Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast
where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.
My name is Pastor Josh and I want to thank you for listening to
this podcast.
I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen
you in the word of God.
Now come along, let's look into the Bible and see what God has
for us here today.
We're going to continue our mini sermon series looking at church
culture.
What does it mean to have a church culture?
Well, all churches have a culture.
Just matters on what we're going to base that culture off of.
Some churches base their culture off of the environment around
them.
Some churches base their culture on the circumstances that
they're facing.
Some people face church culture off of big culture in the
world that's happening around them.
And so what we know and what we studied last week is that a church
of build its culture off of what the Bible says about the will
of God, the way of God, the path that he has laid out for us.
In scripture, Ephesians chapter four, we see just that, God's
plan for the church, God's plan for his people.
And as a church we must build our culture not on the way that we
feel, not on what works, not on what the world tells us to do
what on what God tells us to do.
In chapter four he says in verse one, walk worthy of the vocation
or the job wherewith ye are called.
Meaning this, if you are a believer here this morning, you are
part of the church.
If you are part of the church, you are called to walk worthy of
the purpose that God has called you to walk in.
And the purpose is this, to glorify him, to obey him, to reach
others, for cause of the Gospel, to teach others, to grow
in our understanding of Him.
And so he says the way that you walk worthy is this verse 2.
To walk with all lowliness, humility.
So a church characterized by a humble spirit, not self seeking,
not promoting certain individual ventures, but ultimately
humbling ourselves and serving one another.
Jesus is the greatest example of servanthood when it comes to many
things that he did in his life.
John 13 he washes the disciples feet.
Philippians chapter 2 says, he humbled himself and became a servant
for those that he came for.
He didn't come to be served, but to serve others.
We know all of these things about Jesus.
And so if we're called to be Christlike, one element of the church
that should be one of the pieces that we champion is humility.
Then we see the next thing there he says meekness that's gentleness.
That's strength under control.
Then he says we should live with long suffering.
That's patience.
To have patience, the church to.
To endure one another in our shortcomings, to be patient with
one another as we grow together.
Then he says, forbearing one another in love, and so to live with
patience, but to live with that sense of love, agape love, that
sacrificial love, doing things for others, even if we don't receive
anything back.
Then he says in verse number three, to endeavor to keep the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
And so he says the church culture should be a culture of unity.
Not uniformity, not looking the same, but understanding that
we're unified together in one purpose, that we're unified together
in, as it says in verse 4, one body, one spirit, one hope of your
calling.
And so the idea is, is that we have something in common.
And if we have something in common, then we're not fighting against
each other.
We're unified in our spirit.
And if we're unified in the Spirit, the Bible says that we will
be characterized by peace.
He goes on to say more in verse five.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,
who is above all and through all.
And so that introduction is this.
You're to live with humility.
You're live to live with meekness.
You're to live with that sense of patience, that sense of love and
unity and peace.
Why?
Because we're in this together.
But it's more than just being in it together.
It's that we all, if we are believers in Jesus today and we're
part of the body, have the Spirit living within us.
And therefore, if we're following the Spirit, we're united
in purpose, we're united in love, we're united with truth.
And so that kind of sounds like, hey, everything's going to
be okay.
We're never going to have any struggles.
But the idea is this.
Sometimes the Bible is going to tell us that in our flesh, in
our humanity, there will be conflict.
You know, if we all, let's say this morning, all of you said, okay,
Pastor, we're unified.
So we're all going to get up and preach this morning.
So every one of you gets up here and we all try to stand on the
pulpit and preach, and there's no one out there, we're all just
yelling.
That's confusion, right?
That would be.
That would be conflict.
Even if three or four of us wanted to come up here this morning
and try to preach There would be conflict.
So God is not the author of confusion.
The Bible actually says he's a God of order and a God of clarity
and a God of teaching and equipping us.
And so in verse seven, we're going to start here this morning
with the idea of how we can walk unity.
The way God works in the church is that he works in unity
through giving individual with spiritual gifts of grace so that
there can be order, so that there can be purpose, so that there
can be direction.
And so in verse number seven, he says, but unto every one of us.
And so the idea would be this, that every person who is a believer
in Jesus Christ in faith, right?
One faith.
That when we trust in Jesus Christ as Savior, he gives us the
gift of grace in salvation.
That's the first and biggest gift.
But we see that with that gift of salvation comes also a gift of
grace in the measure of a gift of the Spirit, the gift of Christ.
And so we have the gift of salvation.
But all of us, as we see here in this passage, in many other passages
in the Testament, that all of us are gifted with spiritual gifts.
So what that means is this, not everyone is gifted the same way.
I want you to go over with me to Romans chapter 12.
It's where we started this morning in our scripture reading.
But I want you to see what the Bible says about these spiritual
gifts, because not every one of us is gifted the same way.
And that's a good thing, because remember, it's not uniformity.
We're not all called the same way through the same thing.
We're all called to possibly different aspects of ministry so
that we can work together.
And so that's part of church culture.
So Romans chapter 12, we see in verse number three says, For I
say through the grace given unto me, every man that is among
you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think,
meaning this humility, right?
He goes back to humility.
Even with the gifts of grace, it's all to be characterized with
humility.
Not about, look how great I am, look how much I've been gifted.
Look how many people that I can influence.
No, he says here to not think of yourself more highly than we ought
to think, but to soberly, to be serious, to be somber about the
right things, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure
of faith.
Every believer in faith has this gift.
For as we have many members in one body, so.
So there's different parts.
First Corinthians tells us that the church is a body.
The body of Christ and that we're made up of different parts.
We're all not the arm, we're all not the ear.
He says that there's different parts of the body, but all members
have not the same office, meaning not all of the people within
the body are going to be able to do the same thing or even called
to do the same thing.
So he says, verse 5.
So we being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members one
of another, having then gifts differing according to the grace
that is given to us.
