Gifts for God’s Workers

Ephesians 4:11f

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

We’re studying Ephesians chapter 4 and it’s verse 11 which we’ve been on for some weeks now, but
maybe you’d look at it again and just to get us all started on the same foot. Ephesians 4:11, and
it reads, “And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some
pastors and teachers,” and the statement refers to the fact that God is supplying the people that
are needed by his Son here on earth. That’s it. Some will be given as evangelists and why I tie up
with us evangelists at all is that evangelists are people who speak to those who don’t know about
Jesus at all. People who have nothing to do with church and they bring them into truth and into
reality. We are very obviously in that category that’s why we’re in business and that’s why we
live the way we live and that’s why we have tried to avoid too much identification with organized
religion because we think many people are not interested in that and that’s not the place to find
them.

The place to find people who don’t know about Jesus and about the truth of God is business. In a
very real way our whole life is given to the life of an evangelist. Except that all of us know the
well known understanding of an evangelist. The evangelist in all our minds is Finney or Billy
Graham, or some preacher who preaches to crowds large or small, and we normally think of private
evangelists like us as people who nail other people and button hole them, and say, “Are you saved?”
Then we explain to them using the bridge illustration or some other illustration how they are
sinners and how they can be saved by believing in Jesus and can go to heaven. We think of
evangelists normally as that.

That of course is not what we have been talking about at all in regard to this term. We’ve gone
back to the Greek, ‘eu’ is the first two letters that become ‘eve’ in English. Then “angelus” is the
Greek word that becomes angel in evangelists, and “uangelos” is good news or a messenger of glad
tidings. And that’s really what an Evangelist is. He’s someone who brings the good news to others.

We talked already about what people often say the good news is. The good news is you’re a sinner
and you’re going to hell but you can believe in Jesus and go to heaven. So you have to tell them
bad news first and then you work the good news on them. Except that that means very little to
people nowadays and they feel, oh your one of those, well their favorite word is you’re one of those
old hell fire preachers who tell me I’m going to hell and so you get into a dreadful kind of tangle
with people when you take that approach.

Of course what we think is true is that’s not the good news, the good news is first of all that all
of us are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus. That’s the first part of the good news that we
have that all of us who know Jesus and those who don’t know Jesus, all of us were made inside Jesus,
inside God’s Son. We would say that that isn’t only Christians because we would return to John 1
and say, “In him all things were created and without him was not anything made that was made.”

Then we would go to Colossians and we would say, “That he is the invisible, the image of the
invisible God, the first born of all creation. By him all things were created whether in heaven or
on earth, whether visible or invisible, thrones, dominions, principalities, and authorities, all
things were made through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold

together.” Everybody, every customer we meet in the store was made in Jesus and they hold together
because of Jesus continued love of them and the continued influence of his Holy Spirit. That is
the first part of the good news we have to tell them, and that is what God wants us to express to
them that we think of them as that.

You know you can get into logical, I would say illogical tangles in your own mind. You can say,
“Well wait a minute I don’t want to give them the wrong idea, I don’t want to give them the feeling
that their right and they’re really wrong and they’re sinners.” Well, they are sinners like
ourselves — people who have a tendency to want to live our own life in our own way — and I think
that’s the normal definition of sin. It’s first of all a tendency to want to live as if there is no
God. In that sense they’re sinners, but they were still made in Christ Jesus, they are still part
of Jesus. He still bears their sins moment by moment because everything they do they do inside him
and what we are called to do is to help them to understand that.

And it seems to me the first obvious step is we don’t treat them as outsiders, we don’t treat them
as rotten old sinners whom we have nothing to do. We treat them as people who are in a real sense
our brother. Just as when Bart talks about Christ our brother, he’s really talking about Christ
being the brother of all men and all women because in him all of them were made and their all dear
to him. So the first task we have as evangelists is to treat them that way as our dear friends, as
our brothers, as people whom we respect, and people whom we feel have been made in the same dear
person as we have. There are opportunities that God will bring us and there are words that he will
bring us to bring something of that home to people.

