The Apostle Paul encouraged unity and diversity among God's people. He taught that the ascended Christ pours out unique spiritual gifts on his followers.
But what's the purpose for these gifts? That's the question we consider today on Truth for Life. Alistair Begg is looking specifically at the gifts of preaching and teaching God's Word. Ephesians 4 verse 1. I therefore, a prisoner for the LORD, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?
He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to 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 may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in 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.
Thanks be to God for his Word. It is essential to do the basics well most of the time. And so it's quite fitting that we come in this series of studies to this passage in Ephesians 4, which is absolutely central to an understanding of the basics of being the church. And it is a happy thing that I'm able to say that these verses essentially, beginning with verse 11 and on, have really established the philosophy of ministry for Parkside Church from the very beginning. In other words, if people say, Well, why do you do what you do?
How is it that you've determined to do these things? What is uppermost in your thinking? We would find ourselves coming back and back again and again to these verses in Ephesians, which establish the nature of our unity, the wonder of our diversity as a result of the gifts that God gives to us, the importance of our partnership in ministry, and then the prospect of growing towards maturity. And it's important for us to make sure that as we return to these verses that we are growing in our understanding of these truths that have been unchanged since the dawn of time. We've tried to make sure we understand what Paul is saying when he speaks about the nature of our unity. You will remember that we noted in verse 3 that this is not a unity that we are to create, but rather it is a unity that is to be maintained.
He's actually going to go on in verse 13 and say not only is it to be maintained but it is something that we attain to. And the nature of the unity that we enjoy in Christ is that each of us calls God Father through the work of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. And Paul has made this wonderfully clear as he's spoken to these Ephesian believers, many of whom had come out of a world of animosity towards one another as both Jew and Gentile, and he says, This is the glorious thing that God has done.
He has broken down this wall of separation, and he has made one new man out of the two. And what he means by that is that united in Christ, then we are united to and with one another. Some years ago at Basics, when we had Eric Alexander, a Scottish Presbyterian, Dick Lucas, an English Anglican, and Derek Prime, an Englishman working in Scotland in an independent Baptist church, which was part of the fellowship of independent evangelical churches, all three of them came out of different streams, as it were, in the British context. And yet what struck me as I listened to them speak was that arguably they had more in common with each other than they had with the context from which they'd come. And the reason for that was that they were gospel men. In fact, it was quite staggering, because a number of the people that had come to the conference in that year, because they were very, very concerned about the adjective that they had in front of their church—that's why Parkside Church is pretty easy, you know—but if you put, you know, one adjective or two adjectives and you believe the adjective is the most important part, then you'd probably be a little suspicious of those who don't share your adjective. And a number of them went home, I think, radically changed. Because they said, Oh, I never knew that there were Anglican people that loved Jesus and loved the Bible.
I want to say, travel a little bit, for goodness' sake. And how could somebody who's a Presbyterian who does those things with those babies? I never understood that either. And then they discovered something that there were even Baptists who were believers as well. It was really quite… It was a wonderful time for them. A re-understanding of the nature and the foundation of unity, which then is seen to be, says Paul, not marked by a kind of monochromatic experience but rather by a rich diversity. You're not talking about the diversity of personality type or the diversity of national background or the diversity by way of our different socioeconomic contexts, but the rich diversity that is there as a result of the ascended Christ pouring out gifts upon his church. And what he says here in Ephesians 4—he says elsewhere, for example, in 1 Corinthians 12—"to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." And we tried, when we were tackling this a couple of weeks ago now, to make sure that we understood that the gifts that God gives, he doesn't give to us so that we might pride ourselves in them but in order that we might use them for the well-being of the people of God. And this grace to which he refers in verse 7, this grace which was given, was given to each one of us, so nobody should come and sit in church and say, Well, I'm completely inadequate.
I have nothing to offer at all. No, the grace was given to each one of us, without exception. And since it was grace that was given, it deals not only, on the one hand, with a sense of inadequacy, but it kills any notion of superiority, as if somehow or another, by virtue of the gift that we've been given that establishes our status in some way. This grace, in verse 7, we noted, is not the grace that saves us, to which he is referred in chapter 2, verses 8 and 9, but rather the grace which enables us to serve. Now, Paul is not unique in this.
Peter makes the same point. For example, in 1 Peter 4, verse 10, he says to his readers, As each—once again, notice—as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Stewards. Servants. Waiters. It's a nice line, isn't it, when they come and say to you, Am I able to get anything for you?
Is there anything else I can provide you with? Can I serve you in any way? That's the mentality that the apostles are saying is supposed to be pervasive in a church. So that it disavows the notion of seeing ourselves as consumers, whereby we come together in order to receive.
