Body building - what is the believer's part?
Vern Peterman · Jun 19, 2011
What God Is Doing in Believers, No. 25
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492623811517

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So bodybuilding, what is the believer's part? Jim covered for us last Sunday. The first part of that is what is God's part? And by the way, can you think of why there would be a sequence? We've done this every month since February. The second week we cover God's part and the third week we cover our part. Why would we do it in that sequence? Can you think? Is there any reason or are we just strangely random? God's got to do the work through us or it's not worth doing, right?

So that's one. That's good. What else can you think of? It's a growing process and why does God's doing first? Why is that an important part of the sequence? He knows what's needed. Yeah, Pat? Well, first of all, he is the one that does the most and you kind of have to know what he's doing so you don't have to redo it. Okay. All right. And all right. Any other ideas?

In other words, our doing something is always in response to God having defined the possibilities and how things happen. It would be not possible for us to believe in Christ if God had not had Christ die on the cross and be buried and raised. What would there be to believe in? about the fact that today the church focuses on the Bible but they don't necessarily focus on God primarily. There's a lot of other things that they gain from the Bible like counseling and advice and how it affects me and the feelings and the emotions and all this other stuff. But along the way they forget that the Bible is all about God. That's primarily God's book.

Many people are oriented towards the question, what's in it for me? they see the church as sort of a buffet line. You know, well I kind of like this and this and you know, well these are pretty cool and I like the little feeling that this thing leaves in my mouth. So there's a lot of kind of buffet line mentality where I kind of pick and choose what's in it for me.

Yeah. It's kind of like getting the horse before the cart. Okay. Getting the heart before the course, right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so what we're doing essentially each month as we've been through this, the second week we've said, what's God's part? And we've done that on purpose because the next thing we do and what we're doing this week is saying, what is our part? Our part, is it important that we know? Yes. But it's first and priority important to know what has God done and what is God doing?

And one of the things that we've addressed I'd say multiple times here, helps the believer deal with what might be a temptation, and that is to be mad at God. The temptation for a lot of believers is to get mad at God. I'm mad because God didn't do this or God didn't do that. And all those feelings of I'm mad at God about something or I'm frustrated with God, all those stem from not knowing what God's doing.

If we understand that, you know, I look at various things in my own life. God wanted me to have Lyme disease. I needed Lyme disease. I needed that. And I know that God has a purpose in it. So believe it or not, I can be thankful for it. And I can be glad for what he's doing because his eternal purpose for that is something that's good. and I can rest in it. And it doesn't call into question, does God really love me? Or is God in control? Okay, now we look at what is the believer's part.

As I said earlier, the two primary passages that convey the message regarding building up the body of Christ are these. They both come out of Ephesians. Ephesians 2, 19-22. And then Ephesians 4, 11-16. Most of 2.19-22 deals with God's part in building up the body of Christ.

It's in Ephesians 4.11-16 where we get more insight into our part in building up the body of Christ. We're going to be looking, working off of that, and then we're going to be looking at another issue that's brought up partly in this passage in Ephesians, and partly in another passage, and that's spiritual gifts. So in the middle of page one there, it says, Grace and Gifts. God placed each one of us who have believed into Christ, and it was all of grace.

Did you earn the worthiness, did you measure up in some way in order to be placed into Christ? No. What's that? Still haven't. We don't earn the worthiness, we don't work to measure up in order to have the worthiness to be placed into Christ. What did you do? What was the sum total of what you did in order that God placed you into Christ? What did you do? What? What? That's all? That's all? Believe! That's it?

And is there some way I can do something to enhance that? You know, to somehow make a super capacity, you know, put in Christ all... Is there something I can do to really make sure that's locked in? Is there anything? Yeah, and so what you will get from a lot of these groups that come up to the door two by two or three by four, what you will get is the message that you have to do something or do something more or keep doing it. Keep it up.

