Biblical Blueprints, Workshop 1 – Sowing

Transcript

MO 14
09/15/2024
Biblical Blueprints: Sowing Expository
Ephesians 4:1–16
Mike Otazu

Good evening, church family. Welcome to workshop #1. Have we ever called any message up here a workshop? Not even sure what a workshop supposed to be. So I’m just going to talk for a while until this clock runs all the way down to zero and Jake turns off my microphone.

Pastor Jesse did a great job this morning of giving us a fly over of a theological treatment of what the church is definitionally. And, as you know, as he explained, we’re in the first week of a 5 week-series on “Biblical Blueprints.” The idea is that we want to talk about God’s plan and purposes for the church. And so this morning we defined church. Made some clarifications of what the church is. What the church is not. It’s my job to talk about sowing. In the hallway just talking to a few people about “what are you going to talk about sowing? You don’t know anything about farming.” I said, well, that’s not really exactly what it is I don’t think. Hopefully I got the assignment right here. I didn’t get to choose my topic. I was assigned this topic of sowing. It could have gone toward evangelism, but I think we’re going to talk about investing our entire lives into the church. Into the local church.

That’s the way I’m going to take my assignment. Sort of interpreting it mine own way here. Hopefully that’s what you meant Pastor Jesse. And I’m not going to fully exposit a passage this evening. I’m really going to use a passage just as a launch pad. In fact, if you’ve got a copy of God’s Word you can open up with me to Ephesians 4 and we’ll do some workshopping. I want to use Ephesians 4:1-16, all 16 verses as sort of a launch pad. A starting point and maybe even a guiding principle, guiding passage, for this topic of sowing. So let’s read it together, all 16 verses here and then we’ll break it up and talk about how we’re going to approach this topic of sowing our lives into the church.

Ephesians 4. Paul says this, “Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, ‘When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men.’ (Now this expression, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean except that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.) And He Himself gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ, so that we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is Christ, from whom the whole body, being joined and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the properly measured working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”

Wonderful 16 verses aren’t they? I just want to keep going and read all of Ephesians. But like I said, we’re not going to really exposit every nuance in this passage. I want to use it as a starting point and as a rubric to guide us through the topic of sowing our lives into the church. And in these 16 verses Paul delivers a lot of truth. But I want to focus on just 3 of those truths specifically for us tonight. If you are a note taker you are welcome to put down these 3 points this way. THE PREREQUISITE TO SOWING: REGENERATION. THE PROPOSITION OF SOWING: COMMITMENT. THE PRODUCT OF SOWING: UNITY.

These are the 3 main truths that we’re going to see out of these 16 verses. And we’ll be jumping all over the New Testament here. But right at the beginning of the chapter in verse 1, Paul talks about this prerequisite to sowing which is regeneration. He exhorts the Ephesians to “walk worthy of the calling with which [they] have been called.” I think this point’s foundational to our study because it sets the basis for life in the church. It sets the basis, the foundation, for the life of a church member, individual member in the church. And this is important. We can’t really move on beyond this until we get this right.

Paul opens up this new section in his letter. And he’s transitioning from doctrine to practice. He’s transitioning from orthodoxy to orthopraxy. Straight doctrine and straight acting, straight practicing. That’s the flow of Ephesians here in verse 1 of chapter 4 with the word “therefore.” He’s making that transition. It’s the ultimate transition in the book of Ephesians. He’s spent considerable ink so far in this letter in the first three chapters talking about this calling, this salvation. In fact, let’s look back over to chapter 1 of Ephesians. And let’s get a run up into what Paul’s talking about here. He cares deeply about establishing a sound soteriology, a doctrine of salvation before he moves onto to talking about practice.

He says in Ephesians 1, “Paul,” identifying himself, “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” So already here just in the salutation, Paul can’t help but begin dripping truth about salvation. He calls the Ephesians “saints,” identifying them by their status as people who are set apart. And that’s what that word means, “?????,” holy ones, set apart people. And then he calls them “faithful in Christ Jesus,” pointing them to the fact that they’re possessors of faith, and then also the fact that they’re soteriological located in Christ. Meaning that they’re saved in Christ. Their salvation is in Jesus and under His control, he says. Faithful in Jesus Christ. Then he goes on in verse 3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” We’re recipients of the Lord’s blessings, he says. That we’d “be holy and blameless before Him in love.”

