CHRIST PURPOSE FOR OVERSEERS (EPH 4:13)

He opened the prison doors, he parted the raging sea, my

God, He holds the prisoners. There's joy in the house of the

Lord, there's joy in the house of the Lord today. We won't be crying, we won't shout out no prayers, there's joy in the house of the

Lord. My God, I'm sure that in this place, we won't be crying, we won't shout out no prayers, we won't shout out no prayers.

We sing to the God who saves, we sing to the

God who always leads the way. For He hung up on that cross, and He rose up from that grave, my

God. We won't be crying, we won't shout out no prayers, we won't shout out no prayers.

Now we're royalty, we were the prisoners, now we're running free.

We are forgiven, accepted, redeemed by His grace.

We are royalty, we were the prisoners, now we're running free.

There's joy in the house of the Lord, there's joy in the house of the Lord today. We won't be crying, we won't shout out no prayers, there's joy in the house of the

Lord. My God, I'm sure that we won't be crying.

In the book of Acts in chapter 2, after Pentecost and Peter preaching that sermon, it says in verse 42, it says,

Then they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers.

I read this passage this morning as a reminder of the very onslaught of the church, the very beginning stages.

Christ has ascended, the Holy Spirit has come down, and He dwells in His people. And what do they do?

They gather. They gather for the teaching, and for fellowship, for the ordinances of breaking bread.

They gather for the prayers. Why have we gathered today? Same reason, it hasn't changed, has it?

The command hasn't changed. This is exactly what God has called us to. So my question for myself today, and I want to ask you is,

What have you come here for? You come here because it's just what you do?

I'll be honest, I have to be here. Sunday comes and I've got to preach a sermon, right?

So some days I get up and I may not feel like coming in here, but I have to. Why have you come?

To praise God, to glorify God, right? Have you tasted and seen that the

Lord is good? You've tasted, haven't you? You've tasted and seen that our

God is good, and He's the only thing. And so we gather. And when we gather, is what we just sung true?

Is there joy in the house of the Lord? There's joy, isn't there?

Even in the midst of possible lament and mourning, in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of tiredness, there's still joy in the house of the

Lord. This is where we can gather with the saints. And so, saints, welcome to the gathering.

Welcome. Welcome to the gathering. The gathering of the saints for the purpose of teaching, fellowship, the ordinances of the

Lord's Supper, and prayer. As we sing, as we love, and we pray, and we glean from our

Savior, from our Triune God. And so before we start our service officially, let's pray for some other brothers and sisters that the same would be for them.

Amen. And we'd like to pray for Word Baptist this morning here in town. I believe they're still meeting at ASU campus while they work on their building.

And so you can imagine all the hard work that goes into that. Maybe some of the stress that they're feeling in the midst of change and everything going on.

So let's lift those brothers and sisters up in prayer as they gather today. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning and we thank you.

We thank you for the gathering of the saints. We thank you that the church has been doing this since you left, waiting for the return of our

Savior. And so, God, we ask for our brothers and sisters at Word Baptist this morning that they would experience the beauty of the common means of grace, of coming together, even though they're not in their current building.

That doesn't matter. They are the local ecclesia there, gathered, committed together.

And so we pray for them. We pray that you would move in their midst. We pray that you would work in their hearts.

We pray that you would encourage their souls, that you would challenge them, that they would continue in their own personal lives to mortify sin and seek after maintaining the unity of the

Spirit and the bond of peace. God, I pray for their pastors, their leaders. Lord, give them wisdom and discernment.

Help them to stand boldly this morning and declare your truth, that they would declare it rightly, rightly handling the word of truth as you called us to do so.

And, God, I pray that that word would do its job of molding your people.

We thank you for them. I pray that they not only would experience your love today, but they would also know of the great love that their brothers and sisters over here have for them.

In Christ's name, amen. Amen. Well, our call to worship this morning comes from Psalm 77, verses 11 through 15, where the psalmist says,

We will remember the deeds of the Lord. We will ponder all your work, your way.

