One Body

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Transcript:

Well, it seems like at least once a day, I ask one of my children, why did you do that? Why did you break your sister’s toy? I don’t know.

Why did you hit your brother? I don’t know. And it’s not because he just broke her toy.

It’s usually a different circumstance. It applies to any number of circumstances. Why did you do this?

Why did you do that? I get so tired of hearing, I don’t know. And finally, I just told them, admit it, it’s just because you wanted to.

And now they think that’s what they’re supposed to say, because I wanted to. Yeah, that’s not going to get you out of trouble either. That’s just telling the truth.

But I’ll say, why did you do that? I don’t know. And I say to them almost every time, well, maybe if you don’t know why you did something, you shouldn’t do it.

And not to say that, you know, hey, there’s a good reason to hit your brother or hit your sister. But you know what? If you don’t have a good reason for it, if you haven’t thought it through, then maybe you shouldn’t just act on instinct like that.

And the idea is to try to teach them even now, hey, think about what you’re doing. I know I haven’t raised teenagers, but many of you all have. Didn’t you wish that they had at least more often stopped and thought about what they were doing?

I’m sure even as little trouble as I got into, my parents wish I would have stopped and thought about what I was doing more. You know what? That’s good advice for us as adults, though, too.

Think about what you’re doing. Why are you doing that? Church is one of those things.

If we don’t understand the purpose of church, if we don’t understand why God has put us together, then it can lead us to make mistakes. It can lead us to do things wrong. It can lead us to do things with the wrong motivation.

It can lead to all sorts of confusion. and there are a lot of people who look at church like school. Now, when I was in school, you only had so many absences that you were allowed.

Otherwise, you failed your grade or failed your class, whatever it was. I believe it was like five and nine weeks, ten a semester, something like that. And being tardy counted against you.

It was half an absence or something like that. They do the same thing with Benjamin in school. If you’re absent so many times you automatically fail, it doesn’t matter how high your grade was.

And so they take attendance and say, that’s part of your grade. And we look at church like it’s school, that God takes attendance, and if I’m there, I’ll get a higher grade, and maybe God will love me, and if I’m not there enough, then I’m on God’s F list. And we look at church like school, where I think it’s more like some of the classes I took in college, where they never took attendance. I think the professor knew whether you were there or not, but he didn’t keep a book with attendance in it.

You do what you’re supposed to do, and that’s, you know, he looks to the criteria. He’s set up for the grade, but there were some classes I went to that you could show up one time at the end of the semester, take the test, and pass it, and you pass the class, even if you never showed up any other time. God doesn’t tell us in his word that he takes attendance.

God doesn’t tell us that his love for us is based on our attendance this morning. God never tells us that he will love us more if we attend. So we know it’s not that.

We know it’s not that God takes attendance. He does tell us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, but that’s for a different reason. Some people say about church, well, if we could just make it more upbeat and entertaining, we’ll bring them in.

Okay, bring them in for what? Why are they coming? To be entertained?

And I’m not against upbeat music in church or any of those things, but if you’re bringing them in just to be entertained, they’ll go elsewhere to be entertained. Because honestly, church, there are people who are a lot better at entertainment than any church I’ve ever seen. There are some pretty entertaining churches, but Hollywood’s a lot better at entertainment than we are.

Amen? Well, we can bring them in to make them feel good about themselves. Why?

Oprah can, well, Oprah’s not on the air anymore. Dr. Phil can make them feel better about themselves.

And we do that and we start ending up with shallow preaching and teaching that doesn’t do anybody a bit of good. And we could go through, I could spend all morning complaining. I don’t want to sound like the crotchety old preacher complaining about other churches.

That’s not my point at all. This is not, oh, shame on the church down the road for their modern music. Hey, if they want to have modern music, great, as long as they’re doing it for the right reason.

But we could go through, I could spend this whole morning going through any list of the wrong reasons that people go to church, any of the wrong ideas that they have about church, any of the misunderstandings about the purpose, but I’d rather ask you this morning, why are you here? I’d rather us talk about why we do church at all, because I’ve thought about it sometimes when we’re having song service, and I’m sitting at the back with my family, and watching y’all, I mean, I’m singing and focusing on Jesus as well, but also thinking about what I’m about to do, and I’m watching you all thinking, I can’t believe these people sit here and listen to me for about 30 minutes twice a Sunday. it doesn’t make sense that y’all would do that unless there’s a reason for it.

Because I know me, I’m not that entertaining. I may tell the occasional story where I’m the butt of my own joke, but beyond that, I’m not that entertaining. So there’s got to be some deeper reason why we do this other than just have it, or you wouldn’t be here.