Now we're going to stop right there because, because this is a
good stopping place because we're going to go back to Ephesians
and talk about these gifts.
But essentially what he's saying is this.
We're all part of the body, we're all united in one, but we're
all distinctly different.
So we, being many, are one body in Christ.
And so if we're in Christ, we are in the body, but we're distinctly
gifted ways.
And so then having gifts differing according to the grace
that is given to us, meaning this, it is not God looking down
upon the church and going, well, I love this person more, so
I'm going to give them this gift.
I don't love this person as much, so I'm going to give him or
her a lesser gift.
There's no lesser gifts.
There's no, there's no gifts that are more important than others.
All the gifts are equally vital to the call of God, just different
in their roles.
And so we see that it's all, all gifts are given by the grace
of God, by the love of God.
Oftentimes within the church, we're tempted to think that certain
people have more important roles.
For example, some people would say that, you know, the person who's
preaching might have a more important role than someone that
is another ministry, maybe behind the scenes.
And one might argue, yes.
But then at the end of the day, we know that all of us have
distinct roles.
And without certain roles behind the scenes, certain people
aren't able to do things like teaching and preaching and serving
in more public affairs and more public spheres.
And so what we can see here in this case in Romans chapter 12 and
Ephesians chapter 4, is that every person that's gifted might
be gifted differently, but all gifts are equally vital to furtherance
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
So go back with me to Ephesians chapter four.
Now we know that there's distinctions in these gifts.
He says that this gift is given by grace.
We didn't earn These gifts.
So, so we didn't earn salvation and we don't earn our spiritual
gifts.
And so one of the aspects that God would have every church to follow
in our church culture is that every member, every person of the
body needs to identify what his or her spiritual gift is and
use that, as we're going to see later on, for the furtherance
of the Gospel, for the exhortation of the saints, and for
the, of the church.
We're going to get down to that here.
So church culture is this, Church culture is live a humble life
to live with, to live with patience, to live with love, to live
with unity, to live with this focus of peace, but then to live
in action, out what God has given us.
How selfish is it that we have been gifted by God with these supernatural
gifts, but yet we hold them for ourselves, we keep them in private,
or maybe we use them for personal gain or for selfish motivations.
The Bible says that we can live in the flesh as we've been gifted
and use those gifts in a selfish way to, to use them in a
way that brings attention to me or brings attention to my ministry.
Well, the Bible says clearly here in this passage that there is
one reason for these gifts and that is to glorify God, to live humbly.
And so he says, but unto every one of us is giving grace according
to the measure of the gift of Christ.
And then we see a little intermission here where he describes
these gifts.
And he actually quotes a passage of the Old Testament.
He actually quotes a passage from, from Psalm 68, 18.
He says this wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high,
he led captivity, captive and gave gifts unto men.
So we actually see that this is a prophecy back in the Old Testament
that at one point in time God would give his followers, he would
give the family of God these gifts.
Now there's a lot of debate on verses 8, 9 and 10.
What is Paul talking about here?
And there's a lot of interpretations here, but what I'm
going to give you is my best interpretation of what I believe
is saying here.
And so essentially he says this when he ascended up on high.
So I believe that's talking about Jesus's resurrection and his
ascension.
And so after his resurrection, after the church is created, that
he would give gifts unto all men or all believers.
Now that now that he ascended, what is it?
But that he also descended first into the lower parts of the
earth.
Now there are some interesting takes on this.
A lot of people think that this is Jesus going down to Hell,
I don't believe that that's what this is talking about.
This concept we're seeing here is that it's a description of Jesus
humbling himself.
And that that phrase there lower parts of the earth just essentially
means here on this earth.
And so I believe this is talking about is a description of
Jesus coming down his his incarnation, Jesus coming to this
earth, humbling himself, living amongst his creation, and
ultimately being ascended into heaven through the resurrection,
and then ultimately giving us gifts of grace.
And so verse 10 says, he that descended is the same also that ascended
up far above all heavens, that he might fill all.
So I think a very simple interpretation of verses 8, 9 and
10 would simply say this Jesus, the one who came to this earth,
the one who lived that perfect life, the one who died on the cross
for our sins, the one who conquered death with the resurrection,
the one who ascended into heaven, the one who is living and
ruling and reigning at the right hand of the Father, petitioning
for us, being our advocate.
He is the one who is extending these gifts to the church.
It's not coming from the pastor.
It's not coming from a person in the church.
It's not coming from their skills or their looks or their money.
The gifts are coming directly from God.
And so I believe that that's the interpretation of this passage.
And so when Paul quotes Psalm 68, he's essentially saying, these
are the gifts that were prophesied in the Old Testament and
they are here now.
And so we know that In Romans chapter 12, the passage that we just
read, we see the ministering gifts, the gifts that we use for
service within the church.
But the Bible actually mentions two different types of gifts.
We see that there's the gift of the individual spiritual gift
of service within the church, which we're going to talk about later
on.
But then we see here that he actually lists some offices of the
church, these offices, and what we can see here is that these
offices of leadership are given to the church for specific
purposes.
So he says in verse number 11, and he gave some apostles and some
prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.
And so he says here, yes, every individual within the church
is given a spiritual gift of service, but also at the same time,
the church is given leadership position.
And so these are the ones that are listed.
11.
And so we see that there's apostles.
Now, the word apostle just means the one who is sent.
Now, there's a lot of interpretations about what an apostle
is.
Some people say that there's the call of the apostle.
Then there's the office of the apostle.
But nonetheless, we believe that those apostles were there for
a specific time, for a specific purpose, and that is to
validate the message of Jesus Christ at the time when there wasn't
the complete revelation of Scripture.
So we know some of the apostles, like Peter and John and
even Paul, they had those supernatural gifts of being sent
ones to go out and start churches and go out and encourage
these churches.
Now, some people would argue that verse number 11, those apostles
would be people today that we sent out to start churches and missionaries.
But nonetheless, we believe that at that time, speaking of these
apostles, that was a.
