Sunday, June 30, 2024 Summer Session 5

Unity in Ephesians 4 and the Need for Maturity

All right, it sounded like the conversation was going full steam, I hate to shut it down. I heard a lot of murmuring, but not a lot of disputing, that's a good thing. As we're looking at this next portion of Ephesians chapter four, I think we're really seeing what Dwight mentioned to us a couple weeks ago, about how this unity is not static.

This unity is not something where everything is stuck in the mud and not moving anywhere, but there's actually a dynamism, there's a liveliness, there's a movement that goes along with the unity that's being described here.

It's a living unity, like that of a human body, a living kind of unity, something organic. It's not mineral, it's not like a rock that doesn't move anywhere and just clings to itself. With that in mind, we're supposed to find a couple of contrasts there in verses 13 through 15.

What contrasts did you see in those three verses? Anybody wanna share? Right, there was maturity in vision, and then there was childishness that were contrasted. The other contrast was a little bit more subtle, but did we see what that was?

And I think that, so when you look at the metaphors of being tossed to and fro versus being very formed and steady, that really goes along with the maturity and the childishness, but this contrast that really is the one that sticks out the most is connected to another one.

Yes, yes, so there's like the knowledge of Christ, the truth, the knowledge versus the deception, which of course is very much related to that being steady or being tossed to and fro, that being mature or being childish.

So that's important, we see those two major contrasts there as we're talking about unity in the church, Christ gifting grace according to his measure, giving leaders to the church for the sake of something, growing together into maturity.

So Christ calls for unity, therefore he calls for maturity. As we look at verses 11 through 16, talking about church growth, not the marketing nickels and noses, but the actual growth, Christian growth of the church, who grows the church in verses 11 through 16?

And I said three possible answers, I guess I could have said 47, but apparently, who grows the church? What are the answers, some of the answers that you had? The saints, great answer, the saints grow the church, who else?

Christ grows the church, very good. And now for that odd third option.

Individual.

Individual who?

Those who are gifted.

Those who are gifted, right, individuals in particular who are gifted, who are the leaders, who were just mentioned before we did a survey of those five different types of servants that God, that Christ grants to the church.

So we could say Christ grows the church, we could say that those who have been gifted as leaders are to grow the church, and also all Christians, all saints, all members of the church are to grow the church.

And that is true, all three of those things are true as you read the entirety of the passage. So we've already talked about how the two contrasts are related to each other. Where we find a growth in maturity is also along with a growth in knowledge, the knowledge of who Christ is, the knowledge of how he is our savior and how he is our sovereign, but also a knowledge of him in that personal submitting relationship to him.

Growing in your knowledge of Christ is becoming more mature. The alternative is to be tossed to and fro and to be subject to all manner of trickery and scheming and so on and so forth. And this is a very immature picture.

So when we think about the nourishment of the human body, as that is the metaphor that's really coming forward to our attention in this passage, we think about the nourishment of the human body. We had this idea of someone growing up and having lots of nourishment and being very well knit together and they're a strong person, okay?

Versus somebody who is not being nourished and is not well developed and is weak. And the idea is there's maturity and then there's immaturity. So we're thinking about in this passage, what seems to be the needful nourishment, the necessary nutrition for the church.

What seems to be emphasized, do you think? Faithful teaching for the equipping of the saints, right? And can we detect, and that's the right answer, but can we detect anything? That's me. It is on silent.

That was a reminder to make sure that the baptism is warm. Check. I tested it this morning. So the nature of that teaching, the nature of the content of that teaching, what's gonna be the focus of that teaching?

Can we detect that from this passage? Okay, what did you say?

The truth of the word of God.

Truth of the word of God, okay, who else? Right, and in this we can tell that it's, when we're thinking about the knowledge of the word of God, who we find there is Christ revealed in the scriptures. So we're not finding a kind of encyclopedia of religious knowledge in the Bible, right?

That would be kind of the mineral content of a rock. We're finding the living, vibrant knowledge of Jesus Christ in the word of God, which is why there's growth and maturity there. As we think about this passage, we have this very strong call to unity in Ephesians chapter four, verses one through six, where there's a sevenfold exhortation followed up by a sevenfold expression of oneness in Christ.

And then after this focus on unity, there's a call to maturity. And we are encouraged right out of the beginning of this emphasis that it is the gift of Christ. It is the gift of Christ by his spirit.

By his spirit, Christ grants to us grace according to his wisdom. And this is tied to his ascension. The fact that he is victorious, the fact that he has finished and completed the work and sat down at the right hand of the father, that he is victorious and he has sent forth his Holy Spirit to equip us.

