Gospel Driven | Ephesians 4:7-12 (July 17) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Let's pray together, Church.

Father, we thank you.

God, in this moment that we can declare those words with hearts full of faith, Lord, that they're true, that we are free.

Because of all that Christ has accomplished on the cross, God, thank you for Jesus.

Thank you that He is not just our King, Lord, He is the King.

And He has come to this earth.

He came with a mission, and He accomplished that mission on the cross.

Lord, He accomplished our victory, the victory we could never win.

The most important battle we could ever fight, Lord, the battle for our eternal righteousness and salvation.

God, thank you that Jesus has won it for us.

God, we praise you for our freedom.

We pray in this moment, Lord, as we open up your word.

God, would you speak to us with a power that can only come from your word, Lord?

Power that's delivered by the Holy Spirit.

Lord, speak in a way that saves, speak in a way that transforms.

God, we need you.

And so we humble ourselves.

I pray each of us right now, Lord, in this moment, would humble ourselves before you.

God, that we might be changed eternally by your word, God.

We praise you.

We pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Amen.

So good to worship with you this morning.

If you have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, you can open them up to Ephesians chapter four.

We're continuing in our series called Gospel Driven, and over these next two weeks, we're gonna be looking at what it means to be a gospel-driven church.

And there's a thread that flows through Ephesians.

Actually, it starts in chapter one, and you can flip back a page there if you've already made it to Ephesians 4.

And it's in verse 6 and 7, where Paul is praising God, and it's this really dense theological praising of the glory that God has shown through his triune work and salvation.

And he says in verse 6, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved, that's speaking of Jesus.

But look what it says in verse 7.

This is another one of those verses that when I think about it, it really blows my mind.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, the riches of his grace, which he has lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.

Church, to be in Christ is to be lavished fully with the richness of the infinite grace that is in Jesus Christ.

This is what it means to be in Christ, that his grace is constantly being lavished over you in infinite amounts.

Makes me think of the Niagara Falls.

Now I know as a person who lives in the GTA, you don't like to go to the Niagara Falls anymore, and you probably don't even like to think about the Niagara Falls right now, but for a moment, would you just bear with me as we think about the Niagara Falls together?

No one's left, so we're starting on a good note this morning.

The astounding thing about the Niagara Falls, when you first see it, I think, to me at least, is the amount of water that's coming over the edge.

I did some math and trying to understand the exact amount of water that's going over the edge of the Niagara Falls.

And if you were to live a life where you tried to use as much water as you could, these are the statistics I am working off of.

If you were able somehow to collect all the water that were flowing over the edge of the Niagara Falls, you'd have more than enough for your life within seconds.

And yet, day and night, these falls do not stop flowing.

Constantly, the water is being lavished over the edge.

And yet, even this example, this example, is not enough for us to describe the grace that is being lavished over us in Jesus Christ.

And so my question is if the promise of the gospel for all of those who are in Christ this morning is that Jesus is lavishing his grace on us, my question is, how do I stand under it?

How do I stand under it?

How do I receive the grace of Jesus Christ?

And there's a thread through Ephesians that Paul picks up again in Ephesians chapter four, where he gets down to the nitty-gritty of what it means to receive the grace of Jesus Christ and what that practically looks like in the church of Jesus Christ.

And so in verses 7 to 12 of Ephesians chapter 4, I want to read this whole section for you together, and then we're going to spend our time in these verses this morning, and then in future weeks, we're going to spend our time in the following verses.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

But Paul writes this to the church but grace, there's the grace that's overflowing and lavished on us in Jesus Christ.

Grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

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

And saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth?

He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

This is the grace that Paul speaks of in chapter one, and it's the grace that Paul unfolds in Christ in chapter four.

The answer to the question is of where do we find this grace being lavished on us in Jesus Christ?

Ultimately, the answer that Paul finds is in the church, particularly in chapter four, what Paul is talking about is in the unity of the church.

And what Paul is saying is that as the church is united, part of what brings us together is that each of us are experiencing the unifying grace of Jesus Christ.

And so Paul's answer for us is that if you want to experience the grace that's lavished on you, well, part of the way that you experience it, a major part of the way that you experience it, is in the Church of Jesus Christ.

That's not to say Jesus can't pour his grace over you personally, but it is to say that one of Jesus' greatest methods of filling your life with grace, of lavishing you with grace, is by being plugged into the ministry and activity of the church.

This is the way that the gospel-driven church should function in our lives.

It should be one of the greatest sources of blessing in our lives.

It should be the places, the place where our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ go the deepest.

