I'd like for us to pray once more regarding this project before we get into the message. Father, I pray that having seen the production of the spots and beginning to capture the possibilities with these seeds of truth, that you will absolutely excite us and build enthusiasm in our midst, that we as a local church may let others know that we are here, that we care, that we want to share Jesus with them.
May our hearts be broken for those in many of these 50,000 homes we're talking about who are crushed beneath the load of guilt and sin and despair and who are looking for an answer. We pray that by your grace this may be part of your work in their lives, bringing them to forgiveness and hope through our Lord Jesus Christ. Use us as a congregation and we pray that you will raise up the means whereby we can make this tool effectively used. In Jesus' name, amen.
Would you open your Bible please with me to Ephesians chapter 4 as we look today at verses 12 and 13. We talk about Christ's church, a community of fellowship. The Bible says that Jesus gave some as leaders 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 knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
Have you noticed that some words have lost their definition in our contemporary pop culture's jargon? For example, when you speak of something being sweet, it doesn't mean that it has sugar in it anymore. If it's said to be mint, don't be looking for that flavor. If something is called righteous, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's good. We could go on and on with a list of words that our culture has used in a different way than we have been used to.
Not only is that true of words in general, it's also true of biblical words. I think, for example, of the term born again. We have a very clear understanding of what that means, but it is used in our culture today in a variety of ways outside of the context of the Bible. Even atheists will say they are born again about something. Such is the word fellowship as well.
I was recently on a university campus and saw a sign that was promoting an upcoming event and among the things going to happen at this event was fellowship. And I thought to myself, I was rather startled seeing the word there, and I thought to myself, really, what do these people know about fellowship? Fellowship is a biblical word. It comes from a Greek word koinonia. The essence there is the middle of the word that means in common. Fellowship means that you share things together in common.
It is not used in the modern English translations of Ephesians, though it is in the King James Version. But there is a form of the word fellowship that is used in chapter 5 and verse 11 where he says, and do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. Now there truly is the word koinonia in the original language. Do not fellowship, he says, with those who practice unfruitful deeds of darkness, that is, they are in sin. Do not share with them.
Do not participate with them in their activities. The idea of fellowship is found in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 19, for example, where he says, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens. Now the word fellowship is not here, you see, but there is the idea that we share together in a citizenship, whereas once we were aliens to this kingdom.
Again in chapter 3 and verse 6, Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Again the idea of sharing, partaking in it. Fellowship in its essence is what we share together in Christ's community. You will notice in our text today in verse 13, the apostle says, we all attain to the unity of the faith, all of us together. We share leaders to equip us.
As part of fellowship and what we share together in this community, we share leaders to equip us. Christ sovereignly gifts all of His saints. We talked about this last week. Some of those gifted saints, He calls to roles of leadership within the community. That is His order, His arrangement, His structure of things. That order is intended to bring blessing to all of the community. The equipping of the saints comes through that leadership.
This word equipping is a word that is used elsewhere in the New Testament as mending the nets, Matthew 421. It was used in that early day of physicians setting a bone that had been broken, putting it back in place. That's the purpose of leadership. Leadership in a local church is to repair people's lives, to set them in order, to set the church in place, to structure it, to arrange it, to manage it in such a way that the saints mature.
Dr. Galen, who lived in the second century and who must have been a brilliant physician, really he was called crazy, as some of you may know, because he worked on cadavers trying to understand how the body worked. But he was just ahead of his time, we all know that. But Dr. Galen used this term in his writings. He used it in the sense of furnishing a house.
As a body of people, we share the same leadership whose purpose is to furnish us as a people, to prepare us as a community for the work that God has called us to do. When leaders are leading and followers are following, there is a situation where equipping can occur and be achieved. The benefit of what we share through our leaders depends upon our responsiveness to it, however.
In the equipping that is done in the church, we can't sit passively and expect that we're going to be prepared to serve the Lord. Our response has to be active, we have to be involved, we have to be energetic about it. Passive learners don't belong in the church. We're talking about active learning and participating. As a body of people, we share leaders whose purpose is to equip us. That leadership has to be trusted leadership.
That leadership has to be respected leadership so that we as a community can look to them for the equipping that they must do. How does that equipping take place? It seems to me there are at least three means by which equipping takes place in every local church. I don't have time to point it out to you, but if you go to the pastoral epistles, the books of Timothy, written to Timothy, you will find examples of what I'm talking about.
