1. "Perpetual spiritual adolescence is no more an option for us spiritually than it is physically or emotionally or socially. If we don't mature spiritually, it's not just a matter of a potential good ignored or a check uncashed and opportunity missed. No, if we don't mature spiritually, we are in trouble."

2. "Only to the most casual observer does this world appear spiritually calm and neutral. Spiritual immaturity leaves you subject to dangerous forces that are hostile to you and to your well-being."

3. "Church membership may have its dangers, true. Isolation is worse. Don't for a moment think that trying to do Christianity on your own alone is the way out of your problems. Too often, friends, that is out of the frying pan into the fire."

4. "It's sometimes said that doctrine divides and Jesus unites. Well, friend, according to the Bible, true doctrine is actually part of what unites us."

5. "He tells you to follow Him in league with specific other sinful people by which your joining, by the way, will not change the fact that it's correctly described as a group of sinful people. That's all there are. That's all that's on offer in this world."

6. "The heaven that the Bible presents is a world of love. And the church is like a photograph slowly developing into that wonderful picture."

7. "You can be loving after a fashion. You can be kind and considerate, but not teach or live out the truth, and that will never build up the body of Christ. On the other hand, you can speak the truth and do what's right in one sense, but do it in an unloving way, and that will just fracture the body and bring divisions."

8. "Do you understand yourself to be a co-provider of the ministry there? Or do you just come along and eat a little bit when it's convenient?"

9. "Your gifts, friend, were given to you for the body. And you don't have to be formally recognized to use them, but simply consistently serve."

10. "The local church is Christ's idea to help you grow up spiritually. The local church is Jesus Christ's idea. To help you grow up spiritually."

Observation Questions

1. According to Ephesians 4:11, what specific gifts did Christ give to the church, and how does verse 12 describe the purpose of these gifts?

2. In Ephesians 4:13, what three things does Paul say the church is to attain "until" they reach them, and what phrase does he use to describe the ultimate goal of this growth?

3. What negative imagery does Paul use in Ephesians 4:14 to describe spiritually immature Christians, and what forces does he say threaten them?

4. According to Ephesians 4:15, what two things are Christians called to do as an alternative to being tossed about by false teaching, and into whom are they to grow?

5. In Ephesians 4:16, how does Paul describe the way the body of Christ functions, and what two results does he say occur "when each part is working properly"?

6. Looking at the flow from verses 11-16, what role does Paul assign to "the saints" in the work of ministry, and how does this relate to the gifts Christ gave in verse 11?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul use the image of children negatively in verse 14, and what does this reveal about the spiritual dangers facing Christians who fail to mature?

2. How does the connection between "unity of the faith" and "knowledge of the Son of God" in verse 13 help us understand what true Christian maturity looks like, and why are both elements necessary?

3. What is the relationship between the teaching gifts Christ gives (verse 11) and the responsibility of all saints to do "the work of ministry" (verse 12)? How does this shape our understanding of how spiritual growth happens in the church?

4. In verse 15, Paul commands believers to speak "the truth in love." Based on the context of verses 14-16, why are both truth and love essential, and what happens when one is emphasized without the other?

5. How does Paul's image of the body in verse 16—with Christ as the head and every joint and part working together—demonstrate that spiritual maturity is inherently corporate rather than merely individual?

Application Questions

1. The sermon asked, "What teaching are you consuming?" Take an honest inventory of the voices influencing you through media, podcasts, or social platforms. How do these align with or contradict God's Word, and what specific change might you need to make this week?

2. Paul describes mature Christians as those who speak "the truth in love." Think of a relationship where you tend toward one extreme—either avoiding hard truths to keep peace, or speaking truth harshly. What would it look like to bring both truth and love together in that specific relationship?

3. The sermon emphasized that every church member is called to be a "co-provider" of ministry, not just a consumer. In what concrete way are you currently using your gifts to build up other believers in your church, and what is one additional step you could take to serve others spiritually?

4. Verse 14 warns against being "carried about by every wind of doctrine." Is there a popular idea or cultural narrative you have absorbed that stands in tension with Scripture? How can you become more rooted in biblical truth to resist such influences?

5. The sermon challenged isolated Christianity, stating that "church membership may have its dangers, but isolation is worse." If you are not currently committed to a local church, what is holding you back, and what step will you take this week toward deeper commitment? If you are committed, how can you help someone else move from the fringes toward fuller participation in the body?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Romans 12:3-8 — This passage expands on the theme of diverse gifts within one body, showing how each member should use their gifts humbly for the common good of the church.

2. 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 — Paul's extended metaphor of the body of Christ illustrates the interdependence of all members and reinforces why no Christian can say they have no need of the church.

3. Hebrews 5:11-14 — This passage addresses spiritual immaturity directly, contrasting those who remain on "milk" with those who mature to handle "solid food," echoing Paul's concern in Ephesians 4:14.

4. Colossians 1:28-2:5 — Paul describes his ministry goal of presenting everyone "mature in Christ," showing the labor involved in teaching and the importance of being rooted in sound doctrine.

5. 1 Peter 4:7-11 — Peter calls believers to use their gifts to serve one another as stewards of God's grace, with the goal that God be glorified—a parallel vision to Paul's picture of the body building itself up in love.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Question of Spiritual Growth

II. The Problem: Spiritual Immaturity and Vulnerability (Ephesians 4:14)

III. The Promise: Unity and Maturity in Christ (Ephesians 4:12-13, 15-16)

IV. The Provision: Christ's Gifts to the Church (Ephesians 4:11, 15)

V. Call to Commitment and Action

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Detailed Sermon Outline

How can you grow?