You are the God who works wonders. You, with your arm redeemed, your people.

Let's pray a prayer of adoration of that great God that has redeemed a people for himself. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you once again, and we ask that you would be honored in our worship because you are worthy.

You and you alone are worthy for us to commit our lives to you, honor you, to obey you, to love your law because your law is good because you are good.

God, you are altogether separate from us. You are outside of the created order.

You are the creator. We are the creature, and you have created us to point to, to glory in the majesty of your holiness and your immensity.

Oh, God, you are perfect. You are righteous.

Your ways are perfect. Your ways are righteous. Oh, and we, we oftentimes in our flesh rail against that righteousness and commit treason against you.

Oh, but your goodness comes down through your son to redeem us and then to give us his righteousness.

What, what God does that? You, a good

God that loves us, your children, with an everlasting love that you are going to come and find us, you are going to redeem us, and you will not lose one of us, and you are the only one that can do so.

The triune God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and I pray this morning that we would have an overwhelming sense of your majesty.

Oh, God, do not allow us to be indifferent, for our indifference in and of itself is sin against you,

God. I pray that the truth of who you are would stir in us our emotions, informed by your word, informed by who you have told us you are, and that our love for you would grow today.

Be honored in our worship this morning, in Christ's name, amen. Sing this with me.

For we are one in Christ, and we are one in Christ.

For we are one in Christ, and we are one in Christ.

For we are one in Christ, and we are one in Christ. Our scripture reading this morning comes from Acts chapter 20.

This is where we see Paul calling the elders in Ephesus, the book that we've been walking through, and he wants to speak to them before he leaves them.

And I want to read the entire account so we can get into our minds what Paul's calling the church in Ephesus to.

Now for Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him.

And when they came to him, he said to them, you yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the

Lord with all humility, and with tears, and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the

Jews. Oh, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance towards God and of faith in our

Lord Jesus Christ. And now behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the

Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city, that imprisonment and affliction await me.

But I do not account my life of any value, nor as precious to myself, if only

I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the

Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now behold,

I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again, before I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

Oh, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

I know that after my departure, oh, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.

Therefore, be alert, remembering that for three years

I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. And now

I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me.

In all things, I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak.

Remember the words of the Lord Jesus. Now he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive.

And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And there was much weeping on the part of all.

They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken that they would not see his face again.

And they accompanied him to the ship. We see the heart of an overseer here, don't we?

It's warning them. Teach the whole council of God. Guard it.

Love it. Prepare the people. That's what we've come to do today, isn't it? Let's continue to sing.

Who else commands all the host of heaven?

Who else can make every king bow down? Who else can whisper the darkest truth?

Only a voice on each mountain of the splendor of chance

I've seen. Majesty arose with justice.

Only a holy God can save us like her.

Only a voice on each mountain of the splendor of chance

I've seen. Only a holy

God can wash in the water. Who else can rescue us?

Who else can offer his only son? Who else who guides me to glory?

Only a holy God can honor me.

Sing glory forevermore.

And wash in the water. Sing glory.

Wash in the water.

Wash in the water.

Sing it on this day. This day.

Sing it on this day. We're at the end of this service.

We do what the word as it's preached this morning. We're going to clear out all distractions and open our hearts and our minds and our ears.

Lord, we love you. Bring us all these things in Jesus' precious and holy name.

Amen. Go ahead and open up your copy of God's word.

Ephesians chapter four. Ephesians chapter four. I was hoping that we would get to cover verses 13 and 14 today, so we could stay on track with our schedule, that wasn't gonna happen.

After about 25 pages of notes on verse 13, I realized I probably don't want to add to that, so you're welcome.

We will stay in verse 13 today, but I want us to read the whole of the thought from Paul all the way back in verse 1 of chapter 4, so we get our minds set back on the context once again.

I therefore a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the

Spirit and the bond of peace. Now there is one body and one

Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one

God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. The grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.

When saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?

He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ 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, 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 and deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, 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.

This is the reading of God's Word. Let's stop before we jump into these notes.

Let's go to the source. Lord, we come to you once again and we thank you.

We thank you for your Word. We have truly beheld that you are

God this morning, a God that has sought after us, redeemed us, brought us into union, a

God who has given us all we need for life and Godliness right here in your words, penned by your prophets and your apostles.

So God, I pray that you give us wisdom today. Give us ears to hear, give us eyes to see.

I pray that these words would not lead us to be hearers of it alone, that as we hear it we would turn around and be doers of that Word.

We thank you for it. Be honored in it, in Christ's name. Amen. Well, I have titled today's sermon,

Christ's Purpose for Overseers. Christ's Purpose for Overseers.

If you were with us last week, you recall that we looked at verses 11 and 12 that we just read, and we saw how

Christ gave gifts to men, and specifically the gift of the church structure.

We see right at the beginning the foundation as it is built upon that. Right there in verse 11, what does he do?

He gives the apostles and the prophets. The very foundation of the church with Christ as the cornerstone that we build upon.

What we now have written here in the words that we just read by them.

And this truth was handed down to the evangelist, right? The men who go into all the world and make disciples by teaching the gospel, the true gospel, the one that was given to them by the apostles.

You see how it builds on it? And he goes, and they proclaim the gospel that's given to them, and leaving them, those new disciples, to be taught everything that Christ commanded by the shepherds who teach.

By the pastors, the elders, the overseers of the church. It has been handed down to them to disciple the men who

God has appointed to care for the body. And Jesus gave these gifts for the purpose of, as we see in verse 12, equipping.

For equipping the saints for the good work, the work of ministry. For what

Christ has called us to in this life, those works that he has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

It's for building up. Building up for what? What is he building up?

He's building up that dwelling place for God to be in and with his people.

The glorious body of Christ, the church. So how is this structure of what we see here?

The foundation of the apostles and the prophets has been poured based upon the cornerstone, which is Jesus Christ.

The evangelist are a block above the foundation, and now the overseers, the shepherds, teachers, are another layer on top of this building that is being built with Jesus.

Jesus is the head of this. How is this structure being used to build up this body? What is its purpose?

Well, Paul tells us this in these next few verses. As a matter of fact, he even puts a time limit on it.

Meaning that these gifts that he's given of the church structure, this is not meant to be forever.

This is a momentary thing. They are temporary. They are for the purpose of this age.

Look at it. Look at verse 13. What does he say? Until. Putting a time stamp on it.

We don't know the time stamp. We just know there is a time stamp. This structure is meant until these apostles and prophets, evangelists, shepherd teachers, equipping the saints for the work of ministry, during the spiritual construction phase.

This body is being built up. This building is being built, and these gifts are being used in order to accomplish that.

They're called to do this. This prescribed format maintains and continues on until.

Until what? Look at it. Until we all, every single saint,

Jew, Gentile, male, female, rich, poor, old, young, every single saint, all of us attain.

This word really just means to come to, to arrive at, to arrive, to attain what?

Paul goes on to list four things, I think, in this verse that this current ministry structure is meant to attain.

This is the purpose. I want us to see four things specifically. The first one is the unity of the faith.

The unity of the faith. You see, Paul had told us earlier in verse 3 that we were to maintain the unity of the

Spirit, meaning we already have the unity of the Spirit, right? We don't have to conjure it up.

We don't have to come up with something. It already belongs to us. But here he tells us that the church structure is meant to lead us to attain the unity of the faith.

You see, when we were brought into the body, when we, you and I, are brought in by the blood of Christ, we are sealed by the promised

Holy Spirit. We've been talking about this for weeks now, right? And brought into perfect union with the triune

God. There's nothing missing. It's perfect. We are brought in positionally into unity with the triune

God, meaning we're brought into unity with each other in the Spirit. When God sees us, when

God looks at you, if you're in Christ, he sees each one of us, and he doesn't see our disunity.

