“Being The Church”

Many of you have asked this week about our daughter, Corrie, and about Keiler Henry, the son of Craig and Cathy.  They are both students at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee where the tornadoes went through.  Craig and I were able to go down and get our kids and also Dr. Tom Nettles has a brother who is an instructor there.  I think they made it to campus that night and took about 7 kids home with them, as many locals did.  But because you have been so interested in them, you have prayed for them and for us, we want to thank you, and we also thought it would be good to include you by giving you a visual.  Craig and I had pictures, but Corrie showed me a video on You Tube that Craig has extracted and is going to show us that someone from Union put together, so we offer this to include you, to thank you as well as chiefly to call you to pray for Dr. David Dockery, for the faculty and staff and for the students of Union University.

VIDEO PRESENTATION:
Tribute to Union University.

I don't think we can imagine what those who went through it experienced nor what they have yet in front of them, but I thought, whoever put that video together, and by the way, there was a little fundraising thing on there, that's not why it was shown, however, if you do want to give toward Union I'm sure there is an avenue to do that, it is for us to pray for them, and there is a lot more to come for them to go through.

But it was the message of the video that grabs your heart!  There are storms in life for all of us and though it is not the full meaning of this passage, there is in the center of this morning's passage of scripture the rock upon which we stand in the storms of life.  Now the reason it is there in this passage of scripture is to teach us how to be the church.  That's what we're talking about. But it's the same rock that we stand on to be the church that we're gifted by to be the church that we stand on and rest on in times of a storm.

Proverbs 29:25 says "The fear of man brings a snare, but he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted."  That word exalted means to be lifted up on high as if to be set upon a rock to be safe when the winds blow and the waves come.  God did that in the strangest of ways for the people on the campus and surrounding areas of Union University.  When your child tells you in very somber tones they thought that was it, that they were going to die, and then you see the place that they were at, you believe that.  It has a way of reminding you what matters in life.

So let's turn to Ephesians 4 and we will learn about being the church and how we can do that.  I love this passage of scripture.  Let me read it and I will show you why it grabs my heart so bad.  We're in Ephesians 4, we will begin at Verse 7:

Eph 4:7  But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Eph 4:8  Therefore it says, "When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men."

Eph 4:9  (In saying, "He ascended," what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?

Eph 4:10  He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)

Eph 4:11  And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,

Eph 4:12  to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,

Eph 4:13  until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

Eph 4:14  so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Eph 4:15  Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,

Eph 4:16  from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

At first it appears to be a complicated passage but it is just a thorough description of the church with things repeated for importance sake that we could understand what the church is and what the church is to do.  Now, who this excites me is because this passage is one of those great passages in the Bible that shows us how to interpret the Word of God.  It shows us that our Bible is a Christ-centered, gospel-centered book and without those two things you can't understand the whole.  So Paul takes an Old Testament passage, quotes it right in the middle of talking about Christ and his church to show us that God has had a continuity of plan from beginning to end and He is going to see it through.  He quotes it in verse 8, let's take a look at that real quick, verse 8:

Eph 4:8  Therefore it says, [What says?  Actually Psalm 68 says]: "When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men."

Now, what's the picture there?  Psalm 68 is a Psalm of David in which God's people are asking Him once again to protect and vindicate them.  They are calling on God to remember the days of old when He brought them out of Egypt and when they came to Mt. Sinai to worship the mountains shook.  They are saying, "Now, God, we want you to go before us again. And what we want you to do as you go before us again, we want you to ascend to Mt. Zion this time, Jerusalem, where you have chosen for your name to dwell, and we want you to be God so we can be your people, and you be strong in our behalf so that we can rest in you."

Why did he quote that one?  Because he is showing the fulfillment of that, that as Jesus descended from heaven to come to the earth in the incarnation, he lived on this earth and was crucified, then buried, he rose victorious and when he rose victorious, he goes on to say this now about Christ:  When he ascended on high, he led a host  of captives and he gave gifts to men.  In saying, Verse 9:

Eph 4:9  (In saying, "He ascended," what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?