There's no question that we receive, we receive the truth of God's Word. But the real question ought to be, as we think about gathering with the people of God, What am I going to contribute? I'm going to go to the middle service Sunday morning, and I'm going to contribute—contribute in giving my voice to the praise, contribute in giving my gifts for the well-being of the church and for the reaching of those who do not know Jesus, contributing by taking a genuine interest in the people who are around me, contributing by saying, What I'm going to do this morning is something a little different. I'm going to actually just think, if I see somebody who is by themselves—and obviously by themselves—in that moment when it all goes around and little groups begin to form, you say to yourself, No, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to stand back from that, and I'm going to look for that individual. Then I will go and see if I can make a contribution to their life. Or I'm going to get up this morning, and I'm going to make sure that I contribute to the well-being of the people of God by asking them and really meaning what I say, How are you? and then entering into the answer that comes.
The gifts that have been given, multivariously, have been given in order that we might contribute and not simply consume. When I was growing up as a younger man, attending church and listening to the pastor, it wasn't unusual for the pastor, the pastors, to trot out the old chestnut when they were trying to, you know, engender a little bit of enthusiasm in the congregation, and they would say, You know, the church is like a soccer game. You have twenty-two thousand people in the stands badly in need of exercise, and you've got twenty-two people on the field badly in need of a rest. And the inference was, Look at all you folks sitting up there in the stands, and look at us down here, as it were, on the field. Now, there's probably truth to that.
But I also used to sit there and say, Yeah, but wait a minute. Aren't there some of us that would like to be on the field and we can't get there? There's some places where getting involved in ministry is one of the hardest things you ever did. And I hope you don't feel that way.
And I hope that if you do feel that way, you'll tell me that or you'll tell my colleagues that, because we want to make it the kind of place where, since God has given so many different gifts to his people, that those gifts then are exercise for the well-being of the thing. Because it is really possible for a church to become like a pyramid, whereby, as you go further to the top, it just becomes a hierarchy, and these individuals, not least of all myself, control how everything is going on. It's not supposed to be that way. When it is that way, it's wrong. Nor is the picture that of a bus, where everybody takes a seat on the bus and then just criticizes how it's being driven. That's a bad picture as well.
No, the picture is of a body. Now in verse 11—you say, well, good, we're getting to the point now—in verse 11, Paul picks up from verse 7. In verse 7, now, grace was given to each one of us, and now in verse 11, he comes back and focuses on specific gifts. And I want us to look at the nature of these gifts. I want to make sure that we understand this teaching. Because it is not only important for us this morning as a church in this moment in time, but to the extent that we lay hold of this and understand it and believe it and live in the light of it, it is vital for the church in coming generations. It's not enough for us just to say, well, I'm sure this means something.
We need to know what it means. The nature of these gifts. We'll barely get to the purpose of the gifts.
We'll have to come back to that. But the nature of them. First of all, to notice what is true of each gift mentioned—apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor-teacher, or shepherd-teacher. What is true of every one of them? They are all involved with the teaching and preaching of the Word of God.
They are all Word gifts. And let me just say at the very outset, no individual, no church, will be matured to the point that God intends for us, absent from the teaching and preaching of the Word of God. Now, not simply from the pulpit, definitely from the pulpit, but in every dimension of the church's life, saying, What does the Bible have to say? What does the Bible mean here? How is the Bible to be applied to life?
Meeting with somebody who's wondering about the faith and saying, Let's read the Bible together and see what the Bible has to say. There will be no maturing without the ministry of the Word. With that said, being true of each of them, let's look at them in turn.
We won't do it exhaustively, but sufficiently, I hope. First of all, then, apostles. Apostles. Paul has already referred to this group in verse 20 of chapter 2, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. To whom is he referring? Well, he's referring to those who were appointed by Christ—a unique and unrepeatable group who were personally chosen by Jesus and who were authorized by Jesus.
This is of importance. The characteristics of an apostle or, if you like, the prerequisites for being an apostle were these. Number one, that they were eyewitnesses of the risen Christ. You remember when Paul is defending his apostleship, he says, I too am an apostle. I saw the risen Christ.
He makes mention of it, because it is foundational. Eyewitnesses of the risen Christ. Secondly, commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ—so, for example, to Ananias in Paul's case again, Ananias, go, this man is my chosen servant to bear my name before the Gentiles—thirdly, that the word that they spoke was Christ's Word. Christ's Word. In other words, they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and their Word has become for us our New Testament.
And fourthly, they were accredited by signs and by wonders. 2 Corinthians 12.12. So that in the foundational aspects of the church, in the inaugural period of the church, those who had been present with Christ and others too, who then were filled with the Holy Spirit and were sent out into the world, they were inevitably to be unrepeatable.