Our giftings in grace are by the glory of Christ ascended, or his supremacy is our sufficiency. And we begin to talk about the T in our acronym, not only the measure of Christ's gift and the ascension of Christ to God, but the tasks by Christ's grace.

And we focused on these terms, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, pastors and teachers, and considered that some of these were for the foundation of the church. Now those are listed in the scripture as the apostles and the prophets.

And they were the foundation of the church. And Christ who is building his church laid the foundation with him as the cornerstone, the apostles and prophets tied into him. And then based upon that foundation, he's been building the church ever since through evangelists and through pastors and through teachers.

And we talked about the fact that anybody who comes out today and says, I'm an apostle, or I'm a prophet, that invariably what they end up doing is laying a new foundation. They lay an entirely new foundation and it turns out to be a different foundation than the one that was laid that we have.

So we know the apostles and prophets, they did a wonderful job. We're still benefiting from their service today because of the Holy Scriptures. And now evangelists, we call them missionaries or apologists or so on, who are pushing forward the gospel into new places.

And pastors and teachers continue to build the church. They're working towards this kind of church growth listed here. But of course, it's by the authority of Christ and the power of Christ by his grace through his spirit that this occurs.

And the goal is to be equipping the saints, right? It's not just to equip a handful of clergy, but it's the equipping of all the saints so that everybody is involved in the growth of the church. So when we talk about being a member of the church and being a part of the church covenant that we look at one another and we say, I am my brother's keeper.

I am my sister's keeper. We all claim responsibility for one another's spiritual growth. So I'm gonna love you and I'm gonna try to bless you and serve you and I know that you will do the same back to me.

With that in mind, I want us to think about these two phrases, the equipping of the saints and the edifying of the body that we find here in verse 12. Just let's hear that again. These leaders gifted to the church, they are for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.

So there's equipping and there's edifying. The term equipping can be translated as perfecting. Maybe the King James has that translation there, but it has the idea of you have the right size stick, but it's not in the shape you want it.

And so what you begin to do is you begin to whittle the stick down to match the pattern that you know it's supposed to fit. That's the idea of this term of equipping the saints. It has the idea of whittling it down to match and to become very useful.

It has the idea of arranging and fitting something just right according to whatever the container is. Some of you really enjoy vacation simply because the packing. That challenge just thrills you to pack each container just right and then to fit it within whatever vehicle you're going in and you just feel very satisfied with that part of the process.

And that's the idea here, being well fit, being perfectly situated in whatever that container is. So the idea really is this, that the equipping of the saints is that you're seeking to fully and precisely prepare the saints for their tasks.

Now, the same word shows up in another passage, it's a rather famous passage, but in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. For the word of God is, all scripture is God breathed, right? All scripture is inspired, profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be adequate equipped.

Here it is, for every good work. And so once again, the emphasis is that the word of God, the teaching of God's word in light of Christ is being applied to the saints in such a way so that we are all well fitted for those good works that Christ prepared beforehand for us to walk in.

So we have these things that are set before us, prepared for us, but it's not only that God is preparing the works for us to do, he's preparing us for the works to do. Both of those things being described for us in the word of God.

Now, the edification of the body, this edifying has the idea of building, of construction. It's the term used for building a beautiful, complex building from anything from the architectural drawings to the overlay of the final decor.

It's the word that was often used by the Jews in describing how they were building their temple. 46 years it took us to build this temple, they boasted. And they weren't done yet. Yes, it had, you know, innumerable pounds of gold all over it, but they weren't done yet.

They had more beautification to do. They had more money to collect from the widows so that they could make a very beautiful and ornate building to their own glory. But this kind of building is the building of the new covenant temple, not the old covenant temple.

Here is the building up of the saints who are the living stones of this new covenant temple. And we are reminded in Zechariah 4 .6 in looking forward to the building of the new covenant temple. It is not by might, it's not by power, but by my spirit says the Lord that the temple will be built.

So what we see in verse 12 is that there are some who are called to lead out, but it's for the equipping of everybody to do something along the same lines. Years ago, the elders and I sat down and we read a book together over the course of our monthly meetings and so on is called Trellis and the Vine.

And later on, we had to follow up on that called the Vine Project. But the basic metaphor was this, that in terms of building the church and church growth, the idea will be that we should be interested in growing the vine, not building trellis.

The instinct so often is to build trellis. We have a good idea or, oh, that's a really neat thing to do. And so structures and committees and volunteers and schedules and calendars and announcements and all these things are brought together and a big trellis is built.

