As Each Part Does Its Work

How does the body of Christ grow and come to maturity? In Ephesians 4, Paul tells us that the body grows to maturity as each part does its work. Here are two truths that will change how we live as members of the body: 

1) God has prepared unique ministries for each member of the body

2) Through works of service, we participate in the cosmic victory of Jesus

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The sermon text reading for today is Ephesians chapter four, verses one through sixteen. You can find this passage in the Sanctuary Bible on page 1778. Please listen as I read God's word. As a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says When He ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people. What does he ascended mean except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe. So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. Here ends the reading.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

If you are newer with us, whether you're here for the dedications or whether you just sort of found us online or someone from Elmwood invited you, we once again want to uh say how grateful we are that you are with us here today. Uh before we get into the message this morning, I want to uh let you know about a couple things that are coming up. A few dates that I want to ask you to put on your calendar. Uh these are dates when we are going to gather and pray for our city. Uh as more news emerges out of Minneapolis, I think uh we're all sensing and feeling the weight of everything that is happening. Uh there's there's times when these kinds of things are sort of distant out there in the world somewhere, and and that's heartbreaking. Uh, it's different when it's in your own city. And uh, as more news comes out, I think uh it's really important that our first impulse is to pray instead of to go on social media or instead of griping to friends that we know are like-minded with what we already believe. Uh, I think it's important that we spend time praying. And so I want to invite you to put these dates. Uh, a couple Wednesdays, the 28th of this month, which is just a couple days from now, the 11th of February and the 25th. Uh, we'll plan to be right back in the fireside room and uh would love to invite you to join us and uh as we lament and mourn what's happening in our city, and as we turn that over to uh turn that over to the Lord. I'll ask you to join me now in a word of prayer as we come to uh our time together today. God, we come to you now and our hearts are broken at what's happening in our city. God, we hate that we see videos and are forced to ask questions like, did it have to happen this way? So God, we come to you now and we ask that you would bring peace to our city. We ask that no more lives would be lost. We ask that you would help us to be rightly heartbroken and outraged at the loss of life. We ask God that those protesting on both sides would de-escalate. We ask that our immigration laws would be enforced in a way that upholds both the laws of our country and the dignity of our fellow image bearers who are here illegally. God, please bring peace to our city. God, we come to you and we feel so helpless, so often not knowing what to do or what to say. And Lord, we we turn those fears and we turn the heartbreak and the outrage and the anger we feel at what we see, we turn that over to you. God, we ask that you would be uh be present in our city, and Lord, we don't know how, but we ask that you would do what you always do and bring something good and beautiful out of such darkness. God, we know that you are a God who does that, and so we ask for that. God, be with us, bring peace to our city. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. As you heard Dave mentioned just a moment ago, we uh this today is our annual meeting, and uh one of the things that we do uh as a part of the annual meeting uh Sunday is we spend time looking ahead to where we sense God leading us in the year to come. And uh sometimes we do this, we usually do it during the meeting itself, uh, but we thought that we would take this part of the sort of forward-looking uh aspect of this next year, and we would bring this into the service here this morning so that you all can, whether you attend the meeting or not, uh, get a sense of where we sense God leading us in uh these uh this uh year to come. Typically there's a word or a phrase that stands out to us as we think and pray about this as a leadership team that sort of encapsulates where we sense the ministry emphasis for the coming year. And this year's emphasis comes right out of the verses that you heard read from the book of Ephesians. So the ministry emphasis that we have for this next year is this as each part does its work. Paul says this, he's the one who wrote this letter to the church in Ephesus, and he says in verse 16, From him that is from Christ, the whole body grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. So, what I'm gonna do today is begin by just briefly sharing what sparked this theme. Why are we doing this theme? Why are we doing this now? And then I want to look at these uh verses here in Ephesians and uh see some takeaways for us uh individually and collectively as a church. So, what sparked this theme in the first place? Well, this summer I'm going to be taking a six-week-long sabbatical. And uh that means that my family is going to be taking some extended time away from the ongoing and the really never-ending demands of ministry to do things like rest and recharge and reflect. And the goal of a sabbatical, if you're not familiar with this kind of thing, is uh to enable myself and our family to be healthy so that we can sustain ministry over the long haul. Okay, that's the goal of a sabbatical. And so that's what I'll be doing this summer is taking six weeks away for that. And as you might expect, there is a lot of work and a lot of preparations that go into uh myself being gone for that length of time. Now I know, I know that Elmwood will benefit from me being gone. I'll be honest with you. I too many people someone just said amen, and that hurts. Yes, it was Dave. I know it was Dave. His voice was obvious. I know that it will be good for Elmwood for me to be gone for that long, but one of the things that I didn't really expect or anticipate uh was how good it would be for Elmwood to prepare for my absence. And here's why it's been so good. Uh, our preparations that I've done and that our leadership team have been doing has uh helped me and helped us recognize some areas of growth for us as a church. And the main thing that these preparations have exposed is the fact that I do a lot of things. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, good, we pay you to do lots of things. That is why you're employed here, right? Uh yes, while that is true, it's not just that I do things, it's that I do too many things, and some of the things I do shouldn't be or don't need to be done by me. And so the process of preparing to be gone for this extended period of time uh has really helped me see that an area of growth for me personally is equipping people for doing works of service, like Paul talks about in these verses. This is an area of growth for me as well as for us as a church. And uh this is really about, again, it's about sustainability. For our church to be sustainable for the long run, our church needs to grow in empowering the body to do the work of ministry. So that's what sparked this theme, but I want to just make really clear that we are not setting out on this journey to empower the body because I'm going on sabbatical. It's not why we're doing this. We're doing this because it's how God designed the body to function. That's what we see here in Ephesians chapter 4. The whole body grows and comes to maturity in Christ as each part does its work. So my upcoming sabbatical is just uh, it's maybe the catalyst or the impetus for this, uh, but the reason we're doing this is because this has helped uh sort of bring an increased awareness of this aspect of how God has designed the body, that every part should do its work. So, with that, let's turn to these verses from Ephesians 4, and uh what I want to do is look at two different truths that when we uh really grasp them will change the way that we live as members of the body. And the first truth is this God has prepared unique ministries for each member of the body. That's what Paul tells us here, that's what other places in the Bible say, is that God has prepared unique ministries for each member of the body. So Paul says here in verse 7 that grace has been given to each one of us as Christ has apportioned it. And if you read this passage, you see that uh more specifically he's talking about how God has given apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers in order to equip the body for works of service. So God's grace is seen in that he has given the church and has equipped certain people with a unique role of equipping the whole body for ministry. So the whole body is designed to participate in the ministry. That's what Paul is getting at here. And he says, each part of the body is designed to participate in works of service. So what are works of service? Uh I think Paul does not have in mind here sort of generic good deeds, you know, like helping an old lady across the street or uh stopping to help someone who may have a flat tire on the side of the road, although those are you know good things, and we should do those as we have opportunities to do so. Paul here is talking about ministry within the body. And he says that God's people are designed for those works of service. Now, I'm convinced that if Paul were here today and we were to be able to ask him this question, he would say that works of service cannot be confined to a Sunday morning gathering like this. Certainly there's an aspect of works of service that take place in a public gathering like this, but works of service take place throughout the whole life of the church. And so there are some environments like this where the church is gathered together, but then the church also scatters and goes out into homes and into all the places where we live, work, learn, and play Monday through Saturday. So the church gathers and the church scatters. There's some, uh this takes place in environments that are organized. So maybe it's small groups or an adult class or some other ministry program, something like that. But these works of service also take place in environments that are organic, meaning they're more spontaneous or they're more unplanned. So this is the scope of where all these works of service take place. When the church is gathered, when the church is scattered, in places that are organized, in places that are organic. Those are all the different places where God has designed these works of service and these works of ministry to take place. Paul doesn't go into details about this here in this letter, but in his letter he writes to the church in Corinth, he goes into quite a bit of detail about how God's people are gifted by God's Spirit to accomplish these works of ministry that build up the body. So here in Ephesians, he's emphasizing the fact that like each member has a unique ministry role. And in 1 Corinthians, he says, each person has been gifted by God to carry out and to accomplish those unique ministries. And of course, if you look at the different lists of gifts that exist in the Bible, uh it's very obvious that God is given a diversity of gifts. There's not certain people who are gifted and the rest aren't gifted. There's not certain people that are more important than other people. Listen to the kinds of gifts that God has distributed to the church: gifts of healing, faith, leadership, administration, hospitality, mercy, generosity, exhortation, discernment, helps, words of wisdom, words of knowledge, prophetic words, miracles. There's all sorts of different kinds of gifts that God has given the church. So it's not that there's certain personality types or there's certain people with, you know, whether introverted, extroverted, who have different or better gifts. God is uniquely gifted everyone who is a member of the body of Christ. He has prepared unique ministries for each member of the body and has gifted each member to carry out those unique ministries. And so what this means is that if you are a follower of Jesus, you have been gifted by God for the building up of the body. You have. God has gifted you in a unique way, and there's a unique ministry to which God is calling you within the body. And so the question is: do you know the unique ministries to which God has called you? Do you know the unique works of service to which God has called you and for which God has gifted you? Do you know what those are? We want to be the kind of church that not only invites you to use your gifts. Certainly, we want to do that because we believe that you are not designed by God to sit on the margins and be a spectator of ministry that takes place on Sunday morning. So we want to be the kind of church that invites you to use those gifts, but also we