It should be the place where we feel most intimately cared for the most.

It should be the place where we have a vulnerability with friends and brothers and sisters that allows us to be convicted and meaningfully encouraged to be exhorted and to be taught.

This should be how the church functions.

A place where we immensely feel, through the ministry of other people, building up the body of Christ and serving us, we immensely feel the grace of God being lavished on our life.

And yet we know, don't we know by experience, just by talking, we could probably grab a random handful of people in this room.

And we know by experience that often the church doesn't function as a blessing in our life.

In fact, many of us probably think about the past, our past experience with the church, and maybe there's a lot of hurt there.

Maybe as we think about the leadership of churches, we've been hurt, and we really wonder what is God's plan for the church.

And we hear statements like Jesus is lavishing our great his grace through the church, and it's hard to believe.

And so that's what I want to unfold this morning.

What is the gospel-driven church to look like?

How can we live as a church in a way that Jesus is funneling his grace fully into our lives?

And I want to do that this morning by breaking down a sentence.

I'm going to give you a sentence right now that's going to tell you really the whole message.

So if you wanted, you could totally fall asleep right now.

You've got the whole message in your hands, okay?

This is it.

And then we're going to break down the sentence over the period of the message.

It's going to come up on the screen here.

I want you to see that grace is given by Jesus in the form of godly leaders who equip me for ministry.

That's what it means to be a gospel-driven church.

This is how we experience the grace of Jesus Christ in our church.

We recognize that grace is given in the form of godly leaders who equip me for ministry.

Now, let's spend the morning in Ephesians 4 unpacking that sentence.

The first thing that I want you to see is that grace is given by Jesus.

Now, this should be obvious, shouldn't it?

If I were to ask you, where do you find grace?

The answer, the Sunday school answer really should be Jesus.

And that's correct.

And that's why Paul says in verse 7, he says, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

And what Paul's getting to here is practically how is Jesus' grace poured out?

And what he's saying is that Jesus measures it out to each of us.

And it's really interesting because Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 to 6 is all about unity.

Ephesians 4:1–6

Look what it says in verses 1 and 2.

It says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.

And he says in verse 3, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Verses 1 to 6 are really about our unity, because we have all experienced a common grace.

And so in verses 4 to 6, he talks about the one body and the one spirit.

That we find uh this unity that goes deeper than any other earthly relationship in Christ with other believers, you find a unity that is a unity of the gospel.

Because we believe the same truths.

We know this experientially in our life, don't we, when we meet another Christian.

Immediately there are there's so much in common between you.

And you can be of different denominations and you can disagree on a lot of secondary and tertiary issues, but when you agree on the primary things, immediately there's this bond, there's this connection, because there's unity in the foundation of the gospel.

But what Paul wants to get at in verse 6 is really that the thing that unifies us is how diverse we are as a church.

We've all experienced God's grace, but what Paul's saying in verse 7 is that this infinite flow of grace, again, imagine the Niagara Falls.

Each of us have experienced it differently so that we are gifted in different ways.

You see that there in the text?

That we have that grace was given to each one of us, to each one of us.

Grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift, each of us uniquely gifted by Jesus Christ.

Isn't this how it should be?

If Jesus' grace is infinite, then each of us have experienced it in a different way because of its infinite nature, and each of us have turned out different.

And it's this diversity of giftings in the church that creates unity.

And I praise God that as I look around this room and I've been here for such a short period of time, but I see so many gifted people serving the church in such unique ways.

Wouldn't it be a horrible disaster if all we had were preachers?

And every Sunday morning everyone was standing up and just trying to preach.

And you couldn't hear a single word.

But God hasn't gifted each of us the same.

God has gifted so many people in this church to serve in such unique and different ways.

People who serve in hospitality, people who serve in kids, people who serve in formal ministries, but also people who serve in informal ministries, in conversations, in the ways that they encourage, in the ways that they exhort, in the ways that they build up the body of Jesus Christ.

I'm so grateful that as I look around this church, it really is a body.

And I see people functioning in different ways.

There are arms, there are legs, there are hands, there are feet.

This is the diversity that Jesus has gifted us with.

And I want you to know this morning that because Jesus has gifted us with this diversity, it means that you are called in the life of this church to use it.

If Jesus has poured out his grace on you, if he's measured out his grace as a gift, do you believe that church?

Look at verse 7.

It's exactly what it says that grace has been given to you.

You take your finger, you point at yourself, grace has been given to you according to the measure of Christ's gift.

And so the question is, are you using that gift for the church?

And I praise God that so many of you are.

