The Ephesians Story (Part 3)

…a description of all the major gifts. Are you ready? You know what an evangelist is? That’s one of the illiterate brothers in the fellowship in Iconium who’s not afraid to talk to somebody about Jesus Christ and tell him he ought to be a follower of Christ. And he’s the guy all the rest of us cowards turn to and say, “Go talk to Aunt Nelly and Uncle Jack about the Lord. I don’t have the guts to do it.” That is an evangelist. He’s local. You’ll always find him in every fellowship. And that’s all an evangelist is. Now, if he’s really good at it, the church down the road might ask him to come spend a few days down there, talk to some of their people about the Lord.

You want to know what a teacher is? A teacher is one of those rare people in the fellowship who can read and write. And that’s about as good a definition as you need right now of what a teacher is. Do you know what a pastor is? That’s a brother or sister who’s really good at giving comfort when somebody is down and who just naturally gets called on for help.

You want to hear the definition of a healer? I’m going to give you a definition of a healer, the lack of which you have never heard. A healer is someone who is in a local body of believers. Are you ready for this?  When someone is sick, and the fellowship of the body of Christ prays for that person and that person does not get healed, that one soul keeps on helping them and nourishing them and giving them all the possible help they can give to nurture them back to health. That’s what a healer is. He is not a brother who hits town and says, “he didn’t have enough faith.” And then having taken the offering heads for the door.

Now Gene, how do you know this? I have never heard such a definition of all of these people in all of my life because I have seen it with my eyes, and I have watched it grow up organically and naturally in the church of Jesus Christ and it will be there and it’s nothing spooky and it’s not somebody to reverence and you don’t even notice it’s being done. It just is.

And what’s an apostle? He’s the scourge of the earth. He is a pile of dung. He is the least of all Christians. He is to be tolerated at best because he is half-mad, and you do not want him to stay around the church for very long. You will wish him well. You may even give him a little money to get him out of town because the guy’s half nuts. He cannot be local. He is so deranged and so unorganized and so intense and so fanatical that if he stays around, he’ll drive everybody crazy and wreck the church. But wish him well and send him on his way because he’ll go to another town and he’ll raise up the body of Christ. Hallelujah. And that’s what an apostle is.

He is that one person God has put on this earth to defy the second law of thermodynamics. And he will come back, and he will help you in times of trouble. And he will itinerantly return. He will circulate among those churches which he has raised up. He does not belong to a movement. He is responsible for those places. Nothing more, nothing less.

And Gene, what is submission and authority? Submission and authority is something unobtainable in a body of believers. That’s what it is. No matter which way you go, you’re into the authority part, just go ahead and break your bones on that concept, brother. Eventually, they’ll rebel, for it is for freedom He has set us free. Those of you who are really trying to submit, you’ll never make it. You’ll get under the law of submission for months and maybe a few years, but eventually you’ll crack up emotionally and psychologically. You cannot live in that world, and you eventually will kick it over, and you will leave, or there will be one royal fight in which the authoritarians are saying you are witches because the Bible says that if you don’t submit to authority and you’re a rebel, you’re worse than a witch or something like that. And if you’re the other ones, you’re saying you’re a dictator and you’re an egomaniac, and there it goes. I’m going to tell you, whatever it is, it can’t be obtained. It’s just one of those things that you cry over all the time.

I personally can’t get anybody to do anything I want them to. And I can’t. And the brothers and sisters, they’re trying to do what they know is correct, and they can’t. You see, we’re fallen. Our bodies are fallen.

Paul went on a second journey, and they did the same thing. Four months in four churches. That’s eight churches. And they left them every four months, till Paul got to Corinth and that place was so messed up he stayed 18 months and that was his world’s record and from the letters he wrote them he should have stayed longer live or left earlier left soon and not come back right and that church by the way was still the Corinthian church a hundred years later. A hundred years later, that church was still having its problems. It was chasing something.

Now, I’m going to wrap this up by telling you that you haven’t heard anything yet. Here is to me the greatest genius of God revealed in the New Testament about practical things. Paul has eight churches in eight places, and they all meet in eight different ways; and even now, some of them don’t yet have elders.

Rome under Claudius, I believe it was Claudius, had thrust all the Jews out of Rome. Whether there were Christians there or not, you and I do not know, but there’s one thing for certain. Paul cheered when those Jews were chased out of Rome, because if there were any Christians there, he knew that it was not going to be a Judaistic type of Christianity. The Jews were no longer in Rome. Claudius died, another emperor came to the throne, and he let the Jews come back. Paul couldn’t get there. He called on two friends of his. He said, “Get to Rome fast and take a stand for whatever you take a stand for.” And then he did the most brilliant thing. You can find it in Romans 16.