"Christ Ascended = the Church's Provision" Part 9

Christ Ascended as the Church’s Provision

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, you know what we need before we even ask. We need your grace to worship you. We need your spirit to fill us, to grant to us the faith and repentance we all need to respond rightly to what you have to say today in your word concerning your son.

Father, you know that none of us here are here because we figured it out, or we're really good at worshiping you, or by some merit or privilege. But we're here because of your grace, and we ask that you would help us to worship you in your grace, and we ask that you would be glorified in our midst.

Lord, I pray that you would so work through your word, according to your spirit, that we would be the amen on earth of your will in heaven. And we ask these things for the sake of Jesus Christ, with whom you are well pleased.

Amen.

Please turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4. We're going to be in Ephesians chapter 4 and looking at verses 7 through 16. Again, this morning I am looking forward to concluding this passage with you that we began on Ascension Sunday.

We are not going to conclude it today. Lord willing, it will be next week, and then we will go back to our ongoing series in Jeremiah. Now, I've not forgotten that we started Jeremiah, but I praise the Lord for giving us this needful detour for about 10 weeks.

But we have been talking about the gift of Christ. Christ's gift to his church in his Ascension. Christ's gift, and the grace given in this gift of the Holy Spirit. And we are coming to focus this morning on verse 14.

But would you please stand with me in reverence to Christ, who is revealed in Ephesians 4, 7 through 16. This is the word of the Lord. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives and gave gifts to men. Now this expression, he ascended, what does it mean? Except that he also had descended into the lower parts of the earth.

He who descended is himself who also ascended far above all the heavens so that he might fill all things. And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up into all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by whatever joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

You may be seated. Rupert Sheldrake is a British scientist who has written a book called The Science Delusion in the UK. It's published in the United States, Science Set Free. In this book, he challenges the most dearly held beliefs of the neo-Darwinian scientific worldview, one of those being that the laws of nature are fixed.

In other words, constants do not change. He was sharing his passion for breaking the sciences free in a TEDx talks in Whitechapel. And he was talking about his research and sharing about his research, especially about this issue of constants and whether or not they change, such as the speed of light.

Does the speed of light change? And he says, well, the Darwinian hypothesis says that, of course, constants cannot change. It's a closed system. It's the philosophical world of materialism. And yet he goes back, does his research, and he finds in the older physics handbooks that between 1928 and 1945, the speed of light dropped by 20 kilometers per second.

All over the world, scientists had the same result. The speed of light, for some reason, between 1928 and 1945, dropped by 20 kilometers per second. It's a big drop when you're dealing with such fine measurements.

So he goes to the head of metrology, which is the science of measuring measurements. Very interesting job. And he goes to the head of metrology at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, and he goes to talk to him about what he's found.

And so he says, what do you make of this? And the response from the chief there is, oh dear, you found the most embarrassing episode in all the history of our science. And Rupert says, well, could it be that the speed of light actually dropped?

And the chief says, well, no, no, it couldn't possibly have dropped. It's a constant. And Rupert says, well, then how do you account for scientists all over the world getting lower readings for this period of time?

Did somebody make an error and then others just continued to perpetuate that and they were just fudging their results? And the chief says, we don't like to use the word fudge. Rupert says, well, what term do you prefer?

And the chief says, well, we prefer intellectual phase locking. Rupert says, well, how do you know that this intellectual phase locking is not continuing? And the chief says, well, we've solved the problem.

We have the solution. We've fixed the speed of light by definition in 1972. And Rupert says, but the speed of light might still change. The chief says, well, it may be, but we never know it because we've defined the meter in terms of the speed of light so the measurements would change with it.

In other words, the speed of light is measured in terms of meters per millisecond and meters are measured by the speed of light. So we're all going to sleep better at night knowing that constants are constantly constant and if they're not, we'll never be burdened with a quandary.

And that's just a sample of the wisdom of man without God. A far better comfort and I think a real true constant would be that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. A better approach to knowing truth would be this.

By faith, we understand. By faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible. The psalmist praises the Lord. Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven.