And whatever the activity is, and each group comes up with their own, right? Seventh-day Adventist and the Seventh-day Baptist and a few others say keep the Sabbath. So you've got that, but for somebody else, it's, oh boy, you've got to stay away from this food. And somebody else, that's fine, but just don't get married. So I've got all sorts of different things. So there's all these different little things you've got to keep doing or not do, and it's up to you to keep that up, or else the whole thing just goes into the ditch, into the sink, right?

But all this is, God places you in Christ, there is not the slightest evidence that you get taken out of Christ, and all you did was believe nothing more. By the way, do you have to super-believe? Can it be believe with a lowercase b, or do you need to super-believe? Yeah, with a capital B. Do you? No. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

God also placed each one of us by means of the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ. He identified us. That's 1 Corinthians 12, 13. It's a work of the Holy Spirit. And what did you do in order for God to pull that off? You believed, right? It's the same thing. Was it a different belief? Was it a different quality of belief? No. All you did was believe and you were placed by God, all of grace, into the body of Christ. Done deal. Yes? Do you have to have faith in mustard seeds? I won't go into that one. We will go into that later in our study in Matthew, though. I guess the question is, do you believe in mustard seeds? Anyway, I don't know.

God has designed and desired that each individual believer grow spiritually, each individual, each one of us, right, grow spiritually, and for all of us together as believers to grow as a church body. Both of those kinds of growth are what God desires and intends.

And He doesn't just say, hey, just do it. He doesn't say do the Nike thing, just do it. What He does is He gives us a position and He gives us the empowerment in order for that to happen. It's the in thing to do. That's what God did. He put you in Christ, He put Christ in you, and He put you in the body of Christ. God did the in thing. Think about it, Christ prayed for you. Christ prayed for you. Next paragraph, second to the last on page one.

In addition to the grace that placed us into Christ and also into the body of Christ, we also have been grace gifted with spiritual gifts such that each one of us is intended to be used of the Lord to benefit the body of Christ. These grace gifts are given as the Holy Spirit has decided to give them. If I want to have the gift of apostleship, can I just go pick it?

Can I earn it? Nope. It is the Holy Spirit's decision. Yeah? Yeah, in other words, first of all, it isn't up to me to pick which ones, and some of them are specifically apostolic era gifts, not for us to go, you know, looking for anyway. So you're saying they terminated it? Yes. Yeah. And we have this on the next page. We'll take a look at that in a minute.

So last paragraph, these spiritual gifts have been given to each of us as the Spirit has willed and designed to benefit the body of Christ. So there is an individual aspect and a church body aspect. Each one of you has been given at least one spiritual gift for the benefit of the body of Christ. Do you benefit from your spiritual gift? Of course. Only indirectly, of course, but the direct benefit is intended for other believers, right? Other believers. That's God's intent.

Someone asked in our Thursday night study, well, what about private tongues? And I said, well, we're going to address that, but one of the problems with private tongues as a spiritual gift, what's the problem? It's private. It's all for me, right? At best, it's all for me and I'm the one that benefits, assuming there is such a thing. So it's all about me, instead of, as spiritual gifts are intended, to be about benefiting the church body. There is individuality in the giftedness and even variety in the giftedness, even though it is for the sake of the one single body of Christ.

So we have a chart on the following page. It's one we've presented previously at various times. And you may be happy to know that it's also been printed at a larger scale at various times. But it takes a little doing. What we have on page two is a list of the spiritual gifts. Did you get that? So here is this list of spiritual gifts. We have two categories.

One is the Apostolic Era gifts and the second is the Church Age gifts, that is those that continue up till now well beyond the time of the Apostles. The Apostolic Era gifts were gifts that were appropriate and needed in the time of the Apostles when the New Testament was either initially non-existent or only partially completed. So many of the gifts are revealing gifts, they're revelatory. That is, they reveal things because the entire New Testament was not available. So that's the first part there, and that's where you see faith, healing, interpretation, prophecies, miracles, things of that sort. The church aid gifts are the ones that continue now. And then notice that there are three different passages that list those, none of them exhaustively. that lists those church-age gifts.

What we have here is a description of them, brief, I'll admit, but a description of what that gift is, and then what is the intended outcome or result from using that gift, and then finally an example of where that's used. So there's at least something to work from here in terms of how this might be used and exampled in the body of Christ.

