The Church Was Made for More | Caleb Speer | Youth for God Weekend | Ephesians 4

Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up the mountain, and when his disciples saw him, he sat down and he opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are the those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall seek God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God, and blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely because of my sake.

Rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?

It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

You are the light of the world.

The city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does someone light a lamp and hide it under a basket, but he puts it on a stand and it gives to light to all who are in the house in the same way.

Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

We're gonna see a lot of those attitudes and principles and the background of Ephesians chapter four.

So if you haven't already, open up your Bibles with me to Ephesians chapter four.

It is strange and yet so normal and good to be back in Lubbock, Texas.

And more than a handful of you, interestingly enough, remembered a sermon I did four years ago.

A whole bunch of you remember the sermon I did four years ago about scripture, meditation, and memorization.

How's that going for you four years later?

I would ask.

Can I come back to make a point for a sermon that was four years ago?

The point obviously in that sermon, just like also in the Sermon of Mount, where Jesus says, right, uh, don't do works in front of others in order to be seen by them, for then you'll have no reward from your father in heaven.

Any spiritual example we set for others, we want, right, to glorify our Father in heaven.

I just want to press that upon you, since so many of you have been like, Hey, I remember that sermon where you like quoted all this stuff?

Okay, cool.

How's it going for you?

How's that?

They're you reveling in the word of God and meditating and memorizing and devouring the scriptures out of your own joy and necessity, that man truly does not live by bread alone.

I'll just leave that with you.

And with those principles and attitudes from the be from the Beatitudes of Christ, they're here in Ephesians 4.

When you start talking about doctrinal truth and unity for the church, I've titled this lesson, That the Church was made for more.

Oh, so much more, and even more than perhaps all that we've even experienced or known.

I think it's great for us, and it's great for the youth, for the teens to see you have a purpose and a place in the mission of God.

That you and I are part of an ancient faith that is oh so much bigger than any of us individually.

And I also think for everyone, Ephesians 4 challenges all of us, congregationally even, to ask, are we in the New Testament church?

Are we striving to be like them and following Jesus?

Is it possible to be church every Sunday and still somehow horrifyingly miss what God would want of us?

I feel like the Apostle Paul in a strange way when I show up to Lubbeck, where I see you are very religious.

For Paul was a bunch of idols, obviously, a little bit worse, a lot bit worse, but a lot of idols to false gods.

Here it's like a throw a rock and I'm gonna hit a taco villa or a church.

Alright?

That's one of those two things.

I had taco villa twice.

That's how good it is.

Yeah, we don't have that up in the Pacific Northwest, sadly.

But, all right, here you are.

What makes us different?

What's supposed to make us different than the rest of broader Christendom and the denominational world?

Are we just like any other denomination?

And there's not really a whole big difference other than remove a few things here or there.

We're not restoring New Testament Christianity because merely we worship a certain way or baptize a certain way or organize the church in a certain way.

That's part of the New Testament pattern.

They matter deeply.

But if we as the local church and the church abroad don't increasingly look like the church of Ephesians 4, that we're going to break down the next few minutes, you can restore methods without restoring the heart and the life that Christ wants and desires for his body.

A temptation I've seen in myself and in our fellowship is to confuse these restoration ideals with some sort of holy reproduction.

And if I can perfectly model allegedly these things I see in the New Testament, then I am the first century church.

But you can restore a pattern all you want.

Like I said, those are deeply important.

But if the people and the hearts are not restored, it means nothing.

Lord, Lord, did we not do these many authorized things in your name?

And I will say, I never knew you.

I don't want to be that person.

You, if you're here, I think, obviously don't want to be that kind of person.

The church is made for oh so much more.

My first idea from the first three verses of Ephesians chapter four is the church is made for more than coexistence, just getting along.

It is made for unity.

It is made for unity.

Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1.

Ephesians 4:1

I therefore, Paul says, I'm a prisoner for the Lord.

I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

This is how we walk worthy.

First of all, is by loving each other in unity.

Paul doesn't begin here.

He'll talk about it in just a few seconds with church structure or how to evangelize or what we might call programs or whatever.

He talks about with our walk and our calling and what we look like to the world and walking worthy.

We're going to talk about how doctrine creates unity in a second, but here we see that it's God, so we're talking about this with the teens.

