03 The Apostolic

Welcome tonight as we keep looking at the subject—this is church. The point of this whole series is really to teach us what the church is. How does it work? How do we align ourselves with it? And hopefully as we go through this, we're going to see the wondrous thing that is the church and the different aspects of it and how the life of God will come to the earth through the vehicle of the church.

So tonight we're going to be looking at leadership. This topic will be covered in two sessions. The first session I'll do on the apostolic. And the second session will be covering elders and deacons. And this is a big subject because, I often say—show me your leaders and I'll show you the future of your church.

At the end of the day, leadership will ultimately determine the values of any community. Like in a family, a father will determine the values of that family. And so if we get leadership wrong, everything else is going to be wrong. It's probably one of the more important subjects, one that is important to discuss.

The Contentious Subject of Modern Apostles

The first session is going to be quite interesting because I'm covering Apostles in our day. How do they work within the church? Now this is quite a contentious subject. If you go Google this, you're gonna find a lot of negative things around the apostles because largely, like in Paul's day, there is a lot of the fake, but before we go there, let's go back to our Bibles and look at how God says this gift worked?

Is it still needed for today? And if it is needed, how does it work? And what does this specific gift do? And then the other four gifts with it, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. How do these things, these gifts, these people work to help the church get healthy?

Jesus: The Great Apostle

And so maybe to begin, as I've mentioned the other night, every single thing in the church ultimately is birthed in Jesus and ultimately is in Him. We're supposed to, even as His body, be in Christ. And so every part of the church is likewise going to be in Him.

And so the Bible tells us that Jesus is actually the great Apostle. And in Hebrews 3:1, it says—"Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest whom we confess." So we see this interesting concept that Jesus is the great Apostle.

He is the one who's sent by the Father, and that's really the root of the word is sent. *Apostolos* means one who is sent or a messenger that goes before. And so Jesus is the great messenger, but then the word has more than just a sent one in it.

The word also has an understanding of government and how things will work within the church, and we'll discover that later. Just notice—Jesus is the great Apostle. But the Bible says when He ascended, He gave gifts to men. And I always think of Jesus being everything.

He's the full body, and as He ascends to be with the Father, He puts portions of Himself down into individuals, and by His calling, He gives portions to each and every one of us. Some people by His grace are called to be apostles and some are prophets and some are evangelists, some pastors, teachers, and then there's also other gifts like gifts of administration and there's many different gifts, but we're going to cover the first five tonight.

And so maybe just begin with apostles. Most people think of the apostles as the twelve. Then obviously maybe some would say, well, Paul was an apostle. But were there any other apostles outside of those? Let's search the Bible together and hopefully we'll see that there are many and that we do still need the specific gift in the life of the church.

The Unique Mandate of the First Twelve

And so maybe just look at the twelve apostles. Do you remember when Jesus started His ministry? He called twelve men to be with Him and many of you would know them by name.

They're quite popular. And some of them wrote books in the New Testament. So He chose these twelve men to be with Him, the Bible says. They walked with Him for the three years of His ministry. They saw what He did and got to experience some of that for themselves when He sent them out to do miracles for themselves.

They were there at His crucifixion and at His resurrection, and then saw Him raised from the dead. We know that Judas, one of the twelve, failed, and so we know that he ultimately hung himself and lost his position, and so the apostles were left with this quandary in the book of Acts.

Judas is dead. There's only eleven now, but Jesus chose twelve. They grapple with what to do? Now we learn something that makes the first twelve unique from any other apostle. They're different from Paul. They're different from any other apostle today. We see it when they talk about how they're going to replace Judas.

And in Acts 1:21-22, we read what the specific calling and mandate of those first twelve apostles was. It's this. "Therefore," Peter says, "it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord went in and out among us."

In other words, from the time that He was baptized. We need to find someone that's with us from that time. Right through His life, into His death, and now into His resurrection because they're going to see Him raised from the dead. "Beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection."

So the first twelve, their primary distinction is to have walked with Jesus, to have seen the things He did. They're going to be living epistles. They're going to be reminding and writing down later what we will build—everything that we believe on today. And so they're very unique from any other apostle. There's no other apostle like them. And in fact, the Bible says it's their names that are laid into the very foundations of the heavenly Jerusalem.

Biblical Examples of Other Apostles

So most people think it stops there. Obviously Matthias replaces Judas, and that's in Acts 1:26, and so we find the twelve restored. But then we start to see other apostles emerging, and the first one we'll see is Paul. Paul is a different apostle from the twelve, and from any other apostle today.