That's when Jesus became man, Christmas is how we know it, the incarnation is the biblical description or the theological one, and then he says,

      Eph 4:10  He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)

Jesus is Lord and is sitting at the right hand of the throne of God and he has led in his train of victory because of his victory at the cross and the resurrection, the captives of the principalities and the powers that he has defeated, dethroned and disarmed.  That is the one who is the head of the church!  That is the one who is the calm in the middle of the storm.   Some of these young folks will recognize that they are like the disciples now, they were in a storm in a boat.  "Lord, don't you care that we are perishing?" Can you imagine the thoughts that went through their mind? And he stood that time and said, "Peace be still!"  Only the hand of God could have mixed such destruction and such preservation. I wish you could have seen it in person.  If you would like to see that with a little more clarity, you can go on your web, go to You Tube and just do a search for "A Tribute to Union" and for those of you who are 40 and up, ask your children what You Tube is, [Laughter], they will find it for you.

So Jesus is the center of the church.  He is Christ the conqueror!  And the beauty of this passage, to understand it, it's built around Him.  So what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you an outline in diagram form and then we're going to walk through this passage.  In the center we have Christ, the Conqueror, the one who came, the one who was crucified, buried and was risen again and leading all the principalities and powers in his train, they are captive and once he did that, he gave gifts to men.  Christ is the conqueror.  What he did as the conqueror, he gave grace and gifts to the church.  Following that, we learn in this passage why he gave them.  He gave them for ministry and stability, so that we, his church, will be truthful, loving and fully engaged in life. 

Now we could probably stop right there and have enough to chew on.  Actually the rest of the message is about that, but I'm looking at who Christ is, that in what he did, he then took grace and gifts and gave them to us, the church.  He gave them to us for a reason that each one of us would be involved in ministry, in the growth to maturity and stable so that we wouldn't be deceived by other worldly ideas and then, so that we together with one another could be truthful, loving and fully engaged in life.  That, my friend, does not always describe the church, does it?  Interestingly, this passage has an amazing ability to address the individual Christian and the church at the same time, so let's walk through it.  You have been given grace.  That's what the passage tells us.  You have been given grace. Now, look at me just a minute.  When I say you, I'm not talking pleural at this point, I'm talking singular.  You, as an individual believer in Christ, have been given grace and one thing this passage does, it asks us what we are doing with it. 

Now, look at verse 7:

Eph 4:7  But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Each of us is given grace, first for salvation, second for service.  The grace of salvation comes as God's free gift. "For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves.  It is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast."  When God teaches you the gospel through the mouths of human beings, and you see the beauty of Christ and you bend your knee to him and say, "Oh, Lord Jesus, save me from myself, from my sin, take me to heaven when I die, be my Lord," that's the grace of salvation.  Then on top of that you have this grace to serve, every single one of us.  But not only have you been gifted with grace, you have been gifted with a specific grace; each person according to Christ's perfect and personal measure.  Look at what it says:

Eph 4:7  But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

That is how specific he is with the people he saves.  He has measured out to you the grace that you need to serve him with the gift he has given you.  That makes me happy and it makes me nervous, because then I ask the question, "How am I using my gift, because I certainly have no excuse for not using it."  If Jesus himself, who made me, remade me in salvation, knowing me better than I know myself, has custom designed a gift and an amount of grace to give to me to fulfill my service then why in the world would I not use it? It's what I'm made for.  So you have been given grace, but strangely in this passage, then he moves in on in Verse 11 and does something different.  He only mentions a handful of gifts.

