Brothers and sisters, could we please turn to our New Testaments, to the book of Ephesians?
There is so much this morning that we need to be grateful to our Lord for. We are grateful for the opportunity He gives us on a regular basis to come and meet with Him at His table. We are also so grateful that He, in His mercy, has put in our hands a copy of His written Word. And He has also sent the Holy Spirit to take those words and make them understandable and meaningful for our lives.
And when we go through very challenging situations, it seems that the Lord is so utterly faithful to take His Word and make it very personal and very helpful to us. I think that probably for us personally, and for us as a nation, we have never undergone anything of the magnitude that we have experienced this last week. For myself, I have to say, even now, it is almost unbelievable.
And so it would seem to me that it would be the Lord’s heart that we turn our focus to the highest revelation that God has given us. Now, this is a personal decision on my part, but in my estimation, the letter to the Ephesians is God’s high-water mark of revelation.
So I would like to turn our hearts there this morning. I am going to be reading some different Scriptures from different places in it, but maybe you would find this coming week some real help from this letter. Now, we know that the Lord’s Word is from Genesis 1 all the way to the end, and so He can personalize it. But I would just like to encourage you to give yourself to a serious reading of this portion of the Word of God.
Let us begin by reading Ephesians 1:3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
The last part of Ephesians 1:8:
In all wisdom and insight
He made known to us the mystery of His will,
according to His kind intention which He purposed in His Son,
with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times,
that is, the summing up of all things in Christ,
things in the heavens and things upon the earth.
Beginning in the middle of Ephesians 1:19:
These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might
which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead
and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule and authority and power and dominion,
and every name that is named,
not only in this age but also in the one to come.And He put all things in subjection under His feet,
and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Ephesians 4:
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
showing forbearance to one another in love,
being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Verse 14:
As a result, we are no longer to be children,
tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine,
by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;
but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,
from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies,
according to the proper working of each individual part,
causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
Just ask the Lord to help us.
Lord, we thank You that already this morning You have granted us time in Your presence to, in our own way, express our hearts and tell You of our love for You, and also to seek to put You in Your proper place during these days.
Thank You now that, as we continue, we have the promise of Your presence. And Lord, we ask You that, in ways that we do not even know how to ask, You would be with us in a special way today; that You would take Your written Word and Your spoken Word, anoint it by Your Spirit, and make it a living Word in each one of our hearts.
It gives us great encouragement, Lord, to know that You know everything about us, and You love us perfectly. And we want to rest today in the fact that, by Your love, You will speak to each one of our hearts that which we need to hear at this time. So we entrust ourselves to You and ask You, Lord, to speak to us during this time together. And we would ask it in Your name. Amen.
Some of you know that the apostle was in a very difficult situation himself when he wrote this letter to the Ephesians. He was imprisoned in a Roman jail, under the authority of the Roman government, for one simple crime: preaching the Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And from the human standpoint, it would seem like this is not the right place for this man to be. This man ought to be out on the trail proclaiming the gospel, maybe going by and encouraging some of those to whom he had already preached the gospel. But in God’s wisdom, He had this man seated in a prison, restricted in many ways.
And during this time, it seems to me that the Holy Spirit aided Paul by enabling him to see more clearly and to be able to enunciate and communicate what God had made real to him regarding what God was seeking to accomplish on the earth.
So we have what we sometimes call the twin letters: Ephesians and Colossians. When you read these two letters, you see a lot of similarities, but the focus is one. The focus is on the headship of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Now, when Paul begins his letter, you will notice that he begins with worship:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, that is not a doctrinal statement, even though it is doctrine that can be proven to be true. But it is worship. Here is this man, in this situation, finding worship welling up within his heart. When he sees what it is that God has accomplished in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only appropriate response is for him to worship.
And so he begins the letter by blessing:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Now, this is something that came to the heart of the apostle Paul. I am sure that every one of us, if we were given the opportunity, could enumerate the various blessings with which God has blessed us. But here is a man who is seeing something that is good for us to be clear about in our own hearts and minds: God has blessed us with every—not some, not the best, not most, but every—spiritual blessing in heavenly places.
Now, it seems to me that when you go over to the Colossian letter—and I have to be careful this morning because it is hard to stay out of Colossians when you are in Ephesians—Paul tells us twice that all the fullness of deity, of God, of the Godhead, is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I hope that we see that God’s ultimate demonstration of love is in the giving of Himself. It is possible for God to bless us in ways other than giving us Himself, but the ultimate blessing is that God would give Himself to us. And He has done it—not just a little bit, but He has taken all that is in Himself, placed it in His Son, and then given His Son to us as an absolutely free gift.
