Episode Transcript
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As at the occasion of the ordination
of a new ruling elder in our church.
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One of the things that we see
in this passage is one of the
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an expression of the goal that God
has for us in the Christian life.
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He is equipping us, he is
building us up, we read in verse
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twelve, until we attain a kind
of unity, a unity of the faith,
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it says, and of the knowledge
of the son of God. There
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is this goal, the scripture says, to mature manhood, to the measure
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of the stature, of the fullness
of Christ. We are not to be
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children, in other words, but
tossed about by this thing, that thing,
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everything that comes along. There's a
solidity that God wants for us,
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and not just a moral solidity,
but a solidity in Christ, which of
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course, entails morality. But it's
something more than that. Paul is telling
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us that what God wants is for
us to grow up into him. He
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says in Verse Fifteen, WHO IS
THE HEAD INTO CHRIST? And to do
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these things God uses means. It
says that when Christ ascended, we read
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in Verse Eight, he ascended on
high and led a host of captives and
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he gave gifts to men. The
picture here is the conquering king who has
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conquered his enemies and is now dist
beating gifts to his kingdom. But the
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gifts that he distributes here are two
different kinds. One kind is the kind
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that equips each one of us.
We read in verse seven, though,
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there is this great unity in us. All. Grace is given to each
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one of us according to the measure
of Christ's gift. Another way it speaks
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about the gifts is in terms of
men. He gave gifts two men,
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but he also gave gifts of men. What do I mean? Well,
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he says he gave gifts. He
gave verse eleven, the Apostles, the
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prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers, in order to accomplish
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all of these things. That's what
we're celebrating here today, and it's important
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to recognize that fact because sometimes we
celebrate the wrong thing. Sometimes we find
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ourselves and situations where we're excited,
where we're filled with joy and we're moving
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forward, but we're it's entirely a
misdirected it's very important that we ask ourselves
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not just how am I feeling?
And I'm feeling joyful, I'm feeling celebrating,
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and I feel celebratory. As a
church, we are glad, but
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we have to ask this question.
Why are we celebrating? Why do we
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rejoice at the ordination installation of a
ruling elder? It's an important question.
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Why are we joyful? Why are
we celebrating? Because when we celebrate the
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wrong things it can be embarrassing and
other things as well. I like to
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remember and sometimes tell this story about
the one and only bike race I ever
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be was in. It began in
Sedona and ended in Sedona, but there
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were two different loops you could take. You could do the forty mile loop
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or you could do a hundred mile
loop. My friend and I decided to
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do the forty mile loop and we
went down to cottonwood and came back,
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but neither of us were very prepared. Our bikes were wrong, we weren't
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fit. My friend got a flat
tire on the climb back up the hill.
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We were very slow. By the
time we got there, all of
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those other people that had gone to
cottonwooded back that forty miles had arrived and
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were eating their spaghetti dinners. In
fact, we were so late that when
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we came out then when we arrived, they thought, the organizers of the
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event, that we had won the
hundred mile race, and so we chug
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into the parking lot and they are
giving us balloons, they're taking our picture,
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they're saying you did it on those
bikes and it after we realized what
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had happened and we told them.
Rather than waiting around for the real winners
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to arrive, we left as quickly
as possible. Now, this was extremely
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embarrassing for me and for my friend, but it was also embarrassing for these
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people. All of this misdirected celebration, misdirected joy, was gone in a
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way, and I don't know what
they did, but I suppose they had
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to conjure it all back up again
in order to celebrate the real winners,
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who would no doubt arrive soon.
The moral of the story when you celebrate,
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it's a good idea to know that
you're celebrating the right thing, that
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you celebrate know why you're celebrating.
Misdirected joy can be kind of like sprang
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water around in the air to water
a tree. It might cool off the
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air for a moment, might feel
good, but ultimately that's as far as
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it goes. But when we celebrate
for the the right thing and for the
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right reasons, it's like deep watering
something. It produces a lot of benefit
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and is, of course, enjoyable
as well, especially in the heat.
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So in the ordination of elder often
do all we are celebrating a particular thing.
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What are we celebrating? We are
celebrating a particular action of God's grace
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among us, and that's a signific
efficant thing. Some people say that God
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isn't at work today, but we
have seen that he is. We are
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praising God for his ongoing work among
his people, for doing the very things
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that are a promised here in Ephesians
chapter four. Let's consider this more deeply.