A time for a specific purpose.
But then we see that gave to some prophets.
Prophets.
What's a prophet?
Well, literally, the word prophet means to speak forth truth.
Now, most of the time, when we hear the word prophet, we think of
someone who is telling the future.
Now, certainly there's aspects of that in the Bible.
Obviously we know that there's all these prophecies that are given,
then ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
There's some prophecies that have not been fulfilled when it comes
to the end times.
But also another understanding of the word prophet is someone who
speaks forth truth.
So someone who just speaks forth the word of God, which means
this as, as today as a pastor, someone who is preaching, one element
of preaching is prophesying, preaching forth, proclaiming forth
the truth of the word of God.
And so for the church, there should be an element of sending people,
but there also should be an element of speaking forth the truth.
Can't avoid the truth.
We have to speak the truth.
Now, later on in this passage, Paul specifically talks about how
we can speak the truth in love.
So there's a way to speak the truth, but sometimes not in love.
But the church culture should always be a culture of truth.
John 17:17 says, Sanctify them by thy truth, thy word is true.
No, the church cannot be a place of concealment.
Sometimes that's what's happened within church culture is
we've concealed the truth because we want to portray ourselves
in a better manner, better light.
So concealment can't be the case when it comes to church.
We have to be transparent.
We have to be authentic.
The idea would be this.
To proclaim the truth means, yes, the leadership of the church
has the responsibility to proclaim the whole word of God, not
just the things that are acceptable to our culture, not just
the things that make us feel good, but to preach every element
of the word of God, whether it makes us comfortable or whether it
makes us uncomfortable.
Why?
Let's think about it from this perspective.
Why today in America do when we preach about certain things, people
start to squirm in their seats.
We've all believed certain things about the Bible, but sometimes
when a pastor gets up and says something that's true to the Bible,
we all kind of get uncomfortable.
Why?
Because culture has told us that we can't speak that type of
truth.
The Bible says very clearly to proclaim the truth, be a prophet,
to speak forth the word of God.
And then it says more.
And some evangelists, the idea of an evangelist is someone who is
sole purpose is to lead people to Christ, to.
To bring people the gospel, to not just tell them, hey, you're a
good person.
Hey.
The reality is, is that, you know, we're all trying to reach heaven
our own way.
And that's okay.
That's a common belief system today that, hey, we're all just genuine
people.
We all just believe in a higher power.
And that's okay.
We can all come together and be as one.
The Bible says no.
An evangelist preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ.
John 14:6.
I am the way, the truth and the life.
Jesus says, no man cometh unto the Father, but by Jesus teaches
that he is the way, the only way to come to salvation.
That's what an evangelist preaches.
An evangelist preaches the gospel, the way to Jesus Christ.
So a church, and specifically in the church leadership, we should
be sending people apostles.
Now, in this case, we don't send like literal apostles, but we
should have that mindset of sending and going.
We should have the mindset of speaking forth, proclaiming the truth
of God.
And we should have the heart of evangelism.
We should want to see Middletown come to Jesus Christ.
Now, I'm not talking about the city itself.
A city can't be saved literal city.
But the people that make up Middletown, the people that make
up New Castle county, the people that make up Delaware, that's
our mission field.
And so as a church, our heart should be to be a heart of evangelism,
to reach people for Jesus Christ, to have ministries that have
an evangelistic focus, to have a church service that has an evangelistic
focus.
When I tell you that come to Middletown Baptist Church.
And you've been here long, you know, particularly every Sunday morning,
we're going to talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We're going to have a call to invitation to come to know Jesus
Christ as your savior.
Because, number one, we don't know who's here visiting us.
And Number two, we don't know who at the church might need Jesus
Christ to save.
I grew up in a Christian environment.
I grew up in a Baptist church.
I grew up in a Christian school.
But yet it wasn't until I was 16 years old that I trusted in Jesus
Christ as my savior.
And so that's why we unapologetically preach the gospel
of Jesus Christ.
And then he goes on to say this.
He says, and some pastors and teachers.
Now, in this way of translation, it almost looks like
those are two opposites, pastors and teachers.
But literally in the Greek, the understanding is pastor, teacher.
And so within church leadership, there should always be
a pastor teacher, which means this.
Someone who shepherds, someone who guides, someone who teaches,
not only by what they say, but by what they do.
And that's really what the role of a pastor is.
The role of the pastor is to shepherd the flock.
The role of the pastor is to teach the flock the word of God.
There are some people that have perspectives of what a pastor
should be.
And sometimes it's awkward for a pastor to get up and tell people
what a pastor should be.
But the idea, as scripture says, is that a pastor.
If you go back to the Book of Acts, we see that one of the roles
of a pastor is to study the word of God and to pray.
We see in this case in the book of Ephesians that it is a role
of a pastor to shepherd the flock, to take care of the spiritual
needs of those that are in the body of person.
So we see in this case that there is a role of leadership that
the church cannot overlook.
It is to go, it is to preach to forth the word of God.
It is to lead people to Christ.
It is to teach them and to shepherd them and to be there for
them.
And so this means that Jesus established these offices.
It says it right there.
It says, and he gave some.
It's not we gave our own, but he gave some.
And so Paul describes these offices as a gift from God to the
church for leadership, for direction, for clarity, for unity.
As though when we see prophets in apostles and evangelists, especially,
especially in this case, evangelists who are specifically
gifted to preach the good news of gospel, and pastors and teachers,
we know that there is a purpose for them.
It's not to just be there and be a figurehead.
It's not just for them to be there and deal with the financial
aspects of the ministry, even though there's some elements of administration
that's there, but the major purpose for the leadership of the
Church is to teach and to preach and to proclaim the gospel
of Jesus Christ to those around them and to shepherd the flock
and to protect them from spiritual attacks from the enemy.
And so teaching is an essential part of the pastoral ministry.
If I got up here and I said, you know what?
