chapter four of Ephesians, verse
eleven, and he gave the apostles the prophets, the evangelists,
the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work
of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we
all attain to the unity of the faith and to the knowledge of
the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature
of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children
tossed to and fro by the waves and carried around by every wind
of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes,
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every
way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole
body, joined and held together by every joint with which it
is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body
grow, so that it builds itself up in love. Now, this text requires
two more parts. Today and then another part next
week. The part today that we're going
to do is we're going to really jump in to see what it is that
Christ gave. Last week we looked at it very
ambiguously. We looked at the idea that Christ
is the giver of gifts and that every Christian is a gift. That's how I left it. Not that
you possess a gift. Yes, we do possess the gifts
of service, but those same acts of service can be done by unbelievers,
so they're not necessarily divine. What is divine is that you then
have the heart to take what you can do and do it for the glory
of God at the cost of yourself for the saints, for the church.
So if you serve in any capacity... By the way, the word ministry
is better translated as a word service. How are we serving one
another? We know, and as we'll see today,
is that the service, the true service of the church starts,
and I might have said this last week, and ends with the word
of God. Now, there's a lot of places
in Scripture. I made the comment last week that we don't have
the authority to go around telling God what kind of gift we want.
We don't need to be going and asking God to give us this specific
gift and that specific gift. And then some brother said, well,
what about in Corinthians where it says pray for these gifts?
Pray for the gift of prophecy. Well, we're asking God to do
what God wills when we pray, correct? We're not telling God
what we are going to get. So, yes and yes is the answer
to that. We do not tell God what we get.
We do not tell Him that we desire it. There are practices within
some denominations and some non-denominational churches where they will actually
teach you that you just have to name it and then claim it.
You have to blab it, then you can grab it. And so if we keep
on naming and claiming and blabbing and grabbing, we just speak it
into existence. And if we speak it enough and
we believe it enough that whatever we speak that we don't get is
because we didn't have enough faith. Friends, that denies the
very nature of who God is. God's faithfulness is what moves
him. And when we are faithful, good. for our joy. When we are
faithless, what does Paul tell Timothy? God remains faithful
for He cannot deny Himself. So we don't put our faith in
our faith. We put our faith in the One who is faithful. And
therefore, our faith has an object. It's not intrinsic. There's no
such thing as an objective, intrinsic faith except putting faith in
one's own self. We see Jesus dealing with that
in the Gospels where He talks about a Pharisee who prayed and
he looked at his eyes to heaven and he said these words, Thank
You, God, that I tithe. that I worship. And I'm paraphrasing
here. Thank you, God, that I do all
these things. And thank you, God, that I'm no longer like
or that I'm not like that publican or that tax collector. Thank
you, God, for my righteousness. I want you to understand that
Jesus said that man went home condemned. And so if that's the
case, if that man put faith in his faith, then Who is the one
who is saved? Who is the one who is justified
before God? The other. The sinner. The wicked
man. The guy who steals from his own
people. The guy who supports Rome at
the cost of Israel. That was the tax collector. He,
not even desiring to look to heaven, tore his clothes, bowed
his head, beat his chest and said, have mercy on me, O God,
a sinner. Jesus said, this man went home
justified. The other condemned. So we must
not put our hope in our own hope. We must put our hope in the one
who is hope. And his name is Jesus. So as
we look at this text today, I want to move from the ambiguous or
broad idea that Jesus is the giver of gifts and that all Christians
in the body of Christ indeed do or receive spiritual gifts. And so with it, I want to look
and show you what Paul is teaching us when he goes very precisely
and gives a list of gifts and he calls them people. He doesn't
say here in verse 11, and he gave some to have the gift of
apostleship, and some the gift of the prophecy, and some the
gift of evangelism. He said he gave gifts to men. And he gave the apostles. Some
translations say he gave some to be apostles. The some is the
subject. That's what's being given. And
so he's not giving the gift of apostleship. He's given the gift
of the apostle. And so as we look here and we
see this, understand that you, if you are in the body of Christ,
are the gift. And your heart and your attitude
and your mind and your drive may be changed to serve, and
that is supernatural. Instead of serving yourself,
you serve others. Instead of doing things for your
own glory, you do it for the glory of God. But the gift is
not the ability, more than it is you. And then you are endowed
with abilities that indeed are supernatural. Even the heathen,
even the lost person, even the unregenerate, even the wicked,
whatever name you want to put on those who are lost, even those
people, they even have talents that God uses. But it is not
them that are the gift, but rather God using them for His own glory.
