Preventing the Need for a New Reformation: How to Keep Belief and Practice on Track

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we come and we gather in this place today to worship you.

We thank you that, even as we've talked about and remembered today.

We thank you for your work through history and preserving your church.

We thank you that you are faithful to complete the tasks that you have started in us and that both as individuals and as a church, lord, that you are at work, I pray today that as we gather and worship you, that you would be made much of that.

You would be honored and glorified in what we do.

I pray that our worship would be pleasing to you, lord, and I thank you for those who are gathered in this building, lord.

I thank you for those who are part of our body, whether they be regular attenders or members that are not here today.

I know my own family, because of sickness, is not here, and I know numerous others today, lord, I pray that, where they are, that you would be an encouragement to them, that they would be able to worship you, and, father, I just pray your blessing and healing on them.

Father, I pray not just for this body of believers, but I pray for every covenant body of your people around the world, every local church, lord that meets this day.

Lord, I ask that you would be at work in those gatherings, that you would be at work transforming your disciples, keeping them faithful, helping them to have the right beliefs and practice as they go forward.

I pray particularly this morning for First Baptist Church of San Bruno.

I thank you that you are doing a work there amongst them and I pray, lord, that you would continue to do so, that you would use them mightily as they endeavor to make bold steps for you.

Father, bless those endeavors, use them for your honor, for your glory, and to grow and equip that church.

Father, we pray that, as we live within our places, whether we live in San Jose or Fremont or Union City or any surrounding communities, lord, we pray that the places where we live, where we work, where we go about our day to day, lord, that you would use us in those places as messengers of you, that we would be salt and light where we live and where we work.

Father, we ask now that you would bless this time, that you would use it and, lord, we ask that, just as your disciples ask Jesus, we ask that you would teach us to pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven.

Hallowed be Thy name, thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever.

Amen.

So this morning, as we get to this time in the Word, we're going to be in the book of Ephesians.

If you want to turn there In your Pew Bible, that's page 1007.

We come around the Word, and we do this every week, and our sermons are designed to be centered on God's Word, and so we typically focus on a passage, and the point of the passage is supposed to be the point of the message, and that's what we endeavor to do, and today is not going to be any different.

But today I do want to have a little bit of reflection on what Pastor Ricky mentioned to us earlier, that today is a day that we call Reformation Sunday and that may not be in the official church calendar and we stick pretty closely to the official church calendar, but we believe that God is active within His church both now and historically and, as Pastor Ricky said earlier, about 500 years ago the church had gotten to a certain state, and I'm going to use the word church a lot today.

So let me just give you a quick definition so that the church, just very broadly speaking, we would call this the Church Universal or the Capital C Church.

The Church Universal is all believers in all time that are truly born again, that those whom Jesus has redeemed, and together they would constitute the church.

And the church within the world today is those who are living right now.

There's also a visible church, the church that professes faith.

Everybody who would put up a sign, so to speak, and say this is a church, that's the visible church, and then you would have the local church.

The Redeemer Church is a local church, and so I'm going to use some of these terms.

But basically, about 500 years ago and for centuries leading up to that, the visible church had kind of gotten to a place where the beliefs and the practice of that church were not consistent with the Word of God.

And thankfully God, as we believe, is at work within his church.

It's not just us left with this book and it's up to us to do it right.

No, the Holy Spirit actually lives and it dwells us as believers and guides us as we read this Word and helps us to understand and illumines it to us so that we can use that and apply that in an effective way for the change of us as individuals and us as a church and as we go forward on mission.

And what happened is that God raised up within that visible church those who as believers, as those who were Holy Spirit and well, who read the Scriptures, and said you know what this is wrong?

And so they went forward and Pastor Ricky told us one of the stories this morning and they began a movement that we call the Reformation, basically the reforming of the church, and out of that comes a number of things.

Out of that ultimately comes even, like reform, theology, which the sermon's not going to be about, but out of that comes a lot.

But one of the things that comes out of that is what's called Protestantism, and so our church would, broadly speaking, be considered within the Protestant movement of churches, those who are protesting the way that things had been and are moving forward.

But see, what I want to emphasize to you is that the reality is that the Reformation was necessary because the church had failed in various areas.

Now, the church does not fail.

Ultimately, the Bible tells us that the church will stand and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

God is working through his church and the church will win.

