The Cure For Church Hurt

This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.

Amen.

Amen.

Let me say this before I pray.

If you're here, you can sit down.

You can sit down.

I'm going to get at you today, so go ahead and sit down and get comfortable.

Y'all got out early last week.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, somebody passed me and said, Well, that's what a short sermon sounds like.

I said, I'm going to get you next week.

Let me say this.

If you're here, I don't care if you're visiting, it's your first time, or you've been coming for years.

If you struggle with any form of addiction, one of our one of our core desires here is that everyone a Christian, no one a prisoner.

We don't want you to live as a prisoner in any kind of addiction.

The greatest thing about Jesse's story is my wife saw her mom at some event here at the church and she said, How's Jesse?

And her mom said, Well, she died the other night.

And my wife's like, Oh my gosh, you well, they they brought her back to life.

And it was like, oh my goodness, uh, addiction is a powerful thing.

So if you're here, you don't have to struggle in silence.

You don't have to go it alone.

You can come up to me or any one of our pastors, we don't care what the addiction is, and just say, Hey, I'm a prisoner and I want to get free, okay?

This is a safe place for you to be honest.

That's all I want to say.

Does that make sense?

Say amen.

All right, let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, thank you that uh we're not made to be tending a grave.

And addiction is a banquet in the grave, it is a feast to our senses and our affections, but it is killing us.

And so, Lord, we know who we are because we know uh we know who we are because we know who you are.

There's a reciprocal relationship to those things, and so increase our knowledge of you today, and therefore our knowledge of ourselves, because we cannot get close to you without you exposing all that's in us, even the parts we don't want anybody to know about.

But we're safe.

This is the church.

It's not a performance or a production, it's a people.

And so we've gathered today to be your people, Lord.

Say something that has our name on it, we pray, in Jesus' name, what everyone said.

Amen, amen.

If you got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open up to Ephesians chapter four.

Ephesians, kind of towards the back of the New Testament, it's one of the prison epistles.

Uh, we left off the book of Acts.

Paul was under house arrest in Rome and he wrote four books of the Bible.

This is one of them that he wrote.

And so I thought it would behoove us to take a look at something.

Here's what I want to talk about today.

I want to talk about the cure for church hurt.

The cure for church hurt.

Now, if you've ever heard the phrase church hurt, say amen.

It takes many forms.

Church hurt is basically just wait a second.

Like, people get hurt by the church.

The church is great until you need something from the church, and then the church treats you like a stranger.

Like, what is your name again?

Hello.

Uh and I'm just gonna give you just a brief history.

There's a lot of church hurt in the world today because most people, here's a real simple explanation.

But there's a lot of church hurt in the world today because most people have never really experienced the church as God intended it to be.

Okay?

Let me give you some historical context, okay?

Uh just four opening points just to walk you through.

About 50 years ago, people, uh churches looked around, they saw other churches were attracting a lot of people, and they wanted to do the same.

So the focus shifted from equipping people to attracting people.

And so uh, let me say that again.

The focus for the church tragically shifted from equipping people to uh attracting people.

So, what you saw was big churches popping up full of little Christians.

Okay?

Second thing, uh uh, second manifestation, this leads to this unbiblical belief that church was designed to reach non-believers.

So Christians sit and watch their pastor fish for lost people every Sunday.

And so evangelism became the church's responsibility and not the responsibility of the individual.

The Bible teaches that evangelism is the responsibility of every Christian.

Does that make sense?

Say amen.

It's not the church, it's not my job.

Years ago, back in 1994, 95, me and some buddies uh that traveled and preached, uh, we would get together at Lake Fork.

Lake Fork is a trophy bass lake, okay?

Up up near Quitman, Texas, and we'd fish for a week.

And one of the guys would buy, would pay for a guide.

In 1994, it was$300 a day.

I was like, what?

Until one day he said, You want to get in the guideboat?

Yes, I do.

In the guide boat, you don't do anything.

You don't need a pole, you just gotta show up, okay?

You get there, the guide knows everything.

He's got like a TV screen called a some kind of a graph.

He's mapped out the bottom of the lake, everything.

He goes, Now listen, I want to take you to this place, and there's some submerged trees down there about 10 feet below the surface.

We're gonna fish with this bait.

I didn't have to do anything.