Now, in verse 8, something significant about the grace that we are given in Jesus Christ is shown to us.

Look what he says in verse 8.

He says, Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, and he's quoting Psalm 68 here, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.

Verses 9 to 10, he goes on to explain it a little more.

In saying he ascended, what does it mean?

But that he had also descended into the lower regions of earth.

What Paul is saying is that Jesus, in ascending to heaven, after descending to earth as a man who was fully man and fully God, in ascending to heaven, he was victorious over sin.

And he quotes from Psalm 68 to talk about the victory of Christ's mission on earth.

And I think it's really wise whenever we read the New Testament, quoting the Old Testament, to go back to the Old Testament and think about exactly why the writer is pulling from that place.

And so I want you to turn to Psalm 68 right now, and you can kind of put some pressure on your neighbor.

Hopefully, we have our Bibles open, put some pressure on them to open to Psalm 68.

If you need to find it, this is how I do it.

Go to the middle of your Bible, open it up.

You'll probably be in Psalms, or you'll be close to there.

You can race your neighbor, you can uh do a little cheer of triumph when you win.

If your neighbor's on uh on a phone, you can shame them, you can say, shame on you on your subpar biblical text.

I'm just kidding, don't shame anyone.

Psalm 68.

Psalm 68 is a call of the psalmist, a call to God to come and give victory, just like he did in the olden days.

This is like the kind of speech you hear from the older people among us who say, Back in my day, this is what the psalmist is saying.

Back in my day, you should have seen God move.

And so the psalmist is praying, knowing the way that God moved in Israel, the psalmist is praying, God, move again.

Move again.

And so look what he says in verse 7.

Oh God, he's praising God when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness.

The psalmist is remembering what God did in the desert for the people of Israel when he rescued them.

It's exactly what we sang about this morning.

When he rescued them from their slavery in Egypt, delivered them through the desert, through the waters of the Red Sea, and marched them as they followed a cloud away from their enemy.

God triumphed in victory for his people and God led his people.

You remember why God led his people out of Egypt?

So that Israel could worship God.

And so, where did God bring Israel?

God brought Israel to Mount Sinai so that they could dwell in the presence of God.

It was on Mount Sinai that God revealed himself to Israel in such a unique way, giving them the commandments.

And so it says in verse 8, the earthquaked, the heavens poured down rain before God, the one of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel.

And Israel was powerfully aware that God had had victory over their enemies, and not only that, that God was redeeming them for himself.

He was bringing them to Mount Sinai so that Israel could dwell in his presence.

But this was not God's final destination.

In verse 8, the psalmist talks about the mountains.

And the mountains, it's an interesting text.

It's very poetic.

It says, Oh mountain of God, mountain of Bashan, O many peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan.

Why do you look with hatred, O many peaked mountain, at the mountain that God has desired for his people, for his abode?

Sorry.

And there's this interesting thing where the Psalms is looking at the mountains, as though the mountains are talking to each other, and the mountains are like making fun of people.

It's a little bit of like mountain playground banter in this song.

And the mountains are looking at Mount Sinai, where God is going to deliver his people.

They're looking at Mount Sinai and they're saying, Oh, Mount Sinai, you're nothing.

And yet the psalmist is saying, This is where God wants to bring his people.

And this is where God will bring his people.

He says in verse 16, yes, where the Lord will dwell forever.

It says in verse 17, look at the battle, look at the military might of God.

The chariots of God are twice 10,000, thousands upon thousands.

You remember what Israel was scared of in the desert?

They're scared of the chariots, the dust clouds of so many chariots of Egypt coming after them.

And yet the psalmist reminds us that the chariots of God are twice 10,000, thousands upon thousands.

God will never lose a battle that he partakes in.

He says in verse 17, the Lord is among them.

Sinai is now their sanctuary.

And look at this, it's a victory call in verse 18.

This is what Paul's quoting from in ver in Ephesians 4.

He says, You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train, and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the Lord may dwell there.

Psalm 68 was a prayer.

It was a call for God to come and give victory again.

And what if what Ephesians 4 is telling us, what Paul is telling us, is that this God, that this prayer has been answered.

God has come in the form of Jesus Christ, and he has done his victory march, the battle has been fought, the victory has been won.

And so you think about Jesus' ministry.

And isn't it interesting that Jesus' ministry in so many ways mirrors the life of Israel?

As soon as Jesus comes to this earth, when he begins his ministry, where does he go?

He goes to the desert.

You know what the gospels tell us how long he was in the desert for?

He was in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.

