Christ's Provision and Preservation of His Church - Brandon Scalf

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Ephesians 4:11

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All right, well, grab your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians chapter four. Ephesians chapter four, and we are going to be continuing on in our series through Paul's letter to the churches in Ephesus.
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Ephesians chapter four, and today we will be primarily looking at verses 11 through 13.
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And so, if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and fallible and all sufficient word.
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And we are going to read Ephesians chapter four verses one through 13 so that we can get kind of oriented or reoriented with Paul's entire argument.
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And today we are going to be looking specifically at, and this is the title of today's message, building
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Christ's church. So again, look with me at verse one.
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Therefore, I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being diligent to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
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There is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one
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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
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But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.
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Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.
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Now this expression, he ascended, what does it mean? Except that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth.
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He who descended is himself also he who ascended far above all the heavens so that he might fill all things.
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And he himself gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of faith and of the full knowledge of the
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Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen? Amen, please have a seat and start fixing your eyes on our text.
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As we have journeyed through the book of Ephesians, Paul's letter to the church members in Ephesus, we have really been acquainted with how
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God is and has created his church. If you remember in chapter one, we were oriented to the reality that in order for a church to exist,
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Christians have to first exist. And so verses three through 14 of chapter one, we saw this incredible testimony of what
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God has done behind the scenes to procure a Christian people for himself.
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He has to take, and this is what chapter two gets into, dead people spiritually, and he has to revive them and cause them to be born again so that they might see and love
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Jesus because on their own, they would not do such a thing.
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But as chapter one tells us, this didn't just happen in space and time, this was the plan of God in eternity past, and it's going to be fulfilled and is being filled now, and it will be consummated in glorification in future eternity.
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Not only has he taken dead sinners and caused them to be born again, having chose them and hunted them down for salvation, but he has also taken two people groups, namely the
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Jewish people and everyone else, the Gentiles. And though they were separated at one point in history, and though God showed his favor to a particular group, now in the church age, he deals with both of us, and he deals with both of us as one new man.
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We have not become Jewish people, and Jewish people have not become essentially pagans or Gentiles, no, no, no.
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There is one new man underneath the headship of the Lord and our
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Savior, Jesus Christ the righteous, and that is called the church.
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And Paul has prayed for the church, he's taught about the church, but now as we have gotten into chapter four, he is telling us how we ought to function as the church and how we protect essentially what was purchased for us, namely unity, unity.
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The Lord Jesus Christ absorbed the wrath of God on our behalf so that we would be individually saved, and in so doing has given us peace with one another and unified us around him and his truth.
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And it's because of this that Paul, the prisoner of the Lord, can tell us that we are to walk worthy of our calling, that we must be humble, that we must be gentle, that we must be patient, that we must bear with one another, why?
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Because we're all sinners in need of the same cross and suffer from the same malady.
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And so to assert yourself as someone who has this all figured out, to assert yourself as someone who is superior than anyone else would be to forfeit your understanding of what the cross even displays in the first place.
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And so Paul lays out some basic beliefs that we must be unified around. And he did that in verses four through six by showing us this creedal statement of sorts, showing both the unity and diversity within the
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Godhead, that there was one God and three persons, and though they are completely unified in their mission, their operations are inseparable, yet they have different roles within the economy of redemption.
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And then that helps him to move into the next part of Ephesians chapter four, which is going to talk about, and what we did already talk about, the gifts that have been given to each of us in the body to serve one another, to minister to one another.
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And what he's trying to get through to all of us is though we are unified under the one
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God and though we are one body in one spirit, we are yet diverse in the way that God has equipped us to love on, to minister to one another.
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So the ground has been set, as it were. And now we are moving into how the church is built, so to speak, or how it moves forward and progresses to maturity.
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Because here's the reality, friends. All of us need help in maturing, whether you think you do or not.
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And God has put things in place, namely gifts, to help us to achieve that, help us to achieve that.
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He's given us, as it's going to tell us, not just individual members with gifts that serve one another, but men gifts, gifts of people who hold particular offices and gifts that are used to help the body achieve that purpose, to be matured in Christ.
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And praise God for it. So as we look at our text, we are going to be reminded of a few things.
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But I think at the outset, it bears somewhat, I think we should repeat it.
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I think we should draw attention to it. Because here's the deal.
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Churches all across Tulsa, Oklahoma, and really all over the nations, are divided on what the church is and what it is to accomplish and who is to do the leading and who is to do the following and who is to do anything, really.
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And they misunderstand what should come from the pulpit or what songs should be sung, or should we have smoke machines and light machines, or should we have a guy on a piano sometimes, a guy standing behind a pulpit with a guitar or not?
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What do we do? How do we do it? And why does it matter? Well, it starts here. It starts with a basic understanding of who
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God has given and why and what the church's mission actually is. The church of the living
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God, friends, hear me on this first, is not a gathering of gifted individuals for the sake of entertainment.
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But it is an assembly of the saints for edification. It's not for show.
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It's for service. It's not to increase, and this is relevant to everyone in this room to some degree because of what's been going on in the news.
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It's not to increase anyone's fame. It's to be faithful first and foremostly to the word of God and what it says about how we are to actually govern and utilize the gifts that he has given us in the body of Christ.
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And so this passage that we're about to dig into reveals the divine design, as it were, for the church's leadership, its labor, and its maturation.
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If you remember last week, we're just on a continuation of what that was about.
