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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim, Pastor
Looking at these verses here in Ephesians 4, we're in the section where we've observed that Christ calls us to unity, there's a seven-fold exhortation followed by a seven-fold definition of oneness in the first six verses.
And then there is a consideration, therefore, unto maturity. The unity that we have is dynamic, it's not static. It's, we're heading together somewhere, and maturity is a vital expression of that. And we've thought about the measure of Christ's gift, we've talked about the ascension of Christ to God, how we're to see the ascension of Christ as the basis for why Christ has given us what we need by the Holy Spirit for the tasks that He has given to us.
And that's what we're going to talk about now, tasks by Christ's grace. And you're observing there in verse 11 who Christ gave to the church. This is not an exhaustive list, it is not an exhaustive list of spiritual gifts or of types of servants in the church, but it is a list that exemplifies the focus that Paul wants to bring at this particular moment.
And if you think of verses 8 through 10 as some essential explanation for verse 7, you might then just read verse 7 and verse 11 right next to each other.
Right?
And when you do that, you hear this, but to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift, and He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.
You hear the flow of that? Verses 8 through 10 is just kind of bolstering information to help us understand what He's meaning, but is a very natural flow from verse 7 right to verse 11. And again, this is not exhaustive as Paul writes, some, some, some, right?
This is some of the giftings, some of what Christ does, not all.
Okay.
So, with all of that in mind, as you were surveying verses 12 through 16, you begin to see the purpose for which Christ gave these men to the church. And so there are many reasons, and the goal was to list around five.
But after doing that, your group project came down to this, discussing the similarities and differences of the men in verse 11, and then trying to fix on what you might consider the most important reason out of all of them given, which I was hoping would spark some arguments.
I didn't hear any raised voices, so there was a failure on that. But just, I didn't see the sparks flying from iron sharpening iron on that question like I thought there would be. But hopefully, you could center in on, you know, what is Jesus after in giving these men to the church?
So, let's, let's do this. We're going to discuss similarities and differences in a moment of the, of these men in verse 11. So, let's do this. Different groups can speak up. Somebody can pipe up an answer to this.
But out of all the reasons provided in verses 12 through 16, what seems to be the most important reason? What did your group come up with? Anybody want to share? Equipping of the saints.
It's unity.
Well done, Chris. Well done. Reminds me of the old wag who said, this is not a debate. And the other person said, yes, it is.
Yes.
So, equipping the saints, unity, these are not opposite reasons. They're not dysfunctional motivations. Of course, they go together. There's an idea of, well, when, when, when a person's body is working together in unity, things get done, right?
But when your body doesn't cooperate, you don't get a lot done. Maybe you've noticed that. Come on, body, cooperate. Everything needs to be working together so we can get something done. So, when we, when we look at verse seven, we are reminded of the measure of Christ's gift.
And then we have this list of servants. Some, he gives as apostles, some as prophets, some evangelists, some as pastors and teachers. Now, how does Jesus Christ bring about unity through teaching? And we know it to what end.
It's the equipping of the saints. It's for the edification of the body so that the saints are, you know, about his work. But how is it that unity comes through teaching? What are we, is there any clues or anything that we can see in the text that shows us something about that?
How does unity, how does Jesus Christ bring about unity through teaching? As we look at this list, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, every single one of those, what they have in common, what they have in common is the declaration of the good news of Jesus Christ.
The conveying of the good news of Jesus Christ. So there is, there is definitely a teaching aspect to all of those servants. So obviously the end is equipping the saints, edification of the saints, but how is unity achieved through teaching?
Speaking the truth in love, we see that in the text, don't we? That's good. Everyone's focusing on the word of God at the same time. We have the expression, we're on the same page. Right, so we're reading from the same script.
We have expressions that talk about unity in, to that regard. We were all looking at the word of God together. I always think of it as if, if the word of God is the authority and clarity of the word of God, if that's the table that we all sit down at, we can have unity, right?
Because we're, we're, we're learning from Christ by his spirit about what he wants for us, what he has to say about God, what he wants us to be about. So there's definitely unity through, through teaching, a teaching according to, according to the grace of Jesus Christ, according to what he supplies to the church, to be clear.
That's a good point in that when we're all looking at the word together, our blind spots can be corrected by our brothers and our sisters, right? So, oh, I, oh, I didn't see that. So that's a good thing.
Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. He is the son of the living God. He's ascended at the right hand of the father and he has sent forth the Holy Spirit of promise. Why did he do that? In, in John 16, he talks to his disciples about why he has to go away and why he's sending another comforter.
This is in connection to Ephesians four, as we've seen that when Christ ascended, he let, he led captivity captive. And Paul's quoting from a Psalm that is a Pentecost Psalm and very clearly points to Jesus saying that if he ascends to the right hand of the father, then he would send forth the Holy Spirit.
So Paul is thinking about the Holy Spirit when he's talking about the measure of Christ's gift, that in his ascension to the right hand, Jesus sends forth the Holy Spirit for the good of the saints. So in John chapter 16, in verse seven, after he says to them, I'm going away, he knows they're sorrowful.
John 16, verse seven, nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you. Just listen to a sermon this morning.
It was read by an Englishman, which is appropriate because it was a sermon by Charles Spurgeon. And Spurgeon was just meditating on all of the reasons why it was good and better for the church that Jesus send us the Holy Spirit.
And I appreciated the extended meditation and thought about that in all the different ways that we could think of. That it is very true that Jesus did what was for the best for his people, best for the church to send us the Holy Spirit, that we would have this comforter with us no matter where we were, no matter what was going on.
In verses 13 through 14, Jesus elaborates, however, when he the spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will tell you things to come.
He will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine and declare it to you. So the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to bring the word of Christ, the authority of Christ directly into our lives, that we would be directed by our Good Shepherd.
As the Good Shepherd, he's going to lead us and guide us and direct us. How does he do that? He does that by his Holy Spirit. Now, the Holy Spirit is the one who inspired every word of this book, and as promised, he will bring to mind all that Christ has taught.
And so, the Holy Spirit prompts us, guides us, leads us, encourages us, blesses us in accordance with the word of God, never in contradiction to the word of God. We have this gift, and Jesus does this because we see in Ephesians 4, he fills all things.
Note that in verse 10, right before verse 11, where we're looking at this list of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, when Christ ascended to the right hand of God, far above all the heavens, meaning he has the highest position available, the purpose statement there is that he might fill all things.
That he might fill all things. The word fill is the exact same word in the Greek that you have elsewhere in the New Testament that is translated fulfill. It's the exact same expression, exact same word.
So he might fulfill all things. This means that in light of the Old Testament promises, the Old Testament prophecy, that Jesus fulfills all things and will fulfill all things by means of his exalted position.
If we're wondering how the promises get kept, if we're wondering how the prophecies come true, if we're wondering how it all ends up, all we have to do is think about the ascendant Jesus Christ and note that his glory satisfies.
His glory satisfies. There is nothing unsatisfactory about Christ. We begin with the father. Is the father fully satisfied in the son? This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. All of God's promises are yes in Christ.
2 Corinthians 1 .20. So the father is fully satisfied in Christ. His glory truly does satisfy in a fulfilling way the plans, the promises, the prophecies that we have throughout Scripture. Now what of this promise that Christ will give to the church all these spirit-led, spirit-gifted, spirit-called men?
He promised he would send these men. He promised that to his enemies in Matthew 23. He told those who would soon plot and kill him. He told the Pharisees and scribes and Sadducees, I'm going to send to you prophets and scribes and wise men.
I'm going to send men that are empowered by the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel of the kingdom and you're going to persecute them. You're going to imprison them. You're going to kill them. Jesus sends them into war, therefore, but he also sends them into the world.
In Acts 1 .8, he said to his apostles, you're going to be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem but also in Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. So he sends them into war, he sends them into the world, but he spends most of his time and we have most of the expressions describing these men in terms of how he gives them to his church.
There will be conflict. There is advancement. There is expansion. There's not only fighting and the frontier, but there's the shepherding, the encouragement, the foundation of the church that we find here in Ephesians chapter 4.
In John 21, verses 15 through 17, we have Jesus speaking to Peter. Remember that Peter had denied Christ three times and after the death and resurrection of Jesus, one can only imagine the sense of unworthiness and defeatist nature of Peter.
Well, I'm disqualified. I'm done. I didn't make it. I didn't succeed. I'm going fishing. I'm going back to fishing. Not, I'm going to go fishing and see what I can catch today. I'm done doing this thing that I was doing for some three years.
I'm going back to fishing. That's what I know. And Jesus has something to say about that. So John 21, verse 15, Jesus had, again, helped the bad fishermen fish and make sure that they had something to eat for breakfast.
