Ephesians, 4:11-16
Bradley W. Maston · May 17, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 20
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926133566810

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I wanted to start off just with a little bit of clarification last week for those who were here, which is all of us who were here. I looked in a guy named Daniel Wallace, who's probably one of the foremost Greek scholars kind of out there today. He's, you know, bigger than A.T. Robertson in sense of the authority of his work.

He tells us that the captivity-captive passage that we talked about last week the Greek gives us no indication, one way or the other, whether it's Christ descending to hell or Christ just coming down to earth. So it becomes a matter of either you're going to let your interpretation of that, since the Greek doesn't tell you whether it's one or the other, you're going to either let your theological system dictate your interpretation. I believe Christ went to hell, therefore that's what this means. Or you're going to let the context determine your interpretation.

And the context is what? Of what we're talking about here. descended to the lower parts of the earth. Yeah, and the larger, even the larger part of the context is about what Christ has done, is doing in the Church, right? Walk in a manner worthy of your calling, and then going all the way through to what we're going to talk about today, which is really exciting, the body working with its, amongst itself, for itself, through, you know, Christ working through the body to build itself up. So, that's where he's going. So to take this little obscure verse in the middle of all the stuff that Christ is talking about in church and heaven, descending into hell, Hades, Gehenna, and trying to draw this. It may be somewhere else, but it sure ain't here.

Well, but you know, there's such a thing as looking at these scriptures from an academic standpoint, and I sometimes think that kind of happens around here a little bit. You know in Psalms there's a little verse there, I think it's in verse 17, I'm not sure. But it says that God has to humble himself to look down upon the earth. Yeah, and like I said, I read...

So this whole earth, I mean I think it's hell, but from his standpoint, it is probably quite a change. You have no idea what it could be like around here. Yeah well and truthfully right in the tribulation period it will be hell on earth. I mean it will be completely unleashed. Yeah. It's just kind of being covered up with the precedence to hell on earth. Yeah I'll give you that for sure.

So and that is exactly what Paul I think was getting at is that Christ condescended to come down to earth. he condescended to die a death on the cross, right? Just like being born in a manger, he didn't have to choose the most shameful earthly birth that he could, or one of the most, but he did. He didn't have to choose the most shameful death. He did, or could, but he did.

So his condescension is definitely to, in order to become the victor, and like we talked about last week, when an ancient king would would march, do his victory march, he would demand gifts from other people. Well, not this king, not Jesus, not our Lord. He gives gifts as part of his victory march out of that. So I didn't want to burn up a whole bunch of excessive time, but there was just a lot of, there was a lot of random Greek-ish. Well, I went through that pretty thoroughly last week's lesson afterwards, you know. Nope. Nope. It certainly isn't.

So if you have any other questions about that though, I'll tell you this is also the interpretation of the elders. I can give you some Greek resources. Randy can give you some Greek resources. And if you really want to talk about it, like I say, Vern when he's back and Mike and Raj also are well, I'm sure well up on this issue.

So really, I mean, the whole descended into hell thing kind of came out, I believe it was around 800 or 900 A.D. It was when that was added. The original Apostles Creed didn't have it. I'm sure you're all familiar with the Apostles Creed. He descended into hell, and on the third day rose again.

Roger's actually going to be teaching on the Eternal State this morning in the main service. There you go. So we may get some further clarification in that context. So listen to the main service. Okay, good, excellent. We used more time than we wanted and more time than I had for this, but I did want to make it clear because that's what we're all about here, right? We don't want to just move past. All right, cool. Well then, who would like to read first verses 11 through 16 of chapter 4 of Ephesians? That wasn't totally backwards. I guess you could say end at 16, start at 11, chapter 4 of Ephesians. That would be totally starting from end to beginning.

And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ, until all attained to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Outstanding. Okay. As you can tell, it's a big chunk. We're going to have to just turn and burn. So yeah, if you need seatbelts, fasten them, but we got to go.

So who is it? Who's the subject of the first sentence? Verse 11. He. Christ. Yeah. So all of a sudden we're going back to our context from last week, which I think is what what needs to dictate our whole interpretation is that here's Christ and this whole passage is talking about Christ's relationship to the church.

