Who is Called to be a Minister?

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I asked Aaron if I could say a few words before he preaches this morning.
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You all know, hopefully you know, that next week will be his final Sunday.
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We'll be doing some, we'll be doing a dinner after church and doing a little celebration of the ministry that he's had here as our music leader, as one of my closest friends and ministry partners working together here in the ministry at Sovereign Grace.
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And I appreciate the fact that he has been and had such a desire to preach.
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And so this morning I simply wanted to welcome him to come and take the pulpit and lead us in a message which I have already read.
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I always appreciate us, we talk about our notes together and for the last year and a half I guess it's been, have just spent a lot of time in prayer and study together.
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And I really look forward to you hearing what he has to preach this morning.
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I think it's very, very timely for our church.
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And so I invite him to come now and bring the word.
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Thank you, Keith.
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Well, good morning.
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I'm very grateful to our pastor and to the elders for the opportunity to stand again and preach to you from God's word this morning.
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If you will take out your Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter 4.
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We'll read this morning from verses 11 through 16.
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Apparently we're having some technical difficulties with the microphone, so I'll try and speak loud enough that you all hear me.
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If you will stand and join me as we read God's word this morning.
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Ephesians chapter 4 verses 11 through 16.
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And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of 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 about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.
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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.
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You can be seated.
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Join me as we go to the Lord in prayer.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to study your word.
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Father, we thank you for the freedom we have to join together freely and openly and to sing songs of worship, to take communion together, to preach from your word.
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To have fellowship with one another, God, we're so grateful because we know so many in the world don't have that freedom.
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God, we thank you for that.
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May we never take it for granted.
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May we always keep our brothers and sisters in persecution in our prayers.
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God, we thank you this morning for your word, because it is powerful.
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God, your word is living and active.
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Lord, it's, as your word says, sharper than any two edged sword.
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Father, it pierces our souls.
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God, we just ask that this morning you would use your word to convict our hearts.
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Father, for those who are believers, that you would use the word to take any lack of conformity to your word and your will and cut it away from us, that we would grow to be more like you, more like Christ.
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And God, for those who aren't in Christ, we ask that your word would be convicting, that it would lead them to repentance and faith in Christ.
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Father, I have no confidence in my abilities, but only in the power and strength of your word.
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So I ask that you would use your word to build up your people today and that you would be glorified in all that we do in Christ's name.
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We live in a world today that suffers greatly from a problem of busyness.
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I'm not sure if it's just me or maybe it's all of you as well, but it seems like we are the busiest people that have ever lived on the face of this earth.
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We're constantly running from one thing to the next.
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Often we meet ourselves coming and going.
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It seems we don't know what the last thing we just finished was doing because we're so hurried, rushing off to the next thing.
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And in the pursuit of productivity and efficiency, we've gone from measuring time and years to months to days and weeks to hours and minutes.
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And I'm sure pretty soon they'll tell us how we can get things done in only seconds.
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And it seems that we're so busy working feverishly on all of these things.
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But a lot of times at the end of the day, we sit down and it feels like we've accomplished nothing.
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I think we've all succumbed to the power of busyness.
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And because we're so busy and so preoccupied with all of these things that take up our time, we've begun to live in a way that is disconnected from the rest of the world.
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We're so tied up in what we have going on and the things we're trying to accomplish that we barely have time to see the people around us.
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Compounding that issue is the strong preference and drive in our society for individualism.
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We live in a society and a culture that values individualism.
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We don't see ourselves as part of a larger whole and we don't see others as part of that larger whole either.
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In many ways, I think we see ourselves as the main character in our story.
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And then we see other people as accessories to our story or, worse yet, maybe just a means to accomplishing something in our story.
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And while I'm certainly someone who believes in personal responsibility and individualism, it's possible to take that to its extreme, to isolationism, to where we become isolated from those around us and the rest of the world.
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There used to be a strong sense of community that existed in our nation, at least.
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But it seems to have gone away in large part because we've moved our communication digital.
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Now everything is, you know, 140 characters or a Facebook status, a short text message.
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We've cut out face to face communication in a lot of ways.
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There's actually an entire generation of people living today that because of the way they were raised and the technology they had, they really lacked the skills to carry on a conversation face to face.
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And that's a sad reality.
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And so it seems that because of all these things today, we live around people more than we live with people.
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We were constantly surrounded by people, but we seem to be alone in a crowd.
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And unfortunately, this isn't just something that's happened outside of the church.
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The same breakdown seems to have happened inside the church as well, in large part.
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You see, we often attend church with people for years and really never get to know them.
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Our lives don't really cross paths except for maybe once on Sunday for a few hours.
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And so, again, another product of our all too busy lives.
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But the church is a gift from God.