Now see, that frustrates us some. Well, we could review for some
hours, but we won't do that today, being that we've already spent
30 weeks in this text. And here we are in chapter 4,
30 sermons rather. We probably had more weeks than
that. And so with it now, we won't go back and look at the
sovereignty of God in salvation. We won't look at the sovereignty
of God in election of His church. We won't look at the sovereignty
of God when it comes for the purpose of the church to be display
of His manifold wisdom. We know these things. I'm assuming
as we come together, those of you who join us every week, I
would strongly encourage you to please read the letter to
the Ephesians every few days. Don't come in here. Blind. Because God will show you, as
you continue to study the Word, the reality of what He wants
you to see. The one message that's there.
One of the biggest problems we have in the church today is that
so many people have so many different meanings for some of the same
passages. Well, friends, if Paul was an
apostle, and he was, and if the apostle means that they are sent
by Christ, and he was, and if they were sent by Christ and
they're divinely inerrant, which he was, and Paul wrote a letter
to the Ephesian church, which he did, and that letter had one
meaning, which it does, then why is it that we have so many
interpretations of that? It's because we as Christians
listen to people like me who talk and talk and talk, and then
we want to wonder why we're wrong. Because if you listen to wrong
stuff, you'll be wrong. If you don't read it for yourself,
the Spirit of God will never give you the discernment to know
what is wrong and what is right. We must be careful. Now why would
you put that in there? Because in this text, these six
verses, it specifically deals with what it means to mature.
And so first let's look at these. Let's look at the gifts. What
kind of gifts? Now, we see gifts everywhere.
In 1 Corinthians 12, there's a list of gifts. In Romans 12,
there's a list of gifts. In 1 Corinthians 12, verses 28-30,
there's a list of gifts. Spiritual gifts. So we see all
these things. In 1 Peter 4, verse 11, there's a list of gifts.
But nowhere is there a conclusive list of gifts. If we take all
the spiritual gifts that we see in the New Testament, And we
put them on a piece of paper and we eliminate the ones that
are the same. We come up with about 20 different gifts. By
no means are these the spiritual gifts. And by no means is it
inclusive. So what we need to understand
then, based on this text, which Paul is writing to the church
of Ephesus, he wants us to understand that the gift is more than just
the ability And more explicitly, it's the person, him or herself.
It's probably bad grammar. I know it is. But you get the
point. You are the gift. I am the gift. Or we are not
a gift. We are either a gift to the church
or we are a burden to the church. Now, wait a minute. Because the
Scripture does teach us that we ought to lift each other's
burdens. Well, that in itself is a gift.
As we are carrying each other's burdens, we are a gift to other
people. So, look at these gifts. What is it? Who are the people
that God has given to the church? And why did God give these gifts
to the church? Look. What does it say in verse
12? God, Christ, gave the gift of the apostles, the gift of
the prophets, the gift of the evangelists, the gift of the
shepherds, and the gift of the teachers in order to, verse 12,
what? Equip. Equip the saints for the
work of ministry. Number one, equip the saints
for the building of the body. Why do we want to work? What's
the word ministry? Service. So the only way you're
going to know your gift and know what it is that God has called
you to do and to be able to empower yourself and employ yourself,
not necessarily empower yourself, that was misspeaking, but in
order for God to use you, in order for you to understand and
be used in the body, you must know the Word of God. And not
only do you know it, but you continue to know it. You continue
to learn it. You continue to eat it. You continue to process
it. You continue to live it. It is your source. It is your
bread. It is the words of Jesus Christ that give salvation and
then sustains you and equips you and empowers you and employs
you in the body. So let's look at these. First,
He gave the apostles. What is an apostle? An apostle
is that person who by direct giving of Jesus Christ by direct
order, Jesus sends them out. So we have the twelve disciples.
Judas, the traitor, dies. Matthias replaces Judas. There's twelve. There's a man
in Acts 8 after Stephen is stoned to death. His name is Saul. He's
from the city of Tarsus. And so Saul of Tarsus, passionately
hater of the Christian way, hates Christ. He's causing havoc in
the Christian community. He's going house to house. And
in Acts chapter eight, we see him going and arresting Christians.
He gets an order from Rome to be able to go to Damascus. He
found out through a snitch that the apostles were in Damascus.
