Pastors and Teachers (Part 2 of 2)

In the fourth chapter of the book of Ephesians, Paul gives strong instruction to pastors and elders on their assigned role as teachers of God's Word. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg describes the three specific outcomes of a minister who is properly fulfilling his assignment. First, it stimulates ministry, second, unity, and third, maturity. Was I fed, was I equipped? When I go to this place, do I feel that I am being prepared for the voyage of life?

Is it helping with me in my marriage, in my home, in my business? Do the practicalities of Christian living begin to work their way out as the Word of God is proclaimed? That's what's being described here. And that is why it is so vitally important, the way in which we listen to the Bible. I've told you before, there was a man who used to preach at Keswick in the Lake District in England.

His name was S. D. Gordon. And apparently he used to say—and he had a very quiet voice, and he made it even quieter—he used to say, Are you listening? Are you listening with all the ears of your heart? It's a good question. Because remember, James says, if you've got a filthy mind, if you have an angry heart, you might as well not even listen to the Bible. You need to make sure that when you receive the Word, he says, you receive it with meekness as the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls. So that the place of the Word of God in bringing someone to faith in God is absolutely crucial. Now, I know that there are people who have questions all the time about these things, and justifiably so, and understandably so.

What do you do? Well, you do what you do. You don't abandon the love of God because there are problems. You investigate the problems in light of the love of God. What do you do about the Bible when there are problems? You don't abandon the Bible because of the problems. You believe the Bible, and you wrestle with the problems. Jesus said to his disciples, You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right. For so I am.

We have no freedom to disagree with what he says, nor do we have any freedom to disobey what he says. You see, it ultimately comes down to this fundamental matter. Is Jesus Christ the person he claimed to be? And then, if he in his ascended glory has given this gift to the church, we are to make sure that we're paying attention to it. Now, what I want us to understand as well is this. You will notice that the direct link is not there between we teach the Bible and the church matures.

No. The Bible is taught, the saints are equipped, they do the works of ministry, and the church is built up. So, in other words, there's a missing link, isn't there? If we fail to understand that the way in which we not only receive the Bible when it is taught to us but the way in which we take it away with us and say, Now, there are implications for this. So that the, if you like, the spiritual and the numerical growth of the church under God is directly related to all who are members of the church doing what they're supposed to do. Like turning off their cell phones.

We'll come to this later on, some of us. You'll notice the phrase at the end of verse 16, when each part is working properly. When each part is working properly. You know, that jolly CAT scan thing that makes that horrible noise, that … Yeah, that better be working properly. Actually, it's not the CAT scans.

The MRI makes that noise. This changes everything. You see, at school in Scotland we used to sing, There's a work for Jesus ready at your hand. It's a task the master just for you has planned. He's to do his bidding, yield him service true. There's a work for Jesus none but you can do. Now, you see, do you actually believe that—that God has given to you a place and a purpose and a function? Don't look around and say, But I'm not that, and I'm not him, and I'm not her.

Forget that. Learn to say with the old Anglican bishop, I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I ought to do. And what I ought to do, with God's help, I will do. That, loved ones, is ministry. Ministry.

And as a result of that, the church is built up. In other words, this is a bodybuilding mechanism. Now, I shouldn't really talk about bodybuilding, to which there should be another hearty amen coming from somewhere.

No, I get that. But I have seen bodybuilders. Some of you are.

Every so often, I bump up against you, and I say, Oh, so that's what it's supposed to be like. But the average bodybuilder guy, at least, is not the most agile that I've ever seen. I mean, they make that grunting noise and impress everybody.

But I'll tell you what, I'll take them on a hundred yards any time they want—most of them, not some of the professional athletes, because I don't want to get in trouble here. But the fact is, when we think about this in biblical terms, we're not talking simply about bulk. We're talking about flexibility. We're talking about agility.

We're talking about the ability to lay things down and pick it up. We've got to make sure that the metaphor that we have in mind of the body functioning this way is not of a bus, where everybody just sits and criticizes the driver, where all we are are a group of consumers but we're not contributors, or the metaphor of a bottleneck, which is routinely the case, where you have a pastor-teacher who will not delegate anything to anybody, and everything must pass through him. And there's many a small church that the problem actually is in the pastor-teacher. He won't face up to it. It's because he feels he has to do everything. Somehow or other, his credibility is at stake. And so he never draws around him people who are better than himself.

He's probably vulnerable to that. He doesn't want anybody to know that he's not good at everything. But over a period of time, everybody knows you're not good at everything.

Over a period of time, they're wondering if you're good at anything. Bus-bottleneck orchestra. Play your part. You wanted to be a tuba player?

Tough. You're a piccolo player. Play your piccolo to the glory of God. But I'd like a big double bass. Oh, really? Like when the orchestra is leaving through Hopkins, you'd like a big double bass?