Above everything else I think our attitude brings it home to them. And if you say to me, “Well what
do you achieve by that?” Well something of the same thing as would have been achieved had they been
with Simon Peter, and the other disciples on the beach. When Jesus came and said “Children, have
you caught any fish?” something of that. They are able to sense something of the real presence of
Christ by the way we ourselves treat them and the attitude we have to them. They are able in some
sense to catch our faith. I think it is truer than I really saw before that faith is caught and not
taught. I would remind you of how many things we do in our own lives that we’ve caught because he
did it, our Dad or Mom did it so we do it.

I can still remember the most wonderful piece of soda bread, fried of course that I would ever have.
It was part of Dad’s baking and with tomato ketchup on it. So all of us know the influence of
parents, of the people that we love upon us, how we caught things from them, we caught their
attitude to things. We caught the way they do things probably 80% maybe of our ways and our
mannerisms come from somebody that we not only love but that we lived with and were within the
formidable days. You catch a lot just from the presence and the attitude of other people.

Even now we do it, we would say many of us, I notice it when Lucy laughs in a certain way, it’s the
same way Mary laughs or I don’t know which one of them started it first. You notice how you
influence each other just by being with each other. It’s the same kind of thing has happened for
instance according to the fictional story of “The Robe.” Marcellus was the officer in charge of
those who crucified Christ and somehow he got hold of the robe. I forget whether he won it in the
lottery [casting lots], or whether somebody gave it to him, or he picked it up. But the robe came
upon him and of course he immediately had a sense of something different happening inside him and he
was so impressed by it that he then went out traveling to find out more about these people who had
followed Christ.

Eventually you may remember he came to one of their houses visiting, and they were just sitting
around eating and talking and suddenly a door clicked and everybody immediately looked round and he
said, “What’s wrong? Why are you looking so suddenly?” And they said, “Because Christ has come
several times and been among us and that could be him.”

It seemed that he suddenly was brought into the realm of faith, that suddenly he realized these
people know that Christ is here every moment and he suddenly became aware of that something and that
can come over even in the midst of a busy shop and store.

According to the reality of our own attitude and I would submit to you that our own attitude is not
one that’s full of talk saying, “You know Christ is with you every moment. You know you were made
in Jesus? Do you know that sometimes there’ll be opportunities to say, “Well you know we’re all
part of God?” And you can go on after that because, of course, there’ll be all misunderstandings.
Oh, you mean like the Buddhists, oh you mean like the Spiritualist, we’re all part of one Great
Spirit.

There’ll be opportunities to clarify the details, but the important thing is that there will become
moments when you can get over to them in words, but primarily what comes over to them is the sense
that in some way you think of them the same way as you think of yourself. In some way you kind of
respect them, same way you respect yourself and then anything that you express they’ll begin to
wonder, “Well, yeah, I kind of see that and I kind of think that way to.”

In a remarkable way they will ease towards reality and the more they ease toward reality the easier
it will be for the next little thing they hear from somebody else, or the next little thing that
they see on television, it’ll be easier for them to shift over a little more. I agree with any of
you who say, “Oh no, it can’t happen unconsciously by kind of osmosis if it were as easy as that it
would be nice.”

No, but it can take a good many steps in that direction and probably the truth is nobody really
knows they’re a sinner until they’ve seen Jesus, and it’s only when they see Christ and their
Father’s love that they realize how wretched they themselves are, and that’s our first task.

The only other thing I wanted to begin to deal with today is of course there are more things that
are real and that they are made in Christ though everything stems from that. But they were
crucified with Christ and not only they were crucified. In Galatians 6:14 is the time where Paul
mentions it so clearly, “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ
by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.”