He goes to Damascus to have them arrested. And on his way to Damascus,
God saves him. Now listen to this. Jesus Christ stops Saul and says,
why do you persecute me? Saul wasn't contemplating his
sin. Saul wasn't considering that he might be wrong and he
really shouldn't be treating people this way. Saul in his
speaking to King Agrippa as we see later in Acts. Saul when
he talks about his testimony to Rome. Saul when he's giving
his testimony to the Philippians, to the church at Philippi. He
says with zeal and with fire did he persecute the church.
And he was right in the context of his understanding of the law.
And according to the law, he was blameless. Therefore, in
his mind and in the eyes of the Sanhedrin and in the eyes of
the written code, he was blameless before men. He wasn't burdened
or convicted that he was doing the wrong thing. He wasn't seeking
after Jesus like the rich young ruler was. He didn't care for
eternal life. He had it in the bag. But yet,
Jesus stops him and saves him in spite of himself, in spite
of the fact that he was running from Christ, opposing Christ. Friends, that is sovereign grace.
That is sovereign mercy. That is sovereign love. That
is, for God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only
Son, the only one that He had. That all those exercising absolute,
unconditional surrender, belief, faith, at all times, forever
and ever, are His children. They do have eternal life. They
will be saved. It is not an option. They will
be saved. That's how God loves. It's not
the quantity of his love, it's the expression and the manner
in which he loves. He gave his Son that you might be saved. It's not a possibility, it's
a certainty. Jesus is a Savior, not a wannabe Savior. He saves. So here we see these apostles.
These apostles are sent by Christ, and He had to defend His apostleship.
That's one of the things that happened in Paul's day, is that
people would come and say, well, Paul wasn't an apostle. He never
saw the risen Lord. Jesus didn't send Him out. Jesus
did send Him out post-resurrection. And so the office of the apostle,
what did they do? They speak divinely the gospel
of Jesus Christ. And when John died on the Isle
of Patmos, There are no more apostles. People that call themselves
apostles these days, now they may say, well, you know, I'm
sort of like a church planner, so it's like an apostolic. No,
it's not like an apostolic ministry. An apostle has divine, absolute
authority. Paul says in his letter to the
Corinthians, if people don't believe what he writes, they're
not a believer. And that what he writes is absolutely divine.
It's just as inerrant as the word of God through the prophets.
Amazingly, that's the next thing that the Scripture tells us we
get. So God has given the apostles. Will you say, well, how is the
apostle a blessing and a gift to me? We're reading him right
now. God has divinely saved and secured His Word. The apostolic
authority of the apostles in first century Palestine is ours
to behold. We come to faith based on the
words of the apostles, not the words of anybody else. You can't
come to faith through the words of the prophets. You can only
come through the faith, through the words of Jesus Christ. And
who gives us the words of Christ? How do you know that you are
indeed a child of God? Through Paul. He says in Romans
8, 16, For God's Spirit testifies to our spirit that we are indeed
the children of God. And if children, then heirs.
So we know because of the apostles, the apostles are the gifts of
the church. The second gift is the prophets, the prophets. The
prophets were those in the Old Testament days who spoke the
oracles of God. And so in some sense, the apostles
and the prophets are identical in their office, except that
the prophets look forward. They foretold and very little
foretelling. As a matter of fact, less than
one percent of all prophetic writing in the New Testament
deals with future things. and even at the time, dealt with
future things. Most of it, over 99% of it, deals with what God
is telling people to do or else. What God is saying about who
He is. That's the nature of a prophet. So there are no more prophets,
although there are people who exercise like a prophet, such
as a pastor who speaks the Word of God. So as a pastor, I have
prophetic tendencies, not that I say, thus saith the Lord, but
that I read it for you. And I study it. And I teach you
what the apostles and what the prophets say. That is a spirit
of prophecy, if you will. The ability to understand the
Word is only given to the church. I believe the Spirit, according
to 1 John 4, teaches the church. And I believe it all works together
through the preached Word and through the camaraderie and the
fellowship and the life together of the making of disciples of
the church. And so He gave the prophets who spoke the Word of
the Lord. He gave the apostles who were
sent by Christ. To whom? What? The prophets pointed. So
now this gift... Listen to that. The gift of God
to the church is the apostles who gave us the Word of God.
