Him Who is the Head, Eph, 4:14-16

We're in Ephesians 4 14 through 16 this week and This has been part of a series that in prior weeks. We've had this in the handout where Paul has been kind of laying out three themes as he stepped into chapter 4 and We're finishing up the last half of this third theme where specific gifts are given and God's intent for the church as a result of those gifts. This passage has been describing how Christ gave gifted people as gifts to the church. Kind of a different treatment of the spiritual gifts. Not simply the focus on the gifts, but the focus on the giver of gifts to gifted people who are given as gifts to the church.

And now we're looking at what's the outcome from that, We looked at that in the first half, this last time, and now, this Sunday, we're taking a look at, kind of, alright, here's some result. Here's what it looks like. And he's going to do that in a couple of ways. Let's take a look here. One of the things that we're going to note is, as we step back into the prior passage, he gave some as apostles, and there's purpose, isn't there? We see at the beginning of verse 12, 4. Here's the why.

Here's the purpose, the reason he gave these gifted people as gifts to the church, and then until there's a time factor that we pointed out previously. There is a time factor in carrying these things out. The gifted people were not given to the church so that it would go abracadabra, now the church is boom in this form, but there is a direction that the church is headed over time. Now, what we see in the passage here this week as a result of the gifted people, given as gifts to the church, for a particular purpose, carried out over a period of time, as a result, we have this consequence. Interestingly enough, the first aspect of the result is negative. Put it in red here.

The next aspect, verses 15 and 16, are the positive statements. So we're going to look first at the negative statements, obviously, and then move on to the positive statements in verses 15 and 16. All right, let's take a look, and we'll start at it bit by bit. If by chance you're here with us for the first time here, here's the page number on your handout so you can track with us. One of the things to just keep in mind is these are outcomes of the giving of the gifted people as gifts to the Church. These are outcomes of the building up of the body of Christ.

This is what it looks like. He's obviously first going to describe it in verse 14 in negative terms, but he's also going to give us in 15 and 16 the positive terms. What does it not look like? Now, what does it look like? Both of those descriptions. It is all a result of the building up of the body of Christ. Now, as he points out, where is the body of Christ headed? He says, we are no longer to be. So here's his negative description. The King James says, we henceforth no more. It is moving away from this description he's about to give us here. This is what the Church is to be growing away from.

In verse 14, he describes what immaturity looks like. That's how he's going to give us it as a description here. He's going to describe immaturity, and then in verse 15 and 16, then he's going to say, this is what we're growing towards. This is what maturity looks like.

No longer to be children. Nepios is the word that he uses there. The idea is it's an infant, not necessarily a newborn. There's a specific word for that, but an infant. And one of the things we think of just physically. An infant is physically and emotionally vulnerable.

Now, you know, if you've been here any time at all, I just love little kids. I just delight in little kids. But the one thing is, we want to take very good care of them. We have to watch them all the time and we have to keep a focused attention on them. One of the things that drives young mothers to distraction is constantly, you know, looking and looking and looking after this kid.

They love them dearly, and yet there's that vulnerability. Paul uses that description, that vulnerability, as dear as those little kids are, to describe what we are no longer to be, what we are growing away from, if spiritual maturity is taking place. no longer being spiritually vulnerable, no longer being spiritually gullible. One thing that's characteristic of an infant, they have no idea what dangers lurk in the next second and in the next room. Do they? They have no concept of what the consequences of a particular action or inaction might be. No idea.

Paul goes on here to give two very graphic word pictures that we're going to take a look at, and so we have a better sense of what does the spiritual vulnerability look like. The first word picture that he uses is a nautical one, one out of the ship industry, and one that he happens to be very familiar with, and also the Ephesians are very familiar with. I think that's why he chose it. First he gives an illustration that talks about the stability of a ship, and the next part of the illustration is the direction of a ship, the idea of wind. It takes skill and understanding and insight to avoid being totally cast about by the wind and the waves, and that's what he's illustrating here. Now I thought of You know, because we can do on this PowerPoint, we can do these videos where you have you.

And I thought, no, that would have written really bad headlines. You know, Denver Church, entire congregation gets seasick. You know, that just wouldn't fly. So I thought, well, we'll stick with still stuff that shows the rough seas and let that do. OK, so we just kind of show the idea. This is the wild waves that Paul uses as illustration here. to give the idea, no longer tossed about, no longer pushed and shifted in direction by wherever the wind blows. This idea of tossed here and there has the idea of back and forth and around in circles. Back and forth and around in circles. Now, as we look at the picture, certainly we imagine ourselves in a ship, again I decided better part of judgment was let's not make a movie out of it.

