"The Fruits of Unified Diversity"

If you would please take your Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4, a scripture reading, you want to read verses 7 -16 and the message will focus on verses 11 -16.

Get the context of that passage for our message beginning in verse 7. Paul writes, but unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men.

Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?

He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill all things.

He gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.

Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

That we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.

But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even

Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working and the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

Our Father and our God, we pray that as we are challenged by this passage this morning, we would see the kinds of fruit that a local church ought to be producing within itself.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. The Heaven's Gate cult celebrated meticulous, meticulous unity, but it knew nothing of meaningful diversity.

One surviving former group member said of the Heaven's Gate cult, everything was designed to be an exact duplicate.

So when the cult members were found on a March morning, every one of the members was wearing the same black track suits and black and white

Nike sneakers. In order to get into the group, all family members had to be abandoned.

If you were married and your spouse did not want to become a part of the group, that spouse was to be abandoned.

Parents were to be abandoned, children abandoned. If you had any money when you came into the group, it all had to be turned over to the leader of the group.

They practiced religiously a master cleanse. They all practiced it at the same time and they used the same stuff, a mixture of lemonade, cayenne, pepper, and maple syrup.

When men joined the group, they all had to be castrated and they even had to shave exactly the same way every day.

For breakfast, when they had pancakes, those pancakes had to be made exactly the same size and they had to be cooked the exact same length of time on each side and flipped at the same time.

The night before they were found, they had a last supper together. They all went to a restaurant, it was pre -arranged, and there were 39 of them meeting together for this meal.

They all had exactly the same food, same salad with the same dressing, the same beverage, the same main course, and the same thing for dessert.

But the thing about this meticulous unity is that it allowed absolutely no room for any meaningful diversity.

This meticulous unity that allowed for no diversity produced some pretty horrific, terrible, tragic fruit.

Over a three -day period in March of 1997, those 39 active members in that cult all living in the same house, they were found and they had all committed suicide together and they did it in exactly the same way.

They took the same concoction of poisons, they laid themselves down, covered their heads with a plastic bag, laid themselves down on a bed, and covered their faces with a shroud until they died.

They were all found in exactly that same posture. Yeah, unity can be good, but it can also be very, very bad and produce terrible fruit.

On the other hand, we're seeing in our day today, are we not, some rather rabid form of diversity.

It's a kind of diversity that is more of a selfish insisting on having my way, on getting what

I want, and having things done the way I want things done. How I want things done and what

I want, it must not only be tolerated, but it must be accommodated and even celebrated.

If your way of doing things or your way of thinking happens to offend me, well, you have to stop.

Needless to say, the fruit of that kind of diversity is already showing itself, and it's showing itself to be quite rotten, and it's only going to get worse.

In Ephesians chapter 4, the Apostle Paul is calling the church to be unified, but a unity that appreciates diversity.

It's a holy unity that appreciates diversity.

With this kind of unified diversity, it will bring forth good fruit, the right kind of fruit.

Going back to the beginning of this chapter, notice how Paul clarifies that we are called to a unified diversity that is to produce the fruit that we're going to talk about this morning.

Individually, in verses 1 and 2, we are called to walk a worthy walk.

It says, walk therefore a walk worthy of the vocation, the calling wherewith you were called.

That worthy walk that he describes in verse 2, with all lowliness and meekness, long -suffering, forbearing one another in love, that kind of worthy walk, it ends up sanctifying the cultural differences that should be a part of any local church.

When we're walking in this way, then we don't demand things to be done our way.

We don't demand that our cultural preferences and predilections be those of everybody else.

This kind of walk that is worthy of our calling, a walk with lowliness and meekness and long -suffering and forbearance in love, is a kind of walk that will sanctify those, shall we say, cultural differences, and it ends up creating a unity in the church, a unity of character where God's people are walking in the same way.

But then in verses 3 -5, notice how he calls us to maintain in the church, with that walk, that unity of character, we need to maintain the spirit -given unity that is more of a theological unity.

He goes on to say, we are endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace, and he talks about the sevenfold nature of that unity in verses 4, 5, and 6.

