They say, now, of course, if you've got a great faith, you're likely to get such and such a gift. But that's putting it the wrong way around. It is God who determines the measure. It isn't our faith that determines it. It is God who measures and distributes and deals out these very it's God. It's the measure of the gift of Christ. He determines the amount given to every person. That's the whole point of this teaching. In other words, it is again the sovereignty of the Holy Ghost, distributing to every men severally as he will. Now, that's the great emphasis of one corinthians twelve. It is the sovereignty of the giver, the controller, the Holy Ghost. And this is the thing that the apostle is saying here, and we must never lose sight of that. But then let us go on to remind ourselves of this also, that while it is he who gives all the gifts, every one of us receives some such gift. The gifts vary in character, they vary in kind, they vary in importance, so that we end by drawing this deduction. We are not all meant to be the same. We are not all meant to function in the same manner. We are not all meant in the Church to be doing the same things. Now here it is implicit in the teaching God hath dealt to every man. A measure of faith, a particular gift has been given to every single one of us. It's not the same in each case. We are not postage stamps. We are not all doing the same thing. We are not all meant to do the same thing. We must not desire to do the same thing. The emphasis is upon the sovereignty of the giver and the diversity of the gifts. Here, you see, is the basic doctrine. Very well. What happens in the light of that? Well, says the apostle, that is what determines how we should think of ourselves. You see, the whole trouble arises owing to what men think of themselves. Quarrels, disputes, jealousies, envies, wranglings. All these things are the result of men's wrong conceits of themselves. So what the apostle is really concerned to say is this. He says now to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly. Why? Well, because it is God who hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. I've reversed the order in order to show you how inevitable is the exhortation. If you grasp the principle that all the gifts come from him, and it is he and he alone who decides what gift anybody is to have, and that they're to be different and to vary, and so on, well, then that will immediately control your thinking about yourself. What should it be? Well, let's follow out what he says. It's the most interesting statement, this. He says, none of us, as the result of this, should have high thoughts of ourselves, not to think of himself more highly. Now, the word the apostle used is a word that means high thoughts. If you like, don't go in, says the apostle. Says the apostle, for hyperthinking concerning yourself, hyperthinking. You know the meaning of that word? Hyper. Hyper is always wrong. It means an excess. It means something that's too high. Hyper. No, says the apostle, don't be high minded. Don't think above what you ought to think. Then he says he's so careful and so concerned about this, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. Well, how ought a man to think about himself? That's the question. He says, you shouldn't think too highly of yourselves, but you should think about yourselves as it behooves us to think about ourselves. Don't be high minded above that which you ought to be minded about yourself. That's quite a good translation of this. He keeps on using this. Think. No, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly. Now, you see, that takes us back, doesn't it, to the second verse. Don't be conformed to this world, he says, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And we show that we are truly christian. When we begin to show this renewed mind in our thinking about ourselves. Now, the thing is obvious, isn't it? Look at the state of the world. Look at the state of society. Torn, divided groups, factions, jealousies, envies. Look at it in the political parties, ready to cut one another's throats at any moment, pretending loyalty. But it's a sham. They're even revealing it more and more routinely. No men can trust another. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. There are others watching, waiting, and they'll pounce. That's true in all the professions, learned professions, medical profession, legal profession. It runs right through it all. And what's it due to? It's simply due to this hyperthinking concerning self. Nothing but that. It's this hyperthinking. Let him not think of himself more highly than he ought to think. But every man, by nature, does think too highly of himself. He doesn't think as he ought to think. As it is becoming, and as it beholves us to think. Well, then, how should we think? Well, he tells us, but to think soberly. Now, what does that mean? Well, it's a very interesting word, this. It means, if you like, sober minded. To be sober minded. The actual word used by the apostle is a word that means to be in one's right mind. That is, the actual word, to be in one's right mind. So, you see, the apostle is teaching us here that conceit is rarely a form of insanity. That's precisely what he's saying. Soberly mustn't be thought of primarily in terms of not being drunk, although that does come in. It comes in quite definitely. But the real meaning of the word isn't just that. The word sober in the New Testament means basically to be in your right mind. In other words, the trouble with the men who thinks too highly of himself, the conceited person, is that he's rarely lacking in balance. To use a colloquialism, he isn't all there. He's too much up in the air. He doesn't realize where he is. It's a form of insanity. And, of course, drunkenness