And in the Lord Jesus Christ, we find all the spiritual blessings that we will ever need: now, tomorrow, the next day, and all the way into eternity. There is not one thing—there is no more for God to give. He has taken all His fullness and placed it in His Son, and then given us His Son. We have all the fullness.
It is good for us to be reminded that God has not withheld one good thing from any one of His children. Not only that, it is available to every human being who is presently living, who has ever lived, and who will live on the face of this globe. There is an unlimited, inexhaustible supply, because we are talking about an eternal God who has eternal resources.
And so Paul begins by calling attention to what God has done in the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, this morning I was up quite early, and I felt like I needed to turn on the television. It seemed a little early to do so, because it was six o’clock, but I turned it on. And I was amazed at what I heard this man say. I am not going to mention who it was, because you would get your mind going someplace.
But you know what he said? He said that you will not find all you need in Jesus; there is something else beyond Him. So he pointed to all the faults and weaknesses within Christianity, and he held up another book that was not this Book. He said, “In addition to the Bible, you have to have this book. And in addition to Jesus, there is somebody else that you need to know.”
Well, he did not get that information or that revelation from the Bible or from the God of the Bible. Our God has made it clear that everything that you and I will ever need, under any circumstance now or into eternity, has already been abundantly and completely supplied for us in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, when we drop down to those other verses in Ephesians 1, beginning in verse 8, we see something of the problem. In reality, brothers and sisters, when Paul started fellowshipping with the Ephesian church about all these blessings with which God had blessed him, he got so overwhelmed that he forgot to put in any periods.
From Ephesians 1:3 to Ephesians 1:14 is all one sentence. And so it makes it difficult for the translators. How are you going to translate it? You put in a lot of commas and a lot of semicolons—whatever you use—to divide up his thoughts, but he never put a period. Do you see what is happening to this man? He is so overwhelmed by what he sees that he cannot even put a period.
And so, in my translation, I have to begin in the middle of verse 8:
In all wisdom and insight
He made known to us the mystery of His will,
according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him,
with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times,
that is, the summing up of all things in Christ.
Now, brothers and sisters, we heard this week, some of us, that there is a lack in human ability to explain the kind of things that have happened in the world this week. The best minds do not take that situation and fit it into everything that is happening.
And here, what we find is that the apostle Paul, through revelation, says to us that in all wisdom and insight, He has made known to us the mystery of His will. This means that God has taken the deepest secret of His heart and told us that secret.
Now, in previous generations, it had not been known. Man had to grope. But with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, God has opened up the deepest part of His heart and shown us what it is that He is after.
I think, for myself and for those of us who are the Lord’s people, that we need to see this as a tremendous blessing: that God would reveal to mere human beings the deepest secret of His heart.
Paul goes on in these verses to help us understand that what God is ultimately doing is summing up all things in Christ. I know that we do not live in a country or a generation that likes to meditate. We are too busy. Most of our meditation, if we are people who drive automobiles, is driving down the interstate at sixty-five miles an hour and maybe catching a couple of thoughts at that point. But we are too busy.
But think about it, my brothers and sisters: when our Lord Jesus was there on the cross, He was accomplishing not just something personal for us. Oh, it was personal. But the work that He did, which He said He finished, was a universal, eternal work that affects all of creation. And so, in Christ, God is summing up all things.
I think Paul had a struggle trying to find the right word that would explain this whole thing that he saw: that God was taking the fragmented situation that He found in His universe and was now bringing it all back to its original purpose and design.
You see, if we start at the wrong point, it seems to me that we come out at the wrong place. Sometimes, my brothers and sisters, because we do not take time to stop and think our way through these things by the help of the Holy Spirit, we come to wrong conclusions about things.
You know, Genesis 1:1 is a very simple statement. What does it say?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And you will find that at the end of that there is a period. That is it. Now, I know you do not have to agree with me on this, but I am telling you what has helped me. The next verse says:
And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep.
Now, the struggle that I have is that I have difficulty believing that a perfect, omnipotent God would create a void, emptiness, and darkness. Something happened. Some fragmentation, some catastrophe, happened so that this planet on which you and I presently live was empty and void, and darkness was there.
I cannot believe that a perfect God, who only does perfect things, could create something imperfect. So something happened that was not recorded for us there, in eternity past, that caused this catastrophe to appear on this globe.