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It's a gift from God that is good and one that's for our benefit.
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Now, I'm well aware that the church has taken a beating in the court of public opinion in recent years.
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It's not very popular among the wider society, but I would contend with you that that's not because God didn't give us a good gift.
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It's because we've taken the church from what God gave it to us to be and we've turned it into something else.
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We've abandoned what he created it to be.
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And so the church was intended by God to be a place that we lived in community with one another, serving one another and loving one another.
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And the reality is this.
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You can't one another yourself.
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In order to fulfill the commands of scripture regarding the church and how we're to live, we have to be involved with one another in community.
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It's not a place for isolation.
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And so as we look in this passage today that addresses the church and its function, I want us to try and catch a glimpse of the good gift that God gave us in the church.
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And I want us to see how each of us, each of you plays a vital role in fulfilling that call that God has placed upon us to be in the church.
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I want us to see, as you can see, I entitled the message, who is called to be a minister? I want to answer that question.
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Who is called to the work of the ministry? I think from the from the text, you can probably already tell where I'm going to go with that.
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But I want also for you to see how each of us fulfilling that call is essential to the growth of the church.
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And so let's look into the text and we'll go verse by verse and give an exposition.
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And then I'll talk about some application points at the end.
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So we'll begin in verse 11.
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And it says, And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.
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And so, first of all, the first question that comes to mind here, obviously, is who is he? Who is the he that gave these gifts to the church? Well, it's clearly Jesus Christ.
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We didn't start.
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But if we look back at verse seven, it says that but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
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And then he goes on in verses eight to eight through 10 to give the context of Christ's ascension as the time when these gifts were giving.
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Having defeated death through his death, burial and resurrection, Christ emerged victorious and showered gifts upon his people.
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And he did that in giving us these gifted men to form the foundation of the church.
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These gifts were and are still foundational to the formation of the church.
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Christ didn't leave us to wonder how the church should be formed, what the format should be.
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He actually gave us very specific gifts and instruction on how we were to do this together.
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It was his good and perfect will to establish the church under the ministry of men who were called and gifted for a specific role.
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Now, as we look at this list of offices of the church of gifted men in the church, there's been some significant debate over this section.
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You see five different titles listed in the debate centers around whether there are four or five different titles here.
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So we'll just go through one by one.
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First were the apostles.
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Those were those men who were both eyewitnesses of Christ after he arose and who were specially called to the office by Jesus himself.
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These men were, for all intents and purposes, the first and the foundational men to take the gospel.
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They saw Jesus Christ after he rose from the dead, and they were commissioned for a very specific ministry.
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Second were the prophets.
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These were men who were called by God to receive and in turn proclaim God's truth.
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And so these were men who wrote much of the word of God that we have today.
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Now, when we hear the word prophet, a lot of times we think of prophecy in the terms of foretelling the future.
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But the office of a prophet was also as much, if not more, focused on foretelling, proclaiming God's truth and God's word.
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And so we would agree in this church that both of these offices have ceased in this day.
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They were foundational to the beginning of the church.
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But as God has completed his revelation through his word and through Jesus Christ, we have no need of new revelation.
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And Ephesians 2, 19 to 22, I won't go to that, but if you if you want to look at that later, you can write that down, addresses that and talks about the foundational, formative role that the apostles and prophets played.
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And so the third office is the evangelists, and these are those men who were sent to proclaim God's name where it had not been previously named.
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These were men in the New Testament like Stephen and Philip who took the gospel to places where it hadn't been preached before.
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And in that understanding of that role, we would still see today that there are missionaries who take the gospel to lands around the world where God's name has not been known yet.
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And so then we come to the fourth and fifth titles here.
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And this is where the center of the debate is as to what this is.
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It says that he gave shepherds and teachers and in some translations, it'll say pastors and teachers.
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But really, it's shepherds and teachers is more accurate.
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It would appear from the original Greek text, the difference in construction of these two versus all the rest, that really he's not listing two additional offices.
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It's one hyphenated office.
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So we've heard the term pastor teacher, and this is where we would get that from.
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He gave us shepherd teachers.
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This is what we have and we're familiar with today in our churches.
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This is what we're blessed to have in our church today, a man who fulfills the dual role of shepherding the flock by special care while also teaching from God's word so that we might grow in the faith.
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And so I would contend with you that there are four offices there, and I would say that those were clearly given by Christ.
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But here's the question and here's where the text moves on from here.
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What was the purpose of these offices? What were those men to do? And the question is, are those men the only who are intended to fulfill the work of ministry? I would tell you that the answer of that is, of course, not.
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So as we move on in the text in verse 12, it says he tells us the offices he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelist, the shepherds and teachers for what purpose? To equip the saints for the work of ministry.