He handed me a pole, he made some adjustments, he said, I want you to cast right there at that tree.

I mean, he said, Cast, just jerk it a couple times and then reel it.

Jerk it and reel it.

About the third time, wow, wow, boom! Seven-pound, two-ounce bass.

First thing in the morning, I was like, Can I take this home?

He goes, That's small compared to what we're gonna catch.

And he wasn't lying.

I saw a lady pull two 12-pounders out.

I was like, that woman caught two of those.

This can't be right, okay?

But here's my here's the point I'm making.

Uh I as I'm sitting there on the lake early in the morning, and this guy he sits down, pulls out a can, thump, thump, gets a dip, and sits down.

And he watched us do the fishing.

And Clear Isabel, the Holy Spirit, said, wouldn't it be crazy if you paid him and he came out here and said, You got to sit down and watch me fish?

No, the God is there to put you on the fish.

This is the essence of equipping.

We are here to teach you how to fish and to give you the opportunity to fish.

And so evangelism is the responsibility of the individual believer.

It's not the responsibility of the church.

The responsibility of the church is to steward well the glory of God.

Okay?

Here's the third uh uh integration of this.

This leads to churches that abandon their responsibility to Christians, and Christians begin to feel disillusioned with the whole thing.

Uh, here's what happens: Christians become simultaneously excited and disillusioned.

Because they have events where they bring in Tim Tebow and he speaks on Easter, and you have 300 people profess their faith in Christ, and the next Sunday you don't see any of them.

And so Christians are really excited, and then the subsequent Sundays it's like waon, won, wa.

What happened?

Here's the last expression of this.

In this format, the focus is always on what's next and who's next instead of who's right in front of you.

The church loves you until you sin.

And then you make it inconvenient, you gum up the machinery.

Yes.

Yes, some of you are like, uh, I kind of relate to this.

Because when you're not the focus, when the focus is those who would not get a part of us, as I heard somebody say recently, we exist for those who would not get a part of us.

That's not biblical.

That's not biblical.

We exist to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

And basically, here's what here's what we've eroded to in America.

We use means that aren't biblical to produce something that's not the church, and then wonder what happened.

And so, how do we respond to that?

Do we get angry?

Do we get no, not at all.

Not at all.

That's that's not a biblical response to any of that.

And so I just want to say the church, the cure for church hurt is right here in Ephesians chapter four.

It's basically just you experiencing the church as God designed it to be.

Well, what is that?

Let me read Ephesians chapter four, starting verse one.

He says, I now this is where Paul where Acts left off.

Paul's in prison in Rome, and he writes these words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

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

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

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

Therefore, it says, now when the Bible says it says, it's talking about the Bible.

So the Bible, according to the Bible, the Bible speaks with as much authority as God.

So when you read the Bible, you're reading the words of God.

It says very clearly, therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.

In saying he ascended, what does it mean that uh, but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?

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

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of 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.

I would submit to you today that we don't need any more church growth tactics.

We need to equip the saints for the work of ministry and build up the body of Christ.

And if you do those two simple things, the church will grow itself.

This is what I believe.

Maybe I'm just lazy, or maybe I just believe the Bible, okay?

So what's the cure for church hurt?

We got to get back to this explains what we do here.

So if you're visiting our church today or you've been visiting for a while, you're like, hey, what drives the bus here?

This is, I want to just tell you three things.

This is what we do, okay?

This is the goal of what we do it, and then then this is why we do it, okay?

First of all, this is what we do.

Verses 11 and 12.

Hear it again.

Because he says a lot of introductory stuff, and he gets to verse 11, and he just spells it out, okay?

He says this, and he said that he gave, God gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ.

This is what we do.

It's a two, we have two responsibilities as the church.

And so we have a gifted team of men and women here, uh, what they're referred to as our church staff, our pastors, our ministers, whatever.

Uh, what we do every day is we we do what we do to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

To equip means to think of furnishing a house, okay?

Now, I have some friends that that didn't do it right.

They went down and they met with a banker, a mortgage company, and they said, What do you qualify for?

And so they said, You qualify for up to this much.

Now, if you're smart, you never buy your first house at the high end of what you qualify for.

Uh, but they were told you qualify for$285,000 for anywhere from$200 to$285,000.

