Ephesians 4

Let's read this glorious text in front of us. Ephesians 4 verse 7. This is Paul writing to the Ephesians. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore he says, When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. Now this, he ascended, what does it mean? But that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things.

And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the deacons. Oh, I'm sorry. What does it say? For the equipping of the saints.

Amen. For the work of ministry. For the edifying of the body of Christ.

Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. But speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ.

From whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to the effective working by which every part does its share causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Amen. Amen.

Let's pray. Precious Holy Spirit, my prayer is that I may decrease and Christ may increase and that as I teach from this text, Lord, no one would hear the words of man but we would hear the Word of God. Lord, so please get Sam out of the way and for everyone in this room get all of us out of the way so that we may have ears to hear and hearts to receive and bellies flowing with rivers of living water and beauty in this room and glory in our lives, Lord, and that we may finally say today everybody in this room could be able to say, you know, it's not about me.

Lord, so turn our eyes upon Jesus. Help us to look to him. Help us to take our eyes off our belly buttons and to look to you, Lord.

Help us by faith to fly out of ourselves today and hear what you have to say to the church. Thank you, Jesus. In your mighty name, amen.

Amen. So I want to give you a super practical sermon today, very practical, and I'm going to ask two questions. First one is this, what is your vision of the church? And second one is this, what is your ministry in the church? Amen? So first question, what is your vision of the church? And secondly, what is your ministry in your local church? And if you're just visiting here, if you don't know quite yet if this is your local church, that's okay.

But all of this would apply to wherever you call home in your church body, okay? I wrote down right here, this sermon is going to be super practical, but it is meant to give Satan a black eye, okay? What do I mean by that? I think there are a lot of things we could do right now to try to take out Satan in Portland, Maine. We could maybe make a parade. We could maybe go give a declaration over the whole town.

We could maybe figure out where all the bars are and the pot shops are and pray over them. We could do a thousand things, couldn't we? Right. But I think, no, I know studying this text right here, that the most powerful thing we could do, and I don't know if you guys are going to agree with me, is to get every single person in this church doing a little ministry, okay? And I actually think that would be the most powerful offense to Satan.

If he saw a group here of 60, however many of us believers, and he saw each one of us doing exactly what we're called to do. So not just being busy, right? Not going to every single meeting you can go to. Not just doing a bunch of church stuff.

But doing exactly what you are called to do, Satan would quake in his boots. He would have no idea what to do with it. So that's what I'm after today.

Have you all heard the 10-90 rule? The 10-90 rule is that most churches, let's see, how does it go? 10% of their people do 90% of the work. Can I get an amen? Okay. Think about that for a second.

You've got a church, let's say it's us, and we're around 60 people. 10%, so just a few of them, how much would 10% be? Okay, six people are doing 90% of the work. And I calculated in our church, we're at about 20.

So 20-90. 20% of our people do 90% of the work. That's pretty good, right? But we could do better.

And the vision that Paul paints right here is that the ideal and healthy church is a place where 100% of the people are doing the work of ministry. Amen? That's amazing. But somehow, in Christian history, the church has shifted to a place where we go there just as spectators, right? And I'll go on Sunday, and I'll listen to a sermon, and I'll say, okay, that was cool, and I'm back to my life.

But what Paul says here is that he wants each one of us plugged in to our calling, to some specific thing that God wants us to do to advance the kingdom. Okay? So that's what we're heading for. Two simple questions.

First question, what is your vision of the church? And we're gonna dive right into verse 7 here, and I just want to go verse by verse for a few minutes, and I want you all to get familiar with this portion of the Bible. But I know that many people could say, well, church is a place where I go on Sunday, right? What else could we say? Church is a place I go on Sunday if I'm free, if I have nothing else to do. Church is, you know, I take my faith seriously, but I'll show up if I want to.

I've heard a thousand people say that. What else do we say about church? Church is a good community, or church is a house of worship. That's pretty good, right? That's getting hotter.

But what does Paul say right here? I wrote this down. He says, church is a glorious body growing up into its head in the sky. Can I say that again? That might sound really weird.

You all are like, what? I thought I was just coming on Sunday. But Paul says church is a glorious body growing up into its head, which is in the sky. And he even adds in Ephesians chapter 3 that when we grow up into that body, Satan and demons and principalities look at us and they get terrified, okay? That's what he calls us to do.