For me, I'm just going to get up here and tell you all my opinions,
I'm going to tell you maybe some Bible verses, and then leave,
that's going to be a huge issue.
Because I believe a pastor is called to not only proclaim the truth,
not only to evangelize the lost, but also teach the word of
God to believers so that the believer can grow the knowledge and
understanding of who God is and to be able to serve.
And so the role of pastor teacher is a gift given from the
discretion of Jesus Christ, working in the Holy Spirit to give
us all an opportunity to grow in the Lord.
Now, you might say, well, Pastor, yeah, it's your job to teach,
but it's also your job to serve.
It's also your job to do everything.
We come in and we are consumers, and that's really what
America teaches within the church culture.
Church culture in America is there's a production team, and if
it's a really big church, they have a production mastering team.
And there's six pastors and there's 15 worship leaders, and there's
all these different things.
And then people come in and it's a product.
We receive a product.
We're entertained, we're challenged, and we're.
We leave, we go home.
And so even in small churches, even in small churches, it's like,
Pastor, he.
You know, he.
He does it all.
We come in and we enjoy it and we go home.
And then we get home and we critique what happened that day.
And there's nothing wrong with critique.
I'm open for a critique.
But let's see what verse number 12 says is the role of the
pastor and the role of all leadership in the church.
Because I think that this is one of the major areas of American
church culture that we have wrong.
We have this wrong because a lot of people think that there's
no responsibility for the actual member of the church that
comes in.
But look at verse number 12.
The role of leadership is what?
For the perfecting of the saints.
Now, that word perfecting is an older word that means equipping.
Equipping the saints.
Now, who are the saints?
Well, those are the real special people.
There's St. Paul and St. Peter.
No, Biblically speaking, every believer is a saint.
Just means to be set aside.
To be a saint means to be set aside for a specific use.
You all are set aside for a specific use in Jesus Christ.
That's what the Bible says.
And so the role of leadership in the church, biblically speaking,
this is not the movement of the culture.
This is not just someone's opinion.
This is the word of God.
The role of leadership in the church is for equipping the saints.
For what?
For the work of the ministry.
So what is the implication there?
The implication is that all saints are to be in the ministry.
Maybe not vocational ministry where you're getting paid for it,
but the Bible says here clearly that every member, every
saint, is called to serve at some capacity within the body of
believers.
And it's the role of leadership to equip the saints, to
prepare the saints, to teach the saints, to train the saints,
to disciple the saints, to grow to elements of leadership within
the church.
So.
So I say it this way.
The Greek word for that word, perfect or equipping, actually has
the idea of someone setting a bone that's been broken.
I don't know if any of you have had so, so severe of a break
that you had to get it surgically aligned.
It's not a.
Sometimes it's not a nice process.
It's sometimes a painful process, but sometimes it's necessary
for proper growth within our bodies.
It's the same thing within the church.
Sometimes the perfecting of the saints, the equipping of the
saints is an easy process.
It's a fun process, and we all come together and enjoy that class
or we enjoy that ministry.
But sometimes the perfecting of the saints for the work of the
ministry is a painful process of growth.
There might be some challenging there, there might be
some confrontation in a biblical manner and say, look, I
see this happening in your life, and this needs to adjust.
This needs to change.
That's the Holy Spirit's guidance.
But what's happened here is that many times within the church
setting, a pastor or leader has tried to manipulate the saint
for the work of his ministry.
Not equip the saints for the work of the ministry, not the work
of Pastor Josh.
By the way, when you come to church and you're serving, don't
ever think I'm doing this for, for Pastor Josh or for one of the
deacons or.
Or for this ministry leader.
You're coming to serve the Lord.
You're coming to invest in the kingdom of God.
Because when we think about it from that perspective, we'll never
be discouraged because God's never going to fail us.
People will fail us.
And so a pastor here, a leader in this context, is someone who,
as it says here, comes and equips the saints, prepares the saints
for the work of the ministry.
So think about it from this perspective.
My role as a pastor of this church is not to run everything.
Some of you are like, well, pastor, what do we hire you for?
It is not my job to be the dictator, run every element of this
church can't be, especially if we grow.
The idea for me as a pastor, my role, biblically speaking, is
to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, to teach, to shepherd, to
pray for, but at the same time, equip and challenge and train
individuals and groups to take elements of responsibility within
the church.
For evangelism, that's sharing the gospel for, for edification,
that's building up.
When you hear that word edification, it just means to build
something up for edification, for exhortation, that's challenging,
for, for education.
That's, that's, that's teaching in certain areas.
And so I want you to think about these, these words here.
Evangelism, that's sharing the gospel.
Edification, that's building other Christians up, that's encouraging
other Christians.
Exhortation is, has an element of encouragement, but also challenging.
And then we have education that's teaching Jesus.
Now, now I say all that to say this.
That's what the role of the church relationship.
The role of the church should find one of those areas of ministry.
They would say, well, what about fellowship?
Shouldn't we fellowship?
Yes, for the purpose of all of these things.
Right?
I want to fellowship with my church family.
I love being around my church family.
I try to find every excuse with my church family.
But for the purpose of edification, for the purpose of exhortation,
for the purpose of education, ultimately, in some cases, fellowshipping
with unsaved people for the purpose of evangelism, that's church
culture.
Church culture should not just say, let's come together and have
a good time and have a good potluck.
I love a good potluck, by the way.
Okay, I, I do love good potluck.
Some of you think sometimes that I speak poorly potlucks.
I don't.
I love food.
Every excuse to have food, I am for, I think in the biblical Acts,
chapter two says to break bread with the saints.
But at the same time, if it's just about the food, then we're missing
the point.
If we get together and we have a good time in a certain capacity
and we forget to mention anything about the Lord.
We forget to sow a seed of evangelism or sow a seed of edification,
or sow a seed of exhortation.
We're missing the point of church culture.
Now.
This isn't talking about not having time with friends that you
don't have to pre.