The church is on the winning side.

So that's not what I mean.

I don't mean it ultimately failed.

I mean the church had failed to effectively do what it had been called to do, and so the Holy Spirit, leading through various of the saints within that church, were raised up to course correct what had been happening.

And so today, as I was reflecting on this and preparing for today, I was saying well, what was the mistake and what could be done to prevent that?

You see today's sermon.

I titled it Preventing the Need for a New Reformation how to Keep Belief and Practice Beliefs and Practice on Track.

So I'm not going to diagnose or talk about the historical problems within the church and their specific theological errors that needed to be corrected.

But the truth is is that churches are always in danger of compromise.

They're in danger of compromising beliefs or in compromising practice or mission, or how we go about doing what we're going to do, whether that be a philosophy of how we go about incorporating our beliefs into daily life or the practicals about how it actually works out.

There are various ways that we can be drawn off track, but God has instituted the church with certain gifts, certain ways that the church is supposed to be able to preserve and equip and grow itself to go forward, to be able to remain faithful.

And so today I want to take actually this text, any Ephesians, and I want to really focus it in on the local church.

So we are just one local expression of the church, but we have a part to play within the whole.

We even just this last week, some of you may know, pastor Ian and myself we gathered with a number of churches that we fellowship with in Fresno and participated in a meeting and there's not much to it was pretty uneventful.

There's not much to report to you, so to speak.

We had some really good conversations with some ministry partners that we're excited about and we'll see how those things develop.

But the truth is we're not alone and we play a part in the larger body of Christ.

But what we have the most control over and what we have the most specific call to is our local church, and we're here right now as one local church and we are preparing, as most of you know, if not all of you know we are preparing in January to start a second local church.

So out of this body will be two local churches.

And so what I want to emphasize to you before we dig into this text is this and this is kind of the big idea or the main point of this text, and it's this that the local church is designed to preserve, equip and grow itself through a union of diverse gifts.

The local church let's dissect that a little bit.

The local church so this is a local church and there are various ones.

So this body is designed.

It doesn't happen by accident.

We're not given total freedom to just set up the church however we want and do whatever we want.

No, god has designed the church to operate in certain ways, so it's not accidental.

It is designed in such a way that the church is able to be preserved, to not fall into false belief, to be equipped to do the work of the ministry, to as we've talked about recently a lot the mission of the church is to go and make disciples, baptizing them, teaching them all things.

We are able to equip ourselves as a church to be faithful in that and ultimately able to grow, both as individuals, growing towards maturity, and grow as in reaching the lost.

We're able.

God has designed the church to be able to do all of those things through a union of diverse gifts.

He's given gifts and they are different, but they cooperate together in unity, which sometimes is the hardest part of the whole thing is to be able to preserve that unity.

And so the book of Ephesians is written to the churches in Ephesus that Paul is writing these instructions to, and he gives some very practical teaching here and I want to be able to dig into that.

And so that's going to be mostly in chapter four where we're going to end up.

But before I get into chapter four, just the quick run through of where Paul has been.

So, chapters one through three, paul lays a theological foundation.

When I say theological, that's a teaching and belief about God.

He lays down the teachings, the beliefs, like hey, this is what you believe, this is what you need to know, this is the truth.

And then in chapters four through six he takes that and he applies that practically and they're deeply interconnected and dependent on each other.

But in chapters one through three, paul makes a big deal about the Jewish and Gentile difference, the Jewish people being the ethnic group, so to speak, but more than ethnic group, the religious group that God had chosen in the Old Testament and called out to ultimately bring about Jesus and bless the nations through that group, god's people that he chose for that purpose, who had been God's people, but now, through Christ, the Gentiles, are able to be God's people too.

So he reminds them of the gospel and how the gospel has reconciled what, humanly speaking, may have been irreconcilable.

And then he holds up the word of God, the teachings of the prophets and the apostles as essential of a foundation to be able to move forward, and then that, ultimately, he has provided the church to live out these things.

And this is perhaps best in the first three chapters, summarized.

In chapter two, starting in verse nine, it says consequently, you are no longer so he's talking to these Gentiles you are no longer foreigners and strangers.

You used to be alienated, you used to be hopeless, you used to be those without life.

But you are no longer that, no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household.

So they're now redeemed, they're now reconciled, they are now part of the household of faith.