And we say, wow, that's a really long time to be without food and without water.

But what the writer there wants us to understand is that just as Israel was in the desert for 40 years, so Jesus was in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.

And just as the kings we read in Psalm 68 fled from God when he delivered his people through the Red Sea, so when Jesus came, who was terrified?

It was King Herod, the kings fleeing at the presence of this baby.

Just as the earthquaked when God ascended Mount Sinai, when Jesus ascended the cross, the earth quaked.

And just as God was going to a new mountain to deliver his people to his new place, so Jesus came to this earth.

Not to create a heaven on earth for us, but to bring us to a new place.

He said he goes to prepare a place for us, and that place is heaven.

And just as we read in Psalm 68 that God arms himself with chariots upon chariots, Jesus armed himself with the cross and gave the final destructive blow to our enemies.

What Paul is telling us is that the victory, the greatest battle that we could ever fight, the battle for eternal salvation, has been fought by Jesus Christ, and it has been won by Jesus Christ, finally and decisively.

Jesus has won.

The victory is his.

And what Paul is saying in Ephesians 4 is that the reward is ours.

You notice a difference there in Ephesians 68, in verse 18, when we read what Paul's quoting from, it said it talks about God ascending on high and leading a host of captives, but then it said he received gifts among men.

Did you notice that?

Where in Ephesians 4 it says he gave gifts to men.

And our question is, well, why the difference here?

Why is Paul misquoting, seemingly misquoting Psalm 68?

And there's a few different answers.

Some people have just said, well, Paul, maybe he didn't remember exactly what the verse said, and so he just did his best, but he was a little off.

Some people even argue that Paul, he was just twisting scripture to say what he wanted it to say.

And so he didn't mind, you know, shift a word here and shift a word there.

I don't believe anywhere in scripture that any of the writers of scripture are willing to do that.

Scripture is written on the foundation of scripture that came before it, and so what we understand that Paul is emphasizing what Paul's Doing here is emphasizing a different aspect of the truth that was being emphasized in Psalm 68.

See, when a king would have a military conquest, when a king would have a victory, they would go in after and they would receive the bounty.

They would receive all of the rewards.

And what a good king would do would then dole out the rewards to the people.

And so for a king to receive the reward is for a king to also give the reward.

And what Jesus, what Paul's saying is that Jesus has not only had a victory, Jesus has also given the gifts of his victory out.

In Jesus, we have the victory and the reward of the battle that he fought on the cross.

Church, this is such good news for us.

Because so many of us are fighting our own battles.

So many of us are looking for our own victories.

So many of us are looking for our own rewards.

And we live our life looking for victory in different areas of our life.

And so some of us maybe we're pursuing victory in the area of fitness.

So everything in our life revolves around us being fit, going to the gym.

Everything revolves around our diet, at the expense sometimes to our relationship, the expense sometimes to our jobs.

We're looking for victory in this area.

Maybe that's the least relevant application you've ever heard to your life.

Others of us are looking for victory at work.

We want that promotion.

Once we have that promotion, that's going to be victory.

Finally, we're going to have the reward that our hearts long for.

Then I'll be happy.

Then I'll be truly rewarded.

Then I'll be satisfied.

Some of us are looking for victory in our family.

When my family looks a certain way, when my kids behave a certain way, when they say the right things, then that's victory, and I'll be rewarded with what I want.

And Jesus is here this morning to call us off of that tiresome treadmill of trying to achieve victory in our own power.

Jesus is here this morning to call us to embrace his victory, the victory that he has led us on, and the reward that he is willing to give to us.

So maybe you're here this morning and you don't know Jesus, and you're walking in here and you've been on the treadmill, the endless, tireless treadmill of trying to obtain victory, and you've had victories in your life, but isn't it true that when you whenever you get something, whenever you get the reward of your hard work, the only thing you want is more.

There's always a further thing to chase.

There's always one more thing to do, one more thing to accomplish.

And Jesus calls you off that treadmill.

He calls you to rest in his victory, he calls you to embrace his reward.

Jesus has already ascended on high.

On the cross, Jesus won the decisive victory.

He's won the victory.

What are the gifts?

What does he give us?

Well, here's the second point of our message.

Grace is given by Jesus, but I want you to see this.

It's given in the form of godly leaders.

And so look at what Paul says in verse 11.

He says, He gave, again, this is what we're talking about.

What did Jesus give?

What are the gifts?

Isn't that the most important question on Christian on Christmas morning?

The kids come down.

What are the gifts?

What's under the wrapping?

Well, that's what I want to know.