Now when you're six or sixteen, age simply takes care of it. Actually it does that at sixty too.

But how can you grow in other ways? How can you grow professionally?

By job training, mentors, experience.

How can you grow educationally? By reading, applying yourself, coming to school, taking courses. How can you grow athletically? By diet, by exercise, by enough sleep, by coaching and practice? How can you grow financially?

By reading and watching, learning from others?

How can you grow in your marriage and family life? By praying, by good examples, taking time to listen, getting good couples who've modeled marriage and family well?

There are so many ways to grow, aren't there?

How about spiritually?

How can I grow spiritually? How can we grow spiritually? This has been one of Paul's main concerns as he writes us a letter to the Ephesians that we've been studying this year. We thought a couple of weeks ago about Paul urging the Christians in Ephesus to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Paul is about to turn in the passage we come to next week to exhort the Ephesians to change, to put off their old self and put on their new self.

How can you and I be in the position to do that? And all the other things that Paul addresses in the second half of this letter about our love life, about our family, our work, everything else. There's only one way.

We must grow up spiritually. We must grow up spiritually. Perpetual spiritual adolescence is no more an option for us spiritually than it is physically or emotionally or socially. If we don't mature spiritually, it's not just a matter of a potential good ignored or a check uncashed and opportunity missed. Oh, it would have been better if I could have done that.

No, if we don't mature spiritually, we are in trouble. Only to the most casual observer does this world appear spiritually calm and neutral.

Spiritual immaturity leaves you subject to dangerous forces that are hostile to you and to your well-being.

What does real spiritual maturity look like? What are we aiming at? Well, that's another part of this to consider, isn't it? I mean, there's a big difference between looking for your most basic answers inside yourself and looking for them outside yourself.

There is a difference between assuming that you start out right or you start out wrong. Is there a God outside of you?

Has this God spoken?

If so, what has he said?

All of this is important for figuring out your goals, spiritually speaking, what you want to look like and be like spiritually. And then that takes us into the how question that I begin with. Given that you want to grow up spiritually, how can you do that? Is it a matter of getting a private trainer, a coach, a guru? Do you need to read this?

Do you need to give to that? How does spiritual growth happen?

Well Paul was concerned to answer these questions for the Ephesians. They lived in a world that swirled with wrong answers. Remember their city, we said, was the home of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the giant temple of Diana, much larger than the temple of known still today as the Parthenon in Athens. It was one of the wonders of the world people would come to. Paul wanted to change these Ephesian Christians.

He wanted them to, as he says a little bit later in Ephesians, put away falsehood, leave off crude joking and replace it with giving thanks. He wanted them to be able to recognize the bluster of empty words and not be affected by them. So many good things ahead of them if They could only grow up.

That's what Paul is talking about in the passage we come to this morning, Ephesians chapter 4, verses 11 to 16. You'll find it on pages 977 and 978 of the Bible's provided. If you're not used to listening to a sermon that's basically just a long talk on the Bible, leave your Bible open. It will make me less boring. Just open it up, look at the words, follow along with me as I read them, and then I will be talking to you for the rest of the time about what those words mean and what they might mean for you and for us.

Ephesians 4:11-16.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up.

In love? How can you grow spiritually?

In order to answer that, Paul wants us to understand the problem, the promise, and the provision. That's my outline. The problem, the promise, and the provision. Stay tuned and see if this helps. First, let's look at number one, the problem.

You see it there in verse 14.

So that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning and by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Now it may throw you off to have Paul using the image of children as a negative image. We today tend to think of children in a very sentimental way. We tend to think of children as an image of innocence. Well, in the Bible it is true that sometimes children are presented as examples of what is good. So Jesus in Matthew 18 brings a child to stand among them and presents him as an example of a trusting acceptance of truth.

Or Peter, when he writes about the Christian's longing for the Word, he writes about it being like the longing of an infant for its mother's milk. So there are some ways in which the Bible presents children, infants, as examples of the good. There are other times, though, in the Bible where children are presented as examples of that which is bad. In the Proverbs, an uncorrected child is a child which will be spoiled. Or in Hebrews 5, children are presented as an example of being...

Christians are presented as being immature, in that sense, they're being an example of what is bad, wrong immaturity. Well, here in Ephesians 4, it's this latter way in which children are being mentioned as an example of something that's bad. In this case, their changeability, their instability, their vacillation. And why is that so bad? Well, friends, the more immaturity, the more vulnerability.

There is to harmful forces and destructive teaching. Friends and family along the Gulf Coast right now are facing the forces of hurricane winds. Those of you who've been through anything like that know that the danger is not just the wind itself, as dangerous as that is, but it's the unsecured objects which the wind can pick up and hurl at structures and animals and people.

That's the kind of image Paul is using here, tossed to and fro by the waves, carried about by every wind. Well friends, immature Christians can be like those unsecured things, tossed to and fro. And notice what those winds are. They're not physical gusts, but they are gales of teaching and doctrine of schemes that catch us up. They're not of God, they're of human cunning, Paul says here.

They're not honest, they involve craftiness and deceit.

