Now I want to begin by sharing one of our one of my favorite
movies. A couple weeks ago my wife and I
sat down with the kids and we watched the movie Incredibles.
Anybody OK, a few of you enjoy it.
The Incredibles, it's an awesome movie.
It's kind of an all time classic, one of the strongest I
think of of Disney and so on so forth.
And it's a story about a family, and it's a story about a family
that has superpowers. And basically the plot line is
this, that there's a bunch of superheroes out there and
everyone loves them. They're heroes, They are saving
the world, They are solving problems until they start
getting sued because of their abilities and gifting.
So they have to kind of go into hiding and it's a whole thing.
And so Mr. Incredible, he's the father of this family.
He's the strongest one, right? He's the leader.
He goes from rescuing people out of burning buildings and saving
lives to having to go into the mundanity of office work and
selling insurance. OK.
And you can see in this picture just kind of the the life being
sucked out of him as he goes from living on mission using his
giftings into just the the day-to-day world.
He go, he's he's off on his own, he's distracted.
There's this scene at the dinner table where the mom's trying to
hold everything together. But the family is disjointed.
They're not unified and they are divided.
And what we see is that even though Mr. Incredible is a
strong leader, even though he had his glory days at one point,
he's no longer living into the mission and the calling.
And So what happens is he gets a call to go to this sort of
sketchy organization, to begin using his superpowers again for
good. And what he does as he goes off
on his own to a secret island in order to use his gifts again,
right? Relive the glory days, live on
mission. The problem is he leaves his
family behind. His wife suspects there's some
kind of affair or something going on, and so she hops on a
plane to come and rescue her husband.
So there's a scene where the wife is in a plane going to this
this island, but the kids have stowed away.
They're also in the plane. And what they don't realize is
that the island they're flying to is actually the island of the
villain. Missiles are fired towards the
plane. The mom's freaking out.
The mom's trying to to tell her children to use their gifts to
save the plane. The problem is the kids have
never been trained to use their giftings.
They've never been trained to live on mission.
So here you have this strong leader going off on his own,
leaving his family behind. You see these kids who have
giftings, but they haven't been trained how to use it yet.
And I bring this up this morning to say in many ways, this is a
picture of the modern day church.
Often times you do have these strong, gifted called
charismatic leaders, but often times they get distracted.
And So what do they do? They run off to chase their own
dreams, to chase their own agendas to to preach to the
podcast in the pulpit rather than preaching to their
congregation or doing it for the book sales or what have you.
They have their own agendas. They've lost the mission.
Not only that, but within the family of God you have a number
of people who have been given spirit empowered gifts, but
they've never been trained how to actually use them.
So you have leaders running off on their own, neglecting the
family of God that the congregation and not equipping
them to use their God-given giftings.
There's all these different denominations and all these
different podcasts and all these different networks and so on and
so forth. And if we're honest, at times it
can feel a little disjointed, can it?
As a church, when you think about the global church, most of
the people looking at us wouldn't say that we're a
unified body. They'd say we're divided.
They'd say we've been distracted maybe from the true mission of
God to live for the Kingdom. And so today we're going to
continue in our Ephesians, Ephesians series.
We're looking at the second-half of Ephesians, chapters 4 through
6, and we're calling this series the Good Church.
We're asking the question, how can we become all that God has
for us as a church? How can we be a unified church
that's living on mission for him?
Everyone using their giftings. And so if you have your Bibles,
we encourage you to turn to Ephesians if you could.
It's in the New Testament. And we always encourage physical
Bibles. But if you don't have those,
that's OK. It'll be on the screens as well.
You can look at it at your phone.
We just encourage you to get that in front of you if you
could. OK, so Ephesians chapter 4,
towards the end of your Bible, what we talked about last week
was we talked about how Paul is painting a picture of a unified
church that's living on mission as one body, and he's appealing
to the oneness of God himself, the oneness of the Trinity.
So before this passage that we're going to get into today,
Paul talks about how there is only one body.