The prophets who gave us the Word of God. And then what? The
next three. The skip evangelists. Not because
they're not important, but because I want to use them for a minute
in something else. And look at the next two. Shepherds and teachers. Shepherds are people who give
care. Presbyteros. Episcopos. Pastors. Elders. People who not
only teach the Word of God, just like the teacher there, but people
who teach the Word of God with one common goal. What is it?
To mature the body together. To hold each other accountable.
To lead the charge of continuing to deal with the maturity of
the church. Why? Because the church must
display the glory of God's wisdom. We must be growing to the praise
of His glorious grace. Or we are growing to the satisfaction
of the enemy. And we are growing into a man-centered
glory. I'll tell you. Now go back to
the evangelist. So we've got the apostles and
prophets who bring us the Word of God and reveal the Christ
to us through the written Word. Then we've got the teachers and
the shepherds who teach us the Word of God that was given to
us by the prophets and by the apostles and then hold us accountable
to continue to go in it and grow in it. And then the evangelist
sitting in the middle, what do they do? They extend the work
of the shepherd and the pastor, and they continue the work of
the apostle and the prophet in the context of taking the word
of God outside the confines of the church. That's what the evangelist
does. Now, there's a difference in
someone who is an evangelist and the call and the command
of God that all Christians must be evangelistic. As a matter
of fact, all Christians must be teachers. All Christians must
share their faith. And if we're not sharing our
faith, chances are it's because we've not been taught the Word
of God to a level of sufficiency that we have been empowered by
His grace through His Word to actually go and deal with it
in someone else's life. So what is our ministry? What's
the primary purpose of the ministry of the church? It centers around
what? The Word of God. The Word of
God. So the Word of God, and I'll
get to this in a moment, It's one of those things that people
just could care less about much days. People like to take the
Word and spend about 4 or 5 hours on a passage and deal with a
couple of outlines that they create out of creativity or with
a thesaurus to come up with some alliterated points, put together
a PowerPoint, tell you that this is what the Bible says, use about
16 other places throughout the text and even 5 or 6 different
translations if the actual meaning of the text doesn't fit, Or at
best, they'll just paraphrase it to make it fit. And then they'll
tell you, thus saith the Lord, now go and do. You know, the
preaching of the Word of God is not supposed to be go and
do. It's supposed to be stop and see. The preachers aren't supposed
to tell you to go and do, although the Scripture does. And yes,
we should. But the primary purpose of the preached word is not for
you to go and do, but you for to stop and see. See what? See
God in his manifold glory. See God in his manifold wisdom
and then to reflect it. So why do we get these things?
Why are these gifts important? And we see the service of the
apostles and the prophets and the evangelists and the shepherds
and the teachers. What is it, verse 12, to equip the saints
to do the work of the ministry? So to equip the sheep and the
saints. What's ironic about it, and I
won't get into a lot of this, I'm a pastor, but I'm a sheep.
I'm just as much of a sheep as any of you. I'm a husband, but
I'm also a bride. And I look forward to the day
when my pastoring and my husbandry go away so that the true husband
and the true shepherd will be forever with his saints and his
body will be complete. And we won't have to worry about
whether or not we stayed up all night long dealing with stuff
all week long, worrying if we're going to get it right. But we
will always have it right because Christ will always be with us.
It will be a constant worship. So we are to grow by equipping
the saints of the work of the ministry. The teaching of the
word of God is the ninety nine percent function of when the
body gets together. That's what they should be doing.
As the church. When your pastor stands before
you, when you gather as the saints, you need to be learning who God
is in some capacity. Not what God's wanting you to
do and how to do it, but who God is. Because when you learn
the Word of God, God will empower you to do what He's called you
to do. In that now, what else are we looking for? We are to
teach the Word of God, the gifts of the church that teach. And
it's not just pastors. That word teachers there and
evangelists and shepherds. Not everybody's going to be called
to be a shepherd, but everybody's going to be responsible for shepherding
somebody sometime in life. Not everybody is going to be
a pastor. Not everybody is going to be an evangelist. But we're
all responsible, and out of an overflow of our heart, and of
an overflow of our adoration, we will defend and share our
faith in Jesus Christ. Because it's what's most important
to us. So then we are to grow and equip the saints with the
work of the ministry, and also the ministry of the gifts to
the church with the Word of God are to build up the body of Christ. How many of you need building
up today? I would say that I need building up. My flesh is weak.
