11/16/25 - Defining the Terms

Recap

Paul is giving instructions to the Ephesians church

He is trying to correct some things before they happen

And trying to establish a baseline for unity.

At the end of chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 4

Paul has prayed for the church

Shared the unity that should be in the church

And then begins to talk about the diversity in the church.

All for the purpose of unity.

Jesus Authority

Ephesians 4:11 CSB

And he himself gave some

He gives the qualifications Jesus has to establish the unity in verses 7-10

And to establish His authority as the head of the church

And the authority to then establish leadership offices in the church

The Offices

Ephesians 4:11 CSB

to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,

These five categories, offices, gifts, functions to the church

Are so that we know who is supposed to be leading the church

Those that have the particular gifts given by Jesus

Have been equipped by Jesus to then lead the rest

I think the big question is

what are the leadership positions supposed to be doing?

What is their purpose?

I’ve mentioned sort of tongue and cheek

That I have been told I only work an hour one day a week

And my response has always been

It’s actually two hours, but who’s counting.

However without a clear direction

the office of the pastor can be morphed into so many things.

While working at one particular church

I was told that I would be not only ministering to the people

Which is quite normal

And planning the ministries for the people

Also quite normal

And counseling those that need counseling

Again, normal and expected

And also visiting those in the hospital and homebound,

Planning messages to teach to those I was ministering to

Participating in funerals and special events

Praying, singing, or speaking at said events

All of which are in the scope of what I was called to do.

I would also have to be the janitor for the church

the first to arrive and the last to leave

Making sure that everything was locked up

And that alarms were set.

making sure that the trash was removed

So not to invite critters and unwanted odors

I also was told I needed to reset the rooms

back to the original set up

So that the next group wouldn’t have to

Move the chairs and tables back into position.

At the time we were also in a building program

I literally was a part of digging the septic lines underneath the buildings

Laying all the pipework for the plumbing

Both infrastructure and in the new building

Designing the new kitchen take was built

Running all the Wi-Fi and lines for all the audio visual.

All this was on top of the ministries I had to keep running.

I’m not sure that’s what the Lord meant by calling

but that’s what the pastor put in the bottom of every job descriptions

When it read

Whatever the senior pastor deemed necessary.

I learned a lot through that experience

including that I could actually do all these things

and maintain the ministries I was in charge of.

And wouldn’t trade it for the world.

One of the things I learned is

there are a ton of people that have better expertise

At putting in sinks and fixtures than I do

Tons of people who knew how to run cat 6 cables

More efficient than I ever could.

People who could run and cut black iron pipe for gas lines

Way better than I could.

And certainly people that could run an excavator

A lot better than I could.

That being said, I did all that

because it was in my job description

And because we, the staff, wanted to show the rest of the church

That we weren’t afraid to do the work that needed to be done

So we worked all day on the building stuff

And then went to the office and studied and planned

Until all hours of the night.

It wasn’t sustainable,

but it was only for a season.

And at the end of the day

The Lord multiplied the hours

And everything got accomplished

And nothing even skipped a beat.

Paul is sharing with the church

there is a structure to the church

Even though I could do all those things

It wasn’t necessary for me to do all those things.

So Paul gives a structure to the church

by sharing the leadership offices

And then gives the purpose of those leadership offices

Purpose

The whole purpose of the leadership is to

To Equip the Saints for the Work of Ministry

Ephesians 4:12 CSB

12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry,

Why would the pastors of the church

want to equip the saints for the work of the ministry?

I thought the pastors of the church

were supposed to do the ministry?

That’s what we get paid for, right?

We’re supposed to do all that stuff

Let me give two reasons why we are to equip.

Multiplication

We can do more together

than I could ever do on my own.

I can do all that stuff

but when we function in our gifts rather than our needs

and we stay in the lanes that God created for us,

more things can be accomplished for the kingdom

The Bible shares this in the context of marriage

A man and a woman get married

There are a number of reasons people get married,

but two biblical reasons for people to get married

are to multiply the ministry they could do alone and

produce more godly people in the world through children.

Both are multiplication

A husband and a wife that are equally yoked or tied in to Christ

are on the same wavelength

and can accomplish way more together

than and single person will ever be able to.

That’s just good math.

When the church is functioning properly

and are on the same wavelength as their husband, Jesus

That church can accomplish way more than if

They are constantly fighting both Jesus and each other.

A second reason to equip the Saints for the work of the ministry

is so that the pastoral leadership can focus

on doing the jobs and gifting they were called to do.

Acts chapter 6 gives a good example of this

The apostles were busy apostling

preaching, praying, teaching, discipling others

setting up the brand new churches

Suddenly there were a group of women

Why is it always a group of women

that get together and cause trouble in the church?