But it's interesting, Paul continues to draw upon this idea even to the point of 1 Timothy 1.19 encouraging Timothy to keep faith and good conscience. Some have rejected and suffered spiritual shipwreck in regard to their faith. And here's some Mediterranean shipwrecks to illustrate the point from the era that Paul was in.

So why does Paul use this word picture? Why this particular one? Well, one thing, Paul had just traveled by ship, as he writes this, from Caesarea to Puteoli, which was the port city that you came into to head into Rome. So he'd just been there. And Acts 27, the whole chapter basically describes a shipwreck that Paul was subject to. So Paul had just been through one of these things.

He knew what it was like. The thing that they would typically do is start dumping over cargo. Dump anything extra so you don't have the ship way down in the water. So they'd start dumping over the cargo when things got wild. But even then, in this case, the ship was lost in spite of the best efforts.

Paul would personally be able to testify it. One of the points we could make here, 2 Corinthians 11.25, He says shipwreck three times.

Guess what? That was written before Acts 27. So how many counts? Four that we know of. Paul is almost somewhat of a shipwreck expert by this point. So when he talks about this being cast about, he's not talking hypothetically here. Here's a guy who knows very well what he means. That's not all.

In Ephesus, one of the things that the Ephesians were very proud of is they had an inland port. It was somewhat problematic and it was constantly filling with silt and they had to keep hauling the silt out. But people were able to bring their ships in substantially into an inland harbor. And it was that inland harbor that allowed them to offer a port environment that was superior to what many of the coastal cities had to offer. And so the folks at Ephesus were very proud of this. that they had this inland port and that people could come in away from it.

To come away from the storm and into the inland port was exactly the picture in the Ephesians mind. You see why Paul would use this? He said, ah, I can write about this and certainly I know what it's like to be on that ship that's in danger of being shipwrecked, but the people at Ephesus will know exactly what I'm talking about. because either they've been sailors or they have talked to sailors because those are the ones that are coming in and the sailors are always glad to come away from the tossing seas into the inland port where there is safe harbor, where the waves are calm, where the wind isn't tossing the ship about. So the very character of Ephesus was a perfect illustration for what Paul was using. Here is the theater, for example, at Ephesus we'd made note of before. This is the theater, by the way, that later in Acts, this is where the people shout for two hours, great as Artemis of the Ephesians, this is the one.

You could look out from there, there's the road that goes out to the harbor. This harbor is now filled in with silt. At the time, however, you could stand up in that theater, look out and see the inland harbor. That's what the people at Ephesus would be thinking.

We have a good place, a great place, so that when Paul gave the illustration, it made perfect sense to them. Ah, that's what we're doing. We're growing away from the wild tossing seas into a place where there's safe harbor, where we know where the ship is and it's not being cast about. The illustration would make perfect sense to them and to Paul.

All right. The other thing besides that, we look at, he's got this broken into two parts. One is tossed here and there by the waves. The issue is stability. Now, notice the context, doctrine. He is using a word picture to illustrate doctrine. It isn't, here's the latest doctrine. It isn't, hey, we have this doctrine, but another guy came through and he taught something different. And we got this guy over here and he teaches this other thing. Getting tossed about by different doctrines.

He said, no, we're growing away from that. That's immaturity. The other one is direction. You can imagine, here's the ship, wherever the wind's blowing, that's where we're going. And he's saying, nope, that's not good. That's not a good thing. The direction is sure and fixed. Why?

Because we have singular doctrine, not miscellaneous, not an assortment, not doctrinal potpourri. His illustration here talks not just about stability, but the direction is fixed and constant. It's one of the reasons we brought up last week fixing our eyes upon Jesus, not just the latest. we can fix our eyes based on solid doctrine. And that's his point here to end up his illustration. The word picture here is specifically doctrine, but it's not intended to be just a bunch of cold hard facts.

You can put doctrine in a book or on a CD. I've got a hard drive in this machine and it stores lots of doctrine, but that's not entirely what he's talking about. He is talking about Doctrine that's lived. Doctrine that's lived out. It isn't just a matter of, hey, I believe in the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, and between the three of them we have the Trinity. No. How does that get lived? What does it look like when I live that? So it's not just hypothetical doctrine, not just intellectual, put it in a book. But what does it look like when it's got skin on it? What does it look like when it's alive? And that's one of the reasons why we'll see in the next couple of verses, he uses very much a living, dynamic illustration, not a dead, static one.