And then, so verse 15, so when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs.
He said to him again a second time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, tend my sheep. He said to him the third time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?
Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. And that indeed is the focus.
The apostles, the prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are all instructed along those lines to be nourishing and feeding sheep. In Acts 20, verse 28, the elders of Ephesus meet with Paul, and Paul exhorts them and encourages them.
He had spent three years at that church solidifying the leadership there and discipling and training.
There.
And on his way to Jerusalem, which was ultimately on his way to Rome, Paul stops at a place where he can meet with the elders out of Ephesus, and he charges them to care for the flock of Jesus Christ, that God had entrusted to them to defend them, to nourish them, to take care of them as good shepherds.
And this is the focus of these men that are given to the church. Now, I want to spend a little bit of time thinking about the dynamics of this because this is the first example that we have in the passage where we're getting down to some specific details.
Jesus died upon the cross, was raised from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Father to send forth this grace, this great gift, this great blessing to us by the Holy Spirit to edify and equip the church.
And this is in connection with the unity of the church. And we get down to some very practical, very specific details. He gave some as apostles, he gave some as prophets, he gave some as evangelists, he gave some as pastors and teachers.
So, I think there's two or three things we need to think about, and before we begin to identify them all in their particularities, how is an apostle different from a prophet, how are they different from an evangelist, and so on, I think we need to do that.
But before we do that, we need to have some qualifiers. We do not have here a list of the clergy. There's no such thing as the clergy, did you know that? If you're a Protestant, there's no such thing as the clergy, not really, especially if you're a Baptist, no such thing as the clergy.
We don't have a magisterium, Latin for teachers. Why not? Because of how Jesus already described these men he was giving to the church, how he talked about them and how he told them that they were to operate.
So in Matthew 23, verses 8 through 12, in contrast to the scribes and Pharisees and so on, in contrast to that, verse 8, but you do not be called rabbi, don't let anybody give you a special title, he says to these disciples who were so craving the first place in the kingdom.
Oh, I want the right end of the kingdom, I want the left, they're always fighting, who's the greatest, who's the greatest? And he says, you should not be craving titles like even rabbi, which is a very common title.
But you do not be called rabbi, for one is your teacher, the Christ, and you are all.
Brethren.
Ah, so we should be considering one another as brethren. Do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your father, he who is in heaven. So don't go around and say, father so-and-so, father Tom, okay, no, or the Latin Pope, don't call anyone Pope, because that's the Latin word for father, don't do that.
That's against Christ, it would even be considered anti-Christ, especially by the Puritans. Do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your father, he who is in heaven, and do not be called teachers, plural, don't, if you're going to, I've told you not to take on personal titles, don't be, call me rabbi so-and-so, and don't say, call me father so-and-so, and if you think that you can get around this prohibition of singular titles by giving yourself a group title, oh, don't call me teacher, I'm part of the teachers, we're going to diffuse the glory over a group, and we'll be at, so the Latin word for teachers is magisterium, which of course is the ultimate authority in the Roman Catholic Church.
Do not let anyone call you teachers, do not be called teachers, for one is your teacher, the Christ, but he who is greatest among you shall be your servant, whoever exalts himself will be humbled, he who humbles himself will be exalted.
So when we come to this list, and we're looking at apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, we're not looking at titles, we're looking at descriptions, we are looking at giftings, we are looking at ways that some serve, we're looking at job descriptions, but we're not looking at titles, we're not looking at credentials, right, if somebody says, you know, here's somebody's name, and at the end of it you see Ph .D. period, D. period, D. period, D. period, right, because they have a doctorate of philosophy and a doctorate of divinity, that's the origin of Fuddy Duddy, by the way, Ph .D. D .D., that's where Fuddy Duddy came from, Ph .D. D .D., Fuddy Duddy.
So this is not about credentials and titles, or position, I have a position of power now, how did Jesus describe it? If you're going to be first, you're going to be last, you're going to be a servant, so this is not something that should be capital A, capital P, capital E, capital P, capital T, all the way, you know, so we have those listed like that, we use it, but not as titles, this is descriptions, this is job descriptions.
Something to remember is that we are all anointed by the Holy Spirit as Christians. In 1 John 2, verses 24 through 27, it says that if you're a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit, you have an anointing from the Father, and you don't have to have an official teacher.