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Most immediately, of course, we
are celebrating an ordination. And just
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as we might be faint, but
I'm sorry, but just as we might
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be thankful for flowers that come up
after the monsoon rains, it's a perfect
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opportunity, when you see a flower
like that, to praise God for the
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rains themselves, and that's what I'd
like to do now. The Flower of
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Pete's service has been produced in us
by something good, the sweet smelling rain
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of God's salvation. Pete, like
every believer, is a flower in the
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desert, a seeming impossibility made beautifully
visible, to put it very plainly.
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And our brother is here because God
saved our brother. God sent his only
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son, Jesus Christ, to come
into the spiritual desert of this world so
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that our new ruling elder and everyone
who would follow after Jesus Christ would drink
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this eternal law otter and spring up
into this glorious bloom for him. Because
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of the sin the entered into the
world through our first parents, through the
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sinful fall of Adam and eve.
We, their children, have all been
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born, all mankind has been born
into this terrible, miserable state. We're
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like dead seeds planted and a dry
desert. The Bible describes this lots of
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different ways. We read about an
Ephesians. Some of these just descripture,
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descriptions walking in darkness, children of
Wrath, other descriptions of this state that
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we're all born into. Our like
are equally as dark. We are born
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into sin, the Bible says.
We're born under the law and it's curse
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for disobedience. We're born into bondage
to our sins. We are children of
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Wrath. We do things that are
deserving of death, and our lives outside
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of Christ bear witness to this fact. That's isn't just a real theoretical reality.
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Bad things are produced in bad people. Our sinfulness in us, our
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bentness towards perversity and away from the
things of Godd produces things that are not
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of God, things that we've read
about in Ephesians this morning, things which
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ought not to even be spoken about, Paul says, in our brother will
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testify to this sad fact. This
is exemplified in his own life as well.
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The sinful reality of being born,
or the reality of being born into
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sin, the reality of being born
and under law, the reality of producing
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works of darkness. It's a it's
a terrible thing. But what happened?
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What God has done in the world
and in our lives as he has come
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into the world to take what was
dead and bring it to life, to
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take what was dark and make it
light? How he's he done that?
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Well, he did it by becoming
death for us, by taking the penalty
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of our sins on himself, by
being our substitute, by paying for what
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we owed, and he died in
our place. But because Jesus is God.
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He was able to make complete satisfaction
for all of our sins before God.
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Death was unable to hold him,
and that's why Ephesians, for says
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when he ascended, it's speaking of
Jesus is not just his Um kingly ascent,
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but a literal ascent. is well, he rows up from the dead
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because he overcame death, not just
in and of himself, in and for
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himself, but for everyone who believes
in him. He was a substitute for
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us. God gave his only son
so that whoever would believe in him would
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not perish and continue in death,
but have everlasting life. This is what
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Jesus is done. He came to
die to pay for our sins, but
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in doing so he took the power
of sin away from us. He takes
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what is dead and he makes it
alive. He finds what is lost and
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declares it to be found. This
is the background of what we are celebrating
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in the fact that our brother has
come before the congregation this morning and promised
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to serve and love the Lord Jesus
and lead us in those things. That's
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what's happened. God has done something
really wonderful. He is takes someone who
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is lost and is found him.
Jesus tells a story with this in relation
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to celebration in Luke Fifteen, eight
through twelve. He's explaining the Kingdom of
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God and he tells this story that
sort of centers around a question and he
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says this. What woman having ten
silver coins, if she loses one coin,
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does not lie a lamp and sweep
the house and seek diligently until she
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finds it? And when she has
found it, that coin that she lost,
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she calls together her friends and neighbors
saying, rejoice with me, for
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I have found the coin that I
had lost. Jesus then says, just
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so, I tell you, there
is joy before the angels of God over
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one sinner who repents. It's that
a wonderful thing that when a sinner comes
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to the Lord and repents, because
of God's gracious work in them, he's
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finding of the lost one, the
heavens themselves resound with joy. Perhaps you
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remember the first, I think it's
the first stance of amazing grace by Isaac
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Watts. Yeah, it's the first
one. Amazing Grace. How sweet the
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sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now
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I'm found. Was Blind, but
now I see. We, as we
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celebrate the fact that our brother has
been called to serve God is our ruling
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elder, we would do well to
remember that it is God who has made
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that possible by sending Jesus to find
the law us to rescue us. This
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is true for the life of every
person who repents and believes the gospel of
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Jesus. Now let's stop here for
a moment and think about what it means
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to be found, what it means
to be saved. Some people think of
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salvation only in terms of the initial
steps of faith and repentance in the Christian
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life, Thou's first commitments and first
prayers, first confessions. Other people think
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about salvation only in terms of the
final step from this world and into the
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next. They think of salvation purely
in terms of being in heaven, of
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the resurrected life or eternal life that
follows this age and this time. The
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salvation of Jesus secures both of these
things for us, but it's much more
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than that. Being found or being
saved includes the life in between these two
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points. In other words, God
doesn't just forgive us and then ditch us
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and then show up at the end. He forgives us and then, as
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Paul says in Effusians, for here
he equal whips us, he forgives us
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and equips us by and with His
grace and unites us to Christ himself to
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be part of his body. In
other words, when God equips us,
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he equips us to belong to something, right here and right now, as
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members of the church, as body, as part of the as members of
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the body of Christ, and that's
another thing that we're celebrating here today.