It could be because the men are absent,

Different sermon

A group of widows were frustrated

about not receiving the daily distribution of food.

The apostles got the whole church together

And told them in Acts 6:2-5

Acts 6:2–5 CSB

2 The Twelve summoned the whole company of the disciples and said, “It would not be right for us to give up preaching the word of God to wait on tables. 3 Brothers and sisters, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom, whom we can appoint to this duty. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 This proposal pleased the whole company. So they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a convert from Antioch.

It was the job of the church leaders

notice in verse 2

To preach the Word

And in verse 4

Devote themselves to prayer and ministry of the Word

So they appointed deacons,

which the word deacon literally means servants,

to handle the ministering to the people.

Even from the very beginning of the church

there were separate roles of the leaders and the members

The deacons that were appointed

are literally the servant examples to the church.

The pastors are the servant examples of the church

The pastor equips the deacons to serve

and then releases them to serve the congregation

so that the pastors can do the work they were called to do.

It’s called equipping

But before we gloss over this verse

let’s dig in and define two of the terms this morning.

Define the Terms

The first term that comes up

is the term to Equip

To Equip

Equipping is a medical term in Greek

it means to set a bone

The underlying meaning means to restore something

Back to how it should be.

Anyone ever have a broken bone?

it takes a long time to heal

And it has to be set back right

Or the whole body goes out of whack

And doesn’t function correctly

My daughter Ada has had to have multiple surgeries on her leg

granted she didn’t have a broken bone

she had six inches of cancerous bone removed

and a new bone grafted in with plates and screws

The first bone didn’t take to well to the chemo after the surgery

And it had to be replaced a few years ago.

Now it is healing nicely

However, we noticed there was a discrepancy in the length of her legs

she had to have a sonogram to measure the bones in her legs

And found that one leg is 2 cm longer than the other.

2cm may not sound like a lot

but it’s enough to cause a limp

and throw her bone structure out of whack when she walks.

Doctors are correcting it with shoe lifts

and eventually orthopedic shoes

Imagine the church off just a centimeter or two

just off a degree or two

Imagine what it would look like if we as the church of God

decided we wanted to worship idols

and we believed that there is a God

but He is just one among many

There was even a teacher that lived and taught great things

and died at age 33

He was a guru as well.

When we went to Morrisville to visit the Hindu temple

This was the explanation we got.

Everything they said

was just a few degrees off of what we believe as Christians.

That is just some of the things of the Hindu faith

It’s only a few degrees off.

That’s the importance of equipping.

It means to set the broken parts right

And then let them heal so the body can function better.

If there’s no one in charge of setting the bones right

it’s very easy for the church to go off in a direction

that it was never meant to go.

That’s the job of the pastors

Is to equip, to reset the bones

Also, when a person becomes a new believer in Christ

how much do they know about Jesus?

The Bible? God? Sin? The Holy Spirit?

Are we supposed to leave them to themselves

And figure it out as they go?

I believe there are a lot of churches that do just that

However, God, through the apostle Paul

has just told us that there are people

whose sole purpose in life

is to guide and direct these new believers

or at least guide and direct other people

to guide and direct the new believers.

Otherwise we walk around like a bunch of broken boned

limping, hurting, in pain, complaining about the pain people.

So the job of the leadership is to equip the saints

This morning in your bulletin and on the table in the back

as well as all around the church

there are cards, two of them

These cards have simple information on them

The first is a card that has the upcoming sermon series for Christmas

it has the dates and times of the service.

The other card has the information for the Christmas music service.

These cards equip you with an opportunity

to invite people to come hear

either the messages on Sunday mornings

or the music on one Sunday evening.

These are gimmies.

Meaning that people are going to be searching

for a church to go to on Christmas anyways.

You might as well help them in their search.

You can even take it a step further and

invite them to go with you

pick them up

take them to a meal afterwards

and ask the question

what did you get from the message this morning?

This is me setting the bone of evangelism and discipleship.

and equipping us with the tools necessary

to allow that bone to heal.

I’ll be doing this along with you.

The best thing that could happen is

we have to set out more chairs because we are overcrowded

or we have to have people sit in the overflow.

The worst thing that could happen is we

throw out all these extra cards we made

and they don’t get used.

So use them up. We’ll make more.

For every ten cards you hand out

one person may decide to come.

You are now equipped.

So who are the leadership required to equip?

The Saints

Who are the saints?

These are the believers in Christ.

But it’s more than that

It’s followers of Jesus Christ.

