[Transcript represents full sermon's text]

       We pick up today in Ephesians chapter 4. We're going to cover verses 7 through 16, and our main focus is going to be on how the church works, basically as far as what the different roles of the church are, and the people carrying out those roles, and how it all works as one body, but many members, basically.

       Let's go ahead and start. We'll read verse 7 to get started off. Ephesians chapter 4, verse 7: “But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift” (ESV).

       This verse is interesting because really that could mean one of two things. Perhaps it means both things, but it could mean that the gospel was given to each one of us as we needed it. If we think of it like the grace is the forgiveness of sins was given to each one of us, each of us individually, according to the measure of Christ's gift. And that would be depending on how many sins we had committed in the past, that grace was given. For some of us, it would have been a lot of sins, some sins. Maybe if you were saved at five years old, not that many sins, right? So it just depends. But you could read the verse that way. That's one option. The second option, which is perhaps more likely, is that Paul is talking about spiritual gifts, because that's what he's about to be talking about in verse 11. In that view, we would say that the grace represents the gifting of God. The grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. The measure of Christ's gift in this understanding is that God bestows different gifts to different people, and some people he gives more responsibility to than others.

       And we can think of the parable there of the talents in Matthew chapter 25, and that's verses 14 to 30 there, where Jesus talks about people receiving talents. We can tap over there real fast. I don't want to read the whole thing just because it’s a lengthy text. But if I tap over to Matthew chapter 25 and go to verse 15, “To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability” (ESV). So there it is in the most simplistic sense, right? If we take that form of logic over to Ephesians chapter 4, it would be that Christ gives us responsibility just based on it, it could be multifactorial, it could be based on when we're saved, what we've done in the past, good or bad, what our natural abilities are, stuff like that. He gives us different gifts. And of course, the Holy Spirit equips us, energizes us, endows us with those gifts. So there's that spiritual aspect to it, too. But let's hold that thought there for a second, because we're going to come back to this at verse 11.

       But for now, let's go to verse 8. “Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)” (ESV). Let's stop there.

       That's a little bit foreign to us, I think. It's a little mysterious when we read that. We're not quite sure what's going on here. We can get a clue into that because part of that there, and most of verse 8 there is a quotation from Psalm 68. It’s Psalm 68, 18. And that song is a victory song that David wrote, and it's probably related to when David was able to bring back the Ark of the Covenant. Remember the Ark of the Covenant, which would sit in the Temple of God in the Old Testament and the Holy of Holies, when David was able to bring back the Ark to Jerusalem. And that took place in 2 Samuel 6, verses 12-15, but it could be a reference to that. If we go to Psalm 68, because there are some verses I want to point out to try to get us some understanding of what Paul's discussing in Ephesians. Psalm 68, and I want to look at verse 19, because that's really the key to the psalm that gets us an idea of what's going on. David says, “Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation. Selah” (ESV). David is thanking God, he's praising God, that God has taken care of the Israelites and put things back the way they should be. Well, if we translate that to Ephesians chapter 4, how does that compare? Well, it compares to the cross.

       So Jesus descended to the lower regions of the earth. He descended from heaven to the earth, became human, and grew up as a child. Of course, he did all the miracles, all the teaching. But what did he do? He gave his life on the cross to make us right before God so that we would have a covering for our sins. The sin that we have all accumulated was nailed to the cross, right? We become righteous before God. We take on Christ's righteousness by trusting in Christ's work on the cross. And in effect, God is putting everything back to the way that it should be, just like David is talking about in Psalm 68. And if we go to verses 34 and 35 in Psalm 68, David says, “Ascribe power to God, whose majesty is over Israel, and whose power is in the skies. Awesome is God from his sanctuary; the God of Israel—he is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God!” (ESV). To complete out our picture in Ephesians 4, Paul also says that Christ ascended. He’s back in heaven with God the Father. Well, God and Jesus's physical absence is equipping us. He's giving us power and strength, just like David talked about the Israelites. And again, we're about to dive into how God does that.