And then the poor, exasperated, tired vine is told, well, get on up there. That's not exactly what we're being told. Growth of the body, building up of the church, church growth is actually growing the vine, the edification of the saints, the building up of the body.

And so the leadership is to be leading out by example as a catalyst for vine growing because we know how saints grow. If we're babes in Christ, we long for the milk of the word. And if we are grown up in Christ, we want the steak, we want the meat of the word, but it doesn't matter which way it is.

We're both reading the gospel of John, right? It was a scholar one time said that gospel of John, I think it's true of the whole Bible, but he says the gospel of John is a safe enough for a child to wade and deep enough for an elephant to drown.

And this is why when you read the scriptures over and over again, as you walk with Christ throughout your life, you come back and you're like, I didn't see that before. I didn't notice that before. Wow, this is making so much more sense now.

As we go again and again and again to the word, it's just like growing up, just like growing up where once as a child, we enjoyed the family gatherings for one reason, but now we enjoy them for another reason.

And there's just something, a new perspective as we grow up in Christ. And so we see that everybody is to be tasked to invest in this growing of the vine. And ultimately this is to bring about unity in Christ's gospel.

Unity of the Faith and the Measure of Christ

So verse 13 begins this way. Here's a direction that we're going. It's not simply to get more understanding or more knowledge or more spiritual growth badges. There is a goal here. Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God.

So there is a unity of the faith and related to this as a part of this unity or maybe even explaining what this, the faith is, the knowledge of the son of God. So there is this growth that we're looking at, this equipping and this edifying is not really about, you being the best version of you that you can be.

It's not really about how, this is to solve all of your financial and relational problems, okay? This is about growing up in to the unity of the faith, the unity of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the one who has made us, the one who saves us, the one who reigns over us.

So this, we are reminded here about this expression, unity of the faith back in verse five of Ephesians four. We are one of the ones, the seven fold oneness. One of those ones is one faith. We talk about the objective beliefs that we have, that we all agree on and growing up in to that.

So there is an objective knowledge, there is an objective set of truths about Jesus Christ as the son of God. And where I began in that faith, I am not there anymore, right? When I was first saved as five years old, all I knew is that I needed Jesus.

Just convinced I needed Jesus. And the ability to explain what that meant, I did not have. But when I was 13 years old, I understood more about it. And when I was 20 something years old, I understood more about it, and so on and so forth.

So I was unified with the leaders of the faith, right? People who were very well versed in the faith. I was in a unity with them, even though I didn't know everything they knew, but we were still in unity, you see.

So there is a, but there's a trajectory here. The spirit-empowered, scripture-saturated ministry of equipping the saints and edifying the saints unifies the saints in their knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Notice where the unity is. It is in their knowledge of Jesus Christ. That is who is being taught. That is who is being upheld. That is who is being exalted. That is who is being emphasized. And I point this out because there are so many good things that we can get really excited about.

And the desire would be that as we find that this new interest is somehow married to a sense of growth in our faith, that we will want everybody else to be unified in our excitement about this one thing.

But this ultimately does not unto unity. Our unity is in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That's where the unity is. So there are many good things, but that's not to be our unity. We could get really excited about family-integrated worship services.

We could get really excited about abolitionism and taking out all abortion of every form. Family together, how good? Stopping all abortion, how good? I'm for those things 100%. We could be for all manner of good things.

We could be very, very excited about the doctrines of grace. We could be very, very excited about eschatology. We could be very, very excited about a lot of different things, but that's not our unity, all right?

Now, each one of these things may become a passion and an idea and an opportunity for growth as we work through those things in our own Christian experiences, but what is our unity, right? And if we're gonna spoil something,.

Let's just go ahead and spoil this, right?

The leaders, the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists and the pastors and teachers, they're all about teaching the folks about Christ, right? So it's not unifying around a personality, not unifying around some spiritual guru, not unifying around someone called the leader or something like that.

Our unity is around Christ. And this is realizing his goal in verse 13. Continuing on, notice the trajectory. We all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

So our unity in the faith is not just confessionalism. Hey, we all ascribe to the same confession, therefore we have doctrinal unity. No, that it would be helpful for us to know what we believe, always good to be instructed in the things of the faith, but our unity in the truth, the objective truths of Jesus Christ is unto maturity in who he is.

If we wanna know what it means to be human, we look at Jesus Christ. The most human of all humans is Jesus Christ. He is the last Adam, sinless in his perfection, the son of man. And growth in Jesus Christ, sometimes we think of it in terms of only spiritual or emotional or relational terms.

