Gifts for the Church

[00:00:01] This morning, we're going to be looking again at Ephesians and fourth chapter as we continue looking at the practical side of the church. [00:00:13] Ephesians, chapters one through three were the doctrine of the church and where we fit as believers. And the entire second set of chapters four through six all deal with the practical life and outworking of a Christian. [00:00:37] So this morning, I want to challenge you, and I want to begin by telling you a story. [00:00:45] The great symphony orchestra leader Arturo Toscanini was known for having a very sharp ear for music and listening. And he could discern all the different parts of what was over hundreds of pieces of instruments, and he could tell what each one was doing. And he was in one particular rehearsal, and he stopped the rehearsal right away, and he pointed to one musician, and he says, I didn't hear your viola. [00:01:22] Were you playing immediately? Musician said, yes. Yeah, I was playing. [00:01:29] He says, well, I didn't hear you. [00:01:33] Well, it turned out that the music stand had fallen over, and what the musician was doing was just sitting there making the moves, making no sound. [00:01:47] Every part makes up the whole, and it's integral parts. I remember in high school, a lot of us would go to the Philadelphia orchestra, and we would listen to that symphony orchestra, and I was just always enraptured by that music. [00:02:12] Full symphony. [00:02:15] And that is what the church is to be. [00:02:22] When we looked earlier in chapter four, it talks about the oneness in the church. One faith, one baptism, one God and father in all through all. [00:02:37] And you see, that is a unity that he has called us into. [00:02:44] We become a part of the body of Christ. [00:02:50] Church is not just something you do at 1030 or at 930 for Sunday school. [00:02:57] It is a living, breathing body. At least we hope you're all living and breathing at this point. [00:03:07] And that is what God has designed, is to have every part of that body functioning, because all the parts function as one whole. [00:03:20] And therefore, God supplied spiritual gifts. [00:03:28] And those spiritual gifts are given to every believer so that the body of Christ is effective and there are no unimportant parts. If you want to really look at scripture and you go back and look through what Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he said, you know, even the toes are important. [00:03:49] There are no unimportant parts in the body of Christ, and you have been given grace in measure to the gift that God has given. [00:04:06] Ephesians four, one, three states that every believer is to walk worthy of our calling in Christ Jesus. [00:04:15] That is, it's bringing our daily living into balance with our understanding of our vocation our job, our career as a Christian, a Christian is a Christ one. [00:04:35] Now, when you look at that, and Ephesians four, four, six declares that the unity or the oneness of the body of Christ is there, and we are to urgently keep that unity, that oneness and the Holy Spirit that binds us together. Just pick that up there, because what it's saying is, because from the moment of salvation on, you have the gift of salvation. But in that gift, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in the life of every believer. [00:05:18] When you have the Holy Spirit in your life, I want to thrust you back into the Old Testament. [00:05:30] When God came to meet with Moses, did everybody go running up the mountain? No. [00:05:40] When God came to lead Israel with the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day, and then there was a tent of meeting, did everybody go running in there? [00:05:57] No. [00:05:59] Even Aaron's two sons, because they thought they had a better incense. [00:06:05] When they tried to offer that up, God immediately removed them. [00:06:11] They were dead because God's presence and his holiness was there. [00:06:20] Christian, it says that you are a temple of the Lord. And to make that more emphatic, you have the Holy Spirit living in you. [00:06:36] You are more sanctified, if that's possible, than the tent of meeting was, than the temple was, because God only came down and met there. [00:06:49] Now the Holy Spirit is given to you and lives in you. So again, when it says, walk worthy, every concept that you have and understand of the Old Testament and what was in the temple applies to you as an individual and to me. [00:07:15] In Romans chapter twelve, verses four to eight in the NIv, it says, for just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function. So in Christ, we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. What was that? [00:07:40] Each member belongs to all of the others. [00:07:47] Ron and Lynn belong to me in small group. [00:07:53] So do Laurie and Tabor. [00:07:56] They are part of the body that ministers to me as well as whatever ministry I can give. [00:08:04] That is to be the concept of the church. [00:08:09] But it says we have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. [00:08:17] Now we almost lose the function of the word grace, because grace is not just something you say at the beginning of a meal. [00:08:30] Grace is not just something we talk about and say you're saved by grace. Well, what does that mean? [00:08:38] Well, I want you to think about it in these terms. [00:08:42] Our passage that we want to look at in Ephesians chapter four begins at verse seven. [00:08:48] And Paul was writing to this ephesian church and to the other