Sunday Morning Sermon with Pastor Jeff Shipley - Ephesians 4

Whitten Baptist Church

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We're gonna be in Ephesians 4. Now what's cool about this is this is actually the text

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I used. Good morning Karen. Hey Shane. This is actually the text I used in the very first sermon

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I ever preached at Witten Baptist Church 15 years ago. Hey John, Shane, Tim.

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All my friends are here. Hey Miss Diane from Indiana. Hey Courtney.

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There's baby Jennifer. Brother. Brother Al, man

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I miss you. Need you back by the door man. Hey Morgan.

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So anyways, there's Dalty. Hey Tamara. Man I miss you

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Tamara. You need to come back. There's Kenny. Hey Cindy.

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There's Charles. If I keep doing this I'm probably gonna spend the whole time saying hi to everybody, but I can't help it.

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I just miss you guys so much. Hey Paul. There's a beautiful day

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Tim. It's a beautiful day. Man. Oh he's watching

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Pastor Papa. Hey Brother Rodney. All right I'm gonna quit.

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I miss y 'all so, so much. You know one of the passions of my heart is to build a team.

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We are unified as the body of Christ and we're strong, but I'd like that unity to go outside the walls of Witten because Witten is a local body of the

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Church of God. It is the unity of God's people is so incredibly important.

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I mean to tell you, think about like this. Hours before Jesus went to the cross, he was in the

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Garden of Gethsemane and you know what he was praying for? His people to be unified. The reality of the need of unity within the body of Christ is paramount.

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Jesus said, not Abraham Lincoln, Jesus said that a house divided against itself will not stand.

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I think we've gone through generations now of being divided and fractured and if we don't take this time,

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I mean think about it like this, we're talking about this and through technology we are more unified as a body.

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I mean literally we're talking to people from Honduras, India, Georgia, Indiana, I mean all over the place.

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We're unified more sometimes on a stupid phone than we are in the body of Christ.

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It's crazy. Guys, we can no longer be defined by our denominations or by our church locales.

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We've got to understand what it is to truly be unified. So I'm going to talk to you about four things today and the unity of God's people.

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The first one I think is that we need to have a perspective of how to be unified.

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Being a unified body does not mean we all agree all the time. That is not what unity is.

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You see, unity is found when we were all in Christ. If we are in Christ, we are unified.

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If we submit to the idea that we are positionally as God's people in Christ, that is where our perspective begins.

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Okay, so let's look first in Ephesians chapter 4 and I want us to look very carefully here at these first three verses.

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It says this, therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, accepting one another in love, diligently keeping the unity of the

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Spirit with the peace that binds us. First of all, understand that that first word, therefore, okay, and this is one of the things that we need to get better unified with, okay.

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We need to get better unified with the fact that there is doctrine and duty, okay.

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Some of us are divided over doctrine, all right. That is just silly. The first three chapters of the letter to the

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Ephesian church was talking about the doctrine of God. But you see, doctrine in and of itself, without the duty.

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And the last three chapters of Ephesians says what we are to do with that doctrine. What does that doctrine look like fleshed out, literally, in the lives of individual believers in the church as a whole?

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We need to understand that it is a duty, a diligent duty, for us to be unified.

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So the first three chapters talk about the doctrines of God, but understanding those and knowing those and adhering to those without the duty of love, without the duty of a diligent effort, we're failing.

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So that first perspective is understanding that there is a duty that we have to have.

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Now that perspective also goes into that the duty is self. Look at Paul says, therefore

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I the prisoner of the Lord. Guys, listen to me. We have to understand to have the right perspective of being unified with our brothers in Christ, it means to understand that we have no rights.

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We are a prisoner of the Lord. Many times in Scripture he calls us doula, slaves.

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Guys, we need to quit worrying about what we want, what we feel, what we think, and what we desire, and we need to go with what

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God desires. Understanding his doctrine is good, but then putting that into place in duty is realizing that we are but a prisoner of the

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Lord. Understand this also, that that duty of understanding that we're a prisoner of the

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Lord means that we are accepting one another. Look, it says right here, accepting verse 2, with all humility, gentleness, and patience, accepting one another.

