Body Building

0:10Thank you for listening to the Sermon Audio Podcast for Crossroads Reformed Baptist Church in Rockdale, Texas. Crossroads Reformed Baptist Church is a Reformed Confessional Baptist Church that meets every Lord's Day at 10 a.m. for Bible study and 11 a.m. for corporate worship. For more information about our church or for directions, you can visit us online at www.crbcrockdale.org. Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

0:40Good morning. Open with me, if you would, to the book of Ephesians, chapter four. The title of our sermon this morning, as you can see from your bulletin, is Body Building. And I uh did not at all intend that to be a cheeky title that we're talking about today. Building the body. I didn't have time uh to cover all of this last week, um, other than just to kind of briefly mention this in passing. So I want to begin now connecting last week with this week uh to support a bit more the overall theme which we set up last week, and that was that those offices were given, the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists and the pastor teacher were given by God for a particular purpose, and some of those offices and the accompanying gifts with those offices have ceased. And I want to begin by saying that those that idea in general is not new to me, nor is it a modern or new interpretation. And this is important for our discussion this morning, so I do want to demonstrate that those verses which I uh covered last week were by and large the mainline view of the church, or the interpretation of those uh those verses that I we talked about last week, were the mainline view of the church, but regrettably the historical views of the church are rarely ever insulted. Here then the words uh of our fathers in the faith. Augustine on the cessation of the gifts, this is in the fourth century, these were signs adapted to the time. They beoved, or there behooved, to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues to show that the gospel of God was to run through all the tongues of the earth. That thing was done for a sign and it passed away. John Calvin says this: the Lord raised up apostles at the beginning of his kingdom and still occasionally raises up evangelists in the extraordinary circumstances, but without pastors and teachers, no government of the church can continue. So Calvin argued there the cessation of the apostles and the prophets and a near cessation of the evangelists except in extraordinary circumstances. Theodore Beza says the apostolic office was extraordinary and temporary, appointed for the first planting of the church. William Perkins, English Puritan, said the offices of the apostles, the evangelists, and the prophets were extraordinary. Appointed for the founding of the church, pastors and teachers remain until the end of the world. Matthew Henry, whose Bible commentary is still widely used today, said some of some were immediately commissioned by Christ Himself. Those extraordinary officers were chiefly employed in the planting of the church. Pastors and teachers are ordinary and standing officers. Charles Hodge, on the office of the evangelists, they were assistants of the apostles, and therefore they disappeared when the apostles themselves passed away. And finally, John Stott says the apostles, prophets, and probably the evangelists belong to the foundation period of the church. Pastors and teachers are the continuing ministry. Okay. So there's my support. And this is not only important so that we hold to the truth of God and to his word, but this is important for our life today, and I'll tell you why. When we keep those extraordinary offices and those temporary offices open, it vastly minimizes or undervalues the present and ordinary work of God and his ministry in and through the church. We've heard it said, well, we have a prophet in our church. We get to hear the word of God directly every day, every morning. This fosters in us an attitude that is always looking to the sensational, always to the big, to the new, to the fresh, always looking for the instant miracle, a quick fix. Like it or not, church, these pastors that you have been given, as plain and ordinary and underwhelming as we are, that is all you have. That's all you're going to get in the immediate administration of the word to you. So the call then is to make good use of those means as opposed to seeking for another. Because the reality is, even an ordinary man in an ordinary office, by the grace of God, still holds the words of life. What then is the word of God through this present and ordinary means? What is God communicating through these present and ordinary means? How do we make use of these means? This is what we're going to be talking about this morning. And I hope by the end of this sermon you will see that when we consider church leadership, not necessarily us specifically, but pastoral leadership in general, we see it as a gift from God. And only then are we able to make use of those supplied means. Stand with me then as we read once more, please, if you wouldn't mind. This is Ephesians chapter 4, and I'm starting in verse 12. To equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. This is the word of the Lord. Lord, we thank you again for your word. We