So as he's risen, as he's ascended, he's giving these gifts to whom? The church. This is corporate that's being talked about now. So these are the gifts that God gave to the church. I think a lot of times when we start thinking about spiritual gifts, we have a tendency, I have a tendency to get incredibly self-absorbed about it. Oh, this is my gift. This is my gift that God gave for me.

I mean, if you've ever been involved with the charismatic movement at all, it's incredibly or can become incredibly self-absorbed. Oh, my gift is tongues, prophecy, da da da da da. Prophecy folks are a whole interesting breed unto themselves because they begin thinking everything they think is prophecy, which is not a good idea. But anyway, if anybody's ever had a New Testament prophet come up to them and tell them what's going to happen to them, nearly always wrong. But that's okay. Just in my experience. Yeah, I've got an interesting little note right there. The gifts will fade away That's an awesome note. Is that Schofield? Oh, you wrote that. That's Jack. That is phenomenal. That is an incredible summation of the whole thing.

Because we sound like, and usually when charismatics describe cessationist doctrine, or people who think that the gifts will fade away, or have faded away, the charismatic gifts. They kind of describe it in this way of, oh, God took all the fun stuff away. You guys are so boring. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a blessing.

This is a gift. Christ at work in all of us, having been given the tools. This is huge. We don't have to play that game. But in any event, moving forward, how do we define apostle, briefly? What's an apostle? Someone who saw Christ and was commissioned There we go. Plain and simple. So how many apostles are there today? None. Well, none. I'm not walking around on earth.

So here we see an interesting concept. Just like we saw in chapter 3, apostles and prophets are paired together. And before when they were paired together, they were paired together in relation to the building illustration or metaphor that Paul was using. What part of the building metaphor did they take place? Did they take up? They were laid on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. We, the church, were building on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. How many times do you lay a foundation? Hopefully. If you did it right, and if God did it, then it's probably right, so we don't need to go and re-do that, right? Obviously.

So this pairing of Apostles and Prophets is important. Now when we come to prophets, the interesting thing is we oftentimes think of prophets in terms of the guys who tell the future. New Testament prophets probably didn't spend that much time telling the future, just like Old Testament prophets really didn't. That was probably in there and it was definitely in the Old Testament, but a great portion of the Old Testament prophecy is just, we're messing up, he's unhappy, let's get right. Right? That's a good portion of it. It's not all future prophecy. That's certainly contained in that. But probably the biggest office of this New Testament prophet was what?

You got no Bible. Telling truth. They're just God's tool to speak truth. Because they didn't have this. We do have this. Thank God. So as the ink dried on Revelation, they probably went, I'm out! Let's get the letters out. Right? It was done. It was done at that point because it wasn't needed anymore. Because that which is perfect had come.

Which is really exciting. That we have all that here with us. So we got this apostles and then we have evangelists. Someone want to define evangelists? Anyone? There you go. I like that. Spread the good news. Ewangelian, right? The good news. A good newser. Someone who goes around with the good news on their tongue. It's a good thing. So, here's the Lord.

He gives some as apostles, some as prophets. I'll tell you right now, there's a handful of people who are just not quite sure how they want to interpret this. Some of them want this word evangelist here to apply only to the apostolic delegates, like Philip, Timothy like people who are commissioned as an evangelist that had some sort of Stephen some sort of specialty I don't necessarily see the need to do that personally And and the fact is is that evangelism or the gift of evangelists never went away from us, right? He still uses us to share the good news I think the dangerous cop-out that we might fall into is Oh evangelism. Yeah, that's I That's Vern's job. Or that's Randy's job. I personally don't have the gift of evangelism, therefore I don't have to share the gospel. Who wants to stand behind that one? Oh good. I'm so glad.

Now getting back into that idea of apostleship. The idea of an apostle, in the cultural sense, was someone who was sent or delegated to go do a task and given all the authority to make sure that the task was complete. Thus, they're specifically commissioned by Christ, and they had the abilities to do miracles on command. They had the ability to work miracles and do amazing things in the presence of God, or in the presence of men, to authenticate what was going on. Now, we don't have that miraculous power, we're not apostles in that sense, but do you have a commission? Has the Lord put you in a certain place with purpose? Has he given you the authority to do what he wants you to do? Sure.

So, I am not saying we're all Apostles. I am saying that we are all involved in this work of spreading the Good News. And as we're going to see later, I think there's even more of a sense of evangelists, the gift of evangelism building up the body. In one sense, evangelists will bring more people, perhaps, than the average person.