He tells us that the mystery of the gospel was revealed to him. He saw Jesus personally, was taken into the wilderness, trained personally, and he understood how the church would work. God gave him that. He could see how Gentiles would actually come into the kingdom and be saved.

And so God gave him a different message, to build on what the twelve did. He had a different grace. Most people say, "That's it." Now let's look if the Bible shows us any other apostles. When we search our Bible together we'll see there are more.

I just need to make that point. In Acts 14:14, "But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard this, they tore their clothes." So now the Bible is calling Barnabas an apostle. He's not one of the twelve. How did he suddenly become an apostle?

Now we suddenly start to see there's more people that are apostles, not just the twelve and Paul. And now Barnabas is included. We don't even know where he became an apostle. Well, the Bible did say that they were set apart by the church in Antioch and commissioned to begin that ministry.

So there was a setting apart that took place. Then also we see, in 1 Thessalonians 1:1, three men write a letter. It's Paul, Silas, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Three men write this letter and through the letter they always write plural.

They write as three people, so "we, we, we, we," is how the letter's written. And then they say this—remember it's Paul, Silas, and Timothy in 1 Thessalonians 2:6-7—"We were not looking for praise from men, nor from anyone else, as apostles of Christ."

So now, it's not just Paul speaking. You've now got Paul, Silas, and Timothy all calling themselves apostles. So now we've suddenly got a couple more apostles getting added to this mix. So you start to realize—this is actually quite a common gift. In fact, there's more apostles named in the Bible than any other gift by name.

You have James, the brother of Jesus. We won't turn there because I've already made my point. You can see that there's more in Galatians 1:19. Apollos in 1 Corinthians 4:6 and 4:9. Epaphroditus, in some translations, we'll translate him as an apostle sent from one of the churches. Andronicus and Junia in Romans 16:7 are called apostles.

Testing Real and False Apostles

And so you've got lots of people who are now emerging as apostles within the church, after those guys. And so we've got to understand what an apostle is and how the gift works. And maybe before we dig into that, it needs to be said that while there were genuine apostles, the devil always brings the fake.

And so whenever you've got the real, you're gonna have the fake. Not long after that Paul wrote letters about many false apostles that are coming, preaching the gospel for the wrong motives, preaching the wrong gospel. He's fighting a lot with others who are calling themselves apostles.

But these are bad apostles. They're not good apostles. And then in Revelation 2:2, which is right at the end of the first century—it's literally the last letter written. All of the original apostles are dead. They've all been killed. And John is the last one alive.

And he writes and he says, "You have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false." It's interesting that there are false and real apostles. And the church has a responsibility to test the real from the false.

If there were false apostles then, do you think there might be false apostles today? Most definitely. I'll actually mention one of the groups because it does often come up. There's a group called the NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation. It's a group started by a guy called Peter Wagner who recognized that God is doing something.

He wrote books about it and it became this movement out of America. I would classify that movement as a false movement. We're nothing like them. Their understanding of how this works is totally different from ours. Their doctrines, I think, are wonky and dodgy. It's a very unhealthy movement. The NAR has aligned themselves with Trumpists and Christian nationalism. There's a mix of Kingdom-Now theology and a lot of really bad theologies that are birthed in that movement. It can be confusing because they call themselves apostles, but they are totally different from us.

It’s like comparing China with America. It's totally different. It's important to mention, because that always comes up. So, there are more apostles mentioned in the Bible than any other ministry. But there are also four other gifts—prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers—which we will look at later.

The Purpose of Apostolic Gifts: Equipping the Body

But I first want to talk more about the apostle and how it works. In Ephesians 4:11-13, we read: It was He, Jesus, who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets. But it's interesting now, I want you to see the language.

There is a difference between a gift of prophecy and an office of the prophet. He's not talking about people who can prophesy. He's talking about prophets; it's a noun. In other words, these people themselves are the gift. It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, pastors and teachers.

And so in each of these cases, you'll find certain people that are called from the church, they're in the church, but they carry a gift that's actually for the church and to the church. And it's those five gifts. And so the apostolic is one of those gifts.

It is an office; in other words, it is something that's set apart by the laying on of hands, and it carries something of the government of Heaven upon it. The purpose of this, it says, is to prepare God's people for works of service.

And so that language is quite interesting. They have a role. There's something that these gifts do to help the church get healthy. And it's ultimately to prepare you to do the work of the ministry. Our job is actually to train you to do what Jesus calls you to do.