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Oh my goodness. Guys, you know it takes patience, it takes gentleness, and it takes humility for us to be unified.

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Listen, are there people in your church flock that just get on your last nerve?

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Go ahead and say yes, and probably some of y 'all are going, love you pastor, okay? Because I know

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I get on people's nerves. I know I do. I get excited, and then

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I just want a hug, and then I get carried away, right? I know sometimes that someone said that I have a big personality.

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I'm not sure exactly what that means other than I love you, and I want to show that love in a demonstrable form.

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I love when people, I can tell when they're putting up with me, okay?

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It's not that they don't love me. It's not that they don't even like me. It's that, well, sometimes

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I get a little excited, okay? And like that first Sunday back, some of y 'all are gonna need to invest in like football gear, because man,

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I'm just gonna pick you up and hug you and throw you around. All right, well, unity in this context that we're talking about here isn't just an annoyance.

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It's the reality that division can happen and separation can happen when we don't have that humility.

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First, Paul said I'm a prisoner, and then he says how we accept one another first is with humility and gentleness.

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I struggle with physical gentleness, okay? But there's a reality that we should be gentle on those who may not think, act, and smell or behave just as we do, okay?

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Be gentle with them. If correction is needed, Galatians 6 .1

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says, do it with a humble spirit. Consider yourself, lest you also be tempted. So understand that we need to accept one another, and that's the perspective of unity.

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But then here ultimately is the perspective that we need to have.

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It says this, the unity of spirit with a peace that binds us.

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It says, there is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope at your calling, one

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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.

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Guys, how important is this unity? Well, it's so important that God uses the one part over and over and over and over again.

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Church, I'm telling you, and I'm talking to the church of the world, not just America, not just Memphis, not just Witten.

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Church, if we don't start coming together in God, in Christ, in that spirit.

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By the way, notice how it says Christ, Spirit, and God all in the same verse, are all in the same passage.

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I wonder what that is. Can you see triune nature? Yes. If we don't start coming together in God, if we don't start coming together in that unity, we're not going to be able to fulfill any of God's commandments.

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All right, so now let's look at the second thing. It's not that we're just unified. Yes, we are diversified.

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Guys, we are not all the same. Could you imagine a church of nothing but just me's?

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Can you imagine? We'd be in left field all the time. We'd be making a left -hand turn everywhere because I'd be squirreling.

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The whole congregation would be squirreling. We wouldn't get anything done. Okay? I gotta have other people because if I'm not reigned in or if I'm not corrected, if I'm not held accountable, if I'm not whatever we as Christians need, guys, we're all gonna be jacked up.

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So we need to have diversity. Look at here in verse 7. Now grace was given to each one.

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Now notice the contrast. First it says one, one, one, one, one, one, one. Now it starts going into each one.

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So there is a unity but a reality of diversity within that unity. Now let me be politically correct here, okay?

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Are you ready? All right, here we go. You leftists out there, okay, and you weirdos out there, that diversity is strength?

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That is not true, okay? God has said a thousand times that our strength comes from being unified in Christ.

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Diversity is not the strength. That is unity is strength. Three arrows together are not easily broken.

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You see, if we don't have unity, we can never recognize diversity because here's what does.

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People say, well, diverse, diverse, diverse. Diversity starts grouping off. That's what we've done. That's why they're

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Presbyterians. That's why there's Pentecost. That's why there's Baptists because we looked at the diversity rather than the unity.

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The diversity is nothing more than a support system for the unity of Christ.

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Guys, understand that it is not culture that is, we're talking about when I say diversity.

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Culture is a man -made construct. It does not matter.

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Culture is irrelevant, okay? The culture is Jesus Christ. The first and foremost thing that we are unified in is

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God, but sometimes that's put off to the side. We're like, oh yeah, we're all Christians, but this is how we do it.

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Who cares how you do it? What's that mean? Guys, you're taking a group of people, unifying them in diversity.

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That's impossible. You cannot do that, okay? Don't herald your culture or your diversity.

