The Discipling Church

Ephesians 4:11-16

Immanuel – 10/30/22

This is week eight of a sermon series entitled “The Ministry of Reconciliation.” Let us briefly review by considering where we began: our identity in Christ.

We live in a culture starved for identity. People lash their identity to their political party, to their class of oppression, to the likes on social media, to some pursuit of success, to their independent nature, or whatever else. But all these false gods cannot conquer our fears and they certainly cannot give life.

Only the True and Living God, our Creator, can vanquish fear and abundantly give life. And if we are in Christ, then we have come to that life. It is a life that has profound purpose. Through faith in Jesus, we have been given new life and a powerful identity: we are the ambassadors of Christ.

Read 2 Corinthians 5:17-21

With identity comes purpose. Again, from the first sermon in this series, we consider the highest of purposes.

The Creator of this world did not purpose His world for failure, to fall to the destructive schemes of the Devil. No, God is reconciling this world to Himself, and He purposes that His will, will be done, that His kingdom will come, that His name will be hallowed. As it is in heaven, so it will be on earth.

As we have just read, God is reconciling the world to Himself through the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you are in Christ, then you have been gripped – body and soul – by that very gospel. And by the gospel, you have been reconciled unto God.

We considered this gospel in the third week of this series: God, Man, Christ, Response.

Your Creator is holy and righteous. Though He created you in His image, you are a rebellious sinner that has broken that image; and such rebellion earns His just and eternal condemnation. But God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to die for our sins and provide a path to forgiveness. Jesus then rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. All you must do is receive the free gift of faith - turn away from your sins and trust Jesus with every aspect of your life - and you will be saved, reconciled unto God.

God, Man, Christ, Response. God calls us – the reconciled – to carry this gospel message to all the nations, to the whole world, to our neighbors. We go to unashamedly proclaim the gospel and make disciples, even if it takes us into uncomfortable territory.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. -Romans 1:16

The gospel is like a mighty cable through which the power of God rushes electric into the heart of the unbeliever. And this divine gospel charge is so powerful that it takes what is dead and springs it to everlasting life. Through it you believe and through it God saves you. As we read in 2 Corinthians 5, God uses the gospel to recreate you – a new creation – an ambassador of Jesus Christ.

But we are not to be ambassadors in isolation; called to shoulder the weight of reconciliation all alone. It is more than individuals are meant to bear. We both represent Christ and disciple the nations more effectively when we come together in community. Christ intends His ambassadors to gather together in the community of the church.

We must understand that the Great Commission, and our calling as ambassadors, cannot be divorced from the community that Jesus has given to us, the community for which He died; the community of the church.

To be sure, we all belong to the Church Universal, the body of Christ comprised of all believers across the planet and spanning the new covenant age. But the Church Universal is far larger than what any of us can experience or understand in this lifetime. So Christ expects us to participate in the life of the local church.

Chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation make this abundantly clear. Christ the King delivers powerful messages to a constellation of churches. What He says to these seven local churches is really for all churches – for the Church Universal. But to receive Christ’s message to the whole church one must belong to the local church; for the messages are meant to be obeyed within the community of the local church.

Purpose

1. Ambassadors of Christ need the local church.

2. How does the local church disciple us to be better representatives of King Jesus?

Read Ephesians 4:11-16

The Essential Church

Though there are truths for the Church Universal in this passage, is it meant for the local church. I think you should all be able to clearly see that. Evangelists and shepherd-teachers operate within the context of the local church. Each Christian ministers within the context of the local church. We all work together in the context of the local church.

This passage is showing us how profoundly we ambassadors need the church.

Two years ago, the government told us that church is nonessential. It told us that we can get on with life just fine without going to church. But man cannot live on bread alone. We need to be fed with the word of God. And the word of God could not be more clear: there is no earthly establishment more essential than the church, because through the church the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is being realized on earth; and each one of us is part of that fullness.

Just one chapter earlier, Paul wrote this to the Ephesians:

Through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. -Ephesians 3:10

We are ambassadors of Christ to the world; and, through us, the hordes of hell are beholding the manifold wisdom of God. Consider the weight of that! Paul says that right now the demons are seeing the wisdom of God on display through the church. It is a wisdom that breaks down their gates and thwarts their efforts. It is a wisdom that transfers sinners out of the demonic kingdom and into the kingdom of God’s marvelous light. It is a wisdom that binds Satan.