I would suggest that we go to Romans 8, and there you will discover that the whole created order is in travail. It is like a woman about to give birth to a child. The agony—all of that is happening. There is something going on in this universe, my brothers and sisters, that God is working toward a goal. It has not been attained yet, but since He is God, who can stay His hand?
We have to bow our knee to His wisdom, His timing, and His way. We would not have done it the way He has done it. But I can assure you, my dear brothers and sisters, when the job is finished, you know what will come out of our hearts and out of our mouths—hopefully aloud? Amen. This was the right way.
But what we need to see is that what God has done to bring this fragmented situation back into wholeness, He did in His Son. And now He is summing up all things. He is bringing everything, once again, under the rulership, the headship, of His Son.
When did God decide that His Son would be the ruler of this universe? Not after He created it—before it was ever created, God made that decision. We do not need to let ourselves think that Jesus, that Christ, came into being in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. We need to know that we are talking about Someone who is eternal, who is a Person of the Godhead.
He is as much God as God the Father is. He is one hundred percent God. He has always been God. He was God before He was ever born into the human race, and He is still God. It was God’s decision in eternity past that His own Son would have the place of centrality in this universe.
Now, that decision was challenged, and that is what I believe created the catastrophe in Genesis 1:2. But did we think for a moment that an eternal, all-wise, all-powerful God is going to stand for that? He is going to find a way to bring His universe back into wholeness.
I have to confess to you, I know next to nothing about computers. But I have a son who knows some things about computers, and every once in a while he will say to me, “Ernie—I mean, Dad—have you defragmented your computer lately?” Defragmented your computer? I had no idea what he was talking about.
But they have designed a computer in such a way that there is a program you can use that takes the fragments that come about by just using it and puts it all back together again, so that the computer works better. It functions better. It does its job better.
Now, my brothers and sisters, by Satan’s rebellion against the throne of God, fragmentation has set in. But God has decided—and no one can change His mind—that His Son and His Son alone is going to have the place of preeminence in His universe.
And the mystery of God’s will is that He is summing up all things. He is taking all the fragments, all the things that are wrong, and He is at work in ways that are beyond our ability to understand. He is bringing it all back into a wholeness.
Why do you think our Lord Jesus came here? Certainly, one of the great things He came to do was to become the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But do you think that God is satisfied just to have sins forgiven? I do not think so.
Our God cannot be satisfied until everything has been totally restored. And so it seems to me that from Genesis 1:2 all the way through to the end of the book of Revelation, God’s work is a work of recovery. He has been restoring what has been made a mess.
Now, when God created man, as Genesis 1:26 declares:
Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.
What was it that He said He wanted them to do? What was it, my brothers and sisters? To take dominion, to take rulership—for man to be in a place of representing God’s governmental interests.
Into this darkness, God created and sent light. He set things up so that man could inhabit this earth, and then He put man in the position of representing His government here, representing His kingdom. We understand, my brothers and sisters, God’s kingdom is an eternal kingdom. How long has God’s kingdom been in existence? It has always been in existence.
It was challenged, and because it was challenged, God’s judgment came. But do you think for a moment that the Lord is going to sit back, withdraw, and give in to the attack of the enemy? Not at all. He has set in motion a way, and He has chosen—oh, my brothers and sisters—He has chosen to take human beings.
Can you believe it? I cannot. I am sorry, I cannot believe it. But this is God’s glory: that He would take mere creatures, human beings, and give them the responsibility of bringing His government to this world—for recovering, for restoring, for defragmenting what has been fragmented.
It is no wonder that the enemy came and made this assault on Adam, because he understood that in Adam, God’s hope was that He would use this man and his descendants to overthrow the kingdom of darkness.
So he came through the weakest link. Please forgive me, sisters, if that comes across the wrong way, but he knew how to get what he wanted. And you know the story: the woman ate of the tree and then gave to her husband. She did it being deceived. Adam knew it, and he still went on and did it. He knew what he was doing.
And so, at this point, a couple of things happened. First, man was disqualified to represent God’s government. If you cannot obey God, how is He going to put you in a place of representing His government? So Adam disobeyed, and therefore he was disqualified.
But at the same time, by default, Satan has now become the god of this world. He is given freedom to set up his kingdom and do his things in his way here on this earth. And the interesting thing, brothers and sisters, when you read the Bible, is that of all the multitude of planets in the universe, the earth and the earth alone is the focus of God’s recovery work.
As far as we can tell, all the other parts of the universe are in harmony with the will of God, except this planet upon which you and I live.
What Paul tells us is that God has decided that His Son would have the place of centrality. Over in Colossians, Paul puts it this way: that He might have the preeminence in all things—first place in all things.