There's one spirit, there's one hope, 1 Lord, 1 faith, one
baptism, one God and Father. So 1111111 over and over Paul is
emphasizing unity. But then in verse 7, there's a
shifting point. He now turns the attention to
the individual. So take a look in Ephesians
chapter 4, verse 7. This will be our passage for
today. This is what it says, the
apostle Paul writes, but to each one of us grace has been given
as Christ apportioned it. So let's pause right there.
So notice the language out of the gate, he says.
But each one of us, he's talking to the believers, talking to
people who are in Christ. Does he say some of us?
No, he says each of us have been given grace.
Each of us have been given giftings.
So Paul is moving a shift or marking a shift here from a
corporate unity, appealing to the oneness of God himself.
But now he's moving to the individual giftings and
responsibilities and roles within this newly formed and
diverse church. Does it make sense?
So let's continue on verse 7 through 10 here verse 7 through
10. But to each one of us grace has
been given as Christ apportioned it.
This is why it says when He ascended on high, He took many
captives and gave gifts to His people.
What does He ascended mean except that He also descended to
the lower earthly regions? He who descended is the very one
who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the
whole universe. Wow.
So what you'll, you'll notice here in this passage, it's on
the screen and maybe you see it in your Bible.
See how there's that section in quotations that's indented?
When you see that in the Bible, usually that means it's a direct
quote, often times from the Old Testament.
Does that make sense? So whenever you see that little
chunk, that's what that means there.
And So what we see here is that Paul is actually quoting from
the Old Testament, from the book of Psalms, chapter 68.
But here's what's interesting. It's not an exact direct quote
like you might expect. So take a look at this next
slide. This is a side by side of
Ephesians 8, our passage and Psalm 68.
And you'll notice that where Paul says he gave gifts to his
people, Psalm 68 says you talking about Yahweh, you
received gifts among the people. OK, So what Paul is doing is he
is adapting this Psalm and he's condensing the whole Psalm down
into a section and he's appropriating it to talk about
the Messiah. So Psalm 68 is all about this
victorious Yahweh king who rules and is ascended on high to Mount
Sinai and eventually to Mount Zion.
If you're familiar at all with the story of the Old Testament,
you see that there's this group of people who God had chose to
be His representatives and blessings to the nations.
They were called the Israelites. The problem was they were
entrapped under slavery by the Egyptians, this evil empire that
was using them for slave labor, slave labor.
And the whole story of Exodus is that that God who is on high
hears the cries of his people. And So what does he do?
He moves closer towards them and he rescues them out of slavery
himself. He proves that his might and
power is far above the the evil empire of the Egyptians.
He sends the plagues to basically demonstrate his power
over them. And then what does he do?
He takes his people, redeems them out of slavery, and then he
goes in a victory processional through the wilderness with his
people. He rescues them into freedom,
rewriting their story. He ascends to Mount Sinai to
preside over them, giving them his presence and his gifting and
his filling. And So what Paul is doing here
is he's saying that is similar to what Christ has done for us
as well. Christ was up in the heavenlies
and he heard the cries of us, his people.
So what does he do? What did he do?
He descended. He became man for us.
He lived a perfect life and He was willing to go as low as you
could possibly go. He was willing to go to his
death on a cross for you and for me to atone for our sins.
And that anyone who puts their faith in that work, anyone who
asks and repents of their sin and asks for forgiveness from
Christ can now be reconciled back to God, be brought back
into relationship with Him and live into the Kingdom.
So Paul is taking an old, old, well known Psalm.
He's adapting and appropriate and saying this is what Christ
has done for you all. He has come from a distance.
He is rewriting your story. He's delivering you and
redeeming you out of slavery and into freedom.
And so because he descended, he was elevated above all things.
He then ascended back into the heavenlies.
He was now the, the victorious triumphant Yahweh giving gifts
to everybody. So imagine for a moment that
you're, you're outside on your front porch and all of a sudden
a plane drops over. This is like an just a little
bit of an analogy. A plane drops, a package comes
down, lands right there on your front porch.
Imagine that you open it up and it's the world's largest
firecracker, world's largest firework, let's just say.