Well, you're saying discerning of spirits, for example, is only apostolic error. Yes. That happens today. Yes it does, and how does it happen? I mean, we're asked to come to church and discern the truth. Okay, and how do we discern? Scripture. Yeah, in other words, we use scripture now as opposed to the spiritual gift. Let me give you another for instance. Does God heal today? God can heal. That is different from the gift of healing. So there's a distinction there. Some of these things, you look at them and you say, well, those are happening today in some way. Yes, they are.

Are we to discern? We most certainly are to discern. But we use the Word of God as opposed to a specific spiritual gift that's used apart from the Word of God. this gift of discerning of spirits in the apostolic era was apart from using the New Testament which hadn't been revealed or fully revealed. I guess that's a fine line because you may not Scripture doesn't necessarily precede that discernment of spirit. Does that make sense? Yeah, but what I would have to say is the ultimate test for discernment has to be the Word of God. We may have a sense of, that doesn't sound quite right, and that may be there, that's not the same as the gift of discerning of spirits. The gift of discerning of spirits was a definite and specific spiritual gift where someone during the apostolic era, absent the complete New Testament, would have the ability to say, that spirit is not from the Lord. And to say it with definiteness. So you're saying it's more bereaved today, where you discern something or you go in and you say, this doesn't seem right. Then you go to Scripture. Right.

In other words, the ultimate test is the Word of God. They didn't have all that there. All they had was initially, just for years, the Old Testament. But in terms of New Testament truth, it had not been written down and disseminated among people in the churches. Yeah, in other words, if you look at it, these people, apart from the Word of God, would be able to look, and having this gift would say, that is not from God.

And they would be able to know with certainty that that's the case. Just like now, I share this instance, beg your forbearance, but Nancy and I prayed. Just not long after I got the Lyme disease, the Lord would heal us. She had a whole body intense itching that would wake us both up at night and she'd be scratching herself bruised and bloody. It was really bothering her and both of us. We both sat down and prayed. The Lord healed her of that, and she's never had a problem with it since. It's been like two decades ago.

Before we said amen, it was gone. The Lord did not, however, heal me. So that is an instance the Lord can heal, but that doesn't mean we have the gift of healing like Peter was able to do without question. He didn't come up to the guy who was lame and say, hey, if I pray for you, I think the Lord might decide to heal you.

Let's try it. Nothing of that. In the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk. And it was certain. Let's see if this works. Anything of this sort. the exercise as part of an apostolic set of gifts, the gift of healing. That's not the same as what Nancy and I did when we said, let's see what the Lord will do. Yes, but? Oh, I love rabbits. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right.

He's asking the question about the Church of Christ and their prohibition of instruments. What the Church of Christ attempted to do, and this is the Campbell brothers were the ones in the 1800s, by the way they had some interaction with Joseph Smith But anyway, the Campbell brothers were the ones who founded what's known as the Church of Christ, and about half the churches of Christ now have a prohibition against instruments. What they did is, rather than going back to scripture and saying, what does scripture say, their pattern has been to go back to what did the church do in about the second or third centuries, And if you look at it, well, people couldn't afford instruments, and they couldn't afford music. And the other thing is, if you're a persecuted church, are you going to make a lot of noise when you get together?

Probably not, right? And so what do you do? You don't go playing a bunch of instruments. You know, if you sing, you sing quietly. Yeah? Well, when she was on me, when I was talking, somebody at that denomination said, well, you go back to the Jew book and the Old Testament. Yes.

The other problem they have is they don't understand law and grace. And they make salvation dependent not just on belief, but you've got to confess all your sins, not miss one, before you get baptized. And you get baptized and it's got to be in their church. So that's legalism. And that's adding to Scripture. and it's wrong.

Anyway, let's get on track here. So we have these various gifts. We've obviously got more detail here than we are going to be able to address, but the idea is you could go through these and look at them. But I want to address what is in fact perhaps a more critical perspective. Let's look at page 3, top of page 3.