But I'm gonna have to try to explain that. I heard this illustration, and I don't think it's irreverent, and I've prayed a lot about it, so I'm just gonna give us this illustration. I think it'll help you picture this text, okay? Imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger's head right here.

Can you all imagine that? Okay, he's got a big head, right? And even his neck, right? Big, fat, strong neck. Is that okay to say in a sermon? Okay, that's Schwarzenegger right there, right? Just towering over me. He's huge.

And then right here at the bottom of his neck is a stick figure. A line, a line, a line, a line for his legs, okay? That's the picture that Paul has right here. We have this glorious, ascended Christ.

He's the head of the church. He's in heaven. He's powerful.

He's sovereign. And then he's sending down gifts to try to flesh out this stick figure that's below him. Do you all see that? That's exactly the picture.

And it's sort of an odd picture, because he actually says, we are going to grow up into the head. Did you all see that? Where does it say that? Look at verse 15. We grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ.

So do you all get that image? Beautiful, powerful head of the church up here. And we are growing up into Him. May we go from being a stick figure church to being a strong, powerful Arnold Schwarzenegger church, right? Where we flesh out that body and we glorify Christ.

Okay, that's the picture here. I just want to go verse by verse a little bit, get us familiar with this text. Look at verse 7. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

So has grace been given to each one of you? Yes? Amen. Has He given you little gifts? Has He started to show you little things? Like, hey, Jim, you can teach. Has He started to show you little things? Logan, you write songs for the Lord.

I won't call out anybody else, right? But He starts to show us these little things. You've got a grace on your life, brother, right? He's got this. He's giving specific graces into each one of our lives.

Next verse. Therefore He says, when He ascended on high, He led captivity captive. Do you think of the ascension of Jesus? We want to preach the cross, right? And then we want to preach that He went down into the grave and He busted open the grave and He was resurrected, right? Do we preach the resurrection? We better.

But do we preach the ascension? Amen? That after 40 days, He flew up into the sky and He's seated now at the right hand of the Father up there. And it says right here, Paul's quoting Psalm 68, that He ascended on high and He led captivity captive. What does that mean, brothers and sisters? It's one of my favorite phrases in the whole Bible.

It means you were in captivity and He brought you into captivity to Himself. Amen? You were, if you're honest, you were a slave to the world. And Christ came and He made you a slave to Himself.

Amen? We were enslaved. We were captives and He made us captives. That's what that beautiful phrase means.

He brought captivity captive. And then it says from that position in heaven, He gave gifts to men and women. Isn't that beautiful? Look at what Paul says, verse 9. Now this He ascended.

What does it mean? But that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens that He might fill all things. So Paul is giving us a little summary of what's going on here.

And then what does it say in verse 11? And He Himself gave. Now what did He give? He's the exalted head. And now He gives the shoulders.

Okay? The first line of defense. And who does He give? Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. Amen.

Can I give you all a way to remember this? Hold out your right hand. I got all the right hands. Oh okay.

Because the apostle is strongest and he can do all the work of the other fingers. Okay? He's got command over the other fingers. Yeah? That's the apostle.

Prophet is your pointer finger because the prophet points things out. He has vision and he points to what we should do. Yeah? Middle finger is what? Evangelist.

Because he reaches beyond the other fingers. Right? Outreach. The evangelist goes out into the world just like our middle finger.

What's the next one? Ring finger. There it is. That's my ring.

Isn't that nice? What does the ring finger signify? Faithfulness. Fidelity. So who's the fourth one on the list? The pastor.

The pastor is faithful to the local church. The pastor isn't going anywhere. The pastor is in covenant relationship with his people.

Right? He's staying there. Faithful. And what's the final one? Teacher.

That's your pinky because the teacher goes for the fine points. Amen? Those little things and says, okay, we got to clarify that. We got to clarify that.

Is that helpful? So we have apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher. And they've been given to us from Christ. He's given those things.

Let me ask you all, and here I'm going to get in trouble. Are there still apostles today? Oh, yes. Amen.

There are still apostles today. And let me say this. There were the original 12 apostles.

There were the ones who wrote scripture. And then as we go on from there, if you read in the book of Acts, for example, you find that Barnabas is an apostle in chapter 14. You find that Andronicus and Junia are apostles in Romans 16.

You find that Silas and Timothy are apostles in First Thessalonians, chapter one and chapter two, all of which proves to us that apostles are still alive in the church. Christ is still sending apostles. And you can think of it this way.