But then in verse 7, he shifts gears to talk about the diversity, and it's a diversity that we need to appreciate because it is a

Christ -given diversity. In verse 7, he says, but unto every one of us. So while we are all to walk with the same walk, walk worthy of the calling with which we've been called, and we are to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace, we are nevertheless to appreciate this diversity that he describes in verse 7.

But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

So each one of us that comprise a church are given gifts according to the grace of Christ, and they're going to differ from one another in nature and in quantity and so forth.

He goes on to talk in verse 11 about what those foundational gifts were for the church, the apostles and prophets, and then the ongoing gifts that exist in the church today in terms of these teaching, if you will, leaders.

These are not the exclusive list of gifts by any stretch of the imagination. He's focusing, first of all, on those who are in a responsibility who have the gift of teaching and preaching, have those responsibilities, evangelists as in church planters, and pastor -teachers as in the office of the pastor of a local church.

So there is this diversity of gifts, and that's the focus here. He's not talking about a diversity of cultural preferences or backgrounds or any of that.

That's all a given. That's all a given. In fact, earlier in the book of Ephesians, Paul has talked about the fact that you who are

Gentiles, you have been brought in and joined together with those who are Jews, and Jews and Gentiles were all worshiping together through Christ.

We've been brought together with our different backgrounds and ethnicities, and all of those kinds of things.

We've been brought together in Christ, and that's where our unity focuses in the person of Christ.

The diversity that is going to exist culturally is a given here, but that's not what

Paul is focusing on. He's focusing on the diversity of our giftedness.

Now, this kind of unified diversity will bear good fruit.

I want us to see in verses 11 -16, three fruits that grow from this wholesome unified diversity.

Notice first of all in verses 11 -13, that a wholesome unified diversity yields maturity.

It yields maturity. God gifts particular leaders to equip

God's people. That's the emphasis of verses 11 through the first part of verse 12.

He gave some apostles and prophets and evangelists and some pastor -teachers for the perfecting or for the equipping of the saints.

The word perfect in the King James should be translated better perhaps equip. It's a word that is used in Matthew chapter 4 of the fishermen disciples who are called to follow

Jesus as they are mending their nets. They are equipping their nets.

They're taking the holes and repairing the holes that are in the nets and so forth. The point that Paul is making here by using that word of the role of the pastor -teacher in particular is that he engages in a healing, a restorative ministry using the word of God as he's teaching the word of God.

The gifted leaders equip God's people and those people then, the saints that he goes on to talk about, he talks about at the end of the first part of verse 1, the perfecting of the saints.

Those saints then serve. The pastor -teacher equips the saints so that the saints can then do the work of the ministry.

This is what the verse says. He equips the saints for the work of the ministry.

In other words, as Christ gifts the church, as he says in verse 7, unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

As Christ gifts the church, the pastor -teacher is involved in equipping the saints for the utilization of those gifts.

So they are then deployed to employ their gifts from the

Savior. This is what you are to do as part of a local church.

You're not to just be a spectator that comes and sits on a Sunday morning and gets up and goes, and says, okay,

I've done my church duty. But you're to be part of the work of the ministry, and the pulpit ministry, and the

Sunday school teaching ministry, and the Bible study teaching ministry. Those ministries are designed or are intended to equip, to help the saints to be able to better employ their particular area of giftedness in the course of a given week.

One of the commentators on this passage says, I mentioned this last week, I believe. He says, quote,

God has given the ministry of his word to his church in order to transform it, that is transformed the church, to heal it of its various spiritual sicknesses, to make it whole, and restore it to a fit working order, thereby enabling it to exercise a work of ministry that will build up the body of Christ.

So gifted leaders, as Christ gifts these different leaders to equip the saints, they equip the saints, and then those saints turn around and serve for the work of the ministry.

The fruit of all of that is the maturity of the body, the maturity of the church.

See this at the end of verse 12. Pastor teachers perfect to equip the saints who do the work of the ministry, and what is the fruit of it all?