pray and ask, Lord, would you speak now to build up your body, Lord, to equip the saints to edify your church, Lord? Let this truth be truth in love. Lord, and may everyone, everyone's ears and hearts be open to receive it. I ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Our text begins. If you had the uh NASB, the text began with the word uh for. This is another case in which the NASB wins the translation battle, and if I keep saying that, I may switch. Excuse me. There must be something about this pulpit, coffin. But uh the NASB begins like this uh for the equipping of the saints and for the work of service. If you had the KJV, I think that's more or less how it begins in slightly different wording. Whereas the ESV, as I read, said to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, but both convey the same idea and in fact obviously have the same Greek word, although it's translated differently. Uh but the N S B A N A S B does capture it better. And the Greek word translated there as for or to is the Greek word pros, P-R-O-S, which is also in John 1.1, which reads, as we all know, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. That word with there in John 1.1 is the same Greek word pros, which is translated here as for or to. So the word with then conveys a sense of closeness. It conveys a sense of communion, of active fellowship, not just present with, but purposely and actively present with, or for. Have you ever been sitting in a room? I know I've done this many times, and I'm daydreaming, I'm my mind is somewhere else, and somebody also in the room says, Hey, are you with me? Has this happened? They don't mean locally present, because of course you are with them. They mean actively present. Are you with them? This is the idea conveyed when the text says that these officers, specifically the pastors and the teachers, were given for the church. That men would be called and raised up by God to be actively present in his church, to be with his people, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, or for the service, I think, is perhaps what the uh NASB says, and to build them up in the body of Christ. My question for us this morning is do we see it? That way. But as a word of exhortation, do you see these offices, and specifically the office of the shepherd, elder, pastor, bishop, whatever you want to call it, as the ordained means by which you are equipped for your work, for your life, to be built up in Christ? This is what the Word of God says, doesn't it? In the same way he gave the apostles to found the church, to lay the foundation of the church, though much more ordinary, he now gives the shepherds to build the church. Often, though, in our independently mind culture, we think everything is on us. I don't need a pastor. I don't need a shepherd. I don't need the church. I'll just take myself and my Bible and I'll be fine. That's all I need. Or perhaps we see our involvement in church in a very self-centered or superficial way. We say things like, I just need to, and I've used this example before, we I just need to go to church and get my battery recharged. Or maybe we don't say it, but in our coming to fellowship, are we just checking that spiritual box to get our gold star for the week, to feel better about ourselves? Or do we come in anticipation of hearing from God and leaving better equipped to complete the work that God has for us each week? Is that how you feel about the Lord's day? Do you come in holy reverence and awe pleading? Lord, I know you will challenge me this week, and he will. I know the enemy is going to tug at me, and he will. I know my remaining sin is going to rear up again on me, and it will. Build me up today to do the work that you have for me. This is our prayer. And the good and the great news is that he has supplied for us what we need in the church. And in this communion, if we would only make use of those means, prayerfully and actually. And Paul speaks later in the text, this is, and I am jumping around a little bit, but he speaks later in verse 16 and following, from whom the whole body joined together and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly. Because of every joint being fitted back together and the whole body functioning when every joint is supplying what it should. Some of you have had the great pleasure of uh breaking a bone. Or knowing someone perhaps that has broken a bone. And you know that when a bone is broken, when it is not set properly, it won't heal, right? And that limb is essentially useless. So the doctor then he takes that bone and he forcibly sets it back into place. It's a painful but necessary process, right? And you were, I was, by nature and in many ways still are, disjointed, out of place. How God intends us to function and how we should function in the body. In that state, you are not of maximum use with our Lord and to his church. Because we are still in some ways disjointed. But thanks and praise be to God that he doesn't leave us disjointed. He doesn't send us to the doctor, though. He sends us to his church. He sends us here to receive his word. He calls men to preach and to teach his word that we may be fitted properly for our service. Is that painful? Yeah. Necessary? Of course. This means though that