You've met that guy, haven't you, or that woman, with the charisma, who can walk in and go, people just come to Christ. It's like, what happened? I think I love Jesus, kind of like he loves Jesus, but when he walks in the room, people just start confessing. It's awesome. When people have that gift, it's amazing. I've been exposed to a handful of people who do.

But at the same time, a great example is Gene Fuqua, who I don't want to presume anything, but I do believe that he has the gift of evangelism. He has taken at least one point to stand in front of the congregation and share a couple of simple, quick ways to share the faith with you. He thought about them, he heard about them, he found that they worked, whatever it was, He's building up the body, right? He's building us up, and hopefully you were equipped, as I was, to share the gospel a little bit better. How cool is that? Outstanding. So, now we get into the fun.

So we've moved from apostles and prophets who are primarily given as people who are giving the Word of God, right? They've laid the foundation, absolutely. We talked about apostles are the ones who could write scripture, prophets are the ones who could tell truth, speak truth. on behalf of God by divine empowerment. So now we get evangelists, these are the people who are bringing people into the church, and then you got pastors who are also teachers.

Now, I believe this is NIV. NIV wants to say pastors and teachers. It's not the best translation. This is a Granville Sharp. By the way, does anyone have another translation of Those three words, pastors and teachers, or what do we all have? Shale on those guys. I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Does anyone have anything besides pastors and teachers? Does King James say anything else? Pastors and teachers. Pastors and teachers. OK. This is a Granville Sharp construction, which means that because there's No, we won't get inordinately Greek-y. I'm not going to Greek out at all. We're going to restrain.

So, restrain ourselves from Greek and say that probably the better translation is pastors even teachers, or pastors who are also teachers. So in other words, they're talking about one office. He's not talking about two different people, the pastors and the teachers. What he's talking about here is pastors, which means shepherds, Or, if we like, under-shepherds is probably a better way to put it, who are also teachers.

So, I'd like us to evaluate modern Christianity for just a moment. When you think of the top five pastors, or people who stand up at the pulpit at most churches you've been to, what do they usually call that, or want to call that? Preaching. Senior pastor. The senior pastor, he's ministering. I've been a part of a lot of churches of a lot of different sizes in my short time.

And the tendency seems to be you want to pick a leader, a pastor who's defined by charisma. Who's defined by an ability to get people to follow. An ability to give vision. An ability to stir people up. An ability to tell great jokes. pastors who are also comedians.

He said pastors who are also teachers, right? This is the specific qualification that Paul wants to put in to our elders. Also, notice the requirements in Titus and Timothy for elder and for deacon are also that they can teach, right? Teaching is important. I'm not going to say the sum total, because it's not the only thing that he wants elders to be a part of, but we shouldn't be picking, and praise the Lord, we don't hear, but we shouldn't be picking people on the basis of to rule our body, on the basis of how charismatic they are, on the basis of all these other things, unless we know for a fact that they're able to teach. Why is teaching so important? Does God just have this incredible affinity for classrooms that He insists that we all be in one and that you need to be able to have someone who rules you that teaches. Yeah, how do we behold Christ?

We did a study on this not too long ago in the main service. So, if your pastor, or the guy up front, is not a teacher, how good a shot are you getting at that? Yeah, you're getting deprived. from being deprived of one of the major functions and ministries of the church by the fact that you wanted to be purpose-driven instead of Bible-driven. You wanted to be funny instead of da-da-da-da.

So, yeah, I found that to be incredibly convicting. I find that verses 11 through 16 is just described really in a non-sense. purpose in setting up the kingdom of his son here on earth. From 11 through 16 it's all tied together. Absolutely, yeah. It is definitely not, this is not an isolated person. This is all God's doing. Which is Yeah, and with that we should probably move forward. Exactly.

To prepare God's people for works of service. So this word prepare could be translated equally as well equip or make ready, build up. I think build up is NASB maybe. So the purpose of the apostles and prophets, the purpose of evangelists, the purpose of pastors and teachers is to build up or equip the body, I'm sorry, prepare God's people that the body of Christ might be built up.

So, what's the goal of our meeting together? What's the goal of these gifts? To be grounded. Yeah. Once we're grounded then we can be of use to others. As well as more at peace with ourselves. It's what needs to happen, right? It's what we're all about. Or what we need to be all about. Yeah. So, to prepare God's people for works of service.

