Ephesians 4:1-13

Jimmy is starting the fourth chapter of Ephesians, which focuses on how beliefs impact one's actions. The first three chapters were theological, emphasizing redemption and the church as the dwelling place of God. The speaker highlights the importance of unity in the church and how it cannot be forced but should be characterized by humility, gentleness, and patience. The speaker mentions that grace is a key theme in Paul's writings and emphasizes the need to use gifts with humility. The passage encourages believers to live worthy of their calling and maintain unity through love and peace. The speaker concludes by discussing the importance of humility, gentleness, and patience in a hostile society. Well good morning. Good to see you all. When you get our age, our age, a granddaughter's wedding wears you out. So, Jack and Barbara are recuperating, and we missed them this morning. We're going to start the fourth chapter of Ephesians. I don't know how far we'll get into it. It's a great chapter. It's a very important chapter in the book. The first three chapters of Ephesians were theological or doctrinal, telling you what you ought to believe, how you ought to relate to the Lord. And so the logical question, which ought to be asked after every sermon, the question is, so what? Every sermon you hear, every lesson you hear, you ought to ask, so what? What does that mean to me? Well, that's what Paul is doing now. He's coming to the fourth chapter, and he's beginning to tell them how what they believe impacts how they live. And so the last three chapters are very practical and very specific. Now, bear in mind that the Apostle Paul is in prison. Ephesus is a hodgepodge of people. It was composed of slaves who were bought and sold like cattle, and except for a small group of elitists, which is kind of the way it always is, the other half were tradesmen and laborers who existed just barely above the poverty line. So a lot of different kinds of people, a lot of different nationalities, a lot of different levels of society. And in chapter one, we found the description of the unprecedented redemption that is ours in Jesus Christ. We ought never to get over that. Whenever we were saved, we don't ever want to get over it. And the sad thing is, it seems like many people get over it. And Paul's warning against that in Ephesians. Second chapter, we learned that the church is made up of born-again individuals who are part of the most unique body ever known. Second chapter, he said in verses four to six, but God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. Can't helped himself now. He just says, you're saved by grace. You can see the exclamation point after that. And he also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus. That was in the second chapter. In chapter three, we discovered that we were part of the building or the dwelling place of God. He lives within us. We are his temple. So we have the indwelling presence of Christ in our lives. And it's great for us to believe all of that, but it has to impact our lives. Now, I'm going to make a statement that I believe is accurate. I've lived a long time and I've preached in over a thousand churches. There's just a lot of people in those churches that don't act like they believe anything. Some of the meanest people I've ever seen are church members. Now, thankfully, that's been very rare in our lives. But if you look very far into churches today, of all kinds of churches, you'll find that many of them, if not most of them, are fighting about something. And it's never anything important. It's always some preference somebody has and they don't like it because somebody else does like it. So they argue over the mundane and the unimportant. We're faced again in the fourth chapter with a unity that ought to exist in the church. We can't get away from it. Jesus spent an entire chapter in his prayer, John 17, and the Apostle Paul, almost in every chapter of every book that he wrote, in one way or another, he appeals to unity. Now, there's an interesting thing about unity. We can't create it. We just can't create unity. What we can create is uniformity. We can insist everybody believes like I believe about everything, way beyond theology. But that's not what unity means. Unity is not uniformity. It doesn't mean we agree on everything. It does mean that when we disagree, we do it in an agreeable way. We don't fight over it. We don't fuss over it. And so he's going to talk about that here as we move into this fourth chapter. Watchman Nee, I think Jack mentioned Watchman Nee several weeks ago. Tom, I believe we put Watchman Nee's book on our internet where you can pull that book up and read it. You ought to read it. It's a classic on the book of Ephesians, not a long book. And it's simply entitled, "Sit, Walk, Stand". And that's really the three main points of the book of Ephesians. We sit in heavenly places according to the second chapter of Ephesians. And then beginning here, he talks about some translations translate the very first of this fourth chapter as walk. Our translation that I use, that I was compelled to use because we did it when I was president of Lifeway. And I figured if I was going to be president of a company that had a Bible translation, I ought to use it. So that's why I use it. I used the King James up until then. But anyway, it starts off with just that we are to live worthily. It means to walk how we live our lives. And so that is an important transition now that we are