August 23, 2026 | Building The Body of Christ - Part 2

Sometimes I get a sense there may be some barriers to you receiving God's word this morning.

And I've kind of sensed that this morning.

So here's something interesting.

You ever been in church?

They go, you know, just set everything aside, set all your problems aside, set everything you're dealing with aside.

And I just want to tell you, don't do that.

Just stick with all your issues and all the feelings you have right now.

It's okay.

I'm going to pray right now for God to speak to you through it all.

Let's pray.

Lord, I know that some have come in here this morning, and I know some people don't even want to be here.

They're here for whatever reason.

They don't want to be here, though.

I know some others that they have a lot of suffering right now.

They can barely even hear what I'm saying because they're just struggling.

And Lord, some of us are just in sin.

And Lord, in the midst of all of it, I ask that you would speak to us your word and grow us and mature us and make us sold out, committed God lovers.

In Jesus' name, amen.

At the moment, I have two adult daughters.

They have their birthdays five days apart.

And when they were little, I would um I would mess with them when they were little.

You ever mess with your kids?

And I would tell them when they were around of three years old and turned into seven years old, I would tell them to stop growing.

Just stop growing.

And they would say, No, we're not gonna stop growing, we're gonna keep growing, ha ha ha.

And I would say, No, I want you to be little babies again.

And I would tickle them and say, Stop growing, stop growing.

And praise God, they didn't listen to me.

They kept growing and growing.

Now they are mature, adult, young women.

That's natural, that's healthy, that's good.

But what we don't like is when adults, or at least people who look like adults, act like kids and never grew.

I mean, it's really funny on the playground when you see some toddlers, you know, trying to be selfish and fighting over things, and if they don't get their way, they throw a fit, and then they eventually take their toys and leave.

We go, oh, that's so cute.

What's not cute as we age, as we continue to do that.

I mean, I'll admit it, we're all selfish.

Every single one of us.

And when we don't get our way, sometimes we throw a fit.

And if we don't really get our way, we'll take our toys and leave.

And that's just it's not a pretty sight.

Now take a lot of people like that and dump them into one church.

And from time to time, you'll have people arise with a loud voice and they're not getting their way, and they'll throw a fit and they say, you know what?

If you don't do what I want to do, we're gonna leave.

And to that I say, bye.

And you may say, Well, that's really rude.

That's really rude.

You can't say bye.

You gotta be patient and merciful, and I believe all that stuff.

But I want to tell you something I heard this week.

Here, here this catch this.

If you baby Christians, you will get baby Christians.

We're not here to baby you.

We're not here to give you your way just because you want your way.

And I believe, and I think I believe this.

I think I think everybody in here does not want to be babied.

You're saying, Pastor, just give it to me straight.

I don't care what it is, I don't care, I'll take it.

I'm not gonna be a baby anyway.

Just tell me.

All right, so let me tell you right now.

This morning we're gonna talk about you growing in every area of your life, and I mean every area.

And so if you invite God in, let's say He this He's the contractor of your life, and you say, Okay, come on, God, follow me around the house of my heart.

I want you to renovate the kitchen.

That part's not looking so well, the bathrooms are a little stinky, let's fix those.

Go into the family room, let's renovate that.

And God's like, What about the basement?

Oh no, that's locked.

There'll be no renovating that part of my life.

And this morning, God's like, no, that part too.

I want to renovate all of you and grow all of you and mature every single part of your life and get this.

It's not a single player game.

He not only wants to renovate you, but everybody else, and he wants to mature us and grow us as a church.

Let's look at Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Ephesians chapter 4, we got to ask ourselves, well, you want to talk about growth.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

What exactly are we growing?

If you're a big note taker this morning, just ask yourself the question, what's growing?

What are we growing?

What are we building here?

What are we doing?

All right, well, let's jump in.

Ephesians 4, start in verse 7.

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

In the context, there we're talking about gifts.

The Jesus, the ascendant one, exalted, gives gifts to every single person in this room.

That means the person next to you and you need them, you need me, and I need you.