Now this is Vern. I feel like Vern talked about this a couple weeks ago. I don't actually make the main service, so I just get it via audio. Which means I get it out of order a lot of the time. But it's still cool. But here's the reality is that we've always figured that Christian service is what? Right? Christian services. That's what we pay somebody else to do. Yeah, exactly.

And as Vern brought out in that one teaching, that one Sunday, I don't have the reference for you, I'm sorry. That one time, occasionally, at band camp, like whatever, two weeks ago, there we go, which I'd highly recommend listening to if you weren't there or happened not to be there, points out that the service The actual thing that the Lord's working through isn't what's going on up front. All the wonderful things that go on up front, the hours that go into the teaching, we've got, what, five, six classes running, four, six classes running all the time.

All those hours, that's definitely part of someone's service, but essentially, church The church, the body of Christ, is not a spectator sport, right? It's not about the hero worship of, oh wow, that's the real Christian over there. And we all are participants.

I was working with a fellow at the Korean church that I work with who was convinced, someone had convinced him that God had made him for common use. God had no service for him to provide. He had no purpose. It was an appendix, a vestigial organ. Yeah! This was what he was convinced of. No spiritual gift, no, no, just, you know, send me on my way. I'm just here to live and make money and then go be with him. Wow, that's tragic.

But the reality is, what Paul's painting here, is all these gifts, they're God's gift, God's doing it, right, going back to that, to the church, so that Christ's life can be manifested in all of us, both corporately and individually. Which is phenomenal, to say the very least. For the building up of, now the goal is for the building up of the body of Christ, right? So how do evangelists build up the body of Christ, as we talked about?

Can I go, but can we go back? Yeah, let's go back, sure. You don't have it bolded here in the section on it, but it says, we're prepared for works of service. And I think that's one of the areas where when we hear works, particularly here at OLLI elsewhere, we're very concerned with grace for good reason. We hear works and it's, you know, our heresy meter goes off. Wait a minute, you just said works.

But I think it's a tremendous, It's not works by itself, it's works of service. It's serving one another, it's helping one another, doing various things. There's action tied as a result of the empowering of the Holy Spirit and the equipping of the saints through these people. But it all originates from love. And write these works of service. Yeah, exactly. If we get there. It's one of those amazing realities.

I mean, is this not what Paul was talking about in Ephesians 2.10? Is this not, you know, the works that he's prepared in advance for us to do? He prepared them. He's doing them through us. This is a kind of idea that focuses on him again.

My flesh says dark, but the rest of me goes praise the Lord because I would goof that up I was thinking about it this morning as I drive in because there's just always this Maybe it's not every teacher. Maybe it's just the really simple ones like me, but I'm driving to church and Thinking about like okay. I just hope it goes well. I just hope it doesn't devolve into it I'm just thinking about all the things that could go wrong. I didn't go in I can only goof this up We can only goof this up That's all we can do.

The Word is perfect. The Word is amazing. The Word is incredible. God's done it. The Holy Spirit in us is amazing, incredible. God's done it. All that we can do is let our flesh get in the way. We are so good at it. I'm so good at it. As my 15-minute drive here mostly revolved around thoughts about me, right? And not about, Lord, your Word is so good, I feel like I should just go like this. Go.

Okay, well studied up good, okay, but anyway the reality the reality matter is once again We see the Lord has done it the Lord has done it and the Lord wants to prepare us or Equip us or build us up for these works of service that in turn build up the body of Christ, which is really really really really fun so until we all reach this is This is kind of a fun one, until we all reach, actually let's read the whole verse, until we all reach the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Okay, so, the Greek words here have this sense of journey. This is one of those verses that I think I never see attacked or used in attacks on Christianity. But should be used a lot in attacks on Christianity, right? Well, this Bible says that God's working for us to achieve the unity of faith. Unity. Unity. Faith. Unity. Christians. United.

No. Not at all, right? I mean, so the Bible's wrong, right? The Bible lied. We're not attaining the unity of faith. Like, to me, that would be, though it wouldn't be a correct argument, would be a good argument if you were going to be argumentative and want to fight with Christianity. Because we've talked about how this is all by God's empowerment, and yet we haven't done it. We've got more denominations today, more separations in the Church than we've ever had before. That's kind of complicated. Or at least it's complicated, maybe, for me. I think there's a lot of facets to this, to this issue, and we could talk about it for the rest of the time, and we're not going to.