Get together.
Some of you should know this, but maybe you don't.
I don't preach every single time I get with you.
So for some of you, I spent time with you and I. I didn't preach
a message to you.
It would be awkward if I was riding in the car with you to.
To.
Towards a meal and I just start preaching a sermon.
That would be really awkward.
But at the same time, there's elements of preaching that happen
outside of a sermon.
There's discipleship, there's investment, those lives.
And it's getting to know people.
It's.
It's understanding where their needs are.
It's speaking truth from the word of God.
It's.
It's helping in areas of.
Of need.
And so here in Ephesians, chapter four, we're looking at church
culture.
We're seeing the purpose of leadership is to.
It's a gift of leadership.
But the purpose of leadership is then to equip the saints in their
gifts.
Everyone has a gift.
So it's my prayer.
And I want to tell you, this isn't just like a vague statement.
It is literally my prayer that every single person that's a member
of Middletown Baptist Church just understands their.
Knows what their gifts grows in that gift and utilizes that gift
for the cause of evangelism, education, exhortation and education.
That's really the idea.
So he says at the end of verse 12, for the perfecting or the equipping
of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of
the body of Christ.
Why.
Why does this need to happen?
Why does a leader need to equip the saints?
Why do the saints need to work, as it says here, for the ministry?
Well, for the edifying, the building up of the body of Christ,
the strengthening of the body of Christ.
And so we go back to that question at the very beginning.
How can we live in unity when leadership follows what God has to
say about what leadership is?
When the people of the church recognize that the role is not just
exclusively for church leadership to serve, and then ultimately,
when the church is edified or strengthened in the truth, that is,
when we can walk in unity, when we're walking in humility, when
we're walking in meekness.
When we're walking in patience, when we're walking in love,
when we're walking this bond of peace, as Ephesians chapter 4:3
says.
So I want you to think about, you might say, well, number one,
Pastor, I don't know.
Well, that's the first step.
Well, actually, let me rewind.
The first step is trusting in Jesus Christ as your Savior.
You're not part of the body without trusting in Jesus Christ
as savior and faith.
But secondly, then you have to understand that God has gifted you
in a certain way.
Romans chapter 12 tells us those ministering gifts.
We're going to talk more about that next couple of weeks.
But what I will say is this.
If you are totally oblivious or clueless to where God has called
you in your gifts, hey, that's something that we need to get dig
into.
That's part of the process of leadership.
But at the same time, it's one thing to know your gift.
It's another thing to utilize that gift for the kingdom of God.
Some of you might say, I know where I'm gifted, but I, I'm, I'm
too busy, sir.
I, I know where I'm gifted, but I, I, I just, I don't know if
I can do that at this time.
We have to understand that it's a call, it's a purpose, it's,
it's our job to walk worthy.
So he says, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the
ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come
in the unity of faith.
So we're supposed to do this till we all come into the unity of
faith.
Now what does that mean?
That means that we never stop.
It's forever.
We're to do this until the Lord comes back.
We're to do this until we take our last breath.
He says, till we all come in the unity of faith and of the knowledge
of the Son of God.
The idea would be this.
We should strive to grow in our unity.
How do we grow in our unity?
By faith.
Growing in our faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
To know him more, to know him more, talk about him more, to study
him more, to grow in our knowledge of who God is, specifically
in this case, Jesus, who Jesus is.
And then to grow in our faith in him unto a perfect man, unto a
mature man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ.
That's a fancy way to say to become more Christ.
Like, so, church culture.
The goal for church culture should be this.
For us to Grow in faith for.
For.
For us to get to a place in our life where we know Jesus more
so that we can be more like Christ likeness.
Christ likeness is the goal for us to respond to people the way
Christ would respond.
You might say, well, that's an impossible task, Pastor.
I'm never going to be perfect.
Well, that's not what this passage says.
This passage says to be more and more like it.
So sometimes what happens is that we think if we can't have perfection,
then we're just not going to strive at all.
We're not going to try it all because I'm always going to fail.
No, the Bible says for us to strive to be Christlike, to.
To grow in our fullness of Christ.
And so if we go back and we want to kind of have a narrow list
of what church culture should look like, it should have proper
leadership doing the things that God has called us to do.
Evangelism, edification, all those things that we mentioned.
And then it should look like every individual within the church
serving in the gift that they have been called to serve it for
the edifying of the body of Christ, for unity of faith.
More faith, more knowledge, more Christ like.
Then he says, why?
Why do we need to know Christ more?
Why.
Why do we need to grow in Christlikeness?
Why do we need to walk in faith?
Verse 14.
Because on the other side of things, there can be attacks on the
church.
Verse 14.
That we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried
about with every wind of doctrine.
The idea that Paul is trying to explain is this, that if we are
not maturing in our Christ likeness, if we are not growing in
faith, if we're not growing in what we call sanctification, that
spiritual growth, then we will be at risk of, as it says here, being
tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.
Now, let me tell you, today there's a lot of winds of doctrine.
Think about how many books have been written.
Think about how many YouTube videos are out there.
Think about how many churches are preaching certain things that
are against the word of God.
And what's happening is, is that churches in the world today
are.
This is not my words.
This is.
Paul's words are like children, immature.
We have.
We have immature Christians.
There's a very interesting study that you can look at.
It's called the Juvenilization of the American Church.
Essentially what's happened is that we've tried to lower the maturity
level of the church in our culture today to Entertain.
We've tried to get people's attention by saying, you know, you
don't need to know doctrine, you'll need to know theology.
You can live how you want to live.
It's essentially what's happening is that we're not allowing
a culture to be a culture where people can spiritually mature.
And when people don't spiritually mature, what's propagated
is false teaching.
And people are tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine,
every whim of the world, every new movement, every new trend.
And what happens is church becomes trendy.
We follow trends to get people and we get people.
We have to keep people the way that we got people.
And it's that vicious cycle of consumerism.
