23 May 2004

Church Growth God’s Way:  Part 1   

“The Gift of Ministry”
Ephesians 4:7-10

Prologue
People say a good sermon title needs to be relevant and practical and magazine cover-like so here goes.  The title of my sermon this morning is “How to Proliferate the Abundant Riches of Christ Throughout the Universe in One Easy Step.”

Ephesians 4:7-10   But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.  This is why it says:  "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." (What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions?  He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 

Introduction 
This morning we begin what I believe is the greatest passage in all the Bible on the duty and function of the Church.  We also come to the hardest verses in the whole book to interpret.  What does it mean that we’ve each been apportioned a grace?  How in the world does verse 8 support the point of verse 7?  Why does he quote Psalm 68?  What does Psalm 68 mean anyway?  Why does Paul change the wording to say the opposite of what Psalm 68 actually says, then make that changed wording the main point of this passage?  What does it mean that Jesus descended to the lower, earthly regions?  Where is that – and why did He go there?  What does that have to do with Him giving each of us a unique, individual grace?  What does it mean that the reason Jesus ascended was to fill the whole universe?  What does that have to do with the point of the passage?
Let’s look carefully at verses 8-10 and see if we can answer these questions; then, the meaning of verse 7 will be as clear as crystal.  Although verse 7 is the main point, you can’t appreciate it until you understand verses 8-10.

The Giving Ministry of Christ
8 This is why it says: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men."   
That part of the verse comes from Psalm 68:18.  The problem is that we don’t know for sure to what Psalm 68:18 is referring.  Everyone agrees it is referring to God achieving some great, military victory; however, the Psalm isn’t clear about which victory. 
Another problem is that Paul seems to misquote the verse.  In Hebrew, the last line reads He received gifts among men.  However, Paul says, “He gave gifts to men.”   There is good evidence that Paul had a version of the Old Testament that read that way.  There are various explanations for why Paul used that version, but it is not a huge problem because the two translations are not as far apart in meaning as they sound at first.  For example, when a king collects the spoils of war, he then distributes those spoils  to his people.  Hence, he receives gifts among men in order to give gifts to men.  Therefore, the Psalm is referring to a time when God achieves this great victory, receives all kinds of treasures as the spoils of war, then gives those treasures as gifts to men.
The Hebrew idiom in the first part of the verse is “he led captivity captive.”  Some have tried to read that phrase literally and explain it to mean that God took people who were already captive, freed them and then took them captive.  That is not the meaning of that idiom.  This idiom is a Hebraism that just simply means He took captives; it is part of the whole imagery of the spoils of war.  (Part of the spoils of war are captives.)  
The point is simply that God won a final, great victory, and, like a victorious king, received all the spoils of war.  Whatever the solutions to the difficulties, the point Paul is making is clear enough: the gifts the Lord gives the Church are the spoils of war.  The Lord Jesus Christ won a great victory, and, as a result, received massive wealth; it is on the basis of that wealth that He gives to us.

Proof that Psalm 68:18 is Messianic
Verse 9 has been used to support some questionable doctrines – including some outright heresy. We need to discuss some misconceptions before we talk about what it really means and how that fits into the context.

Did Jesus Go to Hell?
Most of you are probably familiar with the doctrine that suggests that Jesus descended into hell while He was in the tomb.  There are several variations but generally the idea is that while Jesus’ body was in the tomb, Jesus went to hell in His Spirit, unlocked the doors, then took all the righteous souls out of there and brought them to paradise.  
Some people even go so far as to say that, during the three days, Jesus’ soul was tormented and punished in hell and that is where He accomplished redemption.  (That one is a really serious error, because it holds that redemption was not accomplished on the cross – even though Jesus said “It is finished” and not “It is almost finished”).
Others say, “No, He didn’t suffer there. He just went and proclaimed victory and took the souls of the righteous to paradise.”  One reason why this view is so popular is because it has found its way into the Apostles’ Creed.  
Is there any verse in the Bible that says Jesus descended into hell or Hades or Sheol?  No.  Then where does this doctrine come from?  It comes from three verses in the New Testament:  Ephesians 4:9, 1 Peter 3:19, and 1 Peter 4:6.  (I have comments on those Peter passages in the appendix to the notes in the sermon manuscript so I won’t get into those now.)  I’ll just say this:  nowhere in the Bible does it ever say Jesus went anywhere during those three days He was in the tomb – except Paradise.
He told the thief on the cross, “This day you will be with Me in paradise,” and that is the only information the Bible gives as to where Jesus’ spirit was during those three days.  Yet many people have pointed to Ephesians 4:9 and insisted that it is saying Jesus went down to hell.  It is assumed that his descent into hell must have been in between His death and resurrection because that was the time when Jesus was winning the great victory.  Therefore, let’s take a careful look at verse 9.