Unrepeatable. Because there is nobody then who saw the risen Christ. There was no one who was directly commissioned by Christ. There was no one then who was inspired by the Word of Christ.
Oh, yes, there were charlatans and hucksters then, and there are today as well. But the important thing to understand is that the authority of the apostles is preserved today in the New Testament. The authority of the apostles is preserved for us here, that the word that they spoke was inscripturated, so that when we think in terms of apostolic succession… Apostolic succession does not move from a person to a person, or in Roman Catholic terms, from a pope to a pope. But the true apostolic succession is the passing on of the truth of the Word of God from one generation to another. That's why we spend so much time with Timothy. Paul says to Timothy, But you, Timothy, in an environment that is crazy, make sure that you continue in the things that you have learned, knowing from whom you have learned them, and how from your very infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. That is the apostolic succession.
And so it is important that we get it. By this definition, there are no apostles today. By this definition, there are no apostles today. Apostolic authority is in the New Testament. Now, I know that some of you say, Well, we know a church somewhere else, and they have an apostle as their pastor. Well, okay, fine. He calls himself that.
I wouldn't do that. But I'm not going to assume immediately that he is putting himself on the level of this unrepeatable group. I hope that what he's doing, or what that church is doing, is recognizing one of the two other ways in which apostle is used in the New Testament. One is in John 13 16, where Jesus says, A servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent—that is, apostle, apostolos—neither is the apostolos greater than he who sent him. So in other words, he uses the verb, uses the notion—news is the noun, actually—uses the noun in that way. And also, you have the same thing in 2 Corinthians 8, where Paul refers to the brothers who are messengers of the churches, which is apostoloi. It's the same noun.
So you have this, and I think that is probably what people are doing. So they're saying, Well, apostle Jones or whoever it is will be conducting the evening service. I want to assume that they are using it in terms of John 13 or 2 Corinthians 8.
If they are using it in terms of this primary dimension which we are saying is unrepeatable, then of course there's a real problem. So let's be clear. In the sense in which Paul uses the term here, and in chapter 2 verse 20, there are no apostles today. When I wrote that down, I found myself singing, Oh yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas. I got a very bad mind. I really do. And then I was singing, We have no apostles today, boom, boom, boom.
So that might actually have woken a couple up and helped you with your memory. Secondly, prophets. Prophets. Once again, they are contained in the twentieth verse of chapter 2 on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Also, they're mentioned in verse 5 of chapter 3, where Paul talks about the insight into the mystery that God would unite in one new man, the two of old, and he says this hasn't been something that previous generations have known, but it has now been revealed, verse 5, to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. So in other words, along with the apostles, their ministry was foundational. Their role was as a mouthpiece of God. Their role was as a vehicle of direct revelation from God. And so that when they spoke and brought truth to bear upon the context within the framework of the apostolic band, they had a place.
A place, of course, which had to be dying out. Because as soon as you had the Word of God inscripturated, as soon as you had the closed canon of Scripture, there was no place for and no need for somebody coming and saying, I can tell you what the Word of God is. Because God has now provided us, finally, in the New Testament, the words that were spoken by his prophets and apostles. You understand, loved ones, how absolutely crucial it is—the primacy and the place of the Scriptures in the life of God's people. That is why the undermining work of the Evil One from the Garden of Eden on has always been to say, Did God really say this? Can you really trust this? Do you think that's what God really means?
Go to any area. And classically at the moment, in the realm of family and of marriage and of the issues of sexuality and so on, how can we know? Because we have the Bible. You're listening to Truth for Life. That is, Alistair Begg explaining the foundational role of the apostles and prophets.
He'll have more for us tomorrow. I trust you are benefiting from Alistair's Bible teaching. As we learned today, it's impossible to mature in our faith without solid Bible teaching. And we are encouraged to know that this daily Bible teaching program is reaching people all across the globe in every walk of life. No matter where you're listening today, all of us share the common experience of trying to navigate a world that is rapidly changing.
That's the topic of a book we're recommending called Future Proof. The subtitle is How to Live for Jesus in a Culture that Keeps on Changing. It's a newly published book. It takes a fascinating look at what happens when a culture abandons a biblical worldview. It explores the effects an unbelieving perspective has on technology or the values of government, how people view climate change, how people view themselves. Future Proof is an engaging book, and we're recommending it because it points out the many opportunities we have to bring the hope of the gospel to an increasingly hopeless world. Ask for your copy of Future Proof when you donate today to support the ministry of Truth for Life.
You can give online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Thanks for listening. Tomorrow we jump back into Ephesians 4, looking at apostles, prophets, evangelists. Are evangelists a unique and unrepeatable group like apostles? Alistair concludes today's message tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