They bought a$290,000 house.

Now, this was years ago.

Here's the problem with that.

They did not think, they lived in an apartment like 800 square feet.

They bought a house for$290,000.

And when they got in the house, they had uh the furnishings of an apartment, not the furnishings of a house.

So when you went to the house, you had to take your own chair because they had nothing to fill it up with.

You walk in and you're looking around, kind of like, hey, hey, um, hey, bro, are you working?

Uh and he's like, Yeah, we kind of got in over a head on the mortgage and we're making the payments and everything, but we're gonna slowly get furniture as we go.

And I remember looking around thinking, none of your chairs match.

I don't mean in the living room, I mean at the kitchen table.

And he said, Yeah, yeah, we had a four-seater chair and we got uh a table and we got this six-seater chair, but we just kind of, and I was like, now why do I say that?

Because if you're not careful, uh that describes a lot of Christians, you look good from the curb, but when people get close to you, it's not built out on the inside.

There's a hollowness to you, and that's not the way the Bible says that you were created to be, nor the way I was created to be.

And so you keep people at a distance because you know that you're not fully furnished on the inside.

To equip the saints for the work of ministry is not to just make you look uh uh spiritual on the outside, but it's to make you spiritual through and through because you're equipped for every good work as the Bible talks about.

The second thing he says we do is we build up the body of Christ, the church.

This refers to the act of promoting another person's spiritual growth.

Let me ask you a simple question: Who do you spend time with that promotes your spiritual growth?

Who do you spend time with?

I say promotes, I mean that that's that that's a safe word.

Uh maybe think of it like this: who provokes you spiritually?

To get it down even further, who makes you angry because they bring up things you don't want to think about?

See, here's the problem in America.

You got too many comfortable friends.

You should have some uncomfortable friends.

When you get around them, you're kind of like, you pull up to the restaurant, you look at your wife, you're like, I have no idea what's gonna come out of his mouth, so brace yourself, Effie.

But right before you open the door on your truck and get out, you're like, hey, but I'm gonna be better for it.

So you ain't gotta defend me.

Yeah.

You should have, if all you have is comfortable friends, then you're just becoming mediocre with more people.

You should have some uncomfortable friends that they bring up stuff and you're like, hmm.

Or as I like to do every once in a while, just sit down and say, okay, what topics are off limits?

And then you see what people want to defend.

Some of y'all are looking like, that's why I don't invite you to my house.

That's okay.

I'm not, I'm not gonna be awkward or anything.

I'm just like, hey, here's the thing.

Now, when I say to to uh somebody promotes your spiritual growth, I mean who provokes you Godward?

Provocation is a form of building up, all right?

Provocation, that's not a bad word.

They should provoke you.

You should walk away and be like, oh, I didn't want to think about that, but she made me think about that over lunch at La Madeline's.

My salad didn't taste good.

The Bible says it like this in 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 1.

2 Peter 3:1

He says, This is now the second letter I'm writing to you, beloved.

In both of them, I'm stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.

Who stirs you up on the inside?

And when's the last time you spent time with them?

Because if all your friends are comfortable, you're gonna be who you've always been.

You should have some uncomfortable friends in you.

They just kind of not not not that they're obnoxious or they're mean, but they are uncomfortable.

Do you do you understand the difference?

Say amen.

It's not not somebody that's like, but just like, ooh, are you kidding me?

Now, by the way, you have a church uh that this it embraces their responsibility.

Hey, we're gonna equip the saints and build up the body of Christ.

I I brought a graphic to help you understand what what this looks like, okay?

Now, this is what most churches in America are like.

The pastor's at the top of the pyramid, and everybody and everything serves him and his vision.

Amen.

Y'all are like, no.

Unamen to that, Skippy.

Uh, yeah, here's what people say in a church like this: they have a great pastor and just a good church.

People have a task, but they never have an identity.

When you come to that church, you come twice, they got you volunteering for something.

Uh uh thirdly, lots of stimulation, not much education.

You know about as much as you knew the first day you walked in the door.

There's a lot of things that happen outwardly, a lot of simulation, but not much life change inwardly.

Your mind doesn't change about things.

You don't love people more than you did when you first started, you don't hate sin more, you're about the same.

People feel used, but here's the big mantra at a church like this where everything's driven by the pastor's vision.