Eph 4:11  And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,

Hmmm…. So if we've been graced why did God mention only these gifts?  Well, you know there are other places in the Bible where God mentions gifts of the Spirit. What I like about this particular passage is it tells us that Christ is the one who ascended and gave the gifts.  You can't dissect the Trinity so neatly, can you? You can't separate the work of the Holy Spirit from the work of Christ in essence, they are the same.  All these gifts come from God.  They are put to use in us by the power of the Spirit, but here Christ gave them, but what did he give? It's not so much gifts that he gave that it is people he gave with gifts to the church, but why did he mention these gifts here?  The gifts are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers.  Apostles?  Well, very quickly, we've studied this before.  Apostles: We don't have any of those today because one thing an apostle had to be was an eye witness of the resurrection of the Jesus Christ and none of you are quite that old!  You weren't around then, so it is basically impossible to have the gift of apostleship in that sense.  Now, apostle is used in other senses in the New Testament but we don't have time to go into that.  Also, I think here the word, prophet, is limited to the specific kind of prophecy that was given before we had the written Word of God.  We needed prophets to tell us this is what God says.  Now we have a book that says this is what God says, so in the present day church we have those who have the gifts of evangelist.  They are an evangelistic person who has a gifting of the Holy Spirit to tell the gospel to the world plainly that people could be saved.  And then we have the present day gift of pastors and teachers.  That may be one gift, that pastor-teacher is one role, or some people are pastors in the church and they must teach, but some people are teachers in the church, but they are not necessarily the pastor.  It could go either way.  That is also a present-day gift.  Why mention these gifts?  Here's why:

1. So the church will understand how God works.

If you will notice, everyone of these gifts is related to the teaching ministry of the church.  That is how God communicates to his church, through human agency with teaching gifts to help us understand God's revelation.  It's simply so the church will understand how the church works.

2. It is so that the work by those with those gifts will always be done in humility.

Remember how you got that gift, if you are a teacher? Or, if like me, you're a pastor-teacher?  But grace was given (so it's free) to each one of us.  It was designed for you according to the measure of Christ's gift.  I have nothing to offer him in service except what he's given me.  So pride and Christian teaching are mutually exclusive.  Boy, is that convicting!

3. So the purpose of the church will be clear.

We have lots and lots of motives in our hearts and good intentions, but the church receives her orders, her directions, her purpose, her mission through the scriptures taught to the church through the mouths of pastor-teachers, evangelists, prophets and apostles.  We have the apostles' word here; they penned the scriptures.  Now we have pastors and teachers to help us understand it so that we don't go off in wrong directions, so we can see what the church is and what the church does and that's exactly what this passage of scripture then is for. 

If he gave these gifts, why did Jesus give these gifts?  Let's take a look specifically at why he gave these teaching gifts to the church in verse 11. We read that, we'll move onto verse 12:

Eph 4:12  to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,

Why did Jesus give these gifts?

For ministry.

I want you to look please. He gave these gifts to equip; to give you the equipment, the saints, the believers in the church, to get you ready to give you what you need to know to do the work of ministry.  The church serves on a platform of truth.  Your church does not have 5 ministers on staff.  You have 5 pastors on staff.  We are all ministers of the gospel.  This is one of my chief roles is to teach.  You have chief roles that you can do, I cannot do, but together as the Body of Christ with Christ as the head, our ministry spreads out how many fold through our lives?   Somebody told me today, I believe it was Gloria McMillen, told me about somebody that had had a surgery.  Gloria has already been with them during that, she's helped them during that, she's taken things to them during that, and I know Gloria's done that more than once, she has a nursing background and what a servant she is in the Body of Christ, quietly.  I wish somehow we could know of all those things that go on.  There are multitudes of things that go on with different gifts being expressed.  But not only were they given for ministry, look at verses 12 and 13:

Eph 4:12  to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, [they were given for maturity, look at verse 13]

Eph 4:13  until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

I guess the simplest application of that verse is, "How much like Jesus are you?"

