Sermon preached on Sunday, November 18, 2012 at Garden Valley Chapel during our worship morning service based on Ephesians 4:11-12.

Take your Bible if you will and open it to the book of Ephesians chapter four. We begin a new portion of Scripture that I believe will set the course for our church body to follow.

You could put this way: There is work to be done and this is how we get it done. In other words, this is the vision for all NT churches, as well as ours.

Having a vision is critical to the life of the church because it describes where we are going and how we are going to get there.

And the Word or God will serve as our blueprint.

Now the central point of this portion of Scripture is the dispensing of gifts to the church - given to unify the church.

Paul began the discussion in v.7 when he wrote –


7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

At the moment of salvation you were given a unique spiritual gift – one that is to be used to minister for His glory. There is no such thing as a non-gifted believer.

Beginning in v.8, Paul quotes from Psalm 68 and in vv. 9-16 he applies it to the believers of this age by concentrating on two words/verbs from this psalm.

He ascended – After his descent Christ did ascend victoriously over Satan, sin, and death and thus had a right to give gifts.
He gave gifts – As a victorious King, Christ has the right to give gifts to His church (i.e. distribute the spoils of victory).

Now returning to the theme of giving of gifts to the church, Paul discusses the gifted men given to the church as leaders and how God uses them to build the Body of Christ.
That is why we have titled this series, the Building of the Body.

Listen as I read this portion of Scripture. Read Ephesians 4:11-13.