to walk worthy. Our lives are to walk worthy of the calling that we have. And the focus of this chapter as this entire book is grace. Paul refers to grace in his epistles 110 times. So it's his writings is full of the grace of God. He could never get over the fact that he described himself as a chief of sinners, persecuted the church, agreed to and participated in the death of believers, got saved. He never got over it. And so he speaks about grace. And we always, it would help all of us if we had realized that everything about our relationship with God is based on grace. He does not use any of us because of us. It's always in spite of us. But he's a God of grace. And the more we realize this, the more diligent we'll be in using the gifts that God gives to us. And the more humble we will have in those gifts because they're grace gifts, according to this chapter. The grace without gifts is presumptuous and arrogant. And grace, a gift without grace is pride and carnality. The more gifts we have, the more grace we need. That's what he's saying. Now I want to read these first seven. My goal today is to get through verse 13. And Eddie took up so much of my time. I don't know that we'll get there. But the good news is we'll be back next Sunday and we'll start wherever we stop. So he's telling the church now how the doctrine and theology that they have heard needs to be seen, what they do. So let me just read these first seven verses and then if we get that far, we'll read the next few verses. Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to live worthy of the calling you have received with all humility, gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Here it is again. Making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.. Now listen to what he says. He's going to say it another way. There's one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope at your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all who is above all and through all and in all. Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gifts. And we'll just stop. Well, now we'll stop there. It's interesting. Christ, he introduced the giving of gifts here. And it's really a description of the church. The gospel is not without its demands on believers and on members. I got an email this week from Jeffreys and he's having all of us who teach to sign a covenant commitment. I think that's a good idea. I grew up in a day where they had the church covenant on the wall of the church. Some of y'all remember that. And not that we pay much attention to it sometimes, but it was there for us. We are people who make commitments. And so I thought it was interesting that they had asked the deacons to sign that, sign one for the deacons. And so now they're signing the teachers and the Sunday school, which I think is a good thing that we do that. But he emphasized the calling that is upon every believer. The calling. We're to live worthy of the calling you've received. And how are we to live out our calling? Humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love and making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Paul is clearly pointing to the means by which all of this will happen. It will be those who have received their calling. They are to fulfill their calling. And the graces that are mentioned, humility, gentleness, and patience are the three vital qualities that all of us need. Needed in all of our lives. Humility is the opposite of pride. Humility was essentially, in Paul's day, humility was considered a vice. Nobody was humble except slaves. And they were supposed to be that way. So it was not recognized as something that the average person would want. Slaves had humility. Nobody else did. And yet, first thing he mentioned is humility. And Paul mentions it first as it is the foundation for unity and the foundation of peace among believers. Gentleness is the opposite of arrogance or self-assertion, rudeness, harshness. It suggests one having their emotions under control. Patience is the spirit that never gives up and endures to the end. And it's something we all want, but we don't like the process of getting patience. But it's there, especially in times of adversity. And especially in an evil society. I'm not going to take time to go back and talk about emphasis and all the things. Jack's done that and I've already done that. But these believers are in the middle of a hostile pagan society. And yet he says you're to be humble, gentle, and patient. Kind of hard to do when you're in a society like that. But patience is one that never gives up and endures to the end, especially in times of adversity. And the result of all of this is unity that causes us not to quarrel, dispute, or divide, but to bear with each other in love. That's what will produce peace. It's what I love about our church. We don't agree on everything, but we all love the Lord and love each other. And that's the way it's supposed to be. And beware. The Bible warns us don't build a relationship with an angry person. It never turns out good. So the church is to be united. Well, this is the assignment of the church. Here's what he tells us. Have I read this yet? Did I read it? Okay. I don't want to assume that we didn't read it. And at my age, you never know when it comes in here, whether it comes out there or not. But anyway, he is talking to them about the, he says, here's what you're to do. The church, fulfill your calling. Walk worthy. Don't deviate from the divine strategy. Obey your