Ephesians 4:7-16
The Whole Church Equipped to Minister
This week Marcela my wife had a splitting earache. Last weekend it was so painful that she spent most of it in bed with painkillers unable to sleep from pain. Also unable to hear properly. All sounds were just ringing in her ears. First thing on Monday she went to the doctor. He prescribed antibiotics and a stronger painkiller. Slowly slowly the pain is going away, but still cant hear properly, and sometimes has problems with balance. She has trouble sleeping. It has effected her whole life this week.
So what caused this problem? That threw Marcelas whole life out of whack this week? It was the Eustachian Tube. An infection in the Eustachian Tube. Its an organ in our inner ear. It is only 3.5 cms long, and 3 mm wide. Tiny. But this tiny organ, when not working properly, not functioning as it should - this 3.5 cm organ laid low a 162 cm tall adult for the week.
Think about the human body. It is an intricate thing, marvelously made. But to work properly, each part has to work properly. This week, every other part of Marcela was working properly. Her eyes, hands, feet, liver, were all working properly. But one tiny part wasnt. Wasnt doing what the head wanted it to do. Wasnt following the rules. Wasnt working with the other parts of the body. Was doing its own thing, going its own way, with negative consequence for her whole body. And Im sure weve all been sick at some stage. Some of you are sick now. Tiny parts of the body effect the whole body.
Todays passage is about the body. The body of Christ. Weve already been introduced to the church in Ephesians. And weve already been introduced to the word, body being used for the church. It appears a number of times in Ephesians. Most recently was last week, when we talked about unity, and there were all those ones. One of the ones is Eph 4:4 There is one body. And now in 4:7-16 Paul talks about the body, the body of Christ, and how it is built up. Eph 4:12 talks about preparing God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up and Eph 4:16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love. So this passage mentions a lot of things, which well see soon. It uses som of the Christian buzzwords we introduced last week such as giftings, unity, equipping.
But the goal of the stuff mentioned in this passage is for the building up of the body. This is important. Often we see this passage as teaching about giftings, which it is. But we often dont think of the goal of this passage, and we cant understand this passage and how the gifts work together if we dont understand the goal. The goal is for the building up of the church as each member does his or her part. And this goal is not mentioned until the last part of this passage, so we sometimes miss the goal because it comes last.
So lets read the passage now, noting all the different things mentioned, and seeing how they lead to the final goal of building up the body of Christ the church.
EPH 4:7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says:
"When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men."
EPH 4:9 (What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach 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.
EPH 4:14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
So lets now unpack these verses. Lets see what Gods plan is for building His church His body. Firstly, Christ has given each one of a gift or gifts. That is, the ability to be able to do certain things, to serve the Lord in a certain way. EPH 4:7 But to each one of us grace has been given. This word, grace in this context means gift. So each of us has been given a gift, and each of us in the church, is charged with using our gift. The last verse of our passage today, verse 16, talks about each part doing its work. So straight up, we can see each of us has a gift, that we ought to be using.
And we need to understand from where these gifts come from, and why we are given them. Verses 8-10 are often very misunderstood, but if you look at what they say, it is not so hard to understand them. Verses 8-10 talk about the descent and ascent of Christ. Jesus Christ is God the Son, and therefore before He was born, He lived in the heavenlies with the Father. So verse 9, where it talks about Christ descending to the lower, earthly parts, refers to His incarnation, that is, Christs coming down from Heaven to earth, to live as a man, and to even suffer and die as man. But praise the Lord, He did not stay down here, but He rose again from the dead! And not only that, He ascended to heaven! Thats what this passage refers to. And as part of that process of ascending to Heaven, and of being victorious over the powers of evil, He is in a position to distribute gifts to men as it says in last line of verse 8.
The death and resurrection and ascension to heaven of Jesus Christ, the turning point of history, not only does it secure our salvation and eternal life for those who believe in Him. Its also because of this that Christ established His new people of God, the church, and gave His church gifts in order to build it up.
Now some of those gifts are specifically mentioned and these gifts are actually gifts of people. Specific people with specific functions in the church. Lets have a look at them verse 11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers,
Lets have a look at each one.
The first two go together apostles and prophets. They were already mentioned in Ephesians 2.20. Eph 2:20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. You might remember when we talked about that verse, that although we dont have apostles and prophets among us now, we have their teaching in the form of the New Testament.
Now perhaps I better explain what I mean when I say we dont have them now. For some people say we do. Firstly apostles. In the New Testament apostles referred to a very small number of people, who had actually witnessed the Lord Jesus in the flesh and His resurrection and been specially commissioned for specific tasks in the early church. Acts 1 when replacing Judas with another apostle, Peter said AC 1:21 Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection." Paul was a bit different having believed in Christ well after the resurrection. But Jesus appeared to him specially on the road to Damascus. He was a special case. Without that appearance he could not have been an apostles as he says himself in 1CO 9:1 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? So the age of the apostles is over.
