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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
Today we're going to be in Ephesians chapter 4 and the verse that we're going to focus on is actually verses 11 and 12.
So I'm going to go ahead and read those to you.
Verse 11 says this, And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
What I want to focus on today, and as you can tell not in the studio today, I'm here at Sovereign Grace, I'm in the sanctuary, and what I want to talk about today for Coffee with a Calvinist is the concept of ministry.
If you read this verse you'll notice something that it says.
It says God gave the church certain people to do certain things.
It says that God gave the church evangelists, that God gave the church pastors and teachers, that God gave the church apostles and prophets, and all of those things are important.
All of those things have a role in the church.
Today we look at the church and we see the elders who function in many of those offices.
The elders function in the office of overseer.
That's where we get the word elder.
It's actually from the word presbyteros, which means a shepherd or a one who, also the word episkopos, which is a similar word which means overseer, and so the elders responsibility is to teach the people of God, and then of course the deacons have the responsibility, the word deacon means to minister, and so the deacons are to minister within the church, but this passage tells us something even more.
What this passage tells us is that these offices that are given within the church are given for the purpose of equipping the saints for the work of ministry.
Over the years I've been introduced different ways.
Some people say this is my pastor, some people say this is a preacher, but more often than not the way that I'm introduced to people is they'll say this man is a minister, he's a gospel minister, and that's fine, that title is fine, I appreciate that title, but one of the things that we need to understand is ministry is not the job of the pastor only, and ministry is not the job of the deacons only, and it's not the job of the elders only.
In fact the job of the elders is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, and the job of the deacons is to be examples among the saints of ministry, and so when we talk about the ministry that's done at our church, or whatever church you attend, maybe you're not a member of Sovereign Grace Family Church, when you talk about the ministry that is done in your church, are you just talking about what the pastor does, or are you talking about what you as a church member are doing? A good question that you could ask yourself, and a very important question, is in what way am I ministering within my local church? In what way am I ministering within the body that I belong to? Because oftentimes people are very good at being ministered to, but not really good at ministering to others.
Sometimes it's because they don't know how.
Sometimes opportunities for ministry are not as frequent, and not as open, because the church has limited the ministries to only people who are paid, or only people who have titles.
Years ago I wrote a book called The Biblically Functioning Church, and one of the things that I talked about in the book is how churches ought to do what we would call in this church gift-based ministry, meaning that if God has gifted you to a certain thing, that that should be the ministry that you should be functioning in within the church.
The Bible outlines certain ministries, certain gifts that are given to minister within the body.
The gift of administration is one.
The gift of mercy is one.
A person who has the gift of mercy might make a wonderful counselor.
A person with a gift of administration might make a wonderful bookkeeper.
You know, there are different things that God can give us the ability to do within the body, but one thing that we should all be doing is that we should all be ministering within the body, and we should be ministering to one another.
And my job as the pastor of Sovereign Grace Family Church, along with my fellow elders, is to equip you for the work of ministry.
So here's something I want to challenge you with today.
Do you know how God has gifted you, and are you using the gifts that God has given you to minister within the body? And if not, why not? You might say, well, pastor, you haven't given me the opportunity.
Well, that may be true, and I may not.
So I would want to know, if you feel like there's something that you could be doing within the body that you're not currently doing, and you want to serve, please let me know, or let one of our elders know, because that is our job to equip you for the work of ministry.
This is not Keith Foskey's ministry.
This is not Mike Collier, Andy Montoro, Jack Bunning, and Richard Taylor's ministry.
This ministry is not ours.
This is the ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church.
This church belongs to Jesus Christ.
We are simply the under shepherds here.
We lead and we teach by the Word of God, and we seek to equip the saints.
And by the way, who are the saints? Some people say, oh, well, the saints is a special group of Christians.
No, the word saint is every Christian.
The word saint is not a special category.
I realize that's what's happened in Roman Catholicism, is they set up a special category called saints.
That's not what the Bible does.
You see, you were lost.
You were dead in trespasses and sins, but because you have been saved.
If you're a believer, the Holy Spirit has come to live within you.
You have now been made a saint.
That doesn't mean you're perfect, doesn't mean you never sin, but you carry and you bear the righteousness of Christ, because you have been declared righteous because of his work that was done on the cross for you.
So now you're a saint.
My job as a fellow saint, but as also as a minister, and see there I went use that word again, as a pastor teacher, my job is to help equip you for the work of ministry.
What ministry has God called you to? What ministry should you and could you be doing within the body of Christ that maybe you aren't? That's the question for today.
What ministry could we as a church better equip you to do? And if you're not a member of Sovereign Grace Family Church and you're in another church, hopefully it's a biblically functioning church, and if it is, my encouragement to you would be to find a place in which you could serve where God has gifted you.
I hope today has been an encouragement to you.
If nothing else, I hope today has been a challenge that we all are supposed to be ministering within the body.
A congregation doesn't have one minister.
It doesn't have two or three ministers.
A congregation is a body of ministers equipping the Saints for the work of ministry.
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Again, thank you for watching.
I appreciate your time, and may God bless your day.