Are you telling me you're not happy to have that little piccolo right here in your inside pocket? God knows what he's doing! Oh, we'd better move on. Ministry and unity. Unity.

Paul has started the chapter by urging them not to create unity. It's already theirs in and through Christ. In their union with Christ, they're united with one another. So it is a unity that is to be maintained. Verse 3, and then down here in verse 13, it is that to which we attain. So it is maintained, and it is attained.

He's already told them that you are the dwelling place for God by the Holy Spirit. The uniqueness of the church is fundamental to the impact of the church. If you read church history, you will know that the church is always at its most effective when it is most countercultural. Every time the church is absorbed by the culture or identified politically or socially with a certain framework, it is diminished in its usefulness. So, for example, for the first two hundred and fifty, three hundred years of the church, the developing church is persecuted.

They're chased from pillar to post. And then Constantine becomes a Christian. And suddenly, the church has gone establishment. Now the Roman emperor is part of the game. And one of the great questions that has confronted church historians in that context and then beyond is, did that make the church more effective or less effective?

And history would argue that it made it less effective. Because there was confusion as to whether this was a political issue or whether this was a spiritual reality. Loved ones, you've got the exact same confusion today.

The church is at its best when people are going, This isn't what I expected. The progressive movement within evangelicalism in the last twenty-five, forty years has been to try and make everybody know that we're not weird. We're just like you. We dress like you, we walk like you, we talk—whatever it is, you know, we're the same as you. And people go, Well, if you're the same as us, what do we want you for? Yeah, no, we have the same music. Yeah, we have the same lifestyle. Yeah, we have everything the same.

That's why we did it this way. So you would like us. Forty years on, what has happened? The millennial generation says, We don't like you. We don't even want to have anything to do with you. Do you really think that we think that because you think you're cool that that's going to make us want to come and listen? The fact that you, in your sixties, can wear jeans?

That we'll be going, Oh, he wears jeans, we gotta get there. No, they're too smart for that. Let me tell you what they're looking for. They're looking for something that is radically different. That's why so many of them are intrigued by Eastern orthodoxy. That's why so many of them have gone in search of the numinous, in search of an existential dimension that is not met by the trivialities that is represented in so many churches' attempts to try and prove that we can absorb you by being just like you.

No! It's supposed to be very, very different. Because the unity that exists is the unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not like in any other organization.

All kinds of clubs you get in on the basis of your achievement or your social status. But the church is not that. Entryway to the church is by the grace of God. So that the readers in the Ephesian churches realized, This is only God could put these Jews and these Gentiles together. They hate each other's guts. And I was at one of their fellowships the other day, and they are sitting side by side. Something has happened there.

It's not like anything else we have ever seen. And the members of the Ephesian congregations realized that the only person that would ever be excluded from the church would be the person who thinks he or she has no need of grace. No. You see, the entryway to the church—as Rutherford the Old Scottish Divine put it—the entryway into a knowledge of Jesus is low. Low.

In fact, the metaphor was—what did he say? Down with your topstail. Down with your topstail.

Stoop, stoop. It is a low entry to go in at the way of Christ. I don't want to go down like that.

I want to walk in like this. No, you can't. Not when the grace of God shows you who you are and what you are and shows you the wonder of who Jesus is and what Jesus is. Then all of the things that mark us out as having significance are not irrelevant.

They are simply subservient to the unity that is brought about in a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? You say, Well, no, maybe I do. Maybe I don't know.

I don't think so. I've never met him. Well, you're not going to meet him.

I mean, he's not walking around Cleveland Heights, I know. You say, Well, if I'd lived at another era, I would perhaps believe, but not now. Where do I come to a knowledge of Jesus?

Well, we're back in the exact same position. It's through the Word of God, by the enabling of the Spirit of God, that we come to an awareness of the Son of God. People say, Well, this is a conundrum.

How can I do this? Do you remember the disciples on Emmaus Road, Luke chapter 24, and they're walking along, and Jesus draws near to them the risen Jesus? They don't recognize him. They're kept from recognizing him.

It's interesting. Kept from recognizing him until it's time to recognize him. And when did they recognize him? He says, when he opened the Scriptures to them.

That's quite remarkable, isn't it? So he's physically beside them, and they don't see him, and he gives them a Bible study, and they see him. John Stott says, The Bible will give Christ to you in an intimacy so close that he would be less visible to you if he stood before your eyes. The Bible will give Christ to you in an intimacy so close that he would be less visible to you if he stood before your eyes.

The final word—and I only have time to introduce it, and we'll come back to it—is the word maturity. You see the development. The pastor and the teacher equips the saints. They engage in ministry.

The body is built up. This is an ongoing, progressive reality until we attain to the unity of the faith, of the knowledge of Son of God. Ultimately, now we see through a glass darkly. Then we will see face to face. There are degrees, if you like, of sanctity, and therefore there are degrees, if you like, of unity.