That doesn't mean Christ was wrong to give teachers to the church, but you don't have any official mediator of truth other than Christ, who has given us His Spirit. So teachers are great, they're very helpful, but they are not required for you to be a child of God.
You don't have to go through a spiritual expert, a spiritual authority in order to be a child of God, or to have somebody else anoint you. This teacher says, okay, now you're a saint, because I've said so.
Yes, especially with 315, because Timothy from his youth knew the scriptures that were sufficient to make him wise unto salvation. The scriptures that Eunice and Lois, his mother and grandmother, are simply reading to him, and he comes to know salvation by the reading of the scriptures.
Timothy probably didn't have to be encouraged to give attention to the public reading of the scriptures, because he himself knew the power of God unto salvation through that. We are called in 1 Peter 2 .5, 2 .9, Revelation 1 .6, we are called priests.
The saints are called priests.
Why is that?
What other proper biblical descriptor is there for those who are anointed by the Holy Spirit? Who are living stones of the new covenant temple? Who may at any time, with boldness, come beyond the veil, by the righteousness of Christ, to appeal to the throne of God, to find mercy and grace in our time of need.
It was only the priests who were allowed in there, in the old covenant. In the new covenant, everybody who is in the new covenant is a priest, and we all can go into the Holy of Holies, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, without fear, without punishment, and find there a merciful, welcoming ear.
So we're all called priests. So we don't have a clergy. We don't have a clergy. We do not have a magisterium. We do have a mandate, all the saints, and this is throughout the New Testament, Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 John 3, 2 Thessalonians 2, all Christians are declared, do not be deceived.
The apostle is saying to regular, run-of-the-mill Christians, do not be deceived. It's your responsibility. Well are Christians able to not be deceived?
The Lord has given you the scriptures, he's given you the Spirit, he's given you the fellowship of the church, he's given you all these gifts, so it's on you. Do not be deceived. Don't turn that responsibility over to somebody else.
Well I don't really know what's true, I'll let some council somewhere tell me that. So we are to be people who search the scriptures to see if these things are so, Acts 17 11, we are to meditate on God's word, be blessed by that, Psalm 1.
Now all this being well established, Christ so loves us and is so desirous to save his sheep and wash his bride with the water of the word that he gave and gives and will give certain servants to the church, and we see that in verse 11.
Why?
For the equipping of the saints, for the edification of the saints, the equipping of the body unto maturity, unity and advancement of his kingdom, and we see that in verses 12 and following. These various giftings and roles are not prizes of power over which to be fought, but we see the disciples trying that from time to time.
Who's going to be first? Do you remember the jealousy of Joseph's brothers? And we talked about in a previous session how when parents give gifts to kids, sometimes that causes squabbling. And this is really seen not on a birthday or a Christmas, but over decades.
Why do grown children fight? One of the main reasons is the parents did more for this child over the course of time.
Than this one, right?
But what were the parents trying to do? We want our children to do well, and if it looks like we need to do more for this one for some reason than this one, then we're going to do that because we think that's good.
You know what?
They're free to do that. That's called grace. That's called love. Each one of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift, so he decides. But look, this person over here gets more than that person over there, and there's fighting.
About that.
But in addition, remember that Jacob gave a certain coat, a coat of many colors, a very colored tunic to Joseph, and then sent Joseph to go supervise his brothers. The tunic he was wearing is not the work garment.
There's a word in Hebrew for a work garment. He was not wearing that. His brothers were. He was wearing the bossman suit because he was the firstborn of Jacob's favorite wife. And so he goes out there.
The father has greatly blessed him. He's shown great favor upon Joseph that he's not shown to the others, and Joseph goes out there in his bossman suit and supervises and says, y 'all not doing it right.
I won't tell dad. So do you see how authority and hierarchy and responsibility came with the gift? It wasn't that he had a cooler coat. It was that there was authority given to him. That's what really ticked them off.
And it was only reinforced by those visions he had, where he talked about himself being an authority, and all the other sheaves bowed down to his sheaf. So this is where there's a lot of controversy, fighting, and disunity.
It can happen in focus around where Jesus is supplying servants to the church, gifting them to do certain tasks with special grace to do these things for the good of the church. But because there's blessings there, there's actual responsibility there.
There's extra authority and hierarchy there, and all of a sudden, then there's fighting. There's conflict. But that's not the purpose of it. The purpose of it actually is for unto unity. It's actually unto unity.