what is happening here is certainly not of no consequence. Nor is this ordinary work ordinary at all. This is the work of God for you. This is the work of God for you. This is the word of God given to you. This is the means of equipping you. This is the means for building. May the Lord help us grasp that reality then. And certainly may help your shepherds bear the weight of that truth. We next then move to what our text lays out as the goal of this work in setting the joints right and equipping or building up of the saints. And this is verse 13. Until we all attain the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature or the fullness of Christ. I'm so thankful that it makes clear in his word what the goals and the outcomes will be of this body-building work of the church. It's so refreshing that he tells us that his church will experience a doubling of a membership in three years. That when the body is built up, there will be an exponential increase, and that new members will be coming weekly, and that renovation projects happening to make room for all those new people will be happening, that there will be budget increases and financial blessings. Is that what it says? We joke, but it's a marvel to me how the American church continually puts those things on their vision board and measures church and pastoral success based upon those corporate metrics. What does the word say will be the fruit of proper equipping and building? I'll read it again. Until we all attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature, the fullness of Christ. What is the fruit? Unity of faith, spiritual maturity. This is what we get. And certainly growth, church growth and blessing, this will be a part of that, if God wills. But if we're asking ourselves the most important questions of church work, it's not how do I get more people into the door or how do we increase our budget? It is how do we grow the saints who are here to greater spiritual maturity. How do we build you up? How do we unify more and more in the faith? This is what we look to. And these are the important questions because the church isn't primarily for atheist John Smith and figuring out how to get to him and appeal to him. The church is for you, saints. To grow you into maturity and to equip you for life and for work and for all that the Lord has for you. So before you think in your mind, oh, so he doesn't care about the atheist, he doesn't care about. I do. And for all those who don't know Christ and who don't follow Christ, but the command is for the unbeliever to repent and to believe. To follow Christ, to join the body and to submit to God's word. The command is not to accommodate to and appeal the church to the pagan, but to command the pagan to repent and submit to Christ. So what is this faith exactly then that Paul is saying that we are working to attain unity of? This must be all of those essential Christian doctrines and the gospel message that Paul previously outlined for us in those first three chapters of Ephesians. This is the message that the apostles labored and the prophets and the evangelists worked to establish. And I'll outline that a little bit more in a moment. But our call then is to unify under and submit ourselves to the established faith of God's word and not to the ideas. And to the inventions of men. We started a video series this past Wednesday from Dr. Sprohl on the Christian conscience. And one of the things he taught in that first lecture was the difference between ethics and morality. He noted that in our present day, with respect to morality, we often do a survey of popular opinion and what the masses generally agree is moral, we adopt then as our common morality. We do the same thing with faith and with the Word of God. If people begin to drift and start believing something contrary to the faith of Scripture or contrary to what's been taught, the apostolic teachings of Scripture, as soon as enough people take that position, we see that unity begins to form in line with those drifting away. And in that way we form a passive unity where we just say silent and we slowly conform to the masses. Or we all just have that agree to disagree kind of attitude, and we just get along for the sake of getting along. This is not unity. Certainly not biblical unity. A true unity only happens when we as individuals and as people submit to and conform ourselves to the truth of Scripture. Even and especially when it contradicts the populace, and even and especially when it's difficult and painful for us. To this point, Calvin says, as long as every person allows himself to be hurried away by his own inventions, there can be no unity. A practice of receiving truth from God, not putting our truth on God. And we see these are the fundamental aspects of the gospel, to no surprise. Submission, surrender, repentance, humility grounded in truth. And such are the fundamental aspects then of unity growing into maturity. Doesn't mean we're going to have perfect unity. Doesn't mean we're going to have perfect maturity in this life. But this is the goal that we strive towards. And in humility, we seek to learn and we seek to grow and we seek to be taught by those faithful saints of the past. We often forget that God raised up the office of the