But the reality is that this, all the language here is talking about journey. And all of the context here is talking about the local church body. Okay? These gifts, the pastor, the elders, it's talking about this journey towards the unity of the faith. We need to church-hop until we find the perfect church that has perfect doctrine, right? Wrong. Because there's only one, right? Wrong.

What this is talking about is the mindset, I believe, what Paul's talking about here with the Holy Spirit is the mindset of the people who are involved with the church. What's our point? What's our purpose here? Has anybody ever been to a celebrating diversity church? We unite on what we feel and whoever decides what the really vital doctrines are.

And then we just give you free reign to disagree about whatever you want. Predestination. Go fight about it. Heck, it's fun. It's way more fun than talking about football for me. But I don't think that's what Paul's after. I don't know if you've ever been baited into or, like me, because I'm an argumentative jerk, like to jump into theological discussions where I prove you wrong and I prove me right and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, right? That's not what this is about, right? We go say, hey, I could be wrong, you could be wrong. We're working towards what?

Unity of the faith. Once again, we've talked about this before. The faith. The faith. definite article, the faith, meaning the specific doctrines, the specific teachings in Christianity. I present to you the faith. Well, the second half of it. This is the New Testament.

Still, this is what we're looking for, is unity on this. So when the elders come together here, and I know because I've seen this, and we've all seen this happen over really important issues, when the teachers get together and there's something that we agree with, we're not coming together And I know that it hasn't happened in the past to say how right I am, how smart I am, how right my favorite commentary is. We're coming together to find the truth so we can teach the truth.

So all this right, I'm right, you're wrong, you're right, I'm wrong stuff, where does that come from? Where does that spring from? The flesh, right? When do I get to be right? It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life. God's right. I just agree with Him. Do I get to take credit for that? Like, a scientist discovers a cure for cancer, and I go, I agree! Praise me! No! Not at all! It's ridiculous, right? This whole, like, I'm right, you're wrong thing needs to go.

It's our flesh, right? It's just our flesh. We need to behold Christ together. We need to be moving towards this amazing end, which is the unity of faith, which means we have to give God the credit that it can happen. Will it happen now? Are we ever going to be a perfect body? I'd put forth no, because we've all got our sin nature, we've all got our flesh. But this is the journey God wants us to be on. The process of sanctification, individually, has its own complexities. This is talking about group sanctification, and that's complex.

It's not, you know, this simple thing where you just go, oh yeah, that works. It's also why the older men need to be teaching the younger men and the younger women. And then those families coming together and it's weaving together. I have not come up with a good visual illustration of it yet because I can't figure out how to visualize such complexity in a simple format. But it's awesome that we're in the process together, jointly, on the journey of sanctification. It's not an instantaneous thing. It's a long, drawn out, and maybe we get impatient with it. Isn't that funny? Anybody ever get trapped in the mindset of like, okay, we'll get all learned up, and then we'll be ready. Once we finish the Ephesians class, then you'll be ready to go out and share the gospel. Once we finish the Ephesians class, then we'll be ready to act like the body of Christ. Once you're out of seminary. Yeah, then you're ready to be a... Exactly. And you're 21, so that really works. So, anyway.

Well, the other thing I think that's, and I want to be careful because this is a logical conclusion, it's a supposition maybe, but the process of sanctification means by default that you're going to start out with immaturity. so that you can be conformed to maturity. It means you're going to start out with more than likely some theological errors, or at least I know for myself, I've got those, so that I can be conformed into it. It means that you have to be humble because you know you're coming in with a deficiency to be built up. Well, and isn't that the amazing that God can use, God uses those things to work on us. I have a theological incorrectness. Randy tells me, I think you have a theological incorrectness. Gently, hopefully. Gently. Still, my flesh flares up and I go, no, I'm right, and then a week later I'm going, wow. Something needs to happen.

So through my theological incorrectness, not only did I get my theology corrected, but also I got a keen insight into the fact that I'm not abiding. I'm not resting. This is an issue of arrogance and pride for me that probably needs to be addressed. And yet, if I was just sitting alone in my room, you know, studying away, studying away, writing away, writing away, outside of fellowship, how would that happen?