Just last week, when I got done preaching, I walked in the back like I normally do, and some guy in our church came up unprompted and just started praying for me.

He wasn't praying for me before the sermon so that I would, you know, by God's power would bless the people.

He prayed for me after the sermon.

And I want to say, for no particular reason at all, I need him.

You need people like that.

We need each other.

And so we're gifted.

And those specific gifts, you can read them later, are in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12.

But last week we also saw a variety of gifts in something we called apest.

Apest.

That God has given apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher to his church for the building up of the body of Christ.

Let's look at verse 11.

Verse 11 gets very specific and says, and he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers.

And the point of giving these specific people to each church is to build the church up so we grow.

And I'm gonna keep asking the question this morning: what are we building?

What are we growing?

I want to show you my first picture this morning.

Let me show you this picture of this church.

This is Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain.

How many of you have been there?

That's a lot of you.

You've been inside there.

Uh this thing started to be built in 1882.

That's when they laid the first stone in Barcelona, Spain.

It was designed by the architect Antonio Gaudi.

Now get this.

He designed something so massive and so intricate that he knew it would never be finished in his lifetime.

And when people would press him and say, hey, when's it going to be finished?

He would always say, My client is not in a hurry.

And he kept building and building and building, and he died in 1926.

And so you have a generation of architects and stonemasons, ordinary craftsmen building through Civil War, through decades of money running dry, and a variety of things, and most of the people who built it didn't even live to see it going up.

But for those of you who've been inside, would you say it's pretty amazing?

Pretty amazing.

Now you may say, Pastor, that's awesome and everything, but we have something in Arkansas that's just as awesome.

Let me show you a picture.

How many of you have been there?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

My wife and some ladies' friends from the church went this past week.

That's amazing.

Bucky's is amazing.

And so you want to you want to say, okay, okay, let's contrast the two.

What are we building?

Bucky's is there to to fill you up and to keep you moving.

But when you walk into Sagrata Familia, you stop moving.

You're blown away.

And what I want to see this morning is God is building this church, and the gates of hell will not prevail.

And we're not talking about a building, we're not talking about a pit stop.

We're talking about people growing and maturing in the Lord.

And the way that happens is through gifted people building into you.

And last week we talked about the apostle and the evangelists, those with the specific kind of apostolic giftings of sending us out into the world.

Those are the gifting of sharing the gospel locally, nationally, globally.

And we talked about this idea of extensive and intensive growth.

Remember that?

Extensive growth, we get the gospel out there.

And when the apostle, those are those giftings stir us up, the evangelists stir us up to share the gospel, and we get the gospel out there.

But this week, we're going to talk about these three intensive growth giftings that work inside the church.

Once again, look at verse 11.

And he gave some as apostles and some as prophets.

All right.

Prophets.

What is a prophet?

Well, let's give you a technical definition.

Let's just say that prophets don't exist today.

Well, some prophets exist today, but they're false prophets.

Because the prophets we're talking about here have received revelation from God, and they're giving it to a gift of the church.

We're talking about writing scriptures, laying the foundation.

And I want to tell you, we're not waiting for new revelation.

We're not in some place in Utah that's waiting for revelation from God to create this new religion.

No, no, the canon is closed.

We have the word of God.

I would say there's not prophets on par with the scripture prophets that we see in the Word of God.

However, some of you have a kind of a what we would call a prophetic gifting.

And here's what it looks like to have a prophetic gifting.

You see what the Word of God says, and you see where the church is at, and you see the gap, and you're like, we need to do something about that.

And you're you're uncomfortable and you make people uncomfortable because you take the word, you're trying to apply it to what you see, and you want to speak the truth where there's a gap.

Now, let me just give you a heads up.

For those of you who have this gifting, if you are immature, this gifting is going to be a mess.

You're just going to be some, it's going to be like a smoke detector that chirps during dinner.

That's you, just chirping, chirping, chirping, chirping, chirping.

Because you're immature, you don't know how to use this gifting.

But those who are mature know the right time to speak.

And the smoke detector goes off when there's an actual fire.