Equipping takes place through the work of overseeing, which leaders must do, through the work of teaching, which leaders must do, and through the work of modeling, again, which the leaders must do. They must set an example.
When you put those three things together, with leaders who are committed to overseeing and managing the church, who are committed to teaching the Word of God, and who are committed to modeling it in their lives before the community, and you have a community of people who are watching and eagerly learning and who are active and who are committed, then you have a situation that is dynamic. That's the kind of a situation the New Testament is talking about in this verse.
It's the fellowship of the saints. Because we are a fellowship, we share leaders to equip us, but secondly, we share work to build us. The purpose of this spiritual outfitting is to get God's work accomplished. We are a saved people, saved to serve. God intends for that service, for Christ to be directed in and through the local fellowship of the saints. Thus, there is no place in this fellowship for laziness, apathy, or retirement.
We have in our hands from God a lifetime assignment, rather we must make place for diligence, faithfulness, and endurance in the work of service that he talks about in verse 12. The God-honoring result of this, when God's people are serving Him, is that the body of Christ is built up. The Greek term here really is house building. Notice the equipping of the saints for the work of service results in the house building of the body of Christ. Have you ever been involved in building a house?
You may have done it once. If so, you may never do it again. It's a lot of work. I mean, even if you're hiring people to do the job, it's still a lot of work, it is a big headache, but it's important. And the finished result is ever so satisfactory as you get into that home that you have labored over on paper and with people who are building it.
And finally comes that day, you get inside, you begin to move your furniture around, and you say, we're here, but what the Bible tells us is that as we are equipped and matured and as we then serve the Lord, the result is that as a body of people we get built. We've been doing that for the last 12 years. Some people are frustrated we're not further along the line. I think house building is a frustrating job. So is building a church.
And there are times that all of us wish we were further along or this were in place, or we would be able to do that, or this. But the point is that as all of us in this fellowship that we participate in, as all of us are being equipped and get involved in the work of ministry, we will be built up as a house of God. The church is only as strong as its weakest member. That's a provoking thought, but it's true. A church is only as strong as its weakest member.
What God wants us to do is to build up one another so that we as a body of people become a strong house. The building of this community is not just the job of the pastors or the staff or the elders or those in leadership. It is the job of every one of us because we are this community. We are this community. We share the work to build up this body of Christ. Every person who's a part of us, it's ours. To do or to fail in, it's ours. Thirdly, we share unity to mature us.
That's part of fellowship as well. Now, in one sense, we have unity that the Holy Spirit produces spiritually according to verse 3, and yet we are told in verse 13 that it's a goal. It's still out there in front of us, that we haven't arrived there yet, and we all know that's true. He tells us that we must enter into it fully as a fellowship of people. We must look to be unified in our faith and in our intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ. We share that unity in Him.
Now we must grow in it and experience it so that we will become a mature man. Notice He doesn't say mature individuals because His emphasis is on what we are together as a people. A mature man, He says, the picture here is of an athlete who has so worked out and so built his muscles that he is well-defined and ready for action. That's the picture here of the church. We share a unity in the Holy Spirit that we want to use to grow into maturity so that we are muscular.
We are able to accomplish the work He calls us to. We're not there yet, of course. We don't yet measure up to all the fullness of Christ's likeness, but that's our goal. Out of this brief message this morning before we come to the Lord's table, there are three lessons for this community of fellowship that I want us to draw from our text and what I've said. Lesson number one, the focus of fellowship is not what others do for me, but it's what we contribute to each other.
In this narcissistic culture we live in, there is a me-centeredness that precludes the work of God and the lives of people who allow that to control them. You see, the focus of God's plan, His fellowship, is not on what others can do for me, but rather it's upon what we can contribute to each other. They give and receive proposition. Even saints who are unhealthy or hurting will gain from giving to others.
If today you are feeling miserable in your Christian life, if you are feeling wounded and hurt, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to get involved in serving others and to get the focus off yourself. Someone says, but I'm not being ministered to. Maybe the real question is, to whom are you ministering? Because you will find that if you minister to others, you will be ministered to. Question number two is that the aim of fellowship is not to be happy, but to be Christ-like.
People today want to come to church for a spiritual high. They want to come for that emotional uplift for the week. I understand that there is emotion as we gather together. There are things to be happy about, but we have to understand something. The aim of fellowship in the community is not just to be happy. The aim is to be like Jesus. And sometimes that comes through tears. Sometimes that involves trials as well as triumphs. Our fellowship with Christ includes His suffering, of course.