God is the one who creates the unity, not us.

If you're in Jesus, God did that, not you, not me.

You can choose to participate or not, you can choose to have faith or not, so to say.

God's the one who made the unity.

Ephesians is a classic Pauline letter where chapters 1, 2, and 3 is like, here's what God has done, the theology, 4, 5, 6, therefore, here's what you go do.

And that's we're in the transition right now.

And you see that therefore, verse 1 of chapter 4, we're in the transition from the theology uh to the orthopraxy to the action.

From here's what God did, here's what you need to do.

Okay, that's the transition that's going on in here.

I understand our church has, I mix them up all the time, thanks to places like this.

There's a care groups or life groups here, one of those things.

I don't even know what it's in my own church, it's one of those things.

They call them different stuff.

Those are good.

And those are those are good and being in each other's homes and things like that.

Uh, there's a lot of churches and religions who do stuff like that, frankly.

There's probably a church out there who does it even better than the loving family of Waqia, who fills up their meal trains faster, who hangs out more than you do.

I mean, that's just the nature of life, right?

It's so we're not just merely talking about those kinds of things, though they are essential and important.

But notice the characteristics here when we talk about the first half of the first six verses, when you think of verse two, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love.

What comes to your mind?

Walk in a manner worthy of the calling in which you've been called.

You represent Jesus.

How do I walk worthy of Jesus?

Well, he starts with humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another and love.

One of the teens astutely put it yesterday that this it sounds like the fruit of the spirit.

Correct.

Gold star, yes, this is Ephesians kind of version of the fruit of the spirit.

These sorts of things.

Every single one of these virtues you see in verse 2 fundamentally is death to self.

Every single one, all of it.

Humility gives up my need to be first, gentleness gives up my need to win, patience gives up this uh demand that people have to do it my way and my timeline.

As we talked about in our morning class in Ephesians 5 with the teens, these are kind of forms of submission to one another.

All this is death to self.

Oh, so many things of church divisions and whatnot, whether you happen to be right about the specific issue or not, you could be wrong, that's part of being humble.

Comes down to lacking these attitudes, lacking the principles and the beatitudes.

That's a problem.

It's possible to win an argument and still be losing humility, right?

If we fight for truth in ways that violate the fruit of the Spirit, you're not really standing for any truth at all.

You haven't.

That was Jesus' problem with the Pharisees.

Who on paper, Jesus and the Pharisees, are in the same doctrinal theological camp on what is the canon of the scripture, the future actual bodily resurrection from the dead, da da da da da da da da da check, check, check, check, check.

Hey, we should be able to get along.

And Jesus' problem with them is a litany of things that a lot of us are familiar with.

And seeing the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law.

If we fight for truth in ways that violate what the apostle Paul is saying here, the fruit of the spirit, you're not really standing for truth.

We need to remember that.

Truth can't violate the very commands of God.

You can be technically correct, and you can be quarrelsome, impatient, mean, rude.

Ephesians 4, the gospel, the Bible refuses to separate sound doctrine from Christ-like character.

A church is not sound because they do or don't necessarily do certain things.

If they don't act like Jesus, it's not a sound church.

When you stop using those terms for denominational disagreements and stuff sometimes.

You're following in the line of Ephesians 4, where scripture says, Hold on, what's your attitude about this?

What do you mean by that?

It starts with the attitude in the heart.

That's where this is going to start.

Now, continue, it has to be in truth.

Okay, we're not throwing truth aside.

Paul's not.

But before we even get to the truth, he says in verse 3, you need to be excited, eager to maintain.

Notice again the word maintain, not create.

God did it, not you.

You need to maintain, or as we said with the teens, you need to protect the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

Peace.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

They shall be called sons of God.

Not blessed are those who were right about one thing and were angry and stormed off.

Obviously.

And yet we'll live in that.

We'll be back, hey, that's a faithful brother.

He may not act like Jesus all the time, but at least he's right on this thing we split over 35 years ago.

You don't want to stand before Jesus in that condition.

I don't, at least.

Eager to maintain the unity of the spirit.

That's what we should be eager for.

And then he's going to hit the doctrinal truth.

So, biblical unit unity.

It's not maintained by everyone agreeing on every single tiny little judgment call.