Well, I think I've got a long way to go, how about you?  So why did Jesus give these gifts? For ministry, for maturity, and don't miss this, for stability.  How many of you, [don't raise your hands] many of you, I know, watch religious broadcasting.  That's one of the most dangerous channels on television!  It really is.  There are some great and wonderful teachers who have television programs, but what I hear is described in these verses many times. Verse 14:

Eph 4:14  so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

And what I see on so many radio and television programs that are outside of the norm are people who are creating false doctrine in their own minds.  They are humanly cunning, they are crafty in their deceitful schemes and they are sucking people in so they can simply suck money right out of their wallets into theirs!  When somebody has a gold toilet seat in their house and they are a minister of the gospel, somethin' ain't right!  [Laughter]

For stability!  How stable are you?  How do you know truth?  How did you learn it?  You know when it becomes really important what your truth is? Is when you are knelt down in a dorm room or a house and a tornado is going by.  You know when truth is important?  I've seen it and some of our staff have seen it, is when you are sitting beside the bed of one who is minutes away from eternity.  They are about to die.  I've talked to people before they go into surgery.  They know going into surgery that they've got maybe 50% chance of coming out.  Do they go in peaceful? Do they go in fretful?  That's when truth matters.   So, what do we base that truth on? "The Secret," where if we think good thoughts they are going to come to us and we'll come out alive!  Where do we place our faith? The doctor?  No, we have to have a Rock upon which we stand.  We have to have one who is strong enough to conquer the principalities and the powers, strong enough to conquer death and the grave, to take the sting out of it so I can face death and come back to this life or I can face death and go into eternity, which then we could say would be far better, "for me to live is Christ, to die is gain!" Is that true for us?  It's so hard for us to say that with Paul.  To live, that's Christ; to die… Oh……that's gain! It would be far better to depart and be with Christ.  How many of us could say that right now?  We're so attached here that we can't, but we need the stability that makes us strong enough to stand so that we're not swayed by these truths or these falsehoods that claim to be truth, should I say!

What is it that tosses the immature?  What is it that causes us, and by the way, there is a significance to the order in that you have your maturity so that you can have your stability.  Look at what causes us to be unstable if we are immature, Verse 14:

Eph 4:14  so that we may no longer be children,

Now, we're to receive Christ like a child, but once we have done that, we are to grow to adulthood because if we don't this is what happens.  You know children can be persuaded to do anything for a piece of candy, sometimes.  Some of you adults are saying, "Well, if it's chocolate, I might too!"  [Laughter] Joyce Mitchell asked me this morning if I wanted some sugar!  [Laughter]  Joie, I forgot to tell you that! [Lots of laughter]  Then she proceeded to hand me a heart-shaped piece of chocolate!  I was a little scared there for a minute.  Sorry, Joyce.  I'm going to get in trouble for that.

What makes us waffle? What makes us be uncertain?  What causes us to be so influenced?  Lack of maturity, for one, but if we're not growing, here's what happens:

Eph 4:14  so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine [teaching; every wind, every wave]

We'll come back to this scripture because that's vitally important, but you see teaching moves us.  I could have come off the video of Union and I could have told some stories, given some more pictures and had most of this congregation in tears.  I could have probably solicited an offering for Union if I were the president and moved you to give what you had not planned on giving because of emotion.  Teaching, doctrine does that to us, but it does it in a severe way.  You need to understand that this is not some mild thing.  He compares it to the waves of the sea, to the winds that blow and we saw what wind could do.  It disturbs the soul.  This truth thing is vitally important that your feet are planted and you are secure in the one who descended to the earth, died and was buried, and raised to life!  Because, if not, somebody could come along and tell you something today and you would be off and gone.  And by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes, those are the things that cause us to drift.

So then, what is our response?  What does this passage teach us actually to do?

To be saturated in the truth.

What you soak in is what you smell like!  It's a great theological fact.  What's the aroma coming from your life? Verse 15, what do we do?  How do we avoid these winds and these waves?  Well, first we have the gift of teaching, but it is more than that.  That's not the only people in the church.  Verse 15:

Eph 4:15  Rather [rather than the wind blowing you, and the water moving you, rather than being immature and instable, rather than not ministering to one another and building up this Body of Christ], speaking the truth in love, [literally the word is "truthing it" - you need to be so soaked in the truth that your life has an aroma of truth about it, not just regular telling the truth which is an imperative for the believer, but that your life radiates the truth of this risen Messiah. 