If Jesus has measured out gifts to each one of us, what are the gifts?

Well, he says it in verse 11.

He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers.

That's really interesting, isn't it?

At first glance, doesn't that seem kind of like an underwhelming gift?

This is like Christmas morning when you were a kid and you were hoping for something really big and it was a big, giant box, but your parents had cruelly put in a brick or something just to make it feel heavier than it really is.

But that's not what's happening here.

I wonder if you were to ask for a gift of Jesus' grace in your life, I wonder what you'd ask for.

Maybe some of us would ask for, you know, a new car would be nice.

Family restored, maybe a new job.

This isn't what Jesus wants to reward us by his victory.

What Jesus wants to give is people.

Specifically, he wants to give leaders.

God knows exactly what he needs to give us.

God knows exactly what the perfect gift is.

And he wants us to hear this morning that the gift that Jesus is rewarding through his victory is the gift of people, of people who pour into our lives, people who equip us for ministry, people who help us to build up the body of Christ.

This is one of the primary ways that we receive the grace of God is by being plugged in to a group of people who are doing life together.

So much so that experientially, I don't know how you can live a blessed life by God if you are not walking with other believers regularly.

Every one of the blessings that I can point to in my own life have come through the ministry of other believers in my life.

Every one of them.

I don't know what life looks like if you're not plugged into a group of believers that are speaking the truth in love into your life.

I don't know how you experience God's grace because in my own life, and what Paul's saying here, the way that it was intended to be, is that the gift Jesus gives so that we might experience his grace is people in our lives.

This is a mindset shift for us.

Because often as we think about God's blessing in our life, we often think about God, things that God does for us apart from people.

Maybe it's delivering us from suffering in some significant way, providing us a new job, doing something in the life of a family member that we wanted to see happen.

We think of God's blessing on our life as something that's separate from people.

But what the mindset shift that has to happen is that the primary way God delivers his blessing, the primary way that God delivers his grace to our life is through people.

This is why when Jesus ascends, he gives gifts to men, and those men are godly leaders.

They're people.

And so Paul says that as Christ has ascended and he's given gifts to men, he points out five different functions and roles of these people that Christ has given.

The first is apostle.

See it there in verse 7, it says, sorry, sorry, verse 11, he says, He gave the apostles.

Now, this word apostle, it means sent one, and it can be used in a variety of different ways.

In one way, all of us are sent.

This is what Jesus means when he says a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who is, who sent.

This is what Jesus is saying.

In one way, all of us are sent, commissioned for the sake of the gospel.

It could also refer to people who have kind of like this apostolic-like ministry, where they're sent out by churches, whether it's to do errands for the church in the New Testament, or kind of as like a missionary on behalf of the church.

But most of the time, when the scriptures use the word apostle, it's speaking of a group of people that God used.

It was a group of twelve disciples, minus one, plus Paul, James, and possibly a few other people that Jesus considered the apostles.

And the apostles were called and commissioned to a unique work of being the foundation of the church.

And so the apostles had to meet certain criteria.

They had to be personally chosen by Jesus, and they had to be eyewitnesses of Jesus.

And the apostles were God's gift to the church, including our church.

They were God's gift to the church, uniquely given to the church for the foundation of the church.

That's why in Ephesians 2.20, Paul says that God built the foundation, sorry, that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

The foundation of this church is Jesus Christ.

And the team of people that Jesus set up to pour that foundation were the apostles.

They're a gift to the church because they wrote most of the New Testament.

Every book of the New Testament is tied to an apostle.

It's in this way that separates us from many other churches, churches like the Catholic Church, which tries to tie a line from Peter to the Pope, or the Church of Latter-day Saints, that have a constant apostolic counsel that shifts in and shifts out.

And in this way, the biblical witness is different.

The apostles are given to us as a foundation for the church.

They're given to us, Paul says here as a gift.

The next group of people is the prophets.

And the prophets, likewise in Ephesians 2.20, were given as a foundation to the church.

And a prophet is someone who stood in the council of God.

They heard what God spoke, and they spoke on behalf of God.

So that so much of the New Testament, if you read it, you start circling this, your arm will get tired.

How many times the New Testament says, thus says the Lord?

Because God's primary way of speaking to his people was through the role of the prophet, who spoke on behalf of the Lord.

They had a unique authority to declare what God had said.

And so they had a unique role in the church.

And again, Paul talks about this role in Ephesians chapter 3.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

Verse 5, he says, speaking of the mystery of Christ, that it was not made known to the sons of men and other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles.

And listen to this prophets by the Spirit.