I just remind you of the verse in 2 Corinthians 5:14 that says, “For the love of Christ constrains
us; because we judge that if one died for all, then all died.” So the reality is that not only
were all of us created in Christ Jesus, but all of us were crucified in Christ Jesus. Of course
they have no idea of that at all. If they have they have no idea of the second part of that verse
that the world was crucified to me, and they have no idea of the result of that being what Jesus has
said, “I have overcome the world.”

They have no idea that Christ has foreseen everything that would happen to them in their life and he
has provided for it. He has destroyed the things that needed to be destroyed so he was able to come
and actually influence them in their jobs as they fished. He was able to say, “Throw the net on the
other side.” He had overcome the world, he had overcome the whole system that opposes his presence

and his will in this universe. He had destroyed that system and he had recreated a new system, a
new creation, that actually worked with his Father’s will for each person. That was the power that
enabled him to see that the fish were on the other side or if they weren’t there, to create them so
that as the net hit the water the fish were there and were caught, 153 of them. When they had been
fishing all night in that area and had not caught anything.

It is the same power which took place in Acts and chapter 12 if you would look at it. It’s the same
power that influenced Peter when he was put in prison. “About that time,” in verse 1 of Acts
chapter 12, “About that time Herod the king laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church.
He killed James the brother of John with the sword; and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he
proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. And when he had
seized him, he put him in the prison, and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to guard him,
intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people.”

“So Peter was kept in prison; but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. The very
night when Herod was about to bring him out, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two
chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison; and behold, an angel of the Lord
appeared, and a light shone in the cell; and he struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ’Get
up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him, ’Dress yourself and put
on your sandals.’ And he did so. And he said to him, ’Wrap your mantle around you and follow me.’”

“And he went out and followed him; he did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but
thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to
the iron gate leading into the city. It opened to them of its own accord, and they went out and
passed on through one street; and immediately the angel left him. And Peter came to himself, and
said, ’Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from
all that the Jewish people were expecting.’”

Again Christ overcame the world, and overcame the change in the person. That’s the message. That
Christ has touched everything that needs to be changed. He has fixed everything that needs to be
fixed. Therefore you don’t need to be anxious. In fact the God of the whole universe says to us
and to our customers have no anxiety about anything. “ Have no anxiety about anything, but in
everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
[Phillipians 4:6]

They, of course they don’t believe it. The poor souls they watch the bank account going down, they
know that they’ve only had three customers that day in the shop, they know that that merchandise
they bought is not going as they thought it would. They have no idea, no idea that God has done
anything about that at all. They have no notion that God foresaw that moment, and they have no
notion that God has done something in his dear Son that is changing that situation even now. So
that his will will come about in their lives, and the only way they’ll get to know it is by you
explaining all this. Is that right?

No, no they won’t believe you, but if they see you living like that, if they see you living free, if
they see you and me living above those things, if they see you and me living in peace and rest and
contentment in the midst of situations that worry other people that make them anxious. At the
beginning they’ll say, “Well yeah, he’s a happy kind of guy, he’s one of those Americans. She’s one
of those Americans, they’re always bright.

At the start that’s what they’ll say, and then as the days and months go by and they see you still
at it they’ll begin to wonder, “Is there any real reason for being like that?” It’s Jesus saying
to all of us this day and to me too. Saying to all of us, “I have called you to be evangelists that
are people who live in the light of the good news. That I have made you all inside my Son and that
there is not one thing that will come upon you this day, or tomorrow, or the next day, but that I
have already foreseen it and I have already worked it according to the council of my will, and so
you are like innocent joyful little children that are playing in the safe protected back yard of a
loving Father who would lift and lay everything on your behalf, and that is our great privilege, and
my it is my great privilege.

Not a moment of worry, not a moment of care, not a moment of anxiety, not a moment of strain or
stress, that is what God has set up for us. Now that is what he exhorts us to do to be good
witnesses or to prove to ourselves or to somebody else that we’re Christians, but that is reality,
that’s reality for us, that’s what he has called us to.

Let us pray.

Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each
of us throughout this week. Amen.