       Really, this Psalm 68 chosen by Paul is the perfect parallel to what Jesus accomplished. Because the ultimate goal of the accomplishment, the Israelites, had defeated their enemies. Christ in the same way defeated his enemy, who was Satan, right? That's what happened at the cross. Christ is victory. He gains victory over Satan. And Satan's laying claim on people and dominion of the earth is broken , so for those of us who believe in Christ, Satan can no longer lay a claim on us. We've talked about that already in our study, and that can be further looked into. It's called the Christus Victor view of atonement, and that's in contrast to penal substitutionary atonement, which is the predominant view in Evangelical Christianity. But if you go on, say, Wikipedia, look up Christus Victor, you can read about Christ's victory there.

       Anyway, if we go to verse 11 now, we get to dive into really our key area today and what Paul's looking at with the church. Verse 11 of Ephesians 4, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers” (ESV). Let's stop there.

       If we remember back up at the beginning of Ephesians, in this letter, Paul had said that God predestined a group of people basically to be conformed to the image of his son. Well, this is how God is choosing to accomplish this predestined plan. Notice, again, and this was discussed, it's not something that's automatic. When we become a Christian, we don't automatically become good in our behaviors, become good in our Bible knowledge, become good at everything. It's a process. Yes, we are sanctified on the spiritual level. We are forgiven of our sins, past, present, future. But there's also that ongoing sanctification that each and every one of us as members of the body of Christ has to go through. That's important to see that distinction because that helps us understand why God is doing what he's doing. If it was automatic, then really these roles wouldn't be nearly as important as they are and have been.

       So the apostles. Who are the apostles? What is Paul talking about ? Again, this we would say is the 12 apostles, the 12 disciples. Of course, we know Judas defected. The early church chose Matthias through Peter's direction to replace Judas Iscariot. Now, some people think that no, that was a bad choice. It's really the apostle Paul, who's supposed to be number 12, because obviously in the Bible, Paul calls himself an apostle. But without getting into that, we would say Paul is number 13. But if we notice these 13 people, we might not say it exactly for Matthias, but the idea is that the apostles had a direct call from Christ. So the 11, they saw him face to face. He called him face to face. Even Paul on the road to Damascus, he was called face to face. One untimely born, as Paul will say elsewhere. He was late called, but he was called by Christ from heaven. Pretty amazing there, but it's a direct call from God. And that's why I would say that once John's ministry is over, unless John is somehow still here on the earth, we do not have apostles today. There aren't apostles after the New Testament period in my position.

       Let's move on to the prophets. The prophets were obviously those in the Old Testament who wrote about, who spoke about these hidden things that are now being made manifest in the New Testament, about Jesus coming and dying for the sins of the people, about Jesus rising from the dead. Stuff that they wrote about that they didn't even know, that's what they were writing about. Well , there are prophets with them, while there are also prophets during the early church period, really nearing this New Testament period. We remember that Paul will talk about the orderly procedure of prophets in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. Now this has become a big debate, as we're aware of, within Evangelical Christianity, because there's a good amount of people that still think that prophecies, healings, that kind of stuff is still active within the church. Again, I stated my position on that. I think it depends on society and culture. I think for the American Evangelical church and Western Evangelical Christianity, I think we primarily do not see that.

       Prophecies, healings. Will you see that in remote areas and countries that are hearing the gospel for the first time or in the beginnings of that? Yeah, you might see that stuff because that's how God can better work with those people. But I think that that stuff for a lot of us is done. I would say that once John completes Revelation, there is no more prophecy. I would say that most prophecies at that point have ceased. And so that's my position, but obviously there are many who will disagree with that. But I am usually pretty skeptical when I see people trying to prophesy the future. And you've got to remember that when God prophesies, I would say, when God says something's going to happen, and again, this is getting kind of technical and debate-worthy too. But when God says something is going to happen in the future, that has not happened yet. And there is no time machine that you can get in and go into the future. And the future is non-existent right now at this point. When we get there, if we take the position that God has fixed, we'll use the word fixed, he's fixed something in the future that he said is going to happen, then he will use his power, his angels, to accomplish whatever it is that he said he fixed, so that it comes to pass at that time. But it's not that it has already come to pass. See, that's the difference?