The Purpose of verse 9 – to prove Ps.6:18 is Messianic
9 What does "he ascended" mean…Good question, Paul.  
Most commentators on Psalm 68 assume it refers to God (as symbolized in the ark) ascending up Mt. Zion.  Others say it’s Mount Sinai that He is ascending.  However, the phrase on high (~Ar’M'l;), when used of God, most naturally refers to heaven.  When Psalm 68:18 says God ascended on high, the most natural interpretation would be that He ascended into heaven.  The problem is:  how could God, who is already on high, ascend on high?  If He is already in heaven, how can He ascend to heaven?  Hence, Paul says, “What could that mean, 9 …except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions?  The only way He could rise up to heaven is if He first descended down to earth – which is what Jesus did. 
Therefore, the purpose of verse 9 is not to tell us where Jesus went while in the tomb:  the purpose of verse 9 is to make an argument that Psalm 68:18 must be a messianic prophecy.  It can’t refer to God the Father because the Father never ascended into heaven, so it has to refer to the Messiah.  If you know me very well, you know I’m about as skeptical as they come when it comes to finding messianic prophecies in the Old Testament.  Yet I really believe Psalm 68:18 is messianic.  Throughout Psalm 68,  the psalmist is talking about God but this verse suddenly makes Him appear human – so much so that the translators of the Targum took it as a reference to Moses.  
In addition, the imagery of verse 18 is very similar to other messianic psalms (for example Psalm 2).  It would be very natural for a promise of a great, final military victory to be associated with the coming Messiah.  Hence, the purpose of verse 9 is simply to prove that the psalm he quoted is a messianic psalm referring to Jesus.

Where did He descend to?
We know that Jesus descended and then ascended.  But when He descended, to where did He descend?  A literal translation of the Greek sounds this way: He “descended into the lower parts of the earth.”  That has traditionally been taken to refer to a descent down into hell.  However, some people say, “If God wanted to say “earth,” He could have just said “earth.”  Therefore, this becomes the primary passage to prove the doctrine of Jesus going to hell.  Most modern scholars do not accept that view, and for good reasons:

1.	“The lower parts of the earth” is not the simplest way to refer to the earth.
This is true.  But it is not the simplest way of referring to Hell either. If He wanted to say hell or Hades, He could have just said Hades.  Neither hell nor Hades is ever referred to as “the lower parts of the earth” anywhere in the Bible.

2.	Hell is never mentioned in Ephesians. 
The cosmology of Ephesians is always a two-storied world – heaven and earth – and those two regions sum up all that exists.  Whenever Ephesians talks about warfare with the forces of evil, the battlefield is in the heavenlies, not Hades (1:20-21, 2:2, 6:12).  If Christ went somewhere to proclaim His victory to the Devil, demons and other evil powers plus authorities, thrones and rulers, He wouldn’t have gone to the realm of the spirits of the dead.  That is not where the devil and demons are.  The idea that the devil is in hell is a myth.  Someday he will be thrown into the lake of fire; for now, though, he is in the heavenly realms.

3.	If the phrase “the lower parts of the earth” must mean something other than the earth…
Then when Paul states, “He ascended higher than all the heavens”, does that mean it has to refer to some place higher than the dwelling place of God?  The contrast is between heaven and earth – the higher and the lower.

4.	Paul’s logic requires that the descent be a descent from heaven.
If He ascended into heaven, He must have also descended from heaven. Those who say Jesus descended into hell say that it happened while Jesus’ body was in the tomb.  But if that is the case, then His descent was from the earth down to hell rather than from heaven.  Hence, the logic of Paul’s argument would break down:  he would be saying, “If Jesus ascended into heaven, obviously He must have first descended from earth to hell.” That doesn’t logically follow.

5.	The same goes for the other direction.
Jesus ascended from earth – not from hell.  Why would Paul say, “In order for Jesus to ascend from earth, He would have first had to have descended to some other place”?   Paul’s point is that, in order for Jesus to depart from earth, He first had to get to earth.