So our part in the building up of the body of Christ, and I give actually a negative definition here, is not to say to ourselves, Oh, I get it. I know what to do. Now that I know what to do, I'll just work at doing the right things among the body of Christ with all my strength. I'll get really, really busy doing these things and God and everybody will be so pleased with my admirable efforts. That's not what God has in mind.

Actually, our part in building up the body of Christ is still to have the life of Christ doing the living through each one of us and to walk in the Spirit. So it's a living out of the spiritual gifts among us as a work of the Holy Spirit and the building up of the body of Christ as a work of God among us rather than our own best efforts to carry out what we think the Lord has in mind for the body of Christ. That's a huge difference. When the building up of the body of Christ takes place biblically, God is the one giving the gifts and He is the one carrying out the gifts among us.

He is the one who is glorified. Are you aware of anyone whose name as a pastor, typically, is more prominent than the name of the church? Yeah, and the reason is we live in an era where high profile is something that is thrust upon us. This is the guy whose name shows up on the TV screen, and whose name shows up on the books, and a lot of times the titles of the books will be smaller than the name of the guy who wrote it.

You know, that kind of thing. And so there is, in our era, common thing among Christians to have this kind of celebrity Christians, and we'll put a high value on those names. But you know what's interesting is, here's Paul, the Apostle, who had been personally taught by the Lord, like one-on-one, personally taught by the Lord.

And yet you don't get the impression that he goes around blowing his own horn, so to speak. He rushed us to express humility. Tell him we don't have a book of Paul. Yeah, we don't have a book of Paul. That's also why in Corinthians where you mentioned the conflict of I'm of Paul.

Yeah, I'm of this guy, I'm of that one. And we could do that, we could replace the names that you mentioned in 1 Corinthians 1 and we could, here are some high profile Christians, and I'm of this guy, and I'm of that guy, and we put all the names in there, and I'm of this one. Yeah, man, this guy, he's really cool. And pretty soon we got all these high-profile Christian names, and we're right back to 1 Corinthians 1.

And let me ask you, was Paul real happy with that situation back in Corinth? No. There was a reason why it wasn't good then, and there's a reason why it isn't good now. I called Mike up after I was gone this last weekend, and he said, well, everything went great without you. I said, that's wonderful. That's the way it ought to be. Because in the end, the Lord needs to be the one glorified.

It needs to be the body of Christ that is working and not this name or that name or anything of that sort. In the middle of that paragraph there, When the building up of the body of Christ takes place biblically, God is the one giving the gifts, and He is the one carrying out the gifts among us, and He is the one who is glorified. The Church of Corinth did not understand this principle, and this was evident because there was division among the members of the body such that they were not saying the same thing.

2. There was a human focus centering on one person or another adding to the division. the next part of the chapter, and this focus upon one believer or another distracted them from a singular focus upon Christ. There was a tendency towards feelings of both arrogance and insignificance. See, in other words, instead of having an assessment, you know, here's who I am in Christ, it tended towards the extremes. Arrogance Boy, I am the best and I want to get everybody behind me and pulling for me and get myself on the top of the pyramid or I don't count because I'm not like that guy.

Instead of seeing that every believer is a part of the body of Christ and every believer is gifted to be an active part of the body of Christ. The idea that there are more important or less important gifts or totally unnecessary gifts on the basis of what is more high-profile or impressive and what is less high-profile and supposedly impressive is not biblical. How many of you have a liver? I hope you do. I hope it works. How many of you have ever seen your liver?

I haven't either. I don't want to see it, but I'm glad I haven't. There are parts of us that are maybe not all that aesthetic and they're not high profile and probably like myself, you're not all that interested in looking at it. But you're glad you have it. Why? Because it's necessary whether it's high profile or not.

I mean, people don't say, wow, man, you have a really cool liver. You know, they don't do that. And it's hard to get impressed with livers, but you need it. A liver does something like over 500 things. So you're glad you have it, but nobody's impressed with livers, and that's fine.