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So let's talk about this word equip and what it means.
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This is the only time in the entire New Testament that this specific word is used.
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So that lends a little bit of difficulty in understanding what the meaning is.
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What you would normally think of as equip, I don't think is really the idea behind this word fully.
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There are what are called cognates, words that sound just like this, but have a little bit different ending throughout the New Testament that help us understand the meaning of this word.
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The idea behind this word is twofold.
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It could mean to repair something back to its original state.
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So something's broken.
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We're going to repair it.
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Or another idea that's really similar.
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They would use this word to talk about resetting a limb that was dislocated.
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So a dislocated shoulder, putting it back into place, making it work properly again.
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And so I think that that idea of resetting a disjointed limb has a significant purpose and helps us understand because as we see later into the passage, he's going to talk about joints in the church and how we're all joined together.
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But understand that equipping the saints could mean putting back that which was dislocated.
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And think about what happens when a new believer comes into the church.
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They've heard the gospel and they responded in faith and we're grateful for that.
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But they come into the church and what do they bring with them? Their entire life of bad decisions and sinfulness and all of the things that come with that.
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And so when we accept Christ, we don't instantly go from being a broken sinner who's been at at war with God for all of our lives to instantly being perfect.
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So they bring along all of those things that need to be put back into place, need to be repaired.
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And so it talks about the the offices of the ministry.
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That's their job to equip the saints, to prepare them, to put them back right, set them right so that they can do the work of ministry.
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Verses 11 and 12, as they're constructed in the original language, are actually very difficult to render accurately.
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There's a lot of there's multiple phrases held together by these prepositions and the flow of it has been greatly debated throughout church history.
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There's at least four theories on how these clauses fit together.
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And I won't go through each of them today because I don't think that would be helpful to us.
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I want to tell you that I believe strongly the best understanding of both the Greek text originally and also the wider context of this chapter, which is talking about unity among the body and among the individual members in the role that we play together, helps us see what is actually intended here.
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I would argue to you that the first clause, the clause that tells us what offices were given to the church, relates to the second clause that tells us what they were given to do.
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And then the third clause tells us what those people in turn were given to do.
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And so a more literal translation of this text from the Greek that would be shaped by this understanding might read this way.
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Hear this.
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And he gave both the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists and the shepherd teachers with a view towards equipping or perfecting the saints for the work or dispensation of ministry in order that they might build up the body of Christ.
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And so when we understand it this way, we see that he's not saying he gave these offices so that they could equip the saints so that those offices could also do the work of ministry so that those offices could also work towards unity in the church.
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There's a succession or a relation between these things.
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And so, again, we're trying to answer the question of who is called to the work of the ministry.
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I would argue with you that the saints are called to the work of the ministry.
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Who are the saints? That's not some special class of Christians or believers who've been elevated by some denomination to some special status.
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When the saints is used in the New Testament, it's referring to every one of us who are believers in Christ Jesus.
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So every single one of you, whether young or old, married or single, who believes in Jesus Christ and who's been saved by faith, is a saint.
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And therefore, you have a part, a role in doing the work of the ministry.
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So think of it this way.
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God gave us officers of the church so that they could equip the saints.
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So in turn, those saints could do the work of ministry, which will in turn build up the body of Christ.
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There's a good chain here of how things are supposed to work.
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The people who are called to a specific office in the church are called to prepare and equip the saints for ministry, not to do it for them.
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I would.
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So as I've already said, each of these saints has a job to do.
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The work of the ministry is not something that we can farm out to others.
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It's not something that can be bought off, although there's great value and biblical basis for men in the ministry being paid to do the work they're doing, the work that they're called to.
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That doesn't mean that simply you can come as a church member and pay your tithe or offering and your duty is fulfilled there because you've hired someone to do the job for you.
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That's not how it works.
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But in the modern church, in large part, we've allowed this consumer mindset to creep in where we think that we come, we pay our bill, we sit, we're entertained or whatever the case may be, we have someone to hear our concerns if we need and then we go and that's it.
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That's all we have to do.
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But that was never the intention of Christ when he formed the church.
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And as long as that's your mindset, you'll never actually partake of the benefits of the church as Christ intended them to be.
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So it's clear that God's design for the church was for the minister to equip and perfect the saints.
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And then we have the question, what are the saints to do? Well, we see in verse 12, he says that he's to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
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So the work of ministry that's performed by the saints has as its goal building up the body together.
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If we look back to chapter two of Ephesians in verses eight through ten, you don't have to turn, I'll read it to you.
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But in chapter two, verses eight through ten, it says, for by grace, you have been saved through faith.
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And this is not your own doing.
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It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
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And so Ephesians tells us earlier in chapter two that we were saved by Christ with a purpose, with a reason in mind.
