Ephesians 4:12b-14 | Maturing, part 2

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning.

Please take your Bible with me to Ephesians chapter four.

Ephesians chapter four as we wrap up this passage of scripture this morning.

We began our worship this morning singing, Come, people of the risen king.

And that's exactly what this passage talks about in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

It's all about Christ taking individual people and bringing them together and forming a new body.

I'd like to conclude looking at that this morning at the last couple of verses of this chapter.

We are called to respond to God's work by walking worthy.

That's how chapter 4 begins in verse 1.

Walk worthy in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.

What does that look like?

Well, it looks like being humble, gentle, patience, bearing with one another in love, seeking to pursue the unity of the Spirit.

As you go on in this chapter, in the middle portion of our section in verses 8, 9, and 10, it talks about Christ giving us gifts so that we might all participate in the work of the ministry.

And all of that is part of the process of growing up together, maturing together, becoming unified together.

We are not to remain spiritual children.

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

We're to grow out of childhood and into spiritual adulthood.

And now in these last two verses of this section, verses 15 and 16 of chapter 4, we begin to see what that process, that growth process, looks like.

Amen.

Life is a continual learning process.

Our world is continually changing.

It changes every day, if not every hour, or sometimes it feels like every minute.

There's something changing in our world.

Because of that continual change, we need to change.

We need to learn and to grow and adapt.

Otherwise, we're going to find ourselves at odds with our world, at odds with our society, at odds with our country.

We may find ourselves breaking laws.

We might find ourselves offending people.

We might embarrass ourselves or others.

We might fail in what we're trying to accomplish.

Maybe I can illustrate some of those things with some areas in my own life in which I have struggled to learn and adapt.

The first example is when I was a young child, maybe six, seven, eight, nine years old, I can't remember exactly when.

I was young.

My parents had a particular rule for me.

One can of pop or soda a week.

One can a week.

That was their rule.

I don't know why they made that rule.

My dad got his can of Pepsi with his popcorn every night, but I only got one a week.

And no, I'm not bitter at all.

They never told me why that, at least I don't remember them telling me why that rule was there, but it was.

I naturally did not think that was appropriate.

So, being that I felt differently, there were times when I snuck down into the basement where my dad's Pepsi was kept and had an extra can or two.

Because I failed to adapt to the rules that were set in place by my parents, I got in trouble for my decisions.

My failure to learn and to adapt to that situation did not work out well for me.

I don't remember how well I learned in that particular situation, but I do remember getting in trouble for it.

Now, fast forward several years from that point.

Sometime around my senior year high school, college, I don't remember exactly when, state of Montana changed the speed limit laws from 65 to reasonable and prudent.

What are you assuming about me?

For many people, that meant no speed limit.

But generally, if your speed was in triple digits, it was thought that you were not being reasonable and prudent.

I remember my first time driving out of state on my way to college and having to struggle to remember that other states had defined speed limit laws.

Especially when you get into Iowa and it goes down to 65 of all things.

I never received a speeding ticket, thankfully.

But I do remember that tension, that struggle to learn and then to adapt to a new situation, to learn to work within it.

If I didn't, I would obviously pay the consequences.

Now each of us has those kinds of areas in our own life where we need to learn or we may struggle to learn because we have to adapt or pay the consequences.

Just as we must learn and adapt as human beings in a changing world, we also need to learn and adapt and grow to follow our Master the Lord Jesus Christ and what he calls us to do.

We are called to grow up in our faith, to mature in our walk with the Lord.

And in our passage today in Ephesians 4, we have laid out for us four requirements for growing up.

But before we look at those requirements, I want us to understand how these two verses fit in the context.

First, they serve as a contrast.

You'll see that verse 15 starts with the word rather, indicating to us there's something different that's coming, something different than what came before.

Well, what is it that came before?

Well, if you look at verse 14, he talks about being tossed to and fro by the waves and being carried about by every wind of doctrine.