And what God is saying is that the role of prophets had a unique service to our church 2,000 years later, that the prophets would declare the mystery of the gospel.

They would stand in the council of God and declare on behalf of God what God said.

And now, having declared the mystery through this book that we hold in our hands, having completed the foundation that Paul speaks of in chapter 2, verse 20, Paul says that this role is done.

Prophecy's been complete.

Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2 speak of how there is a time when God spoke through prophets, but now he speaks through his son.

Hebrews 1:1

And so these first two roles are gifts to us.

The apostles and the prophets, they're gifts to us, but they're no longer functioning in the church.

But these next two roles, evangelists and the pastors and teachers, these are gifts that are functioning in the life of the church today.

And the first that Paul talks about is the van the evangelist.

The verb to evangelize is used frequently in scripture, as we're all called to be evangelists in the sense that our calling is to evangelize.

The reality is that Jesus has given us one mission, hasn't he?

When he came back and he spoke to his disciples, he said, You are to go and make disciples of all nations.

You can't make disciples unless you're evangelizing.

If you're going to take up Jesus' call to make disciples, then it requires that you are evangelizing in your life so that you are seeing lost people saved.

All of us, in a sense, are evangelists.

And yet what Paul is talking about here is significant in a unique way, in that there are some who are called to be evangelist leaders or evangelist teachers.

There are some who are given the spiritual gift of evangelism in an increased way, in that they're able to help others learn how to evangelize.

They're helped to help others learn how to declare the gospel in a clearer, more concise, more captivating way.

This is the role of the evangelist.

The next role of the pastors and the teachers is the pastors and teachers that Paul talks about in verse 11.

Some translations translate this word as shepherds.

And really that nuances the job helpfully for us that God has given leaders who are to care for the church.

And one of the primary ways that these leaders, these pastors, these shepherds, care for the church is through teaching, by feeding the flock.

This is why it's a qualification for every elder.

Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 3 to be fit to teach.

All the other qualifications are things that every believer is called to, to live a life of holiness and devotion to the Lord.

And yet there is one role, and the role of an elder, that's unique and not necessarily given to everyone.

It's the ability to teach.

These men are called to care for the church.

Now, many of these roles are a calling, many of them are an office.

But in some way, each of them is relevant to all of us.

Each of us are called in some ways to these ministries.

We're called to be shepherds and teachers to some people, to care for them, to teach them.

We're called to be evangelists to all, to share the gospel, to see lost people saved.

In some ways we're called the prophetic ministry, not in a sense that we can speak on behalf of the Lord, but in a sense that we're to uh speak the truth in love, Paul says in Ephesians 4.

We're to open up the scriptures and explain them to others, whether it's our children or our small group or our friends.

And in some ways, each of us are called to an apostolic ministry, or we're sent and commissioned by God.

Certainly, Paul's talking here specifically to leaders, and there's a whole message that could be preached from these verses specifically to the leadership of a church.

But I share with you, I want to share with you an application that's relevant for all.

And then it comes in the form of a question.

Here's my question for you.

What does God need in this church?

What does God need in this church?

Or better yet, what should you be looking for in this church?

What should your desire be to find in this church?

And the thing that Jesus hands out, we find here in Scripture.

The thing that Jesus hands out to the church as his reward is the leadership of godly and gifted leaders.

It's men who take up the calling of God.

It's leaders who hear the calling of God.

Now, this was such an eye-opener for me this week because I'm new at this church, and I keep thinking about the health of the church, and it is so easy for my mind to gravitate towards this question.

What does the church need?

What does it need?

And often my mind will gravitate towards different methods, different systems.

Well, what if we did a small group like this?

And what if we did a sermon series like this?

And what if we did our prayer ministry like this?

And I think about ministries and I think about methods.

But look what God is teaching to me here.

That the gift that Jesus gives to the church for the flourishing of the church is not methods, it's men, it's people.

I love what Ian Bound says.

He says the church is looking for better methods.

God is looking for better men.

Church, you need to hear this.

That systems are good, methods are good, practicality, the practical side of ministries, doing it well is good, but the most important thing for the church is people who are called to deeper growth in their discipleship.

The most important thing for the church are men and women who are on fire for the Lord.

The most important thing in the church is that there are people who are committed to God.

This is why our mission statement as a church isn't about a method.

The mission statement is that we would fulfill the Great Commission in the spirit of the great commandment.

It's not about a method.

It says nothing about the method.

Because the only thing we want to do better is make better disciples of Jesus Christ.

What God needs for this church is people who are gifted and using those gifts for his glory.