Oh yes, the church is most certainly essential. No grocery store, or pharmacy, or bar has cosmic effect; but the church most certainly does. And how we ambassadors need it!

The manifold wisdom of God – that’s another way of saying the fullness of the wisdom of God. Ephesians 4, as we have seen, talks about the fullness of Christ. Both aspects of fullness are revealed in the church.

We need to know how this fullness comes to be seen through the local church. It’s all about the Word of God.

Read vs 11

The Church’s Leaders

See at the beginning of verse 11 that Jesus Himself has given the church its leaders. He has both established the leadership roles and He has given specific people, at specific times, to fill these roles. In other words, your church leaders are literally gifts from the King.

That should be a comfort to you and a weight to your leaders.

Consider Paul’s words to the elders of the Ephesian church.

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which He obtained with His own blood.

-Acts 20:28

God gives each faithful local church their leaders: apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherd-teachers.

Three times in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul uses the phrase “apostles and prophets.” Here is one:

[The Church is] built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone. -Ephesians 2:20

I don’t want to spend time discussing who apostles and prophets are, but I do want you to know that these are foundational offices. The primary role of apostles and prophets is to first deliver the gospel to the church. So Paul lists apostles and prophets first because they are foundational.

Next come the evangelists. They take that gospel and herald it, sowing its life-giving seed generously and broadly. Do not be fooled, Christ calls every Christian to be an evangelist; but there are some people He powerfully gifts with evangelistic success. These are the evangelists to which Paul refers. They are easily identified, because through their ministry many come to faith and are gathered into the church.

Once gathered – into the church – they need to be taught. In verse 4 we read about shepherds and teachers. But these are not two different roles. Think of it more like a shepherd-teacher. This is obvious when we consider Jesus shepherded through teaching.

When [Jesus] went ashore He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things. -Mark 6:34

Jesus saw the people needed a shepherd, so He began to teach.

Notice, of the four different roles in Ephesians 4:11, only the shepherd-teachers regularly interact with the local church. Apostles and prophets are foundational. In other words, they lay the foundation. They neither build the building nor maintain it. Evangelists’ main concern is outside of the church, though they send people into the church.

But the shepherd-teacher is in the church day in and day out, protecting from wolves, mending wounds, leading to green grass, guiding to living waters: and all this is primarily done through the regular teaching of Scripture.

But they don’t teach with cold indifference. He is a shepherd, and his teaching is especially beneficial because he knows his sheep. He lives with the flock. It is his regular duty, and joy, to disciple the people of the local church with the word of God.

I am a shepherd-teacher of this local church. But so are the other elders (Dave Fuller, Dave Nauss, Josiah Stevens, Geoff Christian, Jim Talento, and Norm Fuqua). The role of elder is the role of shepherd-teacher. Listen to Peter’s words:

I exhort the elders among you…shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

-1 Peter 5:1,2

Twice Peter writes “among you” – as in, the people among you. Peter is so clearly talking about local churches. Shepherd-teachers shepherd local churches primarily through loving, relationally informed, Biblical teaching. It is why I am here at Immanuel.

The Bible also tells us that the church is to respond in a specific way to their local shepherd-teacher:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. -Hebrews 13:17

Just a quick caveat: elders, or shepherd-teachers, are under shepherds. Jesus Christ is the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4). If the local shepherd is not himself following Jesus, then you need not follow them.

Ok, Jesus has given the local church its leaders. But He has given these gifts to accomplish a purpose.

Read vs 12

Ministers

Church leaders, and me as one of your shepherd-teachers, labor to make you into ministers. You are the real ministers. You are the real builders of the church. With Scripture on my lips, I am here to teach you how to be ministers.

These past eight weeks I have been teaching you how to build the church through evangelism. I have been teaching you how to be faithful ambassadors for Christ, obedient to the Great Commission.

Yes, we want to see more and more come to faith in Jesus Christ. We want to see baptisms and we want to rejoice in brand new worshippers. But conversion must not be our only focus.

The primary focus that you ministers of the church must have is spiritual maturity. Otherwise, churches will fall into gimmicks, or seeker sensitive shallow attractionalism, or all kinds of compromising endeavors. Making disciples, as we have been commissioned to do, is mostly about teaching people to obey everything that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:20)!