churches in Asia, minority. And in verse seven he says, but to each one of us, grace has been given as God, as Christ rather, has apportioned it. This is why it says when he ascended on high, he took many captives and he gave gifts to his people. [00:09:13] Well, just taking verse seven alone, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. [00:09:24] I didn't like the word apportioned in the NiV, so I took the greek word out and what it says. There are three things to notice in that one verse. The first is that these gifts are out of God's grace. [00:09:42] He is freely giving it's unmerited favor. We've heard that before. [00:09:49] But that is the grace of God in you, and he's given you a gift. [00:09:57] And that gift from by grace is to enable each believer to function in Christ's body by God's equivalent to a gift, it's spiritual ability. [00:10:13] He enables you to be part of the functioning body of Christ. [00:10:21] I've told you before, but I want to underscore it, because in my mind, one of the first, and I want to say the priority for me growing up and when I was ordained in my home church, I remember a little lady by the name of Miss Peggy Minto. Miss Peggy, all she did was minister in nursing home. She took saltines to people in nursing homes, and she would sit there and pray with them, and she would share the word of God with them. [00:10:56] And the biggest thing that I treasured from that day was Miss Peggy said, I'm praying for you. I can't tell you how many times I was in different situations, being challenged or being discouraged and thinking back and saying, Miss Peggy was praying for me. [00:11:22] That seems like the most minor function, but that's still a function within the body of Christ that is really one of the most important. [00:11:36] The second thing I want you to see is that every gift is fitted, it's measured, it's proportionate to that spiritual ability that he's equipped you to do. [00:11:50] And the third point that I want you to look at there is the emphasis on the word gift. [00:11:57] The word gift here is different than the word gift in the next sentence because this word for gift emphasizes the graciousness, the gratuitous character of God's giving to you. [00:12:16] I don't deserve it, but God has given it. [00:12:24] God has given you the necessary understanding, the encouragement, the ability to use your spiritual gifts in the body of believers where you are. And he's designed you for filling a needed void. [00:12:43] That's what your spiritual gift is supposed to do. It's to fill a need with those that you are one with, whether it be in a local church or whether it's in the broader terms of the church universal. [00:13:02] Many years ago, when you would drive on Route 30 and you went over the railroad tracks, I would say it was near gap. You would go over the railroad tracks there towards Christ home and everything. There was a little house over on the side. And in there, the queen of the dark chamber lived. [00:13:29] She was someone who had been afflicted with a disease that if she went into sunlight, if she was out in the sun too long, she would become very sick. [00:13:43] And so she had to live with the windows and the blinds all down. [00:13:50] Her ministry, yes, she had a ministry. That's how she earned her name was to international students. [00:13:59] And they would come and they would stay with her, and she would minister day after day, the word of God, speaking to different cultures for Christ. [00:14:13] How many of us would sit there and say, yeah, I'm sick. I want to be left alone, you know, I want the curtains shut. Don't open them. I want to be here by myself. [00:14:24] That was not what God called her to do. [00:14:27] Now, those are some recognizable exercise of gifts, but that dear little old lady, Miss Peggy Minto, exercised a gift that I so greatly treasured. And to this day, they treasure those who commit to praying for me because I need it. [00:14:47] Ron, don't nod your head. No. Yes, okay. [00:14:52] Tabor is just being quiet. He's going to get me later. I can see that. But you see, that's just that interchange right there is because they are precious to me, as you are precious to me. [00:15:07] And my greatest desire is for you to become strong in the Lord, to exercise that gift so that you're building up one another in Christ Jesus. [00:15:20] First Corinthians, chapter twelve seven, says, now, to each one, the manifestation of the spirit is given for the common good. [00:15:34] You're not being shoehorned into a job. God isn't sitting there saying, well, I'm missing this part in the church at lawn. [00:15:44] I'll stuff you in there. I'll put Sally there. [00:15:48] Do you ever wonder what you're here for, Sally, aside from me to pick on you? [00:15:53] But you see, that is the very essence of the body of Christ. [00:16:00] You come together not just because it's Sunday and you want to be here because that's what you've always done, but because the body of Christ is to be built up together. With you. And that extends way past Sunday. [00:16:19] That goes from one Sunday to the next and all the days in between. [00:16:25] Now, verses eight to ten in this chapter, which read, and it says, when he ascended on high, he took many captives or he took captivity captive. If you go back to the King James and he gave gifts to his people, what does he ascended mean, except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all of the heavens in order to fill the whole universe or to full the fullness in Christ. [00:17:08] Now, that is kind. I