Better together

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Transcript:

All right, we’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 4 this morning. Ephesians chapter 4. And I have to tell you, one of my dreams in life is to one day move out to western Oklahoma and buy a large piece of property and have a farm or a ranch.

I don’t know if my mother’s laughing at me because of that or she’s laughing at the baby. And some of you are probably thinking, I can’t imagine you doing that. That’s never going to happen.

It’s called a dream for a reason. We have to have dreams. And that’s mine, is to move out to western Oklahoma and start a ranch. And Charlie’s dream is to have a house on that ranch and never have to go near the animals.

And just stay inside. That’s Charlie’s dream. But I want a very specific kind of ranch.

I want to raise bison. I love bison. You may have seen my tie clip.

or the sticker on the back of my truck. If you’ve been over to my office at the house with all the other native art that’s hanging, I have a few framed pictures of bison. I love bison.

And not only do I love them, but there’s another reason I would want to raise bison on a ranch. It’s because I’ve heard Brother Greg tell stories about taking care of cattle, and it doesn’t appeal to me. Bison just kind of do their own thing.

Bison are very hands-off animals to the point that for the most part, you know, with bison, they can give birth on their own, and you don’t need those gloves that go up to your shoulder, and I think, okay, I’m more, I’m much more on board with raising bison than cattle, but as I’ve been reading about it, because you want to know what you’re getting into, and this, we’re nowhere near this, I’m just, I’m looking down the road and just dreaming, but as I read about what goes into this, this week I was reading about the kinds of fences you have to have. And I should have known this. You know, these animals, they start at 2,000 pounds.

And so you can’t just put up a fence around your property. No, you need things like seven-foot posts anchored in concrete, and you need high-gauge wire. And I’m looking at Charles saying, this is sounding expensive.

And I’m seeing diagrams. You can find anything on Pinterest. I’m finding diagrams of bison enclosures and all this and all the things you have to have them. That’s a lot of money. I’m just imagining how much all that’s going to cost. So you need special kinds of fencing and special kinds of enclosure, and you need certain kinds of pasture, because if they can’t find the plants they like, and if they don’t have a pond, and if they don’t have interesting places to run around, they’ll just get bored, and they’ll break out.

Okay, so we’ve got to buy a special kind of land to raise them on where they won’t get bored, And they get lonely. They’re herd animals. And so it says, one thing I read says, you want a minimum of 12 to 15 bison, just so their herd instinct is met, and they’re not breaking down the fences to get out to go run in a herd with the neighbor’s dogs or something, because they want to be in a herd.

And I’m thinking, seven foot posts, sunken concrete, steel posts, high gauge fencing wire, special enclosures, gotta have a pond, Got to have a full buffet of plants that they like. Got to have 15 of these things. This is getting expensive.

I just wanted a couple bison to look at while I’m out on my property. This is getting expensive. They’ve got to have all this stuff.

And I looked at Charlie yesterday because we were having breakfast together and talking, and I’m looking at stuff too. And I finally said, maybe we should just raise goats. Yeah, maybe we should just raise goats.

The thing is, you put goats in this fancy bison enclosure, it doesn’t make them bison, does it? The bison aren’t bison because they go in this fancy enclosure. But because they are bison, they need this, that’s where they belong.

I mean, unless they’re just out running free, that’s ideal for them. But if you’re going to keep them, that’s where they belong. They don’t belong in a little 8×8 pin with just chain link around them.

Now you build a special enclosure for them, that’s where they belong. But putting something else, if I put goats in that enclosure, they’re not going to automatically become bison just because they’re in the right enclosure. I’m coming around to a point here.

This is my point. Here’s my point. Putting somebody in a church doesn’t make them a Christian.

But because we are Christians, the church is where we belong. The church is the pasture that is built for us. It’s the enclosure.

It’s the 15 square miles of land with the pond and the plant buffet for the bison. This is where God designed us to be, for our needs to be met and for us to do the things that he designed us to do. And when I say the church, I don’t mean the building either.