But it's even more than that. It's deeper than that. It's more thoroughgoing than that. Everything that it means to be human, if we wanna know what that is, what the mold is, what the standard is, we have to look at Jesus Christ.

Because he's not the first Adam, he's the last Adam. He's the ultimate Adam. He's the one who fulfills the meaning of humanity itself. So advancing in united understanding of Christ is unto renewal and growing up into the very standard of humanity.

Anything that is godly is good humanity. Anything that is Christ-like is good humanity. And if those ever get flipped upside down, that's when you end up with Protestant liberalism and social gospel and so on.

Many theological boats have capsized by saying, well, the point is just being a good human and Christ was one of those. You see, they flipped the boat upside down, didn't they? But let's keep the boat upright.

The Bible will help us there. To explore this more, and I encourage you to do this as a matter of homework, but I would encourage you to read the second half of Colossians 2 and the first half of Colossians 3.

And why that's important is when you work through the second half of Colossians 2, it will help you to be diverted from false forms of godliness, false forms of spiritual maturity, kind of the quick and easy fix-it mode of spirituality.

And in the first half of Colossians 3, we'll say, here's what it is. It's Christ, being renewed in Christ. Keep your eyes where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, being renewed into the image of the invisible God.

And this is Christ's goal for us, that as we look at him in this word, we will look like him in this world, by his grace. In verse 14, we need to identify the childish griefs which can sometimes plague us and bring division into the church.

Spiritual Immaturity, False Doctrine, and Truth in Love

Verse 14 says that we should no longer be children. And what does that look like? Well, it looks like this, tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine. So, you know, Paul's naval metaphors, you know.

He knows what it's like to be in a light ship on a heavy sea. Not good. Not anchored. This whole thing, we're just getting tossed way over, back and forth. Every, James says, every new wind of doctrine, right?

This new thing is coming all the time. Oh, this anxiety. Oh, this new teaching. Oh, this problem. And just back and forth all the time about what we believe. And how does this come about? By the trickery of men, the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.

These are the destabilizing approaches that affect those who are not mature. If we are anchored in Christ and our focus is on Christ and our unity is on Jesus Christ, then, and if we're growing up into him and we know that trajectory, then we're not gonna be tossed to and fro by these other things.

We're going to get hit with this wind. We're gonna get hit with that wind. And we're gonna say, hmm, I wonder where that's coming from. I wonder why that wind's blowing that direction. Why so fierce?

Why now?

I wonder what it has to do with Jesus Christ. I wonder if they're about what I'm about in trying to exalt him and glorify him and grow up into him. So we need to identify the childish griefs that we will be unmoved.

And then verse 15, we have truth for Christian growth. Truth for Christian growth. So in contrast to the trickery and the craftiness and the plotting, in contrast to being tossed to and fro in a childish way, verse 15 says, but speaking the truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him who is the head Christ.

We've been talking about the whole time. But this is one of the most overused expressions in Christianity. Speaking the truth in love. Oh, it just rolls off the tongue. We need to be clear on what it means.

Be clear on what it means. Speaking the truth in love has been used and is used to describe everything from bitter complaining to cowardly equivocations. Oh, I'm just speaking the truth in love.

So I can say whatever I want.

I'm speaking the truth in love. That's why I'm not taking a hard stand against sin.

Right?

And there's the people who take one side or the other, and then they just say whatever they wanna say, whatever they feel compelled to say, and then cover it over with this sacrament. Oh, I just spoke the truth in love.

What does it mean? Well, thankfully, the truth has already been defined in the passage. The truth has been defined in light of the person and work of Jesus Christ. And love, 1 John 3, 16. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for the brethren.

So also we have to lay down our lives for one another. A definition of love is a righteous and sacrificial devotion. So we know where truth is, truth is in Jesus. And we know that love is defined by his defining act of laying down his life for us.

With this in mind, we are reminded that speaking the truth in love is not about self-protection. Speaking the truth in love is not about self-protection. It's not about, you're different, you annoy me, I'll say something harsh, so you take two steps back and don't bother me again.

Self-protection. It's not, I want everyone to like me, I'm afraid that you might sneer at me, so I'm gonna say whatever I think you want to hear so that you'll like me. And call that love, and the first thing you call truth.

But neither one was truth in love. So it's not about self-protection. So love is a righteous and sacrificial devotion. I'm gonna be for you in the right way, even if it costs me. And when it comes to truth, I'm gonna be evaluating my statements in the light of Jesus Christ, not in light of my own experiences and so on, or my agendas.

