Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2694
“But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet I show you a more excellent way.” 1 Corinthians 12:31.
THERE are among us many who have recently joined the visible Church of Christ. We have heartily welcomed them and we desire to always entertain, concerning them, a joyous feeling of thankfulness that they have united with us. May they never have to regret it and may the Church of God never have to regret it, either! Dear Friend, now that you have become a member of a Christian Church, you should say to yourself, “What can I do for it? I have not come here merely to confess that I am saved and there to let the matter stop, but I have enlisted in an army that I may be a comrade with other soldiers, and be drilled, and trained, and equipped so that I may know how to march and to go forth to the battle. I have come into the church to be a member of a body. What is my office? Every member has its own special office in the body—it is not there merely for its own comfort, but to be a help to the whole system of which it forms a part. What, then, can I do?” The question which we should each one ask of the Lord is that which Saul asked on the way to Damascus, “Lord, what will You have me to do?”
When that question is once answered and you, dear Friend, know your proper place in the body of Christ, and have taken that place, whatever it may be, I think that your next desire will be that you may be in the best spiritualhealth— that you may be as vigorous as you can be—that, little though you ever may have to place at your Lord’s disposal, yet that the best use may be made of that little! Even when we have done all those things that are commanded us, we shall still have to confess that we are unprofitable servants to our great Lord and Master. Yet everyone of us should pray that he may have as much to use for Christ as he can use, and that he may be as well fitted by the Holy Spirit for the Master’s service as it is possible that he can be. I would like to give to God the best that I have and, as that must be my whole spirit, soul and body, ought I not to wish that my spirit, soul and body should be at their very best? I believe that many of you, dear Friends, feel just as I do about this matter. And, therefore, I shall not do wrong if I stir up the pure minds of those who have, through Infinite Mercy, given themselves to Christ, and say to them, “Make the most of yourselves. Make the best of yourselves. ‘Covet earnestly the best gifts.’” But when I have said that, I shall have to add a caveat and, possibly, that caveat will rise into a word of encouragement and exhortation—“Yet I show you a more excellent way.”
There are two things in the text. There is, first, an excellent way. And, secondly, there is “a more excellent way ”
I. First, there is AN EXCELLENT WAY. That is, for each individual Christian to “covet earnestly the best gifts.”
Paul is not speaking here concerning ordinary gifts as we see them in men of the world who are gifted in various ways. He is referring to spiritual’gifts—gifts which we dare to ask of God, gifts which we may expect the Spirit of God to bestow upon us, gifts which can be used in the Church of Christ and which we desire to possess in order that we may use them to the Glory of God. We have not all the spiritual gifts which were entrusted to the first Christian Church. I do not suppose it would have been wise that we should have had them!
The gift of miracles, for instance, if it had continued in the Church, would have attracted the notice of men rather to the supernatural power of God than to the moral and spiritual power of Christ Jesus our Savior as manifested through the Divine Spirit. This great spiritual battle between right and wrong, which is being fought out in the arena of the world, God never intended to be fought out by mere might and power through the dazzling display of signs and won-
ders. He resolved to win the victory by the effectual working of the Holy Spirit, according to that word unto Zerubbabel, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.” He intended to work in a spiritual manner upon the hearts of men and, therefore, He dispensed with the aid of miracles which had been necessary in the first stage of the Church’s growth. You have, no doubt, often seen, in the case of a young tree when it is newly planted, that a stout stake is driven in by the side of it and the sapling is tied to that stake. But when the tree grows bigger and stronger, it needs no such support. So has it been with the Church of Christ on earth. At first it was feeble and needed to be upheld and sustained by the aid of miracles, wonders and signs—but it no longer needs that aid. Or, as you have seen a ship in the Thames being towed out to sea and then, when it is fairly out upon the ocean, it is trusted to its own steam, or to the winds of Heaven, so has it been with the Christian Church. She was towed out of the narrow river of Judaism onto the broad sea of later times and now the Blessed Spirit speeds her on her way without the tug of miracles!