We have enjoyed a wonderful weekend in fun, fellowship as well as
feeding on the Word of God. Our theme
and purpose for the annual Family weekend was simply to continue to build good, God glorifying relationships at Eastside, and this not just theoretically, but practically.
With God’s help and by His grace, I believe
that we have seen our church propelled
a little further along this road, which we have been called to travel together to our heavenly city.
Our thoughts on improving and developing our interpersonal
relationships, rooted in loving unity,
have been derived from this fourth chapter of Paul to the
Ephesians. Let me briefly remind you what we have seen there.
1. Verses 1-6 begin
with a call 'to walk in a manner worthy' of our Christian calling. The key
attitudes with which we are to live before God, and with one another, is by way
of humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to
maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (4:2).
Our relationships and our unity with one another are to be based on our relationship with the Triune God in 4: 4-6.
Him we are called to imitate. Now it is true
that this unity is something that we receive by way of a gift from God, but it is also true
that it is our duty to maintain this unity by working on our relationships. This unity is precious because it
is rooted in the very nature and image of our Tri-une God, who exists in the context of an eternal happy relationship of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
The
relationship into which we entered when we became God’s children, is now
reflected in the way in which we live with one another, one
body (the church), one hope, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all…”.
Our
context is that of living in a fallen, broken world. Words like ‘unity’ and
‘relationships’ are therefore challenging words. We find them difficult to implement.
But with the help of our God we find grace to do this.
2. For this reason 4:7-11 tells us about the help which God has given us for our life
together. Paul speaks here about the foundational spiritual gifts which the
ascended Lord Jesus Christ has given to His church. These foundational
spiritual gifts are the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastor- teachers. They
are given in order to promote God glorifying relationships in the body of
Christ. The apostles and the prophets are those that were inspired by God the Holy Spirit to write the Holy Scriptures for us.
3. 4: 12-16 then defines the specific task of
these foundational gifts, which
is “to equip the saints
for the work of the ministry, for
building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the
unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son if God, to
mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Please note that, whilst the foundational gifts exist to equip the church, the ministry of the church was never given to a ‘professional class’ of people. The ministry is given to every member of the
church.
Illustratively then it is interesting that we see a significant number
of our people involved in the Sunday morning ministry of our church. I may be
well upward of 30 people that participate in serving us in one way or another
on a Sunday morning. The so called ‘professionals’ (which they are not- most of
them are dead anyway, at least the prophets and apostles) remind us "how to be" the church and how “to do church”, by drawing our attention to
the Word of God.
The church is built on
people equipped by God. People exist in relationships- in a body of people, and if these relationships do not work, then it is clear
that the work of the church is hindered. The work of God in the church is hindered by Satan who easily incites and tempts members to sin. We see this in the last chapter of this letter to the Ephesians, where the work of Satan, the sworn enemy of the church, is explained.
4. In 4: 17-32 we observe how the
church may be alternatively hindered
and helped in its life together. Paul explains what hinders the progress of the church, and he teaches us to 'put off' these bad habits, replacing them with good, relationship- affirming and God glorifying habits. The purpose of the so called 5 fold foundational gifts is to help the church to mature and grow
up into Christ, with each part working properly, making the
church body to grow and to be built up in love.
It is therefore with this in mind that we return to our focus
text in
verses 12-16. Notice that
this text speaks about the unity of
the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God (4:12). It speaks about becoming mature by growing in the
likeness of our Lord Jesus (4:13). It speaks about the importance of outgrowing our
childishness (4:14) through
a loving reflection and communication of the truth as we grow in the image
of our Lord Jesus Christ (4:15). As
we help one another to get to know the Lord Jesus, we are equipped to be the body of Christ, and as we, as
individual parts of the body work together properly, we experience a true
growth in biblical love. (4:16)
Now we understand
that all this happens against the background of living in an imperfect,
sin-riddled world. This is the result of
the fall in Genesis 3. The greatest challenges that we face in this world are broken
relationships at all levels of society: family, church and state. These broken
relationships began immediately after the fall. As we drifted from God, so we
drifted from one another. It became even worse than that. Cain killed his
brother Abel. We do not only drift from one another, but we try to get rid of one another. The Bible
reads just like our newspaper headlines – murder, betrayal, intrigue.
However, in the midst of this mess, God
declares His gospel. By the Gospel He is
re- building a people, a body called the
church. She is His treasured possession, the bride of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. But the church is, as we said, called out of
this broken world, with its poor communication skills and poor conflict resolution skills.