That's why you can look at all these different churches that are all doing church differently, with different methods, different styles of worship, different styles of service, different names for small group and ways to do small group, even different styles of preaching in some cases, at least different flavors of preaching.

And so many of them are being blessed by God because God isn't calling the church to a method, God is calling men to himself.

This is why when Jesus came, what did he do?

He didn't start to establish a kingdom, a system, a method, and call people to it.

Instead, what did Jesus do?

He showed up on the shore and called men to himself.

He called the disciples.

And as you look at Jesus' ministry, there is a method to it, but the real important thing is that Jesus is discipling these men for the sake of his kingdom.

What the church needs is not a new system, not a new method.

What the church needs, as Ian Bound says, is better men.

And we can add to that better women who are living for the Lord.

This is our church mission.

To grow disciples, to make disciples, to mature disciples.

This is what the church needs.

This is what the church was given by Jesus Christ in verse 11.

But I want you to see what they were given for in verse 12.

And this is the last part of our sentence.

It says that these leaders are given to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.

This is the role that the leaders in a church are to have.

They are to equip the church for the work of ministry.

Paul here is really showing us a model of church leadership, isn't he?

And this model is so contrary to the model that we often see functioning, or maybe we've even practically experienced functioning in churches.

See, we have the tendency to kind of pendulum swing between these different kinds of met models of leadership.

There's one model where church leadership is really like stomped on.

Leadership is not a good thing.

The less leaders, the better.

And I find in our day and age, we're really swinging to that kind of model where there's this kind of disgusting taste of leadership in our mouths, and we're bringing that into the church, and we don't want to see any leaders.

We just want kind of everyone to be on the same field.

And we can pendulum swing to this other side where the only important person in the church is the pastor.

And the only person who can do real work in the church is the person that God has called to that church to be a pastor of the church.

But God here is calling our church to a different model.

A church where the leadership of the church equips the saints of the church, equips the body of the church, equips the people in the church to do the ministry of the church.

Very practically, this could affect maybe how we put our, you know, our staff and leadership on the website.

If you were going to go on the website, maybe we should change it so that it looks like what Paul's talking about here, where there's a section for leaders, and you see the leadership of the church, and that's really important, but then there's a heading and it says ministers, and who's under that heading?

And it just says the church.

Or maybe we take a picture of each of you and we put all of you there to say that the people who are doing ministry in this church are the church.

This is the calling of the church.

Some of you hear that picture thing, and they're like, I'm really worried.

I don't want my picture up on the internet.

I'll have you know if we do that, we're gonna make sure you're not even prepared for the picture.

We're just gonna put one up where you're not even smiling, you're not even paying attention.

Well, we're not gonna do that, but maybe it would be helpful to kind of get at what Paul is saying here, that the ministers of the church, the ones who are doing the work of the ministry, are the church.

And those ministers are being equipped by the leaders of the church for the work of ministry.

This is what church involvement should look like: each of us being equipped for ministry.

And Paul tells us exactly what involvement practically is.

He says that we as saints are equipped for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.

It's two things.

If you're called to be committed to a church, the first thing that you're called to is to the work of ministry.

That word ministry means service.

You're called to serve other people.

Whether that's in practical, formal ministries like setup and teardown or kids' ministry or the worship team or small group.

There are formal ways that you serve people, but just in general ways, your eyes, as a person who's committed to the church, ought to be looking for ways to serve individual people.

Whether it's providing a meal, whether it's providing encouragement, whether it's calling them, asking them how they're doing, our role, as we're committed to a church, is to serve others.

The second thing that we're called to do when we commit to a church is to build up the body of Christ.

Do you know that this is if you're in Christ and you're committed to a church, who builds up the body?

Well, Paul says it right here it's you.

Who's responsible for the growth of other believers in this church?

It is you, the one who is committed to the church.

Yours is the work of growing other believers.

And so let me ask you this question.

Are there other believers whose growth is dependent on you?

Who can point at you and say, I have grown because of the way that you have served me?

That's the way that the church is supposed to function in our life.

We're supposed to be so committed to it that there are other believers who point at us and say, This man or this woman has been a vessel of God's growth in my life.

And I can imagine where I would have been without this person speaking the truth and love into my life, without this person doing the work of ministry in me, without this person building up the body of Christ and doing it very practically in me.

This is what it means to be committed to a church, is to be working, to be doing the work of ministry, to be doing the work of growing other believers.

This is so different from the language that we often use when we talk about a healthy church.

When we think about church commitment, when we think about being involved in the church, often our question is, what's in it for me?

