We easily forget that the church is a body.
Today on Insight for Living with Chuck Swindoll. We have tried to operate the church as an institution, a corporation, a business, but the reality Paul wants us to grasp in Ephesians is that the church is a body made up of selves. And the selves are individual believers, not you and me and other brothers and sisters in Christ.
Each cell has a unique role to play in keeping the entire body healthy. Sometimes large contemporary churches have become all too comfortable for parishioners to slip in and slip out on a Sunday morning without getting noticed. The megachurch, as some call it, offers a measure of anonymity.
It's a safe place to sit and listen without participating or contributing to the cause. Well today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll reminds us that the church is a place where Christian believers gather to worship and to express their unique God-given gifts. Chuck titled his next study in Ephesians 4, Body Life at Its Best. It's been a while since we have looked into the pages of Ephesians together, so I'd like you to crack open your Bible again to the fourth chapter, and let me read for you what I would consider the greatest message for the church to hear in any generation. This place is full of all kinds of people, all different levels of education or ages and maturity and single and married and divorced and twice divorced and widowed and some celebrating 50th anniversaries.
We've got all kinds of folks here. Now, Ephesians 4, 11 through 16, and he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming. But, truthing it in love, the word speaking isn't in the original, but truthing in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
Isn't that grand? Lord, it's so great to come together and to laugh with each other and to have the load lifted that we've been carrying too long, strapped around our shoulders. We're not made to carry it, but we do. We've worried about things that we're not able to change, and we've fretted over things that we haven't caused, and we can't alter, but nevertheless, humans that we are, we bring ourselves to this place, and all of a sudden, it's remarkable how perspective begins to return. I was thinking all the way through that great song of the words of Isaiah, can a mother forget her nursing child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, even they may forget, yet I will not forget you, says the Lord. I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. Your ways are continually before me. Thank you, Father. Thank you for not being so preoccupied sustaining gravity and spinning the planets in the universe and maintaining the chronology of the stars through all of this time that you've existed and that they have. Thank you for caring about little people like us. Thank you for knowing our thoughts before they ever flit through our minds. Thank you for being timeless in your mercy and for reminding us just with the rising of the sun that those mercies are brand new.
They're as deep as we need to go in the pit in which we find ourselves, and they will take us to whatever ecstasy of a mountaintop anticipation that may be ours to walk into. Thank you, Father, that with you there is never a letdown. With you there is never a payback. With you there is never shame. With you there is always hope, always hope. Thank you. Now we open your timeless word in this moment as we continue our worship, and we pray that truth will leap from the page before we have left this place. And it might make a difference in how we view life, how we see where we fit in it, and in how your plan is coming together. In the name of Jesus.
Amen. As most of you are aware, about the middle of my seminary years, I had the opportunity to be, if not the first, one of the first pastoral interns serving under Ray Stedman. Unfortunately, Ray is no longer with us. The Lord took him home, seemed to me to be awfully young in life, but not before Cynthia and I had the privilege of living in his shadow and watching him do his work and studying alongside him and serving and learning from him. It was a life-changing experience.
I've been marked forever as a result of it. Shortly after we returned to school for our last couple of years there, the Lord led, at Peninsula Bible Church where Ray pastored for over 40 years, the Lord led those people to do something most unusual. If you recall the 60s, some of you smiled in understanding, others of you only study it in your history books and you've only been told about it.
It was a time of out of control atmosphere here in America. Churches were making a decision at that time. Many of them chose to build their walls higher and thicker and to increase the size of the moat and add alligators so that those hippies couldn't possibly find their way in. Other churches, on the other hand, decided to open their doors, drain the moat, and make it possible for whoever to come in and find hope to go on because behind the folk songs and the free lifestyle was a world that had lost its way, longing for a bridge over their troubled waters. They found such a bridge at Peninsula Bible Church in what came to be known in that ministry as body life.
Again, you date yourself if you know firsthand of that. It is a very unusual, albeit biblical, approach to handling a church, to shaping its philosophy, to dealing with it and caring for its people. It is an open-hearted, vulnerable, unguarded style where the leadership doesn't remind people of who's in charge, where image is never at stake, and where the body really does function as such.