illustrates the same thing. A man takes too much drink, knocks out his higher centers, knocks out his judgment, knocks out his sense of balance. And he's a man who's capable of doing anything. He'll fight anybody. He can give a final opinion on anything. There's nothing he can't do. What's the matter with him? Well, he's not sober minded. He's drunk. He's acting in an insane manner. He's not thinking as a man ought to think. Well, now, you see, that's what the apostle is telling us here, that we ought to think of ourselves, therefore in a rational manner. In other words, we are not governed any longer by our impulses and by our desires and by our instincts. We've got this new mind. The mind has been renewed, and now he's giving us a picture and an understanding of the church. So instead of asserting your rights and putting yourself forward and claiming and so on, you stop and you say, who am I? What am I? What have I got of which I am entitled to boast? What do I deserve? And the moment you ask those questions, you're beginning to act in a sober manner. You're now really beginning to think. You're not being governed by something else which is driving you a kind of passion. You're sober, you're collected, you're calm. You're really facing the facts. You know, the apostle, oh, he has to keep on saying this. He's put it all, it seems to me, very perfectly, in one verse, in one corinthians four, verse seven. Here it is, you see, who maketh thee to differ from another. And what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now, if thou didst receive it, why does thou glory as if thou hast not received it? There it is. That's exactly what he's saying here in romans twelve three. Wait for a moment. You are about to assert yourself. You say, look at the gift I've got. Look at me. And then you despise the other men. Or he, perhaps with his smaller gift, is jealous of you. The apostle says, stop. Think for a moment. Think soberly. Think rationally. Come to yourself. Be sane. What maketh thee to differ from another? Do you decide the difference? Have you decided the genes that went into you of taking it in the spiritual realm? Have you decided the gifts that you possess? What hast thou that thou didst not receive? And the logic is inevitable now, if thou didst receive it, why does thou glory as if thou hast not received it? Now, you see, here is the way in which, therefore, we work this thing out. In other words, he's telling us that we're all to be like our Lord. Look at him, the son of God, the one in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the goddess bodily. And yet he says, the words that I speak to you, I speak not of myself, but the father that sent me. He gave the words. The works that I do, I do not of myself. The father that sent me, that's what he keeps on saying, he says, I am meek and lowly in heart. Come and learn of me. Bear my yoke. This, he says, is how you are to function. And the apostle here is simply pressing that teaching upon us. We are to remember that he said, also, apart from me can do nothing. We are to remember that he looked at those disciples who'd been with him for three years and who'd seen his miracles, who'd seen him dying, buried, who'd seen him after his resurrection, were aware of all the facts. It was to them he said, tarry in Jerusalem until he be endued with power from on high. Without the gift of that power, even they, with their knowledge first eyewitnesses cannot be true witnesses to him and to his great salvation. It is what was given that enabled them to do it. In other words, that hymn which we sang just now seems to me to sum it up very well. One of the verses, every virtue we possess and every victory won, and every thought of holiness are his alone. Don't think too highly of yourselves. Don't think above what you ought to think. Think soberly. Think in a sane manner. Think in a rational manner. In other words, then we can put it like this to you. The first thing we have to do is to learn to look at these gifts in the right way. What's that? Well, the right way is not to look at them subjectively. Don't look at the gifts in terms of yourself. That's the fatal mistake. Always the moment you begin to look at the gifts in terms of yourself, you'll go astray. Don't do that. Don't be subjective. Look at them objectively. Indeed, I would almost venture to go so far as to say that we should always look at these gifts in an impersonal manner. What do I mean? Well, I mean this. The gifts are not ours, and therefore they are nothing of which we should burst. We have not produced them. We've not generated them. They're not a reward for anything that we are. He, with his master strategy, has decided and determined to give these gifts as he wills, dividing them severally, as he wills, so they are entirely his. And therefore it follows that we can go on to say this, and this is most important in view of this teaching concerning the nature and the source of the gifts. We must never overestimate any gift. There's a great tendency to do that. You see, the whole trouble in Corinth was they were overestimating the gift of tongues. The place was in confusion overestimating tongues. And people have overestimated many other gifts. Preaching has been overestimated many and many a time, and it's led a grievous trouble, I think, towards the end of the victorian era, and you and I are reaping some of the results of that. There was undoubtedly a worshipping of preachers taking place in this country overestimating the gift of the preacher. They were almost idolized and almost regarded as gods. That's no longer the case, and that's a good thing. But there's always this danger to overestimate the importance of any gift, certain particular gifts. It is equally important to emphasize the opposite. Never