orders. Follow your head, who is Christ. He mentions the word calling several times. Philippians 3, 14, he calls it God's heavenly calling. In 2 Timothy 1, 9, he calls it a holy calling. In Hebrews 1, the writer there calls it a heavenly calling. This is the true function and nature of the church. The church is not a human instrument. It's not a human organization. Now, the church is not a business, but it ought to be conducted like a good business. I was president of LifeWay for 15 years, and we were a business and a ministry both. But that was a hard line to walk. We weren't just a ministry and we weren't just a business, but we were a business that had a ministry component. And we were a ministry that had a business component. It's that way with the church. The best possible financial and physical attitudes and decisions that ought to be made in the church. We shouldn't not do business in a sloppy way. So we ought to do it in a good way, but we are a ministry. Now, that's always going to be rough on the edges. It's going to be hard for us to maintain, hard for us to know when you cross the line one way or the other, but that's what the church is to be. And the church is not expected to devise its own strategy or to set its own goals. It's not an independent organization. It is a body that is called into a special relationship with God. And that's what many in the religious world don't understand. Christianity is not a major world religion. It's a major world relationship. The essence of the church is what John is talking about this morning in church. We are under the dominance of God in our lives, and we ought to live like it. We're in a special relationship with God, and we need to realize that. And I'll just say it again because it's mentioned so often by Paul and in the epistle. Jesus only prayed for one thing in John chapter 17, and that was for the oneness of the believers. One body, the church, one spirit, the Holy Spirit indwells believers. One hope, our confidence in the future presence and power of God. One Lord, Jesus Christ, is the head of the church. One faith is the message of Christ. One baptism, which happens at conversion when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us. One God and Father over us all who is sovereign over all, and he wants to live through us and reveal himself to the world through us. That's what the church is about. Now, it's interesting that he mentions the Godhead several times here. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. The one body of believers is vitalized by one spirit, and all the believers have one hope. There's again the oneness of the church and of the body of Christ. The body is united by its one Lord, and each believer is to act in faith, and its identity with him is depicted by baptism, that each of us when we're saved, we're baptized, baptized spiritually and physically, and one God and Father who's supreme over it all. It's all about God. The church is not all about us. Get over yourself. It's not about us. It's about him, and we spend time, I'm afraid, too often expecting the church to please us, and that's not what the church is for. The church is to praise God and to be an instrument of spreading the gospel to those around us. I told you this once before, but it was such a sweet experience in the end. We had a guy when I was at Cana Baptist as interim pastor that I'd been there about six weeks, and he cornered me after the morning service and told me how I had mentioned that I had had lunch with the former pastor. All I said just made, and he greeted the people, I said, he told me to tell you hello. He said, we just want you to know that some of us were not real happy with the former pastor. Well, that immediately told me that he'd been talking, he was unhappy, and he'd been talking to other people, so other people were unhappy. When I got home, I really got mad. I'm sorry. I just got upset, and I wrote him a letter, a two-page, single-spaced typed letter. I should never have mailed it. Anyway, I mailed it, and in the letter, I told him, I said, number one, it was inappropriate for you to tell me anything about your former pastor. I said, I hadn't been here long enough, and you don't know me well enough to do that. I said, number two, it's obvious you've been talking to other people, which means you've been spreading your unhappiness within the church, and that's inappropriate. I said, number three, on and on. I laid it on him, and I told him, I said, this church, the pastor doesn't exist to make you happy. I said, you need to get over yourself. It's not the pastor's job to make you happy, and I mean, I found out that the two staff members that were kind of in charge while I was at the interim, all I wanted to do was preach. I didn't want to get into the internal leadings of the church, so I was preaching on Sundays. Two staff members said, he does this every once in a while. I said, he's done this before and had to be reprimanded for it. I said, usually after he's reprimanded, he just doesn't come to church for a few weeks, so we were all interested to see if he came to church next Sunday, which he did, and after the service, he pulled me aside. He said, I want to thank you for that letter. He said, it took a lot of courage for you to write it, and I apologize, so it turned out to work out pretty good. I have written a few that didn't turn out quite so well, but nevertheless, you know, anything that creates dissension or chaos in the church, we shouldn't be a part of