When he looks at 12 5, he doesn't see the little disunifying issues that happen.

That's not what he's looking at. He doesn't see our sin. He sees the perfect righteousness of Christ, and we all share in that glorious unity.

However, we have yet to see this blessed unity culminate into its fruition.

Experientially, oppositionally, we're there.

We are just called to maintain the unity of the Spirit, but there's often times we don't feel very unified, do we?

This magnificent body, it's still being built. It's still in the growing phase, and because of that, we do not get to experience that outworking of the perfection of that unity that we long for, but we don't have it yet.

Not experientially. And one of the ways that we see this unity not being worked out in the here and the now, in this current age that we are in, is the fact that we are oftentimes very disunified, look at it, in the unity of the faith.

We're very disunified in the unity of the faith. What does Paul mean by this? What is he talking about, the unity of the faith?

We already know that we're maintaining the unity of the Spirit. What's the unity of the faith that we're to attain? When you see this word faith,

I think we often think of the faith that we've been given in Christ, and we have.

Rightfully so, that faith is what gives us our glorious hope, faith in Jesus Christ, yet sometimes when we see this word in Scripture, it is referring to something objective.

Some of you might be familiar with that idea, because we talked about that back in verse 5, when we talked about one faith.

Meaning, yes, this is referring to the faith in Christ, however, it is also speaking of this body of doctrine, speaking of the

Word of God, the faith, the Bible, the truth that is in the

Bible, given to us by the prophets and the apostles. So when we say the unity of the faith, when

Paul says that, that this structure is meant to equip the saints until we all attain to the unity of the faith, the unity of this body of doctrine.

I believe that Paul is speaking about the fact that it is the shepherd teacher's job to equip the saints to properly handle the

Word of Truth that has been handed down to us. It is the overseer's job to learn from it, to interpret it properly, to be molded by it, to boldly declare it, to fight for it, to defend it, striving to convince all the saints to be unified in this body of doctrine, in the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

Pushing for it. You may know oftentimes we are hated for this here.

There are many, many churches in the area that cannot stand the way we approach this task.

The question is something along the lines, can't we just all get along? Why do you guys have to debate?

Why do you have to constantly correct us every, at every turn?

Why can't we just get along? Can't we? Can we all just get along?

Yes, we can get along as long as you bend the knee to the truth. It's that simple.

Bend the knee to what the Apostles taught, and we can get along. It's easy, right?

But we're hated for this. This unchanging, God -given, Apostle -written truth.

You may say, well, come on, Pastor, there's a lot of interpretations out there. There's only one meaning.

And our desire as saints and as a church should be to arrive at that one meaning.

And I can tell you right now, and most of you already know, that if someone can come to us and point to that right meaning, and it's clear in Scripture, we will bend the knee to it.

We don't get everything right. The question is, are we striving to get everything right? Are we desiring to get everything right?

And then are we submitting ourselves to that interpretation? Are we truly living as if that is the case?

Because it's handed down by the saints. Now, left there, this kind of unity can often lead to a heavy -handed, totalitarian false sense of unity.

Because we might be able to force all of you to believe, to intellectually affirm a truth.

We might be able to overpower you with intellect and force you into a corner to say, yes, obviously it says that, and yes,

I have to believe that. But if that truth isn't convictional in your own heart, you have intellectual subordinates, not a unified body, which is what

Paul is calling for here. He's saying this structure of overseers, the

Apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherd teachers, this is called until...this

is meant for until we all attain to the unity of faith. We're striving towards it.

We're pushing towards it. But you do not want to just force people into this body of doctrine that do not believe it.

And praise God, Paul doesn't stop there. This leads us to the second thing that Paul wants us to see in this text.

The unity of the knowledge of Christ. The unity of the knowledge of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the

Son of God. That unity applies to both of these, by the way. He's not saying to the unity of the faith and then detaching the knowledge of the

Son of God. No, he's saying the unity of the faith and the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God. We're striving towards unity here.