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Christ, who has ascended on high and given gifts to his people, now directs the course of the church, and in many ways, the course of history through gifted leaders for the purpose of perfecting the saints and equipping them for gospel ministry.
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What this means for us is if we're paying attention, the church does not rise on human talent or clever programs.
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It rises on the word of God, faithfully preached, proclaimed, taught, and lived out.
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That is it. What Christ has entrusted to his church are you, with the gifts that he has given you, and the apostles, and the prophets, and evangelists, and pastor -teachers who are charged with leading the church into deeper truth, greater maturity, and fuller service.
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And really, this is a text that's going to act, as it were, as a death blow to seeker -sensitive churches that desire to do things their own way.
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The pulpit shouldn't just be governed by the word of God, but the church ought to be governed by the word of God, and this is why
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H .B. Charles had said over the weekend at a conference that he was doing that if you think it's appropriate to preach the
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Bible in the pulpit, but reject it as it pertains to the church, you're a fraud, you're an imposter.
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The word of God governs everything. And so as we look at our text, I want you to first note that Christ has made provision for his church.
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I want you to see Christ's provision for his church.
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Look with me at verse 11. It says, and he himself gave, and then he, of course, continues on.
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Some as apostles and some as prophets and so on and so forth, but he gave, and he gave some.
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The Lord Jesus is in the business of taking care of his church. He's in the business of making sure that it's going to work.
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There is not a chance of this thing failing because it is upheld by the one who holds all things, and he fills all things, and so when he gives, he gives for a reason, and that reason can never be thwarted, changed, or done away with.
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He has sovereignly gifted, and he will sovereignly see to it that those gifts are utilized in ways that, as we will see, build up the church and equip everyone for the work of ministry.
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So the first thing that we need to see here is that this is not just any gifting, it is a sovereign gifting.
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Now, to be sure, every gifting is a sovereign gifting, but this should clue us in, especially to those of us who stand behind a pulpit or respect the pulpit or desire to be in ministry someday, and there are some people here, but also for everybody sitting in the pew.
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It's like buckshot, it goes everywhere. People are not standing, or they should not be standing in this pulpit because they think it's fun, because they want to be heard, because they want their voice to travel far and fast.
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People who are delighted to stand in front of people and to be looked at and admired. No, this is a gifting from God.
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It is a calling from God, and he is the one who places people here, and he is the one who places people in ministry.
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And when you assume that on your own, well, you do great damage to the church, and you do great damage to your own soul.
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God is the one who gives these things, and he gives them. Now, I want you to see something.
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You'll notice it says, and he himself gave some as apostles. In many ways, this is a continuation from verse seven.
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If you go back to verse seven, you have, but to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.
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Now, I'm not gonna go back and preach that whole sermon. You know I'm already long -winded, but I will say this. There is a parenthetical statement that separates that verse from the verse we now find ourself in, verse 11.
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And that parenthetical statement is found in verses eight all the way through verse 11 to some degree, although definitely nine through 10.
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And that's him explaining where these gifts came from. And then he now zeros in on a few.
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He now zeros in on a few because there's an argument he's trying to make about the church.
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He's not discounting any other gifts. He's simply pointing at some key ones that he wants to utilize to help us understand what's going on.
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Every single believer is indwelt by the Spirit with no distinction. Every believer is graced to serve the body without exception, but not everyone is given the same gift in the same measure.
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And in our present context, verse 11, what's being presented here is the reality that sometimes gifts are given to people in an official way as they hold offices.
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So there's offices of the church being talked about now, and that is being talked about as giftings.
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Now, I'll be upfront about this because some of you really like nuance. There is a lot of debate as to whether or not this is speaking about gifts or offices, meaning that some people could potentially hold the gifting of pastor and not be qualified to be one, right?
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Or maybe he's qualified to be one, but he shouldn't be one because he can do that out in the body.
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He can care for the body. He can love the body. You see what I'm saying? But maybe he doesn't have the time to devote to full -time ministry.
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So maybe there's some reasons. I think there's some truth to that, but I think this text here is tying them together for a multiplicity of different reasons.
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One, the Bible never separates them, first of all. Secondarily, apostles and prophets are included in this list.
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The reality is that they exist in the same context.
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And so there's never an instance where an apostle is an apostle, but not actually an apostle. Like an apostle is always apostle, and a prophet is always a prophet.
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Now, he's not always prophesying, but a prophet's a prophet, and an apostle is an apostle. So we need to see these as office gifts, men gifts given to the church who possess an office.
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In particular, it's word offices. God has given the ministry of his word to his church in order to transform it.
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And he's given it to apostles, he's given it to prophets, he's given it to evangelists, and he's given it to who?
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Pastors and teachers, or pastor -teachers. I think it's pastor -teachers, but we'll get into why
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I'm saying that here momentarily. The reality is churches need to be healed of its various spiritual sicknesses.
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It needs to be made whole, and it needs to restore it to a fit working order.
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And people need to be enabled and propelled into exercising their gifts for the work of ministry to build up Christ.
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And it's only the ministry of the word and the power of the spirit that can produce churches of such spiritual depth and maturity that Paul is going to tell us about here.
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The word matters. The word is important. That word is imperative.
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It drives everything. So in other words, when he starts bringing up these word offices, what he's doing is he's saying, if you're gonna take the church seriously, you need to take the word seriously.
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And if you don't take the word seriously, you're no church at all. You are no church at all.
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Now, he begins listing who those men gifts are, those word offices.