A church culture should not be a culture of consume.
It's not producing a product that people necessarily like.
Now, if you like church, I'm glad that you like church.
But my purpose as a leader, if our purpose as a church is to create
a product that everyone in the culture likes, then we're missing
the point.
Because the point is, is producing something as a body of
Christ that glorifies him, that obeys him, not against modernizing
things within the church.
There's things that are good to modernize.
Fifty years ago, if they had screens up in the church, there would
have been a huge issue with that.
Some of you say, pastor, I still have a huge issue with that.
Well, we can talk after the service and we can, you know, try
to help you out with that.
But the idea would be this modernization is not necessarily
compromised.
There's things that we can modernize without compromising the
truths and the values of the word of God.
But at the same time, when we allow for compromise is when we say,
okay, now, we don't teach this as much or we don't live this way
as much.
That's when we start getting into that place of that vicious cycle
of being tossed to and fro as immature Christians.
So verse 14, he says, you're going to be tossed to and fro and
carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men.
Meaning it's not just this fake wind that's coming about with
doctrine, but actually there are individuals who are going to
want to mislead you with lies with every wind of doctrine, by the
slight of men.
It's talking about the lies of.
There are leaders today who want to deceive people so that they
can use them for specific purposes.
They may or may not know exactly the depth of their deception,
but the reality is, is that the Bible says that there are some
do know that it says by the sight of men and cunning craft folks
be on guard.
Be as the Bible says in Acts, be a berean.
Check the word.
Match up the preaching with the word.
Match up the lifestyle with the word.
Match up the focus with the word.
If you go in, you should know within the first 30 minutes.
You probably know within the first five minutes.
But let's just say for, for fairness you should know within the
first service what that church is all about.
And I want someone to come in to our church.
I think God wants someone to come within our church and say, you
know what that church is about.
The church is about the gospel of Jesus Christ and that that church
is about preaching and proclaiming and living the word of
God.
Not perfect.
I don't think anyone that's going to walk in a Middletown Baptist
church is going to say well this is a perfect church.
Because by the way, there are no perfect churches.
Churches were made up of in and, and, and there are some churches
that you could go into.
And again, I'm not preaching against any other church.
I'm just saying I'm preaching about our.
But there are some churches that can, can go in and say, well
that church has a really awesome like coffee shop.
I'm not preaching against coffee, I drink coffee.
But if that's what we're known.
If, if, if you're known for, hey, like they have a great music.
Music is great.
Music is worship.
I'm all for having the best music that we possibly can have.
I, I'm all for that.
So I'm not preaching against that.
But end of the day, what is a church known for?
That's our culture.
And our culture must be that we are a church that is looking to
be the family of God, to, to be the body of Christ.
All those other things are great things to add on to.
I would love to build another building one day when we fill up
this building.
But if we're known for the actual hard and fast walls around
us and roof over our heads, we're known for the wrong thing.
So we have to be in this case known for the right things.
And so he says there's cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait
to deceive.
So the Bible says, don't be deceived by these shiny things.
Don't be deceived by all the bells and whistles.
Come in to see what really church is all about.
Church is not about those outward things that that worldly
Craftiness.
Church is about being the family of God and finding a place
in service, in ministry.
And so he says here, this is how you deal with that verse 15.
But speaking the truth.
We already mentioned that.
But in love.
Speaking the truth in love.
Now, we could preach a whole sermon on just that phrase.
But I'll try to condense it.
Just boss here.
The Bible says that we should speak the truth.
We should speak it in love.
Sometimes what happens is within a church culture, we're ready
to speak the truth, but we're not ready to do it anymore.
On the other side of things, there's some folks that in the idea
of love, we will sacrifice.
Well, I just want them to feel love.
So I'm not going to tell them there's a time and a place to disclose
truth, that when that person is ready.
But what I will say is that we as a church must have the culture
of speaking truth but in love.
And that's the beautiful marriage thing.
We don't compromise truth, but we do it in a way that demonstrates
our love.
So what that would mean is this.
Let's say someone walks through the front door of the church.
This is the first time I've ever met them.
And before I even ask them a question about something, I immediately
start telling them all the things that they're wrong.
Just I look at you, I know you're wrong about this.
I know you're wrong about that.
Now, maybe I'm right.
Possibly I'm right about some of the things that I would judge
when I would see that person.
But at the same time, have I asked the question to show them that
I care about their eternal destination, that I care about their
soul.
Then at that point, I'm able to come and talk to them about the
truth of God.
And so I think that that's something that as a church, we must
grow in, is that understanding of balancing truth and love to the
same point that as it says here, that may grow up into him in
all things, which is the head in the Christ.
So he says it's to be more Christlike and love.
That's what Jesus.
And so what I would say is that we see this common theme of
being more like Christ.
More like Christ.
And you say, well, what does it mean to be like Christ?
Well, study his word, study the Gospels, understand the character
of Christ, understand his humility, understand his love, understand
his desire to teach, understand his desire to evangelize.
And then we see in verse 16, this is going to be our last verse
here this morning.
He says, from whom?
Talking about Christ.
So?
So Christ is the cornerstone, he's the centerpiece, from whom the
whole body fitly joined together, which means perfectly joined
together and compacted by that which every joint supplied according,
according to the effectual working in the measure of every part.
That's a fancy way to say that in Christ we can all walk in unity.
We can all be in perfect synchronization as we walk in the
path that he has called us to walk, according to the working of
the measure of every part, give increase of the body unto the
edifying of itself in love.
And so ultimately, what we can see here is that the Bible says that
if we walk in this culture, if we walk in this path, we're able
to work alongside of one another.
The evidence of a church culture that is following this path
is a culture of maturity.
Now, you say we're all mature.
Just look around, Pastor.
We've got some mature people here.
I'm not talking about physical maturity.
It's not always physical maturity.
Equates spirituality to say something.
I'm an offensive.
Do it anyway.
Okay.