And So what do you do? You set it up, you light the
fuse. All of a sudden that firework is
destroyed. It explodes, right?
Poof. It flies into the air.
Higher, higher, higher, higher, higher.
And then what does it do once it finally reaches its peak?
And imagine just for a moment, that that firework just rains
down upon the entire sky. This is kind of a similar
picture to what happened with Jesus.
He ascended down. He dropped down to earth.
The fuse was lit. All of a sudden there was an
explosion. With his death and resurrection,
He ascended back on high. And then he fills the whole
universe. And what comes down, according
to this passage, what is raining down over the entire sky back
down to us? Gifts.
It says God has given us gifts because He's victorious, because
He's on top. He now rains down gifts.
So the question is, what are the gifts?
What are these that He actually gave us and gave His church?
This is what it says in verse 11, Ephesians 4, verse 11.
Here are the gifts so Christ himself gave.
These are the gifts Christ himself gave the apostles, the
prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and the teachers.
So the gifts are people. The gifts are these different
people that Christ has given to us.
In other words, they're the leaders for the church that
Christ is building. Now, there's four or five
different roles here that are mentioned.
There's an acronym for these, these five here called Apest
APEST. And this is kind of their
different roles and functions. I'm going to move really quickly
through these, so just bear with me because we're a limited time
here, but #1 the apostles. The apostles role is to govern
the foundation of the building of the church, often times the
the capital. A apostles were the OG sort of
12 disciples that were following Jesus around.
So Jesus had many disciples, but there were 12 apostles that were
instrumental who saw the risen Christ and built the church.
Today, those who have an Apostolic gift are passionate
initiators. These are the people who are
going out and planting churches. They're starting ministry
centers and they're doing the work.
They're sort of pioneers. Next you have the prophets.
The prophets role is to guide with revelation.
These are the people who are able to discern the will of God
for specific groups and address them with authority.
Next, you have the evangelists. Their role is to gather the
lost. This is a very rare term in
Scripture, but it's essentially the people who are going out
sharing the good news, heralding that Christ is risen and the
Kingdom is here. And what do they do?
They win converts, and then they gather them back into the fold.
So they're going out bringing people into the church.
They're literally gospelers. OK, next you have the pastors.
This is maybe one we're familiar with.
Their role is to guard the flock.
The word for pastors is the word shepherds.
And so these are the leaders of local congregations and their
job is to care for, to nurture, to train, to correct and to
equip the church for the works of service.
Now in the Greek, pastors and teachers here are are linked
together. So some say there's only four
roles, Maybe you call them pastor teachers or teacher
pastors. But teachers, their role is to
ground in the truth. So their job is to instruct
knowledgeably, to interpret and apply Scripture to their
audiences. All right, got all five.
You good. Memorize those five different
gifts, these different people that Christ gave to build the
church. I'm going to give you a really
quick way to memorize these. OK, picture it like, like
picture it like a hand. So the apostles, the first one
is like the thumb because they're hitchhiking their their
way on to the next thing. They're always going, they're
always moving, right? They're always starting next.
You have the index finger, OK. The prophets are the ones who
are pointing to God, always listening to him and pointing
the way. The next is the middle finger.
This would be the evangelists. They're usually the most
prominent and the most loud. They're out there, right?
They're the ones going on the front lines and sharing the
gospel even with people who don't want to hear it.
So sometimes they can also be the most offensive of all the
fingers. It's a little joke.
OK, Next you have the pastors. They they're kind of like the
ring finger. Why?
Because they are dedicated to the bride of Christ.
So picture a wedding ring on a ring finger.
They're all about the bride of Christ.
Finally, you have the teachers. They may not be as flashy or as
prominent as all the other roles, the apostles and the
pastors, but did you know, fun fact, the pinky is actually one
of the most important fingers for grip strength.
So the teachers hold them all together with the truth.
So you got all 5 memorized. Great.
All right, we're going to move on.
That is for free and here we go. The gifts that Christ gave us
are the people, the founders and leaders of the church.