He chose us for a particular purpose, Paul says. That we would be holy, set apart, and blameless before Him in love. And then he goes on, “by predestining us,” again, choosing us for salvation before time began, “to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself.” In other words, we’re made sons and daughters of God through the propitiation of Christ’s death on the cross. And he goes on, “according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He graciously bestowed on us in the Beloved.” What a glorious truth! What a glorious set of truths about salvation.

It’s hard to read Ephesians 1 without stopping and just trying to process what Paul’s saying here, what he’s revealing to us about the intricacies and nuances of salvation, isn’t it? It’s just mind-blowing that God, having no limitations to His knowledge and having a detailed plan for all of history would specifically choose you and I to be saved. If you’re saved here tonight, it’s because God chose you to be saved. Let that sink in for a second. God intentionally chose you. He determined that He would like to get the glory from you being born into sin, and then at some point being saved. Being adopted into His family. He wanted to make you holy and blameless and set apart by forgiving your sins through the blood of the cross. And He did it all, why? I contemplate that question all the time. Why would He pick me? Why did He choose me and not others?

Paul tells us the answer right here at the end of verse 5 and into verse 6 of Ephesians 1. Why did He do it? He did it “according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace.” He did it because He determined that it would bring Him glory and He deserves and wants that glory. This is a foundational truth when it comes to understanding the implications of soteriology, the implications of why we have been saved. And Paul goes on explaining in even more detail the salvation in verse 7 and following. “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions, according to the riches of His grace which He caused to abound to us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him for an administration of the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth in Him.”

And then in chapter 2, flip over to chapter 2, in verse 6, after painting the grim picture of our natural state of sin apart from Christ, Paul delivers one of the most clear and beautiful descriptions of salvation in all of the New Testament. He writes, “But God,” in verse 4, “being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ -- by grace you have been saved -- and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast.” And then here in verse 10 he makes the connection that we’re looking for back in our chapter 4. Notice the link here between the fact of our regeneration and the product of our regeneration. Look at verse 10. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

The Christian life is not a life of sitting back and relaxing in your new-found peace and kicking your feet up and just contemplating what heaven might be like and when Jesus is going to come back and get us. That’s not the life of the Christian. We’re saved so that we can do something. We’re not saved so we can just kick our feet up. We’re saved -- we’re “created in Christ for good works,” Paul says. Salvation demands action. Regeneration results in good works, necessarily. That’s how it works. Obedience to the commands to repent and believe is just the beginning of a lifetime of obedience to the rest of God’s expressed commands.

Paul’s telling the Ephesians and us, as we read on, that salvation isn’t sterile. He’s saying that salvation is just the beginning and that after salvation there’s much to be done. Many good works to accomplish. Lots of action to be taken. And back in our passage in chapter 4, Paul’s drawing on this doctrine to exhort the Christians in the local church in Ephesus to live it out. He’s saying, live it out. Live out everything we just talked about. “Therefore,” connecting back, “I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called.” See, the foundation for how we act in this life is found in our calling, our salvation.

In other words, the fundamental motivation for all that we do in life as Christians is rooted in the fact that we’re Christians. The fundamental motivation for how we live in this church, how we act in the universal church, even the local church, is rooted in the fact that we’re in the local church. That we are partakers of this. We’re part of it. We’re part of the living organism that is the church. The manner in which we walk through this life is anchored in our status as people who “have been called”. The called-out ones. That’s why he writes, walk worthy of it. “Walk worthy of that calling,” Paul says.

And this phrase here deserves a bit more of our attention. If you’ve done any studying of ancient Greco-Roman cities or the culture or even the economics that existed back in Bible times, especially in these New Testament epistle times, you might remember that a lot of these cities had marketplaces. They would call them agora. These were marketplaces that would be centralized locations for street venders and farmers to come in, haul in produce and sell their merchandise, and their handmade goods, and their produce to people who lived in the city or who traveled to the city to buy things. And even if you went to Ephesus today -- in fact, you can see the agora that Paul’s probably referencing here. You can actually walk through the agora and look at the different ways that it was laid out with walls and central location for entertainment. Even places for where the street vendors would have been. I’m giving you all this background because in the middle of verse 1 we see the word “worthy.” And it’s the Greek word “?????” which would have called to mind in the Ephesians the mental image of a scale like they would have seen in this agora.