       Then there's also the factor of prophecies being parallels. Like when the Apostle Peter brings it up at the beginning of Acts, when they're choosing Matthias, he parallels an Old Testament scripture with the Judas situation. But it may not be that the Old Testament writer was saying that there was going to be this guy named Judas and he was going to do this or that. It’s just a similar passage that parallels with what actually happened. This stuff's important because if we go roundabout on the individual level to a person in the church prophesying, well, how does a person in the church have the authority? Basically, when you say something is going to happen in the future, when you prophesied something, you were saying that God is going to use his power to bring that about what you have said. So you are speaking on behalf of God's power. That's serious business. I'm trying to get us to think through it, to get into the logistics. It's not that the future exists and the prophetic insight that the person has is seen into the future. See, that's how we think here in 21st century America most of the time. We think that the future already exists and that you can see into the future. We've seen so many movies, so many different ideas, books, and we have that fantastical idea of the future.

       But see, look what the prophet is actually doing. The reality is the prophet is saying they don't know it, but what they're saying is that God is going to use his power to accomplish this, that, or the other. And God's up in heaven saying, oh, I am, am I? So that's serious business. It's not just, “Oops, I didn't see into the future.” No, you misspoke on what God was going to do with his power. Those are, I think when you contextualize it that way, you can see the seriousness of it. That's why in the Old Testament we remember false prophets. That was serious business. They were supposed to be stoned to death. That was, you don't want to be saying stuff's going to happen when you have no idea. So just wanted to dive into that a little bit so we could try to see the seriousness of that, because I think it's a little too casual in our time.

       Let's talk about the evangelists. I think with that one, we pretty much understand what Paul is saying. There are different types of evangelism. There are people that are specifically, that's their life calling. Usually it's a couple. We see that in the Evangelical church. They'll go to a different country and they'll set up shop. And they might be overtly or covertly, they're evangelizing to the people of that country, that area, trying to share the gospel and establish a church and all that. We're familiar with that. We know about people like the late Billy Graham, who used to go around the United States and basically hold large tent meetings to try to get people to wake up. Sort of like the guys did in the first and second great awakening back in the 1700s and 1800s. We can think of George Whitefield or John Wesley. Some great evangelists. Sometimes, like in the case of George Whitefield, they have the gift of evangelism, but they also have the gift of Bible teaching. So it's not that you're just one or the other all the time. And then it's also true that God individually gifts people within the church to do one-on-one evangelism. To go and have just a good ability.

       I've known people in my life, a few, that have just had that really good capability to do one-on-one speaking about Christ, having good success, having people believe in what they say just because they know how to do it. It's just they're talented at it because they've been gifted by God to do that. I do not hold the position as, again, you'll hear many Evangelical pastors basically say this or insinuate it that everybody basically has the gift of evangelism. I don't hold that position. I mean, they won't come out and say that, but yet they want everybody to be witnessing, everybody to be evangelizing. But if you don't have that gifting, you're not going to be particularly good at that in every situation, all right? So it's not wrong, obviously, for us to share our faith and to utilize opportunity when it arises for each and every one of us. A lot of us don't have that gift of evangelism, but it's often made to seem as if we should or maybe even that we do, but that's just not, I don't think, what Paul lays out. I just don't see that. I think that's a case of being ultra zealous and wanting people to be saved. I mean, it comes a lot of times out of a good motive. The problem is it's just not reality, and it can put undue burden and even guilt on people's shoulders who just aren't particularly good at that one-on-one evangelism. And I don't want to do that to people. I don't want to be telling people they need to do something that even Paul didn't even say. You got to be careful with that.