Now, many of you probably know some pastors, maybe you've
experienced some leaders who think they're God's gift to the
world, right? They are kind of elevate
themselves to be prominent or they use their position for
their own benefit. But here's the thing, the
singular purpose of God giving these gifts, these people is to
serve and equip the Saints. Their sole purpose is to serve
the church and the and to train the church up to use their
giftings. Why?
Because as the passage we just read says, each of us has been
given a grace by God to be used. So it's not about just the
leaders. You may look at that list and be
like, wow, they must be the important ones.
No, no, no, no. The leader's job is to come
underneath and support and lift up and build everyone to use
their God-given gifts in Christ. This is the role of the leaders
of the church. And we also need to recognize
that it's only by grace that any of these leaders would be called
into these positions. This is not a position that is
earned. This is not a position based on
merit or based on skill or based on ability.
In other words, if you're a leader in the church, it's
because Christ has appointed you and given you the grace to do
that, not because you're something special.
Does that make sense? No one has room to boast in in
leadership in the church. This is why at Presence Church
we talk about the phrase servant leadership.
OK, if you want to be a leader at Presence Church, you have to
be the first who's willing to get down and wash feet like
Christ and serve His church. When we're trying to identify
leaders at our church, we are looking for the people who are
most willing to serve even in the lowest positions at this
church. Why?
Because that is the nature and the call of spiritual
leadership. Imagine for a moment, you know,
you've got this this person who's new to the church, they
come in and they've got all the giftings, right?
I mean, they can, they can preach, you know, with charisma
and they can, they can sing like Whitney Houston on the stage or,
you know, or whatever it is right there.
There's the phenomenal giftings, right?
And imagine you go up to that person and you're like, oh, man,
we're so glad you're here. We're going to put you on the
stage to be a leader of the church.
If you can come in at 7:00, that's when we set up and
imagine for that person is just a moment is like, oh, oh, oh,
setting up at 7:00. Yeah.
That actually isn't part of my spiritual gifting that God has
given me. So I need to pray about that.
You know, I can just imagine if that was the case for a moment,
that'd be a red flag, wouldn't it?
That'd be huge red flag. Why?
Because it's not about the ability, it's not about the
gifting, It's about their willingness to live like Jesus
and serve the church and build it up.
Does that make sense? So when we're identifying
leaders, we're looking for those who are willing to go lowest.
Those are the people that Christ wants to elevate.
Does that make sense? So how do we do this?
What is our role here? Let's carry on in verse 12 here,
Ephesians 4, verse 12. So God gives these gifts Christ
because he's victorious, He fills the whole universe.
He rains down these gifts as people to do what?
Verse 12. To equip His people for the
works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up
until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of
the Son of God, and become mature, attaining to the whole
measure of the fullness of Christ.
So the primary role of these leaders, these gifts that that
God has given us is to equip. This word for equip is actually
quite interesting. It's only used once in the New
Testament, which is, which is pretty rare.
So that's kind of something to pay attention to.
It's the word Qatar tismas in the Greek.
And like I said, it's a rare word, but it can mean to
restore, to equip, to perfect, to prepare, and to mend.
Whenever you see a word once only used once in the Bible, it
can be helpful to go outside of the Bible to see how that word
is used. So outside of the Bible, that
term can refer to the setting of a broken bone, getting it back
into place in order to make it useful again.
It can also refer to supplying of an army.
So this is the idea of like corporate strength and
refreshing the body or refreshing an army that's on
mission and the one I want to focus on today.
The third use outside of scripture for for this
particular word for to equip is referring to the outfitting of a
ship or a vessel. In other words, making it
seaworthy and ready for a voyage or for military activity.
And perhaps this is the idea that Paul maybe had in mind,
maybe seeing some of the great Roman ship and all the ways that
they're connected, and this could be what he had in mind.
And we'll get to that in just a moment.
We might have an indication of that.
So part of our roles as leaders is to build the ship of the
church to be seaworthy. Does that make sense?
But the question becomes, what kind of ship are we called to
be? There's a lot of different
options out there and we see different types of ships.
I think all around, all around America.