Buy into the vision.

Buy into the vision.

Come on, man.

You you you you you you you need to buy into the vision.

You're like, okay, does the vision ever buy into?

This is not biblical.

I say this as your pastor.

This is not biblical.

It's very popular, but it's not biblical.

What's biblical?

I show you what's biblical.

Here's the other slide.

The pastor is at the bottom, amen.

Don't say it with so much gusto, people.

Denny Douglas is going, yeah, I like this.

Yes, yeah.

Here's the thing: I don't want to be a great pastor at a good church.

I want to be a good pastor at a great church.

And by the grace of God, I am.

There's nothing super amazing about me.

I'm okay, uh, but I'm a part of a great church.

So a great church and a good pastor, people grow into their identity and they want to serve.

You don't have to pigeonhole people.

Hey, you've been three Sundays, don't you want to serve in a kid's ministry?

You're like, no, I don't even like kids.

I don't have kids.

That's okay.

We need help.

Uh thought-provoking, you grow in the knowledge of God in the Bible.

Uh, if you go to a church like this, you have to get a Bible.

And they don't make you, but you feel like you're missing out on something.

You're kind of like, uh, yeah, okay.

Uh people experience their capacity because they are equipped.

Here's the thing that happens in a church like this: you begin to you have this thought.

I didn't realize I was capable of this.

This is what I mean by saying when you grow in your capacity.

And then lastly, developing people is the vision.

Equipping the saints for the work of ministry.

That means it's not our job to you, you all to come and watch me and the staff do all the heavy lifting.

We equip you where your capacity so increases that just you breathing, things get done.

This is the biblical model.

This is the model that this church follows, okay?

We're not perfect, we don't have it all figured out, we don't even compare ourselves to other churches.

It's worse than that.

We compare ourselves to this.

This is the only standard we need.

Somebody said to me one time, hey, I never hear you ragging on other churches.

And I said, They're not my standard.

Oh, to God, it were that easy.

It'd be easy, but it's not.

This is the biblical model, okay?

You should have people just poured out of the top of that because they're being equipped.

Now, this is what we do.

Here's the second thing I want to tell you this morning.

This is the goal for what we do.

It's it right here in verse 13.

He says that he gave these people to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.

And this is the goal for what we do.

Look at verse 13, until we all attain to the unity of four things, okay?

Until we all attain, until you get these.

See, you belong into a church, not just coming to a church, but belonging to a church, you should attain some things.

You should gain some things.

Some things should become a part of your life, should get stuck to your head and your heart and find expression in your hands that you weren't necessarily looking for, but man, it just starts manifesting in you, okay?

Until we all attain to four things.

Number one, to the unity of the faith.

Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, this refers to the shared foundation of Jesus Christ and the gospel.

This is the unity of the faith.

There's a oneness, there's a cohesive nature to the Christian faith, okay?

It's not your faith, it's not my faith, it is the faith, okay?

Unity doesn't mean uniformity, but it does mean harmony.

In other words, I could get on a plane and go to Kenya right now, and if I met Christians, they would believe the same things about God that I do because we have the shared faith, okay?

I could go to Detroit and find the same thing.

I could go to Massachusetts and find the same thing.

I could go to California.

I could go to Longview, Texas and buy the same thing.

Whoever the man is from Longview, Longview, Texas, by the way, is home of the butcher shop.

It's a great place to get a hamburger.

It's also home of the Longview Lobos and the Pine Tree Pirates.

And if you go a little far out of town, it's the Spring Hill Panthers, but I digress.

Now, some of you are like, how do you know that?

I grew up 42 miles from Longview.

Longview was where you went if you wanted to impress a girl on a date because they had a mall.

All they had in my town was two red lights and a convenience store that sold lottery tickets and malt liquor.

And I only know that because Wade Call Your told me, but I digress.

And this is the goal for what we do.

It's the unity of the faith.

Again, unity doesn't mean uniformity, but harmony.

Translation, not everybody has to be like you or do what you do, okay?

But we do have to believe the same things.

We are the church in as much as we practice and believe the gospel.

When we cease to practice and believe the gospel, we're no longer the church, okay?

Now, now listen carefully to what I'm fixing to say.

Uh, because when you cease to do those two things, you're no longer the church and you've settled for the buzzword of the day, community instead of unity.