Very often the apostle is the superstar or these big preachers, and they might be good preachers, but the point of the ministry is actually to see the church rising up. And the word equipped is *katartismos* in Greek. It means to mend and make entirely whole.

So part of their ministry is to actually come and find broken individuals, and as they administer together into the churches, the church comes into a wholeness. And it starts to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up.

It starts to connect properly with one another when those gifts are working. Until we all reach unity in the faith, and we start to believe rightly and in the knowledge of the Son of God. In other words, we start to know Jesus properly and become mature.

We start to grow up so that we start to look like Jesus because of these gifts working into us, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. These gifts are there to ultimately see the church maturing. The gift that God's put in every individual that make up His body start to come to fruition so that the church looks like Jesus.

And so the gift is not there to come and watch it in a big auditorium. The gift, when it works properly into the churches, sees the church rising up and actually being the church. And that's really important. So often big ministries today say, "Come and watch the big worship team."

That's not the point of what the church is supposed to do. We're supposed to see the church reflecting Jesus and ministering Jesus in everything that they do. There are some people today that will say, "Well, the Bible is enough. Now we've got the Bible, so we don't need those gifts anymore."

And I would argue that this is bad theology. Even though most of those guys are quite good theologians. Because the Bible tells us in the book of Revelation—the last letter written, about AD 95—at this point, the churches have got every single one of the letters that Paul's written.

They've got Timothy, Titus, they've got all the Gospels written, and those letters have been drifting around from church to church. They've got the whole Old Testament. And five of the seven churches are terminally ill and still needing the apostle to say, "You need to fix this, you need to fix that."

So the scripture by itself is not enough to keep the church healthy. We need to see these gifts functioning. John is functioning as an apostle after all the letters, except his, are written, he's still bringing significant tweaks. Do you see that? The scripture to illustrate my point.

Why the Church Still Needs Spiritual Gifts

Until we all attain, the Bible says we need these gifts, in Ephesians 4:13, "Until we all reach unity in the faith and a proper knowledge of the Son of God and become mature. Attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."

Now let me ask you this, when's that going to happen? Has the church reached full unity? Has the church reached the full knowledge of the Son of God? Has the church fully matured? Has it attained to the full measure yet anywhere in the last 2,000 years of the stature of Christ?

And no, in fact the Bible tells us very clearly. There it says we'll know fully, we'll be like Him fully. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13:12—Now we see but a poor reflection. In other words, even as we look at Jesus, we're seeing Him like a poor reflection.

But then, when He returns, we'll see Him face to face. Now I only know in part, but when He returns, then I will know fully, even as I am fully known. When are we going to finally not need apostles? When He returns. Then we'll finally be like Him.

We'll know as He knows, we'll be as He is, and we won't need that gift anymore. Until Christ returns, we need this gift to work right through the church to keep it healthy. Are you with me? All right. Every church needs apostolic grace.

The Fivefold Ministry and the Nature of Apostolic Grace

I often marvel that Jesus decided to use these five gifts. I'm going to build the church, I'm going to teach it to start to mature, it's going to grow up, and I'm going to use these five gifts. So this is God, the Creator of the universe, saying, that's how I'm going to do it.

These are the gifts that when they're in place, all the other gifts will start to mature and emerge. How do we think we're going to build a church properly without them? It's a bit like trying to bake a cake. You need flour, you need egg, you need certain things.

Try and bake a cake without those ingredients and it doesn't work. Likewise, if we don't use those five gifts, there really is no way that the church is ever going to be the church that Jesus is looking for because we're not doing it His way.

Building on the Foundations of Apostles and Prophets

Does that make sense? The apostle is the one gift that undergirds all the others and holds them together. We'll look at that just now in a bit of detail. But the Bible tells us in Ephesians 2:20 that two of those five gifts are different from the others.

And it says that the church is built on the foundations of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ Himself as the chief cornerstone. Basically what that means is this. Jesus is obviously the chief cornerstone. Everything aligns with the chief cornerstone when you built the house in the old days.

And so, these gifts are able to lay the foundations that everything aligns with Jesus. Now, when you build a house, you can't go outside of the foundation. If you build a wall where there's no foundation, that house is not going to stand. It's going to crack.

It's going to break. It's going to fall. Foundations are vital for the building to take place. Two gifts lay foundations in the church. Apostles and prophets. The other gifts build upon those foundations. Elders, deacons build on those foundations, but those two gifts are different from any other and they lay the groundwork in.

In some ways they lay the invisible thing in place that the church is actually built upon and they align everything with Jesus. And so Paul uses this language about himself. He is an apostle and in 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, we see him talking and he says, according to the grace as an apostle of God, given to me like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation.