Paul said that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings. We must be prepared in the church to fellowship together even when it's not happy, but to fellowship in the hard times and the trials and the challenges as well. Now number three, the key to fellowship is not settling for I might, but affirming I will. The saint who says, well I might do this or I'll think about that, is a tentative saint.
A tentative saint will not enter into the depths of fellowship with his fellow Christians or with Jesus Christ. Fellowship is for those who make commitments. It's required. We rob ourselves when we react ambivalently to opportunities in the church. We must not allow ourselves the indulgence of being fringe in God's work, of just staying on the edge, of being in the galleries. Fellowship requires us to get onto the playing field, to get involved. Fellowship in the community requires commitment.
Commitment is the key that unlocks the treasures of what fellowship is all about. When we refuse to make commitments, we cannot enter into the fellowship of Jesus Christ because He is a Savior who committed Himself to us and requires commitment from us to Him and to each other. The Bible says that Christ loved the church and what? Gave Himself for it. Gave Himself for it. The question is, are we willing to give ourselves for the body of Jesus Christ, for this new community of the saints?
Are we willing to give ourselves as Jesus did and make that commitment? A number of years ago I stood beside the grave of a pastor in whose church I was privileged to minister. He died ten years before I got there, but I stood beside his grave and I recognized that in the thirty-five years he was in that church, he gave Himself for that church. He died of a heart attack at sixty-two years of age because of the load that he bore to build that church.
And I said to myself, I want to be the kind of a pastor who gives Himself to the ministry he's in. I hope that's true of all of us. Just as Jesus loved the church and gave Himself for it so that we too would love His church and give ourselves for it and to it. As we come to the Lord's table today, it will be our invitation.
So that as we take up that piece of bread reminding us of His body, and we lift up the cup to our lips and we drink of it, reminding us of His blood, we are saying, Jesus, as you have been committed to me and to this community of the saints, so I commit myself to your community and to the fellowship of your people. And as we eat that bread and drink that cup, we are answering the invitation and saying to Him, I am committed, Jesus Christ, to your body as you are committed to your body.
Let's pray together. As we pray and prepare our hearts to receive these elements, perhaps it's good for us to take a moment to reflect and to really examine whether we are committed, whether we're willing to give of ourselves to the work of Christ. Let's not be dishonest as we partake of the elements.
Rather, let's be truthful and understand that as we partake of His communion cup, His fellowship cup, we are saying to Jesus, Lord, I am willing to commit myself to the fellowship that you have created by this broken body and shed blood that I remember today. Just quietly allow the Spirit of God to minister to your heart and prepare you for this moment of response. Lord, we thank you for the sacrifice that you made for us. For this bread and for this cup, we humbly express our gratitude.
We also today respond to the call for commitment to the fellowship of the saints. By partaking of these elements, we are saying to you, we are committed, we are willing to lay down our lives as you did for one another and for the work of God in our midst. Firmly secure our hearts as we partake and respond to the work of your Spirit. In Jesus' name, amen. This is my body which is for you, eat it in remembrance of me.
Lord, we remember your sacrifice and the precious blood that was shed that we might find forgiveness for our wickedness and iniquity. Thank you that by this blood we have been declared right with God. We have been forgiven. We have been received. As we partake of the cup, may we even in our own woundedness and hurts receive one another, care for one another, and commit to serve one another that we as a body may be built up.
Amen. When I survey the wondrous cross, I see the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. I see the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. Forbidden Lord, that I should host, Save in the death of Christ my God. All the vain things that Charming God, I sacrifice them to His blood. See from His head His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love, Flamingo down. Did ere such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns come, poor, so rich a crown?
Lose the whole realm, abhor, breach your mind, What were a present far too small? Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my own. Lose the whole realm, abhor, breach your mind, My soul, my life, my own. Jesus said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Drink it in remembrance of me. As we drink of His cup, as we eat the bread reminding us of His body, We should call to mind that ours is a fellowship of suffering. God calls us to that kind of fellowship and faithfulness in it.
That kind of fellowship requires commitment, and I think of the aged polycarp who in the first century was brought before a stake to be burned to death. He was asked if he would not recant of his faith in Jesus Christ, and he said, Eighty-six years I have served Him till now, and He has not failed me. I will not fail Him now. And he allowed his life to be taken.
May that kind of commitment, recognizing what fellowship means, may that kind of commitment spur us on to faithfulness in 1993 to serve Jesus Christ as a community of people. Let's stand together and be dismissed. Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen. related.