Now, because of the nature of the enemy, he is not just going to quietly allow this to happen. He is going to do everything that he is capable of doing to keep God from defragmenting and recovering His universe in fullness.
But you notice that the Word of God has a lot to say about wisdom. And even though our enemy is wiser than we are, he is not wiser than Him. The interesting thing and the glorious thing to me, my brothers and sisters, is that sometimes, unbeknownst to him, Satan becomes one of God’s most faithful servants. He ends up doing God’s work unbeknownst to himself.
So please, in the face of what is happening, just remember: there is one Sovereign. One Sovereign. Sometimes it looks like the enemy is sovereign, but it only looks that way to our eyes. There is only one Sovereign.
And so God has let us know, out of the secret of His heart, that His objective, His goal, His intention, is that His Son would have first place in everything. He would sum up all things.
Paul uses a Greek word that has nineteen letters in it. That is why I say he searched for a word that would best describe this. I wish I could pronounce it, but any Greek I knew is gone, so I will not even attempt it this morning. But it means to head up again: to bring everything under the headship, the rulership, the government, the sovereign control, of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Now, my brothers and sisters, I do not know what you think about that, but I think that is good news. That is the gospel. It is not just the gospel of forgiveness. Think about it: would you be satisfied with a work that God would do that would forgive you of your sins but leave you the way you are now? Would you be satisfied? I would not be.
I would not be satisfied for me, and I would not be satisfied for you, because I have to live with you for eternity. I hope there are some changes made. You have to live with me for eternity. You had better hope there are some changes made.
So God is not satisfied with just forgiving us of our sins. He wants to change us and use us as instruments of recovery in this great work He is doing.
Now let us look for a few moments at these verses at the end of Ephesians 1. After Paul lists the spiritual blessings with which God has blessed us, he then prays for the Ephesian believers. You remember what he prays? Three basic things: that they may know what the hope of their calling is, what is His inheritance in the saints, and what is the greatness of His power that works in us.
Then, in the middle of verse 19, he says:
These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might,
which He brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead
and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.
Now, my brothers and sisters, when we are looking at this whole event of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are going to do ourselves a tremendous disservice if we only stop at the event where the Lord Jesus was crucified. We need to see that; we need to be clear about what God was doing. But do not stop there. Move on to resurrection.
See that this was part of God’s work: He raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. But He did not stop there. He took another step, a very important step: He exalted Him to His own right hand.
Now, do you know what will keep our foundation from being shaken when certain things happen, like what happened just last week? It is for us to know, in the depths of our being, that we know that we know that we know that there is a Man seated at the right hand of Majesty on high, and He is in charge. He is in control, even though it does not look like it.
He is in control. He allowed whatever forces there were behind this whole thing. He allowed it to happen. That does not mean He did it, but He permitted it.
You see, we have a problem, my brothers and sisters. We want other people’s freedom to be limited, but not our own. What do I mean by that? We ask, “Why did God not stop these people? Why did He not intervene?” Well, why does He not intervene in your life? Why did He not just take you by the nape of the neck when you were going the wrong way, grab you, pull you out, set you down, and have a good talk with you?
Why does He not do it? You see, we want Him to do it with other people, but we do not want Him to do it with us. You understand what I am trying to say? We have this erroneous way of looking at things: that God ought to sovereignly lay hold of people who are going to do evil, but please let me be free to do what I want to do.
Now, since we are creatures, we are not in the place of standing in judgment of the Creator. We should not question Him. Now, I know that we do, but that does not make it right.
But my brothers and sisters, may God do a work deep in our hearts so that, when unexplainable things happen, the last question we would ever think about asking is, “Why did God do this?” It reveals that there is something in our thinking that is wrong about God Himself. We do not see Him as the One He really is.
You know, my brother, He is righteous. He is eternally righteous. Do you know what that means? It means it is utterly impossible for Him to do anything that is wrong. And you and I need to be clear about this. It needs to get into the deepest core of our being and lay hold of us so that we do not ask those kinds of questions.
I realize we are human beings, and when we see these things happen, they have an impact on us. But, my brothers and sisters, you and I need to be clear that even though God has permitted it, He was not the author of it. It did not originate with Him.
I remember a number of years ago, in 1970, we were invited to become the pastor of a church in Long Island, New York. We were flying up to Long Island, and there was a gentleman sitting beside us reading a newspaper. Almost out of nowhere, he made this statement: “What kind of a god would do that?”