And when I say our needs met, I don’t mean our wants either, that we come into the church and it’s all about what I want and what my preferences are and what my needs are. It’s about meeting our spiritual needs so that we can then go out serve and meet other spiritual needs so we can glorify Christ together so we can preach the gospel together the church is where God designed us to be not in a building but in a community of believers and if tomorrow this building was gone and we started having Sunday school you know we started having Sunday school down at my house and we started having church at you know one of the school cafeterias and started having the men’s breakfast down at Brahms and started doing all those things without the building, we would still be the church. And God has designed us to be part of the church.

Now the reason I say it, you know, it’s being here doesn’t make you a Christian, but because you’re a Christian, you were designed to be here, to be part of this community, is because God designed us that way. And as I look at Hebrews chapter 10, yeah, Hebrews chapter 10, which is just a verse I’m referring to. It’s not where we’re going to be in our study today.

Hebrews chapter 10, 25, a verse many of you are familiar with, says not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. In other words, don’t stop getting together as the church, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. The writer of Hebrews, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, says there are already some people in the early days of Christianity who said, I can do this alone.

I can do this by myself. I don’t need this pasture that God has created for me. And yet God, speaking through the writer of Hebrews, says, no, you do need it.

Don’t stop getting together. You were meant to do this together. We are better together.

And the point of the message this morning is, and it’s written down in your bulletin for you, and not with blanks because I wanted you to remember this. You don’t have to participate in a church. And notice I didn’t say go to church.

I’m tired of us thinking about church as someplace we go. It’s something we participate in. You don’t have to participate in a church to be saved.

It doesn’t make you a Christian. You don’t have to participate in a church to be saved, but you do have to participate in a church to be obedient. To be the Christian God wanted you to be, he designed us to do this together in community.

And the idea that we would go and try to be Lone Ranger Christians is just totally foreign to the Bible. We don’t see examples of that in the New Testament. Now, there are some extenuating circumstances.

There are believers today who are in prison, who are in absolute segregation, lockdown. They see nobody. And they’re in there because of their faith.

And I think God will meet the needs that they have in ways that he sees fit. But you and I are not in prison for our faith. And so he didn’t design us to do this alone.

He designed us to do this together. And my reason for bringing this up is as we’ve been looking at reasons why people say, well, the church is not necessary. I want nothing to do with it.

There are a lot of people who say, well, the church is not necessary because I can be a Christian without it. And I say that depends on how you’re using the word Christian. If you’re using the word Christian to describe somebody, just somebody who’s been born again, somebody who’s trusted in Jesus Christ for their salvation and is going to heaven, then absolutely, you can be saved without being a church member.

But if you’re talking about Christian in the sense of somebody who is following Jesus Christ and trying to obey His commands and trying to live for Him, you can do really well with that. But if you’re not doing it with the church, if you’re not doing it with a community of believers, you’re missing a very important aspect of what that means. Again, He designed us to do this together.

And so if we want to be faithful to him and if we want to serve him and if we want to be obedient to him, we’ve got to be obedient to him in everything. And so saying, well, I can do this on my own. It sounds great.

It sounds very American, very self-made man. I can do this myself and I don’t need anybody else’s help. It sounds very great and very American, but it’s not biblical at all.

We’re called to do this together. And there’s one very good reason why we’re called to do this together or why we should do this together, because he said so. And we’ve already looked at Hebrews chapter 10, one of many places where he says so.

And sometimes we will tell our kids or our grandkids, because I said so. Just this morning, just this morning, I wanted to squeeze somebody until their eyes popped out. Because why, why, why, why, why?

Because I said so. That is the reason. Now, sometimes when we’re not being defiant, though, I will give a reason beyond that.

Why did I say so? But the bottom line is I don’t owe an explanation for everything. Sometimes I just need you to be obedient because it’s in your best interest. Get out of the street.