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He begins by saying, of course, look with me again at verse 11, that he gave himself,
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Jesus Christ, the one who ascended, the one that was divvying out the gifts because of the victory that he had won on the cross and by going to Sheol.
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He has given then some, some of those people who had been gift, the gift of apostleship, the gift of prophecy, the gift of evangelism, and the gift of pastoring.
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Now there's a parallel passage to this. Well, there's a lot of them actually, but one in particular that I think needs to be brought up is 1
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Corinthians 12, verse 28. The reason for that is because in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 28,
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Paul says, God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, and third teachers.
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I want you to pay attention to that. Did you catch that? Paul says,
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God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, and third teachers.
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What Paul helps us to key on in that passage that's not necessarily emphasized in this passage is that not only is this a weighty reality that God is the one who sovereignly causes this to be, but it shows a chronological significance.
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When it says first, second, and third, it's showing us that there is an order to the way in which we should view these things, not only historically, but also in significance, in significance.
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So how does God take a diverse people and help them to be unified, to keep them on the track?
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He makes provision for them. He makes provision for them through his apostles, through his prophets, through his evangelists, and through his shepherd teachers, his pastor teachers.
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So the first word here, apostles. His first word is apostles, which just comes from the
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Greek word apostolos, which means sent one. And many people will argue that the office of the apostle should be the office of the apostle.
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The apostleship is still open today because it means sent out ones. And so here in Ephesians four, it's simply talking about that.
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Well, that is not right. That's not right on many levels.
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But one, it doesn't fit the context of what Paul is saying. If you remember, we already talked about apostles at great length.
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If you go to Ephesians chapter two, verse 20, it says that the church having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
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Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone and whom the whole building being joined together is growing into a holy sanctuary in the
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Lord, and whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the spirit.
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So it is most certainly talking about apostles in the capital A sense, the ones who held an office that is no longer around, the ones who served as, if you were paying attention to chapter two, verse 20, as the foundation of the church.
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And if you remember, we said that you can't or you shouldn't, it wouldn't make any sense to build a foundation on top of another foundation.
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In fact, Paul makes that exact argument elsewhere in scripture. That everybody's just building on top of that foundation that has already been built by the apostles and the prophets, of course,
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Jesus being the chief cornerstone. So when it's talking about apostles here, is it talking about the official delegates of Jesus Christ who were commissioned sovereignly and forcefully, but of course, lovingly for the specific task of proclaiming authoritatively the message in both oral and written form and establishing the church itself and building up the church itself.
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In order to be apostle, in order to be an apostle, as we discussed in that sermon, you needed to be taught personally by Christ, you needed to be chosen by Christ himself, and you needed to be an eyewitness of the resurrected
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Christ. You had to see him and not just spiritually.
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Now, more than that, they needed to be able to work miracles that would validate the fact that they were in fact, capital
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A, apostles. 2 Corinthians 12, 12, the signs of a true apostle were worked out among you,
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Paul says, with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles.
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So you see, apostles did things we could not do, possessed a closeness to Christ that we do not have, although we have a great closeness to Christ that in many ways surpasses that because we have the word of God.
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As a matter of fact, that's Peter's argument when he's talking about seeing Jesus transfigured with Moses and Elijah and he hears
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God speak from heaven and he says, you know, we have the Bible, a more sure word than even our own experience, right?
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Because our experience can deceive us, but the word of God is always true. It is a more sure word.
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And so that's why these word gifts matter all the more. So there are no more apostles today, but if that's super controversial to you, go back and please listen to that sermon where we dissected that claim to the teeth.
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And so the apostleship here that's being spoken about is one that existed in the past that laid the foundation and gave us the word of God that we now have.
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It set the tone for everything that we would do. They got to hear from God and we get to preach about what he heard from God, right?
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That's how this works. We're just word people. They were inspired word people and that makes all the difference in the world.
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So Christ makes provision for his church by giving them apostles, but he also does it by giving him, and here's the next one, prophets.
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Now, in many ways, the prophets and the apostles have an overlapping ministry to some degree.
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There are similar functions that they both did. They both involved revelation, but here's where the difference is, emphasis.
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Emphasis. Sometimes people can be doing very similar things and the same things to some degree, even in the body of the church, you're not a prophet though, but we'll get to that in a second, where you can be doing something very similar to someone that you're serving with, but an emphasis be placed in a different place.
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A prime example of this, if you've been around heritage for any length of amount of time is like me and Pastor Corey.
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We're both elders of the church. We hold one another accountable. We're not rogues.
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We're not an authority unto ourselves, and we're also held accountable by the deacons, and then of course the body because we're
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Baptists and that's the way you're supposed to do it, but Corey and I are not the same people, nor do we have the same giftings overall in specific areas.
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We have different emphasis. I primarily am the one who gets up and yells at everybody, and he does too.
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He has that gift. He wouldn't be able to be an elder if he did not, and he does well when he does it, but he's got a lot more things going on in terms of like individual disciple, which
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I also do, but he does it differently, and sometimes with more people, and so there's like a public private kind of thing going on all of the time between both of us, and sometimes those emphasis are placed in different areas, and that's good.
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That's good. That's what we want. If we had all elders who all did the same thing all the time, then everybody would suffer.
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Everybody would suffer, and there would be everybody trying to do the same thing. It's just, I mean, just think about how horrible that would be is if everybody at your job was trying to do what you were doing all day long.