You know that you can have community and not have unity.

Think about it.

Yes, community is a buzzword.

Everybody loves community.

Meet and find spouses for your kids.

Yes.

Arrange marriages, whatever you got going on.

Yes.

Community is so popular that you can have community and never have the unity of the faith.

I'm just, I'm not knocking community.

I live in community.

I'm just saying, let's not settle for one.

Don't come in and just experience community.

Keep moving until you experience the unity of the faith.

Okay.

This is what the this is the goal of what we do, until we all attain.

Just think about that.

Until we all, not a few of us, not the elders, not the staff, until we all attain the unity of the faith.

Can you imagine what would happen if everybody in this room, not to include the next service, but just this service right here, if every one of us believed and lived in the unity of the faith, what would happen this week?

What would you give away?

Who would you forgive?

Yeah, you can see if you got some of those uncomfortable friends like I do, when you bring up somebody you don't like, they say, hey man, the gospel says you have to forgive that person.

You can't slander them, no slander them, you just go not here.

And you're like, oh, I thought you were my friend.

I am your friend.

That's why I'm saying something.

Again, what would happen if we all reach the unity of the faith?

Second thing he says is that in the knowledge of the Son of God.

Knowledge of the Son of God.

So often we get it backwards in the church.

We think in terms of about how God knows us.

Here's the problem with that there's never been a time when God does not know everything about you.

Let me say this again, because I hear this especially in counseling.

People say, like, this is a big bold confession.

Well, God knows my heart.

And I'm like, Yeah, he does.

But that's not the issue.

I asked a man recently, he's like, Well, hey, God knows my heart.

Like, God knows my motives are good, despite the fact that my behavior is radically sinful.

God knows my heart.

And I said, Yeah, you've said that like five times.

But here's my question: Do you know God's heart?

Because Christianity is not you just saying, God knows my heart, God knows my heart.

Christianity is you knowing the heart of God.

Because when you know the heart of God, your heart gets changed.

And he said, I'm not sure what you're saying.

I'm saying this, I mean, God knows my heart.

John 2, about verse 24, Jesus said this.

I don't need man's testimony about man.

I know what's in a man.

This is why I do not entrust myself with some people, Jesus said.

Because I know what's in your heart.

So you saying God knows my heart is a waste of breath and words.

Well, this doesn't feel like counseling to me.

Well, you're welcome.

Again, if you're sitting here thinking God knows your heart, that I'm not mocking.

That just means nothing.

The issue, Christianity, knowledge, until we all attain to the knowledge of the Son of God, okay?

You need to have people that ask you, like, well, I went to college, I became friends with a guy that I referenced before up here.

His name is Joey Butler, my friend from Mississippi.

And Joey Butler was uncomfortable, okay?

When I first met him, I did not like him because he would ask me this question all the time Hey, what's that last thing you learned about Jesus and how is it changing your life?

So I would see him in the cafeteria and pull a Bible because I went to a Baptist school, not necessarily Christian, uh kind of like Baylor, but I digressed.

Anyway, uh whoops, I did it again.

Thank you, Brittany.

Uh uh, and so I would pull a Bible out because I knew I would see him in the line, and I knew he's gonna get his food, he's gonna come sit down by me, and with his Mississippi tobacco chewing crooked mouth, he's gonna say, Hey, what's the last thing Jesus taught you, and how's it changing the way you live?

And so I would look for stuff to say.

Yes, this is why you need uncomfortable friends in your life.

He sat down one time and he goes, Hey, I saw you look at your Bible.

Were you looking for something to say?

Because you, because this is what a jerk he was.

You said the same answer the last three times I've asked you this question.

And I said, So we're keeping score.

And he goes, No, I I just don't experience you as a man who's in the word.

I know, right?

What a jerk.

Don't be so judgmental, Joey.

Every time I saw him, we graduated, he went up to Kansas City to start to work at a church, we talk on the phone, we would talk for an hour somewhere in the conversation.

I would just be kind of thinking, oh, how's he gonna do it?

How's he gonna?

It would get around to, hey, when's the last thing you learned about Jesus?

How's that affecting the way you live?

Now, by the way, there's two kinds of friends, comfortable and uncomfortable, there's two kinds of truth, comfortable and uncomfortable.