I haven't had anything to eat today. I'm very hungry. I could
do for a steak. But what's that got to do with
it? Nothing. I'll just say, we need building up. Some of us
are tired. Some of us are physically ill.
Some of us are emotionally drained. Some of us, we don't even have
gas to get home if we're in college. What's that got to do with anything?
I don't know. You tell me. Do you need building
up? And do you need building up with
gas and food and fellowship? Or do you need building up with
power? Because I'll tell you, the purpose of the building of
the church is not to build us up into this really cool circus. Not to build us up into this
really neat family that really is highly affectionate. Not to
build us up into this really cool club that we call Christianity.
But to build us up in the power of God that is already at work
within us. The power of God that rose Jesus Christ from the dead.
The power of God that the fullness of God resides in us in His Holy
Spirit and gives us all that we need for life and godly living.
That gives us all understanding and devotion and passion and
affection for holiness and holy truths. My prayer for you, church,
is that you would understand that the purpose of the teaching
of the Word of God is to empower you. We don't have to revisit
all of chapter 3 of Ephesians. But I would encourage you to
read it. And remember what was taught to you. Remember what
Paul has taught. Remember how I have tried to
organize and communicate these things to you. That you would
be filled with all the fullness of God. Not a stake. Not a wallet. Not gas. These are needs that
are just superficial. Not that they're not important.
Not that we shouldn't meet them. But friends, that's not what
the body of Christ is about. That's just an overflow. That's
the obvious. Because the world does that.
The world provides for people who are hungry. It provides for
people who are down on their luck. I use that lightly. For people who are suffering.
The world even provides that comfort. But where's the real
comfort? Through the Word of God. knowing
who Christ is, knowing the gospel and seeing its power in you,
Romans 1.16. And so we ought to grow and build
the body. When? For how long? When are
we grown? You see these questions? And
so verse 13, what does it say? Until we all attain the unity
of the faith. What is that? We've been looking
at this doctrinal issue for some time. We've been looking at the
doctrines of election, the doctrines of regeneration, the doctrines
of grace, the doctrines of adoption, the doctrine of predestination,
the doctrine of glorification, the doctrine of God's sovereignty,
the doctrine of God's holiness, the doctrine of Jesus. You know,
what does that mean? The teachings about them. The teachings about
this thing. The word doctrine means teaching. The word orthodox
means right opinion. And so I'm of the right opinion.
Or I'm of the opinion that we ought to have a right opinion
about what we learn. And it ought to be proven through the arguments
of the apostles who were divinely inspired, and their words are
without error. Because if we're not going there,
then what are we doing? We're not growing to mature manhood.
We're not growing to the unity of the faith, as it says here
in verse 13. What is the unity of the faith?
It doesn't mean that we all get along. Although that's a given. We see 1 John, if you say you
have fellowship with the Father, but you hate your brother, you're
a liar and you're not proud. It's the truth. So there's a problem there. We do
love each other, but that's not what it talks about. We talk
about the unity of the faith. How many faiths are there? One
faith, one Lord, one baptism, one body, one Father who was
in all and through all and over all. You see that? It all goes
together. We see this argument being built.
We ought to grow and be equipped through the Word of God as we
have gifts in the church through who can teach us and who can
encourage us and who can equip us for the work of serving one
another and the work of serving each other in the Word as we
all teach one another. And as iron sharpens iron, so
does one man sharpen another. And they just use the masculine.
It's also involving women. Nothing worse than a woman who
doesn't believe that she needs to grow in the knowledge of grace
and to share it with someone. Nothing worse than a child who
believes, well, I'll get there one day when I'm a teenager,
I'll start thinking about these things. I don't know, when were
you first made aware of your faith? I was probably first grade. Didn't you struggle with deep
questions around that age? Absolutely. Yes, you did. You may not remember it, but
you did. And if you have children, you'll know, age of five or six,
when they begin to start asking questions, those questions are
extremely deep. They can handle the Word. They can handle the
truth of God and His holiness and His righteousness and His
wrath and His grace and His mercy. As a matter of fact, they believe
it so wholeheartedly. That's why Jesus uses the illustration
that our faith must be like the faith of a child. That's what
you tell me, Daddy. It's true. And then when that
Reason stage comes into full bloom. Then it gets really fun. It gets really fun. And so we all attain the unity
of the faith. That means that we agree in doctrine. How are
we going to agree in doctrine? By being taught the right word.