He gives apostles for strategy. Amen. Now, we don't have an apostle in our church right now, as far as I know.

But we do have strategists. Amen. We have people who would say, okay, we got to reach the people down on marginal way.

And someone who has that sort of vision is a strategist. They have sort of an apostolic calling to how are we going to do that? How are we going to go over there? How are we going to join with those churches? What are we going to do? That's the apostolic calling. Amen.

And then prophets. Are there still prophets today? Yes. Because in the book of Acts, we see who's a prophet in Acts.

Can anyone tell me? What? Chiara what? Agabus. Yes. Philip's daughters.

Right? There's all these prophets showing us that there is still prophecy going on into the New Testament era. And we don't currently have someone named a prophet in this church. But we have prophetic flavor.

And if you want, you could define this verse as this fivefold flavor of ministry. So there's that apostolic flavor. There's prophetic flavor.

And what would it look like if someone has a prophetic sort of flair in their life? It means they see things. They see vision. They're able to point out, hey, that's the next step.

Hey, the Lord told me that. See how that works? The apostle is for strategy. The prophet is for vision.

The evangelist is for outreach. The pastor is for what? Care. And the teacher is for clarity.

Amen. Everybody getting that? I'm just sort of introducing this off the cuff today. I hope we go a little bit faster.

But here we go. So he gave those flavors of ministry, you might say, as the shoulders of the church. And then what does it say? For the equipping.

Look at verse 12. For the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry. Can I just ask you all to pause and look at verse 12 with me? Does it say he gave all those leaders to equip the deacons? Does it say that? No.

Does it say he gave all those leaders to equip 10 people in the church? No. It says he gave all those leaders to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Amen.

That means every single person in this room who claims the name of Jesus has a work of ministry. Amen. Okay.

And before we even go on from that verse, just briefly, what does ministry mean? Can anybody tell me? Think through this together. What is ministry? What's that? Service. Amen.

Help. What's that? Teaching. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. That was a beautiful, long, glorious answer.

Did you all hear that? But basically, fulfilling the Great Commission, right? Think about it for a second. For the work of ministry. Usually we think that ministry means just helping each other or serving, and it does mean that.

But even more deeply, when the New Testament writers spoke of ministry, they're speaking of serving God to other people. Do you all see that? I have God. I know God.

God resides in me, and I want to serve Him up for you somehow. You see that? And in doing that, we help, we do the Great Commission, we do all of that, right? But we are serving up God. So beautiful.

My point from verse 12 is that every single person in this church has a work of ministry. Let's just go a few more verses here. Stick with me.

Verse 12, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Verse 13, till we all come to the unity of the faith. Okay, now picture with me, just very briefly here.

What is that body getting filled up with? Each of the saints are doing some ministry, and the first thing he says in verse 13 is unity. Amen? So we want all those parts of the body to be working together in unity. Have any of you experienced unity growing in this church? Yeah? When we were at prayer meeting this last Wednesday, it started at 6, and I could feel disunity in the room.

It was like there was a little bit of chaos, and everybody was sort of reeling back and forth, right? But then after about 20 minutes together of praying, God brought unity. He just brought unity, and we were worshiping together and loving each other. Amen? So we fill up this body with unity.

Go on with me here. Look at verse 14, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine. What's that? We fill up this body with maturity.

So not only do all the pieces of the body have to unify and work together, but they have to become mature. So we're looking to become strong, right? To fill up that Arnold Schwarzenegger sort of body, right? Maturity. Can I just give you an example of maturity? Okay? We'll just go through this passage, almost done here.

I heard someone in our church say just a few months ago, they said, oh yeah, God is three person, no, God is one God in three manifestations. I heard someone say that. One God in three manifestations.

And I just went, what? Right? I was like, one God, three manifestations? Meaning there's a problem there. The way you said that was not right. We serve one God in three persons.

And you all might think I'm just being meticulous, but that's the sort of thing. You don't want to be carried about on every wind of doctrine, right? You want to know our God is one God in three persons. And then that's not even Christian maturity.

That's just knowing the truth, right? Christian maturity is, I love this one God in three persons. I worship the Father. I worship the Son.

I worship the Holy Spirit. I have communion with them, and they are one God. Do you see that? That's just an instance where we all in this church have to help each other to grow into maturity.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. One more thing, verses 15 and 16.

But speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into Him who is the head Christ. So what's the third thing we need here? We need unity. We need maturity.

And finally, we need love. Amen? We need love. Are you all committed to loving each other in this church? Give me a few minutes.

Think through that. What does love look like? I saw my brother Godfrey this morning, and I just started weeping. Sometimes love looks like you cry for someone, right? Sometimes love looks like, hey, stick around five minutes and have fellowship with us.

What else does love look like? Hey, how is she actually doing? Can we go help her at her house? What else does love look like? Amen. Taking care of the elderly. You know, another thing love looks like is just listen to someone.

Just sit with them. That happened to me about 50, 100 times this last week. I'm sitting with somebody, and I'm like, I don't know what to say.

Have you ever been in that situation? You don't need to know what to say. Sometimes we beat ourselves up, and we say, if only I had the right Bible verse to feed them right now, right? Just sit there. Listen.

I'm here for you. I don't know what to say. I do feel for you.

I know you're struggling. I don't know what to say. I mean, you want to have lunch? Want to get a coffee? That's love, isn't it? And that ties this whole thing together, right? So the big head at the top, we are growing up into the body with unity, maturity, and love.

Amen? Let me just say one more thing, and then a final question. How does that picture look of the church compared to someone just saying, I'll go to church if I have the time? It's pretty different, right? This is a picture of a glorious church that extends all the way up into heaven, where we're growing together to be a threat to the demonic powers of this world. It's a picture of the church having Christ as its head, and we're growing in these beautiful ways, coming to love each other.

And then I find it so weird when someone says, I'll come like three times a year if I have time, pastor. I'm like, that's almost creepy. No? I'm sorry, maybe that's not the right word.

But it's very weird when someone says that. It's like, what? That's your image of the church? It's a place you might show up to sometimes? We want to have this. We are nothing short of a glorious hub of God's activity on the earth.

Amen? A place where He's squeezing out glory for Himself on the earth. That's what we are, brothers and sisters. I wrote this down.

It's like if you, someone says, I'm going to the fireworks, and you say, oh yeah, I'm gonna go light a match if I can find one. It's a silly example, right? But it's like you've got fireworks over here, and someone's like, maybe I'll go find some matches and light a match and look at it. Right? The picture God gives of the church here is so glorious.

May your hearts be melted by it. Amen? Okay, I'm just, I know I've gone too long, so here's our final question. What is your ministry in the church? Can you all just pull out this insert from your bulletins? And we'll just spend five minutes here, and we'll end here.

You might have seen in the text in front of us that in verse chapter, in verse 12, it says, for the equipping of the saints. That means every single saint has a ministry. And then look at verse 16.

It says, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies. As we close now, I just want to ask you, what do you supply in this church? Amen? Could we see each other as joints who need to supply something? So maybe you're the elbow joint. Maybe you're the shoulder joint.

Maybe you're the wrist joint. But I want to ask you, what are you supplying to the church? Okay? Let's just take a few minutes and look at this together, and we'll end with this. Let's call this an altar call, okay? This is the weirdest altar call you're ever going to experience.

This is what I want you to do. Next five minutes, I'll read this through, and I want you to just start to ask, how can you contribute to this church? Amen? Okay, here we go. You can circle something.

You can take this home and think about it for a few weeks. But I just want you to consider that this is a sacred act. We need you, each one of you, to rise up and do something in this church.

We need to work together. So look at this together with me. You can write your name at the top if anybody needs one.

You need one, brother? First thing, serving Thursday community dinners, we need help at 430 on the first Thursday of every month. If that strikes you as something you can do, show up. Amen? Hope Outreach is our clothing closet and food pantry.

We have help needed on Thursday afternoons or on Saturdays, and we're going to try to determine that time. Secondly, prayer meetings, we need teaching and leading on Wednesdays. And then here's a big one, being a faithful, participating presence in the prayer meeting.

Also music for prayer meeting. But did you all know that one of the biggest things any church needs is faithful, participating members? Amen? Right now, the people I expect to be at prayer meeting are about 10. And I know them so well.

And I trust them. And I know that when we meet, we're going to go to battle together against the forces of darkness. We're going to storm the gates of heaven together.

But I just want to ask you, are you one of those people where you could come and be faithful at prayer meeting? We need not just people who show up every once in a while, but faithful people. Let's go on. Prayer vision for the future.