That household is built what?

On the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

That's today.

This is what we have the foundation of the teaching of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone.

So this whole household is built on the cornerstone that is Christ, who gave prophets and gave apostles for these purposes, and we're going to get to that when we get into our chapter four.

In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord and in him.

You too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.

He says hey, you guys, as parts of the church in Ephesus, you guys are parts of this building.

You're being constructed into a temple.

A temple is a place where people encounter God, where his presence dwells and people are able to worship and receive instruction and learn who God is, and he is telling them that they are being built up in this way, no longer foreigners and strangers, but they are actually a building, a household.

Sometimes we say the church is not a building, and that point is well taken.

The church is the people, but the people are a building.

That's what it says right here we are a temple, we are a household that are being built up, and then Paul prays.

So we're going to jump forward just a little bit before we get into chapter four.

Paul prays in chapter three, and this prayer that Paul gives really leads into everything that follows in chapter four.

So Paul's about to pray this prayer and I'm going to read it to you, and so I want you to think through this prayer and realize that what Paul does in chapter four, as he moves from the theoretical to the practical, paul is praying and asking that God would use that, that God would take what has been theoretical and make it actual, make it lived out, and so that's Paul's prayer.

So let's listen to what Paul prayed verse 16.

I pray that, out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being.

So we've talked about that.

We are spirit and dwelt, and so he's praying that the spirit would empower us, would give us strength, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with the measure of all the fullness of God.

I got to tell you something as a pastor, it's hard to read these verses and not want to just preach those texts, because they are deeply rich.

But the highlight here is that, yes, paul is giving the theology, the right teachings of the gospel, but that ultimately, that gospel that kind of it's culminated in love, particularly the love of Christ and the love for one another.

And so he prays this prayer and you're like, wow, that sounds great when I read that, but how do I make it work?

How does that prayer come true?

Like, okay, yeah, the spirit is at work, but really, what do I do?

That's the question that follows, because you're like, okay, that sounds really really great, but we have fights and arguments and we don't see eye to eye and we have all these problems.

And so Paul then goes into chapter four giving the practical outworking.

And so let's look here, and we're going to look in Ephesians, chapter four, verse one, and what I want you to see in this first section, with regard to how the local church functions and how it achieves what it's called to achieve is that a local church should strive toward unity.

Then remember, I said earlier that that's one of the hardest parts, and so he's going to emphasize that unity here and then he's going to, in the next section, talk about how it works out.

So it says as a prisoner for the Lord, paul was in prison.

I've been, I personally, a lot of my sermons recently have been in the prison epistles.

As a prisoner of the Lord, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

So he's saying hey, do right.

That's what he's saying.

Don't live a life of sin.

Live a life worthy of the calling you have been, you have received.

Be completely humble and gentle.

That's really strong language.

It's like completely humble and gentle.

Okay, paul, I hear you Be patient, bearing with one another in love, make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.

He's saying hey, I just prayed that you would have this kind of love towards one another.

This is how you do it.

You have to be completely humble, completely gentle, be completely patient, and then, when everybody else is not humble and gentle and patient, then bear with each other in love, okay, okay.

So I've got to be perfect so that everybody else that isn't perfect can mess up.

How does that all work out?

Well, it works out because of Jesus.

Let's keep reading.

So make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

Here it is One body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all.

See, here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

Yeah, it's impossible.

It's impossible, and our flesh should be completely humble and gentle and patient.

But here's the thing.

You are not all that matters.

You are one with the rest of the people in this room, just like you don't want a hand that goes rogue on you.

If your arm stops working, it's like what's wrong with you?

Why aren't you working with me?

Why are you doing your own thing?

But no, you want cooperation by all the different parts of the body.

And so, as we practically work towards being humble and gentle and patience and bear with each other, we can progress progressively toward a unity that, humanly speaking, can't happen.

And so the local church needs to strive towards unity.

The local church should also, and this is going to be kind of like okay, I did all this, so let me get a little more practical, because there was the prayer and now there's this really, really profound, hard statement of what we need to do by being completely humble and all that.

Do we have the tools to even do that?

Yeah, we do.

You see, a local church should exercise and develop its diverse gifts.

Listen to verse seven.

But to each one of us, each one of us, is that you, is that everyone here, each one of us?

Yeah, to each one of us, grace has been given.