Paul knows that they see these scales in the agora all the time. And there was no paper money and so the reasons they had to have these scales was that all transactions would’ve been done with coins, precious metals. And some people who were deceptive and selfish and had no conscience would shave off little bits of these precious metal coins and save the little shavings and try to pass off the coins as full value. All the while over the course of time keeping their little shavings pile and eventually melting it down and creating new coins with it or precious metal with it. So there was that deceptive scheme running rampant in the area. And so there had to be these scales at all the street vendors’ tables where they would measure the weight of the coins or the precious metals that were being used to purchase goods, with a standardized weight that would root out the deception and make it obvious if there was deception going on.

So it’s not hard to see why these scales became necessary. And Paul is saying here in chapter 4 verse 1, when He says, “walk worthy of your calling,” walk ????? of your calling, he’s using a familiar illustration from these scales in Ephesus to communicate that our walks, our calling, must be of equal weight. It’s the same word. When you would put the standardized weight on one side and the coin on the other side, you would be checking to see if it was ?????, if it was worthy. And that’s the word that Paul uses here. And He’s calling this idea to mind, this mental image to mind. He just spent three chapters before this verse explaining the immense value of the Christian’s calling. He’s setting the standard weight. And now he’s saying that the life we live, now that we’ve been called, must match the magnitude of that calling. That’s the image going on here. It’s clever argumentation. It’s clever in its grammar and its syntax.

Paul’s putting the divine scale on the table in front of us and on one side he puts our regeneration, and on the other side he puts the lives we should now live. It’s really a masterful way to get us to see the importance of living in light of our spiritual identity.

And this isn’t the only time Paul makes this appeal to New Testament Christians. We see it in 1 Thessalonians 2:12, he says, “walk in a manner worthy,” same word there, calling to mind the scale, “of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.” Colossians 1:10, “Walk in a manner worthy,” again same word, “of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and multiplying in the full knowledge of God.” Again Philippians 1:27, “Live your lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear about your circumstances, that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind contending together for the faith of the gospel.” All of that must be a result of the salvation that you’ve received Paul says. And here in Ephesians 4:1 he says, “walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called.” The standard of our actions as those who’ve been called by God is set by that very calling itself.

The principle is timeless, and it applies to us here just as much as it does to the Ephesians way back 2,000 years ago. If you’re here tonight and you’re saved, then you’ve been called to an intentional, consistent, and distinctly-Christian good works. You’ve been called to do these good works as a result of your regeneration. And you should direct them toward others in the body of Christ. So that’s the positive articulation of the truth here. But the negative articulation of the same truth is just as true. If you’re not called, if you’re not a recipient of the calling of with which Paul is talking about here in Ephesians 4, then you’re not able to walk worthy of it. The scale is out of balance. You just can’t. If you don’t have it you can’t live it out. Shaving off bits of metal from the coins eventually catches up with you and you’re exposed as not having been genuine the entire time. And this helps us understand our first point tonight, “The Prerequisite to Sowing is Regeneration.” It’s just the starting point. It’s the foundation.

Charles Spurgeon made this point in his Spurgeonish way, in a sermon on “The Necessity of Regeneration.” He said “You must be born again, or you cannot serve God. Without a new birth, you are out of gear with spiritual things, you are dead, and cannot fulfill any true function in the living church of the living God.” You’re dead in sin, and dead men cannot serve God. The prerequisite to sowing is regeneration.

And before we spend the next few weeks on the topic of God’s biblical blueprints for the church, I think it really needs to be clear that if you’re not saved, you’re not a part of the church. And if you’re not a part of the true church, you’re ultimately not able to serve the church in such a way as to contribute anything truly meaningful to the building of the church. Don’t hear me say this in any sort of meanness or animosity. If you’re here and you’re interested in the church, by all means, you’re in the right place! We are glad you are here. Keep asking questions. Keep wrestling with the thoughts that you have in your mind to ask us. Be interested. Ultimately, what you’re going to hear from us though who are part of the church, is that you need to turn away from your sins. You need to be a part of the church. Turn from your sins. Repent away from your sins and turn toward righteousness. Turn toward Christ. Look at Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave and believe upon Him. You need to put the entirety of your faith in Him and trust in His death and His resurrection for the salvation of your soul which really does deserve to be cast into eternal punishment. I’m grateful to God that He saw fit to bring you here if you’re not a believer, if you’re not part of this church, or even the church universal. We need to understand that in order to serve the church, in order to really sow our labor deeply into the soil of the church, we need to be a part of the church. We need to be new creations in Christ first. There’s nothing more fundamental than that. It’s the starting point for everything meaningful that we can contribute to the church.