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Herald Jesus Christ and the diversity will take care of itself, but it is important. Here's another thing.

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Stop defining people by skin tone. Guys, I get more comments on this when

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I say there's only one race of people. I hate to confuse you with scientific fact, but there's only one race.

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It's called the human race, okay? I'm sorry if you're one of those people that just believe that because you have more pigmentation or you have less pigmentation, you're a different species of human beings.

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There's only one species of human beings, okay? You can be a Doberman pincher, you can be a poodle, but at the end of the day, you're still a dog, okay?

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Relax with this diversity. Quit looking. It's so childish and immature. Quit looking at skin pigmentation and talking about diversity.

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That is not diversity. So what is, pastor? What's diversity? Well, I'm gonna tell you what the diversity of the church is.

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Here's what it is. Keep reading. It says this. It says, now grace was given to each one of us according the measure of Messiah's gifts.

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Now drop down here to verse 11. And he personally gave some to be apostles, he gave some to be prophets, he gave some to be evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.

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The diversity in the body of Christ is not based on the physical look that's so surface level and silly.

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It's not based on how we physically look. It's based upon the spiritual gifts that God has given each one of us.

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When you start talking about cultural diversity in church, you are way off topic.

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The diversity comes that each one of us has our own gift from God. That is the diversity that Scripture talks about.

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Quit highlighting things that don't matter. Let's start highlighting. I guarantee you go into any church and you talk about multicultural worship.

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What does that mean? Multicultural worship? Well, some people like to wear

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African dress and beat an Indian drum and whatever over here.

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That's nowhere in Scripture. Look right here. Nowhere in Scripture.

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The diversity that matters is how each individual member, by doing what

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God has commanded them to do, build a unity within God's people.

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Now understand that the purpose of the church, just read verse 12.

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It says that here, for the training, now this unity and this diversity is for this purpose.

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Okay, you ready? Here's what the diversity is for the purpose of. For the training of the saints in the work of the ministry.

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It's not to have different sounds. It's not to be appealing to a certain subculture group or even the major culture group.

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Has nothing to do with that. It's for the training and the equipping of saints.

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Here's how we've gotten so jacked up. We think church, the reality of church, is for converting sinners to Jesus.

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That is not the ministry of the church. That is the ministry of the

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Holy Spirit of God. No man can ever convert another man to Jesus.

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Only the Holy Spirit can do that. Here is the reality of the church. The reality of church is to train those that the

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Holy Spirit has converted. Now I'm sorry if this is offending some of you and I hate to mess your morning up with truth, but the reality is you learning the

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Romans Road or EE and going out and witnessing the 32 people is great, but if you're not discipling, if you're not investing in the people that God brings into your sphere of influence in the local church, you're not fulfilling what

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God has called the church to do. Pastors, listen to me. It's great that you can preach a three -point homily sermon.

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It's great that you took homiletics 101. It's great that you can speak New Testament Greek.

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It's great that you have a little hanky you can wave in the air. It's great that you think that the

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English transliteration of Kurios is Lord. Okay?

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Oh, that's great and that's great showmanship, but the reality is, pastors, your job is not to get people to show up on Sunday.

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Your job is to get people to grow up on Sunday. That is your job as a leader.

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Church, that is our job and our function as a church is to mature the body of Christ that exists within our sphere of influence.

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Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Guys, it says here, work.

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Oh Lord, here we go. The work of the ministry.

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How many of y 'all work in ministry? I'm not talking about you dorks that walk down the aisle and go, pastor, the

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Lord's called me into full -time Christian ministry. If you have been saved, you have been called into full -time

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Christian ministry, okay? If you are a Christian, you're supposed to be in full -time

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Christian ministry. The fact that you've been saved 10 years and you just figured out that you need to go into full -time

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Christian ministry shows that you have not been obeying the word of God that you claim you know so well.

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You are supposed to be in ministry. Guys, that is what we're supposed to be doing.

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Look at what it says here. Work of ministry. And what's the work of the ministry? What's it say right here?