Not being tricked by human cunning or by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

So before, there's all kinds of bad doctrine and bad teaching and evil actions and scheming and all that kind of intent to deceive.

We're being told that that's the way some people are.

In fact, that's the way some people act in church.

But we, notice the middle of verse 15, we are to grow up.

We're to be different from that.

That is not to be who we are.

The church is to be a contrast to that way of operating.

Following bad doctrine and incorrect teaching and giving in to deceitful actions keeps the church grounded in infancy or toddlerhood.

But we are to grow up.

And we see here how we are to grow up.

It's very practical.

It begins in verse 15 with using proper speech.

We must speak the truth.

Just rather be different from that by speaking the truth in love.

There's only one other instance of speaking the truth found in the New Testament, surprisingly, and it's in Galatians 4.16.

The Apostle Paul speaking to the Galatian church says, Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?

Isn't that how we often respond?

If somebody speaks truth to us, we often get defensive.

That appears to be what happened between the Apostle Paul and that church, because he told them the truth.

In contrast to the winds of doctrine, false doctrine that were flowing through that church.

Now, this includes speaking factual truth.

That is, when we speak to someone or something, we speak factual truth, but it also goes to the point of proper motives and proper attitudes in communicating that truth.

It's not so much referencing our speaking truth to one another as individuals, although that's included, but it's speaking directly to our corporate speaking to the truth.

That we, as a gathering of believers at Faith Evangelical Free Church, are to hold tightly to and to hold high the truth of God.

That's why a little bit later in chapter 6, verse 14, we are called to strap on the truth as though it were a belt in our spiritual battle.

That truthfulness, grounded in the pages of Scripture, is part of what enables us to stand firm, to stand united in the gospel in the midst of a spiritual war.

Because if there is no truth, there is no unity.

And truth unites.

The methods of some, we are told, are deceitful.

They don't speak the truth, or they suppress the truth, and as a result, they don't live the truth either.

But as the body of Christ, we are called not only to speak the truth, both individually and corporately, but then we are to live it out.

That's what he means when he says, walk in a manner worthy of your calling.

One commentator described the meaning of this phrase like this that, quote, the believer's conduct should be transparent, revealing the state of affairs as opposed to hiding or suppressing the truth through cunning and deceit.

End quote.

This is so important for the health and the maturity of the church.

We are called to pursue unity, to bear with one another in a humble, gentle, and patient way, and that's simply impossible to do if we are not willing to allow truth to be in the forefront.

If we think for some reason that it's okay to not be truthful, or to hide the truth, to cover the truth, to suppress it, or to act in a way that's deceitful, then we will destroy the unity of the church.

We will begin to undermine it, causing it to crumble from within.

Now that doesn't mean that truth is always easy to communicate, or that it will be well received.

But speaking and living the truth is always best.

My parents used to tell me that it would always go better for me if I told the truth first.

That I didn't you know, if if I did something wrong and I fessed up to it and spoke the truth, that somehow the discipline would be better.

Didn't feel better.

But God tells us that speaking the truth is always better.

We are called by our Lord to speak and to live out the truth of the gospel.

We, as a fellowship of believers, must be willing to put the truth of God at the forefront of who we are and what we do and what we believe.

But we must speak the truth with love.

Rather, speaking the truth in love.

That tells us about the manner in which we are to speak the truth.

It tells us that any sort of cunning or deceit or evil schemes are automatically ruled out of our speech and our actions.

To put it in a word that we often use today that we don't really find in Scripture, but is true, we are not to use our truth in order to manipulate.

We're very adept at that human beings.

I think it comes naturally to us to use truth to manipulate, to get our own ends.

In love here dominates the book of Ephesians, and it actually begins and ends this section.

If you look back at verse 2, where we're told to bear to with humility and gentleness and patience bear with one another in love.

We will see in verse 16 that the body builds itself up in love, therefore we are to speak the truth in love.

But what does in love mean?