The apostolic will come and lay the foundation. And someone else is building on it. The apostles very often do not actually do a lot of the building. They raise up elders and the other gifts to do the building, but the apostolic and the prophetic lay the foundation of the thing so that everything can be built properly on Jesus.

And they're very good at discerning—and can see when that's not going to align properly with Jesus. If we bring that into the building, it's actually going to go off the cornerstone. It's going to go off of Christ and the church will be built wrong.

And so it's a gift, it's a grace. They're able to come in and discern, and we'll see this just now, they'll discern what's needed to make sure that the church is built well, and then obviously be careful, let each one take care how he builds upon it.

Aligning the Church with the Person of Jesus

For no one can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. He is the foundation, and He's the one that everything aligns to and is built upon. So, and I want to say, when I say Jesus Christ, I'm not talking just about the historical Jesus or the Jesus of the Bible.

Those yes, but I'm actually talking about the living Jesus. Jesus is life. And He's the one that will ultimately build His church. And so these gifts seem to have a way of bringing Jesus into the foundations and the fabric of the church. So the church ends up being built up on the foundation of the person of Jesus.

And when we start to drift off of Him, those gifts will keep coming back and aligning us back to Him. And you see that in the letters. You see the letters that are written. And there's a continual recalibration of the church. Because unfortunately we tend to drift on our own.

Even eldership teams drift if left to their own devices and they need that grace to keep aligning them back to the Lord Jesus Christ. And again Paul says he is an expert builder, a master builder. If you want to build a house, who would you choose?

And normally one of the first things you'll do is you'll, you'd find someone who's built some houses and go look at what he's built and speak to some people and go, how was that experience for you? Because if you get a bad builder, things can go really bad.

Paul here is obviously a masterful—that God graced him by grace. He just knew how to do it. I often marvel at how prophets prophesy. How does someone call someone out that they don't know and seem to speak the mysteries of their heart?

How do they do that? It's the grace of the Lord Jesus giving them, opening their heart, opening their understanding to see. The apostolic comes in and it sees in the church what's wrong and it can align the church with what is Christ and what is the foundations of the scriptures.

In Hebrews 11:10, Jesus is actually called the architect of the church. So no apostle comes with his own ideas. No apostle comes and says, Hey, I've got this new plan. Jesus is the architect. And actually, Jesus is also the builder. And so the apostolic is able to come and bring the architect, Jesus, and show the church, how does Jesus want the church to work?

And in some ways, I'm kind of doing that with you tonight. I'm showing you how the church works and how it aligns to Jesus. And so this is really how the gift operates. Then he says, and someone else is building upon the foundations laid by apostles and prophets.

Protecting the Church and Maintaining Scriptural Ratios

And that's your teachers, your pastors, and your evangelists will build on that. Elders will build on that foundation. Deacons and others will build upon those foundations. But they are not foundational. They are those that build upon the foundations. If you look in the New Testament, every time a church is planted in the persecution, believers are scattering, as soon as the apostles hear there's a church planted, what do they do?

They go and they ask questions—Hey, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They're immediately there to make sure that the foundations are laid well. So they bring the right materials. They really are careful builders. They're able to bring the right materials.

They can protect the church against heresy. They bring the right ratios. We had a scenario when we built this building we're in now. We hired a company to build the building because we didn't know anything about building. It was a Christian guy whose business was exploding; he was doing really well.

What we didn't know is that he was doing so well that he started to have his sons run his sites for him. Before he'd run the sites himself. So when we looked at what he'd done, it was great. But when his sons did it and he was absent, because of his expanding business...

His sons didn't build as well as he did and we didn't know that until we started building roof height. High slabs were laid, cement pillars. I mean, we'd spent a lot of money. We'd sold our houses and cars and we'd made huge sacrifices for that. Our engineer walked on site and started testing things and said, "I've gotta fail this building."

And we said, "What do you mean?" He said, "You've got the wrong ratios of cement. You've put too much sand in your cement mixes. So everything that's concrete is failed." And we had already built roof high. And I remember thinking, "No," because all that we got wrong was our ratios.

And when we went back to the company, typically, he went bankrupt. He was a Christian. You weren't gonna take him to court. And so we were left with a building roof-high that we had to tear down ourselves and chip bricks to try and recover each one.

And that was a long horrible process to build through. The wrong ratios can cause the building to not get built properly. Did you know that the wrong ratios of any doctrine—if anything comes too strong, not balanced, not nuanced—will eventually cause the building to fail the test of God.