Why? We don’t have time to stand here and have the why conversation. Get out of the street because I said so.

Other times I may give an explanation. Why do I have to go to bed now? Because you’re tired.

Because you’re exhausted. Because you were screaming at your mother. And because you’ve just been a blubbering emotional mess since you got home from school.

And you know what? for your safety and everybody else’s peace of mind, you’re going to go to bed about 30 minutes early because you’re exhausted. We might have that conversation, but I don’t owe them that explanation.

I sometimes choose to give it, but I don’t owe it to them. One of the thoughts that revolutionized my understanding of God was to come to the realization God doesn’t owe me an explanation for the things he says and does. And if he never explains it to me, I just have to be okay with that.

But the good thing is God understands my drive to know the reasons why. And sometimes he will tell us, even though he doesn’t owe us an explanation, sometimes he will tell us why he says things. So in Hebrews, we see that we’re supposed to do this together.

Ephesians chapter 4 gives us a picture of why we’re supposed to do the Christian life together.

And we look at Ephesians chapter 4, starting in verse 11 and going to verse 16, And he says, this is Paul writing to the church at Ephesus, and he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the edifying of, excuse me, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. And so just to stop there for a minute, he points out that in the church, he’s telling the church at Ephesus, he points out that God has put leadership in the church and God has put people in the church to do ministry for a purpose, he says, for the perfecting of the saints, to bring them to completion for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. And one of the reasons why God explains to us, this is why I’ve put you together, is because in the local church, God has built a ministry designed to invest in you so you can be the Christian he designed you to be.

Now, I’m not saying that you can’t be a follower of Jesus Christ without being part of the church. I am saying you can’t be obedient in that area without being part of the local church. God designed us to do this together.

And part of that reason is because God has designed a ministry here to invest in you. What does that mean to invest in you? To equip you, to help give you the tools that you need so that you can be the Christian he wants you to be, so that you can go out and do the ministry that he’s called you to do.

I heard a preacher talking this week about trying to get his church to do evangelism, trying to get his church to do hospital visits, all these kinds of ministry. And somebody said to him, well, preacher, that’s what we pay you for. And I’ve heard that dozens of times in my ministry.

Nobody’s ever said it to me, but I’ve heard people give that example where it’s been said to them. And I’ll admit, part of me hopes that, okay, that’s just a story that’s made up for shock value. It’s never been said to me, but sometimes that can be our attitude.

Well, that’s what we pay the preacher for. That’s what we pay the music minister for. Sometimes even that’s what we have deacons for.

It’s always their job, not mine. And he pointed out exactly rightly, I think. No, that’s wrong.

That’s not what you pay the preacher for, is to do the ministry for you. You pay the preacher to equip you. You pay the preacher.

It’s like, Charlie and I were watching the Olympics last night, or trying to, because we were doing it online through one of those apps on TV, because they don’t really show curling on TV so much, unless it’s late at night, and we are fascinated by curling. I remember four years ago when they were in Russia, staying up way later than I should have, like three or four in the morning, so I could watch the Canadian versus Russian women’s teams in curling, and it’s just fascinating, trying to figure out what they’re doing and why they are doing it. And last night, Charlie and I were sitting there and we’re trying to understand what we’re watching.

And I’m reading the rules on my iPad on the internet. I’m saying, okay, I think they’re doing this because they’re discussing back and forth. Anyway, it’s fascinating.

Whether we’re talking about curling or something else, these people who go to the Olympics, they’ve all had coaches and trainers. And they pay these people tens of thousands of dollars to get them in tip-top shape and tip-top expertise in their sport so that they can go to the Olympics. Now, I am not holding myself out as an Olympic-level coach of ministry, but I’m saying it’s sort of the same idea.

If you wanted help to learn curling, you’d go find a curling coach. If you wanted to learn how to play football really well, you’d go find a football coach. You’d go find a trainer.