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It would never work. It would never work. Nothing would ever move forward, so the emphasis then for the apostle was more on the divine commission to a specific task of proclaiming authoritatively the message in oral and written form, as I said, in establishing and the building up of churches, whereas the prophet was given to communication of divine revelation.
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They weren't building churches. They weren't setting up churches. They generally weren't the ones writing what they were saying down.
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They were actually sometimes very weird and we would probably say in today's world eccentric, right?
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And so they would speak, thus says the Lord. When they spoke,
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God spoke, and that's good.
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The Holy Spirit would fill them and give them the gift of prophecy for the purpose of edifying the body, comfort the body, encourage the body, both in Old Testament Israel and also in the
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New Testament church. In 1 Corinthians 14, three, it says, but one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and for exhortation and encouragement.
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And in many ways, he was the precision point of God.
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He was the arrow of God. He was the one who rained down that sort of thing, but more than that, he also communicated the mysteries and revelation of God to the church that at one time weren't known or he would paint a picture of what was to come in the future, right?
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God would tell him what is going to happen in the future, pointing to Christ, for example,
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Isaiah was a prophet. Isaiah 53, famous. If you don't know that, this is your first day at church.
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It's talking about how Jesus was afflicted and crushed. The man of sorrows that if we looked upon him, we would not be impressed by any means.
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And it's the death of Christ that it speaks of. Well, that wouldn't have happened for centuries.
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And yet the prophet spoke of it. He was the mouthpiece of God. Now, if I don't get moving, we're never gonna get out of this text.
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So he was given, this was his qualifications. He needed to be theologically precise.
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If he wasn't theologically precise, it would reveal he was not a prophet. So the idea of prophecy today where it's like, oh yeah, well, you know, it could kind of go either way.
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Wayne Grudem, right, says there's no such thing anymore as thus says the
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Lord, but there are prophets. But those who are prophets, they need to communicate it this way.
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Well, that might be what the Lord is saying. No, when someone has spoken on behalf of God and they were wrong in the
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Old Testament, they were killed. They needed to have moral integrity. They needed to have predictive accuracy, and they needed to make sure that anything that they did was not inaccurate in any way, or else they were deemed a fraud.
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So don't be deceived by that. This is another office that has in fact ceased.
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According to the Bible, there are two kinds of prophets, those who are right and those who are wrong.
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And now on this side of the cross, there are only one kind of prophet, dead ones.
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Dead ones, that's it. That's all we got, right? And so here it is.
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Before we get into evangelists and pastors, you need to understand this is phase one of church building.
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Okay, phase one of church building. The apostles and the prophets, they laid the foundation in Christ Jesus being the cornerstone and he's the one who gave the gifts, but they set this thing up.
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They set it in motion. They caused it to progress.
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And without them, we would not be here today. Now, in saying that we do not have apostles and prophets, that is not to say that we are deprived of the benefits that they had first given us.
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The reason that Paul put it in here is not so that I could get up in a pulpit someday and explain it away. He gave it to us to show the progression of how the church was built.
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These men were significant in ways we can't even quantify. They created the
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Christian community. They did so authoritatively. And they left us with the
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New Testament scriptures that would govern everything that we do. In other words, one foundation has already been laid.
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There's nothing to build upon it. There's no more special or divine revelation being given. That ceased with the apostles and the prophets.
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And we no longer need to validate our ministry or the truth about who Jesus is because we have the cross.
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We have the message of the gospel. Now, you're saying, well, they did too. That was the whole deal.
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Yeah, but there was a transition period happening. They were transitioning from the
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Old Testament, from an old covenantal system to the
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New Testament era where the cross looms large.
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Jesus is enough. We don't need people to pretend to rise from the dead.
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We don't need people to fall over when Benny Hinn hits them. We don't need people to do any of these things, to hold to the beautiful reality that Christ is working in his people and that he is building his church and that he is saving miraculously people from every tongue, tribe, and nation.
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Hebrews 1 makes this argument for us in times past, right? God spoke to the fathers in many portions in many ways, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by giving us miracles.
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No, by sending his son, by sending his son. That's why all these churches in Tulsa that are charismatic in nature are abominations to God because they uphold the gifts over the giver.
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And they lie about what gifts are actually there. But the first one is more sinister because Jesus should be at the forefront of absolutely everything.
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Anyhow, evangelists, let's do that one next. He's given us apostles and prophets and evangelists. Now, this one existed in the time of the apostles and prophets, but it still exists today.
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And the term here, evangelist, actually, interestingly enough, is only used two times in the New Testament.
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It's only used two times in the New Testament, outside of this one, so that would be a total of three.
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The first one is in Acts 21, verse eight, when it speaks of Philip being an evangelist.
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And then in 2 Timothy, it is used in chapter four, verse five, when speaking of a kind of ministry that Paul ought to do in the context of his church ministry, his pastoral ministry.
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Now, these are similar, but different meanings, but only as it pertains to application.
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They overlap in definition. But as far as this goes, evangelists here is pointed to the reality that there are men gifted to the church to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Now, pastor -teachers, they need to be able to do the same thing, but God has, and church history proves this, gifted the church with men who don't care about,
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I don't know, for instance, divine simplicity, or inseparable operations, or any of these other topics that might, you know, get interesting and massage your ego as you know them.
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There are men who are just dead set on preaching the cross, the blood atonement, penal substitutionary atonement, that God sent his son to be the propitiation of our sins.