The Apostolic is able to come in like a master builder and make sure that the ratios of what you're getting are good and healthy ratios. Often eldership teams can drift. Maybe there's an elder that's very gifted in a certain area and the whole eldership team can go down that way.

You see that in the Corinthians. The whole church is going down the gift of the spirit so much that they're actually becoming dangerous and destructive and Paul has to come in and bring correction. This gift is one that really is vital for the health of the church.

Obviously, Jesus is the architect. This gift seems to be able to, as a master builder, align what's there with the plan of heaven. It can unlock the Bible and say, this is what the Bible says, and this is how we do it. You'll find when the gift operates, you'll find things suddenly become clearer for you.

Supplying What Is Lacking in Faith

And it's normally because the gift is aligning your thinking with the scriptures and with the way of the Lord. And the Spirit in you will agree. And that's because of the grace that's flowing through that gift. The Bible says that these gifts will supply what's lacking in our faith.

Do you know that every morning I take pills because I'm old. I've actually got a number of things that I'm supplementing my diet on, especially when I travel because you don't always eat well. And so in the same way we have deficiencies, in how the church is built.

And so in 1 Thessalonians 3:10, Paul speaks to the church and he says, night and day we pray most earnestly that we can see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. When this gift comes into the church, it doesn't come and just wow you with its incredible wisdom.

It literally is looking at you like if you go to your gym and get someone to analyze you. How healthy are you? They take your levels and look at your muscle mass. That's what this gift does. It comes in and it checks out the church and it determines—how healthy is this body?

What is lacking because it's the lacking areas that are dangerous for you. Then they will supply what is lacking. They'll do that either through their own grace or they'll draw in gifts to come and supplement what's lacking in this church until it gets strong in that area.

And you see this again in Acts 19:1-2. Paul's at Corinth and he takes a road through the interior. He arrives at Ephesus and there he found some disciples. So these are Christians. And he asks them immediately, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?"

They answered, "No. We've not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." They believe in Jesus, but they've got a significant area of lack. And so Paul then comes and he prays for them and they receive the Spirit, he supplies what's lacking, and the church can grow in her faith in health.

Does that make sense? And so you'll see when apostolic gifts come into one of our churches within Four12, they will invariably come in and try to pick up what's lacking here. Which means sometimes the conversation's uncomfortable—because it's not nice to hear that you're not doing that well.

But they need to bring the correction so that we can reflect the fullness of Jesus. They don't come to just bring their latest Tupperware preach. They come to try and impart what's lacking within the church, so that it can look like Jesus and grow up in health.

Balancing Weak Areas: The Bodybuilding Illustration

And I love the story of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was Mr. Austria in bodybuilding. He looked a little bit bigger than me. He wanted to be the best in the world. He wanted to be Mr. Universe. He was winning Mr. Austria all the time, but Austria is not a big country.

And so he went to America where the best trainers were, and he asked them to train him. Because he believed he could be the best in the world. When he asked, he took his shirt off and flexed. And the trainer said—he'd never seen a top half developed as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger's top half—but knowing human nature, he knew that normally we show off our strengths, we hide our weaknesses.

And so he said to Arnold, "Let me see your legs." And when Arnold showed him his legs, he had these thin little legs. And the trainer said, "I'll train you on condition, that we don't touch your top half, we just work on your weak areas."

Which they did. And Arnold ended up building his legs, became balanced, and he ended up winning Mr. Universe, Mr. World, and became the great Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is such a good picture of the church. You come into a church, and they say—we're the spiritual warfare church, or we're the faith church, and actually, it's the lacking areas that need to be built up so that we can reflect Jesus well.

Apostolic Alignment and Recalibration

And so this gift is vital, and when it comes in, I would encourage you don't miss those meetings, because these are recalibration moments, and if you miss the recalibration, everyone else changed and you didn't. And realize there's a grace that flows when that gift ministers, that you can't always get on a video.

There is something about being there. So for us, these would be vital. Acts 2—they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. Why? Because they knew this gift is so key to help us align ourselves properly with Jesus. The apostolic brings in where there's lack.

It fills in. We live in a very windy part of the world called Cape Town and if you try and grow a tree in your garden, you'll find, as that tree starts to grow, that the tree invariably starts to look a bit like this, because the wind is blowing so strong.

It can't help itself. It's trying to go up, but the wind is so strong, it's being bent. It's the same when the Bible speaks of winds of doctrine that sweep through the churches. The Bible talks about, even our culture will shift us. And so the dangers of whatever culture we're in, our culture starts to define how we read our Bibles, how we see things working.