Well, you can be sure he got everybody’s attention. But what we found out was that he was reading an article describing a father and his son who were out mowing the grass. Through some freak event, the little boy got caught in the lawn mower and was mauled to death.
Now, this man reading the article became judge and jury immediately. “What kind of a god?” There was no evidence that God did it, but that was the conclusion he came to. We have all been affected by the poison that enables us to think that way. That is why we need to ask the Lord to purge us of that kind of poisonous thinking.
So that we see that what God has done is act sovereignly by exalting His Son to His own right hand. Now, why is He there? What right does He have to be there? Well, my brothers and sisters, this is where Revelation 5 really helps us. You know why He is there? Because He is the only One worthy to be there.
He is the only One capable, qualified, and able to be in that position. But please do not ever forget: He is a Man. Oh, He is God. He is one hundred percent God, but He is also one hundred percent Man. He is Man as God always wanted man to be. He is God’s example, seated in the position that God always wanted a man to be in.
So He is there. He has been there for two thousand years. He has been exalted to God’s right hand. He has been given the name that is above every other name. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto Him. Nothing happens on this earth unless He permits it to happen.
And He permitted this thing to happen. I am not going to ask Him why. What I want to try to do is ask Him, “Where do I go from here? What is my next step? What responsibility do I have?” And I would hope, as an assembly, we would be open to asking the same thing.
Why? Because Paul says, look at Ephesians 1:22:
And He put all things in subjection under His feet,
and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Now, here is what I understand, my brothers and sisters. I could be one hundred percent wrong, but this is the way I see it: when the Lord Jesus was exalted to the right hand of His Father, He took this position of sovereign rulership over the whole universe, including this earth.
This was a decision that God made. Jesus was not voted into that position. Our opinion was not asked for. It was the sovereign decision of a sovereign God to put the Lord Jesus Christ in that position.
But notice the next step that Paul says He took. He took the same Lord Jesus, who is presently the ruler of the universe, and made Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Now, you and I, in one sense, other than admiring God for doing it, have nothing to do with the fact that the Lord Jesus is seated at God’s right hand. It does not impact our lives directly. But what about the next step? He made Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body.
And what is the church? The church is His body: Christ is the Head, believers are members, and together they make up a body.
Do you see, my brothers and sisters, a correlation between the Lord Jesus being seated at the right hand of the Father, exalted there, and then being made Head over the body? Where is the body located? It is here on this earth, here in enemy territory.
Satan is still the god of this world, and he influences a lot of people. He even influences us more than we are willing to admit through his ways of doing things in the world. But what are we doing here? We are members of this body, and we are to find a way, first of all, for this exalted Lord Jesus to be the Lord of our own personal lives.
I know that I am saying some pretty strong things this morning, but, my brothers and sisters, I am not apologizing. I am just trying to explain to you that, in light of what is going on in our world, there is no time for us to be playing little religious games.
It is possible for you and me to call Him “Lord, Lord,” and not really have Him be Lord. You know what the Lord Jesus said? Those who say, “Lord, Lord,” to Me should back it up with their lives. There ought to be some evidence in the way you live your life that proves that I am really Lord.
You see, the title Lord is not just a title. It describes Who He is and Who He is supposed to be in our lives.
But when you take that position of what Jesus has in our own lives personally and bring it over and apply it to the church, the Word of God tells us that He is head over all things to the church.
When you read the Ephesian letter, you will find three places where Paul mentions the word head in reference to the Lord Jesus. Here in Ephesians 1, it seems to me very clear: He is Head in terms of authority.
Who has authority in the church? Who? Only Him. He delegates His authority, but He never gives any human being authority by themselves. They are only free to be in authority as they represent His authority, living under His guidance and direction.
My brothers and sisters, may it be a time when you and I seriously reflect upon the fact that the church is His church. It is not ours. It is for Him; it is not for us.
Now, you will notice, if you will be very honest both for yourself and as you observe others, again and again we refer to it as our fellowship, my fellowship. Since when? Since when, brothers and sisters?
But the sad thing is that we bring it down to the earthly level, put our own clammy hands on it, and make it ours. When we do, we cut ourselves off from Him as Head, and we are no longer, in reality, the church. It does not mean we are not God’s people. It does not mean God will not bless us. But you can only have the church where the members are united to Him as Head.
And this is what Paul wants us to understand. In the church, God’s objective is that the Lord Jesus, His fullness, would be experienced there:
The church, which is His body, the fullness of Him.