You’d find something much more entertaining to watch on TV. Now, there’s another reason why we come together. And other than obedience to the Lord, because even though he doesn’t take attendance, I mean, God knows whether you’re here or not, but he’s not taking attendance and saying, well, that’s coming off your grade, you missed because you went on vacation.

He tells us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together because we need each other. That is the precise reason why God put us together as a church, not only this church, but any local church around the world, wherever it’s found this morning, that is trying to obey God, that is trying to follow the New Testament, they are put together, they are knit together because God knew that we needed each other. Whether it’s for our own spiritual strength, whether it’s for our ability to carry the gospel to our community and to the uttermost parts of the earth, God knew that we couldn’t do it alone and that we needed each other.

So he told us, don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together. In other words, stick together. I preached on this a few, on something similar a few months ago, and told you the phrase, don’t swim alone.

Don’t swim alone. There’s safety, there’s safety in numbers. And so we’re going to look this morning at Ephesians chapter 4.

And as we’ve been going through this series on basic Christian teaching, I want us to look this morning at why we even get together, why we do this. Because as I said, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to gather and sit here for an hour, listen to me go on for 30 minutes, twice a day on Sunday, and then Wednesdays and Bible studies in between and all the other things we do. It doesn’t make sense unless there’s some deeper reason for it beyond just entertainment or God taking attendance.

Ephesians chapter 4, starting in verse 4, says there is one body. He’s been talking about the unity of the church already. Paul has as he’s writing to the church at Ephesus.

He says, there is one body and one spirit, even as you’re called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. So he’s painting this picture of the church as a unified body. He says, there is one body and we have to resist the temptation for there to be two bodies within the body.

We have to resist that. Paul wrote about that early on in his day, that some were following factions and saying, well, I’m of Paul. I’m of Apollos.

I follow this guy. I follow that guy. And that can happen when we start to be more focused on people than on Jesus Christ. I’ve heard of churches where the body is split because some people are loyal to the pastor, some people are loyal to the associate pastor, some people may be loyal to this Sunday school teacher or that Sunday school teacher, and they form off into factions.

There’s a church that I pastored years ago, and I came into it knowing what a rough situation it was going to be, but there were two factions in the church, the north side and the south side, like gangs. And yes, I noticed some of you always sit on the north side and some of you always saw on the south side. But nobody’s taken a swing at each other yet, so I don’t feel so bad about it.

No, they sat, you could feel the tension walking down the aisle of the church. Somebody new would walk in to visit and everybody would watch very closely where they were going to sit and then they would tell this person, oh, we’re so glad you’re here. Them over there.

Good way to make the pastor’s head explode, by the way. But these factions hated each other. One faction of the church was loyal to the clerk, and one faction was loyal to the treasurer.

And they hated each other. And all those people, as far as I know, are gone from that church today. It was ugly, and the church never grew.

The church never grew while that was going on. And try as we might, the church never accomplished anything for God, because it wasn’t one body. He says there’s one body.

Folks, you don’t have to like everybody. as I’m fond of saying, well, you can’t like everybody. No, as far as I know, I like everybody here.

I’m saying you may not be as close to everybody in this room as you are to everybody else in this room. You may have somebody in this church who is your best friend and somebody that you just kind of know. That doesn’t mean we split off and form factions.

That’s just human nature. You’re going to be closer to. .

. I’m closer to Charla than anybody else in this room. anybody got a problem with that?

that’s just the nature of life and relationships but it doesn’t mean that I dislike anybody else you don’t have to be best friends but we’ve got to love each other and be part of the same body and it’s very easy for me to say that this morning because as far as I know there’s none of that going on from everything I see everybody gets along but we’ve got to be one body we’ve got to be united at least around Jesus Christ and the basic truth that he taught. And our purpose for being here, of making him and his salvation known. We’ve got to be one body working in one direction.

There’s one body and one spirit. We are led by one Holy Spirit. We are led by the Spirit of God.

If part of the church is led by the Holy Spirit and part of the church is led by something else, we’re not going to be working in the same direction. The unity of the church requires that we be led by one Spirit. The Holy Spirit will never steer us wrong.

He will always point us in the right direction. And he says, even as you are called in one hope of your calling. Folks, if you’re a believer this morning, you are part of the same calling as every other believer in this church.

You are partakers of the same hope as every other believer in this congregation. Now when I say one calling, I mean that calling in a very general sense, that our calling is to follow Jesus Christ and make disciples. Now the specific ministry that God may have called you to to fulfill that may look very different from mine, and it may look very different from the person sitting down the pew from you.