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And it's that message that God uses is to save a people for himself.
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So in many ways, evangelists are ground zero for the gathering of the people whom
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God has elected to call. Like, there's no people for the pastor -shepherds to help mature, which we'll get to here in a second, if there's no one being converted and brought to that church, right?
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The hope for heritage is not that we would just have tons of people coming from other churches, though if they're failing or they have, you know, gone off the rails and abandoned orthodoxy, welcome.
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But we want people to come to know Jesus who maybe have never heard his name, they've never stepped foot in a church, and we want new people who have been newly converted by the work of an evangelist to be here.
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Now sometimes that evangelist is you, doing the work of evangelism as just a member of the church, but sometimes it's an office.
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If this is speaking of offices, then it would naturally imply that an evangelist is an office.
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Now exactly how that works, I'm not entirely sure, I'm still working through that, okay? But there should be, at every church, someone who has given over to the work of evangelism.
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They might be a lay office holder, they might not be getting paid by the church, especially if it's a new church plant, so if anybody's sitting around there thinking, oh, that could be me right now, there's no paycheck in it for you yet here, okay?
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But there should be somebody that should be willing to do that sort of thing, to help train people to go out and to discuss
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Jesus with their coworkers and with their people in their homes and the place where they go to do their hobbies.
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These people are literally dripping with the gospel, and they can't be bothered with quaint messages about high -level theology.
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Now, let me nuance that to death, because if I don't do that, then I'm gonna get weird emails and I don't wanna have that happen, all right?
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And I don't necessarily mean people from this church, but there's a lot of people on the interwebs that seem to like to argue with things that I say.
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I'm not saying those things are unimportant. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be given over to them. As a matter of fact, if you look at people in the past who have been evangelists, say
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George Whitefield, for example, they weren't deficient in theology. As a matter of fact, most evangelists that existed in centuries past would just destroy most pastor teachers and their understanding of theology these days.
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But the idea here is, like I said, one of emphasis, right? They're not going on the street corners and being like, let me teach you about the inseparable operations of the triune
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God, right? It's not probable that someone's gonna get saved hearing that message.
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I'm not gonna say it can't be done or it hasn't been done, but I'm saying there's no gospel there unless you spend the next 300 years extrapolating that out.
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So these are gospel people, and they're the ones who bring people to the church.
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Evangelists, when converts to the faith, the faith, sound doctrine, the apostles would establish churches, right?
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So this is kind of the way it went. And then prophets would fill in needed revelation for the perfection of the saints into, honestly, more often than not prophets existed to tell you why you're not that awesome, right?
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We need prophets today in terms of people who speak prophetically, not actual prophets.
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Our world is in hurt. It thinks that it's awesome. And the best thing that a pastor teacher can do sometimes is to stand up and remind everybody,
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I know the world tells you you're awesome. You're not that awesome. Jesus is awesome, and he is working hard to make you awesome, but you're not gonna be awesome till glorification, all right?
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So trust in him, lean on him, and don't think too highly of yourself. The second thing that I want you to see is
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Christ's preservation of his church. So he makes provision for his church, but he also preserves it.
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And we're not gonna be able to get to verse 13, but we will do 12. Christ's preservation of his church.
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This next office here is different in nature. So apostles, prophets, and evangelists to some degree have an overlap.
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And then of course, evangelists and pastor teachers, they are continuing to this day.
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But specifically, this pastor teacher role is one that God has put in place for his church to make sure that they are preserved in the faith and that they grow in maturity.
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So the next thing he says in verse 11 is pastors and teachers.
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He's giving them some as pastors and teachers. Now, let me pause here to both say, one,
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I lied, we're definitely not getting even in 12. But thirdly, or secondly, secondly, not secondarily for those of you in the know, secondly, there is a little bit of a debate going on in the academic sphere and even in your
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Bible translations if you're not using the one that I'm using, which is the Legacy Standard Bible. And that is this, when he says pastors and teachers, is he talking about pastors and teachers, or is he talking about pastor teachers or pastors and teachers in the sense of they also teach?
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Which one is it? Which one is it? Well, of course, you know where I land because I've been saying pastor teachers.
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In other words, I don't believe that this is representing two different gifted people, but rather one person with a combination of the two gifts.
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The reason I believe that is because of both the syntax that is being used here, but also the rest of the
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Bible. But you see here, there's one conjunction before it in verse 11, and some as pastors and teachers.
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So you've got one conjunction and then another conjunction as opposed to a continued list.
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So some people would say this means there needs to be more commas in here, but I take it to be an expletive.
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That is saying that he has given some to be pastors, that is teachers. Does that make sense?
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So he's given some as pastors that are teachers. Now, there are people who are gifted with teaching.
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That is clear, but those people are not pastors.
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So in order to be a pastor, you must be able to teach. But if you can teach, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are or should be a pastor.
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There are many people who could kill it in a seminary classroom and destroy a church by pastoring it.
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That's just the truth. Why? Not because they're immoral people, but because God gifts them in different ways.
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The text of 1 Timothy makes this clear. In 1 Timothy 5, verse 17, he says, Paul says, let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.
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So not every elder should be teaching or has to preach.
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They just have to be able to do it. But pastor teachers are ones that are given to the task of both pastoring, shepherding, loving the church, leading the church, and also doing it by utilizing and promoting the word of God.
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As a matter of fact, a Greek scholar by the name of Wallace, as his last name suggests, that all pastors are to be teachers.