it. Shouldn't be a part of it. Someone comes to me and says, do you know what so-and-so did? I said, wait a minute, let's get so-and-so in here before I don't want to hear about it. Let's get him in here or her in here and we'll talk about it. Sometimes what we listen to is inappropriate. We ought to be strong enough to reprimand somebody and say, look, no, we're not going to have this conversation if you're talking about Susie over here or John over here. We'll get them in here, then we'll talk about it. There's nothing God despises more than disunity. Remember the Godhead, and I didn't intend to do this again, but Paul does it, so I'll do it. We need to realize how important unity in the church is, and we can't create unity, but we can sure mess it up, and we don't want to be a part of messing up the unity of the church. Nothing is too important to do that. Now, if things need to be dealt with, they ought to be dealt with in a proper way. Gentleness, humility, kindness. We ought to be diligent. I have a friend from years ago, Howard Butt Jr., who was the heir to the HEB food stores who now are here. We have them at Market Street and out on 1709 at Central Market. That's HEB. Howard Butt was a lay preacher. He wrote a book called The Velvet-Covered Brick, and his thesis was that's the way we ought to treat challenges and difficulties. We need to be firm. We don't need to be brutal. My dad told me when I got my first chair, he said, now, son, strong convictions do not have to be brutal, and so we ought to be peacemakers, and I tell you, I love Dr. Bell. Dr. Bell is such a blessing to our church and to me personally, but we disagree about something, and we just talk about it, and then he'd grin and say, we could both be wrong. Truth is, none of us knows everything, and we ought to have unity in the church, so the gifts that he gives are designed to bring unity in the church. God, according to this passage, gives every believer at least one gift, and it's a spiritual gift, not a natural ability. It's a spiritual gift. They're grace gifts, which means it's not something we earn. We don't merit these gifts. It's not what we deserve, and there's a difference between spiritual gifts and natural ability, and those gifts that God gives to us are not for our pleasure. They're not toys for us to play with or to hold over someone's head. They're tools for us to bless others and to glorify God. That's what the gifts are for. If we don't use the gifts God gave us in love, then they become weapons to fight with, which is what happened in 1 Corinthians, and you can read about it in chapters 12 to 14 of 1 Corinthians. Paul was not advocating anything in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14. He was not advocating speaking in tongues or anything else. It was a problem. He was correcting it, telling them, if you want to do these things, this is how you ought to be doing it. It was a problem. So if we don't administer the gifts in love, they'll become weapons, and we'll fight about them, and that's not possible for us to do. Now, watch my niece as we sit, and 2 Philippians, we talked about we're seated in heavenly places with Him, and that's always followed by walking, and we sit based on the promise that we're saved, and we don't try to do something. We're trying to fully appreciate what has already been done for us. There's nothing for us to do that God needs for us to be accepted. We are to rest, and when we sit, and when we meditate, and when we are in that learning stage, we sit so that we can be instructed, so that we can be reminded of how much Christ has done for us. It's what Brother John was talking about this morning, about to live is Christ and to die is gain. I mean, everything is about Him. We don't have to do anything to be saved or to keep being saved. We just have to receive what Christ has already done for us. Now, when we walk or stand, we're carrying our weight ourselves. When we sit, all of our weight rests upon what we sit on. I'm sitting on a chair. You are too. It's obvious we all believe it'll hold us up, and the reason we know it'll hold us up is because we're sitting on it. So when we sit, we rest. All of our weight goes on that which we sit on. What we sit, and when we rest, is the provision that Christ has made for us on the cross, and we let God Himself give us the strength that we need to follow Him. We receive everything we need by sitting, by sitting. It's not by doing that we rest. It is by trusting Him who will strengthen us for the journey of faith, and He bears the full weight of our forgiveness. Not what we have done, but because of what He has done. That's the important thing, and Paul is emphasizing that here. Now, once we're properly seated, we are ready to walk. So he says here, walk worthily of the calling you've received. And chapter 4 here is talking about walking, and then you get to chapter 6, and you have standing. So we sit, walk, and stand. That's really the outline of the book itself. We're new creations in Christ, but we're more than that. We possess His divine nature. We are to outwardly demonstrate to the world that what we possess inwardly is real. Paul is challenging the church to be more than the church in name only. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. See, the new has come. Everything is from God who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ, has given us the ministry of reconciliation, and has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ as God is making His appeal through us. We plead on Christ's behalf to be reconciled to God. Peter gave the same kind of description in 1 Peter 2 now when he talked about us being a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation. We are representatives of Christ on this earth. And remember, in the second chapter, remember his show and tell? In the second chapter, he said that he's going to show his greatness, holiness, love, and grace through us to angels, to the universe, to everyone, to an evil world. When the world sees us, what they see in us, they will think about God. Carol Ann reminded me, we like to listen to good gospel music, but there's a gospel song out, when the world looks at us, does it see Christ? Do they see Christ? That's what Paul is talking about. When the world looks at us, they ought to see God, because they're going to think God just like what we live. Most people never read the Bible, but they'll see the Bible that God wrote in you. And that's what Paul is getting at. He's telling, you'll miss it if you're not careful, he's telling these Ephesians, a believer, I am a prisoner in bonds for the gospel, but you are free. Your responsibility is greater than mine, essentially what he's saying. Don't use your freedom to satisfy your own desires, but walk worthy of the calling you have received. Every believer has a freedom of choice that God has given us, and we ought to choose to be a good witness. You will be a witness for Christ. Only question is, what kind of witness will it be? He said, use your freedom. You have a choice. Use your freedom to be a positive of what God is like. We'll be seen by those around us, and they must be able to see God through us. That's a pretty big order, and we need to be serious about that. Paul challenges them to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace, and the ones that he mentions there in those verses, one body, one spirit, one hope, and so on. That's just emphasizing again, you know, you get tired of hearing that, but it may be because it's our biggest problem. It's not that we think too little of ourselves, we think too much of ourselves. Why on earth would you think you're always right? When I got my first church, my dad told me, he said, son, you're not going to always be right. But he said, that's okay. He said, when you're wrong, admit it. Ask the church to forgive you. He said, what are they going to do then? Are they going to beat you with wet noodles? What are they going to do? They already know you're wrong, so if you admit it, it's okay. None of us are perfect. In fact, I was preaching at First Dallas here about, I don't know, seven or eight years ago, and I have a sermon I like to preach from time to time, especially when I just got a one-time shot called Getting Ready for the Future. And I was talking about things we do to get right, and I made the statement, and I made the mistake of pausing. Watch out for the pauses. I made the statement, I don't think we ever made a mistake, and I paused. And some people kind of set up like that. But what I'll say, when I finished, I don't think I ever made a mistake of where we served. Every place we've ever served, we knew God sent us there. Now, we spent a little over two years in Dallas, Dr. Criswell. It was a great time for us, and it was a terrible time for us. It's just, it was one of those mixed times. But just before Dr. Criswell died, he kind of, well, I won't go into that. I don't want to take time to chase rabbits, but just before he died, I told him, I said, Pastor, if I knew everything now, when I first made the decision to come to Dallas, I'd still come. Because God sent us, and I don't believe this was for the sake for us to come, for a lot of reasons. For one, Randy found his wife. That's a good reason. Number two, I found out I didn't have to be in charge. I could be an associate. I was his associate. I didn't know whether I could do that or not. I'd never been anything but a pastor, but I learned that. Just so much we learned. It was a good time. In fact, in the morning, at 11 o'clock in the morning, Robert Jeffress and I are going to handle the funeral services for one of the deacon's wives. Some of our best friends to this day are people we met at First Baptist Dallas. Great church, and we're so grateful. But I made the statement, we don't believe I ever made a mistake. I paused at the wrong time, and people thought I was claiming that I never had done anything that was not correct. But we know that we have been called of God into a unique body, and Paul uses several different figures of speech to describe the relationship. For instance, here in this chapter, the church is a body under the control of the head. That's verses 15 and 16. It would be tragedy if the body refused to respond to the instructions from the head, if we would disobey Christ. In 1 Corinthians 6, he says, don't you know, your body is a part of Christ's body. In 1 Corinthians 3, he describes the church as the temple of God for the exclusive habitation and use of the person who dwells within us and the right to do with that temple what he wills. In 1 Corinthians 3, he says, don't you know that you are the God's temple and the Holy Spirit of God lives in you. In 2 Timothy, Paul calls the church an army under the command of the king. 2 Timothy 2, 3, and 4. He sent Epaphroditus to Philippi and described him as a fellow soldier. Philippians, he called it a fellow soldier and a good soldier. He spoke of Archippus in Philemon as a fellow soldier. Those