Number one, I think we see the church as a cruise ship
sometimes. This is basically the idea that
people kind of come in, maybe they pay their fare, they sit
back and relax and they say, all right, feed me.
You know, they're just kind of sitting back.
They're they're, you know, they're not really steering the
ship. It's it's kind of they're being
entertained. They're well fed, but they don't
really do anything. They just kind of lounge around,
right. This is the cruise ship church.
There's plenty of those that you can find there.
There's lots of entertaining churches out there.
Is that the type of ship we're called to be?
Probably not. The next ship is a little bit
more on mission. This would be like a battleship
and at first like this could be, this could maybe be the picture
we have in mind. After all, the battleship is on
mission. The battleship has powerful guns
to sort of attack the enemies of darkness or whatever.
And in in these types of churches, often times they're
led by a commanding team. Maybe it's like that, you know,
the pastor or the leaders do all of the work.
They call all of the shots. But the people of the church,
their job is just to obey commands, right?
Their job is just to, you know, make sure that the guns are
pointed in the right way. Their job is to just kind of
clean the poop deck or whatever it is.
OK, I wasn't in the Navy, so ask, ask Brett and Sarah or
someone. But I don't know how it works.
But the point is this. The point is this.
The the commanding officers are the one who are, are kind of
doing all the work and calling all the shots, but the people
are just kind of grunts. Does that make sense?
So I don't know if that's the best option.
Then there's a third option, and this is the church as an
aircraft carrier, where it's entire purpose is to equip and
to and to launch individuals out to go on mission.
The entire structure of an aircraft carrier is designed for
people to get in the planes and to go into the battlefield, into
the mission field in order to seek out the targets.
They come back into the ship to refuel and to be equipped.
And I think this is probably the best picture of the church that
we can think of. We as a church are called to be
the ones who are equipping individuals to go out into their
individual workplaces, into their families, into their
communities, doing justice, bringing rescue and coming back
together to be encouraged and to be fed and to be built up again.
The type of church that I believe God is calling us to be
is more like an aircraft carrier than a cruise ship.
Ben Witherington the Third puts it this way.
The point is that the gifted persons listed in verse 11 serve
as the foundational gifts that are used for the immediate
purpose of preparing all the Saints to minister.
Thus, every believer must do the work of ministry.
I'm going to say that one more time.
Thus, every believer must do the work of ministry.
The final goal evolves from the last, namely that the work of
ministry by every believer is to build up the body of Christ.
In other words, you and I have a job to do.
It's to build up the body of Christ.
And what will be the result of this?
Verse 14, Verse 14? Then after the equipping takes
place, after where the readiness happens, then we will no longer
be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown
here and there by the every wind of teaching and by the cunning
and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.
How many of you guys know that? Our current cultural moment in
the digital age that we live in, it is really easy to be tossed
back and forth, right by the winds of teaching, by people's
opinions, by trends on social media, whatever it may be,
right? It seems like every day there
is, there's a new news story that that presents itself on our
phones that we're supposed to be outraged about, right?
And we're just tossed back and forth continually, even in our
political sphere, both on the right and the left, it seems
more and more that we're getting gas lit, you know, by by people
who who are saying, Hey, I know you saw it one way, but
actually, let me tell you what you're actually seeing.
The truth has spin on it. And we see more and more that
blame shifting is occurring to other people or to AI or
whatever. The point is this, even in the
church, there are people out there who are only after their
own gain. It is easy to be tossed back and
forth. There's so much confusion out
there. There's so many narratives out
there. There's so much noise.
But here's what's interesting about an aircraft carrier.
Did you know, fun fact, that there's no record of a aircraft
carrier ever capsizing due to weather or due to waves or
storm? Did you know that it's pretty
amazing? Even in 1944, there was
something called the Cobra Typhoon event, which is like the
coolest name ever, by the way. But it's this massive storm that
like wiped out multiple battleships and destroyers.
And, and the The thing is, even though this, this storm was
torrential, the only ship that survived was an aircraft
carrier. Isn't that amazing?