But we share a calling, if not a particular ministry, we share a calling, and we are partakers of the same hope, which is the fact that Jesus Christ died to pay for our sins, so that we could be forgiven. And now we share the promise of eternal life in heaven. And we need to remember that sometimes when we get sideways with each other.

That does happen from time to time. A church should feel like a family. We should be a family.

And sometimes in a family, you get sideways with each other. But instead of letting it fester and getting mad at each other, we need to remember that we’re part of the same body, that we are led by the same spirit, and that we are, folks, we’re in this together. We share the same calling and the same hope.

That is not my enemy. That is my brother in Christ. That is not my opponent. That is my sister in Christ. We’re led by one Lord.

We serve one Lord. And I tell you what, the harder we work at serving that one Lord, the less time we’ll have for division and squabbles. Some of you are kind of glancing around a little bit without moving your heads.

Is there something going on I don’t know about? No, as I said, it’s very easy to preach on this today because it’s not an issue. The best time to preach on church division is before there is church division.

And we’re just going through these series of basic Christian doctrines, and today just happened to be the church. We serve one Lord, and honestly, as I said, the harder we work at serving Him, the less time we’ll have for squabble and division. I know that in my experience, what I’ve seen is that churches that don’t do a lot of ministry, where there’s not a lot of serving going on, they have time to sit around and think about things to get offended by and to squabble about.

The churches that are doing a lot of ministry are too tired to squabble. I occasionally have those days where I’ve spent all evening or all day Saturday out working in the yard. And I come in and Charlie and I disagree about something but you know what?

I’m too tired to fight about it. You just do what you want while I sit here and drink my tea. I’m tired.

I’ve been working. And the more we serve one Lord, the less time and energy we’ll have to focus on our petty concerns. We hold one faith.

He said there’s one faith. That means we share the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints.

Now you and I don’t agree on everything And the reason I know that is because I don’t agree with myself on everything There are things that I said and taught and wrote 10 years ago that I look at now and say Not quite, I don’t think that I completely go along with it But it’s minor stuff It’s stuff that my view has changed as I’ve come to understand more of scripture So if I don’t agree with my own self I know I probably don’t agree with you on everything we can sit down and talk about my favorite example of that is the timing of everything in the end times we can sit down and discuss that and debate it and how does all that work, how does it fit together when is it going to happen in relation to each other and none of us know for sure but we can disagree about that we can disagree about a number of things but there are basic bedrock truths that we share in common.

And there’s some of the things that I’ve talked about during this series. We as a church stand firm on the Trinity, the belief that God reveals himself in three eternally distinct and co-equal persons. I know that’s a lot of terminology there.

But it just basically means God doesn’t one day wake up as the Father and show himself to us as that, and another day show himself to us as the Son, and then another day he’s the Holy Spirit. Now, he’s all three at the same time. They’re all distinct and always have been, and they’re all equal and always have been.

And they’re all one God. We stand firm on the fact that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully man. We stand firm on the fact that Jesus Christ shed his blood and died as the Bible said he did.

We stand firm on the fact that Jesus Christ was buried in a borrowed tomb and rose again from the dead on the third day, as the Bible claimed, and was seen by eyewitnesses. We stand firm on the Bible being our sole repository of God’s authority. I may not be saying that the right way, but when we want to know what God says on a subject, it’s right here.

And it carries the authority of being God’s Word. It’s not authoritative because it’s a book made up of paper. It’s authoritative because God’s Word is written on its pages.

is what the reformers called sola scriptura. If you want to know what God says, go to the Bible alone. We stand firm on the fact that salvation is by God’s grace alone.

It’s not earned or deserved. It’s given because God is kind and loving and willing to forgive when we didn’t deserve it. We stand firm on the fact that salvation is through faith alone.

That the only condition God placed on us is the realization, the agreement with God that we are sinners in need of salvation and the firm conviction that Jesus Christ died is the only way to purchase that salvation. We stand firm on the truth that Jesus’ death on the cross was a payment for our sins. It was not merely an example.

It was not merely to show us how seriously God took sin. There are about five theories of the atonement that I hear bandied about by preachers about what Jesus’ death on the cross meant. And his death might include all of them, but the one the Bible hits home is that it was a payment for our sin.

That he died in our place to pay for our sins. We stand firm on that in our teaching as this church. Folks, there are some basic non-negotiables of the faith.

And as a body, we hold one faith. We undergo one baptism. Now there’s debate over, when he says one baptism, It’s confusing because there are actually two baptisms spoken of in Scripture.

