We're in Ephesians chapter 4 today, and I sense this is a final preparation moment for us. It's kind of like Numbers 33, when God gave His people those last instructions before He said, "Okay, now go across. You're ready." I'm both encouraged and challenged going into this message, and I think you will be too.
Ephesians lays out a step-by-step progression of authority, and if you skip a step, you don't get to move on to the next one.
A man in our congregation named Carl brought this to me. He asked, "Kade, have you ever noticed this in the book of Ephesians?" There's a progression that leads all the way to chapter 6, where we're told we're not fighting flesh and blood but principalities, powers, and dominion.
If you bypass the first steps, you will not get to that final step of spiritual authority. There are a lot of people battling in the spirit and making no progress because they're unsubmitted in these other areas. The scriptures say, "Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee."
A lot of people skip the submitting part and just try to resist the devil, but if you're not submitted to God, your resisting does you no good because you're right there in rebellion with him.
Christ gave five gifts to the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, and every one of them is necessary for the church to be mature and equipped.
Now these are the gifts that Christ gave to the church. The apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and to build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13, NLT)
Whenever somebody is operating in the gift of the apostle, like myself, all I'm doing is delivering you a gift that Christ gave to the church. I'm a gift-giver, that's my assignment. When Beth comes to you with the gift of the prophet, she's delivering a gift to the church. When Tim brings the gift of the evangelist, he's giving a gift to the church.
It's interesting watching Tim, our evangelist, operate in the gift of pastor too, because those seem like opposing gifts. He'll come in wanting to clean everything up and get everybody in line, and then the next moment he's loving on someone and having them over for dinner. That's the gift of the pastor working in Tim, and it's a miracle of God.
Some churches have decided the gifts of apostle and prophet aren't for today, and it leaves those churches malnourished and immature.
I don't know where we came up with that idea, other than the pit of hell, because the enemy can cripple the church if he takes away two of the five gifts, or even one. You can go into any church that doesn't have all five gifts in operation and find an immature, ill-equipped body of believers. We have to have all five.
I had a dream once where I was sitting next to a mom and her son at a healing service. She'd been to healing service after healing service trying to get her son healed. His hand was deformed, missing two fingers.
We ran out of time to talk because worship started. I looked over and the mom and her son had their hands lifted in surrender, and as soon as the son lifted his hands, his hand was made whole with all five fingers. When I woke up, the Lord told me, "I am healing the deformed church by bringing back the gift of the apostle and the prophet."
This is happening in cities across America right now. There's at least one church like this in every city, and people say they're hard to find because the Lord has them tucked away for a season, being formed in seclusion before they come out and transform their city.
We're not hiding either. You can go read every one-star review about this church on Google, and I leave every single one of them up because it's a great testimony.
You have to learn to honor the gift Christ gave, even when you don't naturally like the person carrying it, or you won't receive what God has for you through them.
If you want to grow from the gifts Christ gives the church, you have to honor those gifts. Where there is a lack of honor, there is a lack of receiving. There are people who look at my humanity and decide not to receive from the gift of the apostle because they can't quite grasp that it's flowing through Kade, and they did the same thing to Jesus.
In seminary, they teach you to hide your humanity so you don't lose people's respect. That never sat right with me, because I don't see that instruction in scripture. Jesus didn't hide his humanity, and I don't believe I should either.
I try to be very open with you about when I'm learning, when I'm getting corrected, and when I've done something wrong.
The Lord matured me in this through a man named Jonathan Shuddlesworth, who carries the gift of the evangelist. I didn't want to listen to him at first. I thought he was kind of mean and kind of rude, but the Lord kept telling me to keep listening.
I later had a dream where I met him and told him I loved his suit jackets, and in the dream he took his off and gave it to me. When I woke up, I understood there was an impartation the Lord wanted me to receive from him.
Before that, I could never have gotten up and preached without a fully scripted message, and after it, I could open the Bible to any page and preach for an hour.
If a believer doesn't learn how to honor the gifts Christ gave the church, that believer will not progress on to spiritual authority.