And we need to recognize that. The apostles were those sent out with a message and authority. They were truly Christ's ambassadors. When they went forth and said things and did things, they did so in the name and the power directly of Christ.
They had his power, as they say about the ambassadors, plenipotentiary. They had the full authority of Christ coming forth throughout preaching and establishing the churches. The prophets we read about in the New Testament are those, well, Judas and Silas are mentioned as prophets, and Agabus was called a prophet.
They both foretold and foretold. And when we read about, a little bit earlier in Ephesians 2, that the apostles and the prophets preach according to what Christ has to say. He's the cornerstone, and the apostles and the prophets are the foundation of the church.
Some people say, well, is that the Old Testament prophets that preached Christ in the Old Testament? Was it the New Testament prophets that preached the gospel?
Yeah.
Paul was no dummy. He meant all the prophets. So, the prophets and the apostles are the foundation for the church, anchored to Christ, the cornerstone, angled from Christ, the cornerstone. And that's the foundation of the church.
That's how things got started, the preaching of the gospel. And then, what happens after that? Well, you build on the foundation, right? We've been building on the foundation. Christ has been building his church for a long time.
He's been building on that foundation. So, we don't have apostles and prophets anymore.
Because they were called the foundation.
We're not building another foundation on top of the foundation, are we? But you'll notice, you'll notice that whenever someone comes out and claims, I'm a prophet or I'm an apostle, what do they always do?
They always lay a new foundation. What else is there to do? Well, we don't need a new foundation. Jesus is doing a good job building his church, and he doesn't need to lay a new foundation. So, we don't have apostles and prophets anymore.
We do have evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Now, Philip was called an evangelist. Timothy was told to do the work of an evangelist. And Stephen and Apollos certainly did the work of evangelists. Evangelists is not the spiritual gift of good hair.
Evangelists are those who, we would probably call them missionaries and apologists today. The apologist who stands in the middle of all those college students and preaches Christ. Or the missionary who stands in the middle of another culture and reaches across those cultural divides to preach Christ to them.
These would be evangelists. And the gospel just keeps going and going and going. And then pastors and teachers. Pastors and teachers to continue to equip and establish the faith amongst the churches to shepherd into God.
All saints are called to make disciples by the word of God in the spirit of Jesus Christ. And we try to make opportunities for that in our church. Sunday school, the regular old Sunday school, you go to your Sunday school classes.
What is that?
That's an opportunity for discipleship. Where somebody is going to take up the word of God by the spirit of God and encourage you in the word. Now, somebody who does that in the context of a small Bible study or in a Sunday school, we're not going to lay upon them some title and say, you're the pastor of this Sunday school class.
No, it's not about titles. This is not about getting to exercise authority. So we're not going to hand out titles like that. Pastors and teachers hang together in the text. And to do one is to do the other, and to do the other is to do the one.
And there are very clear guidelines in Scripture about who gets to be called that. And it's going to be people who have authority in the church. Now, when you say someone's a Sunday school teacher, we're doing a job description.
We're not saying that they have a position of authority. Here, Sunday side, I think we're biblically organized in that we have six elders. We're praying for more. We have six elders, teachers. We shepherd and we teach.
And we have been entrusted with that authority, not for our own gain, but we want to shepherd the church and have that responsibility for the glory of Christ. We're always seeking Christ's wisdom, Christ's unity in doing that.
It's not for ourselves that we do this. And so when we see the gifts that Christ gives, he gives everything that needed to be done for the building of the church. So he gave what was necessary for the foundation.
He gives what's necessary for the expansion. And he gives what's needed for the strengthening. Doesn't he do a great job? Okay, so that's the point of those gifts. It's not to cause disunity where so-and-so has this gift and therefore they have authority and therefore I don't like them.
Okay, like Jacob's sons. This is what Jesus is doing for the sake of unity. There's supposed to be a growing unity through that. Okay, we're going to leave it there. Next time, we're going to finish up this middle section.
We're going to go all the way through the end of verse 16 is the plan and talk about maturity in light of Christ's gifts. Okay, let me pray for us and we'll be dismissed. Father, I thank you for the day.
I thank you for the many gifts that you have given by your Son and through your Spirit to bring glory to your name. And I pray that we will rejoice in your truth today. For Christ's sake we pray, amen.