The edifying of the body of Christ, the building up of the body of Christ.

It's another way of talking about a spiritually mature church.

Now, as he goes on in verse 13, notice how he describes what that maturity looks like.

It suggests that maturity, a spiritually mature church will show itself and evidence itself in these three overlapping areas.

Verse 13, he says, till we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, there's one thing, secondly, unto a perfect man, and thirdly, under the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

So what are those evidences of maturity? First of all, doctrinal unity.

We go back to the idea of unity again. One of the fruits of this sanctified diversity, if you will, is unity.

A fruit of unified diversity is unity, but it's a kind of unity, it's a focus. It's a unity of doctrine.

Notice, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the

Son of God. Now, what's the difference between those two things? Well, I would think of it this way.

The faith is that body of objective truth that we all need to learn and to know.

We all need to learn it and know it. Now, when you come to faith in Christ, you will know a measure of truth.

There is a very, very foundational rudimentary degree or element of truth that you need to know.

You need to know that you are a sinner. God reveals that to you in the word.

You need to know that Jesus is God, that Jesus as God came into this world as a man, humbled himself and became a man, and he did so to deal with your sinfulness.

He did so to die on a cross, to pay the penalty of your sinfulness. Because your sin, the

Bible reveals, demands a punishment of death. The wages, the paycheck of sin is death.

Your sin demands death. Well, what is the answer to that? That need, that debt that I owe?

Christ. Christ is the answer. So the word reveals that truth, that Jesus, God who became flesh, died on a cross to atone for, to pay the penalty of your sins.

You have to believe that before you can ever become a Christian. Then you have to believe that Jesus didn't just die, or he would just be nothing but a man, but that he rose again from the dead, and he rose for your justification, that you might be just before God, that he ascended, and that you, by calling upon him in repentant faith, can be saved.

Now, those are very important, crucial, foundational truths that you need to accept to be a

Christian. And so when you're birthed into the family of God, and you become a child of God, there are some very basic foundational truths that you need to hold, but that's not all.

Can a person come to faith in Christ, who, at the moment of his conversion, still believes in the theory of evolution?

And the answer is yes. He hasn't been confronted with what the scripture teaches about creation and the details of creation, but as he learns the scriptures and grows in the scriptures, he grows to understand it.

Oh, no, no, no, that evolution thing, it can't be both and. It's gotta be one or the other, and I believe this book.

And so it goes, and so it goes. There is an ongoing learning of objective truth, and a spiritually mature church will be one where God's people that comprise that church come to a place of holding in unison and in unity this objective truth that must be learned and that must be known and held to by everyone.

But what about this knowledge of the Son of God? We come to a unity of the knowledge of the

Son of God. I don't think that's talking about some of those, very rudimentary truths about Jesus, about his deity, his virgin birth, and all of those details.

Those things, I think those things fall under the faith that we must hold to.

I think that the knowledge of the Son of God here is more of that experiential knowledge that we come to as we grow in our relationship with God through Christ, where we experience that conviction of sin and then we experience the joy of forgiveness of that sin.

That's something you didn't know before you came to faith in Christ. Or you experience the knowledge of the

Son of God, you have that experience of the Son of God as you learn to, you come to rest in him, and you learn what that's like to be going through a difficult period in your life and then yet coming to rest in Christ and his truth and his presence, the comfort that he offers, the peace that he gives, and so on and so forth.

So one of the evidences of maturity is a doctrinal unity where we come to a unity of the faith and the knowledge of the

Son of God. A second evidence of maturity is practical godliness, practical godliness, described by Paul here as coming unto a perfect man, a perfect man.

Now sometimes in our English Bibles, the translation, the word man is the general

Greek word. The Greek word is anthropos. We get the word anthropology from it.

And it's just a general word for mankind, for humankind. But other times, the word is the gender, the male.

And that's the word that Paul uses here. So in what sense then does the church grow in its unified diversity and experience maturity and evidence that maturity in being a perfect man?

Well, I briefly skimmed at this last Lord's Day, and let me take you back to it, to Titus chapter two.