The prophet gives counsel. The grass withers. The flower fades. But the word of our God stands forever. Christ, who is the word, says, Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away.

And the apostle Peter reminds us that this eternal, enduring, living, powerful, unchanging word, this is the word that was preached to you by which we are saved. We've been talking about the church's provision.

How in the world are we going to do what Jesus called us to do? To go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations. How in the world are we going to do that? But the church's provision flows from Christ ascended.

The church's provision flows from Christ ascended. And from his ascended glorified session, Jesus Christ sends forth the Holy Spirit to fully supply each one of us with the grace we need to grow up into maturity, together building up his body according to his standard.

Through the Holy Spirit, Christ has given us apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers so that by the word of God established, extended, and expounded, we would have all that we need for the building up of his church.

All we need is provision. Without the grace of Christ's gift, here's the problem. We remain infants in a typhoon of lies. Verse 14. As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men.

By craftiness in deceitful scheming. The result of each one of us receiving grace according to the measure of Christ's gift by the building up of the body of Christ through the external ministry of the word.

What is the result of Christ's provision in the life of the church? We will no longer live as infants in a typhoon of lies. We can kiss spiritual infancy goodbye. It is not a permanent status. We don't have to remain spiritual infants.

We no longer have to live as infants in a typhoon of lies. That is only good news if you understand the danger and believe the danger is real. So that's where we're going to begin. Understanding the danger and believing that the danger is real.

Look at the image that Paul gives us. It is a startling image. It's infants in a typhoon of lies. Children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men.

By craftiness in deceitful scheming. As Paul writes these words, he is sitting safely and securely under house arrest in Rome. To arrive there, however, he has come by sea and it was not smooth sailing.

Being tossed here and there by waves, carried about by wind, this comprises a terrifying sensory experience that Paul knows quite well. And he is using this well understood fear in his day to describe the danger, the deadly danger of false teaching.

Now, it would be bad enough to hear the terror and see the panic of hardened sailors being thrown into the tempest as their ship is wrecked upon the rocks. That would be bad enough. But Paul does not write about anthropoi, men, but nepioi, infants.

Infants.

This is the stuff of nightmares. No one can bear long to think about the tragic fate of infants and toddlers tossed by waves, flung about by the wind. Why is Paul being so dramatic? Why does he give us this image that's the stuff of nightmares?

Because, dearly beloved, without Christ's provision from on high, that's the intellectual nightmare we live and that's the spiritual tragedy we embrace. There are three terms that we can use to identify from this verse the nature of false teaching.

Here's the first word, effusion. Effusion. Tossed here and there by waves. Six English words set to try to translate one very big Greek word. Kludonidzimai. This word is all about large volumes of water on the move.

This is a word that is used for oceans and for seas and for floods. And this term would be majestic if we were sitting up safely on the cliffs. But, in fact, it's a terrifying term because, in fact, we are among the billows and we are being rolled under by the breakers.

False teaching comes like an overwhelming storm. False teachers have many cubic acres of poisoned water stored up behind the dam of their mouth. And their favorite hobby is to release destructive torrents of bad doctrine.

You know an effusion of bad teaching or false doctrine when it comes in voluminous waves of information without letting you up for air. It would be the professor in the classroom, the only guy with a mic in your grade hanging in the balance, as this professor pontificates with various proofs to discredit and disprove on a rational and moral basis the existence of the Christian God.

The whole hour and 20 minutes all he's doing is trying to destroy the faith classroom from whatever church. You think he's done? No. Come back a couple of days later for another hour and 20 minutes of the stuff till you get overwhelmed and beat down.

Does this only happen at the community college? Does this only happen at the state university? No, of course not. I went to Bible college only to get hit with wave after wave of bad doctrine. Stuff like, God doesn't know what will happen next.

He's still waiting for us to decide. The Apostle Paul is just a man. You must be very, very careful what you do with his words. You still believe all that stuff about the Bible being true and inerrant?

False teaching comes as an effusion, a massive amount of information to overwhelm us, to leave us with a sense that we have no place to stand. Not only an effusion, but confusion. Notice, carried about by every wind of doctrine.