And what's interesting is it's because of the way it's built,
you see, because of its center of gravity and because of its
center of buoyancy, because the very structure itself is
designed to launch the individuals out into the mission
field, it allows it to stay balanced even in the fiercest
waves. May we to be a church that is so
focused on launching you, the Saints, out into the mission
field that we as a body can withhold and weather any storm.
That is the type of church that we're called to be.
So many of us church, so many of us are still playing around in
our own little dinghies, our own little boats that were just
rowing against the waves and the storms, rowing like crazy, just
trying to survive, just trying to raise families, living on our
own mission, on our own calling. But here's the truth.
Every person needs a family and every person needs a mission,
and the church is meant to be both.
That's the strength of the church.
That's the strength of the body. So how can we be a unified
church that's not tossed back and forth by the waves?
And how can we remain anchored and stable even in the fiercest
weather? Verse 15 gives us the answer.
Let's move on 4:15 instead and meaning instead of being tossed
back and forth, instead of being a blown around like a balloon in
the wind that got let go at a kids birthday party, instead
speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every
respect to the mature body of him who is the head that is
Christ speaking the truth in love.
That's how we do it. That's the answer here.
The the word in the Greek is literally truthing in love.
If you ever heard of the phrase always be closing ABC, right?
I'm going to switch it to abt always be truthing.
That's what our call is as Christians.
You see, speaking and living the truth in love is both the means
to maturity and the mark of maturity.
What do I mean by that? Speaking the truth in love is
how we as a body actually become more and more mature.
When you and I are willing to encourage one another to share
God's Word with one another, we are built up into maturity.
How do we know that we have a mature church, a mature body?
We have a group of people who are willing to speak the truth
in love to one another. So does that make sense?
It's both the mark and it's both.
The means and the mark of maturity in a church always be
truthing. But here's the thing, we have to
have both. We have to have both truth and
love together. Truth without love is just
harshness. Would you agree?
How you say something often times matters even more than
what you say. Proverbs 15 one reminds us of
that. The wisdom says a gentle answer
turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
How you say something matters, the opposite is also true.
If we just have love without truth, well, that's just mere
sentimentality, right? There's no real substance to
behind it, It's just all emotions.
What we see in Romans 2 is that the Apostle Paul reminds us that
God uses both to win souls. Romans 2 reminds us that God
used kindness in order to lead us to repentance.
With you and for me, God was abundantly patient.
With you, He was abundantly gracious With you, His love, it
was never ending. With you, He was continually
calling you, even while we were yet sinners.
Christ was patient. It was His kindness that led you
back to repentance. Does that make sense?
And it wasn't just love, it was also the truth.
It's kindness, which is love, but it's also repentance, which
is truth. We need to be a church that's
committed to both. Does that make sense?
Being willing to call out and confront sin, but be willing to
go the distance relationally in love, to walk with people
through it? Does that make sense?
This is the church that God has called us to be speaking the
truth in love. So which one are we in danger
of? Truth minus love or love minus
truth historically? I think the the church
historically was in danger of being more on the truth without
love side. We saw legalism, we saw
harshness. I think the same is true today,
but only on the Internet. Right?
Like there's a lot of people who are willing to like blast people
with the truth on social media and then just log off and walk
away with no relationship with no loving motivation behind it
in person In today's church though I think.
I think honestly the issue we face the most is is love without
truth. I think people are afraid to
offend in person. I think people are afraid to
have an awkward moment with in in person.
I think people today are far more likely to just run away and
cut ties in relationships than to actually like, hear the truth
and still remain committed in relationship.
OK. I think we're starting to see an
unraveling of the social sort of fabric in that way.
But we need to be reminded that we have to have both.
In other words, in a culture of superficiality, we have to
become a people of substance. May we become anchored deep in
love while others remain shallow.
Church, you cannot separate truth from love because God
Himself is both truth and love. Does it make sense?
So if you think you're speaking the truth, you're dropping truth
bombs on social media or whatever, right?
But you're not doing it in love. You're not actually giving the
truth. Because the two are married.