And yet even as ominous as this sounds and it is, as seriously as Paul is warning them, don't neglect to notice how Paul expresses it here in verse 14, so that we may no longer be children. Here is the great apostle himself in chains in Rome, a prisoner for the gospel, and yet he doesn't excuse himself from having remaining insecurities and immaturities. He uses himself as an example, a fellow imperfect Christian, still needing to grow into maturity along with them. Brothers and sisters, our world today, as I mentioned, is full of gale-force winds, full of influencers. That's the new word that replaces celebrities or stars.

People use their prominence in this arena or that to give them an audience, to sell their wares to, or to promote their products, or lead them to their ideas. Attention, brand, eyeballs, platform, these are the words today and the winds and they especially lead and influence those who are less mature. I wonder who's influencing you today. Who are the influencers whose ads you'll see, whose videos you'll watch, whose messages you'll listen to, perhaps even promote to your friends? Are they using their influence, as Paul was here, for Christ?

Or are they being used for competing interests? Maybe even contradictory loves or false ideas. Don't let the language of children here fool you. I like how Alex Hammond put it to me yesterday when we were talking about this. He said, Parents, your kids aren't the only ones that should be growing.

What teaching are you consuming? What do you spend your time watching or listening to? Have you noticed your own understanding and outlook beginning to sound more and more like what you're listening to? Is there any tension between that and God's Word?

My non-Christian friend, we're glad to have you here. Thank you for coming. A question I have for you: Do you understand yourself to be basically good, the kind of person who, honestly, you don't want to say it out loud, especially not at church, that God would be kind of lucky to have on his team? You know, you're not the best person in the world, but you've seen other people at church and you're thinking, well, if he got me, he'd be doing pretty good.

I understand how you could think that in one sense, maybe. But I think if you read the teachings of Jesus, if you explore that a little bit, you'll find out that Jesus said that what is evil and bad doesn't come fundamentally from outside of us, but rather it comes from inside of us. And there are fewer and fewer teachers in the schools you've grown up in that will tell you that.

The world around us has been absolutely brainwashed in a false way to understand themselves.

Friends, the Bible is one of the few places left that will speak honestly to you. Consider the truth of God's Word and what it says about each one of us by nature. You and I need to be rooted in the truth of God's Word. Rootlessness, transitoriness marks the lives of many people in America's cities today, including in America's churches. And that's not just physical.

People change, and not always for the good. I wonder what things you might say today that if you had five or ten years ago heard you say that, they'd be shocked. Things they saw you read or watch or approve of or laugh at or pass along to others. How's that changeableness been in your own life? Have you been in a current of increasing spiritual maturity or maybe going the other way?

Mike Cosper's very able recounting of some of the trials and missteps of a well-known preacher and his churches in Seattle fits in well with the popular narrative in our culture right now. Authority is dangerous. Churches are dangerous. Better stay away.

The truth of abuse of authority in many places, including churches, is too true. There is no denying that. And the Bible is unsparing in condemning the misuse of authority. Just read the Lord's condemnations in Ezekiel 36 of the shepherds of Israel, Israel's leader, who were using the sheep for their own benefit when the shepherds were there specifically to benefit the sheep. But the Bible is also clear that you are much more vulnerable outside a church than inside of it.

Particularly if we're talking about a normally healthy church. When a predatory animal wants to make a kill, he identifies a weaker, younger member of the herd and tries to separate that weak one from the rest.

Church membership may have its dangers, true. Isolation is worse. Don't for a moment think that trying to do Christianity on your own alone is the way out of your problems. Too often, friends, that is out of the frying pan into the fire. Don't even try it.

If you're a Christian, make it your practice when you move someplace to start going to a church every Sunday. And when you find a church that teaches the Bible and speaks the truth in love, stick with it. Commit to it. If it's Sunday morning, if a new week is beginning, meet with those people in order to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the first morning of the week and start each week of life the Lord gives you. And if you move, then someplace else, join a church there.

Let your church membership and your church attendance always go together. When you don't, then you're looking at encouraging the kind of immaturity that Paul is concerned about here.

Well, this is something the problem as Paul represents here. Now let's go on number two to the promise that we see Paul describe here in our passage. And it's really all through the passage. He presents this beautiful image of something else. Look there in verse 12, that last phrase in verse 12, For the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Or then look down in verse 15, that second phrase. Again, he's presenting the same vision. We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the Head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. So friends, when we mature, we are more united, more stable, aren't we? That's the vision that Paul gives us here.

Really, it's an interesting passage because this is both a command and a promise.

Paul lays out both what they should do and what God is doing. Paul is telling them where to go by describing the destination.

It's like when somebody tells you, you need to go to the grocery store. Well, that doesn't get you to the grocery store. You are not immediately at the grocery store just because somebody told you you should go, but you will have to know that that's where you want to go, where you should go, if you're to take the steps necessary to get there. And because this has to do with God and our faith in Christ, this is even more than that. What Paul is doing here in these descriptions is telling these Christians, he's describing to them something of their eternal destiny.

That until at the beginning of verse 13 suggests that the building up of the body will not cease until it is completed. That until points toward the culmination of our future in our fellowship with God. Ultimately at the return of Christ when we see him.

What is it, 1 John 3:2 says, Behold, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, then we will come to know Him perfectly. Paul is writing to the Ephesian church about Christ's plan to build them up as His own body. Or as he puts it down in verse 16, each part working properly to make the body grow. This image of the church as a body was something new.

Old Testament Israel is not called a body. The individual members of the body there are not called members of the body in this way. We're interrelated by sharing the Spirit of Christ in a new way. Read more about this this afternoon if you want in Romans chapter 12 or 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Paul himself had learned this when the risen Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus and described His persecution of Christians with the question, Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me?