You may be looking and thinking, well, that's just more knowledge, Pastor. Isn't that what you're saying Paul goes against and is trying to squash here?

Isn't that what we don't want? No, it's just some totalitarian unified information, but this is just more knowledge.

Well, here's a perfect example of why Christ has gifted the church with shepherd teachers.

Because when we read this word knowledge, we're left with this idea that it's only referring to some cognitive information.

And that's because the English language is very limited. We talk about that a lot here. It's extremely limited.

We need the body. We need teachers. We need shepherds to point us to what was originally written.

In the Greek, Paul could have used a word, mind you, that carries with it the connotation, that very meaning of just cognizant information, just an affirmation of the information.

But he doesn't. He doesn't use that word. He uses a different word. He uses one that encompasses both the intellect, an intellectual ascent, and a deeply rooted recognition.

It's something experiential. This word goes so much deeper than just information.

This is speaking of something more subjective. We all know what

Christ has done for us, right? I hope you do. Does everyone know what

Christ has done for us? All right. Okay. Just making sure. And many of us have experienced moments of overwhelming, exuberant, emotional, stirring, deep -rooted worship of our beautiful Savior, haven't we?

If you've never experienced that, I would be concerned. But we've experienced moments of this, that objective truth of what he has done to redeem us, and the subjective experience, knowing deep within our souls that he truly has rescued me personally.

It goes so much deeper than intellectual ascent, doesn't it? That moment of worship, just the information, is not enough.

We must know, we must experience the fact that Christ has truly paid for me.

It's not just information. And these two things are all wrapped up in this word, knowledge, that Paul uses.

He takes it deeper. And Paul is telling us that this church structure, the shepherd teachers, it's meant for driving us to a corporate unity of this worshipful knowledge.

We get a bit of a taste of that as we gather on Sundays, don't we? Just a little taste.

And some days, I'll be honest, there's days that I show up on church and I don't even experience that.

I don't feel it. But on the whole, when I come together, it may take me a few minutes for my mind to be geared intellectually to God, but then those truths just working in my heart, and then the truth that Christ has truly paid for me sets in.

And there's the knowledge of the Son of God. You know Him. You love

Him. He knows you. He loves you. And this is part of gathering with the saints.

I'll say this, if Pastor Jeremiah and myself ever stop structuring these services on Sunday mornings with both of those goals in mind, the intellectual ascent and the spiritual, the acknowledgement, the experience of it, the doctrinal teaching of what our

Savior has done, then we have derogated our duty. And you should call us to repentance because our job is to work towards this unity until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the unity of the knowledge of the

Son of God. We get moments of it individually. We get moments of it corporately.

Oh, but we're growing towards something far more lasting and great experientially.

This leads us to the third thing. Moving along pretty good today, aren't we? Paul wants us to see of what this structure is building towards.

The process of maturing into manhood. This structure of the church is for the process of maturing into manhood.

Look at the verse. Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood.

Now there's some discussion as to what Paul means here. Is Paul speaking to each of us individually to grow up into mature manhood, telling us to grow in our spiritual maturity?

And I would say that's certainly part of it. There's an element of it. After all, he goes on in verse 14 to hash that out, and we're going to talk about that next week.

However, I think the context lends itself to speaking of the body as a whole. You see, this structure of the church leadership, as we've seen, it's meant for until we all attain.

That's what it's meant for. Corporate. Who's he speaking of? The church.

The body. Until we all attain mature manhood. In this current age, this body is still growing.

This body is still maturing. We can see it all around us. The church sure does feel pretty immature a lot of times, doesn't it?

It's because we're still growing. We're still in this phase of building the body.

There are parts of this body that have not yet been brought in. We see it constantly around here.

Saints coming to faith in Christ Jesus that were not before. They're being brought in.