want to be the kind of church that helps you discern what those gifts are for you and what those unique ministries are for you. And some of you, as we talk about this, you know right away, this is the kind of thing that God has gifted me for. This is the kind of thing that brings joy in my life, these are the unique ministries that God has given me. And some of you may just like immediately know this is how God has gifted me, and this is what He's gifted me for, but there may be some of you here who have not yet discovered what those unique ministries are for which God has prepared you. And so we want to be a church that helps you discern what those are. And so here's what I'm going to invite you to do this morning. Uh, number one, take the shape assessment. Uh, this is a sort of spiritual gifts assessment. Shape stands for spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and uh experiences. So this tries to take a comprehensive look at who you are and the ways God has gifted you so that you can better understand the ways that God has gifted you. And this is good for, you know, if you know what those ministries are for you, this would be good for you to take this assessment and to be refreshed and reminded of this. But especially if you don't know how God has gifted you, you don't know what your unique ministries and works of service are, this is especially helpful and important for you. Uh, two ways to take this uh there's did uh paper copies of this out at the connections table in the main foyer. You can grab it there. There's also a digital copy of this available on the digital bulletin. So if you take that uh blue card that's in front of you and uh follow the QR code there or head to that website, you'll be able to access it there as well. Uh but I encourage you to take the assessment and be reminded and refreshed about who you are and how God has gifted you and how those uh contribute to the unique ministries that God has called you to. So, number one, take the shape assessment, and number two, the second part of this, schedule coffee to discuss the results. Dave said earlier, we like to buy people coffee around here. Uh spend a lot of money on taking people out to coffee every year, and it's marvelous, right? Uh we want you not just to know those things about yourself, but Dave or I would be so happy to like talk with you and to help you discover uh who you are and how God has gifted you. And we want to help you discover your place in the body because God has prepared unique ministries for each member of the body. That means that God has prepared unique ministries for you. So, what are those for you? Do you know what they are? Take the shape assessment, schedule coffee. Even if you want to just like hang out and get coffee, I'll still buy you coffee, even if we don't talk about the assessment. Pro tip. So, first, this is the first truth. God has prepared unique ministries for each member of the body. And the second truth that we'll look at this morning is this Through works of service, we participate in the cosmic victory of Jesus. Through these works of service and through these unique ministries to which God has called us, we get to participate in the cosmic victory of Jesus. So look at what Paul says here in verse 7. He says, But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says, when he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people. So sometime I encourage you to go back and read Psalm 68. We're not going to take the time to do that this morning. But if you were to go back and read it, I'll just summarize it for you now. Psalm 68 is a song that's celebrating how God went to battle for his people and conquered their enemies. That's what Psalm 68 is about. It says that God went to battle against the enemies of his people, he conquered those enemies, and after securing victory, he ascended into the city of Jerusalem. And since Jerusalem is up at a higher elevation, you have to ascend into the city of Jerusalem. So this Psalm is a song celebrating how God defeated the enemies of his people, and then he distributed the spoils of war to his people. He distributed the spoils of that victory. This conquering king defeated the enemy and then came back and showered the people with all these gifts. That's what Psalm 68 is talking about, and that's what Paul is describing here. And to make sure we don't miss what he's talking about, he adds this in verse 9. He says, What does he ascended mean, except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe. So Paul is making sure that we understand by adding this little parenthetical thing here, he's making sure we understand that he is talking about Jesus. As you read Paul's letters and as you read the book of Ephesians, you see Paul knows Jesus is God himself who took on human flesh and condescended. He descended into our world to be with us. He took on human flesh, he descended to the lower earth. Regions. And then when he was here, he suffered and he died on the cross. And in doing so, he went to battle against our greatest enemy. That's what happened at the cross. He suffered and he died and he was put in the lower regions of the earth, as he was laid in a tomb. And even though it looked like his death was a crushing defeat, his death was actually the means by which Jesus triumphed over the evil one. And so after conquering our greatest enemy, he ascended in victory and shares the spoils of that victory with us. He shares the spoils of that victory with the church. And so what this means is that through works of service, Paul is saying we get to participate in the cosmic victory of Jesus over the spiritual forces of darkness. And even more than this, when we participate in his victory, we declare the wisdom of God to the heavenly realms. Listen to what Paul says just earlier in chapter 3. Verse 10, he says, His intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. So what he's saying is that when the Spirit gifted and the Spirit-empowered people of God who are saved by grace alone, when we do works of service and the body is built up, the church declares the victory of Christ to the heavenly realms. This is what we get to participate in. When we do acts of service, when we discern what our unique ministry calling is and how God has gifted us and wired us, and the part that we get to play in building up of the body, this is what we get to participate in. We get to participate in the cosmic victory of Jesus. And here's what this means very practically for you. What it means is that when you hold babies in the nursery, and those babies