It's a magnificent thing to witness. People come from all over, dressed however, looking, and I might add smelling like whatever, and in they came as they did at our church in Fullerton, California, because I had learned how to do that from Ray. It always troubled him that he wrote his book on it because suddenly it became marketable, and people would read about it and think, well, I'll just start doing that next Sunday. He always laughed over the country church in Nebraska where the pastor visited Peninsula Bible Church, saw it in action, and then went back and tried to make body life work. Ray said farmers don't even do body life with their wives, much less have it happened in their church, and I think he's right.
But if you were of such a secure nature, and if you did find yourself comfortable relinquishing a lot of the leadership, and you didn't worry about looking slick and professional, then body life would work, and it does. If I may pause before we get into Ephesians and address this, I would say if there's a message the church of the 21st century needs to hear, it is this one. We have come on hard times where the church is now more of a corporation or an institution, and anyone who studied under and was marked by Ray Stedman would tell you nothing could be further from the biblical truth. Pastors today seem to prefer to be known as the CEO of the church rather than the pastor. Many of the techniques being promoted have corporate leanings in their terms and their philosophy, and in fact congregations are now being seen not as God's flock, but they're being processed as institutional entities. It's almost to the place where if you are a pastor you don't tell anybody, lest they link you to the role of a shepherd, when in fact that's exactly what you are and you should find great delight in it. I've come to the place where I'm not sure the church was ever meant to be super efficient. The church is meant to be healthy and productive, under God's timing and by God's power, and we're not to be slick. We are not a corporation. If you think that's too far to go, how many times have you ever heard the CEO of a corporation ask you to call him a shepherd?
They don't do that. The church is a family. The church is a body.
Listen to Stedman himself. How does your body function? In the body of flesh and bones there are various kinds of cells, nerve cells, blood cells, skin cells, muscle cells, bone cells, and more, each with a distinct function. In a healthy body the cells do not get together and vote on which cell does what.
They simply function according to their God-given design. In a healthy body the cells do not revolt or go their own way. When the cells of the body revolt the result is indigestion or cramps or even cancer.
When the brain cells revolt the result is dementia or insanity. Only when the cells perform their proper function does the body experience true health. The same is true whether we are talking about a human body or the body of Christ, the church. We easily forget that the church is a body. We have tried to operate the church as an institution, a corporation, a business, but the reality Paul wants us to grasp in Ephesians is that the church is a body made up of cells. And the cells are individual believers, you and me and other brothers and sisters in Christ.
Each cell has a unique role to play in keeping the entire body healthy. No section of scripture addresses this clearer than Ephesians 4, 11-16. It is beyond me why churches all around the world aren't serious students of and models of Ephesians 4, 11-16.
It is beyond me. If and when that becomes a reality in our midst as a church, we will be blown away at how healthy we stay, how the cults, though they may come knocking, will not get a foothold in our lives, and how we will care for each other like the body cells care for one another. What you witness in church splits, church arguments, and church battles, and church fights is nothing more than cells in revolt.
And the body isn't functioning. Look again at Ephesians 4 and be reminded of Paul's words as he starts the chapter, that he is a prisoner of the Lord. Remember, he's in Rome. He's under house arrest. He's literally bound to a Roman soldier for an undetermined period of time. During that while, he writes four letters that have come to be known as the prison letters. Ephesians is one of them. And so he really is a prisoner because of his commitment to the Lord, and he implores the reader in Ephesus to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which he has been called. Please note the words in the verse that follow with humility, gentleness, patience, tolerance, and love. Those are not corporate terms.
Those are not institutional guidelines. Those are body functions. When the body of Christ, the church, is at its healthiest stage, you will witness before your eyes, and so will the world at large to their amazement, the outworking of humility, the absence of pride, gentleness, the absence of force, patience, the absence of impatience and rage and anger, tolerance, the absence of legalism and restrictive thinking, and love, the absence of ignoring others and fighting with one another.
How is that done? Verse 3 tells us, by preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And with that, he launches into a great treatise on unity.
If you haven't marked it already, look at the frequent repetition of the word one. There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called, in one hope of your calling. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. There is one God, Father of all, who is over all, through all, in all.
He couldn't be much clearer. There is one, one, one, one. In fact, there is one God over all who is overthrew and in all, and in it all is the sovereign hand of God, superseding, overshadowing, guiding under the direction of the head of the Church, Christ, the body of Christ. But, verse 7 begins, always notice why there is a connective particle that contrasts the context. But, up until now it's been unity, unity, one, one, all, all, but, to each one of you.