Christ so identified Himself with the Christians in Damascus, He called them me. Maybe you've come here with a fairly churchless idea of Christianity and following Christ. Just want you to know that's a figment of your own imagination. Sponsored, co-sponsored really by Satan and some American evangelicalism. It's just not there in the Bible.

It's not how Jesus thought of following Him. He tells you to follow Him in league with specific other sinful people by which your joining, by the way, will not change the fact that it's correctly described as a group of sinful people. That's all there are. That's all that's on offer in this world. Join up with a specific group of sinful people.

This picture that Paul draws for us here is of the church, the body being built up by those who serve. So church members, having been equipped by those gifted by Christ, they lead out in serving. And all of us need to be willing to let others help us. We all improve with experience and practice. This is very much part of our philosophy of ministry here.

More on that in a minute. Notice again here in verse 13, the we Paul uses, and the unity that Paul predicts and proclaims and prescribes here. This is a unity that Paul can share with them even while he's apart from them, hundreds and miles away in prison. This is a unity he's just exhorted the Christians to work to maintain up in verse 3. This is the unity that Christ accomplished by dying to demolish the dividing wall of hostility, you see in Ephesians 2:14, so the Jewish and the Gentile believers can be together in Christ.

This is that unity worked out and completed. So the present unity that Paul mentioned up in verse 3 helps build the church toward the mature, final, complete unity here in verse 13. And the unity is the hope, the promise, that Paul holds out to us here. And that's why, brothers and sisters, we must be so careful never to re-erect carnal divisions in Christ's church. In these tribalizing days here in America, it takes real wisdom and patience and humility and love to understand what it is to rebuild past divisions wrongly.

And what it is to redress remaining divisions that some people don't see. Before you disagree with your dear brother or sister in Christ on this, listen and pray. Be willing to study and consider how they understand things and what's led them to this conclusion. It could be that you could still have as much to learn as they do.

On the other hand, when was the last time you had a conversation with someone that you knew you disagreed with on some important cultural topics of the day, but who was with you in the Christian faith, maybe even membership in the same local church, and your common trust in Christ was able to bridge that difference between you?

Friends, where we are headed is to this unity of the faith which Paul mentions here. This faith, by the way, isn't so much our subjective believing, it's the objective content of what we believe. For us as a church, it's summarized especially in our church's Statement of Faith. You can find that on our church website. It's sometimes said that doctrine divides and Jesus unites.

Well, friend, according to the Bible, true doctrine is actually part of what unites us.

Now again, if you're here, you're not a Christian, this is what you should most notice about us, what we say we believe. That's going to be consistent with what you hear taught here. It's going to be reflected in the hymns and in the prayers and in the conversations. We have found hope in this broken, sinful world for ourselves in what God has done in Jesus Christ.

We understand that every person, whether we agree with them or not, is made by the one true God in his image to reflect him. We understand that every non-Christian fails at this. And every Christian fails at this. That every Baptist and Methodist fails in this. Along with Anglicans and atheists and Buddhists, everybody on the planet fails at reflecting the image of God.

Other philosophy out there will tell you everybody does it great. I don't think the world gives a lot of evidence to that argument, but that's what they think. We have a kind of dimmer view of reality at first. We think everybody is problematic. That all of us are what the Bible calls sinful.

We all have a jacked up relationship with God. That's just the truth according to the Bible. People don't like to hear it, but honestly, if you don't have anything you're trying to prove to others, it tends to fit with our own experience. Everybody in their conscience kind of knows that something's off, something's not right. Jesus is the one who comes along and tells us about this, and more than that, He's the one who Himself fixes it.

He had nothing wrong in the way He related to God. He related to God with perfect love and trust. And He died on the cross specifically as He had planned, as was the Father's plan. He died as a sacrifice in the place of everybody who would ever repent of their sins, turn from them and trust in him. And God raised him from the dead.

He ascended to heaven, presented his sacrifice to his heavenly Father who accepted it on behalf of all of us that would ever turn and trust in him. I have used so many religious words you may not be used to at all, but that's a quick summary of the message. If you wanna know more about that, and how that could mean new life for you. Talk to me at the door, at the back afterwards, or any of the folks at the doors afterwards. For that matter, any of the members you're around, but you might not know who a member is, so talk to any of us at the doors afterwards.

And we would love to help you understand more of the hope that Stephanie and Fantine and Amber and Alex and James and Vince and Gabriel and I all share. Please reach out and find out what that could mean in your own life. Well, this message is the source of our unity here. Sound doctrine leads to unity. So we understand and believe the same truths about Jesus and salvation.

And yet this growing maturity also has an experience component to it. So when Paul talks about the unity, you see here, the unity of the faith there in verse 13, and he says, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, that knowledge is actually the trusting. It's the feeling, the experience, not merely of knowing, but it includes the trusting that comes from personal familiarity. So this unity which we're maturing toward includes faith and knowledge, trust and experience. Paul sums it up here as mature manhood.

Now that is not asking any of you sisters to lose your femininity. At all. That's not what he means. Paul is simply using the inclusive of the male image for the church as a whole. Kind of like when Paul in Ephesians 5 is going to refer to the church parallel to the wife or to the church as the bride in Revelation.

That doesn't make us males need to lose any of our maleness to be part of the church. It's just a summary image of the church in its relationship with Christ.