don't want to say it's an aside, but what Paul is emphasizing in those short verses, he's saying, your gifts that have been given to you are because Jesus Christ completed the finished work of the cross, having died on the cross, was buried, and rose again on the way over here this morning. For the last couple of days, I've been persecuting Cindy because when we get in the car, I turn on the book that I'm reading, and I'm reading a book from a fellow by the name of Debel Qurashi, who was a Muslim who converted to Christianity. He studied to be a doctor, graduated from medical school, and decided to become a minister of the gospel. [00:18:01] And Nabal Qureshi talks about the estrangement that any Muslim has when they say they've accepted Christ. The reason he's got me so hooked in this book is because he begins his book with a story about Fatima. [00:18:21] I won't even attempt the last name of Fatima, but Fatima created a group, or was in a group of christians on the Internet, and she was defending her I muslim faith of Islam. [00:18:41] And by a mistake, in a dinner discussion, a rather heated dinner discussion with her mother and her brother, it came out that she said, the way of the messiah is much better than Islam. [00:18:57] Well, her brother happened to be part of the Afghanistan or afghani moral police. [00:19:05] She's 22 years old. [00:19:07] As soon as she said that, he went into her room, he looked all through her computer, and being the radicalized islamic person that he was, he said, I give you 4 hours. [00:19:22] You have blasphemed. [00:19:24] You have 4 hours to repent. [00:19:28] And he left. [00:19:30] The first thing she did was got back on the computer and started typing to the group that she'd been fellowshiping with. And she said, I'm in big trouble because in Afghanistan, it is the law that you cannot renounce Islam under the penalty of death. [00:19:57] And here's her brother, part of the morality police, saying, you've blasphemed. You've blasphemed. I give you 4 hours. Don't ask me how it comes out. I told barb before church that I'm still very engrossed in this book because I want to find out the end. And he said he's going to tell us at the end what happened to Fatima. [00:20:20] Maybe in another couple weeks I can tell you, yes, keep us all in suspense. But you see, what has triggered in my mind in this is how much and what do I really believe? And do I believe it to the point of death? [00:20:39] How many of us would sit there and say, hmm, I got 4 hours to think about this. What would you do? [00:20:48] And one of the most astonishing things to me is when he was equating, it's basically his discussion about the differences between Islam and what is true biblical faith. [00:21:01] And one of the things he said, islam talks about Allah and that's a supreme God, but he never comes down, he never interacts with anybody. He's not friendly. [00:21:13] And the only way that he communicated was through the Quran. [00:21:18] And I confess the reason why I'm reading this is because I know on November 14 I'm going to be confronted again, as I have been for the last four years with my muslim auditor for the company that I work for. [00:21:38] And Shahab sits there and says, well, I want you to come and talk to some of our amans. I'm sitting there saying, I don't want to go talk to your amans. [00:21:48] That's not my calling. I'm not a christian apologeticist, but you know, the Lord keeps him on my heart. I keep wondering why I stay at work. I'm 76 years old. I should retire. That only means change the tires on the cardinal. But what I'm saying is that I want to know what he thinks because I know that I have the only way. And by the way, I learned something. Islam literally translates in Arabic to mean the way and what they feel. [00:22:27] Many people can't even read the Quran in classical Arabic. They just learn how to recite the prayers. [00:22:35] And to them their Quran is a very mystical, magical book. [00:22:42] Can't read it, can't exegete it, can't go verse by verse unless you're an imam. And then you got to really study. [00:22:52] But I have a living savior who died, who first came to be born, made flesh, dwelt among us. [00:23:04] Literally, John says tabernacled among us. In other words, his very presence came down just as he did in the tabernacle and proclaimed the gospel. [00:23:17] And then he died. On the cross. [00:23:22] Muslims, people who believe in Islam, believe that Christ didn't die on the cross. They said his visage was changed and put on somebody else. That's who was on the cross. [00:23:36] And what Nabal said, the more he looked at the historical accounts, he knew from historical not just Christians but non Christians gave full testimony. Romans, Greeks in their histories, and Jews gave testimony to the fact that Jesus did physically die on the cross and he was laid in a tomb. [00:24:11] During that intermission three days, Jesus went to what the Old Testament pictures as sheol. [00:24:23] It was divided into two parts. There was lower sheol, and the upper part was sometimes referred to as the bosom of Abraham. [00:24:34] And what he did is he went and he proclaimed God's complete testimony and fulfillment of all that had been in the Old Testament concerning Christ. And it says that he took captivity captive. [00:24:55] Now, many times people think that that was a quote from psalm 60 818, but it doesn't quite follow the quote, because in psalm 60 818, it says that he took captivity. He took captive captives and received gifts from men. [00:25:20] In reality, what