You might not like that.

You're sitting in seats right now.

Sorry if I brought up a sore subject.

You might not like that.

Whatever.

That's not what maintains unity.

It's maintained by recognizing the right hills to die on for the Lord.

The truth.

The non-negotiables that we're about to read in verses four through six.

That I wish I had more time to get on.

But if you want to see more of my opinions on that, there's a podcast I did on this with George and Justin some time ago.

That's online.

But it's maintained by recognizing unity on the right hills to die on.

And even young Christians with teens usually is different, each generation is different, and context is different.

But even with teens, right, the unity is a little bit more superficial in the sense of who likes what I do, and you know, etc.

And we all hang out with who we're liked.

And there's nothing inherently evil with that until it turns into being exclusive to others, not liking others.

And we do that as 60-year-olds, as full-on adults, as well.

We can all fall into these traps no matter our age.

Demanding agreement on every tiny little thing is not unity, it's just conformity, and you'll become cult-like almost.

Not even in the New Testament did everyone agree on how exactly to do stuff there.

But look at the next four or three verses, four, five, and six here.

Here's how I put it.

Here's the other.

The church is made for truth.

The church is not made for way more than opinions, and sometimes you've got to be eager to maintain the unity over disagreeable matters that are small to some that may be actually more theologically important that we're not seeing eye to eye on.

That's easy to preach about, hard to live.

But the church is made for more than opinions.

You can't live there and say we'll have unity at the expense of truth.

Well, obviously not.

That would go to another extreme that's just as wrong as the group that splits over stuff that the New Testament doesn't even talk about in the necessary inference stuff.

The word necessary there is carrying a lot of weight sometimes.

But the church is made for more than opinions, it's made for truth.

Truth.

And the truth is laid out here in verses four through six.

There's one body, one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

But there's seven of them.

Uh, one, you can't just say one, one, one, one, one, one, one.

There's not another Holy Spirit or Son, the Lord, or Father, or church, or you get the idea.

The first thing he mentions, though, is obviously no mistake in verse four.

It's one body.

But he's talking about be eager in verse three to maintain the unity of the spirit.

And the first thing he mentions with that is because you didn't create it, Jesus did, so you should maintain and protect that unity.

There's one body, right?

We're obviously talking about the church.

We're made for more than opinions, we're made for truth.

First church, there's one body.

It's not just a doctrinal checklist, by the way.

This unity is in truth, in reality.

Reality.

So one body, the church, one spirit, the Holy Spirit, as Ephesians 1 talks about, is who's our inheritance who dwells in us all.

You have one hope of eternal life, the resurrection of the dead that's coming at the return of Christ.

One Laura that's King Jesus Himself.

One faith, I think of like Jude 3, is delivered once for all time.

One baptism.

It's a hill to die on.

That's one baptism.

There's one.

We've all shared in that.

And there's one God, one capital G, true and living God, the Father of all.

You see Father, Son, and Spirit in here.

More I can say about that.

Paul doesn't say two or three or one opinion, it's one Lord.

One Lord.

And we can get really ironic with this, as if you preach one body, and then you can quickly act as though the body consists of only people who agree with me on every single thing.

When we were just told, hold on, be eager to maintain unity, and make sure that unity is grounded not in your opinions or inferences necessarily, but on the truth of these seven ones.

A lot more I can say about this.

But unity grows whenever the non-negotiable truths become bigger than our negotiable opinions.

Easy to preach about, much harder to live out.

But unity grows when the non-negotiable truths, one body, one baptism, one Lord, and the like, when those become way bigger and more important than our negotiable opinions.

This is how unity will grow.

Make the main things the main thing.

Small things add up, Jesus says to the Pharisees, like in Matthew 23, you've missed the weightier matters of the law.

There's more important things than others in the Bible.

But he says you should have done those along with these small things, like the tithing of the cumin and the dill.

It all matters.

But unity will grow, and those non-negotiable truce are bigger than all my little squabbling negotiable opinions.

Otherwise, you're not going to be focused on God's plan to unite everything in heaven and on earth in the advancement of the gospel because you're going to be too busy bickering in a corner over there somewhere over those negotiable opinions.

And for teens, that means, of course, that you're and everyone, but your deepest identity, of course, is not in your careers.

