David Jeremiah - The Diversity of Unity
Ohio surgeon Michael S. Kavic once wrote in a medical journal that when interviewing candidates for a surgical residency, the qualifications he looked for were not necessarily the qualities you might expect: a high intellect, excellent hand-eye coordination, an easygoing temperament, or even extensive medical knowledge. "All of these qualities have to do with mere talent," said Dr. Kavic. And the quality that he looked for in a candidate above all else was passion.
"Because of a perceived passion for excellence, the public holds surgeons in high regard," he explained. "The privilege of performing a surgical intervention within the human body has attracted the best and brightest of our youth for generations. A surgeon with rare exception truly loves the practice of surgery. A surgeon will render operative care to the best of his or her ability and to the least of our society day or night, regardless of the hours worked or the patients seen. A surgeon who works inside the human body," he added, "should view a surgical career as being swept away in the grand drama of working on God's temple. Passion, a fire in the heart, is what separates a merely talented scalpel technician from a genuine healer".
You see, according to Pat Williams, passion is a natural love, an enthusiasm, and an obsession for certain kinds of things. Our passions grip us. They motivate us. They excite the imagination. They define who we are. At the deepest part of our being, we are our passions because our passions are the things we care most about in life. Our passions drive us and announce to the world who we are and what we are all about. I hope there's some of that passion floating around in your life for what you do because, you see, all of us no matter who we are, whether we're young or old, male or female, whatever ethnic background we may come from, we are all originally gifted from God. We have a gift.
Did you know the Bible says in James that every good gift and every perfect gift is from our Father in heaven? In many respects, all of us, whether we are Christians or not, are the products of a great and giving God. According to Pat Williams, you are a unique and irreplaceable blend of interests, experiences, abilities, passions, and talents. There is nobody else in the world like you. As Zig Ziglar once said, you are the only person on earth who can use your abilities. So before you even come to Christ, before you even know about Christ, you are born into this world as a gift from God, and he gives you all talents. Everybody's got something from God that he's equipped you with. But because you are given a gift on your first birth, you should not be surprised that when you have your second birthday as a Christian, God gives you another gift.
Did you know that? When you were born, you were specially gifted, but the Bible tells you that when you are born again, you get another gift. 1 Peter 4:10 says it this way: "As each one of us has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God". While your actual existence is a gift from God, and if you are a Christian you have been given a special gift, you may be totally unaware of just how gifted you are. Not all of God's children are passionate to discover their special gifts, and some who know what their gifts are aren't very passionate to develop them.
Someone has said, "Your talent and ability is God's gift to you, but what you do with that talent and ability is your gift to God". And that's true for all of us no matter who we are. As we continue our study of Ephesians 4 today, we're going to see how God has equipped each person in the body of Christ with a special one-of-a-kind gift, gifts that are essential to the health and growth of the church. First of all, beginning in verse 7 of Ephesians 4, we read of God's provision of these gifts. It says, "But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift". Now, the word "but" is at the beginning of this section to help us understand that it's a contrast.
Verses 1 through 6 are all about the unity of the body and verse 7 begins a section about the diversity of the body, and diversity is not discounted by unity nor unity by diversity. They belong together. The church is unified because it's made up of a bunch of people who have different gifts but they come together in unity for a central purpose. 1 Corinthians 12:4 through 6 is a key passage. "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all". We are in unity and we have diversity. Our diversity provides unity because it's all in the name of Christ. We are in Christ.
The Bible teaches that Jesus gives spiritual gifts to each one of us when we're saved. It's an imperceptible thing. We aren't aware of it, but it's true nonetheless. And a spiritual gift according to my understanding of the truth is a divine ability that God gives to Christians for the purpose of glorifying God and serving other people. Let me just pause for a moment and tell you, you may wonder sometime, "How do I serve God? He's up in heaven. I'm down here". Well, the Bible teaches very clearly that you serve God by serving others. Jesus said, "If you've done it unto them, you've done it unto me".