Paul was doing is he was taking the entirety of psalm 68. Because psalm 68 was a victor's song. He was victorious. [00:25:32] And so he, as a victor, took captivity captive. He took those who were in upper Sheol in the bosom of Abraham and took them with him. [00:25:44] Because scripture does say that many of the Old Testament people were seen alive after the resurrection, and not just by one or two people. [00:25:55] And so we have a God who in the person of his son, came to take on flesh in the same humanity as Adam had. [00:26:11] He became the second Adam. [00:26:14] And what he did, he was the only person who had the same moral choice as Adam did in the garden. [00:26:26] But he was sinless. [00:26:29] He lived a sinless life and was crucified as punishment. But he was the lamb slain before the foundations of the world. [00:26:40] Now, when you look at that, it says that what he has done as a victor, and which was common, a victor would come. And those who had fought with him, he would give gifts to them. All you need to do is go back and look at Abraham when he met Melchizedek and when the other kings of Salem wanted to give him gifts, he says, no, no, but those who have fought with me, yes, you can give them gifts, but not me. And instead, he gave a tithe to Melchizedek. [00:27:26] You see, the Old Testament so ties in with us as New Testament believers that this is the savior we have who came. And he gave to you and to me, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell. The one who is the comforter, the one that was to come after he died, came in power on the early christians, not just to the twelve disciples, but to the entire gathered church. At that point, those who believed in a risen savior and came in power. [00:28:07] Well, what did God give us in verses? The end of verse ten begins what in the Greek New Testament is a series of clauses that talk about purpose. [00:28:25] Every time I see the word hinah in Greek, I'm immediately looking for a subjunctive verb that goes along with it because that means there is a purpose, there's a cause somewhere in there. And in this, there's actually three times that he uses the purpose clause. [00:28:44] And the first one is at the end of verse ten where he says that. So then he came, he ascended higher than all the heavens in order. There's your Hannah clause. The reason, the purpose in order to fill the whole universe. Literally, in the original language, it says to fill the fullness. [00:29:11] What Christ wanted to give is the fullness of the fellowship we have in Christ Jesus, making us clean, blameless, spotless, without blemish, that we could live to function together, to build up the church, to build up the body of Christ, to deliver the testimony. [00:29:40] And it says in the book of first Peter. [00:29:47] Peter declares that we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, holy nation, God's special possession. [00:30:00] That's what you are, how precious you are. [00:30:06] And your body of believers should be that precious to you. [00:30:11] But so many times we just think, oh, church is something I go to whenever I feel like it. Church is something that, you know, I can take or leave it. No, you should so desire to be in that fellowship that you are being filled with Christ. And if you notice those words, chosen people, royal priesthood, holy nation, a God's special possession. [00:30:40] Where do you find those words before? Throughout the entire Old Testament, whenever it talks about Israel. [00:30:47] Now, that's not to say we're spiritual Israel. Please don't take that out of that. We are special in ourselves because we have come through Christ and you are possessed. If you have put your trust in Jesus Christ, you are possessed by God. [00:31:10] So what room does he have in your heart? [00:31:14] What place does he have in your home? [00:31:17] What amount of your thinking and decision making is directed towards Lord? Not what I want, but what you want. [00:31:31] And that takes us right back to the beginning that we looked at a couple weeks ago. You're to walk worthy. You're actually accountable. [00:31:39] And we must be the stewards of his great grace given to us. [00:31:46] Walk worthy of the calling wherewith you are called. [00:31:53] Now, what follows in verses eleven to 13 are a description of the leadership gifts. [00:32:05] And it goes in verse eleven. So Christ, and I want to emphasize it, says, Christ himself gave this. [00:32:14] So he's given, he himself has given you a gift of his grace so that you might live in fellowship with one another and build one another up, be there bearing one another's burden. [00:32:32] That's the picture of the church. [00:32:35] Instead, we get snarky comments. [00:32:41] You get divisions in the church. And that's what Paul had to talk about so many times in the other churches. This is one of the few books in the New Testament that wasn't directed at problems. [00:32:53] Paul would even rebuke Galatians and the Corinthians because there were divisions in the body. [00:33:01] That's not building up, that's tearing down. [00:33:08] I'm going to make this very personal. [00:33:12] Cindy and I have been looking at the Facebook page, our Facebook, and I see many of you going on there, giving it a rating, giving it a, a statement. [00:33:28] And then before I was finishing up the, I won't even tell you all the problems of printing the bulletins last night, but as I was getting ready to print the bulletins, I had put the notice in there that we have a new facebook page. I wanted you all to be