We need to develop vision for the future. Other prayer meetings, worship sessions. We also need a good, strong prayer team for Sundays.

So is that you? Is this good, everyone? Can I keep going? Just a few more minutes? Okay. Gifts of the Spirit. If these gifts of the Spirit are already flowing in your life, would you be one who helps bring these gifts into the church through teaching, through impartation, through stepping out in faith? Next, women's groups.

We need teaching, leading, helping. And then what did I write down there? Being a faithful, participating presence. Amen? Janann, how many people were at the women's group on Friday? Four.

So we've got that faithful core, and we want to build up that women's group, right? And you know that the people who really encourage in church are the people who come every week, or as much as I can without missing too much. But we need that so much. Men's group, teaching, leading, helping, being a faithful, participating presence.

Phil, hasn't that strengthened us to see the men who show up every week? It's so strengthening. Music. Maybe our band doesn't need help.

I think it sounded pretty good today, no? That was pretty awesome. Man, that was great. But if you are a musician, come join the band, yeah? Practice Wednesday and Sunday.

We also need help on the soundboard. Amen, Dan? Yeah, we need help there on the PowerPoints and on the live stream. Is this giving you all a good picture of the underbelly of our church? Like this is what it takes to keep a church running.

How many ministries have I already mentioned? Like 50, right? There's so many things, and it's not just about being busy, but it's about finding what's your lane, what's your calling, where does God need you to rise up in the church? What's next? Nursery, weekly help needed. See Rachel or Janann. Encouragement.

This is a big one. If there are some people here who can't come out throughout the week, but maybe you're stuck at home, maybe it's hard for you to get to another meeting at church. Would you like to be on our encouragement team, maybe? This would mean sending an email or a phone call or checking on people.

Helping the leaders know when someone's sick or needs prayer. Amen? That's really, really needed. You know there's so many times when I and the other elders, someone's sick, we don't even know about it.

But we're like, we really want to know. We really want to pray for you. But if we had some people on an encouragement team, they could help us with that.

Amen? Okay, almost done here. This is very healthy for us though. Evangelism.

People who want to get together, schedule and share the good news. Amen? Who do we have right here who has evangelism on their hearts? Anybody? Whoa, okay. Wait, raise them really high.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Whoa, we have ten people. Can you guys get together and organize? Let's do it, right? Because currently, how many people are going out evangelizing from this church? Rob on the campus.

Chris? Awesome. Chris has been almost alone. Yeah? I've been almost alone for the last two years.

Brother? Out there on Saturdays. Awesome. Awesome.

Yeah. Sweet. That's so good.

So can we organize that guys? Get together. Let's talk to each other. Let's share the good news together.

Building maintenance. See Tim Brandon for current projects. Where's Tim? Tim, will you stand up back there? That's Tim.

Give him a round of applause. Tim is sort of overseeing our building projects. Big deal.

If you have any skills with building maintenance, we need good strong groups to rise up and do that. And for the winter, we're already thinking about refreshing the sanctuary, working on how the sanctuary feels and looks, and many other projects. Who's willing to help on building maintenance? All right.

Okay. Okay. Anybody else? Amen.

Okay. Excellent. We also need technology.

WhatsApp. Someone to help getting all church members on it. Help with Facebook, website, online presence, YouTube presence, and finally finance team.

Help with finances, fundraising, prayer, and outreach for building projects. So church is super simple, huh? But I hope that really touches you all. We are all called to have some work of ministry.

Can we just give this a few more minutes if Kiara wants to come and play music for a second? I'll basically dismiss us now, but would you like to just give it a few minutes? Write on that sheet of paper what ministries do you want to do in the church? If you'd like, you can pass it in to me, or we can just keep talking about it for the next few weeks. Let's just give the Lord a little bit of time and prayer to take all of that in. And then as we're done, we'll go have fellowship together.

Amen? Glory to God. Let's just pray. Thank you, Lord.

Please teach us, each one of us, to rise up into our calling, into exactly what you want us to do in this church. And I ask you, Lord, to show us that the church is not just a place we come to on Sundays, but the church is a body growing up into its head, powerful, strong, unified, and loving, so that we look like Jesus on this earth. Lord, we praise your name.

In Jesus' holy name. Amen. Amen.

Feel free to go out to fellowship, or stay here and process, or if anybody needs specific prayer, feel free to come to the front.