So you want to serve God? You got to figure out how to serve people. That's how you serve God. Spiritual gifts that we get when we're saved are not necessarily the same as the talents we're born with. Sometimes they're in the same trench, the same road. You are born with a talent, for instance, to speak well. You might end up being a preacher. You just might be a preacher. But the issue is when you get a spiritual gift from God, it may not be anything like who you are. I've seen people who've gotten a spiritual gift from God that truly was amazing to me because it didn't match anything I knew about that person before they were gifted.
Now, the Bible tells us that there are 19 individual spiritual gifts that are available to us as Christians. We're not going to go through all of them, so I don't have a 19-point message. I'm sure you're happy about that. But let me tell you where you can find the lists. Here in Ephesians 4 and in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. Every Christian has at least one of the spiritual gifts that are listed on that list. 1 Peter says, "As each one has received a gift..." That means everybody gets one. "As each one has a gift, minister it to each other, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God".
Now, some believers have more than one gift. I've known some people who are multi-gifted, and they're amazing people. God has entrusted them with more than one gift. Here's another truth: the Bible says that when God gives us gifts, he always gives us grace to go along with those gifts. That's what the text says. In fact, in Ephesians 4, it says that the grace of God is sufficient for the gift we have received. Now, what that means is the more gifted you are, the more grace you need. The more gifted God has created you to serve him, the more grace you need to exhibit those gifts in the spirit of humility.
This is a good place for me to insert a little saying that has meant a lot to me, that there is no limit to what God can do for you if you will just stay hungry and stay humble, hungry to keep doing new things that have never been done before, but stay humble about what happens when you do it. We need to remember that because God has given us these gifts, because he's endowed us with these promises, he's done that so that we can serve him, and he promises to lift up the lowly and bring down those who are proud. I need to tell you it's a terrible thing to see a gifted person who does not understand the grace that is necessary to go with their gift.
I remember a man that I truly admired. First time I ever heard this man teach the Word of God, I said to my wife he may be one of the most gifted teachers of the Bible I have ever heard, but sadly he didn't get the grace to go with his gift, and after a while it became all about him and all about what he did and his whole thing unraveled. It was one of the saddest stories. Friends, if God has gifted you; not because of you, it's because of his grace that he's gifted you. Handle your gifts with grace. By the way, I read this week that you can pray for humility to God but you can never give him thanks when he gives it to you. Some of you understand that. 'Cause when you thank God that he's given you humility, you're not humble anymore and then you got to start all over.
You know, the Bible tells us we either will humble ourselves before God or he will humble us. So you get caught up in the giftedness that you have as a person and you don't follow the grace pattern, God will do his work in your life. Humble yourself before God or he will humble you. Make sure you understand that. So the provision of God's gifts. And then notice the price of it. Paul highlighted Christ as the giver of spiritual gifts, and in verses 8 through 10, he pauses, Paul does, to reflect on why this giver has the right to give gifts to Christians.
Now, here is one of the most sort of, from our perspective, convoluted passages you will ever read, and I'm going to read it, and when I get done you will understand what I mean. "Therefore He says, 'When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.' Now this, 'He ascended,' what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things".
Now, this verse has baffled believers for centuries. It's sometimes difficult to follow Paul's argument. Please remember we're reading this in English as a translation from the Greek language, and how many of you know it's often impossible to translate one language into another language so that the full meaning of the original language can be comprehended, so you got to really dig deeper. Let me tell you what's going on in this passage. First of all, there's an Old Testament promise. Paul, the master teacher, quotes a very difficult passage from the Old Testament. See if you can remember and see how familiar this sounds.
Psalm 68:18 says, "You have ascended on high, You have led captivity captive; You have received gifts among men, even from the rebellious, that the Lord God might dwell there". Now, this is a quote from David. David is celebrating. This is kind of like a celebratory hymn. David has just won a war against the Jebusites of Jerusalem, and he is now celebrating this, and he is saying in his celebration, "God, you have won the war against Satan and his adversaries. You have helped us be victorious and now you are ascended on high". In the ancient world, when an army would enter the city and would win the war against that city, here's what they would do.