I used to work in teen ministry, and there's a lot of teen
issues that were there.
And if I could just work with adults, we're not going to have any
more of that drama that I started working with adults and I
realized that adults are just teenagers that are grown up physically.
We have.
We all have drama.
We all have issues.
And if we're not careful, we can allow the same immature issues
package in different ways, plague us within our own ship.
So what do we do?
We spiritually mature.
We mature to a place where those little things that used to
hold us down don't hold us down anymore.
You know, there were.
As the older I get, I'm not as young as I used to be, but I'm not
as old as I will be if the Lord tarries.
Older I get, the less I'm concerned about some of those smaller
things that I used to be so concerned with.
I gave you guys this analogy a while ago, and I got a good laugh.
Some of you weren't here, so I'm going to tell it again.
I remember back when I was a teenager, I would sit in the mirror
in the morning every morning, trying to get my hair just right
to impress all the ladies at school.
Number one, I'm not concerned about those ladies anymore because
I've got my one right there that I'm married to.
And number two, I don't have that hair anymore to worry about.
But I was so stressed about that.
I was.
It was such a.
Such a thing that consumed my life in a silly way.
But maturity is like, hey, I've grown past that.
I. I've moved past that.
I'm on to other things.
And that's what.
That's what spiritual.
Mature.
Spiritual maturity is not being hung up on the things that
we used to get hung up on.
It's realizing that there are other people that are immature that
are still going through that process.
I know now, like, when I was working with teenagers, there was,
like, drama within, like, dating.
This girl walks up, pastor.
I was a pastor at the time.
I was teaching in school.
She goes, I don't know if I should follow my heart with this
guy or follow my mind.
And I'm like, don't follow either one, okay?
Follow the Lord, okay?
Because your heart's gonna lie to you, and your mind might be telling
you lies.
I said, you know, in this case, you need to see what God has
to say about this and ask him.
They've been dating for, like, all three days, and it was like this
big struggle in their life, you know, And.
And so I looked at that and I'm like, how immature?
How can so stuff sometimes how we are as Christians, because as
we mature, maybe then we look at other people who are not at that
maturity level yet, and we just, like, we.
We minimize their struggle and their conflict.
But at the same time, as we mature, we need to understand that
they need to get to a place of maturity as well, and we help them
along that process.
That's something that we're going to talk a lot about next week.
And that is what's called the discipleship process.
So me as a disciple, you as a disciple, a follower of Christ, need
to show other people what it means to follow Jesus Christ and
to have that spiritual maturity.
So the evidence of all of this happening within a church culture
is spiritual maturity.
That the leaders are doing what they need to do, that the saints
are doing what they need to do.
And we know that God is going to be doing what he always does.
And so there's that effective working, as the Bible says there.
And so this means that every part of the church provides what
it can to supply for the corporate effort for the gospel.
And so when this happens, it supernaturally causes, as it says
here, growth or increase of the body.
That's the end of verse 16.
A lot of people are talking about church growth today.
It's a.
Trust me.
Yes, Matt, I know this.
But it's a whole industry for church growth.
You can spend as much money as you want about reading books and
seeing seminars about church growth.
And they have every way to grow your church.
You know, if you just do this, if you just have this coming in,
if you just get rid of that, if you just do this, if you create
this program, I'm going to tell you, those are.
Those all can be good things.
But what does the Bible say about church growth?
Well, Ephesians 4, he says, effective, working in the measure
of every part, making increase of the body.
So basically, God gives us the methodology and the mindset how we
grow biblical church, how we properly grow a church.
And that is through what we just read here in Ephesians chapter
four.
That's true growth, both in size and in strength.
I want our church to grow in size.
And thank the Lord.
Last week we had some coming in and praise the Lord.
We've got some more coming up in the next few weeks of adding to
our membership.
That's great.
We want to numerically grow the church.
There's nothing wrong with that.
As long as numeric growth is not our center of focus, that's okay.
We want to grow the church in size.
We also want to grow the church in strength because we don't
want to be a thousand miles wide and 2 inches deep.
We want to build those roots down and have that foundation so
that we're able to build a proper biblical church.
And so we see there that that's biblical growth.
And so that every part working together in that effort shows that
we can have that supernatural body growth that the Bible teaches
here.
So size and strength as we grow in our love, as we're edified
in the truth of God.
And so some people think that the church is like a pyramid where
the pastor is at the top.
Or maybe people think it's like bus driver mentality where the
pastor's in the driver's seat, we're all just in the back, wherever
he wants to go.
But really, it's at the.
At the core of it.
Jesus is the word of God is our God.
He has gifted the church with leaders, he's gifted the church with
saints, and he's allowing us all to serve at whatever capacity
he has called us to serve.
And when everyone does what God has called us to do, we can't.
Best advice I have for a young pastor, he's just getting into ministry.
I just did this recently.
I was talking to a young man who was like, I don't know what to
do and I don't know where to turn, it's like, preach the word,
love God, love people.
And that's the greatest thing as a church.
Follow the word of God.
Are we going to mess up in some.
Are we going to start a ministry that's going to completely
fail and no one's going to show up?
Sure, it's going to happen.
Are there going to be times where our giving is down at the church?
Sure.
Are there going to be times where we go through hardship and
conflict within the church?
Sure.
But we're never going to fail as a church if we follow what God
has called us to do.
When we walk in that spirit of unity, when we walk in that spirit
of peace, when we walk in that one faith, one Lord, one calling,
one purpose.
Hey, we might have some bumps and bruises.
How many of you have in a marriage that you've been married
more than five days, five years, if we're optimistic, how many
of you have never had a bump in the room?
Right.
The reality is, is that even within a godly marriage, and that.
That is wonderful and that's rewarding, there's ups and downs.
That's the same thing within a church.
Never going to be completely perfect.
But at the same time, if we're unified as one, we're going to be
able to overcome those things that we face in our lives.