So you have the waves tossed to and fro by every wave, but then also carried about by every wind of doctrine. So we're in a squall. We're in a full-fledged storm. Paul uses the term that we, from which we gather periphery, all around the edge.

It has a sense of being spun about in a cyclone. Again, Paul is saying that we receive Christ's gift and grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. That we have been given the scriptures established, extended, and expounded.

We have been given the Holy Spirit for this precise purpose, that we would not remain in immaturity, but that we would grow up, that we would mature in Christ, and he's the measure of what it means to be a mature person as a church.

But spiritual infancy is easy to detect. It's right here in the text. Spiritual infancy is easy to detect. It's like watching a plastic bag in the back of a pickup going 65 miles an hour down the highway.

Somehow, the vortex of the wind coming around the cab and into the bed of the truck, and up the sides, and up the backside of that bed, just keep on circulating the wind, and that plastic bag is doing the craziest dance you've ever seen in your life.

It's going all around, now down, now up, now to the side,.

And swing, there it goes.

Floating along the Oklahoma breeze until it lands on the nearest barbed wire fence. That is spiritual infancy. Going here and there by every wind of doctrine. Don't get Paul wrong. He's not saying he's against doctrine.

No, he's very much pro-doctrine. That's the whole point of the text. He wants us to be built up into the full knowledge of Jesus Christ. The problem is every doctrine, every teaching, being tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine.

That's the problem. Because false teaching thrives on confusion. The more ideas being thrust at you from all these different angles, the more confused you'll be, and that's exactly where false teachers want you to be.

False teachers love the pliable, gullible student who will grab hold of anything new, different, or slightly interesting.

Someone once said,.

The wind of error does not blow long in the same direction.

To put it a different way,.

False teachers run an ice cream parlor. The more flavors, the better. And to prove this, all you've got to do is walk into Mardell or Lifeway today and apply the Baskin and Robbins test. Get 31 samples of the most popular Christian literature today, one for each day of the month, and read through them and see if it doesn't become very confusing.

Confusing on basic matters like, what is prayer? What is the Bible? What is the gospel? There is a great deal of confusion in our day. The individual effect of all this confusion is to keep the spiritual infant running ragged from one source of truth or one means of grace to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next ad nauseum.

The mass effect of this confusion is to convince us that there is endless variety in Christianity, that we adopt relativism as our approach, that the kingdom of Christ is borderless, that we begin to say things like, who am I or who are you, to contradict somebody else's experience or to think that someone's statement is somehow wrong.

We should never say those things.

Confusion.

False teaching comes as confusion.

Why?

To silence us and to leave us with a sense that we have no answer to give. But the effusion and the confusion of false doctrine is truly an illusion. Notice, it's by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming.

In other words, if we get overwhelmed, if we get confused by false teaching, it's because of a trick. It means we got hoodwinked, or the older version, hornswoggled. The term trickery here is the Greek word for dice.

It comes from the Greek word kubos or cube, talking about dice. So have the image of dice in your head.

Hold on to that.

And this craftiness is actually a willingness to try anything new, to learn anything new, in order to get ahead. Deceitful scheming talks about a diligence in developing deluding methods. Putting all this together, perhaps in the quieter portions of Paul's sea journey, and when he was under house arrest, perhaps some of the Roman soldiers liked to play dice, like to gamble with dice.

And over time, Paul would know who was cheating. Think of this Roman soldier who has several sets of dice, and some of them are fair dice, and some of them are loaded dice. To make his money, this Roman soldier has to practice again and again, and learn new tricks, and learn new ways of cheating his fellow soldiers.

He has to practice sleight of hand, to move the dice in and out, the ones he wants to roll that will fall his way. He has to practice his pitch. He has to practice his bets. And he develops his craft, and he develops his skill, all in an effort to convince his fellow soldiers that this is a fair game, and they have a fair chance to win.

But in fact, he's just taking their money. That is the illustration. That is the word picture Paul gives us for false teaching. It is a well-developed trick. It is practiced sleight of hand. It is a well-thought-out illusion.