It's not for you right now with your boyfriend or girlfriend or schools or political views or your friend group or whatever it is you're doing.

You're half these kids are making my clothing, it sounds like they're on the crops out there.

You guys have very responsible kids.

But that's not your identity in all of those things.

The things that unite us in Christ are far greater, obviously, than the things that make us different.

Because the truth is, unity is not found by finding people just like you.

It's found by following the one Lord.

And by following that one Lord, I'm entailing all those seven ones, of course.

I, if I were not a Christian, I said this to the teens yesterday.

A few of them were trying to take some pot shots at Seattle.

Don't be careful.

But there's plenty to throw.

But um I would never have lived in Lubbock.

I wouldn't ever have known any of you people.

Uh I know we're all Americans and very culturally similar, but we're also like really dissimilar.

I was telling Robert and Carrie last night in the kitchen uh we've never lived in a place where we feel, oh, so uh like a fish out of water.

Never.

Not even close compared to Florida, Utah, oh, that was a weird place, uh, Seattle.

Uh but they all were culturally way more familiar to us than Lubbock.

Yeah, I've I've never experienced um when it comes to familial care, never experienced that anywhere else to the same by God's glory like that here.

I would never have gotten to experience that.

I've been a part of this family.

Hopefully, you know, we'll see you again beyond this weekend.

But I would we would never have experienced that if we didn't serve this one Lord.

I'm also grateful for you and the gospel of Jesus bringing me to this church, the church universal.

Now, of course, verses seven through twelve is gonna get on, okay, you're more than for just it's not like okay, you get to the pearly gate, so to say, and like I can quote the seven ones and define the Trinity and what the one church means.

No, you're not gonna be handed a piece of paper of a theological test when you get up there, obviously.

The church is made for more than attendance, it's made for more than mere education or head knowledge, it's made for service or ministry.

Tomato tomato, when you hear the word service or ministry.

If you're in Christ, you're in his church, that means each and every one of you are a minister doing something.

You're supposed to be.

Each and every one of you are a servant.

When you hear titles like some people might call me or Nate or George, a minister, they mean a minister of the gospel and evangelist.

Okay, that's fine.

But but really it just means servants.

Every one of us is supposed to be a minister, a servant for the church and in the church.

We're made for more than mere attendance, we're made for service and ministry.

Here's verses 7 through 10, Ephesians 4.

But grace was given to each one of us.

Can you think of grace as a gift?

A gift was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore it says, this is from Psalm 68, 18, when he, now it's being tied to Jesus, ascended on high, he led a host of captives.

He gave gifts to men, and saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he also descended to the lower regions of the earth?

He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.

Pause.

Uh if you want to hear all the nerdy stuff about what's going on here, you can talk to me while we're having banana pudding at the bollock or something.

We can talk about it then.

Uh, really, uh, it doesn't change idea.

Of what the point is that Jesus gives gifts and his power over victories of evil.

Psalm 68 uh compares God's mountain to Mount Bashan.

Mount Bashan is like the gate to the underworld, so that's why some people think this is Jesus when he dies, descending to the underworld, like perhaps in 1 Peter 3.

Other people think it's just Jesus' incarnation when he was born of the virgin and came to the world.

Other people think it's the descending of gifts, it's the sending of the Holy Spirit.

Any three of those options you take.

It doesn't change the point while Paul's making.

The point is Jesus is conquered, evil, and he is ascending on high and victory, and he gives gifts to men.

And the gifts are what?

What are those gifts?

Verse 11.

He gave the apostles and he sent them.

The prophets, those who speak and declare the word of God, and in their days, often miraculous.

The evangelists, the shepherds or pastors, you might have in your translation for shepherds.

Okay, elders, think of that.

Teachers for what?

Uh so I can pass the doctrinal tests at the pearly gates.

Well, uh, not quite to equip the saints for the work of service, ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.

Okay, that's so now here comes the church structure.

It does matter.

Not saying it doesn't matter, pattern matters.

Uh the pattern of our attitudes and heart matter, of eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and show fruit of the spirit, listen to the Beatitudes and all that.

Here are gifts.

Leaders are gifts in the church.

Leaders are gifts in the church, and they're not given to replace ministry.

Thanks.