So grace is something you don't deserve.

You haven't earned it, you haven't done anything to get it.

To each one of us, grace has been given.

Who decided, who figured it out?

Who gave it as Christ apportioned it?

Remember when I said that God is at work in the church.

That means that the gifts that you have and the gifts that I have, the grace that has been apportioned to us, has actually been chosen by God.

So your unique gifts are not a mistake, but they're actually essential for the unity of the body.

That's why it says so.

We can read over this quickly.

It kind of seems almost like a parenthetical.

But let's listen.

That's why it says when he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.

And then Paul says what does he ascended mean, except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions, meaning he had been in heaven and he came to be with and among us.

He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe.

There's a lot that can be said there.

All right, in just the very simplest, that Jesus, who came to be with us, learned who we are, learned who we need.

Well, learned is I'm saying it very humanly speaking and he's human, but also God.

He came and he was with us and then he left, but he did not leave us alone.

He sent us the Spirit and, through the Spirit, has gifted us to be able to do what Paul is telling us to do.

It says so, christ.

So, with all of that, after he ascended, what did he do?

So, christ himself, not someone else, not the people he left behind, not what we're doing all on our own.

No, christ himself gave.

What did he give?

Well, he gave people with unique gifts within the church to help the church to be able to do this.

So he gave the apostles, the prophets.

Now, I believe people are still gifted apostolically.

I still I believe people are still gifted prophetically.

Now does that mean we have the 12 apostles?

No, but we have their words, the word of God recorded that they wrote down.

We have the words of the prophets of the Old Testament.

He gave the apostles, he gave the prophets, the evangelists.

We're all called to evangelize.

He's given some who uniquely have that gift the pastors.

He's given pastors those who shepherd the congregation, who lead the flock, who guide them and protect them.

And he's given teachers, those who can take the word of God and these things that we're talking about and be able to teach them in such a way that they can be learned and applied and lived out.

He's given all of these gifts why?

Well, here we go at verse 12.

And verse 12 is let me step out for a second.

You can obviously read verse 12 and that's fine, but one of the things we've been doing in our sermons lately is we've been teaching kind of some of the core values and beliefs of who we try to be as a church, the things that we try to live out and how those apply.

And verse 12 is obviously should be, a key verse for basically every church, but it's something that we really do try to live out and think through well here.

So verse 12 says he gave all of these verse 12, to equip his people.

Other translations say to equip the saints.

It's just Jesus's people, the believers, the followers of him, to equip them.

This translation says for works of service.

Other translations say for the work of the ministry, so that the body of Christ may be built up.

Okay, so there is a lot there and full disclosure.

Pastor Bob said all the sick people were gone, but I do have a little little going on in here, so I can't talk to you for an hour about this, and I'd love to.

You might not love me too, but I, you know, I'd love to.

But let me say this so God gave these leaders within the church and he gave those leaders so that they could do all the work of the ministry, right, no, no, he didn't.

In fact, it doesn't say that these leaders even do the work of the ministry.

Now, they do, but that's not what the point of this verse.

You can look at it.

Who does the work of the ministry?

You do?

I do, yes, we all do.

If you're here, if you're part of the church, you are the ministers.

It's one of the reasons why I don't.

It's fine.

Some churches use the word to describe pastors as ministers.

I, I, I'm like.

Well, everybody's a minister, everybody is called to do these works of service.

The pastor's job and role, the teacher's job and role.

These, these gifted leaders, their role is to equip the people so that they can can effectively minister.

And so if you are a minister, that means you have a role and responsibility, both to minister within the body and the minister outside of the body.

And you say, well, I don't feel very equipped for that.

And I say, well, that's hard job.

That's what we're trying to do, and that's what you must do as you try to equip one another as well.

And so we have various ways that we try to do this.

I'm not going to get, I'm not going to talk too long on it, but, but right now we have a discipleship class going on that meets in the morning and and it is designed to equip you with the tools and the knowledge needed to be able to faithfully be a minister of the gospel.

And so one of the ways that we plan and intentionally do try to equip you with the tools you need is through classes.

That doesn't mean that we have classes all the time and that certainly doesn't mean that classes are the only way or the primary way of equipping you.

There are projects that are effectively taught in a classroom type setting.

So we do that.

I would encourage you, if you can hear me, I would encourage you to be a part of the discipleship classes.