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The Bible says that every believer WHO's
united to Christ is made a part of
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his body. What does that mean
you? We are not to think about
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that in physical terms and try to
imagine what is a spiritual organism. If
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you try to imagine what the body
of Christ looks like with us as its
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members, you're going to have problems. If you try to imagine that,
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you should just stop. It's it's
because it's a spiritual unity that's described here.
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It the which is by nature invisible. It has no visible form.
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So trying to imagine something in the
some ways that doesn't exist as a fruitless
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exercise. So what's the point?
Of talking about the body of Christ.
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Well, it's not to give us
a kind of it's not to describe it.
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It's Hansible, visible form, but
it's to describe how we function,
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how we work together, how our
unity exists. The purpose of the descriptions
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is not to tell us what the
body of Christ looks like, but how
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it functions. Well, how is
that? It says that when we are
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saved, every believer is united to
Christ and equipped for service in it.
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A hand that was formerly useless becomes
a hand and as good for doing things.
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Take your body, for instance,
your hand and brush your hair,
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feed your mouth, clip your toenails. They can also help help in other
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ways. It can do things that
are useful outside of the body as well.
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Lift someone up, provide them money, give them food. Remember what
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Paul says in Romans twelve versus for
and six for, as in one body,
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we have many members and the members
do not all have the same function.
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So we, though many, are
one body in Christ and individually members
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of one another. This hand belongs
to this hand. In a way,
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they work together, is what Paul
is saying. Having gifts that differ according
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to grace, according to the grace
given to us. Let us use them.
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In God's calling of a man or
any of us into the body of
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Christ and equipping us for service.
He's doing something really wonderful there, isn't
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he? Notice the word gifts there? Sometimes, I think we're too used
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to using this word we forget what
it means. For example, we might
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call someone gifted and we're only thinking
about how amazing they are and not the
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fact of how amazing God is as
the one who has gifted them. But
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Paul uses the word gift here.
If it helps, you could think about
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the word presence. Each one of
us have presence from God. Our various
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aptitudes, functions, gifts within the
body of Christ. These are presents that
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are given to us by the grace
of Christ. The other words, again,
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God doesn't forgive us and ditch us. He forgives US and brings us
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into the body of Christ, the
church, that we might be useful and
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used. Take what Paul says in
First Corinthians twelve, four and seven.
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Here he points out that gifts are
not given to us just for individually blessing,
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but for a together people. That's
why they're there, he says.
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Now there are variety of gifts,
but the same spirit. And there are
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varieties of service, but the same
Lord. And there are varieties of activities,
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but it is the same God who
empowers them all in everyone, to
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each is given the manifestation of the
spirit for the common good. That's why
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we have them, the unity of
the body of Christ being united to him
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our head. We are not given
gifts to say look when I got and
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you can't have it, like little
kids might do it and that birthday parties
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or something, or adults might do
and they get a job or a promotion
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or a new car. A God
equips us, as he is equipped Pete,
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not to be a showoff, a
braggart, a goody two shoes.
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God Equips and empowers for the common
good, for service in his name.
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That's not, by the way,
just a thing to do. It is
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a thing God is doing. Notice
he equips, he empowers. Why?
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To unite us to himself. So
those who are called as ruling elders to
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watch over the flock and fail to
serve in this way come under the anger
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of God. Jeremiah twenty three,
one and two. Woe to the shepherds
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who destroy and scatter, to the
sheep of my pasture, declares the Lord.
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Therefore, thus, as the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning
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the shepherds who care for my people, you have scattered my flock, you
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have driven them away, you have
behold. I will attend to you for
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your evil deeds, declares the Lord. Here one more passage from the Apostle
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Peter, Peter Five, verses one
through four. Here he gives instructions to
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elders and he says not that,
don't do that, do this instead.