       But anyway, let's move on to the final two, which is interesting because he says the shepherds and teachers. Now that could be coupled together as one, and it often is because a pastor, a minister, is usually a shepherd of the church, right? And they're also a teacher. The role of elder in the church, they're supposed to be able to do both, right? In a way, those often go hand in hand. Do they always have to? No, not necessarily, I don't think. I don't think they necessarily have to go hand in hand. There are Bible teachers. There are people that are good at Bible teaching and do Bible teaching that perhaps don't shepherd the church. They might have a podcast. They might share the truth as God's given them insight to do so, but they don't shepherd the church. We know that. And, is there shepherds that don't teach? Well, that one, usually, like I said, elders are supposed to be able to teach. A shepherd should be able to teach to some degree, probably. But could we say there's a shepherd that doesn’t teach? Maybe. A person, maybe it's a person that can teach, but they're not as particularly gifted in that area. Maybe they do it more in a boring fashion, like Paul basically said he did. So yeah, I mean, Paul lists them as separate, so I don't think we can assume that you have to have both hand in hand, but in a lot of cases, people do. So just something to think about. I myself, I'm a Bible teacher. But I'm not a shepherd. I don't shepherd a church. So there you go.

       If we move on to verses 12 and 13, Paul says, “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” (ESV).

       There we see the purpose, right? This is the underlying goal of the five positions I afford to mention. That's interesting because it's not just to endow the saints with knowledge, though that is mentioned, but it's also for them to train other godly men and even women so that they themselves can minister. It's an apprenticeship for them in a sense where they learn from us, and we teach them, so it's kind of reciprocal, and then they go out and teach others and help others and do whatever it is they're doing. It's not a selfish, me-focused thing. It's meant for the benefit of others. There are two accomplishments that Paul brings up, and the first one is the unity of the faith. Until we all attain the unity of the faith. And that's the purpose is that when we interact with each other, when we grow together, when we learn the truth, we hopefully will be united in what we believe. And that creates stronger bonds. Now, obviously, because the church is the way it is here in the 21st century, there's a vast variety of positions, and especially the third level matters and even the second level matters. But the primary things, like I mentioned a while back, the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed is a good core foundation of what we all should believe. If you read that online, you can get an idea of where, of where we all should be, but beyond the Nicene Creed, beyond a setup such as that, you're going to get some fluctuation.

       The second thing that Paul brings up is that he first said the unity of the faith, and we might say that that phrase, the unity, would be coupled also with the knowledge, so the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God. Notice he says, “the Son of God,” and that's something that we can focus on as our core foundation, right? So we focus on Jesus's teachings in the Gospels. Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” So what Jesus specifically taught is an image of what God the Father is like, and that's what we want to be like, as Paul's going to say at the beginning of Ephesians chapter 5 . That's why you'll see, like the Anabaptist Christians, they focus on the Sermon on the Mount, to which they stem a lot of their doctrine. It depends on the Evangelical group you're part of. Some Evangelicals focus on the words of Jesus more, some don’t. They have more of a balance between Paul and Jesus. Whatever, but the point is that we're to gain that knowledge of the Son of God, and really, if you really want to boil it down, that encapsulates the whole New Testament. I mean, yes, the words of Jesus specifically are important, but you've got to consider everything that's said. But you also have to consider Jesus's character and actions. That’s who we're supposed to imitate. That's what we're supposed to be like. So really, it's both. You want to model Jesus’s behavior to the best of your ability, but you also want to be aware of everything that was said, not just what was said in the Gospel. So it seems commonsensical, right? But that's, I'll just state it that way.

