Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to today's episode where we dive deeper into the timeless truths of God's word. Thank you for joining us as we continue our study of Paul's powerful letter to the church at Ephesus. In this message, Pastor Gimme unpacks a vital lesson on the spiritual gifts of leadership, gifts graciously given to the church to build us up, guide us, and strengthen our walk with Christ Jesus, our Lord and savior. Today we'll explore Ephesians chapter four, verses eleven to 13, and discover how these gifts equip the body of Christ for his glory.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: This morning I want to share with you part two of what we started last week and deal with the gifts that God has given.
Now, Romans chapter twelve and verse three puts forward a very fundamental principle of faith and says, God has dealt to each one of us the measure of grace.
And the question then comes up, why do some people, and why do some Christians, like George Mueller, seem to possess and use their faith in such a remarkable way that other people don't do it? What's faith?
Well, in case you don't know the story of George Mueller, he ran a number of orphanages and he raised literally hundreds of thousands, I guess you have to say pounds because it was in Britain throughout his lifetime. And he never made a public appeal. He never spoke to anybody about the need. George Mueller always prayed and the Lord supplied. That's faith.
Well, that displayed, faith just seems so unattainable for many of us.
Why? Why can't we all live like George Mueller?
Well, I think sometimes that the answer lies in just how faith works.
Because when you think of it, faith is a muscle.
Our lives. Now, you'd never think of taking somebody who had never been taught to swim, who never had been in the water, and take them out to the middle of the lake and throw them in, not doing too well when you do that, or you think of, you know, at least giving the guy a lot of classroom time, and tell them, okay, now you put one arm over the other and you go like this, and you kick your feet.
Then you take him out into the middle of the lake and dump him over.
It would be a spectacular drowning day with kicking feet and flailing arms.
Or you take that person and you teach them and you lovingly show them and guide them into swimming, and then they begin to enjoy being in the water. One of the first things I remember I hated about swimming was putting my face in the water.
But then I learned to swim.
Faith is exactly the same way.
You begin to exercise your spiritual muscle of faith.
And as you grow in that faith, you begin to exercise that faith.
And so many times we don't do that. We come to situations that confront us. And instead of exercising our muscles, we sit down and say, somebody else do it. No, you see, that is the reason that we come together as a body of Christ to build up one another in faith.
But God also provided leadership for that church. He put specially gifted people as part of the church so the church could grow, could be built up.
And the first thing that he did is he provided gifted leadership.
Now, in our passage, we have five that are listed as gifts because it says in Ephesians four, beginning at verse eleven, it says that. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach oneness or unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Well, what are these gifts and how do they fit together? Because I want you to understand that those gifts that are given and those are just leadership gifts, there are many other gifts that are to function within the body of Christ. And Lord willing, later we'll delve into those gifts because it says, each one has been given the measure of grace.
You've been gifted, you're gifted people.
So what did he supply for leadership? Well, the first one is the apostles. Now, as I told you at the end last week, if someone comes up to you and says they're an apostle, turn away real quick, because there is a definite definition for the word apostle. And that was given back in the book of acts when they said, because of Judas, who had given up Christ, he betrayed Christ.
Judas was no longer counted amongst the twelve that Christ had chosen. And so they only had eleven. And so they said, well, wait a second, we need to find another who will be an apostle. The word apostillo means to speak from, to be a witness, to be sent.
And their definition for an apostle said that in acts 121 22, it says, therefore, it is necessary to choose one of the men. Now, here's the choices. Here's the criteria. He says, who have been with us the whole time. The Lord Jesus was living among us, so somebody had to be there.
And it says, beginning from John's baptism. Well, what happened to John's baptism? The dove came down from heaven, said, this is my son. So that's the first criteria. Someone who had been there and saw that baptism.
And it says, to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. What was that? Well, at the time in the 40 days that Christ was among the disciples, after he was raised from the dead, I, he was among them. And by the way, he even said, you know, give me some food. He showed that he was real.
He was a living savior.
And it was on that 40th day that they were gathered with Jesus out in the countryside, and Jesus was taken up from them.
And the angel said, just as you've seen him go, you're going to see him return again in power and glory.
That's what we look forward to now. It says, for one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection. Okay, so it's somebody who had been with Jesus, knew him, saw him, and could bear the testimony of that.
So they chose one.
Now, those twelve were the apostles who were at Jerusalem. They were all jewish.
But you see, they were there, and they knew the testimony of Christ.