People who want to lose weight sometimes or want to get really muscular. They’ll go to the gym, they’ll hire trainers. That is sort of the role of the pastor when it comes to ministry.

Yes, to do ministry and to do outreach and to do visitation, to do those things because I’m a member of the church and because I’m a Christian, but to have the ministry on top of it as the pastor, to be somebody who invests in you, to help you, to help train you as much as you’re willing to be trained to do the work of the ministry that God has called you to do, to be your coach and to be your trainer and to be your cheerleader and sometimes be your punching bag as you try to live out the calling that God has given you, to serve you as you try to move forward and do what he’s called you to do. And so Paul says we’ve set up this system where there are apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers. There are people in the church ready to invest in you to help you as you go out and serve the kingdom and as you go out and grow the kingdom.

You will not find that apart from the local church. Are you going to find people down at the, down at, I’m trying to think of a restaurant now, Boomerang. Are you going to find people down at Boomerang to invest in you to help you do your ministry?

The job of Boomerang is to feed you. Are you going to find people down at the insurance agency. Are you going to pay Allstate or farmers to equip you for the work of the ministry?

That’s not what they do. They don’t do that at the bank. They don’t do that in Hollywood.

They for sure don’t do that in Washington. That’s done in the local church. God has put a framework here to help us grow in the faith and help equip us to be the Christians that we’re supposed to be.

And that’s not just saying, hey, I’m your trainer. I, you know, I’m the expert. I’m not the only one here.

Pastors, teachers, evangelists, every Sunday school teacher here has a role in equipping you for the faith. Those who sacrifice, and I do mean sacrifice because I know what it’s like to try to confine my children in a room and hold their attention. Those who sacrifice to do children’s church, every lesson they teach, they are part of the ministry of equipping that is found only in the local church.

Those who encourage one another, those who pray for one another, those who lift one another up, these are ministries of the local church. That is part of what we are here to do, and it’s part of this system of equipping that God has set up to help you do the ministry he’s called you to do. And so he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.

And he spells out some of the reasons why this system is here, why this investment goes on. First of all, and I’ve already hit on it, so you can be equipped for ministry. Verse 12 says, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. until we all come, that’s verse 13.

So the perfecting of the saints doesn’t mean that you go to church enough and you’re going to be perfect. I wish it worked that way. I’m still waiting for it to happen.

Some of us might think we’re pretty close, but we’re not there yet. Now, perfect in the biblical sense often means complete, okay? That’s an important thing for you to remember.

Some of the things that I say to you this morning, you will forget before you leave here. I’ve said that one enough. Hopefully, you’ll remember.

File that back in your mind. Keep that there that a lot of times in the New Testament, perfect means complete. That will help you understand a lot of verses where that word is used.

For the perfecting of the saints means to complete us where we’re not lacking anything. Have you ever gone on a trip and you realize you’ve forgotten something? Anytime I go out of town, my first stop when I get where I’m going is Walmart.

Because in the car, I’ve been making this mental list of all the stuff I’ve forgotten. That was really irritating when I went out west last summer for the convention, and they don’t have Walmart on every corner like they do here. I had to go to Target one time.

I felt dirty afterwards. And I paid twice as much. Don’t you hate that feeling?

You’re on a trip, and you realize I’ve forgotten something I need. I don’t have everything I need. You want to be equipped.

You want to be complete. You want to be prepared. That’s what he’s talking about.

the perfecting of the saints, to equip us and perfect us and complete us so that when we go do ministry, we’ve been equipped with everything we need. It’s like my children taking these adventure bags that Nana got them for Christmas when we went out to Red Rock. They had their compass.

They had their little notepads where they could draw what they’d seen and take notes. They had, I don’t know, they had a collapsible cup where they could get water and have a little drink. They had plastic baggies where they could put the rocks and seeds and things that they picked out.

They were just equipped with everything. Mobile, communication, satellite, phone, the whole nine yards. They had everything in those bags.