If you're just an average church person, you collect comfortable truth, but you need to collect some uncomfortable truth as well.

You need to get some truth that affects the way you talk to your mom and dad students.

You need to get some uncomfortable truth that informs and affects the way you relate to people who don't look like you, think like you, vote like you.

See, this is the beauty about the knowledge of the Son of God.

You don't just get information, you get intimacy.

And intimacy with Jesus changes how you live.

Here's the third thing he says this is the goal.

This drives what we do, okay?

See, you got knowledge of the Son of God, you've got, hey, the unity of the faith, knowledge of the Son of God, and then he says this maturity, to mature manhood, to mature womanhood.

What does this mean?

Now there's a difference in being grown and being mature, okay?

I hear this a lot in counsel.

I'm a grown adjective man.

It comes at the worst times in counseling because people think this is gonna explain it all.

And I just say, hey man, this is not about age, this is about maturity, okay?

You're telling me your age when you say that, but you're not, I don't experience you as a mature man.

And then people get defensive.

I learned it from Joey Butler.

What do you mean?

See, let me just give you the the Bible calls us to maturity, not entitlement.

Like I'm a grown man, I pay my bills, I support my kids.

You're supposed to support your kids.

No cookie for you.

I don't know, I don't know what you're telling me this for.

It doesn't accomplish anything.

But think of it like this, okay?

To be mature is to order your life around your responsibilities, not just your desires.

Let me say it again.

I'll give you an example.

To be mature is to order your life around your responsibilities, not just your desires, okay?

As a man, you have three responsibilities, okay?

Think of it like this one God, everybody.

One God, one person, one career.

Your three core responsibilities.

One God, who am I gonna worship?

One person, if you're a man, that's a woman.

If you're a woman, that's a man.

You don't get to fill in the blank.

So for me as a man, one God, that's who I worship, one woman, that's who I love.

Nobody else, nobody else.

You say, well, what if I'm on a second marriage?

That's your person.

Okay?

One career.

You don't want to just have a job, meaning you want to have a career.

The longer you do something, you get better at it, the more they pay you to do it.

Yes.

Now here's the thing: you give all your emotional and relational energy to those three things, and anything you have left over, you give to other stuff.

What you do not do is give all your primary relational and emotional energy to everything else, and then give these things the leftovers.

That's idolatry.

That's what keeps a man living like a boy.

My kids asked me one time, they said, Dad, is it hard to get them to go to work?

I said, No, I got bills, and I got kids, and they come due on the weekly.

They go, What does that mean?

You'll understand.

My oldest bought a house the other day.

Ringy ringy.

I bet it won't be hard to get up on Monday.

No, it won't.

I get it, Dad.

I get it.

Absolutely.

See, that's just the thing.

Maturity changes the way you think about responsibility.

That's all I'm saying.

Here's the fourth thing: fullness.

Fullness.

He said, until we all attain to this, the fullness, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

What does this mean?

We're fulfilling our responsibility as a church and as Christians to live at a place of fullness because this is what Jesus demonstrated in how he lived, okay?

This is what he demonstrated.

That's why, if you read the New Testament, you'll hear this about Jesus.

It says, he said, The Prince of this world is coming and he has no place in me.

Why does he not have any, why does the enemy not have any place in Jesus?

Because he lived at a place of fullness.

You look back in verse 7, it says, Hey, we have this gift, we exercise this gift into this place of fullness.

You get a church full of people that are exercising the gift under the grace of God.

It brings fullness to the individual and fullness to the church.

Luke chapter 4, don't turn there, but it uses these three phrases about Jesus.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

It says Jesus was full of the Spirit, and then he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and he comes out of the spirit out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit.

Fullness.

This is what Jesus modeled.

This is what the Bible commands us to do until we all attain fullness.

You should ask yourself today, how full are you?

You should have some uncomfortable friends in your life that go, hey man, how full of the spirit?

Are you operating in a place of fullness?

Because you're rattling a lot.

You don't sound very full.

I was sitting at a table with some other people in ministry and Joey Butler at a camp in Colorado.

And this one guy was going off, and Joey's eating his chicken.

And he just looked at me and he said, Hey, hey, you don't sound very full.

You might want to close your mouth.

Nobody else there knew him, but I did.