And look at verse two. Because in Titus two, verse two, Paul talks about the qualities of a quote -unquote perfect man, a fully mature, a fully mature man.

What is he like? Paul is telling Titus to preach the things that become or are appropriate to sound doctrine.

And then in verse two, he says that the aged men live up to their age, basically is what he's saying.

That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound, excuse me, sound in faith, in charity, in patience.

Now you look at those qualities, and you realize, you know what? These are not qualities that ought to be limited to old men.

I mean, they ought to have these qualities just by virtue of their age and having lived through the experiences of life.

These are not qualities that ought to be limited just to old men. The qualities of, the qualities that he mentions here of sobriety and gravity.

You know, life is not a lark. Life isn't a party. Life is a serious matter to be lived.

Gravity, sobriety, being aware of what's really going on in this world.

Sobriety, gravity, temperance, or self -control. Is self -control only something for old men, or is it something that a 22 -year -old ought to have?

Absolutely. A mature 22 -year -old will have developed a sense of self -control.

Sound and faith, we've already talked about. Sound and charity, we're gonna get to.

And then lastly, patience or long -suffering or endurance.

These are the qualities that mark a mature individual, a perfected man.

Practical godliness really is what it amounts to. Practical godliness, practical everyday godliness.

Living a sober, grave, serious, self -controlled, patient life.

Now the third evidence of maturity that Paul mentions back in Ephesians 4 .13 is that measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

That's just another way of talking about personal Christ -likeness, being like Christ.

And this is something that is an ongoing process in the life of the

Christian, from the moment he comes to faith in Christ and God in his grace births him again, from that point until he reaches glorification, he reaches eternity, he is in this growing process of Christ -likeness.

But as a church matures, and as a spiritually mature church, it is going to more and more be characterized by this personal

Christ -likeness. As the saints in that local assembly, they interact with God's word through the preaching of the word, the teaching of the word, and their own, as Paul describes it in 2

Corinthians 3 .18, their own looking in the mirror of God's word.

And as we, as God's people, are interacting with the word of God, and we see

Christ in that word, we are changed from glory to glory.

We are increasingly conformed to the image of Christ. And all of that will culminate, as John writes of it in 1

John 3 .2, when we see Christ. That's 1 John 3 .2,

he says, right now it doesn't appear what we shall be, but we know that when we see him, when we see

Christ, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Spiritually mature church is one that is, that shows that maturity, evidences that maturity in a growing personal

Christ -likeness. So one of the fruits of this, one of the fruits of this unified diversity is spiritual maturity.

A second fruit that we see in verse 14 is stability. Unified diversity yields the fruit of stability.

Now, look at this verse, I want you to notice some marks of stability. At first, he refers to children.

He says, when we have this unified diversity and we've reached a measure of maturity, then that's going to yield the fruit that we are no more children.

We are no more children. So one of the marks of stability is, shall we say, an acquired development.

We're no more children. That's really critical, isn't it? Some of you are parents with really, really young kids.

And you, listen, I'm telling you, you do not want that two -year -old to be a two -year -old when he's 15.

He's going to create his own challenges when he's 15. You don't want to add the two -year -old temper tantrums and all that stuff on top of that.

You want that child to grow out of childishness and the qualities, the characteristics of being a child.

So, for example, children, and this is true of spiritual children that don't grow out of childhood, children can be, shall we say, gullible, where they believe just about everything they're told.

For example, Elias Bliss is going to be four years old on February 29th.

So, I know, technically, we can make jokes about that. Technically, he'll only be a year old. He hasn't had a birthday yet.

But his birthday, February 29th, he'll be four years old. Now, a couple of years ago, when Elias was two,

I'd see him out here in the foyer, and I'd go up to Elias, and I'd kind of go like this with my fingers, and I'd go on his nose, and I'd kind of tweak his nose a little bit, and I'd just ever gently pull it, and then

I'd stick my thumb between my fingers like that, and I'd say, Elias, I got your nose. I got your nose.

