Ephesians 4:7-16

Well, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotion. So good to have you this morning. This is where every day you and I, we get together. We have a little bit of coffee. We get into God's word. We get into God's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2022, we'll make it from. Axe to Philemon. Lord willing. Well, let's go ahead and have some coffee.
You're ahead of me Let's go ahead and pray father. We thank you so much for this day and for your word We pray that as we read your word this morning Lord, would you be our teacher? Father we pray that you would keep us out of the rut of legalism but that we would take these words seriously and That you would reform our lives that we would do the good works that you've called us to do in Jesus's name. Amen. I Alright, Acts chapter 4 beginning at verse 7 and we'll be going through verse 16. So how about Nathan you want to read verses 7 through 10 and I'll read 11 to 17 or 11 to 16. Does that sound good? Yeah. Alright, go ahead.
But to each one of you, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, he says, when he ascends on the high, he led captivity captive. and gave gifts to men. You got two more verses. Now he ascended. What does it mean? But he also first descended into the lower parts of earth. He was descended. and is also the one who ascends far above the heavens that he might fail all things. Is it early or are you distracted? It's confusing. It's confusing, you know, we'll work it out.
Alright, let's read verses 11 through 16. And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors, even teachers, for the equipping of the saints 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. But 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 effect of working by which every part does its share causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. All right so let's start with a what is this about because as you said it kind of Confusion. Confusing, right? So let's go ahead and start with verses 7 through 10. That's that first paragraph.
But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Do each one of us experience Christianity in the exact same way? No. Does that daddy have gifts that other people don't? Do you have gifts that I don't? Do other people in the church have gifts that I don't?
No. That's right. I don't have gifts. Oh, that's very true. She has a lot of good gifts. I don't have, doesn't she? Pretty amazing woman full of many of God's good gifts. Right. And so therefore, he says, he who ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. Right? This is a paraphrase of Psalm 68. And so he's saying that this is what Jesus has done. He's led captivity captive. Right? Are we subject to the captivity of death anymore? Nope. So that's gone. And what has he done instead? He's led captivity captive. And what's he done after leading captivity captive? He's giving gifts to us. He gave good gifts to us. That's right.
And now verses 9 through 11, the translators give a helpful punctuation mark. What's the helpful punctuation mark? How does verse 9 start? Having made known. Verse 9, the very beginning part of verse 9 of chapter 4. What's the punctuation mark? um now this but what's before the now this uh and give gifts to me well do you know what a punctuation mark means uh a quote Well, so like you have periods and you might have an exclamation point, right? So anything like that, that sets something off in a sentence, what is the punctuation or grammatical tool before the word now? So before the nine and before the N, what's there?
A, I just learned this yesterday in coding class, colons. This is a parentheses. So in writing, if you want to talk about something, and it's related to this, but it's not really the main point, you might put it in parentheses. Kind of like, I'm going to explain something, but don't miss a main point. And so the main point here is right he's ascended He's taking captivity captive. He's given good gifts to men, but I want to talk about this Ascended part so he's gonna put this in parentheses, right? He's gonna explain something right? And so now this he ascended What does it mean?
But that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth, right? How did he first lead captivity captive? Well, He humbled himself and became in the likeness of man, and then he even was put where? In the earth. He was put in the lower parts? Yeah, when was Jesus put in the lower parts of the earth? Think about it. In his life and in his death, when was he put in the lower part of the earth?
In the grave. right when he was put in the tomb and so he's put in the tomb he's descended into the lower parts of the earth he who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things right so it was just kind of a rabbit trail a definition a side mark right here I don't want to really call God's Word a rabbit trail that's not very Good.
Yeah, not good. Well, not just good and kind. It kind of seems irreverent to say something like that. But he's trying to describe or define that ascended part. Well, then he talks about some of the good gifts. What are some of the good gifts he gave to the church? Prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Right, you gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, even teachers.
Is everyone an apostle? No. Was everyone a prophet? No. Is everyone an evangelist? Well, they all could be. They could be, right? But are some people really gifted at it? Mm-hmm. And are some people, is it harder? Yeah. That's right. Is everybody a pastor?
No. But these are good gifts that God gave and is giving to his church. And so the question is why did he give these good gifts? What does verse 12 say? For the good of the saints. for the equipping of the saints, right? So for giving God's people the tools to do the work, right? For the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry. So is it just the pastor and the apostles and the teachers and the evangelists who do the work of ministry? No, who does the work of ministry?
God. Well, yes, God, but remember verse 10, right? He prepared- The pastors, the evangelists. Well, they're doing the equipping. Look at verse 12 here. For the equipping of the saints. Who are the saints? The people in the church, anyone who believes. That's right, for the equipping of God's people. The work of ministry is not just the work of the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the preachers, even teachers, but it's of the saints. Right? For the edifying of the body of Christ. And what's the goal with all of that? What's the goal of the work of ministry?