       But that's what these five positions, in essence, do. The apostles pointed us there, wrote it all, showed it all to us. Of course, the prophets have told us what's going to happen. Because in a way, Paul acted as a prophet himself when he talked about the rapture, when he talked about the second coming . And Peter talks about prophetic things. John, of course, talks about prophetic things. The apostles themselves acted as prophets. But individual prophecy within the church, like I said, most of us don't deal with that kind of thing anymore.

       Obviously the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers, they help us build our knowledge so that we're more like Jesus, so that we are more attaining to that image of the Son of God, as Paul phrases it. And he said, it's “to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (ESV). It reminds me of a quote from an old baseball player who's basically said something along the lines that by the time you learn how to play baseball, you can't play it anymore. And I think that encapsulates exactly what we're trying to say. And that is that we want to be growing till the day we die. Are we going to reach mature manhood where we're sin-free here on the earth? I don't think so because we all have that inner sin nature. But the point is that we should be growing and growing and growing, and then by the time we're in our elderly years, assuming we live that long, we want to be as mature as we possibly can before we leave the earth.

       Another verse we can look at to encourage us on this growth process is Philippians chapter 1, and it's probably one that we may even have memorized. 1:6 and part of 7. Paul said to the Philippians, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace” (ESV). There we can see that it is a positive way that Paul phrased it there to the Philippians.

       But going back to Ephesians , we've still got a few verses we need to finish up. So verse 14: “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (ESV).

       There it is right there at the beginning of verse 14 what I’ve been trying to say: we're not supposed to be children our whole lives in the faith. We're not supposed to be basic baby Christians our whole lives. We're not supposed to be just drinking the milk till we're 75, 80, and pass away. That's not the way it's supposed to go. A child believes what they're told, right? Well, if we just take everything that we're told and think that all it must be true, then we're tossed to and fro. And he uses the example of waves on the water, carried about by every wind of doctrine. Things are going to come our way, whether we like it or not, things that we see on TV, on YouTube, wherever, things that we hear on podcasts, things that we hear people say even at church, perhaps, books we read, websites we go to that are supposed to be saying this, that, or the other. People have all kinds of beliefs about Christianity, and they're not all doing it for the right reasons. They're not all on our side. And notice that by human cunning, it's made up by people. It's what they think the way it should be when the evidence of Scripture doesn't support it. Craftiness and deceitful schemes. Sometimes these people are trying to cause trouble. They're not really Christians or they're critical of Christianity. And sometimes, as we all know, they just want our money. We’re well aware of that. We can probably name five people off the top of our head in that category. That one we're pretty familiar with in the United States.

       Anyhow, we got two verses left, and we've been kind of going long . Verse 15, “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (ESV).

       Well, there it is. Truth. Commitment to the truth. The person sharing God's word should be committed to the truth. It's not relative to this. It's not this is a truth. It's good truth, and you can choose to believe it if you want to, but it really doesn't matter because there are multiple paths to God. Nope. We're saying that Christianity is the truth, that the Trinity is the truth, that Jesus is the Son of God and equal to the Father God himself. The truth that he died for our sins. The truth that he rose from the dead. The truth that he is in heaven right now, sitting next to God the Father. The truth. We’re saying that's the truth. Now, that doesn't mean we should dogmatically die on every little hill of a doctrinal position we hold. We have to be careful with that, but with those Nicene Creed, those fundamental truth things, we should be firm about. And that's an important point as we've been talking about growth. I do want to say that it's not possible that six months or a year after we've become a Christian that we know everything there is to know. As we grow, we what? We grow.

       And growth means that we're learning new things, even doctrinally. Our doctrine when we're a one-year-old Christian might be different at 10 years old, might be different at 20 years old. We might have that St. Augustine life where we went through four different phases of doctrine. And I'm not talking about the essentials, but the second and third level matters. Those can change as you learn, as you become more aware, as stuff falls off, bad teachings, things that are not quite the way you thought they were. We could think of Calvinism , stuff like that. That stuff can fall away as you grow more mature in the faith. It's just like parenting, all right? I brought up that quote from the baseball player. “By the time you know how to play baseball, you're done playing baseball.”