What does it mean to speak the truth in a way that is loving?

Well, it does not mean that we should sit back and refrain from being truthful because it might cause heartache and pain.

That's suppressing the truth.

It does not mean that we should somehow passively ignore the need for truthfulness because of what might result.

It does not mean that we should be overly blunt or overly rude in speaking the truth.

It does mean that the body of Christ in our actions and in our speech should always, always, always seek the highest good of the one being loved.

Deceit and cunning in verse 14 is employed for selfish reasons, but love always considers others more important than oneself.

So harshness and unkindness should be avoided, but directness can still be employed in a proper way.

We need to avoid speaking the truth in a way that is retaliatory.

But it can still be stated and illustrated against untruthfulness or wrong action in a righteous way.

We need to avoid sarcasm.

That's probably something that I struggle with.

We need to avoid sarcasm.

But clarity and honesty with gentleness in the expression of truth should be our aim.

We need to avoid sinful anger.

But righteous anger can be lovingly expressed when God's character has been maligned or when scripture has been disobeyed or when the gospel has been undermined or ignored.

See, the point is this truth must reign in the church.

But the communication of truth can be done in a humble, gentle, patient way that understands and bears with the weaknesses of others.

Truth must never be separated from love.

And it must never be promoted at the expense of others.

Truth should not be communicated in a way that tears down another person, but instead we uphold the truth of the gospel, we uphold God's truth, and we do so in a building up kind of way.

Now it is not uncommon for upsetting things to happen in churches.

We shouldn't be surprised when we get bothered or upset or irritated or frustrated when things happen in the local church that we don't like.

We're sinful people.

It happens.

Let's face it, we often use particular tones that irritate us, that irritate others.

That are offensive.

We We sometimes feel as though the truth is not expressed properly or lived out well or demonstrated in a loving way.

Let me encourage you.

The method of dealing with those kinds of frustrations and hurts and pains is not by running away from it.

It's not by keeping it inside and letting it eat away at you.

It's not by running to somebody else and gossiping about it.

We're a family, a fellowship, a body.

And so we ought to be able to work through those things biblically to help us grow up.

So let me give you some suggestions as to how we could spend all morning talking about this, but let me give you a handful of suggestions.

If you are offended or bothered or concerned about the manner of communication that has taken place, ask yourself these questions before you go too far.

Number one, did the person have the right heart or intention?

Did the person who offended me in what they said or how they said it, did they have the right intention or the right heart?

If you don't know the answer to that question, then you have no business being angry or upset or bothered without first speaking with that person to find out their heart, to find out their intention.

Surprisingly, you may go to that person and you may talk things over with them and you may find out that they have the exact same thinking as you do.

They just didn't communicate very well.

Second question to ask ourselves, did I misunderstand their intention or their heart?

Again, if you don't know the answer to that question, you have no business forming a judgment without speaking to them first in a loving way.

Third question to ask ourselves, did they communicate truth but struggle to do it appropriately?

I think we do this a lot.

We often speak truthfully, but we speak truthfully in an inappropriate way.

So we need to ask, am I being gracious in bearing with their faults in the midst of a trying time?

You know, somebody may speak truth to us, and they may do it in a frustrated or an irritated tone, and we may be offended by that.

But we may not know what they've been through this week.

We may not understand that they got a phone call in the middle of the night that just ruined them.

So we have no business being angry or bothered.

Instead, we should go to them and find out what's going on.

We all struggle at times, but sometimes we need to have extra grace for when people communicate truth but don't do it appropriately.

We might ask ourselves, is this a situation where righteous anger could have been appropriate?

So if somebody communicates to you in a way that expresses anger, we might be offended by that.

But could it be that that anger was expressed because of the belief that truth was being ignored or being undermined or that Christ was being discounted?

Is this a situation where untruthfulness was being pointed out or wrong afterwards?

Action was being challenged.

There is a place for righteous anger.

And if there is a legitimate expression of that, we need to be gracious to other people in their expression of that.