We paid George to go do a bunch of stuff, so I don't have to.

Don't do that to poor George.

Come on.

Uh, leaders aren't given to replace ministry, they're to multiply it.

The whole idea of elders and evangelists and deacons, and they had uh teachers, what we do with classes and what you do in small groups and your homes and things like that.

The whole idea is not just so you can be like, well, I know more now.

There's gonna be a bunch of people who know the Bible inside and out in hell.

A ton of people.

A bunch of them.

Jesus said, right?

Many who say to me, Lord, Lord, and right there come to Jesus, and it's Matthew 7, and on that day, many will say these things.

The only one who's gonna enter the kingdom of heaven are those who do the will of my Father.

Those are the ones who enter the kingdom, not those who just merely have a bunch of doctrinal knowledge.

So leaders aren't given to replace ministry.

It's not just education time.

Great, we learned more.

I was challenged, just like with the scripture memory thing.

What did you do about it?

Did you engage with the gift of living in salvation right now, even when it's hard, even when there's suffering?

Because we're supposed to multiply and be reproducible and how we engage the world outside in evangelism and how we grow spiritually, internally, and that we'll probably grow numerically.

The success of a church is not measured by how good the preacher is, how gifted the leaders are, by its budget, by new buildings, or how big it is.

The the biblical measurement of a church is the spiritual growth that we're going to talk about and is how equipped its members become.

That's the standard.

Are we becoming more like Christ and engaged with the task and mission and ministry of Christ?

That's the standard.

Not well, we agree on these five things we do and don't do on Sunday and see you next week.

Okay, that's a caricature, but that's how a lot of people sometimes live.

We're supposed to multiply in this ministry.

We don't want to say it only belongs to the elders or whatever, a handful of deacons' families, or something like that.

Sometimes we measure faithfulness only by attendance, or what's the standard?

What's the standard?

Building up the body.

We're not supposed to be spectators, obviously.

A lot more I could say uh about that, but I see the clock moving on here.

Leaders are given to equip all of us, everyone includes the youngest people, by the way.

I was so it was so cool seeing the thank you cards in the teen room, seeing what's going on with them serving you and you guys serving them and keep up the intergenerational things like that.

We need that in the church.

But to equip the saints for the work of ministry, what are we talking about here now?

To go out and to come to the full knowledge of Jesus Christ.

That's the next thing that he has for us.

So look at verses 13 and 14 in your Bibles.

The church is made for more than spiritual childhood.

This is my language, it's made for maturity.

We're equipped for ministry, and when we're equipped and focus on the mission and purpose of God and saving the world, we're not going to have time nor the desire to split and quibble over all our little opinions.

That I'm probably wrong about half the time.

The church is made for more than spiritual childhood, it's made for maturity.

Made for maturity.

Look at these verses.

We're equipped until we all attain to the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, not about the Son of God, but the knowledge of the Son of God Himself to mature manhood, adulthood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Notice the word until we should always be restoring.

The church is always becoming more like Jesus.

No one graduates from discipleship.

No one is like, hey, we restored it all.

Sometimes we act like that.

We did it, we've done it, we are this.

We've we've restored the New Testament church.

Okay, have you have you?

Have we?

It's until we all attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, maturity, the knowledge that the apostle speaks of is not merely information, like I've been saying, it's this deepening relationship.

We'll talk more about that in chapter three uh tonight.

But sometimes, because you might say, hey, I got those seven ones clocked on down, boom, boom, boom, boom, I've got them all.

And sometimes maybe it's other things, like I know the facts and figures of these things with what the church should do or not, or I got the seven ones down.

He says maintaining unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God is not a list of propositional facts alone.

Because if we're not grounded in those seven ones in a relational sense of knowing Jesus Himself, you're gonna be children.

The goal is to no longer be children, the green on the screen there uh in verse 14.

Sometimes we can mistake certainty for maturity.

Oh, I've never changed my mind on something.

Red flag, run away from that person.

Never change my mind on anything, never done anything different.

Okay.

Certainty, we should have certainty in Christ and what God has done and what his word has, not certainty in me figuring it all out and putting all the puzzle pieces together to where my opinions become capital T truth.

Paul says maturity is becoming more like Christ, rooted in his truth, not my own, but it's also humble, patient, loving.