elder, bishop, pastor, teacher in previous generations as well. And if those men were faithful in their day and taught the unity of the faith to their generation, is their word somehow invalid? Because of the years that have passed between them and now? Was God's word and their teaching relevant for them but useless for us? Do we think, what did those men a few hundred years ago know anyway? Church, we must not be chronological snobs, as C.S. Lewis said. Acting as though our generation is the smartest to ever live. And our interpretation is the smartest it's ever been. To be perfectly blunt, we are utter fools compared to our fathers in the faith only a few hundred years ago. The reality is that we must submit to the teaching of the past because the apostolic teaching of the first generation is the word. This is what we have. This is the gospel on which we stand. It has been faithfully taught for 2,000 years now. So unity and maturity is knowing and submitting to the apostolic teaching, to the word of God, to those doctrines of the faith and the truth of the gospel found here, not our own. How do we know what that teaching is? How do we know what that doctrine is? We submit to the word of God. We approach it with humility and with surrender, asking the Spirit to truly open our eyes to see the truth. And secondarily, or in support of that, his word tells us that he gave us elders, teachers, to help us, to teach us the word. And for that we must look to and submit to those church leaders, both present and in past, those great men who the Lord gave to equip the saints to mature the body for the work of service. Finally, then our text this morning teaches that there is a great benefit to putting in this work of unity and to maturity. And a great benefit of the God-given gift of the faithful shepherd and teacher. And that is that you have God-given stability. This is verse 14. So that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cutting, cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. One of the most memorable vacations I went on growing up was a trip that we went to to Lake Tahoe. On that trip, we went parasailing. And if you've ever been parasailing, you know the experience, but the boat takes off and you climb higher and higher and higher into the air attached to a parachute. And as you get increasingly higher, you become increasingly aware of how vulnerable you are to the wind way up there. Every little gust of wind causes you to sway, causes a shift in your movement. It doesn't take much at all, such that you are never really still up there. It's a constant to and fro. The immature Christian who is not striving for the unity of faith and is not being built up through the teaching of God's Word is perpetually parasailing. Every new idea, every novel interpretation, every fresh revelation, every cultural application, every wind of life is a wind that blows them to and fro. Sadly, though, many are all too happy to stay swaying in the wind. When it's more or less a gentle breeze up there. But it's dangerous. Because eventually a big wind will come. A long way down. This is the enemy's playbook, as old as humanity itself, right? New ideas. Mixing subtle lies with the truth, inserting small revisions, so we ask ourselves, did God really say that? Or is there really a need to submit to God's word? I mean, it was written so long ago. We have no grounding up there. In the name of compassion or charity or even unity, oh a false unity, we exchange the truth for a lie, and by it we're taken away with the wind. What is the fruit of being tossed about to and fro? It isn't compassion, it isn't charity, it isn't unity that is commonly espoused by that position. It creates confusion. It fosters division. It breeds disunity. This is the opposite of what the word says will happen as God grows his church. But this is what we find. So the teaching is again not to look for and to wait for new ideas or for fresh interpretations, nor is it to venture out into the wild unknown on your own. But rather to trust in the word that is given to us. And the apostolic foundations and the teachings that apply the word of God to our hearts and to our lives. It's for that reason that John Owen argued that the church must stay within those settled teachings of the church as opposed to always looking for new interpretations or innovations, he says. This is a reason why we hold to a historical confession written hundreds and hundreds of years ago instead of coming up with our own new ideas about everything. It's of course not a wooden or universal principle, as the church did need at the time of the Reformation to move in a different direction, right? And even now, we're always looking to grow, to renew. We're not stale, stagnant. But providentially, Brother Gerardo said almost these exact words this morning in Bible study. You remember the battle cry of the Reformation? We've talked about it before. Latin. Adfontes, to the fountainhead, or to the sources. The Reformation was not as much a new idea as it was them returning again to the old idea. It was back to the word, back to the word, back to the sources, back to the fountainhead, back to the fount of living water. That might have been exactly what Gerardo said this morning. That's what we