Now, how do we know that He is actually, literally, Head? Many of you know that I have had the joy and opportunity to travel to many places in the world and have had the privilege of meeting many groups of God’s people. I have yet to find a group of people who say, “We do not believe in the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Every group, doctrinally, that I know of would say, “We believe that Jesus is the Head of the church.” But you know what? That is not enough. That does not prove anything.
What proves that He is really Head is when His fullness is manifested in a group of His people. That is what proves that He is Head—not just Head as a figurehead, but Head as a living Head.
This is why, my brothers and sisters, it is important for you and me to go over these things and bring them back into focus again, because we can easily lose sight of what the church is.
In Matthew 16, the first time the word church appears in the whole Bible—and one of the two times our Lord Jesus ever mentions it—He says:
Upon this rock I will build My church;
and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.
You notice that our Lord Jesus did not stop to explain to us what the church is. He did not tell us how He was going to build it. He did not tell us what He was going to build it out of. There are some hints there, but He did not stop to tell us. How do we find out?
After He is exalted as the great High Priest over the house of God, He begins to reveal through men like the apostle Paul what the church is. That is why, my brothers and sisters, it seems to me that here in the Ephesian letter we have a revelation of the church that you and I need to be clear about, and that impacts the way we live individually and live our life together.
Paul makes it very clear:
The church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
That is the clearest, most exhaustive, most important description of the church that I know of in the Bible. Peter saw the house of God: we are a spiritual house. I think John represented it as being the family of God. But it is Paul to whom God revealed that the church is literally, actually, the body of Christ here on the earth.
The Head is at the right hand of the Father. The members are here on the earth. When the two of them are linked in union with one another, you have the church. And when the church is fully linked to Him and surrendering to Him as Head, then it permits Him to fill that assembly of His people with Himself.
Now, you have heard this question being asked before. In Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, when the Lord Jesus is walking among the seven golden lampstands, which He goes on to tell us are the seven churches, what is He looking for, my brothers and sisters? What is He looking for?
Here He is in the midst of His churches with eyes of fire that penetrate the facade. He can get beyond all the phony, and He sees the real. What is He looking for? He is looking for Himself. Why? Because He has a right to see His fullness being manifested, since it is His body.
And He found a lot of things in the churches that were not of Him. When He found them, He pointed them out and told them what had to be done about it.
There is another way that the apostle Paul shows how the Lord is the Head of the church. In Ephesians 4, this is found in verse 15:
But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head,
from whom the whole body—
We will stop there for a moment. Here Paul is showing us that our Lord Jesus is not just Head in terms of authority, but He is Head in terms of being the fountainhead. Where does this fullness that the Lord Jesus expects to discover in His body originate? It originates in Him. He is the fountainhead.
It is the only place that we find the life that He is looking for in the church.
And so the apostle Paul encourages his readers, and thus, I believe, would encourage us even this morning. As he said back in verse 14:
As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed to and fro;
but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up.
We are to grow up. That means we need to have not only the life of the Lord Jesus Christ in us in fullness; we need to have His character built into us.
There needs to be a living way for the Lord Jesus, from His exalted position, to manifest His fullness here upon the earth. And that means that we need to be informed, first of all, that in addition to having your sins forgiven, in addition to receiving new life, and in addition to having the promise that you are going to spend eternity with God, you have been given a place of responsibility.
The moment you respond to the Lord Jesus, you become a member of the body of Christ. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters. It does not require a membership committee to vote on it.
Now, if you are talking about something earthly, that may be necessary. But when we are talking about the church, which is His body, it does not require any vote from any membership committee. It does not need to get permission from any leadership. The decision was a sovereign decision: when we believed in His Son, we were baptized by one Spirit into one body.
It is wonderful, in those initial experiences, those initial months and years that we have in the Lord, to enjoy just being a member. But there comes a point at which it is time to grow up and take responsibility.
What you notice is that we discover that in the Lord Jesus Christ is the resource for everything we need individually and corporately. So it means that we need to learn experientially how to hold fast to the Head.
Now, you know, my brothers and sisters, it is not just a coincidence. Paul was not just trying to rack his brain to figure out the best way he could illustrate what the church is as he understood it. I believe it was God’s doing that He chose the illustration of the body as a way of communicating the truth about the church.
If you take just a moment and look at your own physical body, do you realize that the member that is furthest from the head, on my body it seems to me, is my little toe? But do you know that my little toe does not have the liberty of functioning independently of the head?
It can only function as it is directly related to the head. There has to be a nervous, neurological connection between the head and the toe for that toe to function.