6.	Most importantly, Jesus’ victory did not take place in hell or Hades; it took place on earth, on the cross.  
While Jesus was still on earth in the realm of the living, He said, “It is finished.”  This is one time when the NIV translation is much better than the others.  In fact, an even better translation would be to say, “He descended to the earth below” or “He descended to the lower region, that is, the earth.” Perhaps the reason Paul uses the phrase “lower parts” instead of just “earth” is to highlight the extent of Jesus’ humiliation in contrast to the highest heavens.  Or perhaps he wanted to include the tomb – pointing out that Jesus’ humiliation was so profound and extreme that it even included death.  But there is no biblical reason to assume that Jesus ever went to hell.  To insert that idea into this text would be to not only import ideas that aren’t here but it would completely distract from the main point.  A descent into hell would have nothing to do with the point Paul is making here.  So what is the point?
Now that Paul as proved that Ps.68:18 is messianic – that the great, victorious ascension in that verse that resulted in God giving gifts to men – now that he has established that that is talking about Jesus, he shows us the purpose of the ascension.
The Purpose of the Ascension
10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.

That part of the verse gives us the reason:  the purpose of Jesus’ ascension is to fill the whole universe with his fullness.  We found the concept of fullness in Ephesians 1:23, in the Old Testament background, has to do with abundance.  Christ ascended in order that His abundance might be poured out to everyone and everything and be proliferated throughout the universe.  How does He do that? What is He method for filling the universe with His grace and goodness and blessing?
In Ephesians 1, we learned He does it through the Church.  This passage gets more specific.  He fills all things through His ascension and His ascension was a victory ascension in which He was distributing the spoils of war.  The goal of His ascension (the filling of the universe with His fullness), is accomplished by means of the distribution of those gifts.  Now we can understand verse 7:

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.

We have each been given a grace; the reason we were each given our gift is to accomplish the purpose of Jesus’ ascension which is the filling of the universe with His fullness.  So now you understand the title of my sermon: “How to Proliferate the Abundant Riches of Christ Throughout the Universe in One Easy Step.”  The one easy step is to use your gift.
The point of Ephesians 4:7-10 is this:  through your unique, personal ministry, the abundance of all that Christ offers is proliferated throughout the universe.

Context
Before I say anything else about that, I want to take a second to remind you of the big picture of Ephesians 4 which is about the worthy walk.  After three chapters about what God has done for us, the second half of the book calls us to respond in a worthy way.  The goal of this worthy walk is unity; there are three things that will bring that unity about:

•	Our character
•	Our sameness (what we have in common)
•	Our diversity (our unique ministry roles)

The first two verses speak about the character we must have in order to maintain the unity that already exists: humility, patience and love, then Ephesians 4:4-6 emphasized the unity of our sameness: 

There is one body and one Spirit- just as you were called to one hope when you were called-one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father…

That is the unity of our sameness – all the things that all Christians have in common.  Beginning in verse 7, Paul speaks about an even greater unity than the unity we already have.  This unity comes at the end of a long process; it is the unity of our diversity.  That is why verse 7 starts with the word but i.e. “You people have all these things in common…”

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 

That is the unity of our diversity:  the Body is unified but not uniform. True unity requires both sameness and diversity.  We discussed that when we talked about verses 4-6:  your body parts have both sameness and uniqueness.  They are all part of one body, animated by the same, single soul; they have the same DNA, etc. yet each part has a very different function in order to fulfill the one, single purpose of the soul.  
From here on Paul focuses on our individual uniqueness with regard to our roles;  it is spelled out in verse 7:

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 

There are three important parts to that verse: 

•	What was given?.
•	To whom was it given? 
•	How much was given? 

What? – Grace 
First, let’s look at what was given.  Grace.  What does that mean?  Literally it is the grace – referring not to grace in general but specifically to the grace Paul has been talking about all through chapter 3.

Read Eph 3:2-3

Paul said a grace was given to him and that grace was the ministry of revealing the mystery of the Church – the Gospel.  Therefore, Paul’s lot in life was to be a servant of the Gospel.  Having that ministry of being a servant of the Gospel was a gift of grace from God to Paul.