This body is growing and maturing and expanding. And we're struggling with the growing pains, aren't we?

The church on earth in this age is struggling with the growing pains because we have not yet reached mature manhood.

Oh, but we're headed there. We're on our way.

We will get there. But this church structure is meant.

God is using it to structure the church in the process of maturing. For the way that God has designed the church, the overseers are meant to strive towards this until we attain this mature manhood as a church, as a whole.

And this leads us to the fourth and final thing Paul wants us to see in this text. The process of becoming like our

Savior. The process of becoming like our

Savior. Look at the verse. 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.

Paul mentions over in 2nd Corinthians chapter 3 in verse 18 he says, and we all, us

Christians, we all with unveiled face behold the glory of the

Lord and are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

Slowly but surely being transformed into the same image of our great

Savior and Lord. Let's be honest, our lives look very little like our

Savior's, don't they? Mine does. I'm not as bold as Paul saying imitate me as I imitate

Christ, because oftentimes

I look very little like Christ. We're not there yet.

And we feel it, don't we? I feel it. I hate it. But it's the truth.

And it's because we haven't grown into mature manhood yet, right? To obey Him at every turn.

The things of this world and of our old self pulling us in like gravity to the earth keep gnawing at us and pulling at us.

And that makes its way into this body. If it's true about us individually with sin plaguing us at times, it's true that we bring it into this.

We bring it into this body that has not yet grown into mature manhood, has not yet grown into the stature of the fullness of Christ Jesus.

We have not yet grown into this. We've not yet attained the unity of the faith, this body of doctrine. We've not yet obtained the unity of the knowledge of the

Son of God. We're growing there, but we're not there yet. And we experience the brokenness of this current age and time.

And that makes its way into here and it brings about disunity constantly, doesn't it?

Let's be honest. This is more of what the church looks like. Selfishness, lust, fighting, enmity, hatred, gossip, slander, division.

That's what we look like more often than not, isn't it? It's sad but true.

It's because we have not yet grown into the fullness, the measure, the stature, the fullness of Christ.

No, Christ reigns supreme. Christ reigns supreme because He is the second person of the

Godhead, perfect and holy and just in every single way. And in that,

He showed perfect selflessness, perfect self -control, perfect peace, perfect brotherly affection, perfect love.

His words create life. His words bring about beauty where there was destruction and ugliness.

Christ emulated perfect unity. It's very different than what we as the church often look like, isn't it?

You see the contrast? We don't live up to what the head of this body is in total perfection.

And Paul is telling us that this structure, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the shepherd teachers are here to help us to grow, to strive towards that promise of one day.

The promise of one day, we His people, the body of Christ, will most certainly attain to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

We will be like our Savior. This body will be a perfect representation of the head of the body.

You see, we may be positionally perfect at the moment, but like I said earlier, experientially, we are fractured by sin.

Oh, but God, God has set out a plan for the fullness of time.

Now, I must say, this will most certainly not happen. It will not come into fruition in this age.

Some would say, that's hopeless, Nathan. That causes us just to give up.

Why would we seek after something that we're most certainly not going to attain in this age?

We can't get there. It's not going to happen. We will not be perfectly united in this body of doctrine.

We will not be perfectly united in our knowledge, our experiential knowledge of the

Son of God. We will not be perfectly united in mature manhood. We will not look like our

Savior perfectly. It's not going to happen. Oh, but we are to strive toward, we're called to look towards that great hope, because it will happen.

It will happen when our Savior returns, and we want to be found faithful, don't we?

We don't want to just sit back and give up and say, well, I'm a Christian, I follow Jesus, and all of that stuff with the church, and all of that stuff with pastors, and overseers, and the

Apostles, and the Bible, and all of that stuff. You know, in this life we'll never attain what it's calling us to, so I'm just gonna,

I'm gonna set that as a secondary thing in my life, and I'll just wait till Jesus returns.

May it not be. That's not what God's called us to. He's called us to strive towards these things.

