We're going to begin reading in verse 7 for our text this morning. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. For it says, When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men. Now this expression, He ascended, what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is Himself also He who ascended, far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
And He gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers. Have you noticed that human beings need order in their lives? Now when I say that, you probably think of your basement immediately. I do. Or you think of that dresser drawer that you've been meaning to get to. The fact is that we exist with happiness and security when there is order. Life itself requires a certain order to exist as life. God has made it that way.
God Himself is a God of perfect order and His whole creation reflects that wisdom. He is not a God of confusion but of perfect oneness and harmony. And He has designed that into His entire universe. A few weeks ago when we were privileged to hear the messages from sermons from science and Dean Ortner, we were reminded of the various laws of creation and how they speak of the order in God's universe. You may recall the distance from the earth to the sun is approximately 93 million miles.
That's just enough distance to sustain life on the earth. God tilted the earth to a 23.5 degree tilt on its axis to ensure seasonal changes. The balance in our atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen, 21 to 78 percent, is perfect for supporting life. The ozone layer that we sometimes hear a lot about shelters our planet from the deadly ultraviolet rays of the sun. We can go on and on showing how God has created perfect order in this world in which we live.
But not only in that realm but also even in our physical bodies, God has created perfect order. The older you get the less perfect it becomes. But consider with me that our human body is made of 200 bones, more than that, each of which is shaped and grooved with exquisite skill to perform important functions. To these bones are attached some 500 muscles, some large and some minute, some of them obeying the human will, others acting spontaneously.
But the point is they're all perfectly arranged and in order so that we can function in this realm. Our skin is an amazing organ of our bodies. On the one hand, water cannot penetrate it inwardly and yet to our relief it can penetrate our skin outwardly so that we perspire and keep cool. Our bones are capable of carrying loads of weight 30 times greater than bricks will support. The liver breaks up old blood cells into bile and neutralizes the poisonous substances of our body.
The blood, which we have 10 or 12 pints, is a syrupy substance that distributes oxygen and carries away waste from tissues and organs of our bodies and regulates the temperature.
Our heart weighs less than a pound and yet on the average it pumps 100,000 times every day circulating 2,000 gallons of blood through 60,000 miles of arteries, capillaries and veins and controlling this body as the brain consisting of 10 million nerve cells, which are infinitely more complicated than the largest computer man has been able to design. Our eyes have at least 130 million rods and 7 million cones enabling us to see color and dimension.
And so again on and on we could go with details about our human bodies and how God has made us with perfect order. God does not create confusion and when He called into being the new community, the church, He did not create a community of confusion either. In fact the church is called, is it not by analogy, the body of Christ. His glorified physical body is in heaven where He is at the right hand of God and yet we are in a sense the extension of His life and therefore called His body.
As His body we are a body created with order. What is established order in this new community of the saints? We must understand God's divine design for our order and learn to live accordingly. It doesn't always come naturally or easily for us to do that. We must learn to do it. When we do it honors God and it brings blessing to our lives. The community has one supreme authority. That's the first issue of order I want to talk about this morning.
When God created the new community of His people, He established one supreme authority and that's all. And our text tells us who that authority is. It is Christ Jesus. He is the head of the church, a term that's used later here in this very chapter. There is a reference to Psalm 68 verse 18 in verse 8. Therefore, it says, that is the scripture says this, when He ascended on high He led captive a host of captives and He gave gifts to men.
So here the Holy Spirit writing through Paul brings a verse from the Old Testament and in doing that He rearranges and changes a few things which He has the right to do as the author. And He tells us something about Christ Jesus and the order that He as our supreme authority wishes to establish in our midst. There is a historical context to Psalm 68 of course.
It is thought to be a song written at the time of the procession of the Ark of the Covenant from the house of Obed-Edom up to the city of Jerusalem. It was a joyous day, a wonderful procession which David led and here apparently is a song written for that occasion. In the Psalm there is reference to Israel's deliverance from Egypt, to God's supply of His people in the wilderness, and His choice of Jerusalem of all of the places for His dwelling.
It is a psalm of victory and what we have here is a historical reference to victory that the Holy Spirit brings to the church and applies it to Jesus Christ. He has gone out into battle and has now come back in victory and in doing so He has given gifts to men. Normally when a great king would go out to battle and return victoriously people would present gifts to Him in honor of His victory and there were times when He also would distribute gifts.
More normally gifts were given to Him as the commanding general who led the forces to victory. Here it says that Jesus upon His return to heaven gave gifts to men. Now there is a messianic context to this verse of course. It refers to Jesus coming to the earth and ascending back to heaven. So the Apostle Paul gives us a bit of his own commentary on this verse in verses 9 and 10.