are all army terms. So the church is an army that's under the authority of the commander. These first seven verses in this chapter conclude with God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There's perfect unity. I've told you many times with the Trinity, perfect oneness. There's never division. They cannot disagree. It is a unity driven by the eternal unity of God himself. And disunity is never a sign of God's presence. It grieves the heart of God when we fail to reflect that unity. The church was no afterthought with God. It was actually planned before the world began. God designed his church to be one body. There are not many bodies where God dwells. The church, the universal church, many people, but one body, the body of Christ. God himself lives within every believer at all times, under all circumstances, everywhere we are, whatever we do, should be driven by one motive, to live worthy of the calling that God has given us. God's first concern is not what the church does, but what the church is. Being must always precede doing. What we do will be determined by what we are. And that's very important. There's a holy mystery about the church. It's the dwelling place of God. Now explain that. I can't explain that. God lives in us. But we do know this. The great calling of God for us is to reveal the redemptive purposes of God to men and angels in word and deed. He gives gifts to his people. He has the right to give gifts since he has conquered all his enemies and ours. In verses 8 through 10, I want to read those verses for you. And we're doing okay time wise, I think. Be close. All right, 8 through 10, starting with 8. For it says, this is Psalm 68 he's quoting here, when he ascended on high, he took the captives captive, he gave gifts to people. But what does he ascended mean except that he also descended to the lower parts of the earth. The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all heavens to fill all things. Now, and he himself gave some apostles and prophets and evangelists, some pastors, teachers, equipping for the saints for the work of the ministry to build up the body of Christ till we reach unity in the faith and all the knowledge of God's son growing into maturity with the stature measured by Christ's fullness. Now that'll finish our time when we're here. He, this quote from Psalm 68 that is there brings to mind the ancient practice of a military conqueror who leads his captives, not his enemies, but his captives into a parade. They have a great parade and then he shows off all of the gifts that he took from his enemies when he conquered them, all the things he did. But Jesus did not come to take gifts, he came to give gifts. And so here's the introduction. This is one of the gifts chapters in the New Testament. You have those in Corinthians and you have in Romans and now you have this here in Ephesians. And so Christ is now bringing captives, captives, those who have been captured by Satan before now captured by Christ. Death itself is the defeated foe. Christ came to earth and experienced the depth of humiliation according to Philippians 2 and he ascended to heaven and experienced the highest acclaim and the highest possible exaltation far above heavens to fill all things. This is a victory song, this verse 8 by King David and it's a picture of Christ who descended to earth now ascended back far above all heavens to fill all things. That's an incredible picture of the conquering Christ, the one who won the victory over sin, death, and the grave, the conquering Christ having conquered all things that oppose him and now has ascended triumphantly into the highest heaven to share his glory with the Father. What a beautiful, magnificent, splendid description. Now we have a lot of questions that I'm not going to answer for good reason. What does all this mean? What does it mean he took captives? Well, some think it means he went back to paradise and brought back saints to the highest heaven. When Paul described it, he went up to the third heaven and so maybe that's what it meant. Some think it refers to his victory over evil and all who opposed him. Third, some say it refers to angels. That's what the implication seems to be in Psalm 68. They would accompany him when he comes back. That verse says that God's chariots are tens of thousands, thousands, and thousands. So we don't really know what all that means. I could give you a lot of ideas about what the lower parts of the earth means and all these things. But he concludes by saying the one who ascended far above all heavens to fill all things reminds us that God is still moving in history. He's moving toward a time when he will restore the wholeness of the universe. The Romans, Paul talked about the earth itself is in bondage and waiting to be restored. All these things are not intended to be pressed for details. I know we like details, but there are just some things that paint a big picture and you don't want to necessarily pick it apart. This is one of them. Basically, this is a great picture of the victorious conquering Christ as he returns in all his glory into the highest heaven. That's the picture it paints. Don't try to pick it apart and build some theology about all the phrases used in there. It is one of the spiritual gifts passages, verse 11, that we read along with 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, is part of the gift passages in the New Testament. The important thing is Christ gives gifts to individuals in the church and now he