Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
If I brought a box of gears to your house, dumped them on your dining room table, and said, “can you make something out of these,” how well would you do?
Would it stump you?
Would you waste a lot of time trying to get them together?
At the same time, a watchmaker may take the same gears and start assembling them.
The teeth of small ones would fit into the gears of larger ones.
They would begin to turn.
A timepiece that works together to make something vital would come out of this mess.
That’s the puzzle of the church.
In it are different people.
Some speak other languages.
All have different temperaments, personalities, and abilities.
Yet, somehow, God is supposed to take this heap of humanity and make them into something.
That is what our lesson is about today.
How does God take all the different pieces to make it one church that has lasted through centuries?
It comes down to what we do but what God gives us.
Discussion
The Dilemma
Now, I know that we have well-coached ourselves to give the correct answer.
What do you think of when you say, “church?” “The church is the people, not the building.”
But is that how you consider it.
Let me give you a few examples:
I’m going to church.
(Can mean “I am going to the church building.”)
During church, we sang… (Church now is an event such as worship.)
I gave $50 to the church.
(Church has transformed into an organization.)
Joe is part of our church.
(The church is the people.)
We know that the church is people, but they are also organized, go to one location, and do things together.
“Church” seems far broader in our vocabulary than in our theology.
This lesson emphasizes the pure form of “church” as the body of Christ accomplishing Christ’s purposes.
But we arrive at this lesson fresh off the heels of a seven single-word list.
“There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
(Ephesians 4:4–6, ESV)
The series of “one” is essential.
We know that there is only one hope, one Lord, and one God.
There is only one body and only one Spirit.
Even baptism, which seems to be distorted into various forms, is a single item for Paul.
After all, if all other items in the list mean “one and one only”, it also must apply to baptism.
But that seems to dictate something called “uniformity.”
If there is one and only one, aren’t we all the same?
Some have tried to do it that way.
One of the strange aberrations in the modern churches of Christ was a group popularly known as the Boston Movement.
It started in Florida and moved north to Boston.
The church’s goal was noble, to elevate discipleship in the church.
But even noble purposes go awry in practice.
Suddenly, new converts were instructed concerning who their friends could be, people they could go on a date with, movies, and television to watch.
The theory was if we were to reproduce disciples, they would look alike.
Studies done by people like Flavil Yeakley told a story of people whose personalities were forced into a very human mold.
It created terrible damage to the people they wanted to change into the image of Christ.
Instead of Christ’s image, it was the image of the leading preacher of that church.
It seemed like a good idea, but it was built on uniformity, not unity.
The two are not the same.
In this lesson, we seem to spin around in a different direction.
In the last lesson, we spoke of “oneness,” but in this lesson, the concept of “different.”
takes center stage.
How can you have oneness and still have differences which unique to individuals?
The answer is that God’s unity is not found in man’s uniformity.
We want the church to be efficient, like a corporation churning out widgets.
But the model of corporate sameness skews the reality of the Biblical view of unity.
God’s unity can be found in two verses in the passage we study this morning which emphasize a single characteristic.
“He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)”
(Ephesians 4:10, ESV)
“until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” (Ephesians 4:13, ESV)
Did you catch the repetition?
It is the concept of the “filling or fulness of Christ” in the church.
Unity is not about being like one leader.
It does not conform to a standard of behavior defined by an organization.
It is about reflecting the ideals and life of Christ.
If his presence does not fill the church, it matters no matter how polished the services are or how popular the programs are.
The world must see Christ in the church.
And that’s for a reason.
The way the world sees Christ is through the church.
If it presents an inaccurate picture, the lost have no way of finding the Savior.
So how does God accomplish this grand purpose through us, the church?
The Plan
It is crucial to see the distinction between an organization and a body.
A body is comprised of different organs.
And they do not operate the same way at the same time.
You can take your index finger and use it to punch buttons, but your little toe is not trying to do the same thing.
Instead, it stabilizes the body to let the other activity take place.
To produce the church as a body, we must have what a human body has—a creator and designer.
Think about your body for a minute and the gifts God put in you for your body to function.
For instance, take the opposable thumb.
It might get in the way of a hammer driving a nail, but it is necessary to hold the hammer.
Or take your ears.
When you get older, you may find age-related hearing loss.
That makes you appreciate what God gave you.
You can be in a crowded restaurant and isolate the conversation you want to hear, and your ears will focus on it.
The same can be said of so much of what makes up our bodies.
We truly are gifts put together in unique ways.
The premise of this lesson is that God gives gifts to make a functioning body.
In verse 7, Paul says grace is given to us.
“But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”
(Ephesians 4:7, ESV)
Paul uses the term “metered” to describe a measured process.
A meter lets the right amount of something through at a time.
God gives what we need in the way we need it.
Verses 8-10 reflect an allusion to Psalm 68.
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