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There was something already laid out for us to do.
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Christ did not die simply so that we could pray a prayer, avoid hell and go on living our lives the same way we've always lived them.
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It's just simply not the truth.
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A call to believe in Christ and to be a disciple of Christ is a call to die to ourselves and our selfish desires and a call to follow him and serve him with our whole lives.
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And so there's no room in the church for people to sit on the sidelines.
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So you might ask, looking at this passage, what is the work of the ministry? Well, let me offer you a definition.
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I've heard someone say the work of ministry is ministry work, but that wasn't very helpful to me.
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So I want to try and give you a little more than that.
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I would define ministry work of the ministry is this ministry is the faithful service of God's people rendered unto God and others on his behalf to bring him glory, build up his church and reach out to his world.
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That in a nutshell is the work of ministry.
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Now, it's clear from that definition that there are many, many things that could fall under that title.
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Sometimes when we think of the word ministry, we have this like very narrowly defined scope or idea of what that means.
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Like we think ministry only means preaching or teaching or maybe praying for someone who's sick or certain things.
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The work of the ministry is vast and broad.
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If you wanted to sit with our pastor for a few hours, I'm sure he could tell you story after story of things you might have never imagined that a pastor would be called to do and to help him.
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But the work of ministry is broad.
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It's not just these few things.
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There are many things that need to be done.
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It comes down to this, though.
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It's about serving others.
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The Greek word that's often translated as ministry in the New Testament basically means service.
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And so I want you to understand to minister to someone simply means to serve them in some way.
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Acts chapter six is a good example of this.
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Our pastor preached on this a few weeks back now, maybe a couple of months now.
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But this is where there was a need for serving tables.
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There was a complaint among the church because some of the widows weren't being served properly.
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And they said, should we stop the ministry of the word so that we can serve tables? Does that make sense? Should the pastor stop his study in his primary focus to preach and teach from God's word so that he can handle these things? No, by no means.
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There are many people in the church.
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God has filled the body with people specially gifted to handle each of these things.
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And so what do they do in that chapter six? They call deacons.
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But understand this, just because you're not a deacon doesn't mean you're not called to serve.
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You don't need the title of the office to do the job.
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Titus chapter three in verse eight says the saying is trustworthy.
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And I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.
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These things are excellent and profitable for people.
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So as a believer in Christ, we should be marked by good works.
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It's something that we should be devoted to, it says.
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And it says that these things are excellent and profitable for people, right? By engaging ourselves in the ministry, in the work of ministry among the church, we benefit one another.
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We help each other.
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There's a reason God brought us together in community with each other.
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There's a reason we live differently than those outside the world who are only concerned with themselves and what they can get for themselves and what they can do for themselves.
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There should be a marked difference inside the church among believers.
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We're not like the world.
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We're not here just to serve our own self-interest.
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Titus chapter three, verse 14, just a few verses later, says, let our people learn to devote themselves to good works so as to help cases of urgent need and not be unfruitful.
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The church should never be described as a place that's unfruitful.
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Being a part of a church should not be unfruitful.
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That doesn't mean that someone else should always be serving you.
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It means that you should be actively involved in serving others.
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And in turn, when you have a need, you will be served as well.
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We all work together towards that end.
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But clearly, the Bible tells us over and over, just two verses in Titus, that we should be devoted to good works, devoted to the work of the ministry.
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Now, this could mean many things.
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It could mean visiting the sick and the shut in or providing financial assistance to someone who's in need.
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It could be sharing the gospel with the lost around us.
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It could be any number of other things.
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But what it doesn't mean is that anyone is exempt from this command.
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So again, the answer to the question of who is called to the ministry, every single one of you, if you proclaim to be a believer in Christ and to be saved, you are called to the work of ministry.
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First Peter, chapter four, verse 10, says, As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's very grace.
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So God's good and perfect design for the church not only brings him glory, it's for our good.
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It benefits those of us who are in it.
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He has gifted us specially.
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There's no one else in this church who is exactly like you.
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We each, when we're saved by grace, are given a gift and a special gifting that we can use to minister to others.
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It's important that we use that.
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So when we work together as believers, the whole church is built up.
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And then the passage goes on in verses 13 to 15 and shows us kind of what we can look forward to.
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What is the outcome of these things? It says in verse 13, Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of 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 about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.
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Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ.
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So the entire chapter of Ephesians 4 speaks of unity from the beginning, which we didn't cover today on through into this all the way to the end of the chapter.
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It talks about unity as a goal for believers.
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It's something that we're striving towards, although we realize that we won't actually achieve what it's talking about here until Christ returns, because even though we may achieve unity in the body, there's always going to be new believers coming in.
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Right.