The commander of that army would enter the city and gather up all the spoil, then he would gather up all the captured soldiers and all the other people who lived in that city, and at last he would rescue and set free all of his own soldiers that had been captured by the enemy during the war. Then the commander would go back to his own city and lead a kind of celebratory parade. The army would march through their city to display the results of their victory, the spoil, the captives who had been in the battle, and their own captives who had now been freed. That's what scripture means when it says he led captivity captive.
Paul uses this well-known motive to illustrate what Christ did. He came to earth and defeated our enemies. Sin, Satan, and death, he was victorious over them all, and he returned back to heaven as the conquering king and paraded before all the host of heaven with the spoils of war. And it says in Colossians 2:15, "Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it". Wouldn't you like to have been there to see that parade when Jesus came back from his victory over Satan, sin, and death and celebrated it with a triumphal victory? Notice the New Testament proof that follows.
Now Paul applies this Old Testament reference to Christ in the New Testament by asking this question. "Now this," he says in verse 9. "What does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things". When Christ came to this world, he came down into Bethlehem and was born as a baby. Then when he died, he went down into the grave. And then after his death, he went into the bowels of the earth and he preached the gospel. That's what Peter was referring to in another difficult-to-understand passage. Peter said, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom He also went and preached to the spirits in prison".
In between Christ's death and his Resurrection, in his spirit he preached the gospel to the demons in prison in the center of the earth, then he led those who were believers from having been in this intermediate sort of heaven place. He led them to heaven, and there he rejoiced. And as a part of his rejoicing over his victories, he gives gifts to men, and that's how we get our spiritual gifts. We get our spiritual gifts as the result of the celebration of Jesus Christ over the enemies of sin and Satan and the demons that are involved. According to Peter, Jesus was put to death in the flesh but he was made alive in the Spirit and he preached.
Paul's point in Ephesians 4:8 to 10 is this. It's to explain that Jesus paid the infinite price coming to earth, suffering death, going to the grave, preaching to the demons, coming back into heaven. He did all of that in order that he might rightfully have the authority to stand in heaven and distribute gifts to all of his children. So somebody says, "Yeah, I got a spiritual gift, but it's no big deal".
I want to tell you it's a big deal. It created an incredible pattern for our Savior to come and bring these gifts to us so that we might serve him. These gifts are given to us by God. They were purchased for us by the death, burial, and Resurrection and Ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. We've talked about the provision of gifts and the price of gifts.
Now let's focus on the purpose of them. Why has God given spiritual gifts to his children? Why do we need them? Paul answered that question in verses 11 and 12. Here he says, "And He Himself gave some to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ". Now, follow me. The Bible says that we needed these gifts so that the church could function. Now, Jesus says that he gave us some gifts for the foundation of the church. Verse 11, "And He Himself gave some to be apostles and prophets".
I'm sure, like me, you have seen people on television who call themselves apostle somebody. That might be a nice thing to do, but there's no apostles today. There's no such thing as a current apostle because the qualification for being an apostle according to the New Testament was apostles had to have seen the risen Christ. They had to have witnessed the Resurrection, and they had to have the ability to perform signs and wonders, and they were given to the church for the foundation of the church. Why was that necessary? The scripture hadn't been completed yet. God gave us apostles, and he gave us prophets who foretold the Word of God.
So the gifts of apostle and the gift of a prophet are foundational gifts. Prophets are spokesmen or mouthpieces for God. They told what the Bible said and what it meant, and they foretold the future. In other words, apostles and prophets were given to the church to help us get started. They were foundational pieces for that moment. They're not present in the church today. Two thousand years later we're not still working on the foundation. You got it? So if you think you know an apostle, you know, give him a hug, but don't call him apostle 'cause you're not telling the truth.