Here's the bottom line.

As a family, we should be on the same page.

We should be able to go to one another and say, hey, did you mean to come across this way?

Well, when you said this and this and this, is this what you meant?

Did you mean to communicate this?

Truth should not be suppressed, but supported and declared, but we can do that in a loving way.

Now, sometimes we don't.

That's just the way we are.

We're sinful people.

If you have been offended, then go to the one who has offended you and speak to them lovingly.

Tell them that their words or their tone or their attitude hurt.

But be careful that your tone is not offensive and your spirit is not condemning.

Seek to understand and learn the heart of people in the matter.

Seek to understand why they said what they said, why they did what they did, why they did it in this way, and then instantly be willing to forgive because Christ has forgiven you.

That's how we grow up together.

That's how we mature together.

Now, if you're the one approached in that kind of way, our first reaction is to set up the walls, isn't it?

And not just flimsy walls, but brick walls.

We need to be careful about that.

We need to respond in a humble, gentle, and patient way, bearing with the person who comes to us.

You might be in the right.

You might have said the exact and perfect truth, but not realize the tone in which you said it.

You may not realize how you came across.

And you may have to bear a little bit of your heart to help them see your intentions, but you may have to exercise great humility in being willing to say, please forgive me for offending you.

I didn't mean to come across that way.

That was unloving.

In a similar way, sometimes we don't fully understand why particular decisions are made within the body of Christ or the reason for why such and such was done.

Don't get up in arms about it until you understand it more fully.

Seek to find out why something was done or the reason behind it.

Ask someone who knows, rather than someone who feels strongly about it but doesn't know anything.

And don't run and talk about it to somebody else because you're making an assumption.

Don't assume and then go gossip about it.

Instead, be lovingly humble, gentle, and patient, and seek to know the truth.

It's in that way that we can grow up together by speaking the truth in love.

Now I've spent the majority of my time this morning just talking about that.

There's a reason for that because that sets the stage, that's the foundation for everything that comes after this in the text.

If we are setting aside the improper ways, can we say, of doing church, of living together as the body of Christ, and instead we begin speaking the truth in love, it's then that we can together begin to pursue the proper goals.

What is the proper goal?

Proper goal is to have full submission to the head of the body, which is Christ.

If you chop off your head, the rest of your body doesn't do so well.

Maybe that's a surprise to you, but if we fail to submit to the head of the church, we don't do so well.

We are to grow up into him.

We submit to his direction, to his instruction, to his demands.

They all become our own.

So we submit our thoughts, our feelings, our hearts, our minds, our attitudes to him.

And we begin then to grow comprehensively into every way.

We are to grow up in every way.

Then you take a young child to the doctor, they do all kinds of tests, all kinds of exams because they want to make sure that a child is growing up in every way.

We are to grow up spiritually in every way.

That means we have no excuses for remaining spiritual infants or spiritual toddlers.

It's talking about the depth of our growth, the quality of our growing together.

And that must be our collective goal as a church.

Yeah, there will be times when we fail to be in submission to Christ.

There will be times when we fail to grow in an area or two or five.

But our collective goal together, being unified in it, is to grow up into full submission to Christ in every part of our spiritual lives.

And we have to do that together.

We must maintain proper connections.

Verse 16 gives us some medical descriptions.

I've wondered sometimes if the Apostle Paul hadn't just finished reading the latest medical journal of his time.

Verse 16, speaking of Christ, he is the from whom, the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, and it is working properly, makes the body grow.

Joined and held together.

That word joined only occurs two times in the New Testament.

It means to fit something together in a perfect, connected way.

Ancient buildings were built with stone, and generally without mortar to keep the stones connected together.

So even today you can go to the Middle East or to Egypt and find stones that were elaborately removed from quarries.

Those stones had to be cut properly with hand tools and natural processes so that they could be taken to the place of construction and fit perfectly together.