Now, some of you know this brother up in Long Island, New York, who is a paraplegic. When he was thirteen years old, he drove off a bridge, broke some vertebrae, and severed his spinal cord. I knew this brother back in the early days, around 1973. In our meeting, we had to go up a set of stairs to an upper room, and we had to carry him up these stairs.
Many times, I found myself on the bottom of the wheelchair, with somebody at the top, carrying this brother upstairs. One day, as we were doing this, I was looking at his feet, and all of a sudden they moved. My initial response was, “God healed him.” His feet were moving.
So we got to the top of the stairs, and I said to him, “Danny, your feet moved.” “Oh,” he said, “it was only a spasm, just a muscle spasm.” Now, to me, at first appearance, it looked like something had happened where the nerves had been reconnected again. But it was only a spasm.
Do you suppose it is possible for us to learn how to do things that are only spasms that look like the real thing?
You see, my brothers and sisters, when Paul is writing these two letters, there is something deep, deep, deep in his heart. In the Colossian letter, his concern is that you do not get disconnected from the Head.
There are a lot of things that come in. He makes a whole list of them: different philosophies, the wisdom of this world, traditions of men, and all kinds of things. Are we functioning just out of tradition, or is the Lord Jesus the author of our functioning?
There needs to be a situation where the Lord Jesus is literally, actually, the One in charge of what is going on in our corporate life. But what is the history of the church, brothers and sisters? What was happening in the churches in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3? They were doing things independently of the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it has been a two-thousand-year history.
It ought to awaken us. What is it that the Lord wants us to be in this time, in this situation in which we find ourselves in the world? He wants us to be an assembly of people over which He is actually the Head, so that He can express Himself. He can pour Himself into us and, through us, manifest Himself in whatever ways He chooses.
Those of us who have been around for a few years have seen the downward progression. These gray hairs have witnessed it. When I was a teenager, there was no way that I could have ever dreamed that the world that I was a part of could ever become something like this.
But what has happened, my brothers and sisters? One of the things that has happened is what our Lord Jesus said in Matthew 5:
You are the salt of the earth.
And if the salt loses its saltiness, it is good for nothing.
Is it wrong for me this morning to make the analogy between the salt and Him being the Head? You know what that salt represented? It represented His resurrection life. And it needs to be in us. If we lose it, we lose that which influences the world in which we live.
I have gone to other places in the world where the Lord has not been free to express Himself, where the gospel has not been preached in openness. I can tell you, my brothers and sisters, it is not good to live in a place—it is not good to be a citizen in a country—where there is not an openness for the gospel.
You feel that void when you go to a place, for example, like Haiti. You feel it when you get there, because the Lord is not free. There is no salt there.
What you find in history is that, down through the centuries, people have been brought to a place of saltiness, and then they lost their saltiness. Do not think for a moment that it cannot happen to us.
Our enemy is determined to affect us in such a way that His life is not free to flow into us and through us. And so what Paul says here in Ephesians 4 is that we first of all need to know Him individually as our Lord, as our life. As a member of the body of Christ, I need to be aware of His life in me.
Then we need to realize that there is not only a great privilege that comes with becoming a member of the body of Christ, but there is a great responsibility as well. Every one of us, without exception, if you know the Lord Jesus Christ—I do not care how young you are—has deposited in them a measure of the life of Christ, a measure of the grace of God, a gifting by the Holy Spirit.
You can function as a member of the body of Christ, and in functioning, you will bring in fullness. If there is no functioning, if you are simply a spectator sitting on the sidelines, observing what is going on, and your life is not really involved, then, without even knowing it, you are hindering fullness.
He has placed His life in you, and the way you get that life out is for you to die to yourself and let His life come out in resurrection. That is how fullness comes into the body: through the proper working of every individual part.
We are to be a joint of supply. Supply what, my brothers and sisters? What is He wanting us to supply? That measure of Himself that He has given to us, that He has put in us. We are to give it away.
What you discover is that the more you give away, the more you get. It makes the container bigger. You are able to contain more of Him. Therefore, we need to stop being children and expecting someone else to always take care of us. We need to learn to grow up and begin taking care of other people and other situations, letting a greater measure of Christ be in us and manifest through us.
What is the result? The building up of the body through love.
Now, I was told I could take all the time I need, but I am not going to do that to you.
The Scriptures in Romans 12 tell us that we are not only members of the body of Christ, but we are members of one another. I do not know why I feel this so deeply this morning, but I feel it very deeply: one of the things that very much needs to happen among God’s people is that we need to realize that we are members of one another.