You come to see a tree that looks like this and instead your trees are all bent to the one side. And so what we need is this gift to come and bend the tree up and align it back with God's ways. And in that sense to bring it back from drift.

In 2 Timothy 4:2, Timothy is working as an apostle and Paul says—correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. And now you've got this correction, rebuke and encouragement. So when the apostolic comes in, I'm always hoping that it'll bring correction because I know living in a culture that I'm in, the chances are I'm going to be blinded somewhat by my culture.

And I need that grace to help me see Jesus and how He builds, not how my world dictates things should be. Because the world belongs to who? The devil. And so we don't follow the world, we follow the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

The One Degree Principle: Avoiding Drift from the Truth

Here's an interesting thing. It's important that you actually hit it perfectly. I spoke in one of the sessions earlier about hitting the mark when you're shooting. But do you know there's a principle of the one degree principle? 360 degrees, it's a circle. And if I was one degree out, let's say there's any truth in the church, that's one degree out.

Let's say an understanding of faith. One degree out. When you're standing over here, it doesn't seem like much, but the problem is we build on our beliefs. And so one degree out stays one degree out. And the longer you stay in that thing, it's like you're walking down that thing.

And here's an interesting thing. This is mathematics. If you walk a thousand miles or a thousand kilometers, let's just say a thousand miles, guess how much out you are starting at one degree out? A hundred and seventy miles out. So in a thousand miles, you're a hundred and seventy miles out.

Do you realize you cannot see as far as a hundred and seventy miles? You carry on with one degree out for long enough and eventually you look to see where the truth is and you can no longer even see it. It's that far gone from you.

And so we must be careful how we build because one degree out can mean you look to see Jesus and you can't even find Him. We need Master builders that can help us recalibrate our faith. I remember when I saw this gift operating, I believed that they had a gift that I didn't have.

I was a young believer still. And so what I did was, when they spoke, and I disagreed, my posture was always this: I'm probably one degree out. Because they've got a grace that I don't have. And so I postured myself to learn. I tried to always ask, "Help me to understand why you are saying this to me? I could be wrong, because I don't see it like that."

That made me teachable, and it meant that I grew, and now, today, because of that posture, I'm now teaching others. But I would really encourage you, when you see that gift operating, when you recognize it, posture yourself well.

Biblical Partnership vs. Man-Made Traditions

So how do apostles work with churches? We've built a lot of man-made things into the church, and anything man-made is, is a mess. It messes up what God wants to do. The traditions of man will always nullify the Word of God.

And so we cannot bring man-made traditions, man-made thoughts into the church. It's got to be Christ's thoughts and Christ's building. Here's some things that the churches have built through the ages. Have you heard of denominations? Do you see that in your Bible?

No, you don't see denominations anywhere. So why do we have them, if we want to be Bible people and not go beyond what's written? And what you realize is some people came up with a good idea to build something, but they ended up putting traditions in place that eventually will fight against Jesus.

In most of the churches you go to now that are denominations, you'll see nothing of the life of God. You won't see the life of the Holy Spirit flowing. Those churches have actually lost connection with Jesus, because denominations is not how He builds.

How's about networks? That's a more modern word for today. Most churches say we like networking. Is that a biblical word? No, networking is this loose affiliation. Just join a conference and come along because it might bless you—but it's not what we see in the Bible.

And so what we do is we're very good at copying and almost doing it right. But one degree out... We are not a network. Four12 that we've built, which is out of Ephesians 4:12, is not a network. Because we don't just loosely affiliate.

The Bible talks about koinonia. It talks about partnership. It talks about these gifts working in the church. It talks about correction, rebuke, and encouragement. It talks about a partnership, to disciple nations. All of those things are different from what I see in networks.

So network for me, I can't give myself to it. I don't see it in my Bible. How about independent churches? Do we see that? We actually don't. There's not one single church in the New Testament that's independent. They're all living and in relationship with the apostolic.

And I want us to look deeper into this now. How do churches work together then? Because there should be unity. Shouldn't there? Deep down inside, we know there should be unity. We try and do it all sorts of things. Let's have a unity prayer meeting.

It's not unity. Unity is one heart, one mind, one purpose. Unity is when we all work together to the same end. That meeting in a conference or somewhere is not unity, not the way Jesus talks about unity. Father, make them one as You and I are one.