Now, the church is the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and by the way, folks, what is that? That's the Bible. Because of the apostles and the prophets, we have everything they want us to know in this book. So the foundation of the church basically is the Word of God. You got it? The apostles in the New Testament, the prophets in the Old Testament, it's the Bible, the foundation of the church. By the way, that's why we teach it in the church. This is our foundation. And then he says there's some gifts for the formation of the church. "And He Himself gave some to be evangelists, and some pastors and teachers".
In the New Testament, evangelists went about preaching the good news. Philip in the book of Acts is the illustration. They were divinely equipped to win the lost. They understood the questions that sinners had, and they were given the opportunity to preach the gospel. By the way, there are many evangelists in the world today. Growing up in a fundamental church where my father was a pastor, we used to have evangelistic crusades every year. We'd bring in a well-known evangelist and he would preach from Monday through Sunday. Every night, everybody would come to church. I know that doesn't sound like anybody would ever do that but was some of the best-attended services we ever had, people would get saved, people would get baptized. They were wonderful days.
In verse 12, he says that he gives us, and I believe the word pastor and teacher go together. Pastor-teacher. These are people who teach the Word of God and shepherd the flock. I believe that God has given me the gift of pastor-teacher. That's what I do. Now, how does that work? This next verse needs to be really understood carefully because it's usually not understood. He gives us evangelists and pastor-teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.
Now, here's the way this verse normally looks in the minds of most people. He himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets. He gave some evangelists and some pastor-teachers so that they could equip the saints, do the work of the ministry, and edify the body of Christ. That's the way people read the verse. In other words, I'm the pastor. I have to equip the saints, do the work of the ministry, and edify the body of Christ. People who believe that usually burn out because that's not what the verse says. The verse doesn't say I have to do all that.
I remember when I first came here. One night I finished preaching, a lady came up to me and she just looked me right in the eye and she says, "You work for me". I said, "Oh, is that right"? She says, "I pay your salary, and you do what we want you to do, you work for me". I just laughed. I said, "I don't work for you, I work for the Lord". But what she was saying is the common understanding that people have in the church. You go to church, you put a little money in the offering plate and the pastor goes and does all the work. The pastor is the one who does the equipping of the saints. The pastor does everything on that list in verse 12, and the pastor burns out because that's not what the verse means.
Let me read to you the way this verse is constructed. For the equipping of the saints so that they can do the work of the ministry and edify the body of Christ. My job is to teach and equip the people who are in the church so that they can take up the mantle and do the work of the ministry, and that's how a church flourishes. Churches don't grow from the outside in. They grow from the inside out through the giftedness of the people who are in the church. It's an amazing thing and more amazing to me every year that I do this.
Think of it like a wonderful orchestra. God has given to us this great diversity of gifts so that we can function and produce something beautiful. Everyone playing their own instrument but all in harmony and Jesus Christ as the great conductor with the glory of God as our great purpose. That's what the church is about. That's what we do. What a thrill it is to be a part of something like that. So we have the provision of the gifts from God, the price of the gifts, the purpose of it. Now, what is the point of it? What happens when a church functions like this? What should we look for? How should we identify whether we're doing it or not?
Well, don't be surprised because Paul mentions the word unity again. He says, "Till we all come to the unity of the faith". Use this giftedness that God has given you along with others and watch how the unity of faith develops. The faith is the scripture. The faith is what we believe till we come to the unity of the faith. Then he says it not only produces unity, it produces intimacy. The second reason why God gives spiritual gifts to the church is in verse 13. "Till we all come to the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God". The word knowledge here is important. It means not just being acquainted with somebody but having a deep, ongoing knowledge of that person.
The Bible says that as Christians we're to give ourselves with intensity to knowing Jesus Christ. We're to be passionate about it. Not just knowing about him, not just knowing who he is, but knowing him in a really personal way. How do you get to know him? You get to know him through the study of the Word of God. You get to know him through prayer. I happen to believe that pain and suffering also are tools that God gives to us so that we can know him. And the Bible says that when the church functions as he has designed it to function, with everybody doing their part, with the pastors helping people be equipped to do their work, the result of that is everybody is getting to know, know God, know Jesus better than they would before. There's an old adage that goes like this: "If you want to know the Bible, be a teacher".