This is parenthetical to his stream of thought but it reinforces that he is talking about Jesus Christ being the one supreme authority in the church. He says He first descended to the lower parts, this one He is talking about. He first descended to the lower parts. What is He talking about? Well scholars take different approaches to that.
I think the best way to understand it is that He is talking about the broad work of Christ in coming from heaven to the earth, becoming a man like one of us, dying on the cross for our sins, going to the grave, being buried there and then being raised from the grave. He is talking about Christ coming to earth in His great saving work on our behalf.
He who first descended, He says, is the same one who then ascended far above all the heavens having accomplished His earthly work, having conquered His enemies, having dealt with sin, the Savior ascended back to the right hand of God the Father from where He is imparting fullness of blessing to His church, His fullness that fills all in all according to Ephesians 1, 22 and 23. The point here is this, that Jesus Christ is the supreme authority in the new community. He is sovereign.
He is Lord of all. When we gather, we gather to worship and to adore Him. Now if this is true, what is our part in response to it? It is that we disown any other authorities in our lives and serve Him alone. We disown all other wrong authorities. We put them away. We discard them. And we recognize Him as our final and supreme authority in life. He is Lord. He is Lord. It is easy for us to establish cultural trends as an authority in our lives. There are churches doing that these days.
We do it too as individuals. We allow what's happening in the world to affect our thinking, to tell us what to do. It happens in churches where because of this trend or that pressure is put on leadership to change the doctrines of the church in order to conform to the cultural necessities of the age. You read about this all the time in the newspaper, particularly as it relates to mainstream denominations. Dear people, the culture is not the authority in the church. Jesus Christ is the authority.
Culture can take its curves this way or that way, its ups and its downs. It does not change what Jesus Christ has said to His church. He is the authority. It's easy for us also to place into authority traditional ideas. Churches are very prone to do this. Once we do something for five years or ten years, we get to feel that that's the way it must be done if it's biblical. We've always done it that way, right? Jesus Christ is the supreme authority, not our traditional ideas.
Now where our tradition conforms to what Jesus says, that's fine. But if our tradition is merely tradition and useful for a time, we must be willing to set it aside for what Jesus wants us to do. This last week I met a lady from India who happened to be at a Bible study. She is the widow of the most recent pastor of the church in Calcutta that was founded by William Carey. This year the church is celebrating its 175th anniversary.
Can you imagine the temptation to tradition when a church is 175 years old? You can almost hear somebody say, yes, but Brother Carey didn't do it that way. But you don't have to be 175 to carry tradition around. You can be 12 years old and do that or less. Let us remember that in the order of the church, Jesus Christ is the supreme authority. He's not stagnant. He's not locked into one method of doing things. He is dynamic. He is living. He is vibrant. He is vital, working through his church.
And our job as a people is to understand what he wants of us and to do that because he's the authority, just one, in all of the church. Now the second issue of order that comes from our text is that the community has all gifted saints. That's not a terrific sentence. I wasn't real well pleased with that, but I didn't know how else to say it. The community, all of us, we're all gifted saints. Verse 7, to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.
There's not one exception. As God orders the church, as He lays it out in order with His arrangement, His plan is that every single person who's a member of the church be a gifted part of that church. That means that He wants universal participation in the church. About one is to be on the fringe or on the outside looking in or to use the common metaphor that describes too many churches these days. We're not to be in the stands. We're to be out on the playing floor.
God's plan is for all of us to be involved. We're all gifted for that, universal participation. Each of us has a divinely designed role in the community, in the local church. Now if you don't know what that role is, it doesn't mean God doesn't have one for you. He does. And just again as in our human bodies, there are some roles that are hidden. Even I have never seen what my liver does because it's inside me that I would die without it. So there are some roles that are completely hidden.
And we don't see them in the church. And yet if somebody isn't doing them, the body suffers from it. One of the grand examples of that is the nursery where we have people who are dedicated and committed to that work. And we don't see the people in the nursery. They're hidden behind those walls in there, but they're caring for the babies while we worship here. Absolutely vital to our having a worship service with minimal distraction. I thank God for them.
And for all of those who are doing hidden things that we don't see but which are important to what we're doing right here now. On the other hand, there's my nose. And every morning I get up and I see my nose. It just sticks out there. And so there are some of us who are more public than others, like the nose. And no matter what's happening in the church, we seem to be there, sticking out. Does that mean the nose is more important than the liver? Hardly. That's just its function.
Do you understand my point here? I don't know how God has gifted you. I don't know what He wants you to be doing in the church, but there is something that you must be doing. You must be doing. For God's order isn't being fulfilled. Because you see, God's order is that everyone be involved in ministry within the context of the local church. Now sometimes that's going to be on Sunday mornings in a program of the church.