We are not just members of the body independently. I mentioned earlier how my little toe—I can even move it right now—cannot move without some of the other muscles, ligaments, and everything else in there cooperating with it. You see what I am trying to say?
At any point along the way where there is a breakdown in functioning, it affects many, many other parts of the body. So it means we need to look at it for what it is and accept the fact that we have a place of responsibility.
I do not know if this morning is the right time to do it or not, but I want to do it anyhow. You know, there is coming a day when Ernie Hile, along with every one of you, will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. There you will give an account of what you have done with what you have been given.
You know what He wants to be able to say to every one of us, my brothers and sisters?
Well done, good and faithful servant.
You have been faithful over little things.
I will make you ruler.
You see, this is the place where He trains us and builds His character into us so that He can then have us sit with Him on His throne. But what if we miss it here? What if we drop the ball here? What if we refuse to grow up?
We never stop to ask those questions because we know He is a God of grace; He is a God of mercy. Sure He is. But He is also a righteous God, and only He can balance those two things properly. Do not go to sleep thinking that somehow it does not make any difference.
It not only makes a difference now. Your participation, your giving yourself under His headship, and also being related to one another is a responsibility, and you have to give an account for it.
So, being members one of another—again, my brothers and sisters, I know that some of these things I am saying are not easy for us. It is not easy for me to say them. But one of the mindsets that we have, which I hope somehow we can cry out to the Lord for Him to help us with, is what happens in an assembly of the Lord’s people when we become what I call meeting-oriented.
By that I mean that we get the idea that all the important things that happen in our life together happen in a meeting. What happens the other hours of the week? That is not what I find in the book of Acts.
Why were these brothers and sisters, these simple people in the book of Acts, able to be an instrument into which the Lord Jesus could pour Himself, and then pour Himself through them out into the world? What made them? It was because of the life that they had together—not just in meetings, but outside of meetings.
So I want to say these things as a way of encouraging us to go to the Lord Jesus as our living Head and inquire of Him, ask of Him, “Lord, this is Your assembly. Are You pleased with what You see? Are there some changes, some adjustments, that You would want us to make?”
And I think it would be good if somehow we would consider how to go about doing that, so that we would develop enough ability to hear from Him as the Head. And when we hear, we have an understanding in our heart that we are going to respond.
But also, my brothers and sisters, we realize, “I am a member of this body, and I have a responsibility.” I am a member of my other brothers and sisters—not just in this assembly, but in all of Richmond, all of the United States, and all over the world. We are members one of another.
Now, He has placed us here with one another, and Paul says:
I urge you, I entreat you, to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called,
with all humility and gentleness,
showing forbearance to one another in love.
Why would he add that, showing forbearance? Well, it seems to me, brothers and sisters, that God has chosen to save some very funny people. You happen to be one of them, and so am I. We are not easy to get along with. We have a lot of things in our lives that are so unlike the Lord Jesus. He has to deal with them, and one of the places He wants to deal with them is in our relationship with each other.
So we need to ask the Lord, “Show us: how can we be related to one another? How can we have a life together day by day?” They continued, it says. How can we have that when everything in our society works against it?
You know, my brothers and sisters, sometimes we think it is such a blessing to live in the United States of America—and it is. I spent four years in the military, and if they called me today and said, “Ernie, you need to come again,” I would go tomorrow.
But I want to be honest and say to you: there is nothing in American society that is conducive to being the body of Christ. It is a hindrance. It is a distraction. Think about your life—how busy you are. Even if you thought for a moment, “How can I be more involved with my brothers and sisters?” immediately: no time. No time.
So, my brothers and sisters, it is a wonderful thing that God has chosen to do: to sum up all things, bringing everything back under the rulership of His own Son. And the amazing thing to me is that you and I have a part to play in this. We have a responsibility.
Now, how can we fulfill this? What provision has God made for us to be able to be co-workers in this great work that God is doing? I think Ephesians 5:18 makes it very clear:
Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation,
but keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit.
In the Holy Spirit, we will discover that He takes all the resources of the Head and makes them readily available to every one of us in every one of our situations. He is able, brothers and sisters.
That is why, at the end of Ephesians 3, the apostle’s heart is overwhelmed again, and he has to worship. He says:
Now unto Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,
to Him be glory in the church, both now and forevermore.
He is able. Our Lord Jesus, as Head, is able. We need to find a way, individually and together, to allow Him to fully manifest His headship among us.
He has called us to this, my brothers and sisters. Our being called together is not for ourselves; it is for Him. May we hear that call. May we faithfully respond to it. May we become functioning members that allow Him to manifest something of His fullness among us.