What about the prophets? Some today believe in the gift of prophecy, but even if you do, there is a big difference between what may today be a modern day prophecy and the sort of prophet who says, Thus says the Lord, with such authority that their statements and teaching become part of Scripture.
But even though those apostles and prophets are now gone, their legacy, their teaching, their contribution to building up the church remains with us, in the writings they left behind. Their writings inspired by the Holy Spirit - the New Testament.
So, we need to be using the New Testament, as well as the Old Testament to help build us up. Make sure you are immersing yourself in the Bible, reading it every day.
Lets look at the next one: evangelists. Now you might ask, shouldnt every Christian be an evangelist? That is, someone who is telling others about Jesus Christ, about what He has done for you, and what He can do for others? Yes, of course! We must all be witnesses of Christ, but some are better at it than others. Some of you here are Gods gift of evangelists to this church, and if you are, I want to know about it!
The next gifts are pastors and teachers. What are pastors? The word actually means, shepherd. In fact the English word, Pastor come from Latin and means shepherd. And that gives you an idea of what a pastor a shepherd does. He watches over the flock like a shepherd watches over sheep, making sure they are fed and protecting them from danger. The pastor is to make sure the flock of God are fed and to protect as much as he can, the flock from danger.
So that gives an idea of what pastors do. And teachers are similar. Indeed in this passage, in the Greek, the words pastor and teacher are linked. In other words there is a lot of correlation between pastors and teachers. Because as we will see, pastors shepherds - do a lot of their feeding, their protecting, through teaching, as I am doing this very minute!
So what is the purpose of these people? Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers? 12 to prepare God's people for works of service. So that leads to a question - who does the service? That is ministry? Whos task is it to serve God? Everyone who is a Christian! If you are a Christian, you need to be serving God! Before we looked at the word, pastor. Sometimes we use the word, minister, as a synonym for pastor, but this is misleading. It implies the pastor is the only minister. But in fact, we are all ministers. The pastors function is to shepherd, and along with the other people mentioned, to prepare Gods people for service. Or as some of your translations say, equip that buzz word equipping.
So how do these different ones, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, prepare and equip you all for works of service? Before we answer that, we need to go on in our passage, because our passage talks about the goal. What the goal of all this service is. Vs 12 says we work together, Gods people serving, in order to build up the church. Weve looked at that phrase before, build up the church earlier in the sermon.
But what is this built up church supposed to look like? We are here given one positive and one negative. What the church is supposed to be, and what it is supposed not to be. Firstly the positive, vs 13 until we all reach 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. Theres that word, unity. We talked about that last week, the buzzword, unity. We are told that unity is a good thing, and indeed it is. But we are often told that unity is the most important thing, more important than doctrine. The world looks at the different religions in the world, and says be united. It also looks at the different Christian denominations, so many of them! And so many Christians say, let us be united. Let us be one. And to a measure that is good. But there is also a danger, because for there to be unity, there has to be something that unifies us. And Paul talks about that here.
He says we need to reach unity in two things: the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God. Which of course are linked. What does this mean? It means that for true unity, we can only have unity with those who believe what we believe. That Jesus died, rose from the dead, for our sins. That there is salvation in no-one else but Him. That we are saved through faith in Him, not by the things we do. So we cannot have unity with those who might say they are Christians, but dont hold to those things. Thats why we cant have Christian unity with the Jehovahs Witnesses, because they say Jesus is not God. Thats why we cant have unity with so-called liberal Christians, those who deny the death and resurrection of Christ, because we dont share a unified faith. Thats why we cant have unity with so-called Christian groups that advocate things like gay marriage, abortion, racism, things blatently against the Bibles teaching. Thats why we cant have spiritual unity with Christian denominations that teach that we are saved through works, sacraments etc, and not solely through faith in Christ.
So unity is important, but it is unity of faith, unity of knowledge of the Son of God. That is, unity of doctrine and teaching about how to live as Christians. We need to know about God, how to live as Christians, to have this unity in belief and practice. And as we do that well achieve the other things mentioned in verse 13. Being mature and having the fullness of Christ.
That is the positive. And the negative is the opposite of it. EPH 4:14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. If we are united in faith, in doctine, mature, we will be strong in what the Bible teaches us, and not swayed by every wind of teaching. When someone tells us some strange doctrine, or different way to live, well be equipped to stand our ground, to hold onto the unity of the faith as the Bible teaches. And as a pastor a shepherd - part of my job is to make sure you are fed with the word of God, so you remain safe in the faith, and are protected from spiritual danger.