By being taught the full counsel of God's grace. And what does
that entail? Look at this. Verse 13. You see
how you can ask the right questions and preach the sermon on your
own? Verse 13. to the measure, excuse me, and
of the knowledge of the Son of God. Unto mature manhood, to
the measure, the stature, the fullness of Christ. So we just
continue. How do we grow to the fullness of Christ? By learning
about him. How do we learn about him? Through
the gifts given to the church. What are they? Those who continually
work in the church, the word of God. It is about learning,
folks. I'm not saying academic. It is
worship. But the church that doesn't teach
is the church that will fall away when suffering comes. The
church that doesn't teach people the truth of the Gospel and how
to really deal with the Word of God and to spend hours, sometimes
after a sermon, just skipping meals because you can't get over
what you just heard, That's what needs to happen. Preaching is
an offense to all of us. Preaching ought to rub us up,
down and the wrong way on the other side of somewhere. It ought
to make us move. Even if it's anger, it ought
to move us. There's no such thing as proper
preaching that doesn't affect the heart of a Christian or a
sinner. Unless it's man preaching. Unless
it's manipulated. Unless it's just some stuff that
just sort of goes on and people say, well, this will be good.
This will draw folks in. Let's preach this. I used to
be one of those. The only people I want to see
drawn are those who are drawn to Christ. We don't have time
to draw people to everything but Jesus. That sounds a little
heartless, doesn't it? No. Why would we draw them to
something but Jesus, knowing that He is the only true treasure?
It's heartless to do the other. So we look to attain the unity
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unity there,
to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness
of Christ. Friends, we know that we will not achieve that until
Christ comes to take us or to be with us. Until he returns
to settle it forever. And so we are to continually
grow and study and learn and live and be empowered by the
Word of God. Why? Look at verse 14. Why is
it so important? I've already preached it. You
just didn't see it. It's so important because so
that we may no longer be children. Now, this isn't talking about
age. This is talking about an infantile capacity that you can
take a sock with a one-year-old and draw a mouth on it with some
eyeballs and they think it's alive. Remember that? You throw a plastic spider down
there on a baby, it'll eat it. You throw a plastic spider on
a grown woman and she'll step all over you trying to get away
from it. And men too. Don't do spiders on me. The point
is this. Our knowledge and our understanding
of the Word of God and our intimacy with Christ cannot be infantile. It cannot be at the early stages.
It cannot be in the beginning days. We who are Christians and
have been for five years or ten years ought to be able to stand
with those who have gone on to seminary and understand the deep
doctrines of the love of God, understand the deep doctrines
of His grace, understand at least the method of biblical interpretation. We might not know all the language,
but we must be practicing these things in our lives. The church
ought to be a seminary for its saints or the saints or children. And they graduate at the age
of 95 with nothing more than a second grade education in the
faith. And they do not know God. And they come to me and they
say things like, well, pastor, I know that Jesus couldn't really
be God because God can't be killed. So. An 86 year old woman gave
me that argument in 2008. And I could not convince her
otherwise. It took me almost a year to help her see that if
that's what she believed about Jesus Christ, and she put her
faith in that Jesus, that she was not saved. Jesus is God. Jesus is the living, full, awesome
Creator of everything. He created Mary. He created her
womb. He created the zygote that became
His embryo and the body in which He lived and still lives. Jesus is God and always has been
and He always will be. The question is, what difference
does that doctrine make to you? What difference does it make
to your faith, to the power of your life? Because we don't need
to be children. What does he mean by that? Look
at the next words here. Who are tossed to and fro. by
the waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine. See,
if we are changing our minds, and we hear something on YouTube,
and all of a sudden we believe something different, next thing
you know, we hear another pastor wrote a revival. Well, I never
thought about that. I believe that. And then we see it on CNN.
Oh, I believe that. And we get a tweet. Oh, I believe
that. You can't believe it all. You've got to believe one thing.