And even more than that, disciples of Jesus Christ

One of the things that I emphasize in our new members Discovery Class

taking place on November 30th is

only believers in Christ can be part of the body of Christ.

A believer is someone that recognizes that

They are a sinner and separated from God

Because of the sin in their life.

Not anything that we did, but it is who we are

Romans 3:23 CSB

23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;

You can’t get rid of the sin in our body or our life

God the Father knew that

And sent His Son Jesus to die as a payment for our sin.

Problem solved, almost

Because now we have to believe that Jesus died for us

And equally as important

We need to place Him as Lord of our life

That means we follow His commands

the first thing commanded is to be a disciple of Jesus

The first step to being a disciple is baptism

Matthew 28:19–20 CSB

19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The word baptism literally means to be immersed under water

If you aren’t baptized, you are still saved

But if you aren’t baptized,

you aren’t fully following the command of Christ.

Baptism shows the world that you are a Christian

Yes, it symbolizes the death, burial and resurrection

It also shows that you have died to your sins

And are in the new life of Jesus Christ.

That’s just the first step of following Jesus

then there’s learning all that Jesus commanded

And doing all that Jesus commanded

That’s the whole placing Jesus as Lord part

The church constitution says that to be an active member of Riley’s Creek

a person needs to be a believer in Christ

Baptized by immersion

To maintain their membership

a person needs to be serving regularly

Giving regularly, and attending regularly.

These are minimal expectations for the disciple of Jesus

Because people ought to want to be doing these things

I was reading this morning from Hebrews 10

this is a verse that often comes up about church members

It’s not on the screen, but Hebrews 10:24-25

Hebrews 10:24–25 CSB

24 And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, 25 not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.

What’s interesting before these verses is

a whole paragraph about Jesus making the way

to enter into the presence of God through Him

and that we can have hope in the promises because of that.

After these verses is a lot to say about those who choose not to attend church regularly

and two things are that either they are lost

or if they choose not to attend

not to be concerned with them that

God will take care of them Himself

because according to Hebrews 10:31

Hebrews 10:31 CSB

31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

So it makes sense that

unbelievers wouldn’t want to be members of the church.

If they do,

Sometimes it’s for illicit gain

or just to cause trouble

But genuinely, there’s no real purpose for a lost person

to be a member of the church.

They are welcome to attend, and we hope they would.

That sometimes brings up the question about discipleship

as a side question

can a lost person be discipled?

the answer is yes.

This happens a lot.

People either think they are saved

or perhaps they know they are lost

but want to grow and mature in Christ

and at some point, they realize they are lost through discipleship

opr by simply attending the worship of the saints

and want what we as believers have

and then get saved.

It still remains that

Those that are not believers in Christ

cannot be part of the body of Christ

I mentioned being unequally yoked

so where does that come from?

The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 6:14

2 Corinthians 6:14 CSB

14 Do not be yoked together with those who do not believe. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

Often times this verse is used for the context of marriage

and that fits for marriage

To be yoked to someone is an illustration of a farming term

Oxen, beasts of burden, were put together with a wooden beam

called a yoke

The yoke was often times meant to train another oxen.

The oxen were tied together and the one would train the other

Jesus uses this illustration in Matthew 11:30

Matthew 11:28–30 CSB

28 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

We can be yoked together, and should be, with Jesus

meaning Jesus wants us to yoke ourselves only to Him

so He can train us, and even give us rest at times

Not that it’s OK to yoke ourselves to anyone else

As Paul puts it in his second letter to the Corinthian church

to be unequally yoked,

will create two oxen pulling against each other in farming

and nothing gets accomplished

and the two will constantly fight against each other.

Being unequal, one will win

and that’s not the picture of marriage or the church.

To be yoked to someone that doesn’t believe

will create two people pulling against each other through life.

Picture this.

Two people that are married

when decisions are to be made in the marriage

and one person is a believer and the other is not

they will struggle or compromise constantly throughout their marriage

One person may just give up

as the other is constantly trying to pull the yoke.

This gets amplified when children come into the picture.

Kids are hard enough to raise without having a philosophical and spiritual struggle

I can’t imagine having to raise children where

one person is OK with the worlds structure

and the other is not.

This is one of the reasons that Paul often compares the church to a family structure

That’s why being unequally yoked also fits within the context of church membership as well.

As we will see through the Letter to the Ephesians

there is no good reason for unbelievers to be yoked

tied together, because the mission and vision of the church

given by the Father

will totally contradict anything the world will do.

Paul will explained in the first letter to Corinth

that we should have interaction with unbelievers.

1 Corinthians 5:9–10 CSB

9 I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. 10 I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world.