In fact, in the Greek sentence, the word one appears first out of order for emphasis. One, but to each of you. By the way, instead of each of you, your name could be placed there. But to Frank, but to Shirley, but to Bobby, but to Jane, but to Chuck, but to Bill, but to Doris, but to Megan, but to Barbara, but to Ralph.
Put your name there. To you, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. What does that mean? Initially, it means you were given the gift of salvation through faith in the Savior. Through faith in Christ, you received forgiveness and the hope of eternal life. You came to the cross by faith, like those sitting around you in the family of God, and you submitted yourself to Christ, acknowledging that you're lost.
You turned away from that lifestyle and you turned toward Christ, repentance. You accepted the gift of eternal life and you received grace to live it. It not only means salvation at conversion, it means a spiritual gift. You were given at least one spiritual gift. If you do not have a gift, you are not a Christian. If you are a Christian, you have at least one, probably more than one, spiritual gift. Grace was given you, each one of you. Stedman continues, Each one of us is gifted.
It doesn't matter whether we are old, young, rich, poor, talented, awkward, articulate, quiet, handsome, plain, popular, unknown. You have a spiritual gift. If you do not have a spiritual gift, you are not a Christian. If you know and exercise your gift, you contribute to the vitality and ministry of the church. If not, listen to this, you rob the church of a measure of the impact and influence God intended his church to have in the world.
Now that's a new way to look at it. If you have the gift of showing mercy but you don't show mercy, part of the body is hurting because you don't. Part of a need in the body goes unmet. If you have a gift of organization and that is your joy, that is your spirit empowered gift and you don't exercise it, the church hurts because of that. If you have a gift of teaching and you're not engaged in teaching in God's time as he opens the door for you to teach, then part of the group of God's people that could be taught by you is going to remain untaught and the truth will remain unsaid because you are not exercising your gift.
And we are all different. There are all kinds of gifts mentioned in the scriptures. Let me give you where the lists are placed. Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, 1 Peter 4. Those four chapters you will read of the gifts that are listed in the Bible. Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, and 1 Peter 4. You will read of many of the gifts.
I'm convinced that's not an exhaustive list but that's a good place to start. You have abilities that God has given you to use in the body of Christ. And it will be different from the other person.
It will be different from people in your family. But God designs the body so that we carry out his giftedness to the body. Look at verse 11. He gave some as apostles, he gave some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastor-teachers. And there's much more from this passage we need to discover in Ephesians 4. You're listening to Chuck Swindoll and Insight for Living. To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org.
To give you some context, this program features just one slice from a much larger series. It's a verse-by-verse study through Paul's letter to the Ephesians. The series is titled Becoming a People of Grace. And to enhance your study of Paul's letter, you'll want to order a copy of Chuck's popular commentary on Ephesians.
This isn't a booklet. It's a hardbound volume formatted so you can systematically read your Bible while referencing Chuck's practical insights at the same time. Plus, this volume comes with Chuck's commentary on Galatians as well. It's called Swindoll's Living Insights Commentary on Galatians and Ephesians. So to purchase this 300-page hardbound commentary right now, go to insight.org slash store or call and talk with one of our friendly staff members.
If you're listening in the United States, call 1-800-772-8888. And then just before we sign off and the weekend begins, all of us at Insight for Living are praying this study in Ephesians inspires you to become an agent of God's grace in a world that's craving to feel a touch of His kindness. 2020 will go down in history as a year filled with uncertainty, fear, and even hostility. Because Jesus has broken all barriers through His sacrificial death on the cross, it's all the more reason to become a people of grace. In that spirit, we're inviting you to join us in taking God's message of grace all across our country and even around the world through Vision 195. The majority of your gift is applied right here in North America where you hear Chuck's teaching.
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When you do that, you'll become an elegant bouquet, a sweet fragrance of God's grace. Here at home and all around the world, become a monthly companion by calling us. If you're listening in the United States, call 1-800-772-8888 or go online to insight.org slash monthly companion. Join us again Monday when Chuck Swindoll's study, Becoming a People of Grace, continues here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Body Life at its Best, was copyrighted in 2000, 2001, and 2009, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-31 16:35:39 / 2024-01-31 16:44:24 / 9