Fathom His Gifts

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Good morning. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here today as we continue our series called Fathom, where we're walking through the book of Ephesians, one chapter a week, trying to fathom, trying as best as we can to grasp the height and depth and breadth and width of the love of God in Christ, His plans for us, His great grace. It's an amazing book that just kind of blows out all categories of what you might think of. And today we are in Chapter 4, where we see God's cosmic plan is not something that's just up in the clouds, but it comes down to the earth, very graphic, tangible fellowship in the Christian church. And we are excited about that, because Paul says it's not simply that you would know personally in yourself the love of God and Jesus Christ, but that you will experience that love as we grow together in unity, as we grow together in service to one another, using the gifts that God has for us in the body of Christ. So let's read now Ephesians, Chapter 4, 1 through 16. I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to 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 by grace was. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men in saying he ascended. What does it mean? But that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ 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, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Quite the section. And we have, how do you summarize? The best way, I think, to summarize something like this might be, and the focus of our message today, might be in these two sentences. Well, I guess it's one that I kind of created a run-on sentence. And it's this. We have been incorporated into the very life of God, the fellowship of the Trinity, but we are spiritually immature until we serve together in loving unity as members of the body of Christ. And so we're going to look at those, break this down into three points. The idea of the life of the Trinity, the goal of maturity, and the reason for community. So first of all, the life of the Trinity. Paul speaks in this passage, just like he does the rest of the book, just in such expansive terms. It's rather amazing. He just goes for it. And it is just cosmically huge and big and broad and high. And you might be surprised that the Ephesian church that he is speaking this to, and he talks about the Christian church, is about the size of our fellowship right here. It was no bigger than this. I don't think you realize that all the letters in the New Testament were written to churches that were pretty puny. In fact, some of them were smaller than this. Well, that's kind of the point. It's not really about the size and scope of what we see, but it's really the size and scope of what God has plans for. Right? So what we see is puny or weak. What God sees is powerful and amazing and strong. Amen? All right. And that's what we are finding is that God says that we aren't just any organization. It's not that we together, the sum of our little parts and our little pieces, put together what's called a church. It's the fact that God has invested himself, himself, into this fellowship, into the Christian church. The Ephesian church had faced struggles like with the Temple of Artemis. And you can read this in the Book of Acts. And they lived under the shadow of the power and wealth of other people and not their own. They faced persecution and opposition. They were wondering what resources they had. And yet God says, I have given to you what no other human organization has. The life of the triune God in our lives itself. Notice th...