What am I going to get out of joining a small group?

What am I going to get out of serving?

What am I going to get out of doing this or doing that?

What am I going to get out of coming on Sunday morning?

Jesus is reorienting our mind here.

The question is not about what's in it for me.

The question is, how can I be a vessel of God's grace to others?

How can I be used for the work of ministry and for the building up of the body of Christ?

This is very practically what Jesus calls each of us to.

We see this thread in all of Ephesians, Ephesians 1 7.

He's lavished his grace, Ephesians 4, 7.

He's given his grace to each of us in measure, and the measure according to the measure of his gift.

And what is that gift to be used for?

We see it right here, for the service of other people, for the building up of the body of Christ, for the growth of the church.

And so let me ask you, church, are you seeing God's grace flow through your life, to the positive impact of other people in your life?

Are you using the gifts that Jesus has given you to pour into other believers?

This is the way that we experience the grace that Jesus wants to show us.

And this is what we all should want.

To experience the grace of Jesus Christ.

As we celebrate communion together this morning, this is why we do it.

Because we need to be reminded regularly of the grace that Jesus Christ has shown us through the cross, the grace that has been lavished on us through redemption.

If you walked in this morning, you should have seen one of these little cups with the bread on the top.

If you don't have it, there's going to be some people who are going to come and find you.

You can just raise your hand as they walk by and they'll make sure one gets into your hands.

As we celebrate communion this morning, it really is all about Jesus' grace.

Jesus gave us communion.

He set up the Lord's Supper to be celebrated by us regularly to remind us of our union with Him, to remind us of the way that His grace has been lavished over us.

He gives us the blood to symbolize the way that His blood was shed for our forgiveness.

He gave us the bread to symbolize the way that His flesh was pierced as a payment for our sins.

There's a few reasons that you shouldn't partake in this morning with us.

One is that if you haven't given your life to Jesus Christ, if you haven't placed your faith in Jesus Christ, we just ask that you would pass on this cup and pass on this taking of this communion cup.

And the reason for that is because you haven't experienced the new life that we're accepting by taking drinking the juice and eating the bread.

And the reality is that in this moment, if you place your faith in Jesus Christ, you can experience the new life that we celebrate right now.

And you can celebrate this alongside with us.

So if you haven't done that, we'd love for you to join us.

But if not, please just let this pass.

Another reason why you might not participate in this this morning is because maybe you're harboring sin in your life that hasn't been repented of.

I'm not talking about just you have sin in your life.

I'm saying that you have sin in your life that you're unwilling to let go of.

That God is calling you very clearly to repent of and to believe in the gospel in light of, and yet you are unwilling by the hardness of your heart to let go of this sin.

Paul says that to drink and eat of the communion table when you're unwilling to change is to drink judgment on yourself.

And so we just ask you that you would let this pass.

Some practical instructions here as we take up the blood and body of Christ.

The first is that if you peel us, there's two layers here.

If you peel off the top, you'll get the bread.

If you peel off both, then your juice will splash all over you.

And so you can peel the um the bread off.

And as we take communion, let me pray.

Father, Lord, thank you so much for the grace that you have poured out on us through the cross, that you have lavished on us through Jesus Christ.

Lord, we praise you for the victory that you have won on our behalf.

And then in that victory, you have rewarded us very practically, giving us gifts in Jesus Christ.

And Lord, we take this cup to celebrate all that you have done on the cross, but also to be commissioned, Lord, to living a life that's worthy of the gospel, to living in a way that declares your glory.

Living in a way that we seek to be like Jesus and that we are serving others.

And so, God, we thank you for this time.

We pray, Lord, that you would bless us as we take this.

We pray this all in the name of your son.

Amen.

On the night that Jesus was with his disciples, Jesus took the bread and he broke it and he said, This is my body broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Afterward, he took the cup and he reminded them that this cup symbolized his blood that was shed for the forgiveness of their sins and the establishing of a new covenant with them.

Let's celebrate this together.

Let's pray one more time.

Father, we praise you for the cleansing that you have provided for us on the cross.

Lord, we couldn't deliver ourselves.

We needed a king to do it.

And so, Lord, we thank you that you have sent Jesus Christ to deliver us.

Lord, the King of kings, the Lord of Lords, He stood among us, He walked on this earth, He took on human flesh, that his flesh might be pierced, that his blood might be spilt for the sake of our cleansing.

And so, God, we thank you.

And we pray now as we stand to worship you, Lord, we pray that this would be the overflow.

Lord, the overflow of our heart's affection and love for you, God.

Lord, we pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.