And it's the same thing, there may be functions that go on in this church body that at first blush nobody even looks at or thinks of. But then you thought, well, wait a minute, what if that didn't happen? Then we'd be in big trouble. So something that's high-profile doesn't necessarily mean it's more important. And something that's low-profile doesn't mean it's less important.

So how are the spiritual gifts to be discovered, developed, and put to use? This is a biggie because this is where the modern church has really missed the boat and missed the pier. The spiritual gifts are discovered, developed, and put to use in the context of the body of Christ. I have seen a computerized spiritual gift test. I mean, we're talking high tech here. It's got all the bits and bytes in all the right places, right? But, what could be wrong with a computerized spiritual gift test? What does that not include? It doesn't include the Holy Spirit.

OK, yeah. In other words, it's possible for this whole thing to just be mechanical. Good. What else? Church. Pardon? Church. Yeah, it doesn't happen in a church context. That's where it's supposed to be used, right? So it would be like, OK, I'm going to take my battery out. of the car, and I'm going to test it, and then I'm going to just leave the battery out. Uh-oh. It needs to work in the context of the whole car, just like we need to be working in the context of the whole church.

If we look at things in isolation, especially if we keep them in isolation, that's a problem. There's one other thing too, and that is, if I am doing a spiritual gift test, That is done by me. It's done by me and I look at it and I answer based on my perceptions, period. And why could that fall short? What could be the problem with that? Yeah, in other words, other people would have inputs and observations. Yeah. Okay, good. Other thoughts? is for others, not you. Yeah, that's right.

In other words, if the test is all about me, and the gift is all about somebody else, it's like, okay, it might be somewhat useful. I'm not discounting it entirely. But the reality is, it's not asking this other guy, you know, are you benefited when this person does this over here? Do other people see that When this person does this, you're benefiting. And it doesn't ask that question, which is really the ultimate question, isn't it? Not just, what am I interested in, which might be a clue, but it's not the big picture answer.

So we can easily lose God's perspective on it by looking at things in isolation and only looking at my own personal interactions. and they send you through a bunch of tests to tell you what your talents, I won't say gifts, but what your talents are. And you may be good at biology and science, so maybe you need to go into maybe being a doctor or a nurse or a lab scientist or something like that.

But it gives you a direction. Yeah, here's what I would suggest, that those may be more indicative than the spiritual gift test because they fit more with, I'm an individual and where do I plug in to the larger whole. What is more difficult to discern because the church body thing, that's an organism. What's the effect on the rest?

I'm not saying it's completely valueless, but there's a problem in just saying, here's the answer. with the spiritual gift test because you've got a lot of other answers you need to get. Right, and also it hones in on what that, if the test is appropriate, if it's done correctly, if it's out of scripture and all those other criteria, then it is Right and and what and what would what would be a way to complete? Let's say you get took a spiritual gifts test.

What would be the way to complete that to find out? How does this fit? Yeah, you need to get that only way that a ship can be steered Okay, one is to test it in function. That would be one way. Another would be what? Yeah, in other words, what would others say, you know, comes out.

Let me tell you something that's interesting. I've been in contact, Facebook's an amazing thing. There's people you'd like to talk to that won't. And then there are people that you'd never dream would talk to you that do. But Facebook is interesting because there's a fellow that Nancy and I knew, you know, like 40 years ago. that I just got in contact with about in the last year. And interestingly enough, this fellow, about 40 years ago, sat down and exhorted me because I was afraid to teach. I was hesitant and balking at teaching. And so here's something very interesting.

If you had asked me, do I want to teach? And I'm not so sure. So if I had taken the spiritual gifts test at that point, I'm not sure I would have scored myself very well. But he observed, he said, no, you need to teach, you ought to be teaching, but you ought not to be responding to your fears.

So very interesting, it was that outside input from this other fellow that really zeroed in on it. My own personal inclination was, I'm not so sure about this. Okay, let's take a look further down here. It is by careful teaching and observation of the Word of God that we actively learn.