Ephesians 4:1, he says, “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called,” and read on to get a sense of what that worthy walking actually is, “with all humility,” he’s describing this worthy walk now, “and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” I don’t know much about architecture or engineering or blueprints. I’m not going to pretend that I’ve ever built a house, or even a shed. But I really do think that if I were a builder, the first thing I would do is approach the build site, look at the land. See if it slopes a certain way, I assume. Check the materials that have been given to me for the building project. Make sure that they’re genuine and sturdy and solid. And then I’d draft a set of blueprints for the project. And what we’re doing here in this series, especially in these workshops, is we’re tracing back God’s blueprints for the church. We’re tracing back what He has prepared for the church. How He wants the church to grow. The materials with which He wants the church to grow. And the first point we’ve just seen is that in order to be useful material in this building project, we actually need to be regenerated. “The Prerequisite to Sowing is Regeneration.”

And the next point we’re going to see here is “The Proposition of Sowing is Commitment.” “The Proposition of Sowing is Commitment.” Throughout Church history there’s been always people pushing against the need for Christians to be committed to the local church. As you study church history to any degree, you’ll know that there’s always a group of people pulling people away from a commitment, a robust commitment to the local church. As early as the second century, Gnosticism was infiltrating the church. We even get a sense of this in the Apostle John’s letters, especially his epistles late in his life. These Gnostics were infiltrating the church and teaching that salvation came through secret knowledge, gnosis. They taught that there’s no need for the ordinances of the church, for systematic teaching, or for structures in the church.

In fact, many of the Gnostic sects said that there was no need to be committed in any way to the local church because true spirituality came from personal enlightenment and not Scriptures. Monasticism not long after that began to flourish. And Monastics taught a similar error, that the source of true spiritual growth came from personal spiritual revelation given from the Spirit to each individual. The false teachers here got swept up in this error to be pulled from the church and out in the wild, seeking personal revelation from the Spirit apart from the Scriptures. And they sought to remove others from the church as well so they could experience this isolated contemplation.

Later, in the thirteenth century a group of Franciscans styled themselves as the “Spiritual Franciscans,” made a similar error as the Gnostics and the Monastics before them. They sought to pull people away from the church because they thought that true spirituality was found in extreme poverty and simplicity of lifestyle. To them, the church was too structured and too wealthy to be of any use so they encouraged people to leave the church and take up radically ascetic lifestyles away from any sort of formal association with that wealthy church of the day.

The list goes on and on. The extreme Anabaptists of the 16th century, the 17th century Pietists in Germany, even some of the Quakers who came to the North America overcorrected from the state church and they advocated for personal spiritual experiences to the neglect of gathering together under the teaching of the Word. And it’s not really much different today, is it? As these cycles and trends continue even in the modern day church. Satan is always devising new schemes and trying to pull people out from a robust commitment to the church.

Today we see the modern deconstructionist movement. It’s one of the ways Satan is trying to pull people from committing to the local church. Some of you, especially you younger folks, probably heard this stuff before. It’s all the rage in mainstream evangelicalism today. All the popular celebrity Christians are all about deconstruction. People get frustrated with something about the local church and they react emotionally against it and they begin to reconsider everything they’ve been taught. And they deconstruct their commitment to the local church. They deconstruct their theological beliefs, and oftentimes, they never reconstruct any of it. They just react strongly against everything associated with the church. I saw one “Christian” rapper who deconstructed his faith. I saw him tweet recently, “I love Jesus, but I’m not churchy.” As though Jesus that he professes to love isn’t the head of the church.

We could get into that whole rat’s nest of deconstructionism and trace it out and talk about ways to prevent it from infiltrating our church. But the point I want to make is that there’s always has been and there always will be a very real sense in which people are tempted to devalue commitment to the church. It will rear its head in new ways throughout history. But it will always be trying to pull people away from commitment to the local church.

But the New Testament teaches that the structure of the local church is good and it’s designed by God and that local church is necessary. Look down the page in Ephesians 4 to verse 11-13. Paul says there, “And He Himself gave some as apostles,” speaking to the offices of the church, “and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ,”

See, Christ is the engineer of the church. He’s the master builder of the church. He’s the framer. He’s the finisher. He’s everything to the building of the church. He died that sacrificial death to atone for the sins of those who would eventually be added to the church. He taught the disciples who eventually became the founding ministers of the church. He initiated the birth of the church that we studied this morning in Acts. And Paul tells us here in Ephesians 4:11–13 that He also sovereignly and meticulously designed the church to function with individual parts and unique pieces that all work together to form the beautiful entity of the church.