You're teachable, right?

So we're this is so we're no longer children tossed to and fro.

It's like a boat out on the water.

Uh, you're probably gonna have to go far away from Lubbock to get a boat on the water.

Is there a lake somewhere around here?

There's gotta be.

Is there a big enough one to have a storm?

You get someone out here, some of you guys are crazy fishermen.

Someone's been out there on the sea.

Actually, in our game, one of these teens had been out to sea fishing, I think.

So maybe they experienced this.

But the picture is a boat on the sea being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, right?

The storm.

They're not rooted in the truth of the seven ones, they're not rooted in the goals of bearing fruit of the spirit and looking for maturity.

They're either so certain they're immature and there is no fruit, and it's gonna be my way or the highway, uh, or they're not rooted in truth.

Oh, and I hear this new thing and this new teaching, and just toss back and forth.

It's not very restful at all.

That sounds exhaustive.

This is good news from God that we can experience assurance and rest right now.

Now, look at verses 15 and 16 as we begin to wrap up.

We can't just be unforgiving, cynical, suspicious, can't easily be offended and be like, well, I know the Bible really well.

That's not that's not maturity.

Okay, you also can't be rooted in truth and be like, that's wishy-washy, that's not maturity.

There's truth in Jesus and those seven ones.

Sometimes we also got to remember uh whether it's growing older in your 20s and 30s, or growing older in your 70s and 80s, that growing older is also, by the way, not the same as growing up spiritually.

It should be.

It should be.

Look at the qualifications for elders and deacons and things.

That should be the case.

Uh, but me sitting around for 37 years, if I it's it doesn't guarantee it.

And for you teens, for younger people, you've got to be leery of that because the ignorance I have at 16 or whatever is I'll get to that tomorrow.

It's not a big deal.

I'll change that tomorrow, and you know, 10, 20, 30 years later, you're in an even worse spot, or you've never changed at all.

I can't assume that's the case tomorrow.

Because the church is made for more than stagnation, obviously.

It's made for growth.

Hopefully, it'll produce to numerical growth to where more people are saved and come to know Jesus.

But it's got to start with us growing internally and spiritually.

We're made for more than stagnation.

That's what I mean about the fears of I have it all figured out, I've restored it, past hence, I'm done.

Now I just gotta come and hit the checklist and we're good to go.

That's a scary place to be.

It means stagnation.

We're made for more.

We're made for growth.

Look at the language in Ephesians 4, 15, and 16.

Rather, instead of being tossed to and fro, you should be speaking the truth in love.

And we're 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's equipped, with each part is working properly.

It makes the body, the church, it makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Grow up in every way into Christ, the body.

It's the body, strangely enough, that should help make the body itself grow.

Grow into love.

So truth without love, right?

Of course, it wounds people, but love without truth misleads people.

I mean, look at the lists here in verses 15 and 16.

Don't disconnect it obviously from everything that Paul's been talking about previously.

We speak the truth in love in verse 15.

Sometimes when I think we talk about speaking the truth in love, we are getting to a general principled, perhaps proverbial, uh truth about if you have hard news to give someone, um, that you tell them the truth of that hard news, but you do it kindly.

Okay, that's a good thing.

I think that's a thing you might find in Proverbs.

Sure.

I don't think that's exactly what Paul, the apostle, is talking about here.

Speaking the truth, we've talked about in context, has been grounded in the truth of, right, those non-negotiables, those seven ones.

The seven, the non-negotiables of the one body and so forth, and the trying God, and the one baptism, and the one faith, the one hope.

We talked about the teens yesterday, about uh chapter 4, verse 21, that this is the truth that is found in Jesus that counters the deceitfulness of the world.

So we're not talking generally about like, hey, I'm sorry to say you lost your job or your dog died or something like that, and you say it kindly.

That's not what he's talking about here.

He's talking about talking about the truth of the gospel, the truth of Christ, where we get our purpose and identity.

That's what he's talking about.

But you got to do it in love, which is the bearing, right?

Bearing the fruit of the spirit, maintaining and being eager to protect the unity of the church.

Because I go to go to my brother and I want to tell him the truth of what the scriptures say, and I want to do it in the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

That's what we're talking about.