Philippians 4.9 has four different verbs that have to do with learning. Learning and hearing and those kinds of things. And interestingly, all four of them are active voice. That is, learning isn't something where we just kind of sit down in the pew and we say, learn me, you know. But rather, learning is something that Paul writes as very definitely the learner needs to be active about it. Pursuing the knowledge and actively taking it in.

So we see that we can also observe these things in the body of Christ in action. If we say, you know, okay, suppose I feel like the Lord wants me to serve in some capacity. What does that look like? Well, can I look around the body of Christ and see somebody else doing that or something like it? And I can learn from that, aside from what the Word of God says. as valuable as it is, I can also see it. Oh, that's what it looks like. That's what it looks like. I can see it in action in the body of Christ. That is what's called being equipped.

The Greek word for equipping in Ephesians 4.12 was actually a military term. It was military equipping. Military outfitter. And it's not just giving the equipment, it's training on the equipment. So like when you have these Navy SEAL teams, right? They don't just say, look, here's all your equipment. Good luck. You're now a SEAL, right?

What do they do? They do give them equipment. And I'm sure they're glad for it. But they also give them training on how to use it. And that is actually the task of pastors and teachers in the church, is preparing the church body to do the works of service. As we put it, I'm not in the ministry, you are. You are, not me. Okay, the last paragraph there. Spiritual gifts are discovered, developed, and put to use as God intended by people who are walking in fellowship with the Lord and not otherwise.

What was the problem with the church body at Corinth? Paul addressed the spiritual gifts actually fairly late in the letter. He earlier on addressed the fact, he says, you guys are walking in the flesh. That was a bigger issue. And that was a higher priority issue.

We can't not walk in fellowship with the Lord and then expect to carry out the spiritual gifts. The spiritual gifts are not to get us attention or to enhance our value or something of that sort. they are properly used and they're properly exercised by people who are walking in fellowship with the Lord. Yes?

As far as fellowship goes, how much of fellowship with the Lord is fellowship with believers? Okay. How much of fellowship with the Lord is fellowship with believers? You ask what's actually part of a very big question. Suppose we said, OK, you know, the fellowship of the believers thing, that's just kind of optional. And really, it's just fellowship with the Lord that counts. And push comes to shove. Just fellowship with the Lord and don't fellowship with other believers. You know, if you've got to go there.

How much does that click with Scripture? It doesn't, right? It doesn't. And so what you have here is one of these issues, well, should I do this or this? And scripture doesn't put it that way. Should you drink fluids or eat? Yes. You better do both, right? If you're simply doing one or simply doing the other, you're not going to be at optimal health. You might not even be walking around very long. The reality is you need both.

And the same thing, we need the fellowship with the Lord, but is that the end? No. We actually need to have fellowship with one another. Why? In other words, what's the title of this elective? What God's Doing in the Life of the Believer. A part of what God's doing in the life of the believer can only happen among the body of Christ.

Yep. Yeah. Okay, doesn't that go along with the fact that Paul said that it was an unceasing prayer? Yeah. And when you talk about the filling of the Spirit, that's in the present tense. So in other words, this is a fellowship with the Lord, like I said earlier. unceasing, and the filling of the Spirit is a continual filling. That's God's intent. So that's priority.

And so from that and through that, you have the fellowship with other believers. Right. And your life in general, which is what you're talking about, walking in fellowship, that is a process out of the first. Right. But you've got to have first, first. Yeah. Yeah, in other words, if you look at it, both of them need to be there. The relationship with the Lord is certainly the priority, but God intends both to be there. Yep. Non-stop.

Okay? How many of you like sort of occasional blood flow? You know? You know, sporadic. That doesn't work so good. Hello? The only thing I thought about was those believers that end up, you know, on mission work and away from the local body. Obviously you have instances where local body fellowship is not as prominent in the life of certain believers.

I do think it affects them, but the Lord does carry them through to an eventual point where they are building a church and establishing local fellowship once again. So it's always a means to an end. Even when it's lacking, it would seem that God is still directing us towards that fellowship.