So here, Paul is picking up on the image of the vision that he's already laid out in chapter 2:15 of one new man, the Jew and the Gentile together. This is a passage about destiny, completion, goal, finishing. Paul is describing, as he says in verse 13, maturity. Look at that last phrase in verse 13: To the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Wow.

That's Christ-likeness. The fullness of Christ would be everything that morally characterized the incarnate Son of God: His wisdom, His faithfulness, His humility, His Love. All that and more joined to His resurrection power. Paul writes to the Philippian Christians about knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection. Well, this is what accomplishes the transformation in us.

It takes nothing less than that. This maturity is our goal. Notice the connection between unity and maturity. The more mature we're able to be, the more united. And the more united, the more our maturity is aided and helped.

And so, as Paul says down in verse 15, we are to grow up again. In this image, Paul presents Christ as the head of the church. He is the one into whom we grow, as Paul puts it here. And you look in verse 16, Paul brings it in a few images, but mainly of the body. He talks about every joint, each part.

This lets us know that the body is built up by more than simply the gifts. That He's mentioned up in verse 11, But by the gifts that God has entrusted to each member of the church, every part, for this growth to happen, every part will need to be working properly, literally according to its measure. So the body grows and is built up as each one does its part. Rather than the deceptively presented false gospels that we read of in verse 14, we Christians are to present the truth in love. So the growth of the body here is kind of like the growth of the building, the image that Paul uses in chapter 2, to point to the united future that God has promised his people.

The activity of this body is described here in verse 16, right there at the end, as building itself up. Edification is the point. What divides the church is from Satan. Edification, the building up of the church, It's what we want. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, Let all things be done for building up.

How do you decide what to do in church? Well, you ask the question, God commanded it to be done. If God has commanded it to be done, sing, pray, read, preach, baptism, the Lord's supper, you do it. If He hasn't commanded it to be done, you don't do it. You ask the question that Paul asked to the Corinthians, what will build the church up?

You see, it's not what do the people want.

We're not fundamentally training you to be a consumer. It's not what do they like. All of this is to be done according to what God has shown us in His Word, according to what will build the church up. And all of this is to be done in love. This is part of the description of the life that Christians are to live.

We thought of it a couple of weeks ago up in 4:1, worthy of our calling. This is part of what it looks like to live a life worthy of our calling. It's to live this kind of life together. Do notice that this maturity is inherently corporate. This maturity is inherently corporate.

It's not something you can do by yourself. That's one of the dangers of church online. You get the appearance of being together. The only thing is, You're not together. And see, when you appear to be together online, you can like frame yourself.

You know, you got the suit on here and the shorts on here. Well, you can do that with more than your clothes. You can do that morally. You can go to that one nice background in your house when the rest of things are wreck. But see, when you come together, you can still hide things.

It's just harder. And that's good. The Lord means us to get to know each other a little bit more than we want people to really know us. Yes, that is part of the genius of Jesus' plan. That's why you want to join a local church.

That's why if you join a good one, I promise it will not always be comfortable, but it will be healthy. Love involves us in God and with people and dwelt by His Spirit, indeed with all those who are made in His image. The love we know together from God and Christ becomes typical and normal among us. And that makes us unusual in this fallen world, which is too often filled with the human cunning of pride and the craftiness of selfishness and deceitful schemes for people to benefit themselves and their agendas at your expense. The heaven that the Bible presents is a world of love.

And the church is like a photograph slowly developing into that wonderful picture. This is Christ's promise to us. This is what we're aiming at. So how will all this come to pass? How are we to mature, to grow up spiritually in this life?

And this is where we come to our third point, number three, the provision. Look up at verse 11, how the passage starts. And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And then you see that little phrase at the beginning of verse 15, Rather, speaking the truth in love.

Paul is pointing out the gifts of Christ to the church, and they are gifts which make up for what we've lacked. And this fits perfectly with the problem that we see in verse 14 that so often afflicts Christians.

Are we immature, unstable, indiscriminate, too easily tricked, deceived by false teaching? How can we combat this? We need God's Word and those specially gifted and given us to teach it to us. And that is exactly what Christ gives to His church. These gifts are given for the building up of the body.

Look there at verse 11. He... He gave, we read. Who's the he? Well, it's the Christ who-- the one who ascended in verse 10-- gave gifts in verses 7 and 8.

And Paul is emphasizing this point that Christ is the giver. Friends, the fact that Christ gave such gifts is yet more evidence of the gracious nature of the Christian gospel that we see throughout Ephesians. How did this conquering King celebrate His victory? By giving gifts. He gives out gifts to His church.

This is more evidence of His grace to us. He gives just the gifts that the church needs in order to obey all of His commands. As He always has, God provides for what His people need. What's that puzzling little prayer of Augustine's? O God, give what you command and command what you will.

Give what you command and command what you will. Great prayer from Augustine. John Owen in something of his I was reading earlier this summer said of our passage today that there is no other single passage of Scripture in which the institution, purpose and benefit of the ministry are so clearly declared. And he may be right. It's interesting that the gifts mentioned here in verse 11 are actually people.

These people and their functions are literally gifts to the church. And it's interesting, in our own church's constitution, we recognize this in our language. If you go to the articles in our church constitution on elders and deacons, it states that members so recognized shall be received as gifts of Christ to his church and set apart as either elders or deacons. That's how we understand it here. Christ gifts us as a church to grow us as a church.

You see the list of various ministers here in verse 11. Apostles and prophets were foundational. They were supernaturally called and inspired to found the churches and write the Scriptures. So apostles, we know they're witnesses to the resurrected Christ sent in His name by Him. Prophets, those who speak about God by His special inspiration.