That’s what the work of the church is supposed to do in your life. So that when you do go try to do ministry, when you try to lead people to Christ, when you try to build people up in the faith, when you try to encourage people, when you try to challenge people where they need to be challenged, that you’ve been equipped with everything that you need to do the work of the ministry. Because he doesn’t just equip us to sit and soak.

He doesn’t perfect us and build us up in the faith just so we can sit back like the frozen chosen and say, look how smart we are, look how much we know, look how godly we are. No, he perfects us, he completes us for the work of the ministry. The work that God is doing in your heart is not just so the world can look at you and say, oh, such a great person.

Kay is so nice. What a sweet Christian lady. It’s true, by the way.

It’s not just for that. It’s so that you can go do the work of the ministry. For the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. So that that ministry in turn builds up the body of Christ. God’s put you here so that this ministry can invest in you so that you too can be equipped for ministry.

Don’t sell yourself short and think, oh, only the preacher can do ministry. That’s for him. Or only the deacons can do ministry.

Or, oh, I can’t do ministry. I’m not a Sunday school teacher. That’s baloney.

God has called you into the ministry. and he’s done that because he has every confidence that with his empowering and with his leadership that you can do the work that he’s called you to do and we look at verse 13 we’ve got this equipping that takes place this perfecting this completion of the work for the work of the ministry it says in verse 13 until we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so he puts you here so that this ministry can invest in you and equip you so that you can grow spiritually. It says, until we all come in the unity of the faith.

Do you know more about God now? Do you know more of God’s truth now than you did when you got saved? I hope so.

I hope after how many years? I don’t even know how old I am now. 27 years, I guess I’ve been a Christian, 26, something like that.

I hope I’ve learned something in 26 years. I hope I know more of God’s truth now than I did then. There’s a lot that I didn’t understand.

There’s a lot that I still don’t understand. There’s a lot that I still don’t understand. But in all that time, I’ve grown slowly.

So much so that if you go from day to day, you may not realize that it’s happening. Like when you see a child, I see my kids every day. I don’t realize how they’re changing until I go back and look at the pictures.

You don’t even look like the same person anymore. Sometimes the change is gradual. Sometimes it comes by leaps and bounds, but we grow in the unity of the faith. We grow stronger in our faith, stronger in our knowledge of Jesus Christ, until we all come together in the unity of the faith.

Some of the disagreements and squabbles that people have over doctrinal things really come down to sometimes we don’t understand as much as we think we do. But the more we study God’s Word and the more we dig into it, the more we should be able to come together on the things that matter. And we may never agree on the little things or on the secondary things.

But as we grow closer to Jesus Christ, we grow closer together as well. I tend to look at relationships as being like a pyramid shape. When you’re a believer, I’m here, you’re here, Christ is up here.

What happens? The closer we get to Christ, the closer we get to each other as well. So he describes coming together in the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man.

He says this is what we’re shooting for, unto a perfect man. This is our goal, unto a perfect man. Again, that doesn’t mean sinless.

It doesn’t mean that we’re perfect. What does that word perfect mean? I just told you to file it away in your brain.

Remember it for later. Complete. There you go.

It means complete. That for completeness in Jesus Christ. As we grow in the knowledge of him, our goal is to get closer to this idea of maturity in Jesus Christ. Am I as mature in Jesus Christ as I ought to be? No.

I’m not as mature as I ought to be, period. But I’m growing closer to what I ought to be. And we keep our eyes focused on the goal at hand.

And I’ve given you the example before just in in recent weeks, and I like this example. It just came to me one Sunday night, I think, while I was up here teaching, that those of us who go out to the gun ranges, or maybe some of you have them at your house, you know, take a handgun and you stand from 30 yards back, you’re probably not going to hit dead on on the target. At least I’m not.