So that is the goal. The church is built up, so that it is mature. So it has unity in faith, in doctrine, in practice. So that its members are strong in their faith and not carried about by every new idea. This happens as the members word together. In verse 15 speaking the truth in love to each other. Verse 16 each part doing its work. And as we do this - vs 15 we grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ. The head of the body of Christ is Christ himself.
So now we see the goal more clearly, we can also see how the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers prepare and equip us for works of service, so that the body can be built up. The apostles and prophets, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote the New Testament. The evangelists witness of Christ to unbelievers, and through their witness, God draws some into the church His body. The evangelists also lead the church in evangelism, equipping, training us for evangelism, motivating, inspiring us for this service.
The pastors and teachers in this church, how do we equip? Mainly through teaching and preaching the word. I can meet with different ones during the week, but because of the size of the church, that time is limited. My main opportunity to prepare and equip you is what I amd doing now - the Sunday sermon. And the Sunday sermon links in with what the apostles and prophets have left for us - the Bible. The foundation for all our teaching must be the Bible. Tt is not my job to come up with my own teaching, but to use my theological training to help bring understanding to the Bible and how to apply it to daily life. To prepare, equip you for works of service. Thats why when I preach, I use the Biblical text. I normally preach through a book of the Bible, and stick as close to the text of the Bible as possible. This is known as expository preaching. And as I preach, you need to hold me accountable to the Scriptures. Bring your Bible to church and follow along with me. And dont just believe what I say because I say it and Im the pastor. Check it out, think about it see if it conforms to biblical teaching - so that you are not swayed by every wind of doctrine.
And I also want to emphasis the importance of the Sunday sermon, and how important it is for each of you to come each Sunday as far as is possible. I understand some have work commitments, other times family commitments take you away from Gympie for the weekend. Sometimes we are ill. But make Sunday church a priority. Make every effort to come each Sunday. Even if you come every Sunday of the year, assuming the average sermon is 30 minutes, you will get 26 hours of Bible teaching a year from the sermon. Its not much. When I was in Central Asia in April, in one week I taught 8 hours x 5 days = 40 hours - nearly double what I teach in the whole year here!
So make every effort to be equipped through the Sunday preaching. But dont leave it there. There are also home groups another opportunity to be taught. Your home group leader is also a shepherd, a teacher, to help prepare, equip you.
Of course theres other ways I and the leaders of the church can prepare and equip you as well as the Sunday sermon. And if you have a gift youd like develeped, come and make a time to see me so we can talk about it.
But remember, who are the ministers? All of us! And what is our job as we do works of service? The building up of the church, into maturity, into unity of faith, doctrine and practice. As every member does their bit.
And I close with an illustration of how that worked in one instance this week. This church working together. As you know, we have two chaplains in the schools. One is Jean, chaplain to a number of primary schools. I guess in some ways, she is our evangelist to them. About 10 days ago she became aware of a need. A family of some of the kids in one of the schools, had need for food real practical needs. Jean was alert to this need, having been a Christian for a number of years, being equipped by the Bible and teaching, knowing our responsbility for the needy. So Jean swung into action informing me. I informed our pastoral care team, and together with a deaconess organised someone else from the church to go with Jean. Jean and a few other people from the church put in together to buy some groceries. And last week they visited this lady and gave her some groceries. She turns out to be a Christian but in great need of encouragement. And this visit greatly helped and encouraged here as well as provided a practical need. This is the church in action. People doing their bit. The pastor not doing the ministry. It was great to see this happening without me doing much at all, but the people in the church doing it, working together.
But there were holes. Things that could have been done better. We could have been better equipped. To know who would be interested in helping, to perhaps have had something in our budget for this sort of thing, to know who we can contact in the church, who has time, resources, gifts available, to help in situations like these. After church today there will be a meeting for those interested in practical helps and mercy ministries. We will talk about how we can work together better as a church in meeting the needs of our congregation and of the community. Ill be there, helping to prepare, equip, get things organised, but its up to all of us to do the work of ministry. So come along to that meeting, if you think God can use you in that way.
So recapping today, I started talking about a human body, how it works together. My wife Marcela, her little eustachian tube in her ear was doing the wrong thing, negatively effects the whole body. We are the body of Christ. Because He died and rose again, Christ gave us gifts. Some of those are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, who equip Gods people for works of service, who then minister, buidling up the body of Christ, so that we are united and mature, in faith, doctrine, and practice that is, how we live - not wavering from who God has us to be, as each part is working together.