need. And so for us now as a church is going to continually, we're going to continually be pulled in all these new directions as we have weak and immature people who seek their own way and who seek to collect for themselves weak men who will just tickle their ears. We will continually, church, need to return to the fountainhead. The pure truth of God's word and his gospel. This is what we will stand on. This is what we do by speaking truth in love, as our text says. And I could preach a whole sermon on truth and love. I'm not. Or for our purposes this morning, we didn't know that truth is love. And certainly we can tell the truth unlovingly. Perhaps we do that at times. But the truth is always love. Because God is truth, and God is love, so truth can be nothing else but love. And so as we unite under the truth of God's word and we submit to the authority of Scripture, we are equipped and matured under the power of His Word and His gospel. Let us then do it all in love, knowing that it is love, because it is truth. And let us then hold truth lovely and lovingly. Almost done. A truth that the word promises will cause growth in his church. This is his gospel. The very power unto salvation and sanctification. This is not an exhaustive list of truths, but it is at least a good foundation. After having been created in perfection by the triune God, man fell in sin. He fell in rebellion against God, and that fall was a total fall into depravity. With that fall, the whole world and all of mankind was plunged into death and corruption. This fall left us unable to ever be reconciled to God or to break the curse unless God Himself acted in a supernatural way to restore what was lost in sin. Further, if man did indeed retain some means or some ability to reconcile himself back to God, then could we really say that Christ was necessary? Since the fall of man was total, and in that state of sin, man was unable to write himself back to God. God came in the flesh himself to do the very thing that man in his fallen state wasn't able to do. Christ was God in flesh. Christ in his active obedience fulfilled the law, he lived the sinless life that Adam was created to live. But failed. In his passive obedience, Christ submitted to the Father and willingly went to the cross to die for our death. In doing so, Christ satisfied the righteous requirement of the law. He appeased the wrath of a just and holy God against fallen man. He earned the righteousness in his humanity that he graciously imputes to us by faith. On the third day he rose from the grave, confirming his work was completed, confirming our justification for how can perfect glory ever be held by death. After appearing to his followers, he ascended to the right hand of the Father and sent the Holy Spirit to work faith in his people and to empower us for life and for godliness, promising that he will indeed save to the uttermost all who come to him by faith. He then enscripturated his holy word, that all his may know him, may follow him, and may be built up in him. Christ will come again to unite his own in glory and will once again dwell with his people forever in an earthly paradise. Many, hopefully, most who call themselves Christian would affirm those truths. The reality is that those truths mean something for us. They apply to us, they shape us. Those truths call us to repent and to be changed and to be transformed and to be renewed. They do transform us into the likeness of Christ, those simple truths. This is the bodybuilding work of the church. Not to just accept those truths and say, yeah, sure, I believe that. But to actually be changed by those truths, to be renewed and transformed by those truths. As we continue then through this letter to the Ephesians, my prayer is and will continue to be that those truths and the necessarily implications of those truths will indeed change us, build us, grow us, renew us. And certainly may our God continue to fit us back together in proper order, grow us up into maturity, to build his body more and more by his grace. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the truth of your word. We thank you that you have given us your truth, Lord. That you gave it to us two millennia ago, Lord. In and through the work of Christ, your word became flesh. You inscripturated it for us, Lord, through the apostles and the prophets, Lord. You've preserved it by your spirit to give to us that we may know you, that we may be built up by and through your word, Lord. And now, even now you raise up men to teach your word, Lord. Help us to be faithful teachers of your word, speaking truth in love. Lord, and help us also to be faithful receivers of your word, Lord. Humble, ready to receive your truth. Not insert our own. Lord, would you help us? Would you help this church? Would you build us, Lord? We do ask, Lord, that you grow us in numerical number, Lord, only because we know that the truth is so desperately needed. But even more, Lord, we ask that you would grow us. Build this body, Lord, mature us, unite us in the faith, Lord. That we would be equipped and prepared for the work that you have for us, Lord, that we would be good stewards of your glory. For the watching world. Help us, Lord. We ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.