The Field: How Apostles and Churches Work Together

That's unity. So how do apostles and churches work together? If it's not a denomination, it's not a network, it's not independent? Let's look at what the Bible says about these things. How does it work? It's a huge subject. We'll lay out some big strokes.

And the details you'll catch as you walk with us into the future, if that's what God does with you. But in 1 Corinthians 3:9, Paul speaks about the church and he says, as apostles we are God's fellow workers, but you are God's field, God's building.

And so he brings this concept in of the church being a field. And I love that. And the field is really a place where a farmer works. He's saying to the church, you, the church are God's field. But if this is God's field, the church in the world, how do they all work together?

Do you realize that we all have a Father, we all have a family? So God does the same thing with churches; He brings them into smaller units so that they can work together properly. And so we see this concept—everything is Christ's field and then He subdivides them.

And in 2 Corinthians 10:13, Paul's now writing within his own field to the Corinthian church. And he says, we, however, will not boast beyond proper limits. And I want us to see a few words here. There's limits to every man's authority, but we'll confine our boasting to the field that God has assigned to us.

Now you start to see something interesting. So this is God's field, this whole room, and then Paul says, actually God's assigned a place of boundaries with us. And the Corinthians, a field that reaches even to you. So God entrusted Paul and those working with him as an apostolic kind of household or field of churches.

We're this field. And Corinth, you're in our field, you're working with us. We're in partnership in the Gospel. The word is actually koinonia, there's a partnership, there's a oneness in the Gospel. This concept of field or area of influence that God has assigned to us, the ESV uses that language.

The Greek word is metron kanonos. Metron, where you get the word meters, or length and breadth. Field. It makes me think of maybe rugby or soccer, depending on what nation you come from as you're listening to this. There's a bunch of players that come onto a field and there's metron, there's meters, there's length and breadth.

And so they work together, but now you've got churches on a field working together. And they play together to score a goal. What's the goal? Disciple Nation. They all play together, they all work as a team. And then he says, metron, and the second word there is canonos, where you get the word, Canon, which is translated a definitively bonded or bounded or fixed space within the limits of one's power of influence is confined.

A province assigned to one. In other words, Christ says, okay, I need My church looked after. I know I can't just leave it. So I'm going to put churches in fields. Paul, I'm assigning the Corinthian church to your care. And the Corinthians must test those acclaimed to be apostles.

And if God links them to Paul, then they come into his field, and they work with the Philippians and the Colossians and all the other churches to see the kingdom of God come to the earth. And they play together to that end. It's interesting to see the language he uses.

He later says: I won't boast in another man's territory. And what? That's an interesting word. In other words, Paul was saying that churches fall within certain territories, under the leadership of the apostolic and the five fold gifts working together. And so you've got these churches working in what you call a field or partnership.

Partnership and the Standard of Faith

So the biblical language really is partnership. The Philippians were partners with Paul. He uses the word koinonos. And so we call what we do in Four12 a partnership. And again, the word canon illustrates that there is rule or standard of faith and practice within that field.

In other words, the apostles have to ensure that what Jesus has taught and that health comes to everything under their care. They work with elders—we'll look at that later—the two are very important for the health of the field, but the ultimate responsibility of the field is the apostle's, not the elder's.

The elders are delegated authority. All right. So we learn that apostolic teams are entrusted or assigned an area by Jesus. And so again, local churches are not autonomous. I don't know if any of you know a man called Terry Virgo. He was a man who started a movement called New Frontiers in England, and he's a highly respected man.

He said this, "The modern idea of churches separate, sovereign, and independent is unknown in the New Testament." And I think he's spot on. You just don't see independent churches. You see churches in mutual submission, working together to advance the kingdom of God. All right.

The language used—in area of activity, area of influence, a territory. Our hope is that your faith continues to grow so that we can preach the gospel beyond you. The hope of the field is that we will together disciple nations. And so as the apostles come into the church, they're trying to train every part to work and they raise it up to look beautiful.

And then those parts actually help to go out and to plant new churches and to bring new people into the kingdom. And the thing keeps growing. Remember the apostles and the prophets lay the foundations, but then you've got the three other gifts. Let's look at how those gifts all work together.

Normally when there's a genuine apostolic grace, you'll find the other four gifts pop up almost invariably because the one gift attracts the others. This concept of evangelists traveling out on their own independently is actually not really a biblical one. You see them working in partnership even within the field.

The Fivefold Gifts and the Illustration of the Hand

I've seen this illustration use of a hand and it's very helpful. Each finger represents one of the fivefold gifts. In Ephesians 4 we have five gifts. I'll start with the, this finger, the pointing finger. And it's the prophet. The prophet comes and he points direction.