And his eyes would get really big, and he'd look at my hand, and he's convinced I've got his nose between my fingers.

And he'd say, give it back, give it back. Now, I used to do that to Elias now, and he'd say, what do you mean, you don't got my nose.

It's still there, I feel it, and he's grown out of that. He's not quite so gullible anymore.

But you know what? Christians can be just, professing Christians can be just as childlike gullible as a two -year -old.

I've seen this guy on TV who's holding up a little vial that's got water in it, and he's telling me, as I'm looking at him on TV, he's telling me, he says, if you will send me your donation of any size,

I will send you this little vial of water, a holy water from the

Jordan River. On my recent trip to the Holy Land, he's telling me, I got some holy water from the

Jordan River, and if you will send me a donation of any size, I'll send you this little vial of holy water from the

Jordan River, and it will be a blessing to you. Your life will be blessed in unimaginable ways through this holy water.

And I'm looking at this, and I'm like, God, man, you are crazy. You probably just got that out of your bathroom sink.

But you know what? The sad thing is, there's some other people on the other end of some television screens who are looking at this same guy and saying, oh man,

I gotta get my checkbook and send this guy 50 bucks so I can get me a vial of that holy water.

They really believe that that's holy water? I don't know whether it's water that came out of the

Jordan River or not, but I guarantee it's no more holy than the water that came out of your tap. It's probably full with a lot more bacteria, if the truth were known.

But children can be gullible and believe anything that they're told, but they can also, they can also be quite vulnerable in that they will fall for almost anything.

Have you been reading about some of the stuff that pedophiles are doing to try to lure kids?

And kids are being lured through things like online video gaming, and there's a kid's

YouTube thing where kids will watch movie things on YouTube, and before you know it, something's been uploaded and the kid's watching this.

I saw an article the other day about a, I think it was a seventh grader, who was being taught online how to commit suicide.

And she drew a picture of presumably herself as a girl with a rope around her neck hanging because of what she saw online.

Now, you know, presumably, adults here would see the same kind of stuff, and they'd say, whoa, get out of here, and they'd shut it off, and they wouldn't have anything, they'd know what's happening.

But children can be a lot more vulnerable than that and fall for it.

You know, Christians can be too. They can be as well. If they're not stable, get a thing in the mail from some ministry somewhere, and inside that mailing, there's a folded up piece of paper on one side that looks like an

Oriental rug. And you read the letter from this evangelist guy, and he says,

I've enclosed in this letter a prayer rug. If you will pray over that rug, the thing that you want from God, and then send that prayer rug back to me with your donation of any size,

I will take your prayer rug, and I will pray over that prayer rug, and God will give you what you're wanting.

And again, believing anything, falling for anything, some people obviously, because of the way that the life, the lifestyle of the ministry that is sent, the minister that sends it, obviously enough people are falling for it that they put the money in the envelope, and they throw the prayer rug back in the envelope, and they send the guy back some money.

No, no, a church that is marked by this healthy, unified diversity is going to produce the fruit of stability, and that stability is marked by an acquired development.

When we're no more children, it's also marked by a settled establishment, a settled establishment.

Look at verse 14 again. He says, we're no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.

No more, no more vacillation in the storms of life when you're tossed to and fro.

You're not tossed to and fro by the storms of life. Here's what I mean by that, and I've seen both sides of this in my years of ministry.

I've seen Christian people, believers, professing believers, who when everything in life is going fine, you see them in church.

They're in church, they're happy, they're part of it and everything, but as soon as life throws them a curve, and God doesn't treat them the way they think

God should treat them, you don't see them anymore. They're gone. They're gone.

Until life calms down again, and then they might be happier, and once they're happy again, they might chill back up in church.

What happened? They got tossed by the storms of life. I've seen the other extreme as well.

When people are, when life is fine, he's professing Christians, everything's going smoothly, job's going well, getting promotions, money's enough, and all the rest of that stuff, life is fine, you don't see them at church, but as soon as life throws them a curve, as soon as they get tossed on the storm of life, then they're back at church, and they're telling people, you gotta pray for me, you gotta,

I got this crisis, you gotta get, God's gotta answer this thing.

