When we are Sunday School teachers, when we are speaking in special mission groups, what do we do? Do we find or make up a charming story? No, we preach from the word of God. We use God’s illustrations because we are commanded to. Sometimes in children’s work, people mean very well and they make up a wonderful kind of story about something to impress the minds of the children. It may be cleverly done and very engaging but it isn’t the word of God, and the command to us is to always base whatever we say on Scripture.
‘Let him do it as of the ability which God giveth.’ The idea here is that God will provide – the ability is more the provision that God gives. If you are called to minister, a giver of mercy, compassionate ministry, like those who engaged in the compassionate ministries of Acts 6, God will supply. He will enable you to be hospitable, to do that work, to be supportive to others but you must do it to the full extent. In other words, if God has given you the means to be supportive and helpful and hospitable, you give it all to him. You exercise that gift and that provision to the full extent of God’s provision to you. If we preach, if we teach Sunday School, if we give hospitality, if we exercise some helpful role within the church for souls, or towards others, it is never for our credit. We do it prayerfully and humbly, that Christ may use it, that Christ may get the glory and the credit, that souls may be saved. The moment we want to put on a fair show, or be seen, to be appreciated, we spoil it all. It is all for him. This is the first great point, that God may be glorified. Live not for ourselves but for him, that is the first challenge. We are so unstable and so liable to pride that God will often need to train us to handle our gifts, especially those which elevate the individual in the eyes of the church. Perhaps he will need to take us through a period of trials, or as in Paul’s case be given a compensating burden to offset the gift. It is the hardest of matters for the believer to be exalted and still see himself as less than the least of all men. He must work hard to remember that he was by nature and to attribute all the change that has taken place since the new birth to God.
Calvin dismisses the false view of the passage that Peter means that we should clothe our own words with the authority of God as if everything we say had to be accepted by the people as the oracles of God. Far from it: the authority of God only belongs to his own word and to the extent that we faithfully relate this to the people, we may claim God’s authority in what we say. This word alone is powerful and the preacher is to look for a powerful effect of this message in his hearers for God’s word must have an effect on human hearts, whether it is to harden in unbelief, to bring to repentance, or to edify the children of God.