By Pastor Lynn Sawyer Parks

Ephesians 4:1-16

As I shared with the children, today we are talking about the 5 people gifts that Jesus gives to the church, apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. These 5 are ministry, or leadership, gifts whose purpose is to fit out, or equip, the church. The church needs to be properly equipped for works of service so that everyone grows and matures, attaining to the completeness of Christ. There’s a lot here to talk about but to give some context, Ephesus was a placed where Paul ministered for a couple of years. Some of the places he visited for just a short time and then moved on, but he stayed in Ephesus for a significant amount of time. Both Jews and Gentiles were involved in the church of Ephesus and, earlier in this letter, Paul writes about how Christ has brought Jew and Gentile together into one new humanity, reconciling both of them to God through the cross. He writes that all believers, regardless of ethnicity, are members together of God’s household and are being built together to become a dwelling place for God’s Spirit to live. This fits with the image of the Body of Christ that we have been talking about for the last few weeks. We are all members of the Body of Christ along with all believers around the world. The Holy Spirit lives in each one of us who believe in Christ, and the Holy Spirit also is present in our fellowship together. It’s the Holy Spirit who forms the Body of Christ.

In chapter 4, Paul talks about the maturity of the Body of Christ. It’s not just that the Body of Christ, the Church, grows in numbers as more people believe in Jesus, but that the Body also needs to mature, to grow up, into the fullness of Christ. That phrase “the fullness of Christ” means all the abundance of Christ. It includes all the many aspects of Jesus. You know each person is a complex being. We are physical, spiritual, mental, relational, emotional beings. We have abilities, characteristics, personality traits, interests, talents, quirks that differ from person to person. Jesus is also complex, even more so because He is God as well as human. No one person will ever equal all that Jesus is. Yet He is our standard that we are to grow up to. There’s a goal we are to be reaching for and it is Jesus.

Growing up, we used to measure ourselves every so often and mark our growth on the wall. When Bethannie was little, we began measuring her on the same wall at my parents’ house. There were marks from mine and my brothers’ growth that provided a standard by which we could compare her growth at the same age. We, disciples of Jesus, are trying to reach His marks. In our spiritual, mental, relational and emotional aspects, we are to be growing to be like Jesus. Even physically we should be trying to live in good health, as much as we are able. This is all part of being good stewards of what God has entrusted to us. We can expand it even further to taking good care of the earth and the physical resources we have been given.

To help us grow in these ways, to help the Church become mature, Jesus has given the gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. These are different gifts but they are similar to one another also. I want to try to explain the difference between them and how they are important to the church. An apostle is one who is sent with a message. The 12 apostles were the ones Jesus sent to tell the world all that He had taught them and to bear witness to His resurrection. We call Mary Magdalene the apostle to the apostles because she was the first person Jesus sent to tell the 12 that He had been resurrected. Paul is called an apostle because he also had an encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus and could testify that Jesus had risen from the dead. Apostles are still ones who are sent by the Holy Spirit to testify that Jesus has been risen from the dead.

Prophets are those who speak an inspired message from God. I know I have had people pray for me and then share with me something they felt like God has spoken to them for me to hear at that particular time. One time, Vandy and I were dealing with something (and I don’t remember what it was), but we had been talking about this issue or decision or whatever and didn’t have clear direction. We went away for a week to School for Apostles with EMM. While we were there, I had been talking with a woman and she asked if she could pray for me. I didn’t tell her anything about what Vandy and I were dealing with. But after she prayed, she told me she felt like God wanted to give me a message. She then proceeded to lay out the very thing Vandy and I had been talking about, just as if she had been listening in on our conversation, and then give me a message of assurance from God. This is what prophets do. They give us a message from God that we need at any given time.

Evangelists we are familiar with. They tell the gospel message to people who maybe haven’t heard it before or maybe haven’t accepted it yet. They bring good news to people. Baby John is an evangelist, taking the good news of the gospel to people in India. We can see how apostles, prophets and evangelists all speak important messages from God. These gifts may overlap in one person. Someone might be an evangelist and also minister as a prophet. What is important is that they are all working for the health and maturity of the Church, that we all, the members of the Body, can grow up to completeness in Christ.