Read Eph.3:7

When Paul talks in Ephesians about the grace that was given him, he’s talking not about saving grace, or grace in general, but specifically the gift of the ministry of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles.

Read Eph.3:8

Throughout chapter 3, Paul has made it clear what he means by a grace:  it is a ministry.  Now he says each one of us has our own, unique measure of grace.  (That is not talking about saving grace as in “I’m 40% saved, you’re 86% saved…”).  He is still using the term grace in the same way as he has been – to refer to your own, specific, unique ministry or task in the Church.  However, he speaks of it as a spiritual gift.  This is a revolutionary and very much overlooked way of thinking about spiritual gifts. 
Normally when we talk about spiritual gifts, we mean one thing by that – abilities.  If someone asks you, “What are your spiritual gifts?” you respond by talking about what special abilities you have  i.e. better than average ability to teach, good at administration, good at encouragement, or helps, etc.  There is a good reason why we think of spiritual gifts that way: it is the way they are portrayed in passages like 1 Corinthians 12.  
However, that is not the idea here.  The word grace translated here is charis, and the word gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 is translated to charisma.  You can tell they are related words:  both have the root idea of something given for free.  Charisma is a word that we normally think of as referring primarily to the ability.  Yet charis, in this context, is a broader term referring to both the task and the enablement.  (In fact, I’m starting to wonder if the task idea is more prevalent than we think in those other passages as well.)  
The point Paul’s making is this: Your spiritual gift is a task you have been given (and part of that gift includes the ability to do the task).  I’ll give you an example.  The last time Tracy and I were in a church where I wasn’t on staff, I applied for a bunch of ministries and I got turned down for all but one – stacking chairs after the service.  That was my grace – my charis - my gift that I received from God – my ministry.  (There were other ways I served the body as well, but I’m simplifying to make the point.)  That job was a grace because He gave me both the opportunity (or privilege) as well as the ability i.e. I had two arms and two legs and I could count to 6 before starting a new stack.  Therefore, if you have arms and legs and can count to 6, you have the gift of chair stacking.  So I had both the ability and the opportunity and, given my options, it was the most fruitful ministry available to me; hence, that was my grace at that time.  
Therefore, what was given? Individual ministries.

To Whom? – Each One
Second question: To whom were these ministries given?  Please notice that verse 7 is very clear that every Christian has been given a ministry.  There may be times when you are moving from one ministry to another, or you may take some time to search for a ministry especially right after you join a new church.  However, that should be a very short term process.  If you are waiting for that ideal ministry, you need to be doing something in the mean time because if every Christian has been given a ministry by God, and you aren’t doing anything, then the task God expects you to be doing is going undone.  
This is why I don’t like the word “volunteerism” when applied to the church – as if serving in the Church is somehow optional.  You don’t volunteer in the church:  you either are faithful in your grace or unfaithful.  If you are not serving in ministry, you are being unfaithful, disobedient and ungrateful.  Now having said that, let me also say that you need to watch out for false guilt.  Some of you are doing all kinds of wonderful ministry yet you don’t think of it as ministry because it doesn’t have an official title or name.  I’m not saying you have to have any official title. If your ministry is to just be an encourager, for example, that is just as valid a ministry as being a pastor or anything else.  All I’m saying is if the Lord has given the grace of a ministry to every last one of us, then if every last one of us isn’t carrying out our assigned ministry, something is wrong.
What has been given? A ministry. To whom? Every last Christian.  One more question: “How much?”

How Much? – The Measure of Christ’s Gift (Spoils of War)
Your individual grace was measured out, literally, according to the measure of the gift of Christ.  What is that? That is what verses 8-10 are all about:  the measure of your gift is based on the spoils of the war that Christ won.  
Jesus ascended on high with captives in His train.  He is a victorious king who is on his way home after a huge victory with his wagons’ axels bending under the weight of all the vast riches that are the spoils of war.  You are along with him and he wants to give you a gift out of the wagons.  The point of verse 7 is that the size of your gift is going to be in relationship to the amount piled up in the wagons.  
What were the spoils of this war?  Was it not all things? 

Matthew 11:27  All things have been committed to me by my Father. 
John 3:35  The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.

The Lord Jesus Christ has won a victory and the spoils of the war are all things.  The gift of your ministry has been measured in proportion to that.  There are 2 important implications of that.