You can't believe everything you hear about truth. There is
only one truth. Truth is not relative to what
I believe it is. Like they might tell you in some 12-step programs,
you've got to find your way. Well, there's only one way. There's
only one way, and His name is Jesus, and He is God. And if
you do not come to Him explicitly, you are not of Him. You cannot
come to faith. You cannot be sincere. I heard
this this morning at a Baptist church. As long as you believe
in God, it doesn't matter about the rest. No, that's not true. You can believe in God all you
want to believe. But if you don't know Christ, you can't see God. That's why we must preach. That's
why we must proclaim. That's why evangelists have to
empower and bless the church to get us up off our butts, to
go out and share the faith in the world, because it's not supposed
to be a holy huddle. We ought to holy huddle up when
we're here and then, holy heck, get out there and share it. You
say ugly words if you're not careful. All that alliteration. So we don't need to be tossed
around like wind and waves and seas like a leaf in the ocean. Or, not only every wind of doctrine,
look at the next one, by human cunning. You know what the real
translation there is? Being tricked, like dirty pool. That's really, if it was my translation,
that's what I'd say, by dirty pool. Don't fall prey to people
who are deceiving you. Don't fall prey to the deception
of those who will speak the right stuff, and it sounds so good,
and it's really just a bunch of lies with a coat of truth.
What about craftiness and deceitful schemes? You know the other place
you see this? 2 Corinthians 4. For we have renounced underhanded,
deceitful ways, but by bold statement of the truth, we submit our consciousness
to God and to all and to you. And if our gospel is veiled,
it is only veiled to those who are perishing, because the God
of this world has blinded the eyes of unbelievers to keep them
from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of God, and
they cannot believe and they cannot be saved. And so what
do we do? We just keep on preaching. We
don't try to trick them. We don't try to manipulate them.
The better word there would be manipulating. Craftiness. We don't manipulate people to
come hear the gospel. We don't entice people to come,
but by bold statement of the truth. I fought that for years. Pastor, if you would just take
a few minutes and if you would just preach maybe a series that
would be a little more appealing to the unbeliever. What series?
What sermon? Except you are standing in the
judgment of God. You deserve His wrath. You will
be crushed into all the iniquity of your sin. You will suffer
the wrath of the fury of God. Repent. Believe the God. That's
the only sermon you can preach to a lost world. John the Baptist
says he busts out the gate with his brand new ministry. And people
are coming to be baptized. We want to be baptized. We want
to be baptized. And he says, you brood of vipers,
welcome to ministry. First sermon. You brood of vipers. Stephen's first sermon. Stephen
was a deacon. Deacons have to be able to teach
the Word of God and must do so. It is a requirement of their
office. Pastors must be able to teach the Word of God. That
is their job, to teach the Word of God. Because you can't shepherd
the church if you're an administrator. You cannot shepherd the church
if you're an evangelist. You cannot shepherd the church
if you're a motivator. You cannot shepherd the church
unless you're an expositor of the Word of God. Because you
are starving the sheep and you are sending them into misery.
Many people are mama called and daddy sent to the ministry and
they ought to quit. They ought to quit. And they get their feelings
hurt and they quit and they go get another church. So they say
the Lord's calling to do something else and they go sell cars for
about a week or two. And then they end up with a bigger, better
church with a better salary, with a lot more stuff. And you
see the heart and I'm not thinking of anybody in particular. So
don't think, oh, he's talking about so and so. No, I'm not.
No, I'm not. But what are we looking for?
What are we to be doing? The Word of God protects us from
this deceitfulness, from this manipulation. The Word of God
protects us from false doctrine. And we need to be looking to
see who are the gifts in the church to teach us. Many of you
have been gifted with teaching. You can teach the Word of God.
Let's begin to put it into practice. Well, what does that mean? We're
going to start a teaching program? No. How about you do in your life
what you've been called to do? We don't have to. It's not the
field of dreams. We just need to be faithful. And God will
do what he wants to do. God's going to do what he wants
to do. The nature of these gifts reflect
the nature of the church's core. And though there are gifts that
are important. The most important gift of the
church and to the church is the teaching of the Word of God.
That doesn't mean that the pastor is the most important person,
but that you as a Christian, no matter what you do, I think
I said this, if you're cleaning toilets, make sure that you are
being open and available to teach the gospel to someone. And I
didn't say a gospel presentation, I mean the depths of it. I'm
not talking about responding to the gospel. That's nowhere
in Scripture that talks about responding to the gospel. That
language is something that started with Finney. It's not here. If you don't know who Finney
is, come Tuesday night to Church History at 7. And we'll talk
about who he is. So we need to be displaying the
manifold wisdom of God. How does that work? Well, that
we continue to grow into maturity. That we continue to grow in the
unity of the faith. That we continue to grow in the knowledge of the
Son of God. To the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ. Do you realize that that is a high, tall order? It's the
same order that God gave. Be holy for I am holy. Now, he
says, look just like Jesus. I'm going to measure. See, this
is how God's going to do it. He's going to measure. What does
Paul say? First Corinthians. Do you not know that you are
not to judge the world? That's Paul's instruction to the church.