Now, let me explain what that means. Suppose you had an assignment you're going to teach a bunch of 12-year-olds, and you go there and you teach your lesson. It may be a simple story in the Bible. I promise you before you're done they're going to ask you some questions, and the probability is if you've never done this before it's going to be sort of intimidating. So what do you do? You go back home and you figure out the answer to those questions, you bring it back the next week. You do that enough and you're really a student of the Word of God. There's nothing like knowing the answers to help you be a real student of the Word of God.
The Bible says when you use your gift in the body of Christ to serve him, when you commit yourself to be his servant for his glory, the thing that will happen to you is you will feel united with one another and you will grow in your understanding and knowledge of the Lord. He won't be just your Savior, he'll be your friend. He'll be the one who sticks closer than a brother and helps you through everything you're experiencing. And then the Bible says you not only have unity and intimacy but you get maturity.
Paul concludes verse 13 by reminding us that we are reaching to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. In essence, what Christ wants from all of us in the church is that we grow up to be like Christ. Almighty God wants you and me to grow up. He wants us to be in a place where we can look back over our shoulders and see some progress in our spiritual walk. I mean, every year during the holidays and New Year's, we kind of do that, don't we? "Am I any further along in my walk with the Lord this year than I was last year"? If you get involved in serving him, I promise you, you will be able to look back and see progress. It's just what happens. It says to become a perfect man, not sinlessly perfect. It means to be mature.
How many of you know that you can't be a mature Christian if you're not serving the Lord? You grow when you exercise, just like in the physical realm. You can't be a strong person if you never utilize the muscles God has given you for strength, and you can't be a strong Christian if you don't serve the Lord. If all you do is sit and soak and sour, you will just be a Christian vegetable.
You say, "Pastor, that's really strong". No, it's not too strong 'cause I know some people, that's what they do. They come to church every week that we meet... church, but they never lift a finger to serve anybody and the result of that is they become very self-centered, they become caught up in their own needs, they become really upset when their own needs aren't being met. How many people have said as they went to a church, "I don't go there anymore 'cause my needs are not met"?
My question always to those people wants to be, "Well, whose needs have you met"? Because that's how you get your own needs met, by meeting somebody else's needs. That's what being spiritually gifted is all about, everyone ministering to another the gifts that God has given you. By the way, did you know if you don't do that, you leave a hole in the body of Christ because nobody else has been gifted to do what you do? The next reason for having spiritual gifts in the church is so that we'll have stability.
Notice verse 14. "That we should no longer be children..." That word is babies. "That we should no longer be babies, tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness and deceitful plotting". Let me tell you something I know not because it's just in the Bible. I know it by personal experience. Satan is after us. He's not for us, he's against us. He wants to destroy us. He wants to devour our influence. He wants to take us out of our game, and get us off on sidetracks that mean nothing; and he is really good at it.
Here the Bible says he uses the trickery of men. The word trickery in the Greek language is the word kubeia. It's a word for the word cube, and it's from that word that we get the English word cube or dice. Paul's referring to loaded dice. Satan has loaded dice, you guys. He rolls the dice. He knows where they're going, but he's going to try to deceive you. Look at all the words that are in here. Deception, trickery. That's how Satan works. And the Bible says that when you use the gifts that God has given you, you embody his truth in your life and you're out serving other people determining how best you can build the body of Christ from the inside out, you build a kind of stability that keeps you away from being a victim of the one who's trying to destroy you.