He points things out. He says, this is what God's saying, this is where we're going. And so the prophet comes in and guides. The evangelist is the second finger. And if you notice my hand, it's the longest finger. It's the one that goes past all the others.

He's got the furthest reach. The evangelist is always reaching outside of the church and drawing people in. And so the evangelist represents someone who will always be preaching and bringing in the lost. And when an evangelist ministers, you feel like you want to get saved all over again.

The Evangelist and the Outreach of the Kingdom

You see Jesus, you see grace, you see the wonder. And often signs, wonders and miracles follow this gift because it's got to continually advance and extend the kingdom of God. And so the evangelist gathers. Then you've got your pastor, which is your third, this finger.

The Shepherd and the Teacher: Caring for and Grounding the Church

And that's your wedding ring finger. Now you've got this picture of this marriage, this faithful shepherd that builds the church up to be beautiful and one day to be married to Jesus. He guards, he cares and he loves, and he nurtures the church, and that's what his gift is.

Then you've got teachers, the pinky. This one balances all the others. He makes sure that the hand is actually a hand. Without it, it just looks odd. It fills in all the gaps. He brings good teaching. And when a teacher operates properly, you realize—I've read that verse a thousand times.

How have I never seen that? He illustrates and breaks open the message of the gospel and He builds the church up in her understanding of who Jesus is. And so He grounds the church. And then if you look at my hand, the one I haven't touched is the Apostle.

The Apostle as the Thumb: Governing and Unifying the Gifts

The Apostle is the thumb. And what he does is he governs. He's the one that pulls all of them together. He uses them as they work together and at the same time. He gives grip. Without your thumb, you can't grip properly. The apostle holds the other gifts together and holds the churches together by His grace.

And so you'll find when you listen to the apostolic, you'll normally want to give your life to Jesus. You wanna lay it all down. He pulls you in and He holds you to Christ. The other thing is he can touch all the other gifts.

An apostle can do a little bit of each. He's got that grace upon him. And he also holds them together so that they can work as a group. And so you start to see how these gifts work together to build the church up in her faith.

Building an Apostolic Field Through Four12

Now we are part of Four12, which is an apostolic field. It's now, as I mentioned, over 400 churches in 22 nations and growing quickly. The point of this is that we would work together to disciple nations. And so we come into churches to try and help them give themselves to Jesus, grow up in Jesus, mature in their faith and then work with us to bring others into that whole experience.

Apostles are ultimately there to appoint elders. And we'll look at that in the next session. And they make sure that health is held within the entire thing. And again, I want to close with this. Jesus said, I'm going to use these gifts to build a church.

If we don't have access to those gifts, how will we ever be the church that He's looking for? And so we want to be a Bible people. We go back to the Bible. We see that this is how God builds, and then we align ourselves with His ways.

If we are diligent to follow the instructions that He's given us and to work around the gifts that He's apportioned to us, we start to see the church growing and maturing in their faith. It also needs to be said that apostles have different kinds of grace.

Unique Graces and the Goal of Maturity in Christ

We're not all the same. We individuals, we've all got our own fingerprint. Likewise, every apostolic grace has its own unique thing that it brings to the table. The grace that I carry is a grounding master build of faith. And so I seem to have an ability to draw people in, which is why there's 400 churches now around the world.

When I minister, I tend to be able to cause people to want to give their lives to Jesus. I'm able to break open the revelation of how the church works so that people get it and they give themselves to it. But there's other apostles working with me and they come with their own unique grace and they will build what I can't do.

And my gift is to know who to play where and what gifts to bring in so that the church can mature. And grow up to look like Jesus. The point is that you grow up to look like Jesus, that you grow up to do the works of Jesus.

The Bible says before you were born, before He created you, before He formed you in your mother's womb, He had things for you to do. He had good works. He had things that only you can do. And as I read my Bible, I believe, well, it's pretty clear that God has limited His glory so that only if every part does its work will the world see what He's like.

We can no longer do church with people sitting in pews and watch. We need to become churches where everyone is devoted, everyone is giving, everyone is maturing, everyone is working through issues and growing up so that, when they walk into one of our churches, they go—Is this what He's like?

And that's only going to happen when all of us become all that God's called us to be. Let's end that session there. I do pray for you and for those watching that as we do this, that we will give ourselves and grow up in these matters.

That we'll understand how this thing works so that we can align ourselves with the Lord and mature until we attain all that Christ has got for us, for His name's sake. Amen.