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So there's always this need for striving towards unity.
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We're not going to be we're not going to be arrived until Christ returns.
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But that doesn't mean we don't continue to strive towards that end.
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But we can only achieve that when each believer, each part of the body uses the gifts God has given them in service of the church.
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There's no unity in this small class of people doing the work of ministry, and then this large group of people watching them do it.
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That's not unity.
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Godly unity is also not achieved by lowering our standards.
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It doesn't mean that we go to the least common denominator.
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Oh, we have a disagreement about this.
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We'll just shut that aside.
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Can we just focus on this thing? Like there is a God.
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We're going to start there.
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Well, that's not unity of the faith.
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When he talks about the unity of the faith, he's talking about the fate that was once for all delivered to the saints.
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It's Orthodox Christianity in its completeness.
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And so we need to strive towards that end.
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Always.
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This is why we focus on doctrine, because it's so important.
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Because it's important that we don't just say, well, I see it this way and you see it this way, let's just ignore it.
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There will be differences among us, but we should all individually and corporately be striving to know God's word better and to be more conformed to the mind of Christ.
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Similarly, he calls us to the unity of the knowledge of the son of God.
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And again, this is something we stand looking forward to that day when this is fully and finally completed in us.
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But we strive to know Christ fully through faithful study and through the teaching of the word.
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It's interesting that he uses the metaphor of manhood to explain how the church grows, because we're growing from children, from baby believers and to men and to mature men and really more specifically as the body of Christ together.
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We're growing from a child growing up into a man because as a church, we're bound together.
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Children are wonderful.
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We love them here in our church.
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I love seeing kids in the sanctuary worshiping with their families.
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We're grateful for how God has blessed this church with children over and over again and grown us the old fashioned way, as they say.
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But there's something about children that as a metaphor shows us they have some deficiencies, right? There's a vast difference between a child and a man.
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Children are fooled easily.
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They don't have the skills of discernment that grew over time.
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They haven't become wise in the ways of the world.
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It doesn't take a great magician to pull a sleight of hand on a two year old, right? You can go, hey, look that way.
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Oh, look, a quarter.
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Whatever the case may be, kids are easy to fool in some regards.
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In some regards, they're surprisingly not easy to fool, but they are easy to misdirect.
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And likewise, those people who are childish in the faith, who haven't grown up in the faith, fall prey to the schemes of deceitful men.
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When we're immature in our belief, every wave that comes knocks us off of our feet.
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And every wind of doctrine that blows through knocks us down again.
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We're like blowing in the wind like sea oats back and forth, tossed by the waves, never knowing what we actually believe.
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But there's a very real reason for the church.
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Part of the unity comes through being in the church and being under the teaching of the church and not just the teaching of the pastor, but also where we join together as fellow believers and study God's word together and seek to know it better.
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We grow up through that process and we become more convinced of what God's word says and less convinced of how we feel about it.
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And we know him more perfectly.
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We're able to stand.
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And that's in great way the measure of a man that regardless of what wind blows, what's popular inside or outside of the church today, he stands upon what he knows from God's word.
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It's often said when talking about banks that the best way to know a counterfeit bill is to be intimately familiar with the real thing.
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And that's likewise in the church, there is some value to studying false teaching at a point to know what's being taught outside of the church and in different places.
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But the main way that we know something is wrong is by intimately knowing God's word, because the more you study and the more you know, you begin to be able to hear things and instinctively go, wait, that's not what the word says.
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Because we are frail as humans and we're so easily deceived if we're going to be disciple makers who are about doing the work of ministry, we have to grow up.
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John MacArthur pointed out in a sermon I listened to recently that babies don't have babies.
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Adults have babies, and so as believers, if we're to make disciples and fulfill the Great Commission and teach all that has been commanded.
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We have to be mature ourselves.
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It doesn't mean that you need to wait until some magical time to begin witnessing and sharing the gospel of the lost, but you certainly should be working towards growth and maturity in the faith.
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He moves on to talk about how also as we grow, we gain the ability to speak the truth and love.
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Now, I talked about children earlier.
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Children are funny because they have a tendency to say the truth with no filter.
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This usually gives us a great laugh when it happens.
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I'm the father of a vocal boy who sometimes says exactly what he's thinking, and that can be scary at times.
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But children don't filter much out.
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If you want to hear the truth, ask a four or five year old something.
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They're not going to soften the edges for you.
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They're going to give it to you just like it is.
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So although they share the truth, they don't understand fully what it means to speak the truth in love.
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That's the realm of a mature person who can be honest with someone while confronting something serious, an issue of sin or an issue of doctrine or difficulty, but doing it out of a spirit of love or mature person who doesn't beat people with the gospel, but who lovingly pleads for their salvation because he loves them and cares for their soul.