aware of it. Check it out. [00:33:48] It's going to grow. [00:33:52] Cindy said to me, oh, I don't think you ought to do that right now. So I immediately hit control. Z took it out because she brought to me, she says, look at this now. I found out later, and that's why I put it back in. I found out later that what she was looking at was the Google review of lawn Ec church. [00:34:16] And two months ago, someone put in there that this was a church of gossipers and they're not friendly. [00:34:28] That's personal. [00:34:30] That affects you and me. [00:34:33] You see, if we are not bound together performing what God has intended for the church, what kind of testimony do we leave? [00:34:54] I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those sermons I'm going to have to split in two, because I dearly want to take you to the leadership gifts. [00:35:07] But I'll begin by saying that the first one that's mentioned it says he gave some apostles. [00:35:13] If someone comes up to you today and says they're an apostle, don't believe them, because apostleship no longer has a place in the church. Because there's a very clear definition of apostles and that's found in the book of acts. And when Christ had gone away and when the disciples were gathered together, they said, well, we have to replace Judas. [00:35:41] And so there was a very clear definition of what an apostle was to be. [00:35:47] And an apostle was someone who had been with them, seen Jesus as a risen savior, and could testify to that. [00:36:01] Admittedly, it brings up, well, what about Paul? [00:36:04] Well, Paul says, I was an apostle born out of due time. [00:36:11] I think the Niv says an abnormal birth. [00:36:16] And the reason for that is because where did Paul get converted? [00:36:22] He was on the road to Damascus and a light came and Jesus spoke to him. [00:36:30] And he says, who are you? [00:36:33] He says, I'm the one that you're persecuting. I am Christ. [00:36:39] So only Paul could take on that term of apostleship. [00:36:47] There are no more apostles. [00:36:51] Now, I admit some people sit there and say they're an apostle, and that's probably because they don't understand what they're trying to claim. [00:37:00] But there are technically four other gifts that Christ has given directly to the church for its leadership. [00:37:13] And next week, that's what we're going to take up. What are those four and why are they there? What do they do? How do they mesh? [00:37:24] How does an evangelist match with a prophet with a. I'm going to use the term that should be there in your Bible, but is often translated as pastor, and it's the word shepherd. That's what it really is. [00:37:40] And that's always coupled with the word didoskelos. It means a teacher. [00:37:45] So four other gifts that Christ gave specifically for the building up of the body of Christ. [00:37:55] And then there are so many more gifts because it's that which every joint supplies. [00:38:02] Dear believer, I come to you this morning and I beg of you to understand your position in Christ Jesus. [00:38:14] If you have accepted Christ as your personal savior, you believe that with all your heart, you have made confession in your heart and with your mouth have said, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. [00:38:32] And I believe that that involves the following, the Lord in baptism as an outward testimony of the inward reality of being buried in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's the testimony of a baptism. [00:38:49] If that is you, and you can say in all your heart, yes, that is what I believe, then you belong in the body of Christ so that you can grow, so that you can be equipped for the hard times and for the encouraging and the building up. [00:39:14] And I will tell you right now, and the people in the PRC can back me up on this, because last Wednesday when we sat down and talked about this, my burden for you is that you're not just talking to your friends when you're here, but that truly you come to interact, to hear the needs and the burdens of the people that you fellowship with. Yes, I know you call, you text. That's good. [00:39:45] Please text me so I know what you're saying. So I know how to pray. [00:39:51] I may not always be able to answer the phone call right away, but I sure can answer texts. [00:39:58] And I will call because you are important and there is no unimportant part of the body of Christ. [00:40:16] I am wrestling my mind right here. You can tell it, because what I am wrestling with in my mind is this. [00:40:25] I would rather give you an invitation right now. [00:40:30] Not a raise your hand, walk forward type of invitation, but an earnest invitation for you before the Lord to say, lord, I seek to serve and to serve those that. That I'm in fellowship with, that the body of Christ here be built up. We pray. We pray for each other. We pray for needs. [00:40:59] But a lot of times there are so many other needs that may go unmet because we do not fellowship as a body of believers. [00:41:12] Christian, please be willing to put that before the Lord. [00:41:18] And let the Lord speak to you as to what it means to be part of a body of believers, to be one together in Christ. [00:41:32] Let's bow in prayer. Father, you have loved us with an infinite love. [00:41:40] You gave yourself to die on the cross, that we might be rescued from our sinful nature. [00:41:49] And you desire to build us up, to unite us in Christ, in one, in Christ, Lord, be alive in us today. [00:42:04] For your name's sake, we ask it. Amen. I.