And I just thought, this isn't gonna go well for y'all.

Well, you know, you don't understand, you know, he hurt my feelings, blah, blah, blah.

Your feelings aren't the standard.

The gospel is the standard.

I think you're falling short of the standard.

So either change what you talk about or close your mouth.

Uncomfortable.

He died, by the way, of kidney cancer.

And I did his funeral.

The church he pastor wasn't big enough to hold it, that the high school auditorium.

It was packed, the lobby was packed, the football team stood along the walls, the kids were seated in the floors.

They said the fire marshal is gonna come, we're in trouble.

But people wouldn't leave.

And I stood up and I said, the Bible says in John chapter 12, unless the kernel wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone.

John 12 · chapter mention

But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

I said, We're here tonight because Joey Butler died a long time ago.

He didn't die six days ago.

And the football players wept because that man was no longer around.

See, they love somebody uncomfortable in their life that they knew loved them.

You wanna you want people like that in your life, and you want to be somebody, you want to be that person to somebody else.

Fullness.

Fullness is the byproduct of satisfaction, okay?

And when you're that place of satisfaction, then the prince of this world and all the stuff he has, it has no place in you.

Here's the last thing.

This is why we do it.

This is what we do as a church.

This is the goal.

These four things here are the goal until we all attain to the unity of these four things.

And then lastly, this is why we do it.

Look at verse 14.

You're still with me say amen.

We're not getting out early today.

Verse 14, so that we may no longer be children.

Aren't you tired of being a spiritual child?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Too much working out.

You guys quit.

Like a rotisserie chicken at Costco up in here.

Yeah, people always come up here and they're like, what's those lights like?

They get up and they go, ooh, it's bright and hot.

That's what it's like.

But hey, I'm fine.

I'm in an air-conditioned building.

Verse 14, so it would 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.

I got an email yesterday and somebody stopped me at the coffee bar this morning.

It said, Hey, are you gonna lock the doors and tell them you need$40,000?

And I was like, Oh my gosh, you saw that too.

Some preacher at a conference told the ushers, lock, close the doors.

Don't let anybody out.

We need to take up$40,000.

First he asked them, hey, did you get some out of the sermon?

They all raised their hand.

Then he said, Okay, every one of you give$20.

This is why when I meet people, I don't tell them I'm a preacher.

Because they all got stories and just deceitful schemes.

And the Bible says, Hey, we ain't got nothing to do with that.

This is why we do what we do, so that you won't be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

But rather, three things that were done, okay?

But rather, speaking the truth in love, we're to grow up in every way into Him who is the head into Christ, for whom from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly.

This makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

When I say this is why we do it, there's a negative, so you won't be like children tossed to and fro.

Oh, well, I saw something on the internet.

Oh, well, my friend said, What does the Bible say?

But see, you want to get to the positive.

And here's the three positives when we're done.

Number one, in true growth, everything gets bigger.

In truth growth, everything gets bigger.

You say, What do you mean?

It says right there, rather speaking the truth in love, we're to grow up in every way.

You ever noticed when your kids were born that their body, their whole body grew, not just their head?

We got a mongoloid here.

This kid's like an orange on a stick.

What's wrong here?

No, no, everything grows.

The Bible says you grow up in every way.

In you okay?

You okay, Gail?

In every way.

In every way.

You don't get to pick your area of growth and neglect the rest.

In true growth, everything gets bigger.

Secondly, we all have a part to play.

That's verse 16.

Joined and held together by which uh by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly.

When each part is working properly, this is the responsibility of the believer.

Then the last thing is simply this growth is the byproduct, not the goal.

When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

When each part works properly, the body, the church grows.

The church does not need any more church growth consultants.

It does not need formulas.

As I said to someone on the phone last week, the church doesn't need to be fixed.

She needs to be fed.

And when you feed the church, the people of God, the church, if you're visiting it, church is not the building, it's the people.

And when you feed the people with the truth, they grow.

Every part of their life gets bigger.

Not just their intellect, but their capacity to suffer, their willingness to serve.

All of this stuff grows, okay?

This is the way, this is what we do.

This is the goal for which we do it.

And then this is why we do it.

We want every part of your life to get bigger.

Okay?

We want you to understand who you are in Christ because of Christ.