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Though not all teachers are to be pastors. Hence, while there is a distinction between the two, the distinction is not total.
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So what are these pastor teachers to do? Well, first, let's look at the word pastor. This word pastor comes from the
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Greek word that can easily be translated herdsman or shepherd. And if that offends you, that's okay.
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The Bible calls us sheep all the time, and we are sheep. We need to be led.
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We need to be led by people God has put in front of us as leaders, but we need to be ultimately led by the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And the Bible uses this over and over as a metaphorical expression designed to essentially talk about God's people.
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They're to shepherd God's people. It's also used in other places as captain or leader or chief.
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And the specific word is used roughly 18 times in the New Testament. And what is more interesting than that, and I don't know that this serves any other point other than just filling your mind with useless knowledge, but it's only used once by Paul, and it's right here.
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And so he's borrowing this imagery himself, both from Jesus and obviously the other apostles.
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Now, what I wanna say is that pastor shepherd or pastor shepherds or shepherd teachers or pastor teachers, they are only under shepherds.
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There's one shepherd, and his name is Jesus Christ. Amen? That's what this is all about. He's the one who shepherds, he's the one who leads, and he is the one who calls himself the good shepherd.
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In John 10, verse 11, he says, I am the good shepherd, and the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
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So Jesus says, I bled for you, you're my sheep. Follow me, and you will hear my voice because you know
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I'll bleed for you. Now, let's carry over to what that means to be an actual shepherd of God's people. You must be willing to bleed.
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You must be willing to live a sacrificial life that puts other people ahead of you. Just what it is.
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And this is why so many people get burnt out in ministry, and this is why so many marriages fail. We could go into some, yeah, we could go into some there.
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I'm not going to. But the reason being is because that takes a toll on individuals, and that takes a toll on marriages.
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When you are completely other people -focused, when you're completely sheep -focused, everything else loses its importance.
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I don't get to do everything that everybody else gets to do. I don't get to go everywhere that everybody else gets to go.
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I don't get to go to all the parties, all the fun things that everybody else gets to do. I don't get to go to all the fair rides.
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I don't get to go to all the conferences. I don't get to do all the things that other people should do and get the luxury of doing because I'm called to bleed.
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And Jesus models that perfectly. In Hebrews chapter 13, 20, it says, now the God of peace who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our
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Lord Jesus. And again in 1 Peter 2, 25, for you were continually, speaking to the people of God, straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.
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Our Jesus is the great shepherd and we are to model our shepherding after Jesus, but also underneath Jesus.
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It's his care that we have to care with. It's his love that we have to love with. It's his word that has to govern everything that we say and do.
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We have no authority apart from the word of God and apart from Jesus Christ. So we are under shepherds, herdsmen of his sheep, not our sheep.
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You are Jesus' sheep, not heritage's sheep, not my sheep, not Pastor Corey's sheep. You are
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Jesus' sheep. And so I'm here to steward that. Pastors are there to steward that. If you are desirous of pastoral ministry, that is your calling.
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That is your job, to care for his sheep, to steward his sheep.
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So that way, when you stand in front of him on judgment day, he can say, well, good and faithful servant, you have took care of the ones that I have entrusted to your care.
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Or you can stand there embarrassed because you refused to bleed, because you refused to love the sheep.
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So not only are they to be shepherds and to care, right? And by the way,
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I didn't have time to completely get into it, but one of the things I want you to really understand and walk away with is the reality that ultimately, shepherds are designed.
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They're designed for the purpose of caring for the sheep, for walking with the sheep, protecting the sheep and defending the sheep.
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And how do they do that? Well, that's that second word. That's the second word there, teacher.
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They teach them. So first and foremostly, shepherds are to be under shepherds of souls.
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But secondly, they are to be teachers of the truth. They are to be teachers of the truth.
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That is the primary way that pastor teachers are to care for, protect and to provide leadership for the sheep is by being teachers of the truth.
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Now this word teacher here in the Greek occurs 59 times and it's used seven times by Paul in his letters.
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Romans 2 .20, 1 Corinthians 12 .28, here in Ephesians 4 .11, there's one in 1
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Timothy 2 .7, another one in 2 Timothy 1 .11 and also 2 Timothy 4 .3
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and there are obviously many others other than that. And it always without exception has the same meaning.
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It depicts instruction, helping you understand something you did not know before and not just information, but also how you might live that out.
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So there's a didactic piece to it and then there's a moral piece to it, right?
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It's not just enough that you know that you have a gift, it's the pastor teacher's job to go, you must use it and you must use it like this.
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And sometimes that's in the pulpit, sometimes that's in a room and a counseling session and so on and so forth, depending on what the situation may be, but it's still the same instruction.
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The only authority that we have as pastors, teachers is the word of God and the word of God alone.
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Jesus was called a teacher by both his friends and his foes, just like he was called the great shepherd, so we must model even him in this calling.
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Not only that, but Jesus called himself that in John 13, 13, when he said, you call me teacher and Lord and you are right for so I am.
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Teaching is a huge part of the faith. It is a huge part of the church and people who get up and give
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TED Talks and don't say anything about the word of God actually has to say are failing in their task as under shepherds who are to teach the whole counsel of God.
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And one of the reasons I love preaching verse by verse is not only because I believe that's what the
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Bible tells us we should do, but also it forces me to talk about things that otherwise I would not wanna talk about like this thing right here.
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The last thing I wanna do is get up in this pulpit and try to convince you how important the role of a pastor is.
