Kevin Dibbley - May 26, 2024
"The Ministry of Encouragement"
God’s people continually need encouragement. You do. I do. Our missionaries do. In the mission of God, it is easy for Christians to forget that God has designed the church to build one another up and to encourage each other in the faith. This side of heaven, the Christian life is fraught with perils. We are in a spiritual battle. It is often discouraging and tiring. Yet, we are not alone in this. We have been studying this letter to the Ephesians because it contains the call of our Waterbrooke Church mission to be “compelled to love one another.” Encouragement is a clear way to love each other. Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus from a Roman prison with the goal of encouraging and strengthening the brethren and to encourage them to do the same. Even though he himself was in the precarious position of being in chains for the gospel, he knew enough about how tough it is to live for the kingdom of God even when you don’t have chains. God’s people need to cultivate a consistent environment of mutual encouragement and edification. This message, from Ephesians 6:21-24, is called “The Ministry of Encouragement.” In Paul’s final words to the church at Ephesus, we can see the kind of encouragement that we all need. Let’s pray for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we might learn to encourage one another in living out our great calling to be God’s people, His bride, in a broken and needy world. Looking forward to encouraging each other in Christ as we worship the great Encourager, King Jesus!
Scripture References: Ephesians 6:21-24
From Series: "Ephesians: One In Christ"
We are beginning a sermon series focusing upon the New Testament letter of Ephesians. Our series is called “One in Christ”. In Japan, there is a form of artwork called Kintsugi art. Kin means gold. Tsugi means to mend. In Kintsugi art, an artist will take, for example, a piece of ceramic teaware that has been broken during an earthquake or something like that. Instead of repairing it to make it look like the original plate or teacup, the artist will instead use Japanese lacquer and gold to actually highlight the fractures. Out of the broken vessel comes a brand new piece that is considered more beautiful and more valuable than the original. The apostle Paul teaches in Ephesians that God in Christ has chosen to take our lives broken and alienated from God and each other by sin and make one new community. John Stott writes “Through Christ and in Christ, we are nothing less than God’s new society, the single new humanity which he is creating and includes Jews and Gentiles on equal terms. We are the family of God the Father, the body of Jesus Christ his Son, and the temple and dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.” Our hope and prayer is that over the next several months, we would get a vision of the church as God’s new creation, His masterpiece, which is just the beginning of what God intends to do throughout all eternity and throughout the entire heavens and on earth. Out of his brokenness, we become one. Pray that together we would become in real relationships what we are in positionally through the gospel – One in Christ.