They're tossed by every wind that blows the storms of life, and they no longer gravitate to the latest fad or idea or celebrity.

They're carried about, they're not carried about with every wind of doctrine. Those who comprise a stable work, there's a unified diversity that has produced the fruit of stability, they no longer gravitate to the fads and what's fashionable, or to the celebrities carried about with every wind of doctrine.

Unfortunately, too many young, perhaps immature, professing

Christians, they flit from one TV preacher to another

TV preacher, from one church to another church, and they're always looking for something new, something exciting, something to get thrilled about, some new spiritual adventure.

You know, there really is something to be said for just the faithful week in and week out participation in the same local church under the same average everyday pastor.

Week in, week out, year in, year out. There is a stability that can come from that kind of established

Christian life. And then a third mark of that stability is seen at the end of verse 14, and that is practiced discernment.

Practiced discernment. So the end of verse 14 says, you know I'm carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.

The church that has this, that employs this unified diversity, has a measure of maturity, is also bearing the fruit, producing the fruit of stability where the saints in that work are able to discern much better than the immature.

They're able to discern the tricks that are offered in the name of Christ.

They see through the slight of men. That word slight is an interesting word.

In the Greek language it's communicating dice tricks.

Dice tricks. I suppose, I don't know that much about it, never been involved in gambling of any kind, but I've heard about loaded dice.

Now I suppose, I'm presuming that what that means is that the person who's in charge of the game, the gambling game, has loaded the dice so that the dice will never come up with numbers where you win.

The house always wins. Well, if you're not discerning, you don't see what's going on with those dice.

No, you see through those tricks and you don't fall for the deception of the cunning craftiness of these deceivers.

The craftiness, the cunning craftiness that says, you give me $20 with your prayer rug and God is gonna give you $2 ,000.

No, you've grown enough and got enough sense through the discernment, the stability that flows from the unified diversity as God's people in a local church are using their giftedness together.

You've grown to be able to discern that. You know what, I'm not gonna get $2 ,000 out of my sending in the 20 bucks.

The only thing that's gonna happen is that the guy who sent me this letter is gonna be $20 richer.

That's it. You see that. You see that. And then you can recognize the true character of the fraud.

And what these guys are really doing is just lying in wait to deceive.

Lying in wait to deceive. In other words, you realize these guys are just using me to get what they want for themselves.

You see that. Why is it that you see that? Well, you see that when as the fruit of a unified diversity that is working well to produce maturity and stability.

Ah, but there's one more fruit that Paul mentions here in verses 15 and 16. And that's the fruit of charity.

Unified diversity yields charity. Now, I debated on the word here.

Do I wanna use charity or do I wanna use civility? I finally landed on charity because I think it more reflects the depth and the richness of the

Greek word. The Greek word for love at the beginning of verse 15 and at the end of verse 16 is that word agape.

It's the same word that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 13. King James translates it charity.

Talks about charity, suffering long and so on and so forth. By have not charity. And so the reason

I chose that word is that it communicates more than the idea of Valentine love, if you will, you know, romantic love for sure.

And more even than the love that exists between friends. The word agape is a word that communicates the sacrifice of myself, the willing voluntary sacrifice of myself for the benefit of someone else.

And, you know, we talk about charities and that's really what's going on.

When you give to a charity, you are, and hopefully for wholly altruistic reasons, you are giving of yourself for the benefit of someone else.

Now I say that this unified diversity produces the fruit, yields the fruit of charity because of how

Paul bookends verses 15 and 16. He says we are speaking the truth in love and at the end of verse 16 he says we are making increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

All right, so what's going on in verses 15 and 16? Very quickly. What's happening here is that charity forms the framework, now watch, it forms the framework that Christ, the head of the church, brings together all of the contributing elements of the various members of that church to produce growth and maturity.

In other words, that growth and maturity and stability happens within the framework of this fruit of the unified diversity which is charity or love.

So notice these two aspects that form the framework of what's going on in verses 15 and 16.