Speaking the truth is not just random truths, it's the truth of what he's talking about here in Ephesians 4.

Because truth without love is going to hurt people.

But if you don't have truth, we'll mislead people.

The Bible, Jesus, says we're not going to separate those two.

They're inseparable.

They're inseparable.

One neglected member can weaken the whole body.

I mean, this is the message of the tongue.

Just your tiny little tongue in James 3 can cause forest fires and steer a whole ship.

Uh, I don't know if you've ever had the joy of having like your pinky toe or something hurt.

It's shocking how much it affects everything else.

Right?

One neglected Christian in the church can weaken everyone.

And sometimes it just takes one faithful leader or member to strengthen everyone by the grace of God.

But truth's not optional.

Love is not optional either, obviously.

But sometimes we pride ourselves and refusing to compromise on one and the other.

We have to marry them both.

But Paul's asking just a different question.

Are we equally unwilling, just like with truth, are we equally unwilling to compromise on love?

To grow up is the opposite of stagnation, obviously.

But it's not growing up into my opinions and getting what I want.

It's into Christ Himself as the model.

And you have the whole body, all of it into Christ.

It's being equipped, just like in verse 12, by the leaders.

And when it works properly, when one of us grows, all of us get to grow in this place and purpose together in this family.

And then again, that's what it includes y'all.

There we go.

It includes y'all, you, the teens.

I understand the idea that you are the future of the church in the sense of more leadership roles, but if you're in Christ, you're in the church now.

I think your leaders are doing a pretty decent job about trying to communicate that you're making a difference.

It can help the body grow, not 20 years from now, or when you graduate college or whatever, but right now you play a difference.

But we grow by knowing and speaking the truth in love, which means you grow by listening.

You, you, I keep saying, want to say you guys.

Y'all, you guys, listen to those who speak the truth in love.

You gotta look for leaders who are gonna speak the truth, they're gonna open up the Bible, and they're gonna do it the way Jesus would do it.

This is lengthy, wordy, but I wanted to put it on the screen.

Restoration.

It's not merely recovering the right forms of worship.

That's half of it.

Maybe not even, I don't know.

But it's recovering the model of equipping all the saints for service and restoring the character of Christ in us.

On paper, I think everyone in this room is gonna agree on that with that.

This is why I was rambling about uh with George and Justin on the podcast the other day.

But do we have plans and systems to where like here's here's the standard of what we want someone to be to look like as a disciple of Jesus?

Are we engaged where the older women and the older men are teaching more than here's how to hand out the collection tray and uh to do a kid's class?

Those things are important, sure.

We're talking about conforming them into the character of Jesus Himself.

That's what discipleship means.

The character of Christ.

And that means equipping all of us, from the youngest to the oldest.

That is part of restoring the church even now.

It's an ongoing thing, and this makes the body grow.

So it builds itself up in love.

Love.

The greatest of these, as Paul says elsewhere, is indeed love.

Much more I could say.

I want to wrap up now, and the lesson will be yours.

We need to be grounded in the truth, in the realities of Jesus and the New Testament itself, not my opinions and issues.

But if all we can do is look out and compare superficially with other belief systems or churches, we're not in the model of equipping, and we're not in the model of bearing fruit, and we're not in the model of maintaining unity.

Restoration is only going to be complete when discipleship, when Christ Himself is made complete in our hearts.

So we're made for oh so much more.

The church, more than coexistence, more than opinions, more than attendance.

We're made for unity and one faith and ministry, more for immaturity, but maturity, made for more than arguments, but unity and growth.

And the question is not if God has a purpose for the church.

We'll talk about even more tonight in Ephesians chapter 3.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

Or the question is not, does God have purpose for you?

The question is whether you'll embrace that purpose and join him in the mission to unite all things in heaven and on earth.

God has made you for so much more than drifting through life, watching Fox News or scrolling on your phone, or whatever.

He's made you for way more than that.

So take joy in his word and meditate on it.

Take joy in his people and strive for unity.

That's the church that Christ died to create.

That's the church that Ephesians 4 calls us to become.

This is the kind of church that is made for more.

That you can strive for more, a knowledge of God.

If you're subject to that invitation, you want that purpose.

Now you can come forward and meet some of the leadership over here while we stand and sing this song.