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Now, I want you to understand it because you need to as a Christian, but as a fallen man with insecurities, it's kind of like, now
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I'm gonna do a sermon series on you should give me more of your money, that kind of thing. It's weird, it's strange.
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Nobody's desirous of walking up to somebody unless you're a pathological lunatic and go, hey,
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I just want you to know my name is Brandon Scalf and I am awesome and God has really used me and he's gonna continue to use me because that's what the
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Bible said. Like what in the world, right? But when you go verse by verse, you have to touch on things that are going to cause you to feel uncomfortable and you have to say it with authority because we rest on who?
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The apostles and the prophets who have laid down the truth of what is whether I feel good about it or not.
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Truth, doctrine and absolutely covered in scripture.
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This is actually the thrust of the great commission. It says, and we've already heard it today, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you and behold,
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I am with you always, even to the end of the age. We must teach and everyone must have an element of teaching especially if they are running families and doing family worship.
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John Stott says it like this, nothing is more necessary for the building up of God's church in every age than an ample supply of God gifted pastor teachers.
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It is teaching which builds up the church and it is teachers who are needed the most.
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Not biblical counselors, sorry. Right?
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Now biblical counselors are helpful, important. Not an office of the church though.
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You need men of God. Who use the word of God and apply it to the people of God for the glory of God and the good of his people.
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That's what we need. That's what we need more of. We wouldn't have a need for the level of biblical counseling that we'd need now if people took this thing seriously.
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If people took the pulpit seriously. If people took the word of God seriously and understood that shepherding requires preaching.
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It requires the dissemination of truth. It requires teaching.
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And so many times people who are writing books on the subject or tweeting about it try to pit the two against one another.
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Pastor, your job is not to preach, it's the shepherd. Or it's not your job to shepherd, it's your job to preach.
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No, it's your job to shepherdingly preach. That's the job of a pastor teacher.
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So not only that, a pastor is a defender of doctrine. So it's one thing to teach, but you have to defend.
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The problem with social media, and I'm not gonna pretend as though maybe
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I'm not part of the problem, all right? So let's not think that this is me being all high and mighty.
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So I'm just making an observation. The problem with it is it convinces everybody who bears the name of Christ that it's their job to defend doctrine on a global scale.
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And to be fair, I'm not making the argument that nobody should ever open up their mouth and speak about the hope that's within them.
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I'm not saying that at all. But what I am saying is a lot more people need to be sitting, listening, and learning than trying to convince everybody they're wrong about everything.
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It's the pastor teacher's job to disseminate truth, to teach the truth, and to defend that truth.
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I make this argument because the scriptures make this argument. In 1 Timothy chapter six, verse 20, Paul says, oh, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, namely the truth of the faith, the gospel itself, turning aside from godless and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what has falsely called knowledge.
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2 Timothy 1 .14, he says, guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us the treasure which has been entrusted to you.
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And in Titus 1 .9, he says to Titus, holding fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and reprove those who contradict.
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Who better to contradict false teachers than people who teach sound doctrine, right?
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But if you're believing unsound doctrine, you're not gonna do very well in contradicting it when it's not right.
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And so that's why I make every effort as much as I am able to combat false ideas of what texts are saying, to combat false ideas of what people might be believing about the implications of that text, or tearing down ideas like the idea that apostles and prophets have continued to this day.
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Because some might say, well, isn't that being unnecessarily divisive? No, it's not.
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Because we've been tasked with guarding the truth and we must contradict error.
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Well, which ones are in the tier system of most important or least important? Well, I don't think that that's necessarily a good way to think about it.
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Certainly you have to do some sort of theological triage, but if God has made it clear, it's tier one. Now, as it pertains to salvation, it's a different story, right?
01:02:02
But he must do that. This means in conclusion of this part, which providentially is now the conclusion of the entire sermon, is that means that pastor teachers, evangelists, must be theologically trained in the apostolic way.
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They must understand what the apostles teach. Now, that doesn't mean that every pastor is gonna know every single answer to every single question that you have.
01:02:33
That doesn't mean that they are going to not change their mind from time to time on specific doctrines that happens.
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Hopefully it's in the right direction and not the other way from orthodoxy.
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Because pastors are people. They're not Jesus. They're under shepherds, they're not the shepherd.
01:02:58
And so you need to show them grace. On the other hand, if you desire to be a pastor, if you are a pastor or you think about pastors, and if you're visiting here today, this is a word for you.
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You don't have to come back to heritage. I would like you to, but you don't have to.
01:03:15
But you need to go somewhere where the pastor has been theologically equipped to stand behind the pulpit and teach.
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They're commanded. As we will see, to do so for the maturation of the church.
01:03:34
Look with me, we'll look at these verses though we can't get into them. Verse 12, he gives all of these offices, these word offices, these gifts, these men gifts for what, verse 12, the equipping of the saints for the work of service.
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So that they can go do the work of ministry. So that they can go do the work of ministry.
01:03:54
To the building up of the body of Christ. So that the body of Christ can be built up. And they are to do that until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ, so that we are no longer to be children.
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Right, pastor teachers help you grow up. And they help you grow up, not by telling you how to be a grown up, but by trusting in the word of God, which shows you how to be a grown up in the faith.
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Although he needs to lead by example, I'm not making light of that situation. As a matter of fact, when we get into second
01:04:41
Timothy later on, that's gonna be an argument that Paul makes. You watched my life. But what he means by that is you watched my life as it was governed by the scriptures.