The Head of the church made the church. And He made it to consist of ministers and people with different skill sets and various complimentary talents. Some of them specialize in evangelism. Some of them are passionate about being the kind of shepherds that are in and among the sheep, and caring for them and bearing their burdens with them and visiting them in times of trouble. And he gave all of these people unique personalities, too. Wouldn’t it be terrible if everyone in the church had the same personality? I shudder to think that anyone else would have my personality. The diversity of personality and passion is a beautiful crowning jewel of the church. It’ the part of the design. It’s part of the fibers of the church. God gave us different interests and different passions and different skills and even different roles that we see in the church. And He intentionally designed it to be that way.

It’s our duty to use our unique gifts to contribute, Paul says, “to the building up of the body of Christ, until,” talking about the goal here, “we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” That’s the thought there. That’s a truth that we can take home as regards to the church, commitment to the church.

Let’s see it elsewhere in Romans. Flip over to Romans, would you? Romans 12. Paul’s going to make the same point in a slightly different way to a different set of people. He’s going to communicate this truth to the Christians in Rome. Romans 12:4-8. “For just as we have many members in one body,” speaking of the church, “and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another, but having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: whether prophecy, in agreement with the faith; or service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with generosity; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” See, we’re all individual members of the intricately designed organism that is the church. We’ve all been sovereignly designed to fulfil a purpose in this body that is the body of Christ.

And this body illustration from Paul, I think it’s genius. It really helps us who are very tangible creatures, to understand this spiritual truth of the church and how it’s constructed and all the different parts. Now I wasn’t a believer in high school and I didn’t try very hard in my classes. I remember missing out on all sorts of things and not paying much attention. I just wanted to get the grades that would allow me to stay on the basketball team and not get kicked off. And so I remember even specifically learning a little bit about biology. I had some biology class but I didn’t learn very much. And so now whenever I hear smart people talk about different biological systems in the human body, I’m like, man, I really should have paid attention. Recently somebody was talking about enzymes and I knew that word, but to be honest I forgot what they were. So I went down a deep-dive rabbit hole of what enzymes were or what they are. And as I was learning about all the different kind of enzymes (some of you who know biology or paid attention in class, would know this) there are literally thousands of different kinds of enzymes. And enzymes, they help the chemical makeup of the body transition. They help chemical reactions happen by the way that they interact on a molecular level with different proteins and different molecules that make up our body.

And there are metabolic enzymes that have the special role of converting certain nutritious chemical structures into more manageable compatible structures so that the body can use them for energy production. There’re digestive enzymes that interact with the molecules in the food that we eat and they break it down so it’s more digestible for us. There’re DNA replication and DNA repairing enzymes (this one blew my mind) that do stuff like copy DNA and even fix errors in the coding. Certain ones of these -- I was reading, this was like hours of reading about enzymes, probably way too much, but I did pay attention on this biology -- certain ones of these DNA enzymes interact with the double helical structure of DNA and there’s one that acts like a scissor and cuts the DNA. And there’s another one that proofreads the DNA. And there’s another one that copies it. And they can make actual editing to the DNA strands and make sure there is no DNA errors in the finished product of DNA. And then there’s another one that glues it all back together.

Isn’t that amazing? God designed that. And we can actually see it now. We can actually see it happen. It’s just a handful of the thousands of different enzymes. It’s fascinating engineering. God designed all of these different enzymes to preform unique functions so that all the chemical processing in the body would take place. That the body would keep moving and that it would operate effectively.

And it’s the same when it comes to the church. Paul says that the church is like a human body. Romans 12:4, “For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another, but having gifts that differ,” they’re different, “according to the grace given to us.” We need each other to function properly. We need the one who cuts the DNA strand. We need the one who copies the DNA strand. We need the one who double checks the DNA strand. We need each other. We all have different gifts. Unique skills that God’s given us and He’s even brought us to this local church in His sovereign, meticulous sovereignty so that we would complement each other in our labor together. Isn’t that amazing? That’s spiritual truth. We need to use these gifts that God gave us for the benefit of the collective whole. And this requires intentionality and it requires commitment.