They're linked to each other and if you think you're being loving
by just permitting certain things from going on, even
though your friend is struggling with whatever addiction or
darkness stuff we've all done, stuff we've all gone through,
and you're never actually helping them to say, hey, I
don't believe this is God's will and his and his plan for your
life. Hey, can I help you and walk
with you out of that? Can I pray with you out of that?
If we're not willing to do both, then we're we're not doing
either. Does that make sense?
God is both truth and he's love. We have to be willing to speak
and live out both as a church with one another daily.
And it has to be in the context of loving, committed
relationship. Paul continually talks about the
power of unity within the church, calling people to be
gentle and humble with one another.
Why? It's in environments of
unconditional grace and love and honesty where we can be truly
transformed and healed. This is the power of marriage.
My wife knows the ugliest parts about me, right?
The other day I had a speaking engagement and I had a speaking
engagement and I got done and I was kind of like, how did that
go? So I asked my wife and I said,
hey, what were your thoughts on my little talk that I did there,
Susan? And she did one of these things.
You, you maybe encountered this before She did the you know what
I mean? How did it go?
You know, And immediately I knew there was something there and I
was like, OK, how did it go? And she's like, well, you know,
and she's got kind of did that thing.
And so finally, finally, I had to just say be honest, like tell
me how it actually went. And then she did.
And it hurt my feelings. OK, She told the truth, but I
needed to hear it, right? That's the beauty of marriage,
and that is the beauty of true community.
That is what the church is meant to do, to provide an environment
of unconditional love and security of family, and yet also
the honesty of truth. There's power in that.
I need people to call me out on my crap, right?
You need people to call you out on your crap.
But I don't need people to call me on my crap who don't actually
love me. OK?
So if you're coming up to me and be like, Ben, your sermon should
be shorter and you don't actually love me, forget about
it. I don't want to hear it.
OK, All right. I know they should be shorter,
but here's the point. Here's the point.
If you love me, I might actually be more willing to listen to
you. OK, As a church, we need to have
both. This is true in marriage.
It's true in singleness, it's true in relationships, it's true
in work. It's just a reality.
May we be a church that lives out both.
And by the way, this is This is why we believe there's so much
power in the environment of a discipleship band.
At Presence Church, we have these groups of two to four
people that are that gather regularly.
And the commitment is that they would be transparent spaces
where you can be fully known and fully loved, centered around the
truth of God's Word, but open enough where you can actually
confess your darkest sin and not be judged for it.
Still held accountable to it through prayer and through
loving relationship and through encouragement and grace.
But it's an environment where you can actually grow and be
transformed. The security of love and the
empowerment of truth. This is the power and This is
why we believe in transparent spaces like discipleship bans.
The call of the apostle Paul was to live a life worthy of the
calling we've received to grow in our identity that's already
been afforded to us. In Ephesians chapter one through
three, the first half we see over and over Paul is just, he's
just blasting us with identity statements.
Take a look at this next list. Paul reminds us that we have
been blessed with every spiritual blessing, that we've
been chosen, we've been adopted, we've been redeemed and
forgiven. We were included in Christ.
We were loved. We have been made alive.
We are God's handiwork. We're brought near, we're
reconciled to God, we're heirs together, and we have access to
the Father with freedom and confidence.
Is anyone excited about that today?
This is the reality with which we live.
It's already been given to us. This is what Christ accomplished
on the cross and with his ascension.
And so now as a church, our job is just to simply live into
these things more and more and more every single day.
As a church, our job is to recognize that Christ has
already attained this for us if we're in Him.
And now we become like Jesus together.
Ephesians 5 again, turning back to the Scripture.
Instead speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in
every respect the mature body of Him who is the head that is
Christ. From him the whole body, joined
together and held together by every supporting ligament, grows
and builds itself up in love. As each part does its work.
As some parts do its work. No, as each part does its work.
Two quick application points and then I'm done #1 Every believer
is called to use their God-given gifts in service for the growth
and building up of the church. Every believer.
Our church is not going to be a cruise ship, right?