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Look, to build up the body of Christ. Now guys,

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I build up my body. I do. I am a physical specimen of human perfection and I build my body up.

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It just is going in the wrong direction, okay? Let's just be honest, all right?

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But we're not even talking about physically. When we talk about building up the body of Christ, what we mean is not expanding the numbers.

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We're talking about expanding the sacrifice of individuals, of learning what it means to serve with humility and gentleness and unity.

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Guys, one of the things we need to do as leaders, as pastors, guys, as church members, is we need to start understanding that we are not in competition with the church down the road.

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I am not in competition. I am not in competition with the Presbyterians. Guys, I'm in competition with my own self -centeredness.

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I'm in competition with my own apathy. I'm in competition with that side of me that wants to satisfy

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Jeff rather than satisfy Jesus. Guys, when we build up the ministry, it is building up the local body.

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Guys, look here. It says this, until we reach... Now here's when we can stop. Verse 13.

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Here's when we can stop. Are you ready? Here's your retirement program. Pastors, some of you guys need to look yourselves in the mirror about this retirement garbage.

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That's cop -out. Watch this. It says this, verse 13. Here's the finish line. Until we all reach unity and faith in the knowledge of God's Son.

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That's the finish line. Till we all are mature. How many of you Christians have ever said this?

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Well, God's still working on me. God's still working on me. Well, great. Who are you working on?

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Well, I'm working on myself. Well, that's great. Now you're unified with you. Are you in accountability?

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Do you have a Sunday school? Do you disciple anyone?

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You've been a Christian 60 years. I've been a member of this church since 1970. Who are you discipling?

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Who are you ministering to? Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. You think that's maturity in Christ?

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Guys, chronological years don't define maturity. What defines maturity is what are you investing in?

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Who are you investing in? Listen very carefully. It says this, faith and in all knowledge growing into a mature man with stature measured by Christ's fullness.

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Guys, your church is filled not by how loud your music is, but it's filled when individual members are filled with Christ and then are bound together in the unity of God to develop those who show up.

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And guys, it takes work. I'm sorry, man. It takes work. And if you are drawing breath today,

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God is still calling you to do that work. There is no retirement.

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There is no I'm too old. Or here's my favorite line, I've done my time.

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I've paid my dues. Okay? Come here. If you have gone to the cross and died for the sins of the world,

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I agree with you. You've paid your dues. But until then, you still owe. If you're breathing, you still owe.

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If you have a place where God has sanctified and set you apart, you have a responsibility to reinvest that in the people of God.

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Church is not a building. It's not a social club. It's a group of imperfect people submitted to God Almighty investing not in themselves, but in those around them.

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Who are you telling, hey, you can do all things through Christ which strengthens you. Is the totality of your message of fullness and maturity is

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God bless you. I'll pray for you. Guys, it doesn't say anything here about just praying for someone.

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Praying for someone's great and we should pray for each other. But if that's the totality of your ministry, you are failing to be unified in the body of Christ.

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If one of us hurts, we all hurt. If one of us succeeds, we all succeed. That is the way it should be.

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It's silly that team sports have a better understanding of what team effort is than the house of Almighty God.

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God, it's ridiculous. It's sad. Vince Lombardi gets it better sometimes than we do.

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And you know why? Because most Christians don't know what it means to sacrifice and work.

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And please don't start telling me about you work too much. I ain't talking about that. I'm talking about sacrificing.

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Sacrificing. Where you invest the most precious thing you got, which is your time.

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Time. Guys, many of us are going to stand before the Lord on that day. And it's not our sin we're going to be judged for.

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For praise God, we've been imputed with the righteousness of Christ. What we're going to be judged for is what we did with the grace of God.

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And many of us, the only thing we're going to be able to hold up is our gold star on our Sunday school report or how long we've been a member of some local body.

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Guys, do you really think God's checking your tithing record? Do you really think God is checking how many

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Baptist quarterlies you've read? Or is it going to be measured in the souls in which you have invested your life and given your life?

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Guys, understand that we have to be unified. And listen, unity is not being in the same building together.