I’ve gotten pretty close, but I don’t hit right in the crosshairs of the target. That does not mean that I just go stand in there at BDC and start aiming my gun wherever I want to. They will come and they will probably subdue me in some way and throw me out of there, right?

Just because I know I’m not going to hit dead center on the target doesn’t mean that I don’t aim correctly. Doesn’t mean that I don’t try to get there. And so we have this goal of being mature and complete in Jesus Christ. We will never, we will never be just like him in this life.

We will never be as complete as we ought to be. We’ll never be as mature as we ought to be. It doesn’t mean that we just aim anywhere then and stop trying.

Now this is the goal that we’re aiming for and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ because ultimately the goal is to be more like Jesus Christ. That’s God’s design for us. In Romans chapter 8 it says for whom he did foreknow he did also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. And I’ve told you before that some people will read that and interpret that to mean that God has chosen some for heaven and some for hell with respect to those who think that many of whom are smarter than I’ll ever be.

That’s not how I understand that passage to me. I understand that passage to mean that God’s plan that he’s predestined all along was that for those who trusted in Jesus Christ, his goal for us was not just to save us, but to transform us and to make us more like Jesus Christ, to be conformed to the image of his son, that that’s what was predestined, that God’s plan from all eternity past before he ever created us was to offer salvation and those who received the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ would be conformed to be more like him. What’s God’s will for you this morning?

I don’t know specifically, but I can tell you in a general way, wherever you are, whatever stage of life you’re in, whatever place you’re in, God’s goal for you generally is for you to be more like Jesus Christ. And for some in this room, if you’ve never trusted him as your Savior before, that starts with trusting him as your Savior. See, when we come to that point of realizing that we’ve sinned against God and we need forgiveness, and we realize that only Jesus Christ can forgive us, that he paid for our sins in full on the cross, and that now he offers salvation as a free gift, when we come to that point of realizing he offers that free gift, believing that he offers it, and asking God to forgive us because of what he offers, that’s where it starts. He then saves us and forgives our sins and cleanses us and adopts us as his own children and indwells us with the Holy Spirit.

And then the change begins to take place where he begins to make us more and more like Jesus Christ. Can that happen outside the four walls of the church? Yeah. Can that happen outside of the community of the church?

Yes. But God designed it to take place in community. God designed us to grow that way together so that we could encourage each other, so that we could strengthen each other, so that we could challenge each other, quite frankly, when we need it.

And so there’s that ministry here that’s designed to invest in making that happen. Some of my greatest moments in ministry have not been, you know, what we would look at as the big public moments. Oh, that guy’s a great pastor, a great preacher.

Look at all the people who came forward today. Look at how much the church has grown. Look at all that.

Some of my greatest moments in ministry have been those one-on-one moments where I’ve seen somebody get it. You know what I’m talking about? Where I’ve seen somebody grow.

I’ve seen the change that God has brought in their life through a time of working with them. It’s been those times of seeing the growth. And again, you go down to the restaurant, many of them are great at what they do, but that’s not what they do.

That’s not what they’re designed to do. The insurance agency, the bank, the tag agency, the hardware store may be great, but that’s not what they’re designed to do. Only the church is designed to invest in you to help that happen.

And then we look at verses 14 and 15 this morning. He says that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. So God desires that we do the Christian life together.

God desires that we live this life together in community, in part so we can be confident in God’s truth. Outside of the community, outside of the church, our faith is going to be undermined constantly. And we’re going to be bombarded with questions, and we’re going to be bombarded with doubts.

And there’s nothing wrong with having questions. There really isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with occasionally having doubts.

And I want to be careful in the way I say that. I’m not encouraging you to doubt God exists or that kind of thing. But there are those moments where we think, God, I don’t understand how you could let this happen.

God, I don’t understand why I’m going through this. God, I don’t understand why this was taken from me. We all have those doubts and questions at times.

But outside the world, outside the community, outside the church, we’re going to be bombarded with those questions to the point that many who walk away from the church end up falling pre