So, it's phenomenal. So, in the knowledge of the Son of God, and I'm sorry, like I said, it was already six pages. So we're going to talk about some things that didn't get onto the handout. Second tier matters. You can come up and, it's not that they're second tier, you can read the others.

So the knowledge, here's epigonosis, epi, on top of, gnosis, knowledge. Actual, practical, experiential, experiential, I've been taking English from our ex-president. Some experiential knowledge of the Son of God. Okay, so until we all reach... I'm not making fun of George Bush, please un-offend yourselves. Alright, and the knowledge of... this experiential knowledge of what? Of the Son of God. So once again, we're beholding Jesus. We're looking for this... this real, epi, over, superb, superior, amazing spiritual knowledge of the Son of God, which we're achieving, both corporately and individually.

So once again, the corporate growth. So that we might become what? Mature. Later we get to talk about... Later we may get to talk about immaturity. But, this is God's goal for us. This is what God's about. You know, when we talk about, I've been listening to one of the old series is on the grace series here and It just strikes me again and again that with law It's it's all about the immaturity.

Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do, right? When you go to high school or colleges, just tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do Tell me what to do lower level jobs are lower level jobs because they just do this do this do this do this go home upper level jobs in the universe are the people going Okay, I'm going to figure out what to do.

This is what Christ wants to bring us to, is this fullness of life and humanity. Not to where we're telling God what we're going to do, but at the same time, this maturity where we're not looking for, Lord, I need a law. Red shoes or blue shoes? I need a law. Should I give 10% or 50% or no percent? Come on, right now, give me the rules, right? Give me the outline. No, God wants this maturity, this full Christ life living out within us so that every little aspect and every little situation in our life is living out the love and the life of Christ.

Way bigger than I followed the rules today. I was doing a floor, I do hardwood floors during the week, and I was doing a floor in a Mormon's house and it was the most regulated, rules-based, little universe in the world. You know what? It kind of worked its own way. Everyone put on their smile every morning and everyone, you know, came down for breakfast at the same time. It was just this nice, ordered, little, superficial, infantile universe.

That's not what Christ wants for us. Christ wants maturity, which is so much more, which is so much bigger. Attaining to the whole measure, this word metron means an actual, like a cup for measuring, or a stick for measuring. The whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Let's talk about that for just a little bit. How do you measure the fullness of Christ? What size cup would that be? I would say you can measure the fullness.

It's infinite, right? You don't measure infinity, do you? Do you? No. I'm not a mathematician, but by its very nature it seems tough to count to infinity, right? So, the reality is that here he's using this metrical term to tell us, hey, this is the journey you're on. Oh, by the way, you're going to die, and it's going to keep going. You're going to keep glorifying the Lord.

You're going to keep Ephesians 2.7, which we looked at. It'll be our eternal destiny. Which is why I get skeptical when anyone gets a little bit too haywire out what happens when people leave this earth. Because it seems like God's not really concerned about telling us what kind of harp we'll be playing or what kind of halo we'll be wearing.

Yeah. He's really convinced about what God will be doing. Right? That's what it's really about. Just like Randy pointed out after last week's lesson, he said, you know, it sure seems like when reading, talking about last week's discussion, the apostles and the disciples were way more concerned that Christ was risen than they were concerned with what he did on Saturday. He had a lot to do, and there was a lot going on, and he'd given a lot to do. There was not to do in the sense of your works and your flesh, obviously, but There was a lot of wonderful and amazing things to talk about. looking back at speculating about Saturday, wasn't really on their list of agenda items, oddly enough. So, the whole measure of Christ, yeah, just to kind of re-encapsulate that, it's not just something for pastors and deacons, but it's something everybody should be doing in their day-to-day life, teaching, encouraging, and spurring one another on towards good works and maturity in Christ. I just want to say one thing. I know you're trying to move on. It's okay.

But it's interesting how without the maturity, there's no way that anyone achieves the fullness of Christ. Because there's so many people who, as soon as they become believers, they think they have the fullness of Christ. And it's impossible to really have that intimacy and all the things that Christ has offered us. that relationship, the fullness of it, without that maturity, you can't have it. I don't think. It's even though you have it, you don't realize it.