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Okay? Listen, if that's unity, then hell is the most unified place on the face of creation.

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Hell is nothing more than the same people going through the same punishment.

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That is not unity. Unity is love and sacrifice and work.

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It is a constant burden to where you are lifting someone else up higher than you're lifting yourself.

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It is past the idea of apathy. Well, I don't feel like it today.

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God ain't asking about your feelings. God's saying, be built up in the unity of Jesus Christ.

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Now, how do we know we've reached there? Look at verse 15. Guys, the mark of reaching there is found in the maturity of the saints.

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Let me ask you a question this morning. How mature of a Christian are you? I know that I have faults and failings galore, all right?

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But here is the maturity of Christ. Look here at verse 15. It says this.

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It says, well, let me start with verse 14. It says this, then we will no longer be little children.

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Ms. Carol could preach this sermon great. There will no longer be little children tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching by human cunning and with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.

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Wait a minute. I'm getting a word. For the proclamation of the gospel,

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I need a $3 .2 million jet. God has told me.

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Do you realize that there are more people deceived by lies than they are convinced by truth?

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And here's why. Most Christians today are incredibly immature.

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Guys, the first three chapters of this letter is nothing but doctrinal teaching.

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We can't even get to chapter four where it talks about duty and maturity because we don't know anything about Scripture.

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You ask the general, just ask a fellow believer. Just go, what is your favorite

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Scripture and Bible? I bet you a dollar to a donut and y 'all know what I'm about to say because it's truth.

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John 3 .16, for God did something and gave his son that we can be happy or something like that.

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You see, we're tossed to and fro. Our unity is so split because we hear the voices of men.

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I've got a new word from God. I've got a new way to praise. I've got a new song, a new sermon, a new study book, a new this.

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And people rush over to that. Guys, it's the same thing since day one. Obey God.

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Build up your brother and sister in Christ. Love God with all your heart and soul and your mind. Love each other as you love yourselves.

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That has been God's plan A from the beginning. You want to measure your maturity in Christ?

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Don't look at the chronological years you've sat in a building. Look at how many souls you've invested in.

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Now watch this. Verse 15, But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head

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Christ. Truth in love. I hate making people cry.

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I do a lot of counseling appointments. A lot.

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And when people start crying, I feel bad.

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But it usually comes after I say something like this. I don't care how you feel.

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I don't care what you think about yourself. I don't care where you have failed God. God's not done with you.

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You need to stop listening to your feelings, your preachers, your mama, your culture, whatever you want to live.

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And you need to start listening to the word of God. Now that's hard to say sometimes.

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Guys, anyone who likes conflict, there's something psychologically wrong with you. But the fact is, we're not speaking truth in love anymore.

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It's like we got two different ideas. We either are speaking truth and we're jerks, or we're speaking love and love, what we translate as agape love, has now become enabling liberalism.

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Well, if you feel that way, then it's right. God created mankind, both male and female.

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Do you realize that Facebook tried to include every gender they could think of?

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And they were up to 5 ,000 different genders. 5 ,000, right?

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5 ,000 genders. It's like we've all turned into sixth grade drama queens, and we're more worried about feelings than we are fact.

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And guys, then we start arguing about facts. What's facts? And I hear Christians say it all the time.

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Well, we believe, we believe, and we believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty Maker of heaven.

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It's funny how we will quote men to back up facts rather than quoting

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God's word. This is the only fact there is. This is God's revealed word to us.

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That's just the way it is. So wrap your little brains around this. Go into your safe spaces and pet a llama or whatever you got to do, or hug a teddy bear.

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The reality is there are truths that have to be spoken and have to be spoken in love.

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If you want to be unified, okay, it's going to take truth. You can't be unified in lies.

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You have to be unified in truth because the truth is that which everyone comes to. Guys, it's not about come together right now.

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It's about coming to the Lord. And if we come to the Lord and everyone focuses on that truth and that central point, everyone will start being unified by necessity because the closer to God you come, the closer together you come.

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But we've tried to do this, right? We tried to do this and put God in the middle and somehow put him on a, well, that's too far right, or that's too far left.