And and no church is meant to be a cruise ship and no church
probably intends to be a cruise ship, but it just just happens
naturally. Instead, we will be like an
aircraft carrier, training and equipping y'all to go out and be
on mission and to rescue souls. But we don't do it by our own
power and our own strength. Instead, we recognize Christ is
the head, which means He is the source of all of our
empowerment. He is the one who allowed the
Holy Spirit to come and fill us and give us the gifts needed to
fulfil this mission. He is the one who gives the body
the supply of nutrients it desperately needs.
And like a body that grows and divides, like cells in a growing
body. And like a body that needs to be
moved and exercised to grow and build itself up, so the church
is fulfilled by Christ and builds itself up #2 every leader
is called to equip the church for the works of service.
So if you would like to be a leader at Presence Church, if
God has given you that gifting and that grace, the first
prerequisite is certainly the call, but the second is that
you're willing to go lower in service for others.
At Presence Church, we're going to continue to equip people in
training them in God's Word. This means we're going to
continue to emphasize discipleship bands, which are
centered around Scripture first and foremost.
It means we're going to continue with our equipping calls every
month. We're going to continue to have
youth group on Wednesdays where they're learning about prayer
currently. We're going to continue to train
up people to to teach our kids how to learn about the Holy
Spirit like they are today, learn how to pray and become
friends with God. We're going to continue to
center our Sunday services around God's Word through
sermons and through teachings. Not only will we center around
God's Word, but we're going to help people discover their gifts
and then deploy their gifts more and more.
As a matter of fact, right after service, new to presence, we're
going to be talking about how to identify your gifts and how to
deploy them not just within the church, but beyond it.
We're going to continue doing intentional mentoring and small
scale environments. We see people meeting together
every Saturday right now for that.
And every Wednesday we see we're going to continue to emphasize
whole church ownership, emphasizing our serve teams to
build them up. And guys, let me just say, I'm
so glad and impressed with how many of you have already stepped
into serving. The percentage of people who are
serving at our church is, I would say, disproportionately
high. It's, it's incredible to see how
you guys are just stepping in and leaning into that.
But the need is still great. There's still a need for more
people who are willing to come in at 7:00 AM and set up, more
people who are willing to be trained how to lead our kids,
trained in other areas and then to be sent out as well.
And so if that's you today, if you're like, man, I want to use
my gifts. I want to be useful in building
up the church. I just encourage you like grab
that connect card Mark serving. Let's make it practical.
Let's take a next step because each of us are called to use our
giftings for the building up of the body.
As I close and as I invite Garrett to come back up, I
opened with the story of The Incredibles, how Mr. Incredible
was kind of off on his own chasing the glory days.
But the the children, even though they had gifts, hadn't
yet been trained how to use them.
And there's this moment at the end of the movie where finally
they all come together. The parents train their kids to
use their giftings and they rally a family coming together,
working together. The leaders are leading.
All of them are using their gifts, and people's lives are
saved. Even though they're radically
diverse in their gifts, they're unified as a family in love, and
because of this, they're a force to be reckoned with.
In the same way, church, you and I are called to use our diverse
gifts under the leaders that God has given with the bond of love
in order to go and be sent out on mission.
To rescue people from lostness and darkness, to confront issues
of injustice, and to do whatever it is that God has called us to
do. To make disciples, to live on
mission, and to build His church.
This is the good church that God wants to build.
It's a fruitful family with the bond of love, willing to
sacrifice for one another and living on mission for the
Kingdom to see Ankeny as it is in heaven.
Love is the spiritual mortar that holds us together.
So may we may. May we be a church that is
always truthing one another. May we keep the unity and the
bond of peace. May we choose gentleness and
humility above all. And first and foremost, may we
do it in love. Let's build this house together.
Let's grow this family in unity. Everyone of you has a part to
play. No one's on the sidelines.
Everyone's on mission. That's the dream, because Christ
descended, was willing to go to the cross lower than anyone has
ever gone. He was raised victorious and
ascended above all things. And from that position of
victory and authority, he rained down gifts the people to build
his church, that they would fully equip all the Saints into
maturity so that we together would be the very presence of
Jesus himself and a lost and dying and hurting world.
That's the call of the Church. That's who we're meant to be.
I pray we'd live into that.