And clearly, there are degrees of maturity. The purpose in this is that we might come to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. You remember earlier in the letter he's prayed that he might be filled with all the fullness of God. What an amazing prayer! That God might be all in all to you.

We've sung about that this morning. You're my all in all. Did we mean it? What does it mean? What does it mean? It might mean one thing right now, at this time in the morning on a Sunday with a group like this, but what does it mean when you're on your own, when you're in the car, when you're confronted by temptation, when you want to just go your own road? No, you're my all in all. I want to become mature.

I don't want to be wandering around like a Christian baby. I was telling somebody yesterday, in another context, that all week I've been thinking about an Indian doctor whose name I do not know, whom I met when I was sixteen years of age when he did an operation on my big toe. This is more information than you deserve. The only reason I'm telling you is because somebody… After postoperatively, somebody hit my foot in a cage with a trolley, burst of stitches, which demanded that I go back in the O.R. with the aforementioned doctor who'd done the evil deed previously. And as he said about putting that needle and the stuff through my toe, apparently I did not respond in a particularly submissive way. And I'll never forget. He came up beside me, and he said, You are a big baby. I said, Man, I can't… And then I think I said something like, I'll show you who's a baby, you know? Give me that needle, I'll show you what this is like.

But anyway, I've been thinking about it all week. I don't want the Lord to come up to me and go, Beg you, you are a big baby. You're a child when you should be mature.

How do I become mature? The Word of God. Through the servants of God. Through the people of God. Involved in the ministry of God. Now, think about it not just in individual terms.

We'll finish in this way. Let's think about it in corporate terms. Let's not think individual. Let's think about it as a church. How about the maturity of part-side church? Question one. Is the Word of God the driving force that shapes our church's life?

Rhetorical. Is the Word of God the driving force that shapes our church's life? Because to the degree that it is, we have the opportunity for maturity. To the degree that it isn't, then we diminish that possibility. Secondly, is that same Word of God dwelling in us richly, and are we, as a result, teaching and encouraging one another with all wisdom?

That's Colossians 3. Thirdly, are we living, then, in the unity that is supernaturally created by putting us together as a group in the recognition of the fact that we are surrounded by people that sort of… We just really wouldn't necessarily want to go on vacation together. We don't have to feel bad about that. But yet we love one another.

Really? And are we growing up in every way into him, into Christ, into the full measure of the stature of Christ? Important questions. You know, the writer to the Hebrews spoke very straightforwardly, didn't he, in his letter? And he said to the folks, he says, you know, my concern for you is that you've become dull of hearing.

Dull of hearing. So, still there, still kind of listening, but it's not actually going there. And then he says to them, by this time, you ought to be teachers. But you need somebody to teach you all over again, to teach you the basic principles of the Word of God.

What an indictment on a church! And then later on he says, but I am actually confident of better things concerning you as you pay attention to the provision that God has made. Alistair Begg is teaching today from Ephesians chapter 4, a message about the role of pastors and teachers. This is Truth for Life, and Alistair will complete today's message with prayer.

That's coming up in just a minute. If you're enjoying the current series called The Pastors Study, please feel free to download the audio files from our website. There's no cost. The complete series includes eight volumes. You can also purchase the entire set on one convenient USB drive, or on CD as well.

These items are sold for our cost. You'll find them as you search for The Pastors Study at truthforlife.org slash store. If you're a regular listener to this program, you know it's our tradition to offer you helpful materials beyond the Bible teaching you hear from Alistair. Today we're pleased to be featuring a colorful new book from pastor and popular blogger Tim Challies. The book is called Epic, an around-the-world journey through Christian history. We were immediately attracted to this book because it's unlike anything we've ever offered. It's filled with fascinating pictures of historical objects, and there are easy to read stories that describe the significance of each object. In fact, Tim Challies traveled all around the world over a three-year period. He visited more than 80 museums, not to mention dozens of other sites, to take photographs of artifacts that tell the story of our Christian legacy.

And so he's included 33 chapters about a variety of objects, some left behind by people like Billy Graham or Charles Spurgeon, Charles Wesley. A copy of Epic is yours by request when you include a donation today. It comes to you with our thanks, and you can see a sample of the book online if you'd like. Go to truthforlife.org or donate and ask for your copy when you call 888-588-7884. To send your contribution in the mail, address your envelope to Truth for Life, P.O.

Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. Now here again to lead us in prayer is Alistair Begg. Father, thank you that your Word is a lamp that shines out on our pathway, both individually and as a congregation. And we pray that we might be like those described by James, receiving the Word of God with meekness and the awareness that it is able to save our souls.

For Christ's sake. Amen. What are the markers for success in pastoral ministry? Friday, Alistair describes the priorities Paul established for his protégé Timothy. I'm Bob Lapeen, hoping you can join us again tomorrow as we discover how this essential list helps pastors today stay true to their calling. This daily program features the Bible teaching of Alistair Begg, and it's furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.