And they speak into that.

We need you in this church.

Not the beeping kind, the blaring kind.

Well, not only do we have that gift for the church, but we notice we also have uh prophets, evangelists, and some as pastors-teachers.

Now it's debatable whether in the original Greek this is talking about one gift, one person, a pastor, teacher.

And you can talk about the distinctions or the non-distinctions all day long, but I in practice, in practice, I can see a distinction between the pastors and teachers.

Now get this.

All pastors must be teachers.

But not all teachers are pastors.

Some of you are great teachers, but terrible shepherds.

And that's okay.

Because the pastor, and I'm using that word broadly, and I can apply it to everyone here.

Um, some of you have some really good shepherding gifts.

You notice when someone's not here.

You notice when someone is suffering.

You can see stuff that are going on in someone's heart.

You have that gifting, and you care for the body of Christ, and you want others to care for the body of Christ.

We would call you a shepherd, someone who cares.

But some of you also have this gift of teaching.

You know the Word of God.

You teach it with clarity.

We can understand it.

Many of the men and women in here have such powerful teaching gifts.

And I want to tell you, some of you have 40 years of Bible in you.

And that is not for you to win Bible trivia.

That is for you to take the word that you've known for all the years and to pour it into others.

Because we have people in here that maybe have been a Christian for 40 days.

They don't know much of the Bible at all.

And we're so glad you're here.

That's why we want you here.

We want to encourage the teachers to pour into all of us.

It's not for you to contebe it with yourself.

And if you're saying, well, where where can we find these teachers?

Go to our Sunday school classes after this service, and you'll be blown away.

The level of teaching in this church is on another level.

And you may say, Well, Pastor, do you teach there?

No way.

Why?

There's amazing gifted men and women will be teaching right after.

I dare you to go.

You'll be blown away by the level of teaching in this church, and that is by gifted people.

And you say, okay, we have these five apests.

What's going on?

What are we building?

What are they doing?

Well, look at verse 12.

For the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.

So the idea is that those five, along with a variety of other gifts, are meant to equip you.

They're not meant to do all the all the work.

In fact, the teachers are to teach others, and perhaps those who are being taught can teach others one day, right?

The shepherds who are shepherding others, maybe they can shepherd others who can also shepherd.

See, we're all being built up.

We are growing.

We are growing into this building.

And I'm going to keep coming back to the question.

And the question is, well, what are we building?

We have all these workers.

What are we building?

When you see a sign on the side of the road that something's about to be built there, you wonder what it is, and you're thinking, please don't let it be another bank, right?

What are they building?

So if we have a sign on our church, what exactly are we building?

Well, look at verse 13.

Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

And there it is right there.

We are building unity and we're building maturity.

That's all you need to know from this morning.

That is what we're building.

We are growing in unity and we are growing in maturity.

Look at the unity part again.

Look at again.

It says in verse 13, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

We are building unity in this church around the Word of God.

We're not building unity about what everybody wants to bring to the table, but yet we are distinct people.

And I want to tell you, this church is amazing because not only does it have people from different backgrounds and different denominations, but we also have retired pastors in this church from different theological spectrums in this church united around the Word of God.

So in this section, we have a retired Southern Baptist pastor.

In this section, retired Church of Christ pastor.

Like right now.

In this section, retired assembly of God pastor.

In this section, retired non-denominational pastor.

All in one church.

We don't let them sit by each other, but still.

Yeah?

You get it?

That's this church.

Like, why would people from different backgrounds be here?

This is because of the word of God.

This is the centrality right here.

Yes, we have nuances from our different backgrounds.

We're not saying those are unimportant, but we are ignited around the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Not only are we building unity, but if you also notice in verse 11, up at verse 13 again, it says, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, here it is, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

We are here to grow and mature.

And what does maturity look like?

Did you see it there?

To the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Jesus wants his church to look like himself.

And he's not just saying, just go do it.

No, no.

He knows us in our sin.

He saves us.

And now by the power of the Spirit, He's making us more like Himself.

And when we abide in Him, we bear fruit and we grow.