And so when we're going to come back next week, one of the things
that I want us to do is I want us to understand next week is our
vision.
Sunday next week's going to be how can we implement all the things
that we've talked about in Ephesians 4 in the church, practically?
Because a lot of what we've talked about now is theoretical.
It's on paper.
But I want us to understand that we have to take it from what
the word of God says on paper.
We have to put it into our minds and believe it, and then we
have to put it in our hearts and we have to live it out.
Sometimes as a.
As a leader of the church, the goal is not just communicating where
we should go, but how we should get there and how we do that.
Okay, Pastor.
We're supposed to decide.
We're supposed to live in unity.
We're supposed to live out our gifts.
But I don't even know where to start.
Well, that's.
That's part of next week.
Part of next week is identifying where God has gifted
you, identifying how the church can align with the word of
God and how we can live this out in our lives to the best of our.
So I encourage you to come back for that.
But this study of church culture has been a challenging study
for me.
It's not to say that our church is wrong, not to say that
our church is, is, is on the wrong track.
It's actually the complete opposite.
I believe our church is on the right.
But if we're not careful and if we don't evaluate and if we don't
check ourselves on a regular basis, it's so easy to be tossed
to and fro with every wind of doctrine.
It's so easy to be deceived.
It's so easy to drift off the path and do the things that we are
just comfortable with and not do what God has called us to do within
our church culture.
And so I'm going to ask you this morning, as we conclude, to
think about these things, things to maybe read back over Ephesians
chapter 4 to, to ask God to give you the clarity of number one,
where your faith is placed, number two, how you're living out
your spiritual gift, and number three, what it looks like
within the church.
Because the church can only be as strong ultimately as who we're
trusting in.
And if we're trusting in Jesus, we're going to be okay.
But if I'm trusting in anything outside of the truth of
Jesus Christ and who he is and what he has done for me, then that's
where we can tend to drift.
And you guys know this.
But if, let's say 98 of the church is healthy, but only 2% is
unhealthy, that's the church.
My body.
What if I told you My body's 98 completely healthy, but there's
2% that's in agonizing.
Well, the rest of the 98 of the body that is feeling good is
going to feel that.
Right?
You understand that principle?
You understand that?
Hey, well, I'm.
When I was a kid, I'd hurt myself.
Like I hurt my, my hand.
And my dad would be like, all right, you want me to hit your leg
to make you forget about your hand?
I was like, no, don't do that.
That's sometimes what we do within churches.
We have pain over here, and we just cause pain over here.
And we try to just deflect ourselves from all the pain that
we're feeling.
We're all going to have pain, we're all going to have struggles.
And so the Bible says is that we don't neglect those pains.
We don't neglect those struggles.
We address them with the proper.
In this, in this analogy, the medical field the right medicine,
but then the right teachings and the right thinking, the right
faith, then we're able to address that and fix that and get
ourselves to a place where we're healthy.
The Bible calls us to be a healthy church.
And so I want you to think about that here.
This morning I'm going to ask for you to stand, every head bowed,
every eye closed as the music plays.
This morning we're going to have a time of invitation, and there's
been a lot of things posed today.
And.
And I know that that could be somewhat overwhelming, but I want
to try to condense it down to a very short number one.
You can't be part of the body of Christ unless you are in Christ
when it comes to your faith.
And first question I would have to ask anyone is this.
Do you trust in Jesus Christ for the work that he did on the cross
for you?
Do you know and do you believe that he died on the cross for your
sins?
Do you know and believe that he live that perfect life?
Do you know and believe that he conquered death through the resurrection?
And do you know and believe that only he and he alone can save?
If that be the case this morning, trust him.
Have not trusted in him.
Trust in him and become part of the family of God.
To know what it means to be a child of God.
To know what it means to have everlasting life.
But then secondarily, if you have trusted in him, have you been
allowing yourself to be distracted and lied to when it comes
to church culture?
Have you ever even thought about what it means part of a church?
Have you ever even thought about what it means to influence
a church for the cause of the gospel gift of grace?
If you haven't, I encourage you this morning, think about where
your place is within that bind.
You might say, well, my gift is not the same gift as yours.
It's probably not.
But at the same time, your gift is just as vital to the health
of the church as anybody else's.
And so what I would encourage you to do is say, lord, where do
you have me to serve?
Where do you have me to minister?
Where do you have me in that picture of evangelism, education
and edification?
And exhortation?
Where do you have me, Lord?
The first step is asking and being open and ready to hear what
he has to say to you.
Are you walking in unity?
Are you walking in the love of Christ?
Are you speaking the truth in love?
Are you able to say that church growth is something that's
important to you, not church growth?
When it comes to numbers, but church growth when it comes to strength
and depth.
So this morning we did last week.
May we just commit ourselves to growing closer to the Lord, becoming
more and more Christlike so that we can be the church that God
has called us to be.
20:26 Lord, I pray that you be in this time of invitation, work
in hearts and lives.
Encourage us to a place where where we can walk your truth that
we can have a culture that is characterized by your word.
And Lord, I pray that you be with those that might be carrying
burdens with them today.
Maybe they're not even at the place of their life where they could
serve because they're so burdened with the burdens of this
world and the struggles of their life.
Lord, I pray that they can lay those tears at the foot of the cross
this morning so that they can empty of themselves of that burden
and give that burden to carry that burden away.
That burden.
So Lord, I pray that you'll be in this time of invitation working
hearts and lives as we come before you today.
Lord, we thank you for your love grace Jesus man as the music
plays, follow as the Lord leads.
This morning if you need someone to talk to, we need someone
to show you in the word of God what it means to trust in Jesus.
We have folks up here who can walk you right through that.
Commit yourself this year to the church culture that God has ordained
it.
Ramp.
Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church
podcast.
I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.
You if you would like to find out more information about our church
or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org
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You can also email me directly at Josh Massaro Middletown BaptistChurch.com
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Thank you so much.
God Bless.
Have a wonderful day.