It's always growing. Yeah, it's a constant. I mean, you have it, it's given to you, like your inheritance. Your position Right. I'm with it. I think that's phenomenal. Now we're going to talk about what maturity and immaturity are. Obviously attaining to the full measure of Christ, which we were talking about, you know, positionally, conditionally, that whole deal. Then he goes on to define immaturity in the next verse, which is where we're going now, which means we're gonna make it.

Okay. Oh, yeah. It's only three verses. Ready, go. You don't have to play the class back in slow motion. Would someone be kind enough to read verse 14 for me? then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves, and moan here and there by every wind of teaching, and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming." Cool. So now, Paul, praise the Lord, uses like five metaphors in this sentence, which is really exciting, so you've got to pay attention or else you're going to get mixed up.

So, first, no longer be infants. So here's immaturity, right? The literal translation would be those who are too young to speak. Nephias. So the Wiest tells us that the grammar of it says that this is the person who's too young to speak. Well, no longer be infants. So, you just met Christ. What are you? You're an infant. You can't speak, right? I'll bet most of us have a story of some time when you were an infant, before you were ready to speak, that some errant doctrine came in and you were like, okay, I don't know any better.

And all of a sudden, you're watching Joel Osteen on TV every week. It's errant. It's wrong. I'm not bashful. I usually want to not step on toes and actually that's not true. I really am a jerk. But don't watch Joel Osteen. Please don't watch Joel Osteen.

He's praying on young believers, right? He's praying on people who don't know better. He's praying and telling them that God wants you to have that Ferrari. God wants you to have that better job. God wants you to have... God's really concerned with, you know, your possessions and your job. Doesn't seem like it. And yet, if you don't know this, where are you going to be? You'll be watching Joel Rothstein. I could deal with a nicer car. God wants me to have it.

Hey, great. So let's look at some of these. Tossed back and forth by the waves, he's actually using a nautical term. So here's this idea of a ship at sea and the waves throwing throwing the boat back and forth. Thank you. Ship. It's a tough word. Back and forth. So the first thing that happens if we're immature is that anything that comes along shakes us.

I'm teaching these Korean kids, and there's some younger kids, and you know younger kids, right, love to have the basic conversations that just go away after college. But does God really exist? It's kind of funny. I haven't had that conversation in I don't know how long. It's just kind of weird that that goes away. But anyway, the point is, their science teacher tells them that God doesn't exist.

And all of a sudden, their whole ship is in terrible straits. Five minutes. OK. Tossed back and forth by the waves. So this is someone being thrown about wild and crazy, blown here and there. This has the idea of being rolled around. In other words, losing your sense of focus. Where's our goal? Where's our sense of focus? Christ, right? Yeah. God and Christ and the Lord. That's where our focus should be.

But boy, those bad teachers can sure get you spun around quick and tell you that it's all about you. It's all about Him. It's all about what you're doing for the poor. It's all about what you're doing for Is it? No. No, no, no. It's all about him. But the bad teaching, the cunning and crafty men in teaching can definitely get you all goofed up.

Every wind of teaching, so the whole point is that we'll be able to know that what God said is true. And know where he's taking us is the right place to be. And be able to have faith in him for that fact. We won't be blown around by New Age spirituality, Hinduism, Buddhism, all these other spiritual growth, prosperity, gospel. I've got this great new take on Christianity, you've got to try it. We won't even need to do it.

Cunning and crackiness here, one of the words used is kubea. And it means trick dice. The trick dice of these deceitful and scheming men. You know? Every time they roll the dice, it comes up six. Every time they roll the dice, it comes up six. Or snake eyes. I've never played craps, so I have no idea what you want to roll.

But that. That's what it comes up as. And these are the people that we're dealing with. Have you ever dealt with or talked to someone where you try to Because, you know, in your growing maturity, you were able to say, that just doesn't sound like it jives with what scripture says here, here, and here. So they roll the dice again. Comes up seven. Whatever it's supposed to come up. Okay. Yeah, so those guys are out there. They can argue their way all the way around the corner to the point where everything says what they want it to say.

Instead, speaking the truth in love. Speaking the truth in love is just Kind of one of those fun, like, how do I get this into English things? Being a translator sounds like actually one of the most hard and complicated jobs in the world, for me to say. There's actually no speaking in this, and probably if you have one of those funky little italicized Bibles where they take everything out or italicize everything that's not in there, speaking should probably be, or should be, in italics. Actually, the word here is truthing. We don't have a verse for truth, do we? If you were a verb for truth, sorry, truth is a noun, right? Tell the truth. No, no, no, no, no, no. If you were...