underestimate the importance of any gift. This, again, is a most common thing. There are people who've said, oh, I'm a nobody in the church. I don't count, my friend. You have no right to say that. You are talking about the gift which has been given to you by the Holy Spirit. The whole point and purpose of this teaching, and we'll see it still more clearly when we come on to the analogy of the church as the body of Christ, is that there is nothing unimportant. Everything is important. So we mustn't overestimate some gifts. We mustn't underestimate certain other gifts. And in both cases, we shouldn't do this with respect to ourselves or with respect to anybody else. Don't overestimate the gift you've got. Don't estimate the same gift in anybody else. Don't underestimate the gift that you've got. Don't underestimate the gift that any other man has got. All these things are wrong to overestimate. To be puffed up is bad. To despise another is equally bad. Why? Well, because in both cases, they are gifts that have been dispensed and given and dealt out by God himself, the Holy Spirit. And so you are despising not a man. You are despising not a human gift. You are despising the gift of God. And the way to be right on that is to get the right view of the gifts, to see that they're not natural, they're not human, but they're all gifted. And then you look on at them, and then you get your right balance. You will never be burstful, and at the same time, you will never indulge in mock modesty. And remember that mock modesty is quite as bad as burstfulness. The men who says, well, my little gift, you know, I don't really count. And so that men, I say, is speaking about the gift that God has given to him. He says, I can't speak. I can't teach. I can't do this. Therefore, what I do is unimportant. It's a lie. It's the gift of the Holy Ghost. It sounds very humble, but it's quite wrong. Let me give you an illustration of that before we close. I remember a man addressing a meeting once. And he thought that he was giving a word of encouragement to the ordinary members of the church. But this was the way in which he did it. He was using an illustration of a building. And he said that in a building you get certain great stones placed at the corners, kind of corner stones, and then other great slabs of stones. But then he said he'd noticed that the builder generally does something like this. In between these great, massive stones, he generally brought scent men along with wheelbarrows. And there they poured masses of small stones just to fill in, fill in the gaps. Filling in the gaps with the smaller stones. This man waxed so eloquent on this that in the end he'd worked himself up to saying this, that really, you know, what mattered was not these great big corner stones, these little stones. These are the things that mattered. Filling in the gaps, you see, between the big stones. Oh, now, that was just folly. He was exaggerating the little stern. His desire was to take a little out of the boastfulness of the big stern. That was quite all right. But, you see, he went so far as to reverse the thing. And to give the impression that the only people who really did matter in the church. Were the people nobody knew anything at all about. He was virtually dismissing the apostles and the great reformers and the great leaders. That the church has had throughout the centuries. That's just nonsense. And that isn't scriptural teaching. You'd never have a building at all if you didn't have the big stones. But equally true is it to say that the little ones are necessary to fill in these gaps. The point is, I say, that we mustn't look at it in this personal sense. We must never put them into competition. That's what's fatal, is to compare contrast in a competitive sense. We must realize, therefore, the truth about ourselves and the truth about every one of us is this. That we have got nothing but that which we have received. We can go further, and we can say we deserve to receive nothing. And so we should end by saying to ourselves what a privilege it is to be in the church at all. What a privilege to have any gift whatsoever. It doesn't matter what it is, the amazing thing is that he's ever looked upon us in his grace and has called us and has put us here and has dispensed and dealt to us some gift according to the measure of faith. Well, my friends, we leave it at that. This evening there is his first principle in dealing with this matter. Work it out for yourselves in terms of your whole conception of the christian church, and you will see how important it is. Shall I give you a question? What's the gift you've been given? What is the gift that God has dealt to you, and how is it functioning in your life and in your case? Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we come to thee and we see again in thy holy presence and before thy holy word, our own folly and our tendency at all points to go astray. O God, we bless thy name more and more that we are in thy hands, that we are thy workmanship. We see how untrustworthy we are, how we would appropriate and take to ourselves and glory in ourselves at all pints. God, we pray thee to have mercy upon us. We thank thee for thy grace and for thy love and mercy and compassion. And that how often in spite of us, thou hast deigned to use us in our different ways. O Lord, we rejoice that all is in thy hands, that thou art the great giver, and that nothing finally matters save that and the glory of thy great and holy name. So we offer unto thee all the praise and the honor and the glory, and we do so in the name of thy dear Son, our blessed Lord and savior. And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and the communion of the holy spirit abide and continue with us now, this night and evermore. Amen.