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That's a sign of maturity and something that we grow into the ability to do as mature believers.
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We must learn to speak the truth in love, encouraging and exhorting our fellow believers to grow to maturity and those who are not in Christ to repent and believe in him for salvation.
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Now, I doubt that there's any other word or concept in the English language that has suffered a beating like the word love.
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And this phrase is often misunderstood because we take love to mean whatever we want it to mean in a lot of ways.
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In the world today, many believe that love is a feeling or an emotion.
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It's something that we can fall into or fall out of.
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But I would contend with you, that's not love.
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That's not God's definition of love.
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And he gets to define the terms.
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Love is like truth in that it comes from God.
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He defines what true love is.
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Love is an action that brings someone their greatest good.
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And a person's greatest good is always going to be found in obedience to God's will.
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Always.
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So no matter what we might think about the situation in our current social structures, love tells us that someone's greatest good will always be found in obedience to God.
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It's not loving for me not to tell you that you're running headlong into destruction.
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That's actually a form of hate.
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So love can be defined as actions that work to achieve the greatest good for others by bringing them into alignment with God's intended order and purpose for the world.
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Because if I love you, I tell you things that are hard truths.
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Not because I want to offend you or hurt your feelings, but because I'm more concerned with God's glory and your good than your approval.
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And that's a difficult place to be for everyone.
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But as believers and as mature believers, that's exactly what we're called to do.
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We're called to confront fellow believers within the church who are struggling with sin and lovingly work to restore them.
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We're called to confront the world around us that is running headlong into their sin, loving it all the way to death and eternal punishment in hell.
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And show them that there is a God and that there is a gospel that they must believe for salvation.
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Truth and love are inseparable in this way.
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Imagine that there was a doctor and a patient goes for a checkup, the doctor takes some normal scans and checks and he finds within the scans that there's some terminal disease this patient has and they have only months to live.
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Here's what the world thinks about love.
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This is what they try and tell us is love.
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The doctor goes into the patient.
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He says, your checkup went great.
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Everything's good.
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See you in a year.
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Right, because it would be offensive to tell that person about his true condition, that he's facing death.
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Does that sound like love to you? Would that patient appreciate that doctor withholding the truth from him? We would call that doctor a lot of things, but certainly as soon as his malpractice was discovered, that patient would hate that man.
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And so love compels us to speak the truth, even when it's difficult as part of the body of believers, we're not alone in this pursuit of truth and love.
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Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25 say, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
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This is a great blessing to us as believers.
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And one that we shouldn't overlook.
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The church is a great benefit to our soul.
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We can and should be encouraging one another and stirring each other up to love and the good works.
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The world outside is a harsh place.
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And it's getting worse by the moment, it seems.
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There's no rest for you in the world.
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But in the church, when we come together as a body of believers who love one another and who desire to encourage and build each other up, that's a restful place for me.
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I've been so blessed to be a part of this congregation and to know that whatever's happening out there and no matter how bad it gets, I have brothers and sisters in Christ I can come to and who care and who love me and who hold me up when I'm too weak to stand on my own.
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And that's a benefit that every one of us as believers in Christ needs.
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So when we work together toward this end and we learn to speak the truth in love and we learn to grow up as mature believers, we find the results in unity and growth.
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And there in verses the end of verse 15 and end of verse 16, it says that we are to grow up in every way and to 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.
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And so this is the result of our growth.
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When we work together, when we all are involved in the ministry, we grow up not apart from Christ, but we grow into Christ.
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We grow to be more like Christ.
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We know that he's the head of the body.
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And when the body is functioning properly, it does everything the head wills it to do perfectly.
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That is our goal.
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Christ was our example as he gave perfect obedience to the Father.
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That is our desire to be perfectly obedient to the will of God, the Father.
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And we do that as we grow in maturity together and we grow in unity together.
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He uses the metaphor here of joints.
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I alluded to it earlier when we talked about what it meant to equip.
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He talks about the joints that hold us together.
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Joints in the body are the places where our bones and our muscles come together.
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Without them, we would be a pile of parts that wouldn't be very useful.
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Imagine if you had an arm but no shoulder to attach it to.
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What good would it do you? Think also about people who suffer from joint pain and various maladies that cause our joints to be painful and not to function very well.
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Our bodies without our joints, when they're not working properly, are not as useful as they were intended and designed to be.
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We can't do much when our joints aren't working.
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And so the joints within the church are the connections between each of us as believers.
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As we share bonds and we work in the ministry to serve one another, we build up those connections.
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We grow in unity together.
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And each of us, with our unique gifts given by God, join together to become and to serve the body of Christ.
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And it's only in that context that we can truly together achieve maturity.