False teachers succeed when we think they're playing fair, interpreting the Bible correctly, valuing Christ, the gospel, and the church appropriately. But you better know when the devil plays poker, he's got an ace up his sleeve.

Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, Paul says. 2 Corinthians 11, 14, and 15. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore, it is not surprising. Oh, dearly beloved, please don't be surprised.

No shock and awe, please. It is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their business card is not going to say, false teacher. It's going to say, I'm the next best thing for Christianity you've ever encountered.

And I've got it figured out. False teachers always attempt to establish their credibility and gain a rapport before inserting their falsehoods. This is the language that Paul gives us in verse 14. We are no longer to be infants, no longer children, tossed here and there by every wave, carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming.

As a college student, I remember reading a book. I bought it off a front door display at a Christian bookstore. It was called A New Kind of Christian. It was written by Brian McLaren. It was told in a narrative form, a story, but the message of the book had to do with frustrated Christians who just didn't have any more impact in this new world.

And we just needed to let go of our old-fashioned presuppositions about truth and the Bible to embrace a more authentic journey. In fact, it was an appeal for postmodern relativism. But the heavy artillery was reserved at the end of the book after you developed an emotional attachment to the protagonist.

Vance Havner once said, False doctrine always uses a gimmick to get its foot in the door, and it's always the back door. False teaching comes as an illusion to distract us, to leave us with a sense that we do not have what we need.

Christ ascended, the Spirit given, the Scriptures completed. Not good enough. You need something else. That's false teaching. It's a sales pitch. We've thought about the effusion, confusion, and illusion of false teaching, but we've barely scratched the surface of this theme, which is robust, to say the least, throughout the Scriptures.

But as long as we're snorkeling around in these waters, let's take the time for some honest self-evaluation. Lest we only play the victim, you and I need to own the villain. The heart is deceitful above all else, Jeremiah says, and desperately wicked.

Who can know it? Brothers and sisters, you, personally, are very often the very first false teacher you listen to. And I am the very first false teacher that I often listen to. Because when unsettling circumstances and difficulties in relationships and bad news all assault our lives, we start talking unbiblical nonsense.

It's not always the enemy's insidiousness. It is also our own unsteadiness. But the answer for both is clear. We have a solution for intellectual phase-locking. We don't have to get duped. Christ ascended has given us the Holy Spirit.

So go back to the first part of verse 14. Rather than being infants in a typhoon of lies, we are to be anchored to a solid rock. Listen to it. As a result, we are no longer to be children. As a result, we are no longer to be children.

We are to leave spiritual infancy behind. Stop being such a baby. It's time to grow up. The key to growing up is to never leave home. And the millennials rejoice. I'm not talking about our shirking our human responsibilities to be fruitful and multiply.

I'm talking about the fundamental difference between natural maturity and spiritual maturity. When it comes to our natural maturity, we grow up, we leave home, we form new families, we get on our own.

When it comes to our spiritual maturity, it's the exact opposite. We move from less dependence upon the triune God, less dependence on God the Father, Son, and Spirit, less dependence on the scriptures to more dependence on God and the Bible.

Spiritual infancy is easy to detect. Spiritual infants are running all over the place. I'm going to listen to this person and that person and that person and that person and five podcasts a day. And I'm going to read this Christian book and that Christian book and that Christian book and I'm going to get information from all these resources.

And you know what? Babies need all the help they can get. That's okay if you're a spiritual infant. I understand you're trying to get all the help you can get. You need nourishment. But you know babies also grab stuff they're not supposed to grab.

That's why we can't stay spiritual infants. We've got to grow up. And the more we grow up in Christ, the more we depend on God and the scripture. We've got to leave spiritual infancy behind. Christ's ascension means the church's provision.

Christ ascended, the spirit descended. The body of Christ is built up into maturity through the spirit-empowered ministry of the word among and by the saints. Where the scriptures are faithfully preached, taught, and shared, the saints are equipped, the body of Christ is built, and the church is matured out of infancy.

Where the scriptures are sidelined, J .C. Ryle says ignorance of the scriptures is the root of all error. The key to growing up spiritually is to never leave home. Don't run away from the scriptures. Don't run away from prayerful dependence upon the Holy Spirit.