A church grows into maturity when its people honor the gifts God gave and let the truth in love build them up together instead of being tossed around by every new teaching.
For all these people who are like, we're always going to be the same, we're always going to live in sin. Because then we'll no longer be immature like children. We're not going to be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We won't be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way, more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (Ephesians 4:14-16, NLT)
I see that here. I look around and see a body that is healthy and growing and full of love, a bunch of peculiar people who are so different coming together and enjoying each other's company. There's great variety of generations, great variety of colors, great variety of nationalities in this house, and we're all enjoying it.
Living the way God wants you to live is as simple as imitating him, and it means refusing to take part in things done in darkness.
Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you're his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. (Ephesians 5:1-2, NLT)
You could sum up the whole Christian life right there. How do I live the way God wants? Just imitate him. Would God be doing this? If the answer is no, you don't do it. This is a cheat code. The law is written on your heart, so you already know what to do.
Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness. Instead, expose them. It is shameful to even talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret, but their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them. For the light makes everything visible. (Ephesians 5:10-13, NLT)
You don't actually have to talk about the evil things, because it's shameful to even talk about them. You just don't take part in them. God is going to shine his own light on it himself, and everybody will know at some point.
Have you noticed he's doing that across the body of Christ right now, exposing leaders in churches who need to be exposed so those churches can heal? That's the mercy of God at work.
Instead of turning to alcohol, God calls us to be filled with the Holy Spirit, which gives us a better source of joy and boldness.
Don't be drunk with wine because that'll ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, making music to the Lord in your hearts, and give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:15, 18-20, NLT)
He didn't even want to take that buzz away from you. He's giving you a better source of it, a better source of joy, a better source of boldness. That's what happened to Ron, who went from being stoned on drugs to being stoned in the Holy Spirit.
Pam told us he turned into a whole different man than the one she first knew, and after he got filled with the spirit and laid the drugs down, he became a new creation.
Biblical submission means a wife trusts God enough to follow her husband's lead without conditions, and God gave no outs for that instruction.
And further submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as unto the Lord. For a husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church. He is the savior of his body the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husband in everything. (Ephesians 5:21-24, NLT)
This always brings up the question for the ladies: does that mean I don't have a say in things? No, that's not what that means. A rebellious response would be arguing your case and listing out all the reasons why not. A submissive wife says, "I'm willing to do that, but I was wondering if you'd be willing to talk about it." If he says no, she says, "Of course."
God gave no conditions for your submission and no outs. It was foretold all the way back in Genesis that the wife would desire to have control over the husband, and that's the challenge the ladies go through. I want to equip you to simply ask, "Is this up for discussion?" so you can bring your opinion to the table in a submissive way.
Husbands are called to love their wives with the same sacrificial, patient, never-rude love that Christ shows the church.
For husbands, this means love your wives as Christ loves the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In that same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body, but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church, and we are members of his body. As the scriptures say, a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. It's a great mystery, but it's an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again, I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:25-33, NLT)
Fellas, that's agape love, not the sexy kind of love. This is the agape love found in 1 Corinthians 13.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud. (1 Corinthians 13:4, NLT)
Every time you're rude to your wife, you're in disobedience to God. Every single time. There's no instruction telling husbands to make sure their wives submit, and there's no instruction telling wives to make sure their husbands love them right.
Christ gave each instruction directly to the person responsible for it, so you don't have to worry about policing the other side. Somebody just needs to go first, and you'll see the house come in line.
Honoring your parents isn't conditional on them being honorable, and it comes with a promise of a long life and things going well for you.
Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise. If you honor your father and mother, things will go well for you and you will have a long life on the earth. (Ephesians 6:1-3, NLT)
He didn't say honor your parents if they're honorable. He said to honor them, period. You honor them by speaking well of them and refusing to let thoughts tear them down. If all you can say is, "Thank you, God, for my mom and dad, they got me here," then say that and leave it there.