This focus is exactly what Paul has in mind.

Read vs 12-13

We’ve already spent some time talking about the fullness of Christ on display through the local church. And what an incredible goal it is! We want to see in one another, as much of Jesus as is possible. We want to see the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Is this not the epitome of selflessness?

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. -Philippians 2:3

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

-Romans 12:10

Jesus said: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

-John 17:22-23

This glorious display of the fullness of Christ is not something that can be seen in any individual. It can only be revealed through the collection of us – through the church. So we work, ministering to one another, building each other up, until we all attain such unity of love and faith.

Oh, you cannot live this life from the couch. It is a high calling given us!

Read vs 14

Speaking Truth in Love

We church, help one another not be carried away with every wind of doctrine, or catchy idea, or clever lie. There are lots of things in the world that sound good, they even sound like doctrine, but they will carry you away, they will carry you to your death. To think that you are not susceptible to this brand of deception is supremely naïve. As we learned from Proverbs, a fool does not know he is a fool.

We need each other in the local church to protect one another from these falsehoods. It is hard sometimes, but we need to be shown when we begin to head down a path of folly and falsehood.

At Immanuel I have heard people concerned about the mark of the beast in a vaccine, or a current world leader bringing with him the end times, or a diet proclaimed as if it were the gospel, or fear that some sin was too much for Christ to forgive, or a whole host of other falsities I could name.

False doctrines, human cunning, and deceitful schemes lead the sheep astray. Far too often, it is because the sheep are not submitting to the local shepherds given to care for them. Instead, they scroll through YouTube’s pastures. Not content with what Christ has given them, too many sheep are hungry for greener grass offered by far more famous shepherds. A difference in preference, in style, in personality, and the sheep think their hunger is greater than what Christ has given them.

Though pastors of other flocks can offer benefit, Jesus has not given them to shepherd the sheep of this local flock.

Each time I see someone wander off into deceitful ideas and foolish thinking, it is my duty – not just as pastor, but as a fellow member of the local church – to lovingly and gently redirect them towards the truths of Scripture. It is your duty too.

In fact, this is the first way which we, as members of the church, are to love one another: by lovingly leading each other to the truths of Scripture.

Read vs 15-16

This verse is not directed at the church’s leaders. Rather, Christ is calling all of us to speak the truth in love to one another. And where else do we get rock-solid, reality-grounding, unshakable truth, but from the Bible?

When someone expresses a doubt, a foolish idea, a questionable doctrine, a disordered priority; they don’t need your opinions, they need the words of God. Speaking the truth in love means grounding what we say to one another in Scripture. According to the focus of Ephesians 4, this is how we minister to one another.

From verses 15 and 16, notice what happens when we minister to one another, speaking the truth in love.

1. We look more like Jesus (who is our Head).

2. We are joined together: We are unified as we love one another.

3. We work properly: We are healthy, functioning as Christ intended.

4. Our body grows: I think in terms of spiritual maturity and in terms of numerical growth.

5. We are built up in love: I take this to mean that we become a living expression of the love of God.

In love, speak to each other Biblical truths. It is how this local church will attain to 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.

If we, together, are to become the fullness of Christ, then we must remember that we belong to one another. Your burdens are my burdens, as are your joys, and your hopes, and your weaknesses. And mine are yours. We are here to serve one another. As Christ laid down His life for us, so are we to lay down our lives for one another.

By this we know love, that He laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. -1 John 3:16-18

We are members one of another. -Ephesians 4:25

OK, what does all of this have to do with this evangelistic sermon series? Well, we are ambassadors and as ambassadors we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. In Ephesians 4:12, did we not read that the church is all about equipping the saints for the work of ministry?

Therefore, if we are going to be successful ambassadors, we need the church to equip us for the work of ministry – the ministry of reconciliation. We need the church to protect us from the falsehoods that would carry us away. Therefore, you need to be discipled by the church, and so also does every person that needs the kingdom of God.

When you find that person of peace, and have offered them the gospel, whether they are a yellow or green light, bring them to church; or send them to a church that is local to them. They need the church! They need to be taught what it means to be a new creation in Christ. They need to understand that they too are called into the ministry of reconciliation. And if Christ conquers their heart, then they are needed to further display the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

The means Christ uses to transform sinners into His own image is through the discipling church.