Notice how charity, charity controls our communication, speaking the truth in love.

Isn't this what Paul said back in 1 Corinthians 13 in the beginning of that love chapter?

If I speak, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, I have this great eloquent communication, speaking, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but I have not charity,

I am become a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. No, charity needs to, charity will control the communication where there is unified diversity and the fruit of that diversity is maturity, stability, and charity.

Communication is going to be altered. Now Ian Hamilton in his commentary on Ephesians, he says this of this particular verse, he says truth and love are never mutually exclusive.

When truth is distanced from love, so truth is over here, love is over here, when truth is distanced from love, it loses its grace and becomes pharisaical, clinical, cold, and hard -edged, sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

On the other hand, when love is distanced from truth, it loses that truth, loses, or love, loses its moral character and becomes supine and little more than an excuse for unfettered adult indulgence.

No, we speak the truth and we must speak it in love, charity, charity controls our communication.

By the way, you're thinking people, so what you're gonna do is you're gonna go from here and you're gonna realize, you know what?

You can apply some of these same principles to other institutions and areas of life, like the home, family, nation, government.

There isn't a whole lot of speaking the truth in love in some of these institutions, is there?

Charity controls our communication, and then at the end of verse 16, notice how that charity also determines our edification, our edification, makes increase of the body unto the edifying of itself, the building up of itself in love.

And the idea is this, there is no real building up of the body if it is not done in the framework of this love, this charity.

J .C. Ryle, in the 1800s, he wrote this regarding this particular concept.

And he's commenting here on the situation in John chapter three.

Remember what happened when Jesus is baptizing some followers and John is baptizing some followers.

There's no competition there between Jesus and John, but the followers of John over here are seeing that Jesus is baptizing some people and they come and say, hey, what's going on here?

He's baptizing over there. So they've developed this kind of a party spirit is the point.

Ryle comments on that and he says, there are never wanting religious professors who care far more for the increase of their own party than for the increase of true

Christianity and who cannot rejoice in the spread of religion if it spreads anywhere except within their own pale.

The true Christian must watch and pray against the spirit here manifested by John's disciples.

It is very insidious, very contagious, and very injurious to the cause of religion.

Nothing so defiles Christianity and gives the enemies of truth such occasion to blaspheme as jealousy and party spirit among Christians.

Wherever there is real grace, we should be ready and willing to acknowledge it even though it may be outside our own pale.

We should strive to say with the apostle, if Christ be preached, I rejoice, yay, and I will rejoice.

If good is done, we ought to be thankful though it even may not be done in what we think is the best way.

If souls are saved, we ought to be glad whatever the means that God may choose to employ.

That spirit, that idea is of charity in our edification is a spirit that is marked by, it's the fruit of a church that knows about unified diversity and practices such unified diversity.

In this regard, through four decades of pastoral ministry,

I have seen both. I've seen the good and the bad in these regards.

Some of the most spiteful, hateful things have been said to me within the church as well as some of the most precious and gracious things.

And likewise, some of the most vindictive, protectionist, spirit of jealousy things have been done in the church.

On the other hand, some of the most blessed expressions of welcoming have been seen in the church.

I have seen that latter thing in our own church and it blesses my heart.

So as we think about this, as we think about this, am

I as an individual part of a local church, am

I contributing to a work that is marked by spiritual maturity, spiritual stability, and charity?

Am I contributing to that, that it would be part of our church?

Really at the root of any missing fruit is either a lack of genuine

Christian conversion or a complete failure to be an active, vibrant part of a unified, diverse congregation.

I implore you to not let that be said of you. Our Father and our God, thank you this morning for this challenge from your word.

Oh, how we need it. That there's always room to grow. And everyone in this room, honest with themselves, would admit that.

Oh, there is so much room to grow. But I pray that by your grace, you would use us as a people, as a congregation, to strive for this kind of a walk that is worthy of the calling with which we've been called that leads to the right kind of unity, that celebrates the right kind of diversity, and then enjoys the glorious fruit of maturity, stability, and charity.