There are stones still today weighing multiple tons that are so perfectly fit together that you cannot slide a piece of paper between them.

That's what it means when it says Christ has taken us and joined us together.

We are not chaotically thrown together into groups that have no purpose and no intention, just parts jumbled together.

No, Christ takes us carefully and skillfully, puts us together like a master craftsman.

He says we are held together.

That's a word that refers to the holding of parts together.

It was often used, the parts of a body of sinews and ligaments.

Believers in Christ are brought together in a way that makes complete and perfect sense.

Maybe not to us, but to the builder that makes perfect sense.

We might rebel against that on occasion.

We might rub up against one another and feel, you're kind of rough.

We might rebel against the fitting sometimes.

But Christ knows exactly how the pieces ought to fit together.

And so we must remain in proper contact.

That's what the word joint means.

It was used in a medical way of ligaments or muscles that were connecting together.

Joining.

In this context, it speaks of the contact or the connection between people who are part of the Lord's body.

We are told here that we can only mature and grow up together if we have contact with other members of the body.

Last Sunday, as we were looking at verses 13 and 14, made the comment that we can't come to maturity through YouTube church or live streaming church.

We grow up together, in contact with other members of the Lord's body.

We are distinct members, but we're one body.

And we come together exercising the gifts that Christ has given us, speaking and living out the truth in love in individual and collective ways.

It's all needed because that's how the Lord has determined that we must grow.

And as we grow together, that requires expending the proper energy.

When each part is working properly, the body grows and builds itself up in love.

Working there is literally energized.

When each part is energized properly, that's referring back to the measure of Christ's gift that is given to each of us.

We have each been given a measure of Christ's energizing to fulfill a part in the body.

And he expects us to use that enablement in the measure given to us.

That's emphasizing the individual believer's responsibility to do his or her part in the ministry and not depend on others to do the work that God has enabled you to do.

Because God has enabled someone over here to do something that he's not enabled someone over here to do.

In the physical body, if the liver cells are more active than what they were designed for, the body's going to be harmed.

If they stop functioning, the body's going to suffer consequences because other body parts can't step in and be a liver when the liver's not working.

Pain can even occur when a body part is defective or is in excess or isolated from the rest of the body.

Unfortunately, the way churches often work is that the liver is trying to do the work of the pancreas because the pancreas has decided it doesn't want to serve today.

Sometimes in the church, the leg is limping along to do the work of the ministry because the toes decided they don't want to work that day.

The emphasis is that we should all be working together in service to Christ because we are one body.

He hasn't called one of us to do everything, he's called all of us to work together.

The problem is that in too many churches we have too many who don't do their part, and likewise too many who do too much.

And so the body then begins to break down.

But when we all come together in a unified way, the body functions marvelously well.

Because that's how its builder designed it to work.

We must do everything in love by bearing with one another and living out the truths of the gospel.

That's why he ends this section with it makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

The body grows by being carefully fitted and held together and by exercising our service gifts together.

That's the gracious act of Christ.

He has given us everything we need to be the body of Christ.

He's fit us together perfectly.

He's wise in how he does that.

We may not think he's done it too well sometimes, but he's perfectly wise in fitting the parts together.

And our concern ought not to be how he fits us together, but our responsibility in pursuing unity, exercising the energizing that he's given each of us and communicating the truth in love.

That's all part, as he talks later in verse 20, of learning Christ.

As we learn Christ and we grow up in this way, we begin to display less of us and more of Christ.

We grow up and we mature as we imitate God our Father as obedient children.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we confess that we too often act like toddlers.

We let ourselves run the show.

We let our own feelings, our own unrestrained emotions get the best of us.

We sin.

We ask that you would forgive us and that you would give us that energizing work of your spirit to grow up together.

Lord, you said that the world would know that we here in Grand Forks, North Dakota, at Faith Evangelical Free Church are your disciples by our love for one another.

Make us grow up in love, we ask.

Cause us to be the children you've made us to be.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.