Now, one of the things we also pointed out when we were going through Ephesians 3, the first 10 verses, explicitly Paul lays out that it is God who has chosen to reveal things. It's not because we're all wise. It's not because we have anything to be proud of. It's not because I know something you don't know. But it is because the Lord has chosen to reveal. It's God's doing that we have these truths. Spiritual maturity, then, is a learning of, and a recognition of, and a carrying out in our lives, the truths that God has revealed. Not because we're any better. God is the one who gets credit for it all.

So what does that mean? Spiritual immaturity has this characteristic. It's being vulnerable and doctrinally undefined, shifting and uncertain, unstable. Ever feel doctrinally seasick? That's kind of the illustration that Paul's using here, isn't he? Doctrinally seasick, doctrinally disoriented.

That's immaturity. Oh man, what's the truth? Jesus gave gifted people as gifts to the church so that they would grow away from this vulnerability. That's why he says, as a result. That's the outcome. He does not intend or desire that that spiritual vulnerability be a fixed state in the church. He is desiring that people grow away from it. Think about it this way.

We've been blessed with a number of small children in this church in the last year or so, and they're just delightful little kids. but we would be very alarmed if ten years from now they looked the same, wouldn't we? When they're in high school, we certainly hope they're through with the diapers, and we really hope not to pack a bottle in their lunchbox. It's because we are delighted to have them as new members of the family, but as they get older, we really do want them to grow, don't we?

Paul's making the same kind of illustration here. A new believer is delightful to see. We're glad to have them. It's wonderful. But we most certainly want to see them growing away from something, and he's just describing what that is, and towards something, and he's describing what that is too. Now, an insight for parents here. I think perhaps providing some insight for those who are parents of kids in terms of, you know, what does immaturity look like spiritually and what does maturity look like? And it is the place of the Christian parent working with young kids to grow them in that direction.

There's a handout that I'll make available here. It's supposed to be in the cabinet there. I didn't get to it. For parents and first Thessalonians chapter two, giving some illustrations from Paul's writings to the church at Thessalonica about parenting. You can take a look at it. If you've got kids, it might be helpful. If you've already grown your kids, you can do like I did and look at it and say, oh, that's how you're supposed to do it. But anyway, we'll have that available for you. Now, here's the next interesting thing. He shifts his metaphors from the nautical illustration now to another illustration that would relate more to landlubbers.

And by trickery or sleight of hand, the Greek word there is kubeia, literally tricky dice play. In Ephesus and many of the ancient cities, Ephesus is just one of them where it was real popular, gamblers would go about and they would come in and say, hey, want to gamble some? And they'd have their own dice. and their own dice would not be ones that you'd want to play with if you're looking for an even field. He says that spiritual maturity leaves one vulnerable to people who have intentional trickery in mind. Obviously he's talking about doctrinal and moral trickery. People are saying this is really the case when in truth something else is the case.

Here are some Roman dice from the New Testament era. It would be an example of the kind of thing somebody would bring. Kubas, where we get our word cube, is the Greek word for dice. So, now what's interesting, you can't see it here. See that one there? See the six on the top? It's got another six on the bottom. That was one of the little tricks that they would have, and here's a trick set of dice from exactly the New Testament era during the exact same time. It was the example of the kind of thing that Paul was talking about, that there are those who would intentionally and deviously seek to trick people spiritually.

Seek to bring them along a path when in fact it's going to be a nasty surprise at the end. Hey, I've been ripped off! Now, he also says, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. What's really interesting about this, the Greek is almost hard to translate because he's got several words for scheming and craftiness all built into this very compact little set of words here. But one of the words that comes out is methodeia, where we get our word method. Methodically, a system of deception. That's what he's talking about.

There are not only those who come along and just sort of randomly, like waves and winds, strike people and bring on false doctrines and false teachings. But there are those who systematically desire to do so, who have a scheme for bringing those along for some whatever personal advantage.

I've run across them, perhaps you've run across them. I've told the folks here before, you know, I went to high school with a bunch of people that died with Jim Jones in Guyana. Two of the guys that I went to high school with were also buddies of Charles Manson. Took drugs with him.

Nasty stuff. These guys are spiritual tricksters. These people were substantially misled to the point where it cost them their lives or their brains. So here's this doctrinal naivete. That's what Paul is saying we want to grow people away from. that immaturity.

Hebrews 5.12, working into the beginning of the sixth chapter, uses a lot of these same words and it carries it on.