You can flip over to Hebrews 10. Let’s see it here in Hebrews in a different articulation. Hebrews 10:19, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He has inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” And here’s the part that we need to focus on as we think about commitment to the local body. “And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” There is certainly a context here in Hebrews that I don’t want to ignore, and I don’t want to read us into the text, but the principles transfer over to the church pretty clearly, pretty easily.

We need to be intentional about finding ways to stimulate one another, don’t we? We need to be intentional about finding ways to push each other toward love and good deeds, don’t we? This involves consideration. It involves premeditation. He says, “consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.” Consider it. Think about it. Plan it out.

It’s our duty as fellow members of the body to be present, he also says. To be committed not only to the role of our function in the church, but to be committed to our obligation to be a part of the gathering of the church. It’s just not being there to do what you need to do, but it’s just being a part of it. Being passionate about gathering together. He says, “Let us not forsake our own assembling together, as is the habit of some.” The gathering isn’t a gathering for those who just show up when they feel like it. Gathering is in the very definition of the church, “ecclesia.” The assembly, the gathering, the organizing of individual parts in a shared area for a shared purpose. That’s what we are.

And let us not forsake it, Hebrews tells us. And notice the eschatological element there in verse 25 of Hebrews 10. The assembly is to assemble its individual parts and the individual parts are to “encourage one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.” The church body is an entity that requires a robust commitment from its parts to the whole in order to function. That’s the main truth here. That’s the truth we need to walk away with.

Flip over to Acts. Let’s go back to Acts. Just after the birth of the church that we learned about this morning, we see a negative example of what we are talking about here. An anti-example. Acts 5, this is the account of Ananias and Sapphira. Acts 5, “But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and they kept back some of the price for himself, with his wife’s full knowledge. And bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your authority? Why is it that you laid this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.’ And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last; and great fear came over all who heard. And the young men rose up and wrapped him up, and after carrying him out, they buried him. Now there was an interval of about three hours, and his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter responded to her, ‘Tell me whether you were paid this much for the land?’” referring to how much Ananias said, “And she said, ‘Yes, that much.’ Then Peter said to her, ‘Why is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Behold, the feet of those who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out as well.’ And immediately she fell at his feet and breathed her last, and the young men came in and found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came over the whole church, and over all who heard these things.”

Tragic episode. Tragic historical account. There’s no room in the church for selfishness and holding things back. I’m not saying that you need to go out and sell your land that you have inherited. You don’t need to sell all the stuff that you have and give it to the church. It wasn’t required that Ananias give any of his money to the church, in fact. Tithing is an Old Testament law. We’re talking about the New Testament church here, not Israel. There was no requirement that Ananias needed to give a certain percentage of this sale to the church. And Peter said just as much. He says, “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?” The church had no control over it or claim on it. “And after it was sold, was it not under your authority?” Saying we didn’t require that you give any of this. Ananias’ sin wasn’t a sin of withholding money that the church had a right to possess, as some people often read this passage. His sin was a sin of wanting to look like he was committed to the point of self-sacrifice inwardly. But he deceived in trying to paint that picture of himself. Commitment is commitment. You can’t fake your way through the church. You can’t fake your way into looking committed to the church.

That’s a negative example. Let’s look at a positive one. Flip back over to Acts 2. Just a couple of chapters back. Pastor Jesse preached through this at mach speed as he said himself this morning. By the way, if you’re here and you haven’t listened to this morning’s sermon on the church and the definition of the church and what it is, I highly recommend you go back and listen to that and if you’re watching online later, that’s the first part of this. He sets the foundation for all of the things we are going to talk about over the next few weeks here.

Acts 2:42. Notice the theme here in the early church of the individual members being “continually devoted”, that’s the phrasing, to each other. Look at it. Acts 2:42, “And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. And fear came upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were dividing them up with all, as anyone might have need. And daily devoting,” there’s that phrasing again, “themselves with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number daily those who were being saved.” Again, this isn’t about selling your property or giving money to the church. What we need to take from this here is that the nature of the relationships between the people in the early church was one that was characterized by being continually devoted. They were “continually devoting themselves to the fellowship.” it says. They were “daily devoting themselves with one accord in unity in the temple and the breaking bread from house to house.”