Evangelists, those who share the good news about Christ. And the last two are put together in the original language and maybe suggest not two more but maybe just one more set of gifted people characterized by both words, shepherds, that is pastors, and teachers, which is a central part of the pastor's job. Witness what I'm doing right now. These are the preachers and elders who maintain and advance the local congregation. This is the only place in the New Testament where the word for pastor is used as a noun.

So this is it: shepherd, pastor.

Pastors care for the church, manage it, love it, protecting it as a shepherd does his flock. Whatever else the person does who is called, it is undeniable that teaching Scripture is a crucial ministry in establishing and forming a church. There are some people who look at this list and other lists that Paul gives as such God-given gifts in say, Romans 12 or 1 Corinthians 12.

And they put them all together and they think of them as some comprehensive grid through which they are to see and understand and label all of the ways in which Christ gifts his church and calls us to do things in his church. Oh, I have the gift of mercy. Oh, I have the gift of administration. Oh, I'm an evangelist. I don't think that's what Paul intended with any of those lists and certainly not with this one here in verse 11.

For one thing, almost none of these, with the exception of pastor/teacher, Is it continuing office for the church? Mark, how do you know it's a continuing office for the church? Well, Paul writes qualifications for those who would be recognized in this office in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1. This is not a list of positions we're to see normally filled in our churches. It's a list of gifts.

You'll note specifically around teaching because of the situation that Paul has in mind there in verse 14 that he's addressing. So these are gifts that have to do with the message of the gospel, teaching the truth of God's Word and God's Word coming to people. The other lists of gifts that Paul gives includes a wider variety, but even they, I don't think, are meant to be exhaustive but suggestive. We can be helped by remembering how Peter taught about this in 1 Peter 4:10, As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied graces. Whoever speaks as one who speaks the oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. So how can we misunderstand such a list? Well, friend, if you look at this and you think like, oh, you know, I am not an evangelist, so I am not supposed to evangelize. Well, I don't think that's what Paul is saying.

Paul tells Timothy, who is a pastor in 2 Timothy 4:5, Do the work of an evangelist. Though there are certainly some unique aspects here, you think especially of the Apostles, there's a lot of overlapping in these kinds of words that Paul lists here among Christ's gifts to His church. They're not airtight categories, but they all should remind us of the importance of teaching God's Word. You see the prominence of teaching ministries here.

It's really striking. But then these are the ministries that Paul seems to assume will bring about maturity. If you want to mature, you must be taught God's Word. And that wholeness and unity that's to mark the church, the body of Christ, will come about through the teaching of God's Word. So here in our church, we try to make sure that the teaching of God's Word well is at the core of our life together.

So all of our elders teach God's Word, whether publicly, like I'm doing right now, or privately in a conversation they have in a few minutes with you after church or sometime through the week. In fact, what identifies or marks an elder out is a brother who is understanding the Word and is actively using his understanding of the Word to build up the brothers and sisters in the church. That's how we notice, ah, that guy's an elder. Oh, we need to bring this to the body as a whole. We need to pray that the body is a whole.

We'll consider this and recognize this person as a gift that Christ has given to us to act to build up the body as a whole. That's why what we do in many ways here is to build up preachers. I use the illustration sometimes of green dot and red dot churches. Imagine every church in America represented either by a green dot or a red dot. A green dot are churches which produce more preachers than they can use.

A red dot are net importing churches. When we need preaching, we get it from elsewhere because we don't raise any up ourselves. The more churches that are green dot churches, the better. Christianity, since Jesus gave the Great Commission, has expanded through green dot churches. That's how the gospel grows.

Producing, under God's help, a surplus of preachers. That's just how it grows. You can come up with all kinds of fancy boards and methodologies and schemes to raise money and train, but I'm just telling you on the ground, from Jesus till now, one way it happens and that's the way it happens. Churches produce more preachers than they need. So John Joseph takes a bunch of our favorite members and start Cheverly Baptist Church.

Okay, Mike Law is over in Arlington. Great. You know, Nathan Knight gets some up in Northwest DC. Garrett Kell takes 100 of you every month over to Del Ray. Wonderful.

We love all these friends. And we want to see more of them. Praise the Lord. Pray for Thabiti. Pray for Jeremy McClain.

You know, pray for Mike McKinley, still managing to grab one or two every once in a while from us. You know, it's a wonderful thing to see the gospel expanding in an area. So you wonder, why do we so stress the raising up of elders and preachers here? Because that's how Christianity grows. Friends, that's it.

It's not the only way. Being good parents, telling the gospel to your kids, that's on the very front lines, right there with it. But you will not even have the COVID for those parents to mature themselves if you don't have the good preachers of the Word. The good preachers of the Word are the basic thing that make the whole other spiritual ecosystem work. You've got to have that.

So we as a church are focused like a laser on that. And we would like to see other churches do that as well. Now don't misunderstand this emphasis though. The Pew's job is to support the pulpit. The soundness of the pulpit is essential for the well-being of the pew.

But friends, the pulpit is preparing the pew to live like through the week. Most days of the week, most of your Christian life is not sitting here listening to a sermon. It's how you live the Christian life in your home, at your office, in your neighborhood. That in many ways is the focus of all that we do here. So we don't try to grow by making space for all of our non-Christians that we meet to come here and hear the gospel.