Milk is appropriate for the infant. Solid food is for the mature. Finally, with the challenge in 6.1, let's press on towards maturity. It is great to see little babies. but we want them not to stay that way as much as we love them at each age they're at. We want them to grow. Spiritually, the same is true. We want people to grow. It is God's intent and design that is why he gave the gifted people as gifts to the church. It's the result of the outcome. It's a growing from and a growing towards. Let's take a look here This is the growing towards in verse 15.

But speaking the truth in love, literally here, this is truthing in love. Isn't that interesting? The word speaking isn't in the Greek. It's truthing in love. Truth in action, all entirely within the context of love. That's what he's saying. truth in action, all entirely in the context of love.

One of the things that's interesting, in our culture, and even among some Christian groups, there's a tendency for us to put truth and love at some kind of odds, opposites, as if we kind of have to choose between the two. That's frequently the way things are presented. That's not the way scripture presents it. Here are, and you have it on page three of your handout as well, several New Testament references where love and truth are joined together, inseparably.

The love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 6, love rejoices with the truth. See any separation between love and truth there? No. We see it in this passage here, speaking the truth in love, or literally, truthing in love. We saw when we were studying in Philippians a couple years back now, In this I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and discernment." Not love and truth, and pick one, but both.

As he goes on here in this passage, I want to do a little shifting here, a little different from the usual. I have the verses up above and then down below I have some comments. We're going to do a little shifting here, so you've got to step with me here. I'm going to put the words off to the side and the comments off to the right, so I hope you can handle that.

He carries on this illustration that is unique to Ephesians and Colossians in terms of thoroughly stating the truth, and that is Christ is the head, the church is the body. He carries that out in these verses. It is, as we pointed out earlier, a key teaching in both Ephesians and Colossians, one of the reasons why we study the books in parallel.

The idea here is, as you look at these, you see growth being underscored, right? That's certainly what we would hope a growing young child to do, to go from infancy growing up into adulthood. That is also the picture that he uses here. He keeps coming back to the growth illustration. The body is to be growing. The body is dynamic. The body is vital and living. the body is to be characterized by spiritual growth. That's God's intent.

There's another thing that comes out of here, and notice that he puts a focus on both the entire body and each individual part. Again, here's an area where Christians can get focused on one side or the other, and he says both. Every single believer intended to grow, no exceptions. every single one. If you're a believer here this morning, it is God's intent. It is God's design for you to grow, personally. It is also God's design that we, together, as a body, grow.

Both. God has that in mind from the outset. Growing all of us, growing each of us. That's exactly what he's thinking. The other thing that comes out of this, you see a reference here to intimacy and close connection. We aren't just sort of randomly and casually connected as believers. God intends that there be closeness and intimacy and function that grows out of that intimacy. Now I don't know about you, but I would find it very disconcerting if my body parts were only roughly associated with each other.

We call that an emergency. If I somehow get brought into the emergency ward because I can't get my body parts to cooperate and maybe Nancy helps me. She takes me in the emergency ward and she says, Doc, you got to help this guy. He's got an arm and it's laying here and the other arm is laying over here. There's a leg here and there's a head over there and they just don't seem to get together. That would be an emergency, wouldn't it? It would be a problem. He makes the same kind of assumption here as he describes the body of Christ. He said these parts are designed to be together.

That they're not together is not the norm. That there isn't an integrated, intimate connection in working with one another, that's not the norm. There is intended by God from the outset, and as a result, of the building up of the body of Christ, an interconnection and an intimacy that God has in mind from the beginning.

That's exactly what he has in mind, and that is the direction towards which we are growing. That's what he's thinking. Now, this next point, King James actually brings this phrase, according to the proper working of each individual part, a little more clearly. And the reason I think that they do that is the King James translators wanted to translate a little more consistently. And here's how it's valuable.

Paul has been saying repeatedly in the book of Ephesians, and he continues the idea here, this concept. We saw in Ephesians 1, 18 and 19, Paul talks about, I pray that you might see, okay, What is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe? That's the Greek word eis, which means into. God's power toward us isn't just some sort of random, here's some power dust. Let's throw some power in your general direction. The power is directed and intentional. The primary meaning of that word there is there is a power that is focused particularly upon us. That's what he has in mind. As we get into chapter 3, what has he told them there?

In verse 7, of which I was made a minister, Paul writes, according to the gift of God's grace which was given to me according to the working of His power. How am I being an apostle? By the working of God's power in me. Same message, isn't it? If we look on Ephesians 3, 20 and 21, There's a same kind of phrase jumping out at us, according to the power that works within me.