They were characterized by a serious commitment to the gathering, to the church, the body. Commitment, in other words, is a key ingredient to a healthy church. Robust commitment is a key ingredient to the healthy church. You can have talent, you can have gifting, you can have money, you can have doctrinal fidelity even, you can have a cool building. But if you don’t have commitment from individual members, you won’t have a healthy church.

And so I think we would do well to take advantage of an opportunity like this, a series like this, to ask ourselves some of these hard questions. Do we rightly prioritize the substance of the church over the surface of the church? Do we do that? What I mean by it is, do we care more about the real, deep communion that we have with each other in this local body as brothers and sisters in Christ who have committed to care for each other and encourage each other and spur each other on toward Christ-likeness and righteousness? Or do we care more about the color of the carpet or the volume of the drums on Sunday morning? Do we care more about the bond of unity that we have as fellow forgiven sinners who need each other for growth? Or do we care more about the ratio of hymns to contemporary songs on Sunday mornings? I know these are small issues. But if you let that sort of thinking gain momentum in your heart, pretty soon you’ll find yourself looking for things that you disagree with in our church. If you allow that little kernel of allowing yourself dissatisfaction with surface level things in the church, you will find that kernel growing. You will find that attitude gaining momentum. You’ll find it gaining steam and eventually you’ll find yourself being cynical in the church. You’ll find yourself looking for problems in the church. Looking for reasons to distrust leaders in the church. You’ll end up divisive before you even know it.

Our hearts are really experts at turning casual commentary about things that we see and might disagree with into despicable gossip and slander, aren’t they? That’s what our hearts do. The line is so thin when it comes to this sort of thing. We have got to ask ourselves constantly which side of that line are we on? Are we watching our hearts? Are we being careful to not criticize surface level things in the church? Do we rightly prioritize the substance of the church over the surface of the church?

Another question to ask ourselves is, do we ever slip into the church-shopper mindset? And I know a lot of you who were born in this church probably never even thought about this. But there’s a lot of people out there who just go from church to church shopping for churches. It’s actually a phrase. Church shopping. You can find articles online from major evangelical blogs that teach you how to shop for a church. The problem is selfishness. I’ve been a part of a number of churches and maybe this is more of a thing in California where I am from. I don’t know. Or there’s a church on every corner because the population is 30 times as much as a smaller city like Lincoln. But there were churches everywhere where I grew up. Churches down the street that were of the same doctrinal fidelity as the churches down the other street. And you could just pick and choose based on style. You could pick and choose based on the color of the carpet. You could pick and choose based on the loudness of the music. You can pick and choose based on the speaking style of the pastor. And what that bred. Even I saw it in myself before I caught it. What that breeds in people is this thinking that they have the freedom to just pick and choose what they want in a church.

And then when they pick a church, they think they can pick and choose what happens in the church. And there’s nothing wrong with carefully considering if you move to a new city. Carefully considering the options before you, visiting churches and checking doctrinal statements and seeing how you align even philosophically with churches and their decisions and their philosophy of ministry. But the line is very thin, isn’t it? If you allow yourself selfishness in that equation, you end up being divisive. And the solution of course is selflessness. And you think about your relationship with the local body, your church, you shouldn’t be thinking what can the church give to me. You should be thinking what can I give to the church. What is it that I have that the Lord has gifted me, that I can share with others? What is it? What giftings do you have? How can I give it away to others here in this body?

Philippians 2, Paul exhorted the Philippians to “[do] nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory, but with humility of mind regarding one another as more important than yourselves, not merely looking out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” John 15:12–13, “This is My commandment,” that I give to you, “that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” And He defines love. “Greater love has no one than this, than one lay down his life for his friends.” Principle there that we can extract is love is selfless. Selfless love is pure love. 1 Corinthians 10:24, “Let no one seek his own good, but that of the other.” Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Don’t slip into the church shopping mindset. Fight it. Even if you’re committed to the church you can find little kernels of that thinking in your heart from time to time.

Another question to ask ourselves is, do we view ourselves as real members of the church? There’s different ways to talk about membership in a church formally. You could have formal membership with contracts and classes and covenants that are signed and checked up on and membership that’s tracked. There’s churches that do it that way and there are also churches that are more informal in the way that they think about membership and track and consider who the sheep are in the flock at that local body. And really in the end it doesn’t matter, strictly speaking, how membership is articulated in the constitution of any given church. What matters is the mindset of the individual members of that church. The individual people who make up that church. We’ve got to ask ourselves, do we set our sights on being committed and productive members of the church? Parts of the church. Individuals of the corporate whole.
1 Corinthians 12:27, “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.” Whether your church calls it membership or not, doesn’t matter. Paul says, if you’re saved, you’re in Christ’s body. And you’re individually members of it.