1.	The ministry Christ has given you was hard won – it cost Him.
The battle started with Jesus stripping off all His glory in heaven, and becoming a weak, vulnerable human being.  Then the Holy Spirit thrust Him out into the desolate wilderness, right in the middle of the Devil’s home turf, and His greatest enemy let Him have it for 40 days.  The angels came afterward and attended to Him – which means during the 40 days they were nowhere to be found.  Jesus survived that but later on the battle would ultimately cost Him His life. After suffering ultimate sorrow and the deepest conceivable humiliation and degradation and rejection, He willingly laid down His life.  Then, on the third day, He took the battle up again and conquered death.  He ascended into heaven and gained total victory over all His foes.  He disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Colossians 2:15).  
It was out of the spoils of that victory that He gave you your gift.  Therefore, when you think of your ministry, it is important to consider what that grace cost Jesus.  Do you realize what it cost Him for me to be able to stack those chairs as a ministry in the service of the Kingdom of God?  Lot’s of people stack chairs. Unbelievers stack chairs.  But they don’t stack anything that will have any eternal value in the Kingdom of God.  Their stacking doesn’t accomplish anything but putting chairs in a…stack.  
However, when you stack chairs as a grace from Christ in His Church, you are serving as an adopted child of God in His Kingdom.  It is guaranteed that, if you do it with the right motive, the Holy Spirit will use that stacking effort to produce eternal fruit which makes it infinitely more important than the most important thing the most important unbeliever has ever done.  What a privilege!  What a gift!  And it could only be given to us as a result of the war Christ fought and won at the cost of His own life.  Who am I, that I should have such an honor?  The answer is I am nobody – the privilege was won by Christ, and at the greatest conceivable cost. 

2.	Another implication is that the gifts Christ gives us are in proportion to what He has received through His victory.
He gives gifts based on what He has received.  So when you read about the Lord Jesus Christ measuring out grace and faith to each individual, I hope you don’t picture yourself standing in a soup line getting some meager, little portion.  When you look at your ministry and compare it with someone else’s, it may seem to you like the Lord has been miserly, tight-fisted and stingy when He gave you your ministry.  You wouldn’t put it in those terms but that’s the implication when we complain about the relative smallness or insignificance of our ministries.  If I complain about the ministry I’ve been given being too small or not important enough, that comes from a heart that assumes I’ve been given less than what I deserve, that, in my case, God’s grace has been skimpy and meager.  So let’s look at some practical applications of these truths.

Application #1:  Look at your ministry through the eyes of faith.
When you think about your ministry, don’t look at what you see with your physical eyes and judge the significance of your ministry by that.  Think of God’s abundance.  Think of the proportions of grace God generally has in His giving.  
If you know anything about God’s nature, you know that He is overabundant in everything He does.  When He decides to water the grass, instead of being careful to make sure every raindrop lands on the soil so nothing is wasted, what does He do?  He sends rain all over everything.  It lands on the street, the rooftops, swimming pools – He just dumps it all over everyplace.  When God wanted to add a finishing touch to the sky in the creation, He decided to create some stars. With the naked eye we can only see a few thousand, so you would think 10 or 20 thousand would have been plenty.  But what did He do? The more powerful our telescopes, the more indescribable the vastness of the number of stars.  We have to use numbers that surpass the human mind and have meaning only in mathematics.  Just when they think they have found a tiny little spot in the sky that is actually black, with no stars, they point the Hubble telescope at it and discover thousands of galaxies in that little spot in the sky.  That is just the way God is. 
Paul can hardly say anything about God without using the words “overflowing” or “super-abundant.” Therefore, when you assess the greatness of your ministry – the spiritual gift of grace you’ve been entrusted with – don’t assess it by what you can see.  Assess it by what you know about God’s nature.  Given what you know of Him, and given the fact that you know your grace was apportioned according to the measure of the generosity and abundance of God, how great do you think the eternal importance of your ministry is?  Always look at it through the eyes of faith.

