A Shift to Legacy (Ephesians 4:11-16)

Sermon

Key Passage

Ephesians 4:11–16 NIV

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Introduction

Today, we have an abbreviated sermon. We are appointing an elder at the end of our service.

This is an important part of the life of our church. We will talk more about that at the end of our service.

As we get into our text today, we are going to talk about shifting our lives to an intentional legacy.

Here at Real Life, we call this a Reproducible Process.

In the big picture of our church and in the big picture of our series, we are talking about “If You Want to Change the World”

This Legacy idea, the Reproducible Process, is how this becomes something bigger than us.

Christian Starr Testimony

Preaching

To recap our series so far, I hope that you are starting to get the picture of what is being put together.

I feel it is like a Bob Ross painting.

The longer he paints, the clearer the picture becomes.

First, we saw that this whole thing begins with understanding Jesus call of discipleship

Jesus called the disciples and they left their nets to follow Jesus.

We need to leave our nets to follow Jesus

Biblical Foundation

If we want to be a disciple-making church that changes the world, we need to understand that our source of truth and direction does not come from within us. It comes externally from the Word of God.

Relationship

We were created for relationship

Because of this, the church must communicate and emphasize relationship in everything.

Then the church must create relational environments so we can put into practice what we talk about.

Intentional Follower

As we seek to build a life as a disciple, we need to understand the journey will be difficult

We need an intentional leader to walk with us.

We will actually talk more about that today.

The Church

As we spoke last week, the church is the Kingdom of God in this world.

We are the Body of Christ in this world.

The church is the Ekklesia. The citizens of the Kingdom of God that are called together to:

Experience God’s love

Grow in unity

Mature

Spread the Gospel (Make disciples)

As we get into our topic today, I want to give some framework for where we are in this journey.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the Matthew 4-28 Principle

This is what we are going to explore at a deeper level today.

There are two key verses that we use here as the baseline for discipleship.

Matthew 4:19 & Matthew 28:19-20

Matthew 4:19 ESV

And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Definition of a disciple:

Following Jesus

Being changed by Jesus

Obedient to Jesus by making more disciples

This is what Jesus called the disciples to.

That is the point that the disciples began to follow Jesus.

Between that call in Matthew 4, to the end of the book of Matthew, the disciples did step 2.

As they followed Jesus, they were changed by Jesus.

Do you notice that they didn’t stop #1?

They continued #1 and it built them into #2.

Then they continue #1 & #2, then Jesus extends them into #3

So the disciples followed Jesus

Then for 3 years, they were changed and matured by Jesus.

So what is the last step? They needed to be obedient to Jesus to make more disciples

So, when Jesus died on the cross, was laid in a tomb, raised on the third day and about to ascend into Heaven, He said this.

Matthew 28:19–20 NIV

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Let’s break that down. Is that the same command that He gave them when they started? It is.

But now, His disciples were not at step 1 or step 2. He begins with step 3 because that is where they were when He was speaking to them.

Definition of a disciple:

Following Jesus

Being changed by Jesus

Obedient to Jesus by making more disciples

“Go make disciples of all nations”

They were now called to go be fishers of men.

Jesus was reminding them of the last step, because He was about to go into Heaven.

Definition of a disciple:

Following Jesus

“Baptizing them”

Being changed by Jesus

Obedient to Jesus by making more disciples

So as you go out and complete step 3, you invite those who you are fishing for to complete step 1.

Baptism is a picture of putting the old self to death and raising up as a new creation in Jesus.

It is the picture of leaving your nets and publicly declaring Jesus as your Lord.

Definition of a disciple:

Following Jesus

Being changed by Jesus

“Teach them to obey my commands”

Obedient to Jesus by making more disciples

So let’s track this as one of Jesus’ disciples.

They followed Jesus

They were changed by Jesus

They became fishers of men who called others to:

Follow Jesus

Be changed by Jesus

Make disciples who would

Follow Jesus.

Are you seeing the pattern here?

Jesus left them with a pattern of discipleship that would bring them from being spiritually dead to maturity in Him.

What we are talking about today is the intentional process of growth that Jesus calls us to.

Is this process reproducible?

Is it simple?

Can anyone do this?

Putting it all Together

Most of our discipleship will be with one another as we journey through life together and experience the change that Jesus brings us.

I hope that this whole series isn’t confusing. All of the principles we have talked about will now be used to start to build into a cohesive message.

Basketball

I remember when I was a basketball coach for my daughter’s basketball teams.

I learned I had to be super intentional with a lot of parts of coaching.

For my oldest daughter’s team, we learned the fundamentals of dribbling, shooting and defense.

But when it came to our offense, I really spent a lot of time.

I showed them where to stand on the floor. I taught them how to set screens.

We broke down how to set screens into step by step pieces.

Then I showed them how to put it into practice in the game.

We had a great continual motion offense that we would run through in practice.

Every girl knew where to go, when to set screens, what to do next and all with timing that was perfect.

We then got to our game.

I was confident that we were going to do well.

My team knew how to dribble, shoot, play defense, and importantly they knew how to run their offense.