We are going to have to interact and associate with unbelievers

otherwise, how are they going to be come believers?

we could just hide away in our Christian holy huddles

and not fulfill the command to make disciples

but that wouldn’t be right

nor would it be fulfilling the command of the church

However, interaction and being tied together are two different things

Allowing unbelievers to be members of the church

tied together with other believers in the church

is a different matter altogether.

In that same verse in 2 Corinthians 6:14

Notice the last part of the verse

2 Corinthians 6:14 CSB

14 Do not be yoked together with those who do not believe. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

What does righteousness and lawlessness have to do with each other?

What does darkness have to do with light?

Same thing what do unbelievers have to do with believers

when it comes to the body of Christ, the church?

Therefore it is Bibilcally impossible

for an unbeliever to be a member of the body of Christ.

Imagine someone with a prosthetic limb

or trying to attach a third arm to a functioning body.

In both cases the prosthetic serves the purpose

Of filling in for the missing limb

But it’s never really a part of the body

It doesn’t flow blood,

It has no feeling

Or even trying to add something extra to a body

again, no blood flow and no feeling

And it just would look funny to

Have a third arm or a third leg

It would really look funny to have a second head

But so many times in some churches

they allow the culture to dictate the programs or the worship

Instead of allowing the Spirit of God to drive the worship or the body.

That’s adding a second head

Because the second head could be culture

Or the second head could be human works.

When we allow those that are lost to be part of the body

we are adding a dead limb to the church.

Remember God doesn’t take bad people and make them good

He takes dead people and make them alive.

I don’t know about you

But I would rather not have to lug around a dead limb

In my marriage, or in my church.

That’s what being unequally yoked can do

And so we don’t do that here at Riley’s Creek.

I want people that are lost to come in and

experience the power of God

Flowing through the Spirit of the alive believers

That are actively pursuing a right relationship with Jesus

We can all agree that the saints are the believers in Christ.

and that the purpose of the saints is to be equipped

for the work of the ministry.

That’s what Paul writes through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

And we’ll eventually get to what the work of the Spirit means

Notice what isn’t there.

What are the quality or ages of the saints of the church?

Seeing as this is the bride of Christ

We should try to understand what’s not there

As well as what is there.

The beginning of this week, I was in Greensboro

for the NC Annual Meeting.

The keynote preacher is a guy by the name of Shane Pruitt

Shane is the next-generation director

for the North American Mission Board.

This was a powerful time during the meeting.

At the end, he invited the everyone there to pray

for the next generation

and how to engage them

and the whole floor of 1,000+ people

came forward and knelt to pray.

It was quite a site and incredible to be a part of.

He didn’t say anything really new to me.

This is information I have been studying about

for almost 20 years now.

Statistics that are showing in some ways

the spiritual decline of the next generation

but recently, showing a rise in spiritual maturity within the next generations.

Even more so than the older generations.

But the one thing he said that about got me out of my seat in an amen

is that there is a mistake that is occurring in the church.

As a matter of fact, it is completely unbiblical

and anything unbiblical is heresy

and yet it takes place in just about every church

all across the United States.

It’s the phrase where people say

the youth are the future of the church.

According to this verse in Ephesians

and many others

and according to what we’ve just agreed on

is that a saint is a believer in Jesus Christ

without qualification or age

that means that our youth, students, children

from the moment they become believers

become part of the body of Christ.

They may not be a member of the local body of Christ

but they do become a member of the Church - Big C

That means they should be equipped and treated no differently

than anyone else that is a believer in Christ.

We are required, commanded, to equip them

Disciple them.

The first main point that Shane brought was that

in order to disciple the next generation

Obedience is priority and to not overthink that.

That means they care less about what we say

and more about what we do

and how we act

both toward each other and toward the next generation.

If we keep saying that they are the future of the church

it’s not only biblical heresy

but it ususally means that older members

don’t want the responsibility of dscipling the younger members

and especially don’t want them in the the leadership of the church.

The older membership would rather

segregate them so students are seen and not heard.

We have effectively treated our students

like second class citizens of the kingdom sometimes

when we don’t want them to be part of the decisions to be made.

That is unbiblical, and therefore heresy.

If this church is going to survive

We need to do better.

Or the “future of the church” will dins a different church to be part of.

And that’s not just the youth, that also includes children.

That means when we have a need to equip our children

we need people that are willing to be equippers

not just childcare.

We need people that are willing to be equipped to equip the saints

including the youngest and most vulnerable ones.

So now that we have the words equip and saints established

Paul says that these particular leaders of the church

have the responsibility to repair the broken bones

Fix the wrong beliefs, disciple the new believers

And mature and grow other teachers

For the work

But that’s for next week.