They knew that living savior who had taken them aside and taught them, and they learned some pretty difficult lessons as they went through.
Well, what about Paul? Paul says he's an apostle. As a matter of fact, it says in one corinthians 15, three, nine that Paul said that. Then he appeared to James and to all the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me.
You see, Paul had a very distinct relationship, confrontation with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. He was blinded, and he says, who are you? He says, I'm Jesus the Christ.
And he said that because of that. And it also, and when you look through the rest of the book of one corinthians, Paul and 15 talks about the fact that he never actually went directly to the disciples.
He spent years in Arabia, and only at a later time went to visit with Cephas, with Peter, and then later with James, and then he would later then go with Barnabas to meet with the apostles in Jerusalem. Paul says, I didn't get my gospel any other place but being with God. And there's some rather strong hints in scripture that when Paul was in Arabia, he had an intimate ministry between himself and Christ. He even alludes at one point to saying that he was a man who was taken up into the third heaven and met with the Lord.
So unless you can find somebody like Paul who has had that intimate relationship with the Lord or has been blinded on the way to Damascus, there are no apostles. Why did he say, why did he say then I gave apostles? Because the word of God is established upon apostles. As a matter of fact, one of the choosing things that establishes what goes into the New Testament is that it either was written by an apostle or an associate of an apostle. So you get the book of Luke and the Book of acts from Luke, the physician who was primarily with Peter and relates the story through Peter's eyes. And you go throughout scripture. And there was a very special reason that Paul was an apostle, because prior to this, the gospel was to the jew first. And so you had many jewish believers who had to understand what the Messiah who had come was and meant, and who better than a jewish man who had been the persecutor of the church to become an apostle out of, as the king James says, out of due time, where the Niv says, abnormal birth as an apostle.
But he also had a very unique ministry because he spoke to the Gentiles, the ones that were so.
I don't know a better word than obtuse, away from the Jews. Jews wanted nothing to do with the goyim.
So the word of God that has been passed down to us throughout scripture and especially the New Testament, is all based on what is the word of God.
Now, the next one that he says, he said he gave some prophets. What's a prophet? Do we have anybody running around and saying, you know, woe to you, people of lawn?
No, actually, the word prophetess, or prophetess has the idea of telling forth.
And so, yes, there is the gift of telling forth. And it has more to do with someone who is gifted at confronting the current culture and world, because that's what the prophets did. They said they would go and speak to the jewish culture and in the Old Testament, and they would confront them about their sin.
So a prophet is one who is forth telling, is confronting today's culture.
Now, that gifted person can have problems, because if they so focus on the world and its conditions, they can also become very intolerant to the people in church.
They also have the problem that we see so often is that what they are proclaiming and what they are confronting becomes the thing that they look at and nothing else.
I remember the first church that I had was in a little town in Indiana, and among the people, the entire women's group was part of the WCTU. Now, in case you don't recognize the letters, that stands for the Women's Christian temperance Union, and they still taught in the elementary schools about the demon rum.
I agree that what they confronted is something that is a problem, but it can't become the sole focus of what we look at.
The next one that he mentions is the evangelist.
And this is unique. Now, I want to remind you when I'm saying this, that from the prophet on down through the other, the rest of the four that are current today, they are to be part of the team, which is called the church. These were gifts to the church, that the church might be one in Christ.
So you need an evangelist.
So what's an evangelist? Well, the evangelist has a special responsibility of communicating the message of the gospel to as many people as possible. And it's in some ways a confrontational ministry because you're confronting people with the message of Jesus Christ.
An effective evangelist might be the person that sits on the airplane while he's going to some business meeting and picks up a conversation with the person next to them. I can tell you on many of my flights, I didn't want to talk to anybody next to me.
But then there are other times when I love talking with them.
So the evangelist has the spirit given capacity and desire to serve God by communicating with people who are beyond their natural sphere of influence and leading them to come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
And that message Paul very clearly laid out in one corinthians 15 three six, where he said, for what I received, I passed on to you of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to scriptures, that he was buried, was raised on the third day according to scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve. And after that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. So that gift of evangelism endows that person to be effective and confrontational while leading people to Christ.
But that gift also comes with its own pitfalls, because with the gift of evangelism, the evangelist may become just interested in numbers.
How many can I bring in? How many can I reach? I would love to be a Billy Graham. I would love to be someone who could win hundreds. But that's not my gift.