Though non-Christian friends, you're very welcome here. We have so many members, this place gets pretty full itself just when we get together. Ah, but through the week when we're scattered, we see more non-Christian friends and family and co-workers and students than we could ever get a building big enough to fit them in. And that's where the frontline ministry is going on. So in that sense you need to understand what's going on here is not like the main game.

This is more like a coaches meeting where we're trying to understand how it is that we can facilitate the truth of the gospel going out, how it is that we can mature, help each other mature in Christ so that we can be in the situations that God has called us to be in for a short amount of time, a week, or a long time, four years, or a really long time for our lifetimes. And we can be in those situations as God prepares us to be a representative for Him and His Word. So, does Christ give us shepherds and teachers to equip the saints and to do the work of the ministry and to build up the body of Christ? Or does Christ give us shepherds and teachers to equip the saints who then do the work of the ministry and to build up the body of Christ. Let me say that again.

Does Christ give us shepherds and teachers who then do these things, equip the saints, do the work of the ministry, build up the body of Christ? Or does Christ give us shepherds and teachers to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry and build up the body of Christ? Do you understand the question? Is it those gifted individuals in verse 11 that Paul intends here as doing the work of the ministry? Or is it all the saints?

Now that is a good question for you to look at over lunchtime.

There is no doubt that there is a special ministry that's had by ministers of the Word as we've been considering. Many parts of the Scripture are very clear on this. I think in the context here of unity that he's been talking about, even of that phrase in verse 16, each part working Of the exhortations that Paul is setting up to make to all the Ephesian Christians, his point is clear. Look up in verse 7. Paul has just written, Grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gifts.

He's not just writing Ephesians to the elders of the church. Teachers of God's Word equip the saints who then, along with these teachers, do the work of the ministry and build up the body of Christ. So each one of us has a part in this ministry work, in this body building. One of the most important lines in our church's covenant is that those of us who are members here pledge to God and each other that we will work together for the continuance of a faithful, evangelical ministry in this church as we sustain its worship, ordinances, discipline and doctrines. So you understand our philosophy here is that the full-time pastoral staff facilitates and equips you for doing far and away most of the ministry that goes on, both in evangelism and in discipling, in your homes, in your neighborhoods, in your offices.

In that sense, like I say, Sunday morning is much more like a coaches meeting. In another image, we understand that we are not here to win you like you're a consumer. We are fundamentally consumers of God's grace, no doubt. But we are here fundamentally to help you understand if you're a Christian, you are to be a co-provider of the ministry of the church. You realize every time you walk in late, it just screams, Serve me!

Some of you get here early and turn on the AC. Chris, can you take care of that? Some of you turn on the lights and would you get that sermon ready? You don't have anything else to do anyway, you're just a preacher. And can you get the course seminars ready if I have time to come for that?

Friends, I could keep going with the comedy routine, but you get the idea. Our words speak loudly, but our actions speak even louder. Do you understand yourself? Whether at this church, maybe you're from someplace else and you're visiting, the point is not this particular church, the point is a particular gospel-preaching church. Do you understand yourself to be a co-provider of the ministry there?

Or do you just come along and eat a little bit when it's convenient? Alright, you might be in a state in your life where it's okay for you to briefly eat a little bit when it's convenient. Maybe a crisis is going on, maybe you've just landed someplace, but your steady state life of weeks and months and years should not, as a Christian be, basically as a consumer. Your steady state life should be as a co-provider of the ministry of whatever local church you commit yourself to. If all of this is so, how fitting is it to hear Paul's exhortation there at the beginning of verse 15?

Look at that. It's some of the sweetest words in Ephesians. He starts out, Rather, he's setting a course distinct from the unsteady cunning and the deceitfulness of some he's just been describing in verse 14. Rather, speaking the truth in love.

Rather than the falsehoods of verse 14, we are to speak the truth and we're to do it in love.

This is what the ministers of the word mentioned in verse 11 are to do. They're to speak the truth in love. This is what we are all to do. This is what we are to be equipped to do. This is how we're equipped to do the work of the ministry.

To build up the body of Christ, we are to speak the truth, to live it out. It's interesting the word speak there has some connotations wider than just There are some translations that will even translate this as, Do the truth in love, or Practice the truth in love. We are to speak the truth in love. And Paul's stress here on love makes total sense. Verses 15 and 16 really complete the transition section of the letter from chapters 1 to 3 on doctrine to chapters 4 to 6 on life.

It's really a nice summary of Christian ethics: speaking the truth in love. Because you can be loving after a fashion. You can be kind and considerate, but not teach or live out the truth, and that will never build up the body of Christ. On the other hand, you can speak the truth and do what's right in one sense, but do it in an unloving way, and that will just fracture the body and bring divisions.

How do we find the best combination? By studying God's Word, by praying for the Spirit of Christ to fill us and to bring about His character and the fruit of His Spirit more and more in our lives individually and in our life together. If you have as a calibrator on your life and decisions what will edify others, what will build others up, I know I think this is the case. I know if I put it like this, that's not going to work well. Okay, is there a way I can put it that's going to be better?

That's the kind of calculus as Christians that we should be very at home with. So by the power of God, we love, we serve each other, and this growth happens. The body builds itself up by love. So Christ is the source of our life and the goal of our growth. And I remind you again that in all this, notice the focus here is not merely on the need for individuals to become mature, but it's for the church as a whole to become mature.