Don't stop learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christ ascended is the Christian's anchor. Our anchor doesn't go down, it goes up. Christ ascended is the Christian's anchor. Through the spirit and the scriptures, Christ ascended gives stability to his church.

And that may mean on our part there's going to be some work and some preparation and some repetition, some spiritual discipline, but there is no substitute for Christ's provision. Austen O'Malley says truth lives in the cellar, error lives on the doorstep.

It's harder to go for truth than it is to settle for error. As children of the Heavenly Father, as children of the Heavenly Father, we do not glorify him through prodigal forays into rationalism, moralism, and mysticism.

We are prone in self-confidence, in thanklessness, to take whatever provision we have received of scriptural truth, of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and then head for what we think are the greener pastures of spiritual experience, but we end up with pig slop.

That's not a sign of maturity. Getting tired of the Bible is not a sign of spiritual maturity. Growing weary of Jesus Christ preached is not a sign that you have matured. It's quite the opposite. When the preacher to the Hebrews wanted to expound on Christ as their high priest, though he wanted to say a lot, he had to limit himself to the immaturity of his hearers.

Hebrews 5, 11 -14. Concerning him, concerning Christ, we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have again need for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God.

And you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, because he is an infant. Solid food is for the mature, who, listen, because of practice, have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

It is only by the regular practice of hearing and studying the oracles of God, the word of righteousness, the scriptures, that our senses will be trained to discern good and evil, seeing through the illusions of the enemy.

Why? Because it is through the diligent study of Scripture that we come to know who Christ is. Only by listening to the word of Scripture will we begin to look like the word incarnate. Ephesians 4, 20 and 21 says we must learn Christ, for truth is in Jesus.

Donald English writes, unless your vision of Christ is as large as it possibly can be, you will always remain in danger of heresy. Christ is our solid anchor in the typhoon of lies. The more we know him, the more we will remain unmoved, no matter which way the wind blows.

It's necessary to say that. We live in a day and an age when all the emphasis is on running away from Scripture, explaining away the tough stuff of Scripture, apologizing for Scripture, trying to salvage the Scripture.

And for a whole lot of people, most of the Bible is nothing but a millstone hung around the neck of Christianity to doom us. We live in a church culture where tortured readings of Genesis 1 through 11 are in vogue, and Roman Catholic mysticism is all the rage, and where folks are telling us to unhitch the Old Testament from the Gospel story.

Because when people read the Old Testament, they run away from Jesus. Do you know what? When they listened to Jesus, they ran away from Jesus. And what is the Old Testament about? Well, apparently it's about Jesus.

It's about the Messiah, through whom was the whole Old Testament spoken, the Word of God who would become flesh. It was the Spirit of Christ who spoke through the prophets, Peter says. So if it's Jesus' words in Matthew or Jesus' words in Genesis, this is the Word of Christ.

Well, how did folks ever get saved before Paul's day or even during Paul's day? They didn't even have the New Testament all put together by the preaching of the Old Testament Scriptures. You know, God is a pretty good communicator.

He doesn't say the wrong thing, and He doesn't say the right thing in the wrong way, and He doesn't speak in such a way as to confuse. That's someone else's job. Let God be true, though every man a liar.

Or the New Scientist version, let God be constant, though everyone is intellectually phase-locking. I really don't know any better way to conclude this morning other than by reading from the clear, true, perfect Word of God.

2 Timothy, beginning in chapter 3, verse 13. 2 Timothy, beginning in chapter 3, verse 13. But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

All Scripture is inspired of God and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. The man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom preach the Word.

Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. May we live as the amen on earth of this Word from heaven. Let's pray. Father, You are compassionate.

You know what it is, what the danger is that faces any who would reject the clear truth of Jesus Christ revealed by the Holy Spirit in Your Scriptures. It is going to be disaster for anyone who would allow themselves to be tossed to and fro by every wave and carried about by every wind of false teaching.

Father, I ask that You would convince us of the danger and help us to, in thankfulness, take firm hold of Your provision, the provision that You have given to us in Christ and we pray these things for His sake.

Amen.