Speaking the truth!  Some people love to tell the truth, especially when it hurts.  Have you ever been around somebody like that? They love the first half of this verse:  But speak the truth…. and watch people squirm!  Speak the truth in love. 

Eph 4:15  Rather, speaking the truth in love,

That takes maturity, my friend.  So you need to be saturated with the truth of the gospel.  You need to be close to this one, you need to soak up Christ so you'll smell like Christ.  Then you are saturated, you express it in love.  Why?  To produce an atmosphere of growth.  Look how it's said:

Eph 4:15  Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ….

I turned 50 this year!  Ooops, I shouldn't have let that out!  And I have asked myself more questions in this year of being 49 already than I've maybe ever asked myself in my life.  What's my life purpose?  Am I accomplishing anything?  What in the world am I doing? You know, when you get in your 40s, sometimes we get lazy.  We look at other people around us and we wonder, "Why are they doing so much better than I am?"  Our children are old enough to be really good or to not be so good and we begin to examine that.  Our finances ought to be to the place where we are moving to some realm of stability and some of us have done nothing but dig a very big hole.  And you ask those serious questions, what is life for? 

Let me just let you in on a little bit of that.  It's not going to solve any financial problems immediately, it's not going to solve any family problems, but it will give you this sense of what your life is for and that you have a purpose.

Eph 4:15  Rather, speaking the truth in love [This is what Christians in the church are to do, all of us], we are to grow up…..

At 40s, I've noticed people, they level out, they plateau, they stop  learning, and then they reach these 50s and 60s in which they have been wanting to go and it's like life is supposed to stop there.  You, my friend, as the believer are always to be soaking in the one who is truth so that you can grow up in every way into Him who is the head, in every way in your thinking, in your feeling, in your relating and in your spending, in your living and in your dying, you are to be growing up into Christ, into a person by you personally.  So that you can be fully engaged in the church and in life.  Verse 16:

Eph 4:16  from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part[get that… when each part]  is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

So, in the simplest way, this passage boils down to Jesus, you and me.  What do I mean?  This passage relates to the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.  He descended from heaven, he lived on earth, he died for the sins of the world, he was buried, was raised and ascended to the right hand of the Throne of God.  He took death captive and destroyed it.  He came to destroy the works of the devil.  He is sitting at God's right hand to prove he did it, and one day he will return, but he's not back yet. So, I have to ask the question, what about you?  Not you, pleural, you singular!   This issue of Christ's death, burial and resurrection cannot stand to be ignored.  Can the realities of your heart and your life be ignored? Nothing opens us up like Christ.  And can the demonstrated love of Christ on the cross be left not dealt with by you? I am forever grateful that God saw fit to bring the cross right into my sight.  What about you?  Jesus and you? And then what about Jesus, you, all of you, and me?  Are we serving with the grace and the gift that Christ has given or are you coasting? 

We have done the church a horrible disservice in our age.  We have made it a spectator sport.  Let's get the best preacher and the best musician we can get so we can sit back and leave on Sunday mornings so we got something out of it.  The preacher is nothing more in the church than one person using his gift.  The church is all of us using ours.  Are you growing?  I know our church.  God has blessed us richly and you have the opportunity to be growing here.  Are you coasting? 

Third, are you stable? Has your maturity got you to where you are stable in the storms of life and in the storms of falsehood?  You must know Christ.  If you don't know him, what about you and Jesus?  Isn't it time to trust him? To rest in him? Some of you, not all of you, maybe not even many of you, but some sit in the church so disinterested.  I may be boring, but God is not!  Don't buzz him off, and second, for you who believe, it is time to run with Christ because you've rested in him.  Do you have a place of service?  Do you have a pattern of growth?  Let's pray together.