Here in the church we have to learn new
attitudes, such as humility, gentleness,
patience, bearing with one another in love (4:2).
Here we have to learn a new way of
thinking under God (4:3-6).
Here we
have to be instructed by God’s Word in the hands of gifted people (4:7-11) whose duty it is to communicate
the Word of God as accurately as
possible, so that His church might be
equipped, built up, unified, mature ... and therefore growing and reflecting the image of God in Christ.
The reason why we constantly misunderstand each other, and
the reason why there is so much conflict in the world (and sadly, even in the
church) is that we are not rooted in a lack of common understanding of who God is, and therefore of who we are. This alienation from our true roots as
God’s created beings, has caused havoc
in the world, and sadly also in the church.
And why?
Those foundational gifts responsible for communicating the Word of God accurately, now particularly the
pastor- teacher group, have often not taken time and care to communicate the apostolic and prophetic Word carefully and prayerfully.
This is the Word given into their hands , which alone is given to heal and mend broken souls.
Sadly many
of God’s shepherds have become
social workers, office managers, administrators, CEO’s and the like (and all these functions are
important in their own right), but in so doing they have not taken their calling to dispense the Word of God to the flock seriously. Thus , in the words of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel “they have healed the wounds of God’s people lightly, saying, ‘Peace,
peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14, Ezek. 13:10).
And so the flock of God in many cases has been scattered and divided by the false teachings and the communications of spiritual wolves
(cf. Acts 20). They have been
left to their own devices, to their own corruptions and their own imaginations,
and so their churches have by and
by crumbled and died. Many former evangelical buildings have been taken over by
false religions and cults. The confused flock is described in verse 14 : “…tossed to and
fro by the waves and carried about by
every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes…”.
Bad
attitudes, poor communication habits and conflicts are the results, and these are
described in 4:17-31.
Now that all sounds very negative. But,
I want to assure you that the purpose of the
entire text is not negative at all.
The Lord Jesus is
here in Paul's theology and writing. He is here to help us to rebuild our broken lives and world with
His gracious Word, truthful Word, loving Word. Although there are hard things here, the text is actually is
entirely positive. It is rooted in the redeeming work of our Lord Jesus who
came to fix broken sinners, and to restore broken relationships. Ephesians 2 is a prime
example in terms of how Jesus came to fix the broken relationship between Jew and gentile.
He is here to teach us how to
relate properly to one another.
He is here to help us to speak properly to one
another, and to help us to deal with
our many conflict situations. In ‘learning Christ’ (4:20) we learn to
put off the old self (4:22)
and put on the new self (4:24).
If anyone is willing
to listen to the Word of God today - the Word which is the word of the apostles
and prophets, there is great hope.
I trust that our pastoral team will not be
false shepherds to you. We want to be
those that equip you, the saints of God, for the
work of ministry, for building up the
body of Christ, until we all attain the
unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood,
to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
The ultimate goal of all that we want to be and do as a church is to show the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ
to the world around us. So, the
goal of our unity is not to make us look
good – but to make HIM look good! But
there is a wonderful spin off in this. WE
flourish in our relationships as He flourishes among us! That is amply clear from our text. As Jesus is
exalted in our midst, He gets the glory and we get the joy. As we
learn to speak His truth in
love (4:15) we get the benefit
of being built up in love (4:16). This love is the greatest testimony and
evangelistic tool the world has seen. Christ
is most clearly communicated and
understood by the world when
we, the church, speak and live together in visible and loving unity and relationships: “By this shall all men (i.e.the world) know that you are my disciples,
when you have love one for another“. (Jn.
13:35).
CONCLUSION
The key words in our text- 'unity', 'the knowledge of Christ', 'building up', 'maturity', 'speaking the
truth in love' … these are the things , the design of God that builds
good churches that glorify our
God.
This weekend we have been reminded
by the communication of God’s
Word that we are to be a humble, gentle, patient, loving people, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace as we draw or strength
to be this kind of people, from our Tri-une God.
We commit ourselves to sit under the
prophetic and apostolic teaching and
preaching of the Word of God by gifted teachers, whose work it is to equip us for the work of ministry. This
ministry is a building ministry. We build! And the tools of our building are loving communication of the truth, together with a robust commitment to
keeping our relationships intact
so far as it depends upon us.
In
that process God shall have all the glory, and we shall have all the joy.