01:04:54
So we won't be, it says here going on in verse 14, so that we won't be like waves of the sea being carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming.
01:05:05
You see, theology, especially for younger men, is beautiful and wonderful.
01:05:11
But it also, and I've seen this with my own eyes in churches that I've pastored. They're so hungry to learn more information that almost every other month, they're believing something new about a particular doctrine.
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Some person gets famous and holds a particular theological persuasion.
01:05:36
And now they want to hold to it. And they make themselves believe it because they don't want to not believe it.
01:05:46
And next thing you know, they're onto this doctrine. And then they're on it for a while. And then they're on to something else. They're on a problem.
01:05:53
And it's usually those people who make the most noise and try to do the most convincing. It's ironic how that works.
01:06:01
So men, if they are going to be pastor teachers, and it does need to be men, they must be theologically equipped.
01:06:08
They must be theologically trained. Now, does that mean everybody should go to seminary? That's not what I'm, I'm not making that argument.
01:06:15
But Paul tells us in order to be faithful in his letters, if you're going to be a pastor teacher, you have to be absorbed in the word of God.
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You have to, it says, take great pains with these things. You can't just fit it in. It's got to rule you.
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It's got to govern you. It has to be the thing that you are in at all times.
01:06:39
And you have to get in there, and you have to get your hands dirty. You've got to parse the Greek. You've got to parse the
01:06:44
Hebrew. You've got to figure out what in the world is actually going on with this syntax and with this grammar, because guess what?
01:06:50
That's where the biblical logic is built. And if you don't understand how that works, you're not teaching anybody anything.
01:06:58
You're teaching them ideas that you have formed by reading commentaries. And if you don't understand those sorts of arguments, then you're just taking somebody's word for it who sounds like maybe they're going to preach it better.
01:07:10
Oh, that'll preach. And we have far too many pastor teachers, quote unquote, in all of the churches here in America, in Tulsa, who are governed by, man, that'll preach, and not by this is the word of Almighty God.
01:07:26
That is God -breathed. And it's rooted in a subjunctive.
01:07:40
You must be theologically trained if you're going to be a teacher, defender of the truth, who shepherds people with and by the word of God.
01:07:52
You must, you must study, you must be absorbed, and you must do it far more and far longer than you are up in the pulpit teaching it.
01:08:08
Just a few weeks ago, actually, I think it was last week, I got up and did volume two of a sermon
01:08:18
I preached the morning, that morning. And I'm not trying to make much of myself.
01:08:24
I'm trying to tell you what you need to do if you are going to be a pastor teacher, or what you should require of your pastor teacher.
01:08:32
And the reason I did that is because I had a lot of questions about what the text meant that I preached on that morning. And I got up and I preached a whole nother sermon for an hour.
01:08:41
I wasn't planning to do that. But the reason I could do that is because I lived in the text all week.
01:08:50
And what you get in the pulpit, especially if I can never finish sermons, is all of that bubbling up.
01:08:58
I have notes, but it doesn't do anything for me. It's just there. That's what is required of a pastor teacher.
01:09:06
H .B. Charles says it like this. This is one of my favorite quotes in this regard. He says, a desire to preach and pastor without the desire and or time.
01:09:15
And that's very important there, right? Because you can have the desire, you can even be gifted at it, but if you don't have the time to give everything to it, you should not be doing it because you're destroying everybody around you.
01:09:25
You're destroying the church. He says, a desire to preach and pastor without the desire and or time to be absorbed in the scripture as Timothy is commanded by Paul in 1
01:09:41
Timothy. This person is not a pastor teacher.
01:09:48
He might possess the gifts of caring for crushed sheep, but he is not a pastor teacher and he should not be ordained as one.
01:09:55
And then he goes on to say, a man who wants to preach and proclaim the gospel, but not spend his life in the word, his desire is to perform, not to proclaim the truth of who
01:10:09
God is. He wants people to look at him, he wants people to hear him, and he wants to feel good about that thing in which he is saying, but he is no shepherd and he is no teacher.
01:10:26
And here's what the church desperately needs, friends. As we think about this text, the church desperately needs elders and not entertainers, pastors and not personalities, shepherds, not showmen, and men of the word and not men of the world.
01:10:49
Jesus gifted the church with such men. And Jesus modeled in his life and in his death and in his governing, even now as he sits enthroned in heaven, as the model for how we ought to think about what a shepherd is.
01:11:13
And we ought to learn and lean in to him if we are gonna be a help to anyone else.
01:11:22
And so in closing, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this question. Once again, not to be self -serving, but do you recognize ministers who do bleed, though they're not perfect?
01:11:38
Ones who shepherd and labor and preaching and teaching, though they won't do that perfectly either.
01:11:47
But as a mentor of mine once said, they had blood on their game jersey. Do you see these men as gifts from Christ to the church?
01:12:03
Because they are. And they are not because it's just awesome to have a dude to tell you what to do and how to think about something, but because they've been specifically given to the church to point to the great shepherd, the blood that he spilled to lift high.
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Him and the riches of his boundless grace found only in the atoning work of the cross.
01:12:49
But praise be to God that he has done only what he can do, making peace by the blood of his cross, bringing the people together for himself, gifting them with people with gifts to minister to one another and evangelists and pastor teachers who are modeling
01:13:06
Jesus Christ and his ministry to the people though imperfectly doing it for him. What a