What could go wrong?

Then my team went out there and started playing.

I found out what could go wrong in the first quarter of the game.

They ran their offense, set good screens, got wide open, then passed to the next person, who also was wide open, who then passed to the next person, who was also wide open.

No one was trained on translating the offense to score points.

What was the point of all of this?

It was to score points.

But my team had learned how to run an offense, not score points.

The reproducible process

We are going to look at Ephesians 4:11-16 as our critical text today.

In this, Paul is going to share how and why the church is to grow disciples of Jesus.

Ephesians 4:11–13 NIV

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

This is what we talked about last week.

The church has leadership to make sure that the body of Christ can be built up.

It needs to be built up for a few functions

Unity

Knowledge of Jesus

Maturity

In this, the Ekklesia, the church can look like Jesus in our world.

So how do we do this?

Paul explains this in our next section.

Ephesians 4:14–16 NIV

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

I am going to read this as a whole, then we will break it down.

Maturity

Do you hear the overall language of this verse.

We will no longer be infants

The plan is not to remain infants, but rather to grow into the mature body.

As we begin our journey of discipleship, there is a process of maturity.

There is nothing wrong with being an infant. Everyone is an infant at some point

There is a problem if you remain an infant.

The church is the place where we ought to go to learn the process of becoming mature.

We grow from something called infancy to maturity

There is a vulnerability in infancy.

We can read about this in the text.

Infants can be tossed around by all sorts of crazy stuff this world throws at them.

This world is full of deception and if we do not take maturity seriously, we will be vulnerable as a church to false teachings and the attacks of Satan.

Paul gives three very simple steps that we must do to grow in maturity.

Speak the truth in love (Share)

Ephesians 4:14–15 NIV

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love...

Biblical Foundation

I know we have covered a lot of information in this series.

This is information about who we are as a church and our convictions of what it means to be a church that changes the world.

Earlier, I talked about the importance of a Biblical Foundation

In the Great Commission, Jesus said, “Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

I want you to know that when we take a Biblical foundation all by itself, it is a good platform to stand on.

But it is not just a platform to be right about certain things in life.

It is a pathway to maturity in the Body of Christ.

It is through a Biblical Foundation that we grow, learn the truth and build stability in our lives.

It will not happen through the things of this world or the truth that you hear from inside the box of God’s creation.

God’s truth transcends this creation and points to His very heart.

The word we use for that here is “Share”

When we see people come to faith in Jesus, and leave their nets to be His disciple, we want to put them in an environment to build a Biblical foundation for their lives. This is how they will mature.

Grow in maturity into the body of Christ (Connect)

Ephesians 4:14–15 NIV

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

The second step that Paul gives us here is the necessity for relationship.

A function of the church is to create a Relational Environment for believers.

As we grow in truth, we will grow into the body of Christ as we mature.

This is what we talked about when we spoke about the necessity of relationship and loving one another as a church.

We were never meant to do life alone. Neither can we grow to maturity in our discipleship apart from others.

Within the church, we must intentionally create Relational Environments for people to build trust, relationship and grow in love as we build up the Body of Jesus.

Notice that we don’t stop building on our Biblical Foundation as we grow in our relational environments.

Much like in basketball, we don’t stop learning to dribble in order to learn how to shoot. These things must both grow together to become a mature basketball player.

It is in relationship that the love and the truth of God can be put together for the growth of the Body of Jesus.

We call this the Connect phase of discipleship

We must Share the truth ( Biblical Foundation)

Then we Connect relationally to the Body of Christ (Relational Environment)

Do work (Minister)

Ephesians 4:14–16 NIV

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Intentional Follower/Church

We talked about the journey of being an intentional follower of Jesus and embracing His Ekklesia (church).

This is where those concepts join in this.

We call this phase “Minister” at Real Life

As we learn the truth with a Biblical Foundation, we grow in relationship with God and with the body of Christ.

As this happens, it is a natural step of maturity to find a place to serve.

Every role of service within the church has one function, to grow and build the body in love, as we do our work.

Conclusion

I would like to put the whole process together

The role of the church is to make disciples in this world.

It is how we grow closer and build up the body of Christ

It is how we spread the Gospel to the world around us.

It all revolves around following Jesus and knowing who we are with Him.

As we do this we grow and mature.

I have two diagrams I would like to share with you that simply lay out what the journey looks like

Diagram #1— Discipleship Process

Diagram #2— SCMD

We can’t sit and stare at the playbook. We have to live our lives. But, in our relationships, if we know where we are going to reach the world for Jesus, one person at a time.

And we know how to guide our relationships toward maturity, we will begin to look like the Body of Christ that He has called us to be.

This begins an intentional legacy as a church.

We don’t have a legacy for our glory. We have a legacy and heritage for the sake of Christ.

We have talked about how we cannot separate the MESSAGE of Jesus from the METHOD of Jesus and expect the RESULTS of Jesus.

This is how we must be intentional.

This diagram can take place and shape in a million different ways, but these are the pieces that must take place for us to grow ourselves and in our relationships.

Gospel Presentation

Communion