You know, I got to tell you this. When you walk with the Lord for a long time and you deal with this, I think God gives you a sixth sense about stuff that's not right. Somebody comes to you and say, "Pastor, what you think I'm..." You don't even have to go home and study. You know that ain't right. You just know it's not right. You have built a grid in your life of what the truth is. You've washed over your soul the Word of God and when somebody comes with something that's not the Word of God you instantly see it as trickery, loaded dice trying to get you off on a path where God cannot use you anymore. Finally, the last result of being gifted and using your gift is you have authenticity.
Ephesians 4:15 says, "Speaking the truth in love, you grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ". What is authenticity? It's speaking the truth in love. Our enemies and the deceivers around us use trickery and cunning. We are called to be authentic. We are called to speak the truth in love. Someone has said that truth without love is brutality and love without truth is hypocrisy. Notice, we need both truth and love in balance. I remember growing up in a previous generation when I first started to preach.
The emphasis there was truth, and everybody had their own way of going after the truth. But there was no love. It was truth, truth, truth and no love, and that's brutality. Nobody wants to be around somebody who's always arguing. You know, I have some friends in the ministry, they're just waiting for the next argument. They're just waiting for the next controversy 'cause they love controversy. I don't like controversy. I'm not afraid of it, but I don't look for it. You know why? 'Cause it finds me. Don't look for controversy. It'll come and get you. But when it comes and you deal with it, listen to me, you deal with the truth in love.
Now, today in our culture it's no longer the truth without love, it's love without the truth. That's even more dangerous. "Why can't we all just get along? I know you believe what you believe and I believe what I believe and they're totally opposite to one another, but why don't we just join hands and kumbaya"? That's the deal we have today, isn't it? But you can't have love without truth. Love without truth is hypocrisy. The Bible says when we allow these gifts of God to take root in our lives, we passionately go and find out what we're gifted to do, we get involved in doing it, God gives to us a kind of inner strength and stability that helps us ward off the enemy as he comes to deceive and destroy us.
And the result of it all, the potential of it all is in verse 15 and 16, and I can just read it. What happens when all this takes place is we "grow up in all things, from whom the whole body joined together is knitted by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share and causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love".
The church grows, ladies and gentlemen, from the inside out. We grow the church when we understand what God wants us to do, what our part is. If everybody in this church were fully utilizing the gifts they were given by God when they got saved, we'd have to have ten services every week. There wouldn't be room for the people who are coming to Christ. And this is not meant to make us feel guilty but to challenge us. God has something for all of us to do. You say, "Well, I'm not sure. You don't know..." Yeah, I do know you, I know you are one of the people that he said would receive this gift. You are one of the each, the each one.
One of my favorite people in church history is Dwight L. Moody. I love this guy because he was so authentic. I've told you before Dwight L. Moody is the one who started the Moody Church in Chicago, the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Moody Press the publishing company, Moody Aviation, Moody everywhere from this one man. But the interesting thing about him was he was really not an educated person. I've read some of his sermons and he flat-out murdered the king's English. He dangled participles. He split infinitives. And people listened to him because the power of God was on his life, but he would never get any oratory awards 'cause he just wasn't an orator.
One time I heard about him going to London to preach in a conference over there. He had a two-part session in the morning with a little intermission. So he preached the first session. When he came back after the first session to preach the second session, someone had left a note on the podium and the note simply had one word on it: fool. Moody got up and he looked at it, paused for a moment, he said, "Well, how interesting this is. I've gotten so many letters during my lifetime as a preacher from people who didn't sign their name. I just got a letter from somebody who signed their name and forgot to write the letter". And I thought, you know what, he might murder the king's English, but he's a quick dude.
Anyway, I heard a story about Moody, that one day a man came up to him after he had preached and he said, "Mr. Moody, I listened while you were speaking, and you made 17 grammatical errors in your sermon". And he gave him a piece of paper that he had listed all of his grammatical errors, and Moody just said in response, "I'm doing the best with what God has given me. Are you"? And that's the question I want to ask you today. I'm doing the best with what God has given me. Are you doing the best with what God has given you? That's a good question. That's a question we all need to wrestle with. God is the great giver of gifts. What are you and I doing with everything we have received?