There’s the baptism of the Holy Spirit that we undergo at the moment of conversion. And as I’ve studied this years ago, I don’t believe it’s something that comes later, and then we have a spiritual experience and speak in tongues and all of that, that it happens at the moment of conversion. That we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

We are immersed into the Holy Spirit. There’s the water baptism that we do as a personal testimony, a public testimony, of the fact that we acknowledge Jesus Christ as the one who suffered blood and died for us and rose again. And there’s no consensus on which baptism it’s talking about.

But whichever it is, the point of this passage is on the unity of the church. And as believers who’ve been put together in a body, he reminds us that we are all partakers of that baptism, of the same baptism. Whether it’s the baptism of the Holy Spirit, whether it’s the baptism by water, the main point is that we all have been partakers of the same baptism.

And we belong to one God, it says. One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. We belong to one God.

We are all children of one God as believers in this congregation. And that’s a hard thing to remember sometimes. because I have been a church member who disliked another church member and just didn’t really want to see that person come into Sunday school.

Didn’t want to get stuck next to that person in line as we were trying to make our way past the pastor on the way out the door on Sunday morning. Didn’t want to have to make small talk with them. And yet you have to remember, that is not my enemy.

That is not some dragon person. That is a child of the same God. That’s my brother.

That’s my sister in Christ. Folks, first of all, this morning, the church exists to foster unity among believers. Now, that was a long way to get to the first point. But it’s a big one.

It’s important. We are supposed to. As Benjamin Franklin said, we must all hang together or we will all hang separately.

Now, that’s probably a paraphrase of the exact quote. He was talking about the men who had just signed the Declaration of Independence because they basically signed their death warrant. If they didn’t hang together, if they didn’t stick together, and the American Revolution was lost, then they had all presented King George with all the evidence he needed that they had been behind this treason by signing the Declaration of Independence, and they would be all hanged.

They would all be executed together. Well, for us, it’s a little bit different situation. but this world is a place that is ready to eat God’s people alive.

You say, where do you get that? God warns us through the Apostle Peter that the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. This world and its leader is ready to eat you alive if given the chance.

We’ve got to hang together because we need each other and this world will hang us separately otherwise. So the church is here to foster unity among believers. And I’ve met people who are good, decent Christian people.

I mean, godly people who want to serve him. But, you know, where do you go to church? Well, I don’t.

We just worship God at home. You can worship God at home. But where are you getting that unity with other believers?

Where do you build that fellowship, have that relationship with other believers?

if you’re not part of the church and I’m not talking about going to church I’m talking about being part of the church there’s a difference which we’ll get to in a moment you can worship God at home again, he doesn’t take attendance he knows where you are but he’s not taking attendance you can worship God out on the lake this morning you can worship God on the golf course I’ve heard all of it, it’s true but where are you getting the fellowship and the strengthening and the unity with other believers that you need we’re here to help each other we’re here to strengthen each other have you ever felt down spiritually have you ever felt discouraged spiritually I have I have this week and yet we come together and I’m encouraged by being in your presence I’m encouraged by being around you I’m encouraged by praying with you and for you and praising the Lord together with you and hearing about what God’s doing in your life, I’m encouraged and strengthened by those things.

Have you ever had a friend notice something’s not right with you or have you ever noticed something’s not right with a friend and called him up or talked to him in person and said, what’s going on with you? I do this sometimes with my wife. I say, what is wrong with you?

Now, I’m not saying there’s something. . .

Okay, how do I talk my way out of this? Maybe instead of saying, what’s wrong with you? It’s what’s wrong.

Because see, I know her well enough to tell when something’s wrong. And more often than not, it’s just my imagination. She’s not trying to slam pans when she’s putting things away in the kitchen.

It just sounds that way. But occasionally, I know. .

. there have been times where she said, no, I’m okay, and I’ve said, no, you’re not. And she’s told me, you’re right, I’m not.

As a believer in your spiritual life, who is going to come alongside you and say, what’s wrong? What’s going on with you? No, I know everything’s not okay.

What is going on? Who is going to come alongside you to do that for you in your spiritual life, if not your brothers and sisters in Christ? if you’re trying to do the Christian life alone, apart from the unity of the body, who’s going to do that?

Who’s going to check on you? And I know we’re Americans, we’re individualistic. I don’t need anybody to check on me.

Yeah, I know, I feel the same way too, but we do. We need somebody to check on us from time to time. The world that lives in rejection to God is not going to check on you spiritually.

Folks, we need the unity of this body. We’re going to skip ahead to verse 11. For time’s sake this morning, and it says, And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. And as I said earlier this morning, we will not all have the same exact ministry.

We have the same calling, but we won’t have exactly the same ministry. How many of you want to get up and talk in front of people multiple times a week? Anybody?