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There's no lone wolf Christians who can just go it alone.
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We need the body of Christ.
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We need to be a part of this body together.
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It says that when all the parts are working properly, the body builds itself up in love.
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As believers and as a body of Christ, as a local body of Christ and as the body of Christ corporately, we should be characterized by a deep and abiding love for the brothers, a love that desires their good and God's glory.
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Make no mistake, though, we know that our growth is only actually caused by Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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It's not that we do these things in and of ourselves.
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I'm not telling you just to work harder.
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I'm telling you that as you abide in Christ and as the Holy Spirit has given you ability and gifting to serve him, we should hope to be described as Tabitha was in Acts chapter nine, verse thirty six.
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It said there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which translated means Dorcas.
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She was full of good works and the acts of charity.
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How great would it be when someone went to talk about you to describe you to someone else? They said there was a brother in the church, Sovereign Grace Family Church, and he was full of good works and acts of charity.
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That should be the testimony about each of us.
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They shouldn't say, oh, well, there's this guy went to church with.
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He just came to church.
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That's not what we're striving for.
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So having taken time to gain an understanding of this passage, how do we apply it to our lives? What are we to do with this? I've got three points of application I want to make.
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First is this.
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Every follower of Christ must have an active role in ministering to others.
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And I think I've already said this very clearly, but I want you to know every each and every one of you has been gifted to serve the body of Christ.
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And if you're doing that already, that's great, outstanding.
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If you're not, you need to get involved today.
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The work of the ministry is not given only to those who fill the pastorate or who are teachers.
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It's for every single believer.
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So ask yourself now, how am I involved in the work of the ministry in my local church? Right.
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God has given us the blessing of church, the church universal.
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He's also blessed us with the local church, which is so vitally important for us to be a part of and to commit our lives to to walk in fellowship with one another and serve one another.
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The gifts given to you by God are not only for your benefit, but they're for the good of others and for God's glory.
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Don't be guilty of letting that gift go to waste.
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If you are someone who's involved in the ministry of the church, I want you to be encouraged and I want you to know that even though your work might seem small at times or insignificant, that there's nothing that happens here that's insignificant, that even the smallest acts, the things that might go unnoticed, that we don't stop to thank people for every week are a big deal.
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In First Timothy, chapter five, it tells us that talks about how some sins are conspicuous.
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We can see them very clearly and other sins are hidden for a while, but revealed, leading to judgment.
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But then also it talks about how some good works are conspicuous, some things we can see very clearly, but others that are not will not remain hidden.
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Nothing escapes God's view.
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Every act you do.
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Every work of ministry, every good work.
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You will receive more than a just reward for.
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And we don't do it to earn a special reward, we do it because we've been saved by grace.
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And God has enabled us to do it.
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But even those things you might think are small, don't think that everything that happens in this church, every small act of ministry to this church is vitally important and builds up the body.
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If you're not currently involved in the work of the ministry here, if you merely come on Sunday to sit and listen, repent.
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And ask God to show you your gifting and how you can use it to build up the body of Christ.
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And I don't just say that to beat up on you.
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I'm telling you that you're missing out.
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You're missing out on God's good and glorious design for the church.
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You're stunting your growth and you're stunting the growth of others.
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So get involved.
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It is for your good.
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Colossians 3, 23 and 24 says, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.
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You are serving the Lord Christ.
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And we talk about this verse a lot of times as to the things we do outside of the church because we should do everything as unto God.
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We as believers effort and endeavor to glorify God in all of our actions, whether we're firemen or policemen or you cook in a kitchen or you raise children at home, no matter what you do, do it all to the glory of God.
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But certainly every act, every work of ministry in the church, do it to the glory of God.
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Do it the best you can do it and know that you'll receive your reward from him.
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The ministry work is not confined to the walls of the church.
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The gospel and sharing the truth and love must be taken outside of the walls of the church to our neighbors, our co-workers and our communities.
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And one of the ways we do this is through our work, through our secular work.
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Not everyone is called to the full time vocational ministry of preaching and teaching in the church, but everyone is called to full time ministry.
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Every believer is called to full time ministry.
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If you don't believe that, tell me which day in the week you shouldn't be involved in the work of ministry.
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We're all called to full time ministry when Christ, when God saves us and sets us apart.
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He does it so that we can in turn share the gospel and love others and be the salt and light of the earth.
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We're all to be involved in the ministry.
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Number two, every follower of Christ will be growing in relation to Christ and to others.
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I want you to know that the perfecting of the saints is and has been the redemptive purpose of God from eternity past.
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This is not something that came up as a recent innovation, not only so that he could set apart, but also sanctify a people for himself and for his glory.
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And that means that as believers, we cannot continue to live as we once did.