Verse 13. Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge. Yeah, so we want to have a unity of faith and a knowledge of the Son of God. We want to come to be a perfect man to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Does God want us to continue to be children? Yeah. Well, what's verse 14 say? That we should no longer be children. What? I thought you just said he wanted us to be children. Innocence yes, that's right.
He wants us to have faith like children Right, but does he want us to be weak and able to get plucked up and carried away? He means like He wants us to be not children that are in faith Yeah, we'll look at verse he wants us to be children of God That's what I want to be us to be children in our faith. He wants us to be good men in faith Oh, good, right. He wants us to be grown men of the faith.
Good. And so what does he say in verse 14? that we should no longer be children tossed in to and for carried about with the every wind objection by trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. Right. So they're going to Jesus told them that they were going to be people who came in and tried to spread false doctrine, who tried to say they were Christ's, to try to trick up his sheep, to try to drag them away.
And is God's desire that we would be like children following every type of teaching anywhere? No. That's why it's so important what we're doing right now. We listen to the apostle and the prophets. We say, okay, what did they say? What were the very words that God inspired? that we might live our faith, not as children, but immovable and abounding in Christ Jesus. So we got to be careful. What doctrine we listen to? What teaching is there? Because people can be crafty. They can be deceitful.
But speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things who is the head Christ. And then it talks about the body in that last section. Each one of us, as we grow up, we strengthen each other. And we talked about this in a previous book. Who's the head of the church? Jesus. And what are the rest of us compared to? If Jesus is the head, the rest of us are what? Church. We're the church, but we're the body of Christ.
Now, when Deborah ran into the tree, could she say to her knee, I don't need that knee. No, because that means very vital for her to walk. It's vital for her to walk. It's vital for her to run. It's vital for her to lift. Did it hurt when she was trying to sleep? Yeah, it's hard even to put on shoes, right? She might not have ever thought about her knees before, but did she need her knees?
That's right. Do her knees help her whole body to be strong? Yeah. Every single member in the church is vital. That's why we need to be with each other. You can't say, oh, you don't really need the windpipe. It's fine. We'll live without it. That's right. And so each individual member is responsible to be part of the body. This is this is a very dear thing to daddy's heart. Right.
If somebody is not coming to our church, do you know what I'll often tell them? That's fine. I understand if you don't want to be a member of this body, if you're not coming to our church, that's okay. Maybe you've stopped coming, but you must go find a new church. You can't just not be part of the body BS. Yeah. That's right. Do we want them to stay here? Yeah, absolutely.
But If it doesn't work out for them, they can find for them to go to another church. But even more than that, they are essential. Every single Christian is essential to the healthy growing of the body. Does that make it easy when we have to tell someone, you know, we're removing you from the rules, you need to go find a church? It's not easy at all. But we need to tell people that. You need to go find a local church. If you're coming back here, great. But if you're not, you are vital to the life of a church. Go to church.
Go be part of the body. Go build each other up. This is Hebrews chapter. I know this is kind of a big part of the sea calling where, so we're going to just skip the sea calling part, right? But Hebrews chapter 10, 24 and 25, God warns us about not forsaking the assembly of the body.
People can make it a habit to do that. Do you know that? Could it be tempting just to stay home and watch TV on Sunday instead of coming to church? Could it be tempting just to go, you know, go camping or fishing or, you know, go play sports or something like that instead of coming to be part of the body of Christ? Yeah. Oh, yeah. These are easy things to do. A lot of people say they're more fun to do.
But we need each other. I need you to encourage me during church. I need people after church who confront me about sin. I need to be up there teaching and equipping people. Some people need to equip you. Some people need to equip me. Do I need the wisdom of people in the church? Have you seen me ask people in the church for wisdom before? Yeah. Yeah, right. Because I need people. We all need each other. And so this is the way in which the body, everyone builds each other up. Everyone's important.
From the littlest of kids, to the most gray-haired and feeble of old people. Well, what do you think is the best verse to summarize this? That's a hard one. That is a hard one, isn't it? Let me see something. I'm just going to underline one sentence. Oh, don't do that. Yeah. What are you going to underline? I'm just going to underline one sentence, which is almost the whole entire thing. 11 through 16? Yep. Actually, that's just a... It has...
Semicolons and sorry. Yeah, semi or cool colons and And commas, doesn't it? Yep, you know what I would underline You ready for it verse 8 I Would underline verse 8 aren't you proud of me just one verse. Oh I wouldn't even underline the first the first part where it says, therefore, he says, I would just underline the paraphrase of Psalm 68. But then you'd underline it. Nope. Nope. Just eight. Well, I'm going to do calling with you.
Are you regularly participating in the life of the church? How are you being equipped for the work of ministry? How are you exercising the gifts that Jesus has given you for the edifying of the body? We don't believe in a lone wolf Christianity because Jesus is the head of the body. You are united to Jesus Christ and you are part of the body of Christ. You are vital. Where are you going to church? Where are you participating in the ministry of the church? How are you adding to the life of the body?
Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the work that you have done in history and are doing in your church. Please, Father, Let us use the good gifts that you have given us for the building up of your kingdom in Jesus' name. Amen. May the Lord bless you, and we'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.