The gifts of pastor and teacher are also closely related. The pastor is the shepherd, the one people entrust themselves to, to care for their souls. We all need someone watching out for the care of our souls. The teacher is the one who teaches about the things of God, who devotes themselves to learning and sharing that learning with others for the purpose of us growing to maturity. For all 5 of these, the person who is called has the responsibility to also be growing to maturity, to be hitting those marks that Jesus has laid out. These are all leadership gifts and if our leaders are not growing, those who follow them will not be growing.

In verse 2, Paul says “be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” When we look for leadership gifts in a person, one of the first things to look for is humility. Look for a person who is able to recognize their own areas of weakness and is seeking to grow. Look for a person who is teachable, because a teachable person wants to grow. Look for a person who is able to be patient with themselves and others. Look for a person who is able to love others with a 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love that we talked about a few weeks ago.

Leaders are given to the church to equip the people, to fit them out with what they need to do works of service. It’s like equipping a football player with what they need to play the game. They all need a helmet and some pads. They need the right type of shoes. They also need the right coaching, the right strategy to maximize the strengths of the team as well as knowledge of the opposing team’s strengths and weaknesses. That’s about as far as my football knowledge goes but I do know that, without the right equipping, the player stands a greater chance of getting hurt in the game and the team stands a greater chance of losing. These 5 gifts are given to the church so that we can be properly equipped and in chapter 6 Paul will talk about the armor of God that we need to put on. These leader gifts also equip us with the message of the gospel, the witness of the resurrection of Jesus, the inspired message from God that we need to hear at any given time, the care that we need, the teaching that we need, so that we will be mature and not be tossed around by every teaching that comes along or fall prey to the lies and deceit of the world around us. So leaders also need to be knowledgeable of the context in which they minister.

Ephesus was a place of spiritual darkness. People there were into sorcery and witchcraft, emperor worship and worship of the goddess Artemis. There was an active sex trade going on in Ephesus. In Acts 19, we are told that, when Paul lived in Ephesus for 2 years, God did extraordinary miracles through him. People would take handkerchiefs and aprons that Paul had touched back to the sick and they would be cured and the evil spirits would leave them. This showed that Jesus was more powerful than the other things they worshipped. It was in Ephesus that some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of Jesus over the demon possessed. But these Jews didn’t know Jesus. They had seen Paul at work and thought they would try the same thing, using the name of Jesus like an incantation. One day, 7 sons of the Jewish chief priest Sceva tried this and a demon answered them saying “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” Then the man with the demon jumped them and beat all 7 of them so badly they had to run away naked and bleeding. The church there needed to be equipped to bring the light of the gospel into the lives of people living in such darkness. We need the same equipping today.

This sermon series is about commitments and one of our commitments as a congregation is to develop leaders who develop leaders. We need these gifts activated in our fellowship because we want to be growing up to hit the marks that Jesus has laid out for us that we will be more like Jesus. We are committed to spiritual growth so we need these ministry gifts working among us to help us grow. In reading the story of Raymond Jackson in “All God’s Children” I could see how him being called into ministry and reaching out in the neighborhood resulted in tremendous growth in that church as they engaged in some creative means of ministry to the neighborhood. We as a congregation, have directly benefited from that ministry. What was done there has helped us to grow here. Not only was that a model for us to learn from as OCCCDA was developed, but some of the families from Diamond Street are now part of OCMC, contributing their gifts here. The Body of Christ is still growing. We give thanks to God for all this.

We have a wonderful team of gifted leaders contributing their gifts here at OCMC. We have our leadership team, our church council, and pastoral support team. We also have our youth leaders and Christian Ed teachers, as well as our worship team, sound team, ushers team. All these people are necessary for our church to function well and several people volunteer in more than one ministry area. But also, as we’ve heard from Pearl, there is the ministry of OCCCDA which several people from our church are involved in, as staff, as board members, as volunteers. That is a great deal of people resources in one place and we need to be seeking God as to how to best put all this talent to work for the building up of the Body of Christ. What happens here isn’t about me or you. It’s about Christ. It’s about making Christ known to the world. That’s the purpose, that Christ be revealed to all.