That's why so many things happen here the way they do. That's why in my sermons I try to always have applications for us as a church. I don't neglect you as an individual. I preach about that as well. But I try to speak about things about Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

I think that's part of what the preacher of God's Word needs to do. That's why on Sunday evenings we don't mainly pray about things that merely involve an individual, though we'll do some of that. But we have an angle when we gather in Sunday evenings to pray to pray about the things that concern us all as a church body. Characteristics that will take care of all of us or bring in all of us or ministries that we're all concerned for. That's how we grow together as a body.

And God uses all the members to enable the church to grow and develop. Your gifts, friend, were given to you for the body. And you don't have to be formally recognized to use them, but simply consistently serve. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. Paul says when each part is working properly.

What's your work? Have you been doing it? I remember when I was a student over in England, there were people who were talking about whether or not I should be an elder in my local church. And I remember saying to a couple of them, I profoundly did not care. I was going to be evangelizing and trying to disciple Christians, and as I had opportunity, I would teach the Word.

And if a church wanted to call me an elder for doing that, it would take some of my Thursday nights in elders meetings, okay, but it would be an honor and a privilege. I'll do it. But calling me an elder would not fundamentally change the way I would relate to the congregation. I'm a Christian who's using what gifts I have to build up other Christians. Friends, that's the way you want to be and the way the Lord has called you to serve.

Every way God gives you an opportunity, you want to try to love and serve others. And can I just say, this is a wonderful congregation to pastor. You all have caught this so well and exemplified it in the culture of discipling where you are concerned not only for your own spiritual growth, but for the spiritual growth of others. I love hearing about Sister so-and-so meeting up with this group of women and talking about this, or these folks meeting up at work, or this guy starting a Bible study, or this person meeting up with this other person who's been in trouble. I love hearing that.

That has nothing to do with our budget, nothing to do with the pastoral staff of the church. That's Christians being Christians, church members being church members. Friend, if you're a member here, I hope there are other members you are specifically trying to do good to spiritually, trying to help spiritually. We experience God's fullness as we use the gifts that He entrusts to us for each other and ultimately for Him. So this is how we can live together as a church, and we should.

This is Christ's provision for us.

W.T. Conner taught theology for many years at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He was born in Cleveland County, Arkansas, and as a teenager his father moved the family to near Abilene, Texas. While he was there in the summer of 1894 when he was 17, W.T. Conner became a Christian.

He remembers it recounting it as follows: I was converted in an old-time hurrah Methodist meeting, and my conviction of sin gradually deepened until it became a very definite and heavy load. I became deeply enough interested to begin to go forward for prayer and thus seek for help. A number of people talked to me at what was then known as the Mourners' Bench, but none of them seemed to give me any very definite help. Finally my load became so heavy not knowing what else to do, I gave up. The expression gave up expresses my experience better than any other that I can think of.

When I gave up, my burden was removed. But I did not have any ecstatic joy or feel like shouting or anything of that kind. I simply felt that my burden was gone and I hardly knew what had happened. Finally it came to me that I was saved by putting my trust in Christ and not by any particular type of feeling that I had.

Friends, our church is to be made up of people who share this in common. We're to be made up of people not that we perfectly tailor and select for our church for participation here on Capitol Hill. Oh yes, this person will help there and that one will be a good acquisition for the ministry and this is just the one we need for the that musical skill or that evangelistic outreach or that deacon position. No, what we need is a group of people who, like W.T. Connor, have given up on their own righteousness and have turned and trusted in Christ.

And with such a group of people exhausted of their own efforts, Christ will build His church here. So what about you? Have you thought of joining the church? Now you realize that we here at CHBC work hard to have members not just in name only, but we have a good number of people whom you might call friends and supporters. And there are some of you who are listening to me right now who attend but who for one reason or another haven't decided to join us, to commit yourself to the work here.

Or if you're visiting, what I'm saying applies to a good church where you live.

Let me invite you to see me or any of the other folks at the doors after church this morning and find out more about a special membership class that we have coming up in a few weekends. So you can at least not commit yourself to join the church, but see what it would mean for you to join this particular local church. Because the local church is Christ's idea to help you grow up spiritually. The local church is Jesus Christ's idea. To help you grow up spiritually.

Friend, this is a generation that calls for Daniels and Esthers. May God give you holy boldness to follow Jesus in the way, to cast in your lot with the despised Savior, and to take your place with those who are seeking to honor Him. What would become of the churches and what would become of the preaching of the gospel and what would become of the ministry of the Word if everyone did as you do? I mean those of you who profess to be Christians and are on the outside.

Supposing everyone followed your course, well, there would be no churches.

Are you willing to be humble and gentle, to be patient and loving? Are you willing to use yourself for the good of other people? If so, then it sounds like you've given up in the best sense and that you're actually following Christ, going the way He went. And so you'll be the best help you can be to us. You'll be a little picture of an encouragement, a pattern of what God wants us to be as a church.

God's great cosmic plan for the church is all tied up in how you and I commit to and in fact do treat each other today. So let's ask God to deliver us from our immaturity and to give us this hope and help us speak the truth in love. Let's pray.

Lord God, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we do ask these things of youf. We ask you that yout would protect us, that yout would deliver us from our immaturity. Lord, we pray too that yout would give us this hope that other things our eyes have been distracted by, Lord, the shifting shadows of the shifting hopes of this transitory world. Lord, we pray that yout would cause us to be even more attracted to this certain hope that yout're calling us to, that yout lay out here.

And God, we pray that by youy Spirit yout would help us to do as yous command us here and speak the truth. In love. Do all of this we pray for your glory in Christ's name. Amen.