But that you should judge each other, not pass judgment, but
to you should hold Jesus up and the Word of God and you should
hold it next to ourselves. And as we stand next to our brothers
and sisters, we look at each other. Are we measuring up? And
if we're not, then as the gift of a teacher or a prophet or
evangelist or apostle, as the these gifts, we give them the
grace of God that they might Repent, believe the gospel then
and forevermore. So that we might grow to maturity. What is one of the levels of
seeing mature church? We see unity. We see affection. We see a desire to grow in our
knowledge of grace. We see ministry and service to
one another. We see these things, but what
happens is we get the cart before the horse. We start putting the
icing down in the bowl and try to bake it. When there's no dough
in there, the word of God is the substance of our bread, substance
of our life. The trouble is that we've got
so many things today that are so much more important to the
Church of America than Jesus Christ. The unpopular thing to do today
is to preach the truth. The unpopular thing to do today
is to share your faith. The unpopular thing to do today
is to actually just state the boldness of the gospel. It's
popular today to think, oh, what are the needs of my community?
Let's go meet them. What are the needs of my neighbors? Is
it wrong? No, it's not wrong. But is that where the church
should put her thoughts and focus? Absolutely not. We should put
our thoughts and focus of being a reflection of the gospel. So that when God looks at his
church, he's pleased by seeing himself. Where are you? That's always the offense. It's
always the rub. Where are you in? Serving. And it's real easy to serve in
a church like this one. Just look around the room. And
get to know somebody you'll serve. Where are you gifted? Where is
your heart? You know how much the world has
invaded the church? That the church now has administrative
programs to match what the world offers? And we try to build a little
isolated community and say, look at what we're doing for people.
It's like a pastor recently told me, and they feed like 80 people
on Saturdays. And then he made it very clear
to me, we don't talk about spiritual things. We're not going to hand
out literature. We're not going to talk about
Jesus. We're just going to love these people. I said, what love
is it to do the exact thing that Jesus condemned people for? You
come after me because you got your belly full of loaves. Do
not labor for the food that perishes, but labor for the bread that
endures to eternal life. And then after a really long
discourse and a whole lot of rebuke, Jesus says, I am the
bread that came down from heaven to give life to not just Jews,
but to all peoples. Don't labor for anything else.
Eat of my flesh. Drink of my blood. And you'll
have eternal life. And it says that the majority,
the masses, the multitudes walked away. And it was just Jesus and
the disciples. And he turns to them and says,
Are you all leaving as well? And Peter, the big spokesman,
To whom shall we go? For you have the words of eternal
life. Aren't you glad it isn't up to
us to be faithful like Peter, who denied him three times? Because
he sure left. When Jesus was arrested, Peter
left. So where does our hope lie? In the finished work of
Christ. Alone. Solo Christos. In Christ alone. In Christ alone. He is the only way he's the only
hope he's the only means of eternal life, he's the only means of
power and his words are the only bread we need. Eat the word of
God as we all grow and mature for his glory, let's pray. Lord,
we are grateful. And so amazed and overwhelmed. God, I thank you that you are
faithful Even when we fail. I thank you
that you are faithful. When we fail to study our word.
I thank you that you are faithful when we fail to pray. I thank
you that you are faithful when we fail to believe. I thank you
that you are faithful when we fail to submit to one another
and to you. When we fail to love one another, when we fail to
share our faith and when we fail to hold you above all things.
I thank you that you're faithful. Help us to see the absolute power
of your divine faithfulness and that you will not deny yourself,
but you will hold fast to your promises. Father, you have promised to
save all those who believe in Christ Jesus. Give faith to the
faithless. Give hope to the hopeless. Give
life to the lifeless. Empower each of us as we gather
again soon to have much to share, much worship to celebrate. Lord,
we thank you that you are driving professionalism from our midst.
We thank you that you are truly going to bring revival to your
church. And we thank you that you can use each of us. Tools
and instruments in your hands to bring about your purpose in
the world around us, Lord, give us as gifts to each other and
to your body in Jesus name. Amen.