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No, it doesn't matter what you think or feel. Truth in love.

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Now, the other side of that is the other people who do something really creative, like these idiots, these godless heretics who hold up signs that said

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God hates fags. No, God hates sin. If you missed that, go back and read some, okay?

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It's what God hates sin. What God is going to destroy is sin and anything that sin touches.

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You see, truth in love is you got to speak the truth, okay? But in love means that we sit there and look at the reality of what

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Christ died for. Christ died for the propitiation of the sins of the whole world, okay?

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Christ died for all sin. Go read Hebrews 10. I can already hear some of my

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Reformists going nuts. I'm sorry, guys. Relax and rest in the reality that Jesus Christ came as an atonement, the day of atonement, yom kippur, for the sin of the entire world.

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Guys, truth, diversity, unity, all that stuff is this.

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Understanding that truth in love means that God is wanting the most vile of sinner and he's wanting the most destitute of believer.

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You will not outstretch the grace of God. That's truth in love. Not puffing oneself up and not sitting there castigating aspersions on people who are not acting like you, okay?

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The reality is truth is truth, but in love means that we recognize that those people are redeemable by the grace of Almighty God.

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Now, look at this. It says this, verse 16, from him the whole body fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament promotes the growth of the body for building itself in love by the proper working of each individual part.

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Now, I'm going to steal Josiah's sermon, okay?

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I'm going to steal a sermon from Josiah because it's a perfect analogy. When he played football for CBHS or was it or maybe when he was playing rugby at Memphis State, I can't remember, but whether it was in high school or college, okay, he tore his

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MCL, okay? It's just a little ligament on the knee, all right? And it hurt.

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And as he was hurt, he couldn't work out as much as he could.

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In high school, he was squatting 465 pounds. I can't even imagine that weight.

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I never even got close to that, so dude's a stud. But because of that little torn ligament, he couldn't work out anymore.

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Because of that little torn ligament, he couldn't play anymore. Now, what's amazing is this, is it wasn't his knee that just hurt.

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His other leg started hurting. As he walked around, he was favoring this leg, so this leg was now having to carry more weight, so it began hurting.

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The reality of maturity is this, guys, that every part of us, every single part, every supporting ligament, all right, that promotes the growth of our body, if one of us starts falling down, if one of us starts quitting or retiring or I'm too old or I'm apathetic or I care more about myself than I do the body, then the rest of the body suffers.

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Do you understand that when we're unified, when I say one of us hurts, we all hurt? Guys, that means in the church today, you got five people pulling the wagon and 150 riding.

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Guys, we got to get out. We got to all push because the only thing we need to be pushing is the

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Word of God. Guys, we have to come to a point to realize that the maturity of Christ is found in each one of us realizing that we all have a part to play.

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Preachers have done a really bad job, pastors I'll say, have done a really bad job in promoting their own ministries.

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I joke with my people all the time. I tell them, hey man, get back to work and earn that tithing money and please give to Reverend C.

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Jefferson Shipley Ministries for the glory of God. Guys, it's like I've heard people say, well,

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I can't go so I give. I can't go so I give. So, you know, your mission on earth is complete.

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So, because you give to Lighty Moon or you give to your church's mission, that is the totality of your spiritual maturity and the effort you have in the unity of the building of the body?

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No, ma 'am. No, sir, to quote Rebecca Dillon. No, sir. Guys, giving is a part of being part of the body of Christ.

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That's true. But you have a personal responsibility and a personal call to invest as a mature

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Christian in someone who is not yet that mature. We are together.

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Now, last part is this. Our job is to recognize this. Our job is to go and sacrifice.

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But look who actually does the end result. If unity is our goal, the actual power of us getting there is going to be by our submission to Almighty God.

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Because look what he does here. From him, the whole body fit and knit together.

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Fit and knit. I remember my buddy and I, this was years ago, we built a deer stand.

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Now, he had a design and I had a design in our heads.

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But we both agreed basically to the same design. Now, he wanted to use screws and screw two -by -fours to four -by -fours.