gives gifts as gifted individuals to the church. He gave apostles. He gave prophets. He gave evangelists and pastor teachers. Well, apostles, what does that mean? The word apostle itself means someone that is sent with a message. He had a lot of disciples, but he only had twelve apostles. He appointed those twelve apostles and they were one of the gifts of God to his church. A disciple, the very name disciple means a student or a learner. That's who we are. We're not apostles. The apostles were those who gave us the scripture. The Holy Spirit moved through them. Remember, they had no Bible in the New Testament. The New Testament had not been written. It was being written. They needed apostles who would help them to record the very words of God for us. We have the advantage of having a complete New Testament. They had no New Testament at all. They were divinely appointed representatives that had to be personal eyewitnesses to the resurrected Christ. Now, the apostle Paul didn't get to see the resurrected Christ, but he remarked that on the road to Damascus, the resurrected Christ came and validated him as a legitimate apostle. That was one of the requirements. These men who were apostles laid the foundation for the church, according to verse 20. Once the foundation is laid, they're no longer needed. We don't need apostles today because apostles came before the New Testament was written. Now the New Testament has been written and God climaxed the New Testament by saying, whoa, to anybody that adds to this or takes away from this doctrine that is recorded in the New Testament. By the way, the New Testament was firmly entrenched with the books that we now have shortly after the first century, somewhere around at least by 110 or if not before. These were the ones the apostles validated and many of them wrote. The apostle Paul wrote about 13 of the books of the New Testament. You had Peter writing some, Luke writing some, so Matthew, Mark, they wrote various ones. But we have no apostles today because we don't need it. What we need is proclaimers of the truth that's been revealed to us in the word of God. We don't need apostles because there's not going to be any new information coming from any human being that has to be added to scripture. Dr. Bell used to say, when somebody says, God told me, he said, you need to write it down and staple it in the back of the Bible. God told you this part of scripture. Well, God's not still writing scripture. The apostles were the ones that helped us have a word that no new revelation from God is going to contradict any scripture. It'll always be consistent with the scripture. That's what he said. So we have the apostles. They had a unique role that is no longer needed. Then we had prophets who spoke by direct illumination of the Holy Spirit. That's how we got the New Testament. They were prophets that God spoke to and the New Testament was completed and available. We usually think that a prophet has something to do with the future, but in the New Testament especially, the prophet didn't prophesize the future. He proclaimed the word of God. That's a little bit different. He wasn't a seer. He wasn't someone that could predict the future. He was someone who revealed what God revealed to him. Now we have that as our New Testament and so we don't need someone to tell us something that's not in the word of God because it's everything God intended for us to have. We don't get our spiritual knowledge directly from the Holy Spirit, but through the Spirit as he reveals that knowledge through the Bible. It's consistent with the Bible. Anything that contradicts the Bible is not an accurate prophecy. The prophets had a foundational role in the early church, but God's word now has that role and that kind of prophecy is not needed today. Then he mentioned evangelists. Evangelists are itinerant. They travel from place to place. They needed to help the church win converts and they had a great gift at evangelism and leading people to Christ. Now Paul does say that the pastor teacher ought to do the work of an evangelist, which is soul winning. Every one of us ought to be soul winners, but the evangelists have a great gift of God. One of the tragedies in church life today is that we no longer value the role of the evangelist. When I was pastor here, some of you didn't even know this, we had 26 evangelists in our church. Now imagine preaching every Sunday and you'd have one to 26 evangelists sitting in the congregation listening to you. We don't have revivals anymore. We always had a revival in the spring, in the fall and in the spring. We always tried to use an evangelist. The one time we didn't use an evangelist here was when I brought Adrian Rogers in, who is an evangelistic pastor. We had a great week with Adrian here. The role of the evangelist was key in the early church because it helped them deal with the chaos and the paganism of the world and helped them spread the gospel. We still need that today. I wish I had time to talk about that role a little more, but it's a very needed role today. In verse 12, Paul sees two things happening. The body of Christ made up of believers is growing into spiritual maturity and the local body of believers is ministering to each other and experiencing unity. That's why we have gifted leaders because he said that leaders are given that they can equip believers for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. Believers grow by feeding on the word of God and ministering to one another. Equipping