If statistics are true, more people are afraid of public speaking than death. That when you ask people their top fear, more people list public speaking as their top fear than do list death. So I’m guessing not everybody wants to be a pastor or preacher or teacher.

You know what? When Brother Greg drives around in a van to pick up kids for vacation Bible school, I would do that if I had to, but I’d hate it. There’s something about other people’s children.

I’m not patient enough for other people’s children because you can’t spank them when they act up. Some people are built where they just love children, and even if they’re wild. How Sharon puts up with mine in Sunday school, I’ll never understand.

Some people are wired that I just love children and I want to minister to children. That’s really not my thing. I’ve enjoyed in the past working with teenagers, and some of y’all probably think, oh, I’d sooner die.

I’ve heard that before why would you rather work with teenagers than children why would you rather work with children than teenagers God wires all of us differently I like people who are old enough to understand and appreciate my sarcasm is my thing God wires each of us differently Brother Ken I’ve led music before in church I wouldn’t want to do it as my as my routine ministry. I appreciate what you do. I wouldn’t want to do that every week.

That’s not what God’s called me to do. God calls each of us to do something different. And He’s equipped each of us in different ways and He equips the church with different people to do different things so that all of it somehow gets done.

He’s given some apostles and prophets and evangelists, some pastors and teachers. These are all different roles in ministry. And we each have these different roles in ministry.

But the important thing is that the church exists. All of these things were done, as it says in verse 12, all these things were given for the perfecting of the saints, meaning the completion of the saints, to bring God’s people to a place of completion and maturity for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. The church exists to equip believers to do ministry.

when we work together as a unified body part of the product of that working together should be that we are equipped and strengthened to do ministry you may be thinking well what’s my ministry that’s a good question I’d love to help you find out and my hope is in the near future on Wednesday nights once we get through with the sermon on the mount and do a little bit do a little bit more stump the preacher and I get some lessons written up and finished, I’d like to do some talking about how do you find your ministry. But if you’re thinking, well, I’m not really a Sunday school teacher. I don’t want to sing in the choir.

Ministry does not just go on inside these four walls. As a matter of fact, I submit to you, we ought to all have a ministry inside these four walls and one outside these four walls. That’s just my own personal take on it, but we should have one of each at least. But God will show you what your ministry is, and he’s called you for a ministry.

But the church exists because God puts leaders here. See, I’m not here to teach you because you can’t teach yourselves or because you’re incapable of learning God’s word on your own. There’s a tension here.

There’s a balance that needs to be found between believing we have pastors and teachers to help teach us, but also we have the Holy Spirit who can help us understand the scriptures on our own. God doesn’t put leadership in the church to teach and to preach because you’re incapable of understanding on your own. It’s to help guide you and invest in you to equip you to do ministry.

We have in America a very backwards view of ministry. The churches need to change. That we need to change here if we’re going to be effective in our ministry.

Because there’s this idea that we need to figure out what the big ministry, the big overall ministry of the church is and what the pastor is doing and get behind him and support him. That is backwards. I am here to support you and equip you and invest in you as you go do ministry.

Now, I have ministry of my own as a pastor and as a member of this church. But as your pastor, the important thing here is not for you to get on board and support what I’m doing, but for me to get on board and help you and supporting you and what God is sending you out of these four walls to do. And until we get that straightened out, the job of the church is not for us to all come in and support what I’m doing, but for the church to invest in and equip the people for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body, to prepare you to go out and live out your calling.

And any church is going to be stunted in what it does and what it can accomplish. and there’s an example that I’ve thought of and I’m almost finished, I promise no, I don’t promise, but I’m trying to almost be finished a lot of times if you’re familiar from school with the stories about the Revolutionary War and I didn’t realize all my examples were going to come from the Revolutionary War this morning but if you think back to it, there were a couple of men who were instrumental there were more than these two A couple of the men who were instrumental in the Americans winning that conflict were George Washington and Baron von Steuben. And I remember hearing just a very little bit about Baron von Steuben when I was in school.

So I forgive you if you don’t know who I’m talking about offhand. You should know George Washington, right? Everybody good on that one?

He was the leader. He set out the vision, and the troops got behind him, and they pushed for victory, and they followed him wherever he went and supported the program that he laid out for them. They were able to do that because Baron von Stoiben was a Prussian military officer, a man from Germany, who came over here, and the Prussian military at that time was the most prestigious military in Europe.

Everybody wanted to pattern their military after the Prussians, part of northern Germany. They were just tip-top. They were the best. And for them to get this Prussian military officer to come over and say, we’re going to train your continental troops.

We’re going to take these farmers with pitchforks, and we’re going to turn them into an