There are others who would say, well, the church can attain this, and when it does, Christ will return. And I have great brothers and theologians that affirm this truth.

I don't see it. And sometimes they would point over here and say, well, that's, that's hopeless.

We get to, we get to bring about this maturity in the church, and then

Christ will return. The problem I have with that, I don't see it in Scripture. As a matter of fact,

I'll remind you of one of my favorite verses in Scripture. I quote it all the time. Philippians 1 .6.

Somebody said it under their breath, so I do say it all the time. He who began a good work in you will see it to completion.

He who began a good work in you will see it to completion. At. At what?

The day of Christ Jesus, right? What's Paul talking about? The return of Christ.

It will be perfected at that moment. Christ returns and finds his people faithful, striving, suffering, dealing with sin, fighting sin, striving for unity, striving for unity and doctrine, striving to be the church, the body of Christ on the earth, oh, but failing miserably in most areas.

And then the Savior comes in and goes, guess what? I already paid for all of that, and here I am to redeem it and to fix it, and I will resolve it, and it will be a done deal.

Oh, I long for that, don't you? Until then, we strive towards the goal of maturing.

The church has given us these means. I hound on it a lot. We're spending a lot of weeks in this, and there's a reason

I want it ingrained into our skulls that the high view of the church that the

Apostle Paul presents under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the high view of the church, you cannot be a

Christian and live the Christian life without it. It's what God has prescribed.

I didn't prescribe it. I'm not making it up. He wrote it here.

You either believe it or you don't. It's the church. Shepherd teachers in submission to the

Apostles teaching, pointing us day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, and as we've seen through history century after century, right?

Time and time again, over and over, the overseers, the shepherd teachers pointing back to this is what the

Apostles said. This is the truth of the gospel. Striving towards holiness, looking to Christ, the one that has given us that holiness positionally through his substitutionary atonement.

I must remind you all the time, because I have to remind myself, he was a substitute for you to bring you into this.

Oh, and one day he will give it to us experientially. One day.

I long for it, and until then we have some work to do, don't we? I'm not up here declaring a works righteousness.

I'm not up here saying pull yourself up by your bootstraps. What I'm saying is rest in God's prescribed means.

Rest in Christ, and when you rest in Christ, oh, you love the law. You meditate on it day and night.

It becomes who you are, and as God is molding us through it.

Amen? People of God, are you encouraged? Have you been pointed to Christ?

Have you been pointed to Nathan? I hope not. I've been pointed to the one that is redeeming us as a church, so in light of that, let us prepare to go to the

Lord's table together. Let us prepare for this ordinance that Christ himself has prescribed for us, that has called us to.

So in this moment, I ask that you would bow your head with me and pray as you prepare to worship him in this way.

Dear, dear Heavenly Father, we bow before you.

We trust in you, for you promised to redeem us, and you did through your

Son. You promised to keep us, and you do, and you promised to bring us into glory in that beautiful hope you promised, and you were good on your word.

I am not often good with my word. I am often plagued with sin.

I am often unfaithful. I am often lazy and indifferent.

I am often striving for disunity amongst the brethren.

I'm often rebellious, envious, but even in that, my

Savior has redeemed me from it and has paid for even those sins, and I long to lay them at the foot of the cross and rest in my perfect Savior.

I long to be made like him. I long to see his glorious majesty.

I long to embrace and worship him. I know we as a people this morning long for that as we struggle through this age and this current life.

Oh God, help us, for we are forgiven.

We are redeemed. Help us to live in light of that. Mold us.

Help us to be faithful to your word. Help us to be faithful to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Help us to be bold. Help us to be selfless.

I pray that you would be honored in our worship through the ordinance this morning. I pray that our glorious Savior would reveal himself in a unique way to us today as we share in this unifying act of partaking of the same vine and the same bread, symbolizing the blood and body of the one that has redeemed us.

Oh, we'll be honored in it, I ask. Search our hearts. Mold us in unity in Christ's name.