Let's ask this question. Suppose someone goes out on a fairly individual mission, or sometimes you'll even have it where two or three people, maybe a couple, maybe not, but two or three people will go out and be on something for an extended period of time away from the church body. Is that God's will? It could be, and why? Why does the Lord want the church body in general to get together and yet have people... There is Paul, he says, I sent Titus out to this place, and as far as we know, there weren't any other Christians there.

What's happening there? You're still having a building up of the body intent even with that kind of remote location, you're still looking at building up the body. How? How are you building up the body in that? That man has had the chance to grow in his knowledge and his worship and his walk with the Lord because he still knows that I'm God.

There's a lot of things out here in the world that really irritate me and bug me as far as Let's take the instance, Paul sends Titus here into Dalmatia. By the way, that's modern Kosovo. He sends Titus into Dalmatia. As far as we can tell, he sent him there alone. It appears to be the case with Crete, where he sent him in there alone.

First of all, Paul did the sending. Even when Paul went on his missionary journeys, there was a group that he was sent from. and came back to. So there is still, even with miles in distance, a relationship and a connection to the church body. So with that, that's part one of the answer, is that they're being sent from somewhere, and even if there's no opportunity for communication, You can still have, okay, we're sending you for a particular purpose. We also know that you have been prepared to be sent. I've taken somebody, he just gets through saying amen after he's trusted the Lord, and we say, okay, good, you're ready to go out there into this remote. No, we don't do that. Someone is prepared to go out. in a remote situation. XYZ ministry and go serve for 5 10 20 years or whatever.

Yeah, they never grew in the context of a local body Yeah, never were sent out properly by the eldership of that body Yeah, and another thing that happens is when Titus was gone there was still fellowship in prayer with his body. Mm-hmm So there was still spiritual fellowship even though he was remotely removed and for those that are rogue in a sense Christian mission or Christian just pirates out there on their own. They don't have that prayer fellowship of the body. Those were really important things for me to understand about body growth and being sent out. It is still an extension of the church body.

Even as Ephesians 4.11 says, there's apostles and prophets and what? Evangelists. The first guy going out there. And so you will have, biblically supported, somebody going out sent by a church body and still connected to that church body even though the miles may be between them. Prayers and letters, I mean.

Yeah. And so there is still a connection to the church body even though they may be miles away. And today we have even more opportunity for that. Yes. When you're out there on your own, and you're leading people to Christ, you're taking them out of Satan's kingdom into God's kingdom, and so then you're fronting them more attacks, and so to know that somebody is advocating on your behalf... Right.

That church body is standing with you in prayer. That's one thing. I'll go across an ocean and to another continent and go way away from things, and yet I'll tell the people there, you know, this church body back here, they're praying for me. I'll even ask, hey, would you like these people to pray for you? And so there's a connection there even though there may be many miles from an earthly and human standpoint. Spiritually, those miles are no challenge to the Lord. And if we go back to scripture like we're supposed to do, this is a question, so we should go to the scripture. And in the scripture, if you want to go to the first instance of that is when Christ sent out the disciples.

He was the head of the church. He was the body and he sent them out. The instructions he gave them is something that we can look at, even though he only sent them to the house of Israel, it's still an example. It would be an example within the context of Israel, But still there's some relevance. He did the sending, right? And does he not send us? And what were they dependent on? He was praying for them and all the things that we're talking about happened.

Let's take a look at page 4. We only have half a page there. The discovery of spiritual gifts has tended to be either ignored by the church taught an example done biblically or in one way or another. In other words, these days, you know, in the last 30 years roughly, there's been a tendency for people to pursue spiritual gifts that aren't even mentioned in Scripture. Holy barking, holy mooing, holy barfing, things like that, you know, mock birthing, holy spirit glue, All sorts of things that you say, where is that? You know, it's not in there, okay? It's not in there.

So there's been a tendency to start exploring things that way. Discovered, and I may make this exclusively, by someone individually conducted tests with some supposedly equipped in a seminary context. One of the things I'm seeing is, okay, what do we do with seminary?