Application #2:  Look at Your Task as a Gift of Grace
Thinking of your ministry as a grace is a different way of thinking about gifts than what we are used to.  Most of us are quick to recognize that our abilities are something we were graciously given but we tend not to be so alert to the fact that the work we do in the church is graciously given.  For example, if someone has an ability, he’ll say, “I’m so thankful to God for giving me this ability. I don’t deserve it, and I’m blessed to have it.”  Yet when it comes to his ministry, he has a haughty, arrogant attitude: “I’m giving up my time to do this. The Church is lucky to have someone like me, and they had better accommodate everything I need for my ministry to go smoothly.”  Or he may think, “If the people in this church aren’t thankful for what I do, I’ll just quit doing it.”  
We tend to think our abilities are something God gave us and our ministry is something we give God.  That’s accurate – except for the second half of that phrase.  Our abilities are graciously granted, underserved gifts from God and the privilege of serving in a certain capacity is a graciously granted, undeserved gift from God which came at great cost to Him.  
Imagine a king who captures an enemy who has committed many acts of treason over a long period of time.  But instead of carrying out the death penalty or torturing him, the king has mercy and lets him live.  The traitor is full of gratitude and thanksgiving.  Then the king says, “You know, I’m still not satisfied. I want to show even greater love and greater kindness to that guy.” So the king racks his brain to think of what other wonderful honor he could bestow on the former traitor.  Then he thinks of a very honored, high level position in the king’s own service right in the palace.  There are many faithful men in the kingdom who have served that king all their lives and who are more deserving of that high position but the king decides to graciously give it to the former traitor as a gift.  Can you imagine the guy serving in that position with an attitude like many of us tend to have?  (“Everyone around this palace better be thankful to have me around”) – and start demanding that the other attendants in the palace serve him.  Can you imagine him quitting? “I don’t have time for this anymore – I’ve paid my dues.”   Or thinking:  “This job is too hard. No one appreciates me” and then just walking out of the palace to go off and carry out some meaningless job as a peasant somewhere?  Or could you imagine the guy just not accepting the job initially?  The king says, “Guess what, I’ve decided to honor you with this high level cabinet position! You don’t have to work as a slave anymore – you can come work for me.”  And the guy says, “No thanks. I’m not ready to make a commitment like that right now. I have too many things going in my life right now.”
Have you ever gotten a gift for a child that you were so excited to give because it was such a costly gift?  But when the child opened the present, he frowned and tossed it aside?  Can you imagine bringing a dozen roses home to your wife and then walking past the trash can 20 minutes later and seeing them in there?  And your wife walks up to you and says, “I like daisies”?  Ingratitude is an ugly, hurtful thing.
God has given each one of us a grace – a specific task in the church ministering to the church.  
What has been your response to that gift?  Have you tossed it aside? Is it in the trash?  Are you dragging it around with you thinking of it like a ball and chain?  Are you using it as a platform to complain about not getting some different gift?  Our attitude should be like David’s who was always saying, “Who am I to deserve this?”  When Saul offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to David, 

1 Samuel 18:20  David said to Saul, "Who am I, and what is my family or my father's clan in Israel, that I should become the king's son-in-law?"

When God made His covenant with David, the first thing David said was, 

2 Samuel 7:18-19  "Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? 

Later on David asked God for a ministry.  He wanted the ministry of building the first Temple for God.  God said no – He wouldn’t give David that grace because David had so much blood on his hands.  So the grace of that ministry was given to David’s son, Solomon.  But God did give David the grace of financing the project.  Hence, David, along with all the people, gave with unbelievable generosity.  When they put all that they had given together in one pile, David was so overwhelmed with joy over the incredible privilege of being a part of giving that much that he burst out in praise:

1 Chronicles 29:10-15  "Praise be to you, O LORD, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.  Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.  Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.  Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name. 

Now listen very carefully to the next words out of David’s mouth:

14 "But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. 

David’s giving ministry was like Paul’s preaching ministry – it was a gracious gift from God.  Whether or not we acknowledge it as that – God does.  God takes the gifts He gives seriously, even if we don’t.  
Moses’ brother Aaron had a ministry – a hard one (the priesthood). Listen to what God said to him when He gave him that gracious gift:

Numbers 18:7  I am giving you the service of the priesthood as a gift. Anyone else who comes near the sanctuary must be put to death." 