How about holding? Holding? Talk about that a little more. I like that. Well, it says by speaking the truth is up. Holding the truth is up. And by speaking, you're holding the truth up. I can see the value in that. I think it was Weiss who kind of pointed out most succinctly, it's a holistic, full walk in truth. Everything happening in truth.

What's the difference? Can you lie with your actions? Certainly. Right? Exactly. Or can you, maybe lie is the wrong word, can you deal dishonestly and simply your actions? Oh yeah. God doesn't just want, you know, that to work well. Right? But the life of Christ in us will cause us to speak the truth, to live the truth, or if you like, have us truthing in what Love, right? Truth and love are opposites, though. How does that work? Truth and love are opposites? Yeah, I mean, come on! Maybe they overlap a little bit here and there, but I mean, I've seen people use this as a great license, people like me, to be a jerk.

Right? Hey, your haircut looks horrible. Sorry, I have to speak the truth in love. Right? It was loving to let you know that, no, I mean, there's something way deeper, right, than this. Because, right, this could be our huge cop-out in these classes, to have a huge battle with each other. Wow, we've got to speak the truth. Right? That's not what we need to be about.

We need to be about speaking the truth in love. I'm not, if we were to devolve into a huge argument, hopefully we're arguing because we want to see each other lovingly conform to the image of Christ. Because I love you too much. Because you love me too much to sit here and let me sit here and be an error. Not because you want to be right. Not because I want to be right.

Right? an all-encompassing lifestyle of truth and love. If you're discussing something where there's conflict or there's a disagreement, and your lifestyle is consistent, that's going to be highly validating in contrast to, Randy is a complete flake, he's a jerk, he's carnal all the way. but he is really dogmatic on this eldership thing. I could be right about eldership, but it doesn't matter because the rest of me is so screwed up that I have no authority to speak. It's obvious I don't get it anywhere else, even if I was right about eldership. I'm sure we could all name an instance, but I can think of people. I developed this rules, a hard word to use, but I've developed this rule for myself. I'm just going to say. I've developed this rule for myself.

If I see someone doing something that I think is wrong, or teaching something that is wrong, I have resolved not to talk about it with them, not to confront them with it, unless I can fully commit to walking through it with them. Does that make sense? And lovingly walk through it with them, every step of the way. If I feel like It just makes me mad that they do that.

Then I'm not, I've resolved in my heart not to talk about them until I can. Talk to them? Talk to them in love. Right. Talk about them. Yeah, exactly. In which case we just gossip and that just takes care of everything. No. Okay, we are just about out of time.

Verse 16, actually the end of verse 15 and verse 16 talks about the body illustration, which is really incredible because now we get into the more organic image. Last chapter he talked about the building. as being what the church was being built into. Here he talks about the body as what we're growing into.

Yeah, jointed and held together, you know, all of our supporting ligaments holding each other up, working together. If your arm gets cut off, the rest of you will react, right? Or if you get cut somewhere on your body, if you step on a nail, somehow the rest of your body starts to try to help, right? So anyway, we don't have time to go into all the cool richness and depth, which is really tragic. You've got places to be. So any closing comments? We're already cutting into coffee time. Does anyone have anything else that they want to add to this?

There's obviously an infinite depth of things that could be added. which was phenomenal. So I definitely, even if you felt like now you've attained to the full measure of the understanding of this passage, go listen to it anyway, it's awesome. Because you didn't this morning, I'll just promise. Cool. Any other comments, questions, complaints?

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you for your magnificent word. We are overwhelmed with what you've done for us, in us, through us, with us. Lord, I praise you for this body, this local body. This is your goal. I praise you that you have set us on the journey to coming to the unity of the faith. And Lord, that is the goal. And the journey is your will. So we're not moving towards that end so that we can do the next thing. We're moving towards that end because that's what you want us to do.

Lord, I pray that all of our words, all of our actions, all of our, Lord, everything about us, by the power of your Son, would fulfill the image of maturity that we might be truthing in love in all things. And Lord, it brings into such sharp relief, such sharp clarity that we can't do this. We have no way. Lord, I can't even speak the truth much less in love So we rely on you as a body we rely on you as individuals and we worship you because you've done it We thank you and praise you for all that you've given us in Jesus name. Amen