is an interesting word. It literally is a medical term for setting a bone or putting a joint back in place. It's also used as the discipline of a believer. The purpose of discipline is not punitive, but redemptive to restore the believer. The particular word is used only here in the New Testament. It occurs in verb form in other places in the New Testament. We won't have time to look at that, but it's a very important thing. The work of the ministry is the work of service. The word ministry is diakonos, or diakonian, which is deacon. People ask me, what are deacons supposed to do? Well, their name tells you. That's their job description. Diakonos means one who serves on behalf of another who gets no personal benefit out of a service but only does what he's told. That's a little different from churches today where the deacons pretty well run the church and tell people what to do and run pastors off and all of this. That is a violation of the rule. The deacon is a servant. So are we. There are no hot shots in the church. We're just sinners saved by grace and we ought to live together in unity and love each other and treat each other with kindness and stop quarreling and complaining. In fact, Hebrews 12 talked about a root of bitterness growing in a person. The word that is used there is a word that means the growth of a poisonous plant. Bitterness is a poisonous plant that grows like a cancer in the body of Christ. It cannot be accepted. Well, to conclude it, he talks about the unity of the faith, the knowledge of God's Son growing into maturity, and the maturity that we're growing into is not measured by what people around us are doing. It's the fullness of Christ. In other words, we're to grow and we'll be mature as Christ is mature. Humility, patience, love, unity, peace that he started out with in verse 2 are the true marks of Jesus and Christians are not to try to minister or witness in arrogance or rudeness and not in prejudice or anger, not in sanctimonious presumption, and certainly not against the background of ugly church fights and harshness between Christians. That is not the way it's to be. The church cannot save the world, but the Lord of the church can. The church cannot exalt its Lord while it tries to exalt itself. We have to be careful about this. We preachers are bad about this. I'm not referred to this church as my church. Well, it's not my church. It's the Lord's church. This belongs to him. So I don't need to get riled up over something I don't like. By the way, I have done a lot of things in the church that I didn't like doing, but that's what needed to be done. The supreme mark in the life of Christ within the Christian is love. Love accepts others as they are with tenderhearted forgiving. It seeks to prevent misunderstandings and differences of viewpoint that divides. Jesus said in John 13, by this shall all men know that you're my disciples if you have love one for another. Love is never manifested in rivalry, greed, ostentatious display, indifference, or prejudice. It's the opposite of name-calling, backbiting, stubborn selfishness, and division. It's concerned to maintain unity, not creating it. We cannot create it, but we can certainly maintain it. What's happened is, let me close with this. The church has introduced a new dynamic into human life. It's not us. It's the dynamic of the life of Jesus Christ, and the risen Lord Jesus is available to men everywhere to implant within them his own life and to transform them into loving, concerned, and confident people, able to cope with whatever problems they may face. That's the calling of the church. Now, I have to say one thing. Every once in a while, you'll have someone who is very opinionated, and they have an opinion about everything. And they'll say, well, it's just the way I am. That might be you. I have one word for you. Quit it. If it's the way you am, you are not the right way. Christians can't act. In fact, he talks about it. Don't keep living like the pagans live, like the Gentiles live. You have a new dynamic. Christ lives in you. Stop going back. Don't go back. Nothing to go back to. People ask, would you like to go back to the 1960s? No. They were wonderful. I don't want to go back anywhere. Now is wonderful. A little painful, but wonderful. God is real. And the church has the calling of living like Christ. The average pagan will never read the Bible, but they will read you. So what are they going to see? Well, Paul's advice is, hey, live worthily of the calling that you've received in Jesus Christ. That's what this chapter is all about. We'll finish chapter five. Let's see. Jack's going to do next week. No, I've got one more week. I've got verses 14 to 32, so I've got one more week. Next week we'll finish this chapter, and then Jack will do chapter five, and we'll come back. I fudged a little bit. I get to do chapter six, which is a great chapter. They all are. Anyway, thanks for letting me go on and on. I never thought I'd like teaching Sunday school class, but people stopped asking me to preach. And I thought I'd be miserable, but it's great because we've known each other now for nearly 20 years, some longer than that, a lot longer. But thank you for putting up with me and letting me have an opportunity to share with you. Father, thank you that you gave us your word. It is your word. It's not ours. We can't change it. We can't amend it or edit it. We just receive it, and God help us to live worthy of the calling you've given to us. In Jesus' name, amen.