       It can be that way for parents. I've talked to parents who've told me in different settings, “I didn't do it right. By the time I learned how to be a good parent, they were 18 and gone.” And I think that's the experience of a lot of parents. It's not that they didn't do it entirely right, but they learn, as parents, people learn things along the way, right? They become better and better parents, hopefully. And some things, unfortunately, they learn them when their kids are in their 20s. But they can still work those things out at that point. But it would have probably been nicer if they knew it when their kids were 10 and 12, whatever. But you see the point. And a lot of people can relate to that.

       Paul says we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head and Christ . And he talks about in verse 16 how it's all interconnected together. He uses this imagery of the joints and our body being joined and held together. He gets into an anatomy doctor analogy, which I think is good because, I mean, obviously, if we look at the human body, we don't have to be a doctor to understand that, that everything needs to work correctly together for our leg to do, for our knee to work properly, for our hip to work properly, for the leg to work properly. We get that. Well, Paul's saying that all those little muscles and ligaments and stuff like that in our legs, those all represent different positions within the church. Some are more important than others. But they all are equally important, I think we could say, to the whole picture. You take away just one of them and the leg's slightly off. Now, some of them, if you take them away, it's really off, but some of them it might be slightly off. Well, the point is, it's off. And it's not working right. We want all that stuff in our legs to be working right. And Paul says, when each part is working properly, that he says it makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

       And that's the point we want. We all want to be doing what we're supposed to be doing within the church body, whether that's one talent, two talents, five talents. We want to be committed to God. We want to be moving forward in our faith and our growth so that we are building one another up as time passes by, as we live our lives, as we get closer to the end for each and every one of us. Notice that the last word in this whole section is love, and that encapsulates the whole thing. All of this is to be done out of love. All of our growth, all of our interacting, all of our working out of our gifts in the church, all of this is to be done through love, because if love is not at the core of what we're doing, it turns into legalism, it turns into drudgery, it turns into obligation. We're not that cheerful giver that Paul told us elsewhere that God likes. God wants us to be doing what we're doing because it's in our heart. It's what we really want to do.

       And our heart grows and becomes bigger toward Christ as we grow in our faith. That is what we want to be doing. In other words, as we get older, as we do more obedience, as we do more for God, we learn how to love better. As we grow more, we learn how to love better. That’s a simple way to put it. But it's a process, guys. He says it makes the body grow. It’s a process. It’s not six months to a year after we become a Christian. It's not done and over with real fast. We’ve arrived, and we can just relax. That’s not the way it works. I think a lot of us understand not the way it works, but some people don't. And a final note is, I will say if you're always surrounding yourself with the same Bible teachers, the same people within the body, if it's always the same thing over and over and over, that's probably going to limit your growth. That's probably going to prohibit your ability to grow. You want to consider new perspectives, but don't leave your brain at home. Take your brain with you, analyze what's said, but sometimes it takes different perspectives to grow. So whether that's listening to different Bible teachers, whether that's interacting with different people at church than you normally interact with, whatever it is , we need to sometimes prompt that growth into action. And that's just a free final point there that I wanted to bring out.

       Now, if there's anybody out there listening to all this and you're saying, man, I don't even know God, I'm not a Christian. I want to just say that anybody can become a Christian today, can become part of God's family, his church, and partake in all this I'm talking about by placing their faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of all their sins, all your sins, past, present, future sins, and believe that Jesus not only died for your sins, but rose from the dead and is back with God in heaven right now. If you place your trust in that, you can become part of God's family today. And the way you do that is by going to God in prayer and just telling him that's what you want. You can word it how you want to word it. But it's that simple. God will work in your life and change you to be conformed to the image of his son. It's just miraculous stuff.

- Daniel Litton