We say, you know, in order to really be trained as a pastor, we're going to take you out of the church, and we're going to put you in a place where you're going to be taught by people who aren't pastors. And so these guys who aren't pastors are going to train you, and they're going to spend time with you, and you're going to do lots of book work and reading and writing, and you're going to take tests. And when all these guys who aren't pastors have spent several years with you doing things outside the church context, you will be perfectly prepared for stepping into a church and being a pastor. And yet that's the model that the church has embraced.

By the way, the whole idea of going to seminary is a Roman Catholic Middle Ages phenomenon. And so the tendency is to take something completely unbiblical. Show me a seminary in the New Testament. Ultimately, the closest thing you can find to it is Acts 20 where Paul says, I spent three days with you, day and night, teaching the elders. But it doesn't have the feel or description of a seminary.

And it was in a church context. Alright, so we've got pastors and teachers and evangelists ought to be equipping the saints from what was offered by the apostles and prophets. That's Ephesians 4, 11 and 12. The equipping of the saints ought to be towards the saints doing the work of service and toward the body being built up and growing together in Christ.

One of the things that I will advise other guys who are starting off in ministry Oh boy, there's a confusion there. Starting off in ministry is, as I'll tell them, make sure that you stick to what's biblical for a pastor and not just fall into expectations that are being placed upon you that aren't necessarily biblical.

The record for pastors is bad. Eighty percent of pastors in a survey said they were over the line in their commitments to their ministry versus their family. Pastors are the third highest occupational divorce rate of all occupations. That's really high. Okay, way up there. Pastors are disasters. Yes.

And these days, apparently about 75% of all pastors make it to seven years and then they are out. Because this is not their calling. They thought it was their vocation. 1,500 guys a month leave the pastorate. 1,500 a month. And that's just a U.S. statistic. They say, I'm out of here. Or the church says, you're out of here. Right? So, the next one. The equipping of the saints ought to be to growing of the church body away from immaturity.

This is Ephesians 4.14. No longer children, and then he describes what that looks like. Away from immaturity. First Corinthians, of course, has lots of details on that.

Ephesians 4.14 is the summary.

Equipping of the saints, the fourth bullet, the work of the saints in the church body and the growing of and building up of the body ought to result in proper, purposeful, and intimate function and fellowship in the body. The last bullet, these things lived out among us is harmonious with and in support of all the other ways in which God is working in the life of the believer. If God is working among us in the church body, is that in any way inconsistent with you being conformed to the image of Christ? Romans 8, 28 and 29. Is you being conformed and that individual process consistent with what God is doing in our church body as a whole? Yeah. Sure it is. It's the same God who is carrying out both things. What is God doing? God has multiple processes in place in parallel. Individually and as a church body. That's the way God works.

And those are not at odds with one another. One of the things, I was talking with Jim and Craig yesterday, and one of the things we said is love and truth are not at odds with one another. Some people in the church have said, well I'm going to pick one. If a choice between love and truth, I'll pick truth. And boy, I'm going to stand for the truth no matter how many people I have to smash. Right? No matter how many churches I have to tear to shreds, I'm going to stand for the truth. Or somebody else says, you know, we need to be loving and put the doctrine away. And just set aside all that. Just kind of agree to disagree and love one another. That's what God wants. Neither one of those.

1 Corinthians 13, love rejoices in the truth. Ephesians 4, 15, speaking the truth in love. We're literally truthing in love. The truth and love go together. That's biblical. We're not called upon to pick one or the other. And one of the reasons that that is so is God is love. And He is also truth. He is absolutely and infinitely both. We don't pick parts of His character.

It's as if I were to come to you and say, which part of God do you want? Huh? That's not a question we're asked. Right? Which part of God do you want? You want love and you want truth and you want the whole thing and not one or the other. They go together. Let's pray. I've got noses pressed against the glass here. Okay.

Lord, we do thank you as we come to your word. We thank you for as we look at this building up of the body of Christ. We thank you that any part that you have asked us to take is something you've fully provided for. You provided for in who we are and you provided for in terms of the empowerment and the life for it. We give you thanks for that. We entrust everything to you and we pray for the remaining time we have in this class, just one more session here and give you thanks. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.