Not just anyone can do just anything in God’s kingdom.  It is a high privilege to have a ministry in His service – a privilege that can only be attained one way.  You can’t just take it on your own.  You can’t get into it through political maneuvering.  You can’t work your way up to it and it doesn’t come by promotion or good performance.  You can’t get it through a friend of a friend putting in a good word for you.  The only way to get it is to receive it as a gracious gift from the King Himself.  If that happens, whatever you do, treasure that gift. It’s one of the most precious things you have in this world.  Don’t ever neglect it.  
Our ultimate, highest goal is to reach the full measure of the fullness or abundance of God – the full measure of receiving and dispensing all that God offers man.  To bring us to a point of being able to reach that goal, He gave us gifts.  Therefore, the point of verse 10 is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven in order that He might fill all things with His blessings – and, to accomplish that, He gave gifts (in the form of ministries) to the Church.  That means the ultimate purposes of God for the universe take place through your ministry.
On the one hand, that’s really a sobering rebuke to us when we fail to carry out our ministry.  If you are not taking advantage of your graciously given ministry, you are thumbing your nose at the ascension and exaltation of Christ.  When we fail to faithfully and earnestly and wholeheartedly labor at our ministries, we are rejecting the fullness of Christ’s presence and we are resisting His effort to fill the universe with His blessings which was the whole purpose of the ascension.  
On the other hand – when you do everything you do for the Body of Christ – no matter how big or small, you are carrying out the purpose of all the work of Christ in the world!  When Jesus promised at the Great Commission “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” in a very real sense, Christ’s continuing presence with us is fulfilled in your gifts.  Your ministry is the very presence of Christ in the world!  What a blessed truth!

Benediction: Hebrews 10:32a, 35-39   

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering…35  do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. 36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

           

Review Question:

Summarize the message of Ephesians 4:7-10

Sheol

Used in 60 verses

Does it always refer to the place of the conscious souls of the dead? In several places we see that the righteous an unrighteous alike went to sheol. Jacob, job and David all expected to go there. That has created a problem for those who say it is a place of gloom and despair. People who hold this view have had to get real creative to get around that problem. They say, “Well, maybe there are 2 compartments in sheol – a good one and a bad one.” But there are no verses that say that. They just say that the righteous and the wicked go to the same place.

1.	This week I looked up every single use of that word and found that the most literal translation of “sheol” is “the grave.” 
Many, many times it is used in a literal way to refer to the ground where a dead person is buried and decays (the grave). I counted at least 24 times when sheol is used that way. And I realize some of these are debatable, but many of them are very clear. For example in Amos 9:2 sheol is a place where people can reach by digging. Though they dig down to the depths of sheol, from there my hand will take them. 
In Ps.49:14, sheol is the place dead sheep go. Like sheep they are destined for sheol, and death will feed on them. Clearly that has to refer to the ground – the place where your body decays after death. In fact, that’s what the verse goes on to say: their forms will decay in sheol, far from their princely mansions.  Nothing decays in a spiritual place – souls don’t decay. Decay takes place in the grave. So unless we are going to come up with a third compartment, one for the righteous, one for the wicked, and one for the decaying souls of departed sheep, then we have to take this are referring to the ground.
In Job 17:13-16 sheol is used synonymously with darkness, corruption, the worm, death and the dust. If the only home I hope for is sheol, (now listen to how he describes sheol)  if I spread out my bed in darkness, 14 if I say to corruption, 'You are my father,' and to the worm, 'My mother' or 'My sister,' 15 where then is my hope?... 16 Will it go down to the gates sheol? Will we descend together into the dust?" So sheol is the same thing as the dust. 
In Numbers 16, there really can’t be any question that sheol is the ground because the ground opens up, Korah and his group drop into the hole and it is called sheol (Numbers 16:30-33).  Sheol is a place where people are lying down in a prone position (Ps.139:8), motionless, in silence:

Psalm 31:17 let the wicked be put to shame and lie silent in sheol.

In Ezekiel 32, it talks about soldiers who have died in battle, and now they are lying in sheol with their swords placed under their heads, and where their weapons are buried there with their bones (Ezekiel 32:27)
Ecclesiastes 9:10 makes it clear that there is no activity at all in sheol:

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in sheol, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

That is why in Isaiah 38 and Psalm 6, the writer asks God not to send him to sheol because no one can praise Him from there.

Psalm 6:5 No one remembers you when he is dead. Who praises you from sheol? Isaiah 38:10 

So the most basic meaning of the word is to refer literally to the grave.

2.	The second way this word was used was to refer to death in general.
They would take the word for grave and use it in somewhat of a figurative way to refer to death in general.  More than half of the time sheol appears, it is used this way.  This is seen in Hebrew parallelism where the writer states something in one line and restates the general idea in a slightly different way in the next line.