then know that they are loved and that they are cherished and that they are worth protecting. When you greet people as they walk in the building on Sunday morning, when you lead a small group or practice hospitality in your home in some way, when you call people in our church to connect and let them know that you're praying for them, you are participating in the victory of the risen and ascended Christ. When you bring a meal to a new mom, when you provide child care so that a couple can go out on a date, when you speak a word of encouragement, when you gather others to pray for our church and for the ministry of Elmwood, you are declaring the manifold wisdom of God to the heavenly realms. When you invite others to grow closer to Jesus, and when you invest in them to help them grow closer to Jesus, when you prepare refreshments to create a hospitable environment here on Sundays, when you use your gifts of ministry, uh music or administration or leadership or generosity, when you step out of your comfort zone to greet someone who you're like, I'm pretty sure that they're here for the first time, but I don't know them. Maybe I should know them. This is weird, I don't want to look weird. When you step out of your comfort zone and greet people and meet people who are new, in all these things, in every single one of these acts of service and acts of ministry, you are participating in the victory of the risen and ascended Christ, and you are declaring the manifold wisdom of God to the heavenly realms. That is significant. What this means is that in every act of ministry, you are living in rebellion against the spiritual forces of darkness which Jesus has already defeated. Friends, there are no unimportant works of service. You may feel like, oh, my gifting is not very big, or it doesn't seem very important, or it seems behind the scenes, or it seems small. There are no unimportant works of service. There is no work of ministry that is unimportant. Whether it's gathered or scattered or organized or organic, every act of service and every act of ministry has cosmic significance. And so this fills all of those things that may seem mundane, that may seem boring, that may seem too small to be important. It fills all of those things with so much meaning to know that all of these acts of service, they all matter. There are no unimportant works of service. Friends, God has designed you. If you are in Christ, if you've been united to Him through faith, God has designed you for a unique ministry within the body. Each of us has a unique role. And so let me offer this closing word of application. Give yourself to the work of service. Give yourself to works of service. And again, just say when we talk about this, we first want something for you, not from you. Okay, obviously there are ministry needs that Elmwood has, and there's ways that we need ministry team members and all that for sure. But this is not first and foremost because Elmwood has ministry needs. This is first and foremost because this is how God has designed you. God has designed you for works of ministry to give back. God has not designed you to merely attend services, He designed you to invest in and to be a part of using your gifts for the building up and the maturity of the body. There's many of you here today who are already involved in a ministry team or in works of service in some way. And if that describes you, I want to say thank you. Seriously, thank you. And please know that my intention this morning is not to squeeze more out of you. Like please hear that. If you are already serving, if you're already giving, if you're already invested, my heart is not to try and squeeze more out of you. What I want for you is to feel wildly encouraged that your serving matters, that your serving makes a difference. But some of you may be here today and you're not connected to a ministry team, or you haven't discerned what those works of service are for you. Maybe because you're newer to Elmwood and you're still just kind of getting your feet wet and getting connected and you don't know what opportunities are out there or anything like that. If that describes you, please know that my intention is not to make you feel guilty. Okay, for not doing anything, for not stepping up or for not being, you know, being more involved. No, I want you to see the important role God has for you to play in the building up of the body. He has a unique way that he has designed you to contribute. And this thing called the church, this messy, beautiful thing called the church, it only works and it only functions and it only flourishes and it only grows up to maturity when each part does its work. So if you're not yet involved in some way, uh let me invite you to just take one step towards doing so. Uh, if you're here today and you're just like, hey, I'm interested in learning more, either uh what opportunities exist, or interested in you know, taking uh that assessment and then getting coffee. Uh, if that's you, what you can do is you can take this blue card and uh fill out your information and just write serve on this card and drop it in the offering box as you leave here today. And we'll be sure to follow up with you. You're not committing to anything by doing that. You're not gonna get signed up for the nursery if you don't want to, you're not gonna get served, you know, signed up for some other place if you don't want to. This is just the beginning of a conversation where we want to help you discern and discover what those gifts are and what God has uniquely gifted you for so that you can participate and you can fulfill your role in helping the church grow and mature in Christ. When we give ourselves to the building up of the body, we are following the pattern that Jesus set. Jesus gave himself up to make us his people. Jesus gave up his life in order to form us into his body. And as we give ourselves to the building up of the body, we're following that pattern that Jesus gave. As we give of ourselves for our brothers and sisters out of love. And the communion table shows us these incredible realities. The communion table shows us uh the lengths to which God was willing to go to love us and to rescue us from our sin. And it lays out this pattern for us of self-giving, self sacrificing love for the good of the body, for the good of the church. And so that's uh that's what we get to remember and celebrate as we come to the communion table today. I invite you to take uh just a few moments for silence and confession, and then we will uh join together and come receive Christ at the table.