Another question to ask ourselves is do we build our lives around the local church? Moving away from Lincoln sometimes happens. I don’t know why do it. But it sometimes happens. And it’s not sin in-and-of itself. But the question is, do you have a high enough view of personal commitment to the local church that it would not only hurt you to leave this body, but it would hurt this body if you left? It’s a good thing to think about. Do we build our lives around the local church? Are you committed enough to the local body of believers that you structure your entire life around how you can be most helpful to the church? Are you filtering that as one of the top priorities in all the decisions that you make as a family? As a scheduler of your weekly calendar, are you thinking about how you can build your life around the local church? And there’s no perfect way to answer that. I’m not saying you have to be at every single program that’s offered at your local church. But I am saying that should be a factor in your decision making. Do we build our lives around the local church? Do we sow ourselves into the local church? Are we planting ourselves into the local church, into the soil of the church?

That was the second point of our three points tonight. We’ve considered “The Prerequisite to Sowing: Regeneration.” And “The Proposition of Sowing: Commitment.” And this last one is more of a conclusion than a point in and of itself, “The Product of Sowing: Unity.” If you look back in Ephesians 4, if you’re not there turn back with me. We’ll end here. Ephesians 4. Notice the theme of unity in this text. Let’s start in 11. Notice the theme of unity. Paul says this, “And He Himself gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,” they’re all different, “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ, so that we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth in love,” as a unified whole, “we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is Christ, from whom the whole body, being joined and held together,” using the imagery here of ligaments and bone structures that hold things together, “by what every joint supplies, according to the properly measured working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”

Notice the sense of unity that Paul describes the church with. It’s not scattered pieces. It’s joints and marrow and ligaments that are connected, inextricably connected. And now back up in verse 1. Look at verse 1 in chapter 4. He says, “Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience,” here’s the unity, “bearing with one another in love,” You want to know how we can be a unified church? Do that. Bear with each other in love. That’s the number one way we could possibly be unified. If we’re regenerated and we’re committed, what we must do is bear with one another in love. It goes on, “being diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” We are bonded in peace in our shared salvation. We have the unity of the Spirit if we’re regenerated. “There is one body,” Paul says, “and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”

You see, the body is unified, definitionally. The church is one. The faith is singular. Our baptism is common. Paul is pointing here to the unity of the universal Church, but the same is true in the local church iterations of the universal Church. Local churches are microcosms of the capital “C” Church. They’re to be unified. They are to mimic the body itself, the larger structure. And the way they strengthen the unification of their individual parts is, ultimately, stay unified over the course of time when the individual members buy into this vision for the church set by God Himself.

It’s not a vision set by the pastors. It’s not a vision, catchy slogans set by the elders. It’s the vision of the church. The definition, the purpose, the trend, the reality of the church set by God Himself. And if we commit to this. If we take our salvation seriously. If we put to use the equipping that we’ve gained when we were saved. The gifts and skills that God’s sovereignly given to us, if we give up our selfishness and we come to church with a heart attitude of seeking to meet the needs of others. If we make sowing into the church our life’s goal then unity will be the ultimate product. It will happen that way. It’s my prayer that, that would be true of our church here. It’s my prayer that we would take these truths in Ephesians 4 and throughout the New Testament and consider how we even think about the local church here at Indian Hills. And we have put these doctrines into practice. Make them not just orthodoxy but make them orthopraxy as Paul would love to see. May this be true of us in this church.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, You are the ultimate engineer of the church. Lord, thank You for saving us. Thank You for even saving us in this particular historical era. That we could be a part of this church. That we could be a part of Your program which is the church. Lord, thank You for plucking us out of our sin, putting us into slavery to You. Lord, we love it. We are grateful for it. Lord, may we not get distracted with selfishness. May we not get distracted with an over zealousness for our particular opinions to be heard or our particular desires to be met. Lord, may we be characterized as a church who cares about each other. Our individual parts caring for each other in such a radical way that we cannot help but be unified. Lord, may we sow into this church. May we use the gifts and the skills and the personalities in all the uniquenesses that You have given to us and may we glorify You as we seek to sow into this church. In Your name, Amen.