Someone once said that growing old is automatic, growing up is intentional.

Gray hair proves you survived.

Christ-likeness proves you yielded.

It's intentional growing.

It's intentional growing.

And there will be times when you will hear things that may hit you crossway and you can Lord speak to me.

Why does that happen at church?

People are speaking the word of God to me.

I need to hear that.

Because we're not here to baby Christians.

Once again, if you baby Christians, you get baby Christians.

We're not here to do that.

We are here to give you the word of God to see you grow.

And if you do not build unity and if you do not build maturity in a church, you know what's going to happen?

That church, I guarantee you, will drift.

Look at verse 14.

As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming.

It's interesting this word trickery, it's the word uh cubia, which literally means dice playing.

It's a picture of a rigged game where false teachers or con men are playing with loaded dice.

The game looks fair, the talk sounds smooth, but the house always wins.

And immature believers, if you notice, are also like a little boat tossed in the ocean, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.

So what we have in our culture and through other churches, if you have winds of doctrine trying to blow through and make the church drift, they try to trick you with their loaded dice and they'll say things to you like Jesus is not the only way to heaven.

They'll say things that try to blow you sideways to say, you know, there really is no hell.

And that the Bible is full of errors, and you gotta add good works to your faith to be saved.

God wants you healthy and wealthy, so give, give, give, give.

And you may say, I hear you, Pastor, but that's not us.

And I want to say to you, that's not us yet.

When you see a super theologically liberal church, do you think they started that way?

Some of our major institutions and schools and seminaries, primarily on the on the east coast, were solid, theological, foundational, and they've drifted so far, and that does not happen overnight.

So I say, okay.

We're solid now, but we can drift just like anybody else.

My son Elijah is at Southern Seminary in Louisville, and right across the street is a super liberal seminary.

And he said to me, He said, Well, if the Southern Baptists don't send me out, I guess I can just walk across the street.

Maybe they'll send me to the mission field.

And I said to him, kind of jokingly, I said, Oh no, that school won't take you.

They won't take you because you're a white heterosexual male.

You're like, what?

White heterosexual?

What's that have to do with anything?

Exactly.

Because when you walk into some liberal churches across our country, they start talking about stuff you don't even know what they're talking about.

They elevate a variety of trans people to their leadership, homosexual people to their leadership, slam white people, slam males, and you think, how do we end up here?

Well, let me tell you this.

They started a lot looking just like us, solid on the word of God.

And over the years, they drifted.

And you go, how did that happen?

Which brings me back to Bucky's.

I don't know if Bucky's offers very many nutritional options.

It's meant to not only fill up your car, but the food there is going to fill you up as well.

But I'm not sure it's very healthy.

But it's gonna fill you up.

Especially something that they call their beaver nuggets.

Not sure what a beaver nugget is, but it's crunchy corn puff full of sugar.

It's sweet going down, but it's starving you slowly.

And many churches are built on beaver nugget theology.

A little bit here, a little bit of truth there.

Have some beaver nuggets.

Nothing's ever gonna hit you crossway, nothing's ever gonna going to convict you, nothing's ever gonna make you feel bad because they're just throwing out beaver nuggets.

Well, you're not gonna survive on beaver nugget theology.

You will drift, you'll be tricked, and you'll be out to sea.

And that's why we need the word of God given to you by those who are gifted to raise up others, to say solid in the word, and to minister to others.

Let's continue on.

I want you to look at verse 15.

How do we do that?

But speaking in the truth and love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.

So if we're building this building, if we're growing, then what does that exactly look like?

What does it mean to speak the truth in love?

Well, try speaking the truth without love, and that's a mess.

Or try saying, hey, we're just gonna be loving here and we're gonna leave truth behind.

That's also a mess.

So we want to be about those who are speaking the truth and also have love.

Because truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is cruelty.

So what you want each week, each day with one another, you need to know that we speak the truth and love and we say, this is real.

And I'm not telling you this because I'm trying to be mean to you.

I'm telling you this because I love you and I want you to grow up.