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First Peter Five, one through four. So I exhort the elders among you
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as a fellow elder and witness of
the sufferings of Christ, as well as
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a partaker in the glory that is
going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock
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of God that is among you,
exercising oversight, not under compulsion but willingly,
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as God would have you, not
for shameful gain, but eagerly,
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not domineering over those under your charge, but being examples to the flock.
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And when the chief shepherd appears,
you will receive the unfading Crown of glory.
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So we've not moved away from our
main topic of celebrating. Do you
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see the point? God's Word is
telling us that he quips and he had
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powers us for service, and that
includes are ruling elders. We're not celebrating
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that there is a man who among
us who leads a moral life. There's
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lots of that. We're not celebrating
the fact that somebody has offered to be
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useful or serve. We're celebrating something
much, much deeper. Those who are
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called to oversee the flock are called
to do so as an extension of who
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they are in Christ's body they are. We are celebrating the fact that those
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who are called to oversee the flock
are doing so as those who are empowered
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by the spirit of Christ, and
we are members of that same body.
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Good rulings elders, then, are
not an example of moral living. There
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an example of Christian living. That, of course, includes moral living,
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but it's so much more than that. In their lives, by the way
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they live and by what God is
doing in their lives and in the life
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of the body, we see the
grace of God magnified. We see someone
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who is lost who is found,
someone who is blind who has seen and
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who is now testifying and leading us
in those very same truths. By the
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power of God who is doing all
those things. You see where grace is.
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It's everywhere, in everything that's going
on, in everything that's being done,
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Christ, who unites all these things
by his spirit, working in us.
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This is a huge blessing. God
is at work among us, and
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what we're celebrating here today is not
that this happens in a general way,
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but it's happened in a very particular
way in a particular person, and of
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course you know we have pete in
mind in particular. But it's true of
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all of us, all of us
being united to the body, all of
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us being equipped and empowered for the
common good, to the glory of God,
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to his praise and wonder. There
of course, many implications of this.
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Let me share just three. For
one, Christ centered, Christ empowered
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service gives our elders boundaries and shape
to the kind of service they give.
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They are not ministers of themselves,
they're ministers of Christ. So Jesus gives
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rules and he describes this in Mark
Ten. He says in verses forty two
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and forty five. Of you know
that those who are considered rulers of the
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gentiles Lord it over them and they're
great ones exercise authority over them. But
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it shall not be so among you. Whoever would be great among you must
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be your servant, and whoever would
be first among you must be a slave
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of all. For even the son
of man came not to be served but
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to serve and to give his life
as a ransom for many. So what
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happens when a grace empowered, grace
saved servant of Christ then goes and serves
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in the name of Christ? Christ
is shown, grace is shown. This
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is why I say it gives our
elders service and shape to their ministry.
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Christ centered, Christ empowered service also
gives those who serve confidence, knowing that
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they serve not in their own strength
but in Christ's, that they serve not
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according to their will but his.
That's why they can be shaking in their
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boots and nervous and scared and still
say thus says the Lord, because ultimately
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it's not up to them. Ultimately
they serve not themselves, they serve Christ,
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who is their talk, their redeemer, their commander. And finally,
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this is why God tells us to
honor and to obey your leaders. Hebrews
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thirteen, seventeen. Obey your leaders
and submit to them, for they are
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keeping watch over your souls as those
who will have to give an account.
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Let them do this with joy and
not with groaning, for that would be
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of no advantage to you. God
gives us leaders, elders in the church
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for our advantage, for our blessing
gifts, as we said at the beginning.
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That's what we're celebrating today. We
are celebrating God's work among us,
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in Christ by his spirit, not
a work out there, but a work
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in us. God is doing work
in people whose names that you know.
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Direct work, spiritual work, gift, giving life, empowering, salvation,
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bringing work. When Jesus saved sinners
by dying on a cross for their sins,
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he saved them completely. He brings
us all together under him. He
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pays the price for their redem I
should in full. There's not a bit
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of debt left over that he plans
to pay off at some future date.
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Know, you fully and freely belong
to him when you trust him, and
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then he does this not just with
you, but with others. He equips
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us all. This means that our
experience of salvation is a complete one.
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There's a beginning to it and an
end to it. But right now we
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are experiencing the glorious middle, the
sanctifying power of God. In Christ we
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find not only regeneration and glorification,
but also sanctification, and that's what we
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celebrate today as those who belong to
him. We celebrate the glorious middle in
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which Christ is continuing his work in
us, the gracious middle in which every
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member is empowered and equipped with the
very life of Christ himself, by the
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Holy Spirit himself. And so may
our joy and our celebration be in Christ.
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Let's pray our heavenly father. We
lived our happy
