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Jan 15, 2023

Learning to Dance

Learning to Dance

Passage: Ephesians 4:7-16

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Song & Dance - The Gospel Melody that Moves in Ephesians

Keywords: grow, gifts, body, mature, fullness, equip, build up, truth in love

If the “dance” of the Gospel is living in a manner worthy of our new status, both as individuals and also significantly as a community, then just like a dance it calls for learning a mature gracefulness. What is that graceful corporate life whose rescuer and model is Jesus? What have we been given to learn that gracefulness?

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Psalm 34:1-3
LEADER: I will bless the LORD at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the LORD;
let the humble hear and be glad.

ALL: Oh, magnify the LORD with me,
and let us exalt his name together!

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:) 1 Corinthians 13
LEADER: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

ALL: Thanks be to God.

CENTRAL TEXT: Ephesians 4:7-16
Eph. 4:7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore it says,
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.”

Eph. 4:9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

CONFESSION OF SIN:
ALL: We’ve been told we are not an island. Sometimes we believe it. Other times we live as though we are, concealing what’s deepest, or depriving others of the help they need. For you and your glory we are made, and in your Son we find our forgiveness and our hope. But you have also given us to each other– to see You in others where we are blind, to hear from You in others where we are deaf, to share You with others where they are lacking. Forgive us for holding back what we’ve been given for another’s good. Despite our individual and collective frailties and failures, help us see the glory in one another–those you obtained with your own blood, and for which you were pleased to die.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON Colossians 2:13-14
LEADER: And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

ALL: Thanks be to God.

BENEDICTION: Romans 15:5-6
LEADER: May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

ALL: AMEN.

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Psalm 68
  • John 17:17
  • Romans 12:3-8
  • 1 Corinthians 3:1-2 / Hebrews 5:13 / 1 Peter 2:2
  • 1 Corinthians 12:4-11
  • 2 Corinthians 5:14
  • Ephesians 2:21-22
  • Philippians 3:9-10
  • Colossians 2:19
  • Hebrews 4:14, 7:26
  • Hebrews 5:14

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Ever take a dance class? Why? What was it like? What did it take to improve? What was your goal in taking the class? Care to demonstrate your moves for everyone?! (do it!)
  2. Referring to how we began our service this week, how might reducing our life and growth in Jesus to getting the right facts, knowing the right doctrines, and receiving the right content (and no true community) be a misunderstanding of what it means to follow Jesus? To ask it another way in keeping with our metaphor of the life in Jesus as a dance in gospel-faithfulness, why is “dancing alone” a mistake?
  3. Think of what else Paul has said in this letter to account for the emphasis he places here on what unifies us (the seven things we have in common from verses 4-6). How would that help in what might divide the church then? Now answer the same question about our day and various differences we might share with others?
  4. Compare the short list of gifts of grace here with other lists Paul offers in Romans 12, and 1 Corinthians 12. How are the lists alike and distinct? What are all the gifts for? How would you variously split the gifts out into categories? Why make such a fuss over them?
  5. How does the gospel ensure we are neither fixated on the gifts He’s given nor indifferent to them?
  6. What do you know of GMR’s efforts to equip the saints for the work of ministry? Why do we “bother”? What else might we attempt to ensure more gifts are nurtured and put to use among us?

Quotes:


-Leslie Newbigin [source]

  • Coyote. In exchange for a pot of stew, Coyote gave him a song so beautiful when he sang it the women thought of love and the men thought of God. But there were stipulations. He must only sing it at sacred times – marriages, funerals, births, deep religious moments. But as the years went by the boy – who the villagers now called Sings Beautifully – forgot he’d ever not been able to sing like that. He sang for his supper, sang for approval, sang for coin. Coyote watched from the treeline and said, Indeed, Indeed, Indeed. And one night, when the boy was sleeping, Coyote came and he took the song away. (HT: Martin Shaw)
  • In Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing – not even just one person – but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. . . . The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.  C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
  • the church must therefore be about mutual assistance. This is one reason why we need the church: We need help from others, but we also need to help others if we’re going to live faithfully. . . .the church isn’t just a group of individuals helping each other get to heaven. God’s goal is not the salvation of individual believers. The goal is the salvation of the people of God. Peter Leithart

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