I don't want you to be babied, I don't want you to be fed beaver nugget theology.

We are here to grow up and to mature.

And if you notice, verse 15, grow up in all aspects.

Your version may say, grow up in every way.

And when we grow up in every way, that does not leave out any way.

So specifically, God wants you to grow up in every way, not leaving out any way, including that stuff in the basement of your life that you don't want to deal with.

God's like, this morning, let's deal with that.

And you go, that's scary.

That's really evil.

I just want to tell you that Jesus did not die for good people.

He died for evil people like me.

People like you.

People that hide stuff in their basement.

He's not surprised.

That's what the cross is for.

The cross is for sin.

And we can bring it to him and be forgiven.

I'm not saying, okay, bring that stuff out of the basement.

Boy, Jesus is gonna get you.

No, he knows.

That's what he wants to do.

He wants to grow you in every area of your life.

And every area means nothing is off limits.

He wants to mature you and to grow you, and he gives you power to do so.

Look at verse 16.

From whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

Well, Paul's mixing some metaphors here.

He's talking about the body building itself up.

It's interesting, this seems like the building is alive.

This building, this church, apart from the physical building, is being built up, is alive.

And the reason why that happens, it says the proper working of each individual part.

So every single person plays a part in this church growing and maturing.

Not the paid parts, not some parts, each part.

And I want to tell you, this church does not run on volunteers.

This church runs on body parts.

That's a difference.

You see, a volunteer can quit, but a hand can't resign.

You get that?

We're the body, we're growing, we're each doing our part.

Those are the apostolic gifts are trying to get us out there.

Those are the evangelistic giftings, they're trying to get us a share of the gospel.

The shepherd and gifts are they're caring for us, right?

Pastor and teacher, they're teaching you the truth.

Prophets saying, hey, look at the gap.

Time to grow.

We're growing in unity, we're growing in maturity to look like Jesus.

That's the goal of the church to look like the head Jesus Christ.

Well, this past year, finally, after 144 years of building the Sagrata Famia, they they uh pretty much almost finished it.

They put on top of it this past uh February this cross, and it makes this church building the tallest in the world.

And all the scaffolding and all the the cranes came down, and they're still working on a little bit, but man, it looks a lot uh amazing with all the scaffolding down.

And I want to just say our church, the body.

Until we're with Jesus, we're gonna be in the scaffolding years.

People are gonna look at us and go, what is that?

Yeah, we're gonna have cranes all around us, scaffolding all around us.

But you know, we have an architect too, and our architect died, just like Gaudi died, and our architect came back to life, and our architect's still building and growing his church right now, and he's using you to build unity, to grow maturity in this body of Christ.

But if you show up here thinking this is Bucky's, you're just gonna pop in and you're gonna get filled up and you're gonna grab a blessing, and you're gonna be back on the road by noon.

You came to the wrong place.

Because no matter how awesome Bucky's is and all the stuff they offers, and all the hype.

I want to share something with you.

It's just a gas station.

What is going on?

We're not a Buckeyes.

God is doing no work here, He's building us, He's growing us.

And we got some scaffolding, we got some issues.

We're no church is perfect, but he's making us more and more like our head, Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Lord, I just ask that you would just use your body this morning.

I I feel like some members need to be ministering to other members next to them or around them, and and some need to be ministered to.

They need to ask someone to help them, to pray with them, to encourage them.

I just ask the body will continue to be the body.

And for those who feel stirred up, they're like, you know, we're not just here to come in and to fill up, we're here to serve.

Lord, I just ask that every single person here would not see that they're just some customer.

They're just looking for customer service.

May they come here to know this is not a travel stop.

God lives here among us.

We're not here to visit a brand.

We're we belong to this body.

And show us what that means for our own life.

What do we what are we doing to contribute, to give to this church, to serve in this church?

What does that look like?

And I just ask for me and for those in here, Lord, if there's those areas in our life that are the basement areas we don't want you to touch, convict us today.

To unlock the door and say, God, do whatever you want to do.

And may you build us up, mature us, and grow us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.