So the image of God, remember this, the image of God was designed to live by the word of God. We're told that God made Adam and Eve in his own image, and what does he do? The very first thing he does when he makes them is speak to them.

Speak to them, it's the very first thing. The image of God is made for the word of God. And if we have no truth, then there's no growth. If we have no truth, then there's no love. If there's no love, there's no hope, and there's no growth.

So we have to have speaking the truth in love. In verse 16, we see that we are yoked together in Christ's good. Yoked together in Christ's good. Now, speaking of Christ who is the head, from whom the whole body, joint and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effect of working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

Now there was some, I was kind of listening in for the discussion in verse 16. Because like, who? Who does what there? It seems like Paul's thoughts are coming back around into a kind of a knot that you don't know which strand is coming from what coil in the middle.

How does that work? Well, certainly, as we survey the verse again and again, we know that Christ supplies, Christ makes effective, Christ causes the growth, and he uses the means of the saints whom he is equipping, whom he is empowering for the growth of one another.

So in this case, we are acknowledging the fact that without Jesus Christ, it's a dead body, no head. But we have the head, therefore we are all actively engaged in the growth of the body. We are reminded of Christ's invitation in Matthew 11, that we should come unto him and find rest in him by being yoked to him, which of course is an instrument, an implement of work.

He says, come find rest with me in my yoke, the implement of work. I thought we were gonna rest. We're going out to the field. Yes, we're going out to the field. And Christ is the one pulling, we're yoked with him, in agreement with him, being led along with him.

The growth is envisioned here as sourced in Christ, proceeding from Christ through every connection in the body. You remember 1 Corinthians 12, Hebrews 12, the encouragements that every part of the body matters.

Remember that? Every part of the body matters, and there's not supposed to be one part of the body getting envious and grumpy about them not being another part, but every part matters to Jesus. Every part was put there on purpose, and that Christ is building his church.

So every part has its role in applying Christ's grace to each other. How does that look? Well, let's take the least, least, and then we'll apply the greatest, the way that Jesus would often teach. If it's true of the least, then it's also true of the greatest case.

In the least case, if someone is looking at this passage, verses 11 through 16, it's okay, Christ is calling for maturity, but I don't feel like I'm a very mature Christian, and I haven't grown very much, and I don't know hardly as much as anybody else around me.

Okay, and I'm not somebody who's qualified or called to these positions of ministry as an evangelist or as an elder or as a teacher. Okay, I don't seem to make friends easily, and I don't have a lot of people around me, and it's hard to talk to other people, and sometimes my schedule makes it hard on me to be an active part of the church.

Okay, all right, are we getting close? Okay, worst case scenario, hardest job ever. How do you help with the growth of the church? What should we be doing here? Well, you know the direction, and you know the means.

So all you have to do, all you have to do is give a card, say a little word, encourage somebody in the scriptures. Pass along somebody a little card with a scripture verse on it, right? When you pray, when you hear somebody is in need, and they share with you something that they, can I pray for you, and you pray, and you use the Bible as you pray to help you pray for that person, right?

Find some way to speak to somebody else, communicate with somebody else in a way that works for you, the word of God drawing their attention to Jesus, and you are helping with the growth of the church in the way that Christ desires and designed you to do, right?

A church does not grow up into Christ because some leader does it all, right? It only happens when every member and every part is involved in encouraging one another in the word of God according to the glory of Jesus Christ, right?

Now, that was an example that my mom did, okay? You know, my mother was a very quiet pastor's wife. She enjoyed the nursery, and she enjoyed the fours and five-year-old Sunday school class, and she enjoyed the choir, but she was awfully quiet, and she rarely had friends.

But she wrote cards, and I still have several of them, and she would write cards, and she would put Bible verses in there, and they weren't long cards. I mean, she didn't spend an hour writing this thing, and then she'd just hand them off, you see?

And those are things that many of us can do, and there might be some other ways as the Lord leads you, as the Spirit leads you, and how to love others and encourage others, and this will help unify us, but a unity unto maturity, okay?

For the balance of our study here in Ephesians 4, we are going to talk about renewal. So, since Christ calls for unity, therefore, he calls for maturity, which means, therefore, he calls for renewal, and we're gonna be talking about that for the second half of Ephesians 4 for the rest of our study, okay?

Well, let's close with a word of prayer this morning. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your blessings. We thank you for your patience, your mercy, your kindness. We thank you that we can always come to you with our concerns, and know that we have a favorable reception to you because of how much you love Jesus, and how you have given us to him, and we pray all these things in his name, amen.