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Being a shipley, using screws is not the best thing. I like using six -inch lag bolts.

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If it didn't have at least 500 lag bolts per square foot,

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I didn't feel like it was sturdy enough. And so I wanted to fit those things together.

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I also wanted to notch everything out and put everything and recess it. I remember building the trap door.

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I built the trap door and it would hit and then you could kind of wiggle it and then the door would fall into place there on the floor.

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That wasn't good enough for me. So, I got a rasp and I sat there and rasped that door until literally you could feel the air suction of that door opening and closing.

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It's funny, by the way, he and I built this deer stand. We did build it.

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But it's funny that they recently had a tornado go through the area of the camp that this deer stand is set up.

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And there was devastation everywhere. Trees had just fallen all over the place. But the one thing standing was our deer stand.

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So, unified together with his ideas and my ideas, we built a deer stand that could withstand a tornado. By the way,

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Jeff Shipley Ministries is now building deer stands. All right, just kidding. But guys, understand this.

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God fit and knit us together. Guys, the honing that God does when it fits us together is he changes us as individual parts so we will fit there together.

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But he doesn't just fit us together. It says he fits us together and then knits us together.

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Guys, that we are overlapping one for another. Guys, when we come to a place in our lives where we realize that the height of Christian maturity is measured in how much we love

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God and how much we love others, it's not measured in how many doctrines we know. That should be a key point of education.

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And it says we need to build up in the knowledge of God. But if you don't love God and you don't love your fellow brothers in Christ, that knowledge is absolutely worthless.

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At the same time, it can't just be love without truth. Maturity and unity have to be built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ in knowledge and faith.

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You see, there are two things that are coming together here. There are two things that are coming together in the book of Ephesians.

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It's what we should know and what we should do. Guys, it's funny that the central verse of these six chapters starts out by saying this.

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Therefore, be unified together. Guys, we can have truth and we can have love, but the first thing that that's going to be defined by is the unity we have with God and the unity we have with each other.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I hope and pray today that you are looking forward with great expectations to being back one with another.

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But to be honest with you, our physical distance has nothing to do with our unity.

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Our unity is in here. Guys, one of the birth marks of being a

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Christian is this. Do you love being with your brothers and sisters in Christ? Guys, I remember when

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I was a heathen, I hated staying at home. Hated it.

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I would come home long enough to maybe eat food off the stove, squirt some toothpaste in my mouth, and run right back out the door because I wanted to do what

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I wanted to do. But it's amazing now. Guys, all I want to be is with my family praising and worshiping

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God, serving one another, serving him, and showing the world not what we're against, but showing the world what we're for.

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Guys, if we are truly loving God and loving each other, the unity will happen.

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We don't need another book written on it. We don't need another manual on how to do it.

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The manual has been written. What we need is to be obedient. And ladies and gentlemen, I hope and pray that your maturity level reaches past the point where you don't smoke, cuss, or drink.

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If that's your marks of maturity in Christ, you're missing out on what God says. The mark of a mature

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Christian is one who promotes and becomes the unity of the body in Christ.

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I hope you all have enjoyed this today. I look forward to getting to be with all of you again. And I want to thank

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Hunter once again for doing a great job in worship and praise. I also want to ask you, or I should say inform you, that tonight at six o 'clock,

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Brother Josiah will be leaving a Bible study. I believe they're in the book of Philippians. So please join in here on this public page at six o 'clock for his

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Bible study. There will be no Bible study for me tonight. This will just simply be Josiah thing.

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This isn't a Jeff show. Everyone has a word they could share. Also, I want to inform you that on Wednesday night at 5 .30,

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Brother Jeremiah will be doing a round table discussion with the youth. And then 7 .30

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will be our regularly scheduled Bible study. Guys, I love you. And I miss y 'all so much.

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I miss you too, Ralph. I get to go back through and say hi to everybody. Hey, Tara. And I'll see y 'all tomorrow night.

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Don't forget to go to Witten Media Ministry on YouTube. Please subscribe and ring the bell.

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Whatever that means, go ring a bell on YouTube on Witten Media Ministry. All right.