And it also says that they can be prone to judge the spirituality of other people by the number of converts they make. That's nothing. The focus. And it's why scripture says that God gave leadership gifts to blend the church together.
A church is not effective without someone who's reaching out and reaching people to be saved.
I need an evangelist to complement my gift as a shepherd and as a teacher.
And also Satan can use that to attack the evangelist because he can make that person proud of the numbers they get, or he can sit there and make him very discouraged, like Elijah sitting under a broom tree or Noah or not Noah, Jonah, who sat there and was very discouraged. Why God would ever save any of those ninevites.
The next gift that's mentioned, it says that there are some pastor teachers. Those are actually two separate gifts. But many times the pastor and teacher go together, but they are actually two separate gifts. Now, I want to tell you that 17 times in the Greek New Testament, the word that's translated pastor here is used. And this is the only place where it's translated as pastor.
The other six times, it is appropriately translated as shepherd.
Your pastor is a shepherd of the ones that God has committed to his care.
And the guiding factor of a pastor or a shepherd is his care for his sheep.
It is exactly why, when Christ was talking to Peter in John's gospel in the 21st chapter, he confronted Peter and he said, peter, do you love me more than these?
And he used the word agapao or agape. Do you agape love me?
Peter immediately answered with what he thought was a much better word. And he says, lord, I flail you. I love you as a brotherly love. I love you with that great emotional love.
And Jesus said to him, the first time he said, feed my lambs.
The second time he answered that, Peter answered again, Jesus came back to him and said, peter, I want you to shepherd my sheep.
And finally, the third time, when Peter threw up his arms, he said, lord, you know that I love you. He said, feed my sheep. The gift of a shepherd is the care and feeding of the people that God has placed in the church for him to love. And that shepherd does indeed, or at least this shepherd indeed loves you and cares very much for you.
When you say to me, I've got an unspoken prayer request, or, lord, pastor, I just want you to remember this.
I look to the Lord out of love for you and say, lord, answer that and let me pray for them to uphold them before the throne of grace.
Well, there are ways that people misunderstand the shepherd.
When I was reading Doctor Larry Gilbert's book on the gifts of the spirit, he said, one, there are several things he said that can interfere. People misunderstand the shepherd because he should do all the work. After all, he's the pastor. Or they say he should always be available.
Or maybe they say he knows all the answers. Let me tell you, folks, I don't know all the answers, but I'll pray with you and I will search before the Lord for his answers.
He should be at every social function, or worst of all, they should want me to misapply my gift and do all the evangelism, which I can tell you I'm not equipped to do, as is not my spiritual gift.
And also Satan can take and use that against that pastor. So how do you pray for your pastor that he doesn't become discouraged when the load gets heavy?
I don't know how many of you were praying for me, but Wednesday it just hit me like a wall.
And after I was here and I went back home, I could not study, I could not do any work. I actually, to me it was a wasted day.
Not that I was discouraged so much as just I have been putting out. And yes, I stay up late hours, or as Mike has now made me do. I get up at 03:00 in the morning, like yesterday. And I was working from 03:00 to 09:00 last night because the Lord wakes me up and it's out of my love for what I want to communicate to you.
It also can cause pride when his sheep look to him for all the answers. I don't want that. I learned long ago from doctor Rennie showers to sit there and say, it's my privilege, because indeed it is to love you and to serve you.
And some of you have already commented and know I have a very loving and gracious wife who puts up with me being in my office to all hours and sends the dog in to lick me to remind me that she's there.
But you see, Satan can use that against me.
And so it was kind of funny last week when Ron and Lynn and Tibor and Laurie were here. I felt like sending pastor Matt Hill a note saying, please give them an excuse note for being with me.
Not only is it the shepherd, but there's also the teacher.
And I know I exhibit that in many different ways, but, you know, the characteristics of a teacher is one who loves God and loves God's word and is going to stay in it. Folks, you've heard me say it. I love to sit there. And I will admit, the last two weeks my sermon has strictly been in line with what I diagrammed out of Greek for this passage.
And that english diagram that I do so many times also reverts back to Greek.
I freely admit I learned English by studying Greek.
Latin didn't help in the beginning, so I had to go to Greek.
A teacher also is not usually an extrovert.
I am really rather an introvert in my own personality. I may not seem that to you, but that's the teacher coming through.
I would rather be working on a diagram, digging into words and you hear me say something about a word in Greek or a word in Hebrew, it's because those are the things that are resonating with me.