1 Samuel 2:6  "The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to sheol and raises up.

Psalm 89:48  What man can live and not see death, or save himself from the power of Sheol?

When David was in trouble with Saul he said:

Psalm 18:5  The cords of sheol coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me.

He’s simply saying he was facing death.
In Ezekiel 31:15-17, sheol is used to describe the death of a nation – the whole nation, including the springs and waters and trees all go down to sheol.  That doesn’t mean that Babylon was literally buried in dirt.  Nor does it mean the springs and trees went to a spiritual abode of departed souls.  It’s just a figure of speech meaning that the nation died.  
When Jonah was facing death at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea, he thought of himself as already being in sheol:

Jonah 2:2  He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of sheol I called for help, and you listened to my cry.

Job 21:13 complains that not only do the wicked enjoy prosperity, but they often go to sheol in peace.  That makes sense if you understand sheol to refer to death (they die in peace).  But if it’s a place of firey torment, it wouldn’t make sense that they go there in peace.

Job 21:13  They spend their years in prosperity and go down to sheol in peace.

Other examples: Psalm 55:15, 88:3, 86:13, 116:3, Job 7:9, 24:19, 26:6, Proverbs 1:12, 5:5, 7:27, 9:18, 15:11, 24, 23:14, 27:20, 30:16, Song of Solomon 8:6, Isaiah 5:14, 28:15,18, Hosea 13:14, Habakkuk 2:5.  
So the vast majority of the time sheol is used in one of those two ways – to refer to the grave literally, or to mean death in a general sense.  There is also a third way it was used.

3.	A spiritual place for the souls of the wicked
There are some passages that seem to use Sheol to refer to a place not of dead bodies but of departed souls. 

Isaiah 14:9  Sheol below is all astir to meet you at your coming; it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you-- all those who were leaders in the world; it makes them rise from their thrones-- all those who were kings over the nations.

Now it could be argued that this is highly figurative language.  I don’t think anyone believes that the unrighteous dead are down in sheol as kings sitting on their thrones.  Nevertheless, this verse does sound like the word “sheol” is being used to refer to a spiritual place.  
Some other possibilities I found were Isaiah57:9, Ezekiel 32:21 and Deuteronomy 32:22.  Although each one of those if full of figurative language, much of which would be impossible to be taken literally, I still think these are most likely examples of references to a literal place where the departed, conscious souls are existing.  We know from the New Testament that such a place exists and so it makes sense that when the Old Testament writers wanted to refer to it, they would use a word that meant “death” or “the grave” in a figurative way, to refer to this literal place. 
It should be noted, however, that nowhere in the Bible is the word “sheol” used in this way when speaking of the souls of the righteous.  If it’s a place for souls, it’s a place for unrighteous souls only.  
The reason for the two-compartment theory is because so often people don’t understand that words have a range of meanings, and they are used in different ways in different contexts.  So when we read in Hebrews 9:27  man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, - and then in John 11:26 whoever lives and believes in me will never die, we don’t call that a contradiction because we understand that words are used differently in different contexts.  Hebrews is talking about physical death and Jesus is talking about eternal death.  When people don’t understand that principle, they fixate on a word and try to think up a definition that will fit every single use of that word.  That’s why they have to come up with the 2-compartment theory.  
But if we just accept the fact that sheol is like most other words in that it can be used in different ways in different contexts, then we understand that when Isaac talks about going to sheol, he’s just talking about dying.  Proponents of this idea cite 1 Peter 3:19, where Jesus “preached to the spirits in prison” and they assume that must have been at the same time Jesus descended to hell, and the spirits are OT people.  Then they go to 1 Peter 4:6 which says “the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead” and interpret that to mean Jesus proclaimed the Gospel to the folks who have been locked up in hell.  But each one of those interpretations is loaded with problems.  We’ll take them in reverse order:

1 Peter 4:5-6  they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.  For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead 

But that doesn’t mean He preached to them after they were dead.

It’s like Ruth 1:8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back, each of you, to your mother's home. May the LORD show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me.

It is talking about before they were dead.

1 Peter 3:18-20  For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison  who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. 

From this passage it is assumed that:
•	The spirits in prison that Jesus preached to were the souls of people who died in Old Testament times.
•	Jesus did this preaching during the three days He was in the tomb.

But that verse doesn’t say either of those; those ideas are taken out of thin air.