Other times it's going to be outside the walls of the church and maybe not even an official program of the church, but an extension of the life of the church, a Bible study in the neighborhood or whatever. But the point is that we're doing something. We're involved. We're not just receiving, we're giving. That's healthy. He calls this God's grace to us. To each one of us grace was given. This isn't saving grace He's talking about. He's talking about serving grace.
The ability to serve God is called here a grace from Him. There's no such thing in God's order for a working minority and a watching majority as happens in too many churches. God's plan is for all of us to be involved in the work of His church. And He's going to get to that in the next part of this paragraph that we'll cover, Lord willing, next Sunday. Now if this is true, what is my part? What is your part in it? It is this, to discover our place and to succeed there.
Did you know that God wants you to succeed? He does. Now success has to be carefully defined. Success in God's mind is doing what we're supposed to do in the power of the Holy Spirit faithfully. Now we may not see the kinds of results that we expect to see, but results are not really the measure of God. God's measurement is faithfulness. It's understanding our place and then in the power of the Holy Spirit filling that spot. Now it may be that as a new believer you don't know where you fit in.
Well, there are lots of ways to find out. One of the best ways is the welcomeers class, as we keep trying to tell you. If you don't know where you fit into the church, start there. Get an overview and then you'll know better how to plug into a piece of the whole. Or talk to one of the pastors or a leader in your small church or your cell group. But come to understand, discover that spot that God has prepared you for in this community.
And because this is His order, His arrangement, begin to fill it. And you'll find your own life growing with excitement in serving Him. Where each one does his God-designed thing, there's going to be order and harmony. Now the third issue and the final issue I want to talk about this morning that relates to God's order in the new community is this. That the community has some assigned leaders. God's plan is not that all be leaders. That's unnecessary.
God has assigned some to the responsibility of leadership. And in the context of Ephesians 4, He calls these leaders His gifts to the church. It says to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. It goes on to quote from Psalm 68 where it says, and He gave gifts to men. Skip the parenthesis. And He gave some as apostles. So the emphasis here in this part of the text is not on the fact that each of us is gifted.
That's verse 7. But the fact that God then gives gifted people to the new community, to His church. Some are appointed to leadership. There are some apostles and some prophets. Now the apostle in writing this is writing 1st century, number 1. And so there were apostles and prophets. Number 2, He is writing about the gifts to the whole church this whole age. As we understand the New Testament, apostles and prophets are not around anymore.
Now in some generic sense they are, but not in the technical sense. Apostles were those who had seen Jesus Christ face to face. And were appointed by Him to the office of apostle. The prophets were those who filled in before there was a New Testament, receiving revelation from God and passing it on to the church. And Jesus Christ gave us apostles and prophets and they are the foundation of the church, Ephesians 2. But He also gave some evangelists.
Now we understand evangelists as being those who are church planting missionaries. Those who are going out, whether it be in their own culture or cross culturally, to win people to Christ and to establish new communities of believers. Those are evangelists. And then there are some whom He calls pastors slash teachers. These are the ones who Christ gives to the church after the church has begun to teach and to guard and to feed the church, pastors and teachers.
Some are more gifted in the shepherding, some are more gifted in the teaching. But there is usually a combination of those two abilities in the pastor-teacher. Now again, as we understand the New Testament, the pastor-teacher is synonymous with elders. Those two words, two ideas are used interchangeably. And interestingly, whenever the word pastors or elders is used, it's always in the plural, not in the singular.
Therefore we believe that in God's order of things, in the new community, there is to be a plurality of elders. Their responsibility is to lead God's people, to oversee God's people as shepherds, to lead with delegated authority from the supreme authority, Jesus Christ. There is a terrible temptation in our day to diminish proper authorities in our world, in every realm. And it's true also in the church.
And this is where we have to lay aside our cultural trends, our traditional ideas and come back to the authority of Jesus Christ who has delegated His authority to elders in a local assembly of believers, a new community. Now these elders are never to be proud dictators to the people of God. They are disqualified if there is pride. But they are on the other hand to be humble servants who must carry the responsibility of oversight to the church. They are not better Christians than others.
Hopefully they are godly men. But it doesn't mean they are nearer the Lord than anyone else in the church. But it does mean that in His ordering of the church, Jesus Christ has given pastor teachers and elders to the church to oversee Him. Now that being true, what is our part in this order? It is to discern their role and submit. It is to understand who they are, what their authority is under Jesus Christ, and then to submit ourselves to their leadership.
Paul has a great deal to say about this in the New Testament. First Thessalonians, for example, in chapter 5 he says, but we request of you brethren that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction. You see, he is talking about pastor teachers. And that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Live in peace with one another. You see, where God's order is being followed, there is peace.