And a teacher, believe it or not, loves charts, graphs, diagrams and lists.
And if you ever look at my stuff, it's diagrammed, it's charted, and the church board has already been persecuted with that because that's what I do as a teacher.
But people don't understand a teacher. Very often they think, well, he's not a good counselor. No, a teacher's going to go back and look to dig up the verses and to tell you what he sees.
He gives too many details.
He goes overtime too long.
People bear with me because that is the teacher, and it can also become very burdensome.
Very often I feel like I don't have enough time.
I want to dig more.
Cindy often asks me, she says, is your sermon ready? Is your sermon ready? Is your sermon ready? And I'll sit there and it's in progress right up to about 630 on Saturday night.
I'm answering that way because I want to dig those gifts.
The prophet, the evangelist, the shepherd, the teacher, are the four gifts of leadership that God gave for the church to be built up. And therefore it's a purposeful leadership. That's what verse twelve said, and it's to equip the people.
And literally it says, to equip the saints.
People, please understand that that word saint means you are separated unto the Lord. That is what you are. And the gifts in the church, evangelist, prophet, pastor, teacher, are to equip you.
And it says, not only is it to equip you to be even more devoted to Christ, more devoted to the only true God and savior, it's also, it says, for the work of the ministry.
I want you to understand that if I were very literally translating that phrase, it would be for the work of being a deacon, because deacon, or diakonos means to serve.
When the early church had problems not ministering to the widows, what did he do? He says, okay, select seven men from among you and let them serve. And the apostle said, so that we can devote ourselves to prayer and study of the word of God.
So this ministry is to you so that you might, Deacon, you might serve.
Not only that, it says in acts six four, you are being equipped, trained, and mended, because that is what the word of God is to do in our lives.
I'm already violating my teacher pose.
I don't want to stop. So I want to just share with you real quickly the third thing that that says, is that you're to be building up the body of Christ.
It means taking that. It's actually literally saying, build the house.
You're building the body of Christ.
You together are to function as a body of believers.
And finally, it says that you're to be a provisioned people. And that 13th verse says, until we reach, that verse says there's a terminus, there's an endpoint. And I want to jar your thinking here just a little bit, because what that 13th verse says, this is to be going on as the house rules that we talked about.
This is to be going on until.
And what does it say? It says, four things characterize the final part.
When we reach the oneness of faith, where you're one in Christ, one faith, one Lord, one baptism, you come to the fullness in the knowledge of the son of God.
When you attain the knowledge of the Son of God, that will not happen until the day that we are taken up and we become thoroughly newborn, renewed christians.
When Christ calls the church out and we go to be with the Lord, and we shall see him, for we shall see him as he is.
And not only that, it says to a mature manhood, actually, to be more precise, I would say you to be made a complete man of God.
And finally, it says, to the measure of, of the stature of the fullness of Christ, when we come to the place of the Lord calling us home to rapture out the church, we are going to see him, and we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. That's what John wrote in his epistle.
It says, in one corinthians 1551 and 52. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead shall be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
Ephesians 4710, we read this, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gifts. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led the host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. If you remember what I said in that passage, that was from psalm 68. And Paul wasn't just looking at verse 18 when he said that. He was looking at the entire chapter, because it was the testimony of a victor. And the victorious Lord gives gifts to those who serve him, and that is the gifts to the church.
He's given us the victory, and he is the victor.
That is to be the church.
Oh, that today you and I would know what it is to stand in victory with Christ Jesus, to love him as the Lord who is in all through all, above all, who is in you all. I said that was proving that being a Christian must make you southern Baptist because it's you all.
But you know something, that is what Christ wants for you to know his dwelling.
Just as much as God dwelt in the tabernacle where moses could go and meet with him, so it is with us and the church, because Christ is in the church and he wants to give you the victory. Thank you for enduring with me, because that is the burden of my heart for you. Because as your shepherd, I love you and I want you to be equipped to grow, to be victorious in Christ Jesus.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: And to do that, thank you for tuning in to this episode of Fruits of Faith, a ministry of lawn evangelical Congregational Church in Lawn, Pennsylvania.
We hope today's message has uplifted you and deepened your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Remember, whether you're new in the faith or have walked with him for years, God's word is always fresh and powerful to transform.
If you were blessed by this episode, share it with a friend, and don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an update. Until next time, stay rooted in the word, stand firm in the faith and keep growing in Christ.