They are designed to help you gain the knowledge and skills you need to be able to be effective in these things.

Also, other ways that we that we do this is through community groups, through, through building within the the body and opportunity to, to connect and to bear burdens together and to live life together.

Other ways that we do this are through these aren't things that we advertise or talk about, but a number of you are parts of of smaller gatherings and Bible studies, whether they be one on one or groups of three or four people, that that go deeper on some subjects and and and look into things, and and.

There are a variety of ways that we endeavor to do this and and to be just very transparent, we're really working hard to think through, especially as we go into the new year, and and as we become smaller, because we've planted the church in San Jose and we have and, and, and so we have a smaller group.

We've really, we've really committed ourselves to working through and thinking through.

How can we effectively equip our people for works of service?

How can we do this faithfully?

So the local church should strive towards unity.

The local church should exercise and develop its diverse gifts, and the local church then grows to maturity.

Verse 13, you do all this for a while.

How long do you do it?

Verse 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.

Raise your hand if you've gotten there.

No, nobody going to raise their hand.

Nobody has reached unity in the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

The answer how long do we do it?

We do it until Jesus comes and gets us.

We do it until Jesus comes back and you do it your whole life.

You do it until he tells you we're doing something different.

Then, verse 14, 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 people in their deceitful scheming.

Instead, speaking the truth of love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him, who is the head that is Christ.

With Him, the whole body, joined and held together by the supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

You see, we may never arrive, but we will get closer.

We will become through faithfully living out what a local church is called to be.

We will become more and more like Christ.

By becoming more and more like Christ and loving each other more and more and bearing with each other more and more, we will become more and more patient.

We will become more and more humble.

We will become more and more gentle as we bear with one another in love.

It won't be so hard.

In fact, it will get easier and easier because we love each other, because we contribute as a part of the body to the whole.

See, all of this reminds us and tells us that the local church is designed to preserve, equip and grow itself through a union of diverse gifts.

The local church is not just left to its own devices, but God has designed it in such a way that we can grow, that we can be faithful.

Does that mean churches never mess up?

No, it doesn't.

It feels like so.

As a pastor, I tend to read church news.

Some of you are like there's church news.

Yeah, there's a lot of church news.

I tend to just to follow what's happening.

It seems like every week I hear of a prominent church or church leader that has in some way failed.

A lot of times the churches that fail have failed in areas where there's beliefs that they should have and they are no longer holding those historic Christian beliefs.

They've compromised on those areas.

Well, why would they have done that?

Well, they would have done that because perhaps they didn't equip themselves with the Word of God, perhaps they didn't make proper use of the gifted teachers and shepherds within their body, perhaps they didn't follow faithfully, perhaps they didn't bear with one another in love.

But the truth is, is that Paul is telling us here in Ephesians, as he was writing to the church in Ephesus, is that there are a means that God has provided through his spirit, where the church won't fall away, and so, as a local church, we are going to endeavor to do these kinds of things.

And so my final encouragement to you this morning as you think through everything that was said here in Ephesians 4, I want you to ask yourself what is your part?

What role are you playing?

Is that increasing?

Is it shrinking?

What are you doing within the body of Christ?

If you don't feel equipped for what you think God is calling you to do, then talk to me or one of the other pastors, say, hey, I need these skills, I want to serve in this way, but I don't know how to do it.

Or just you're like you know what, I'm here but I don't really feel like I'm doing hardly anything.

Come to me and say what could I do?

I have a list.

There's things you can do, and I want you to recognize that your role in this church is that of a minister.

You are to do the work of the ministry.

That means that we, as a church, we're called to make disciples, to teach them, to bring them in.

That means you have a role in that.

It doesn't mean you do every part.

It doesn't mean you're doing it alone, but you have a part If you don't feel like you've taken a part, then seek that out, because this is what is going to help us grow to maturity.

So seek out your part and your role and see how God grows you.

Let's pray, father, god, thank you.

Thank you for this passage of scripture.

Thank you that we are able to have this kind of unity through the gifts that you've given.

Thank you, god, for gifting us as a diverse body to play different parts and roles for the equipping of your saints, for the work of the ministry.

Lord, help us.

Help us to be more and more like Jesus.

Help us to become more and more mature in Christ.

Help us to be faithful to the task you've called us to.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen, amen.