Again, in the book of Hebrews, the writer says in verse 17, obey your leaders and submit to them for they keep watch for your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief for this would be unprofitable for you. So what is our God-designed part? It is to discern the role that Jesus Christ has given to these gifts to the church and then to submit to their leadership as they humbly serve in overseeing God's people.
Now losing sight of God's order will create confusion, disharmony, and lack of direction. It will cause discord and unhappiness. Losing sight of God's order does not honor Him. It does not bring blessing to our lives. So why do we struggle with it so much in the church of Jesus Christ? A local church, the New Community of the Saints, has been given an order, an arrangement by its supreme authority.
One that understands God's divine order for the New Community and conducts itself accordingly receives His blessing. What are the blessings that come to the communities and for that matter the families and the individuals that follow God's order? Let me suggest three of them before I close. Number one, security. When God's order is being followed then there is security, there is safety from spiritual enemies.
There is nothing that gives Satan a foothold in God's people more than disharmony in their fellowship. It is a wide open door and the people are waving the enemy on in when there is a lack of order in the church. When that order is in place there is security. The doors are shut, the bars are up, and God's people are protected. Secondly harmony. There is unity of purpose. There is singleness of direction.
And instead of everyone doing his own thing, everyone is following the supreme authority Jesus Christ who has delegated His authority to the pastor teachers. Harmony results when God's order is being followed and finally there is joy. Why is there joy when there is order? Well, it's just natural.
Don't you find that in your home that when there is disorder, when there is a lack of oneness, when the husband is not loving his wife as Christ loved the church, when the wife is not submitting to her husband as unto Christ, as the church does to Christ, when that terrible condition exists, is there joy at home? Uh-uh. Ain't nobody happy at home when that's the case. When the husband is loving his wife, when the wife is submissively to her husband in the New Testament context, what happens?
There is joy in that home. And it's true in a church too. Because when there is order, we know we belong, we know where we fit, and we know that our contribution is going to make a difference for God, whether we're visible or invisible. It makes no difference. We know that we're in God's order doing what He wants us to do, and that brings great joy. So, the most important question is, are we today living a life ordered under the lordship of Jesus?
In our marriages, in our other relationships, and in this new community, is Jesus Christ truly the supreme authority? Or do we just give lip service to that and live like we want to? Our concern today needs to be that we bring our lives under His order, knowing that He has arranged things for our good, for His glory. And if we will live under that arrangement, He will be glorified. We will be blessed. Would you pray with me, please? Lord Jesus, You are the supreme authority.
To You is given the highest place. At Your name alone, every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess Your worthiness. We need to bring our lives under Your order. We are so prone, because of the influence of the world and our culture, to live other ways, to be doing our own thing, to insist that nobody is going to tell us what to do, not even you. Forgive us of that worldliness. Forgive us of that great sin of autonomy and rebellion. Lord today we would get into step.
We would submit ourselves to Your order in the new community. With our heads bowed, I wonder if there's someone here who would say, Pastor, my life has not been in God's order. And today I'm convicted of the Holy Spirit that there are some things that in fact are out of order. I wish You'd pray for me. Now I don't know what realm it may be in. It may be in your home. It may be in other relationships. It may be in the new community, the church.
But if things are out of order today, will you acknowledge that and your need for prayer just by lifting your hand and putting it down? God bless you. It's when we begin to see the problem that the answer begins to develop. We have to first see that our lives lack order. Is there anyone else? Yes. God bless you. Yes. My life lacks order because it's not under the Lordship of Christ. Pray for me. Father, for these who have lifted their hands, I pray. I don't know the specific issues.
You do, and obviously they do. And so I pray that they will be able to deal sufficiently with those matters to bring their lives in obedience to Jesus Christ's Lordship. And may all of us live there, Lord. Make us one together in our homes. Make us one together in our fellowship in this new community. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Bind us together, Lord, bind us together With cords that cannot be broken. Bind us together, Lord, bind us together Bind us together with love. There is only one God.
There is only one King. There is only one body. That is why I sing. Bind us together, Lord, bind us together With cords that cannot be broken. Bind us together, Lord, bind us together Bind us together in love. And that's a prayer, and I know that God delights to answer that prayer. It depends upon our own hard attitude. If we're yielded and surrendered to Him, then He will knit together those cords that have been frayed in relationships, and He will make us one. Father, make us one.
Make us one together in Jesus Christ, one in our lives. We know that we are doctrinally and spiritually, but in our practice, may we be one and live under the authority of our Lord Jesus, the Christ. In His name we pray, amen. God bless you.