He's continued to drive this message home, and what he's doing here in chapter 4 is he's saying that same truth carries over to the entire body of Christ. The power of God, the kind of power that raised Christ from the dead, that kind of power and energizing in the entire body of Christ, individually, each one, in all of us together. That's his intent. That's his design. That's where we're headed. That's the direction we're growing.

His power, not my best efforts. God is not asking for us to say, Oh Lord, I give it my best. I give it the best I possibly can. The Lord isn't asking that. He says, that's not what I had in mind at all. He says, my power in each of you individually and together, nothing less, nothing more, nothing different. That's what I had in mind.

That's where we're growing, that's where we're going. According to the proper working of each individual part, the proper working is his working. The other thing that we see, we're to grow up. The growth of the body, this growing phenomenon here, is a parallel to physical maturity, isn't it? Now, we want to take a look at what does spiritual growth look like. To summarize here, it grows from immaturity towards maturity. Immaturity is described as having doctrinal instability and lack of direction. We don't have a doctrine of the week. This is the popular doctrine around this time of year. It is instead doctrinal stability, doctrinal direction.

We can fix our eyes upon Jesus. We can depend upon the Lord's power, and it doesn't matter what the calendar says. It doesn't matter what's the best and favorite book at the Christian bookstore. It depends instead upon God and His Word and what He's doing and what He intended for eternity past. No longer are we vulnerable to the spiritual trickery. We're growing away from that.

Maturity then looks like this. It is believers equipped for service. Believers equipped for service. It's the unity of the faith, not a whole bunch of faiths, or just people of faith. It's the knowledge of the Son of God, not just knowledge about Him. You can find that in a book, or you can find that in some university. Personal, intensive, growing knowledge of the Son of God. It is growing in Christ, as has been defined here, and as Paul puts it, fitted and held together. That's what maturity looks like. Now, let's look at some stages of spiritual maturity.

1 Peter 2.2 spells out one, a newborn babe. There he says, desire the spiritual milk. Nepios, an infant. This is going just beyond that newborn stage. And Paul makes reference to this several times.

Of course, this Ephesians 4.14 is one of those places. a paedion, a youth of educable age. This is growing beyond the nebios. No longer children growing out of the stage of being completely spiritually and emotionally vulnerable. Not being subject to having somebody rip you off, spiritually. Not being sold a false bill of goods. teleos, mature, okay?

This is the direction that we're headed, as he spells out. Several different places there in the New Testament, the passage we've been looking at being one of those. Now, how does this look? This is the way your handout shows. I haven't got all the pictures there, so you can look at it more objectively. Now, let's also put this on a chart so you can get the idea. Here's how it looks linearly from the newborn to the infant to the youth to the mature, and these are the scripture passages that spell it out.

It is not just Paul's unique statement in this Ephesians 4.14 and 4.13 passage that we see here. This is a teaching, not only of Paul, but of the entire New Testament, that believers, individually and corporately, are growing, and what that looks like is spelled out in each case. And that's a good thing, isn't it? We know what spiritual growth looks like. We know what it doesn't look like. We've had it defined both ways for us.

We see repeated reference, not in this passage in Ephesians, but the others, to the infant and the newborn needing milk. We see reference to the youth and the mature having solid food, a reference to meat. As we look at this, this is marvelous, wonderful stuff, because we know, ah, this is why we're getting together on Sunday morning and at all other times. This is what we're doing. It isn't because we like the program, or the moose jokes aren't too bad. We get together because we are building up the body of Christ, and we know what that looks like. We know what we're growing from and we know where we're growing to. That's where we're growing and that's where we're going.

That's a good thing. We know where we're headed. We know what God has in mind. Have you ever had people just driving themselves crazy trying to figure out what does God want? Guess what, folks? We just saw it. We know exactly what God wants. For each of us. For all of us. That's a great thing, isn't it? Let's pray.

Lord, how marvelous it is to look and see that you not only saved us, and that is a wonderful and miraculous thing, but what you are growing us towards, personally, individually, together as a body, what you are growing us towards is incredible and wonderful. And it has not just a purpose here on planet Earth, but for eternity. And how amazing, how beyond this world's comprehension that we could, each one of us, everyone, be seated in the heavenlies and walk side by side here on this planet as we look for your coming. Thank you for all these wonderful blessings and gifts. In Jesus' name, amen.