I'm not saying we don't have real challenges because of how we were raised. But the longer you leave that around as an excuse, the longer that challenge gets to stay, so how about you just move on. We had a rooster on the farm that used to attack the kids, and Beth finally took care of it with a pistol. Whenever we let things keep attacking us, whether it's a rooster or an old excuse about how we were raised, we need to put it to death the same way.
There was a day the Lord told me, "I will never use you to correct your parents." That statement renewed my mind, because before that I had a whole list of things I thought my parents could be doing better. Let God handle your parents. Your job is to honor them.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4, NLT)
Whatever your job looks like, God calls you to work with enthusiasm as though you're working for him, not for people.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. Try to please them all the time, not just when they're watching you. As slaves of Christ, do the will of God with all of your heart. Work with enthusiasm as though you are working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good that we do. Whether we are slaves or free masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Don't threaten them. Remember, you both have the same master in heaven and he has no favorites. (Ephesians 6:5-9, NLT)
There's no slaves in America, so this translates to our employee and employer relationship. It didn't say if you have a great boss. If you're a rebellious employee, you're stuck. If you're a mouthy employee, you're stuck. If you're a complaining employee, you're stuck.
If you drag into work saying you hate being there, you're not submitted to God, so you have no resisting power against the enemy. I'm not saying you can never go get a new job, but while you're working toward it, learn how to work enthusiastically under somebody you don't like.
Even if you find a boss you do like, they can turn into one you don't, so you might as well decide right now to work enthusiastically no matter who's over you.
Once you're submitted to Christ, your home, and your work, you're ready to put on the armor of God and stand firm against the enemy's strategies.
Isn't it interesting that the Lord requires these other levels of submission before he gives you access to spiritual authority? Whoever's getting corrected today can make a choice right now. Wives can decide to submit, husbands can decide to love, children can decide to obey, and employees can decide to work enthusiastically.
Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God's armor so that you'll be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we're not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Therefore, put on every piece of God's armor so you'll be able to resist the enemy at the time of evil. And then after the battle, you'll still be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness for shoes. Put on the peace that comes from the good news so that you will be fully prepared. In addition to all these, hold up your shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. Put on salvation as your helmet and take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere. (Ephesians 6:10-18, NLT)
What are the five gifts Christ gave to the church according to Ephesians 4?
Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. The pastor taught that all five are necessary and that a church missing any one of them will be immature and ill-equipped.
Why do some Christians say the gifts of apostle and prophet aren't for today?
The pastor said he believes that idea came from the pit of hell, meant to cripple the church by removing gifts Christ intended it to have. He shared a dream about a boy with a deformed hand being made whole as an illustration of God restoring these gifts to the church.
What does it mean to honor a spiritual gift instead of the person carrying it?
It means receiving what God is giving through someone even when you don't naturally like their personality or delivery. The pastor said a lack of honor leads to a lack of receiving, and shared his own story of learning to receive from an evangelist he initially found rude.
What does biblical submission mean for a wife?
The pastor described it as trusting the Lord enough to follow her husband's lead even in things she might disagree with, without conditions. He gave an example script: "I'm willing to do that, but I was wondering if you'd be willing to talk about it," and if the husband says no, responding with "Of course."
Does the Bible say husbands should make sure their wives submit?
No. The pastor pointed out that scripture gives the instruction to submit directly to wives and the instruction to love directly to husbands, with neither spouse assigned to police the other's obedience.
Do you have to honor your parents even if they weren't good parents?
Yes. The pastor said God gave no condition that parents have to be honorable to be honored, and that honoring them comes with the promise of a long life and things going well.
What does the Bible say about working for a boss you don't like?
The pastor taught that Ephesians 6 calls believers to work with enthusiasm as though working for the Lord, not people, regardless of the boss. He said a rebellious, mouthy, or complaining employee is spiritually stuck and can't progress toward spiritual authority.
Why does submission come before spiritual authority in this teaching?
The pastor described a progression: submission to Christ through honoring his gifts, then submission in marriage, then honoring parents, then submission at work, and only after that, access to spiritual authority and the armor of God. He said skipping any step keeps a believer from reaching the next one.