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Those of us who are in Christ are a new creation, yet we still war against the flesh.
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Right.
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We all struggle continuously.
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But the true disciple and believer of Christ is marked by growth and they're marked by putting to death daily the flesh and the sins that accompany it and learning to walk in the spirit.
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And that leads us not only to growth towards God, but also growth towards others.
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As our sinful flesh is put to death, we're not so abrasive and offensive and hateful toward others.
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We let the love of Christ show through us to those around us and we build them up and we draw them in those who aren't part of the body.
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Galatians 6, 2 tells us that we should bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.
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If you're a believer in Christ, you shouldn't be going in alone and struggling by yourself.
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We're here to bear your burdens with you.
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James 5, 16 says, likewise, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.
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That's one that we ignore a lot, but God didn't intend for us to struggle with secret hidden sins apart from other believers.
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We're here in community together.
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This is the safest place you're going to find.
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To be truly who you are, to expose sin so that God could heal you from that and grow you through that experience so that you can become more conformed to the image of Christ.
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God and his infinite goodness and wisdom gave us one another so that we could serve, encourage and support one another.
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Consider how important this is to Christ.
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He died on the cross that we might be saved so that the church could be formed.
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This was not like an afterthought.
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Oh, we'll make the church now that we've saved this people for ourselves.
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So how important was Christ was this to Christ? The church, the body of Christ were described as the bride of Christ.
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How important is this to him? Shouldn't it also be very important to us? I think it absolutely should.
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Third and final point, every follower of Christ will be characterized by love and truth.
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Love for the brothers is one of the repeated tests of salvation offered in first John.
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And as we grow in our walk with Christ, we develop a love for one another that drives us to bring the truth to one another, that drives us to love one another, that drives us to bear one another's burdens, that drives us to confess our sins to one another.
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Believers love other believers.
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The Holy Spirit that is within us gives witness to other believers and we're drawn together because we have a common bond around Christ.
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A mature believer doesn't sit idly by and watch a brother or sister walk into sin and suffering and the pain it brings.
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Instead, we should follow the words of James 5, 19 and 20.
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My brothers, if anyone among you wonders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
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There's a very real, tangible benefit, mutual benefit to living in community together as the church.
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We were given to one another to share truth and love for the mutual edification of the body of Christ.
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And this is not only the ministry of the pastors, those who are hired, those who do this as a vocation.
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This is the ministry of every single believer.
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Also, likewise, a mature believer will not ignore the world full of lost sinners who are destined to perish apart from the gospel.
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We will not walk around with our eyes to the ground and pretend like there isn't a world of people who need to hear the gospel around us and around the world.
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We need to boldly proclaim the gospel full of truth and love so that God might be glorified as he draws his elect to himself.
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So the truth is this, and I've already said it, but every single believer who has been called to salvation has also been called to full time ministry.
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We're not all preachers and teachers, but each of us has a gift given by God for the benefit of the body of Christ.
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Don't be satisfied to sit on the sidelines.
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And like I said before, you're stunning your growth and you're stunning the growth of the body.
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I have a quote from a man named R.
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Paul Stevens, who wrote a book about the church.
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He says throughout most of its history, the church has been composed of two categories of people, those who are ministers and those who are not.
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Ministry has been defined as what the pastor does, not in terms of being servants of God and God's purposes in the marketplace, the church, the home, the school or professional office.
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Going into the Lord's work means becoming a pastor or a missionary, not being co-workers with God in his creating, sustaining, redeeming and consummating work both in the church and in the world.
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It shouldn't be that way.
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The dichotomy, the false dichotomy between clergy and laity in terms of who is to do the work of ministry needs to go away.
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We need to understand that God has blessed us and given us those men who are called to full time vocational teaching and preaching and shepherding, and they are a great benefit to us.
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But he has also given each one of us gifting so that we can serve the body together.
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I would urge you to fulfill that calling faithfully for your good, for the good of the body of Christ, for the good of the gospel and for the glory of God.
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Let's pray.
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Father, again, we thank you, Lord, for your word.
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God, we thank you for the gift of the church and that you divinely appointed men to found and form and lead the church.
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But that you also gave each of us a gift so that we could serve one another and serve the church.
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Father, we pray that you would show each believer in this room where that gifting lies within them and what it is that they can do to be involved in the work of ministry.
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And God, we pray that through that you would build up this body of believers to maturity, to unity of the faith and unity of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
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That you would help us to speak the truth in love, that you would help us to grow into the fullness of Jesus Christ.
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God, we ask that as we go from this place, that we would remember that the church is not this building, but it is these people.
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And that we would exist to serve you and glorify your name among all we come in to pass with in Christ's name, we'll sing a closing song, and if you have a need for prayer, please come forward.