I know who I am because I know who you are.

There's a reciprocal, we sang it, there's a reciprocal relationship to those two kinds of knowledge there, okay?

This is why every Sunday we get together, whether it's me or Julian or Ian or Blake or Wade or whoever, they open a Bible and they tell you what it says.

And we give the understanding.

So you walk away and go, you know what, I gotta think about that.

Here's why, and I'm done.

You are capable of everything the Bible says.

Let me say that again.

You are capable of everything the Bible says.

Every command of the Bible.

That's why the Bible says the commands of the Lord are not burdensome.

It's not like, ah, are you for real?

No.

No, the psalmist said it's like honey in my mouth.

It is it is that sweet.

Oh my goodness, everything.

And you're capable.

Okay?

If you're a Christian, if you're not a Christian, you're not capable.

People say to me, I could never live like the Bible talks about.

And I go, You're exactly right.

Yeah.

If it feels like you're pushing a boulder uphill, that's an indication.

And it's also an invitation.

Does that make sense?

Say amen.

Let's pray together.

If you're a guest, just relax.

We like to teach the Bible, then we give you some space to think about it.

Some questions come up on the screen.

That's for your consideration, contemplation.

Just ask you, ask the Lord, what have my name on it today?

What were you saying to me today, God?

Because I don't want to miss it.

Let's just think for a minute before we're dismissed.

Lord, we don't fail because when we're faithful, we leave the out, we just do the next right thing and we leave the outcomes to you.

That's obedience.

It's not success or failure, it's just obedience.

So, Lord, remind us today, Holy Spirit, just to obey and leave the outcomes to you.

We're tired of having a manufactured life.

We want to experience the received life that only Jesus can give.

I pray for anyone in this room that doesn't know what that means, doesn't understand that.

Lord, you put such a desire, such an appetite in them that it wouldn't leave them alone.

Help them to understand you were created for a relationship with God.

Not religion, but a relationship.

Lord, thank you for this truth today.

It is our responsibility as the shepherds to equip the saints for the work of ministry and to build up the body of Christ.

We're not here to advertise a campaign or a slogan or any other advertising nonsense that we ripped off from the world.

We're here to be the body of Christ, and that's enough for us.

So, Holy Spirit, be glorified in this place, in these people, we pray in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

If you're a guest today, let me say thanks for being here.

If you have any questions about anything you saw or heard, some of our pastors will be available down front.

We would love to help you process those questions, take the next step in your in your spiritual journey.

Or if you're going through something, you say, Hey man, I just need somebody to pray for me.

I want to be reminded, I'm not in this alone.

Absolutely.

We want to pray with you, okay?

We always have things going on in the life of our church.

We make you aware of those every week by way of our video announcements.

Let's check out the screens and see what's coming up in the days ahead.

The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.

So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.

They took Jesus.

And he went out bearing his own cross to the place called the place of Skull, which is in Aramaic, is called Golgatha.

There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.

Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

Good Friday.

Easter.

Each of these days make up Holy Week.

As we remember the last week of Jesus' life, we take time to stand in the history of our Lord and Savior.

As we look to the Passion of Jesus Christ, we pray in the power of the Holy Spirit that our faith would be renewed, our consciousness provoked, and our hearts would burn with the truth of the gospel.

We'll sing Hosanna, for our King has come.

We'll sing it is finished, for our sacrifice was slain.

We'll sing hallelujah, for he is risen.

Join with us as we gather each day of Holy Week to worship our crucified and risen king.

When we say Holy Week, that begins uh two weeks on the 13th of April.

It's Palm Sunday.

It's called Palm Sunday because they welcomed Jesus with palm branches, shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna.

And then things took a very God-intended turn for the better.

And so if you've if you're like, I don't know what Holy Week is, it doesn't mean you're a dumb person.

It just means no one's ever explained it to you.

It's the last week of Jesus' life.

It's called the Passion Week because passion is the amount of suffering someone's willing to endure in pursuit of a goal.

Hear that last part in pursuit of a goal.

Okay?

There's always a purpose to what God does.

All right?

All right, we'd like to conclude our service with a spoken blessing.

So if you would stand to your feet, hold your hands out.

Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.

That's your identity.

It is secure, it is safe, it is eternal.

Depart now and skip wildly into this reality.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.