"Built by Love" Ephesians 4:15-16 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

This is the word of our Lord.

It declares, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ until we attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure and the stature, 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.

In contrast with that, our two verses this morning, rather, speaking the truth in love, we're to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Father, we do pray for your grace to do just what we read.

We pray that your Holy Spirit would apply your grace to our life and would build us up into the image of Christ.

He is our head, we are his body.

So we pray this morning that you would make us look more like him.

Help us resemble our head.

It's him who we worship, him who we love this morning.

So we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let me describe for you three different uh somewhat uh common counseling scenarios.

I've obviously changed the names, and if you're curious, I just grabbed a random name generator which snagged the from the top 20 American names, is where these are from.

Just I'm telling you that now to avoid questions later.

Jack and Jill.

Married with a few kids.

Jack is more into his work than into his wife, and his wife and Jill is more into finding her identity and being a mom than she is into displaying love for her husband.

This creates distance in their relationship.

He has distance between his wife and himself as he seeks and retreats more and more into his work, and she takes refuge in her family, her extended family, her local friends, her own children.

She finds more friendship and fellowship there than she does with her husband.

And of course, this is a cycle that just exaggerates itself over time as it gets worse and worse.

As they create distance between each other, they turn cold towards each other.

He begins to turn to illicit things online.

She begins to speak badly about him to her friends, which is what she's doing often.

All he wants, he says, if you were to ask him, is a wife who would love him and show him the respect that he deserves for how well he provides for his family.

All she wants, if you ask her, would be a husband that loves her and cares for her.

After all, doesn't she just deserve that?

Or take Michael and Maria.

Michael is not a good leader, but that's fine because Maria is strong-willed enough for the both of them.

Michael has no problem letting her run the house.

She has no problem doing that either, but if we're being honest, it's not being done well.

She's frankly too busy between her work and between parenting.

Their house is a mess.

They don't really discipline their kids at all, who, again, if we're being honest, are actually the ones who are running things at home.

You hear lines from Michael and Marie all the time, like, we can't spank our kids because, you know, you know how kids are, they just, it doesn't work on them.

You know, they're so moody.

They just are so they get angry so quickly, you know, because you know how they are.

If they don't get the right snack or if they get food dye or whatever, it's all over.

Discipline on them just doesn't work.

So their house turns out to be out of control.

If you were to ask Michael or Maria what they're looking for in life, the answer you would get is we just need a moment of peace.

I guess that will come when our kids turn 18.

Steve and Linda.

Steve was raised in a somewhat stable Christian home.

Linda, on the other hand, was raised in a very abusive family and abusive environment.

She was certainly mistreated.

There's no denying that.

Now in marriage, she doesn't want to have children, so that they won't have to go through what she went through when she was a child.

Her husband knew that there were issues when they got married, but now those issues are manifesting themselves in a lack of trust towards him as well as towards others.

All Steve wants is a family, but Linda feels like any talk about a family is an attack on her and a lack of belief for what she has gone through.

And so they're a bit of a stale.

May he rightly feels like his wife doesn't trust him, and she rightly feels like nobody knows what she has been through.

And their relationship is stuck.

And by the way, all three of those examples are somewhat common in American families, not even in Christian families, just in American families.

In fact, as you're listening to them, you probably see elements of all of those in your own marriage, in your own family.

And one more disclaimer, I'm using examples of from counseling in marriage, not because single people don't have issues as well, they do, but because it lets me sneak in twice as many examples.

See that?

Three examples, six people.

From a pastoral or a biblical perspective, obviously Jack and Jill are hiding in their work and hiding in their family.

They just want respect and love, but their starting point is themselves, what they want and what they deserve, which is of course a recipe for failure.

Michael and Maria, they don't understand marriage roles unless their parenting is falling apart.

They just want a moment of peace, but because they're starting with what works rather than with what the Bible says about marriage, they likewise are not going to see growth in their life.

Steve and Linda are dealing with abuse in their past and thus a reluctance to trust and follow God's design.

Now they're in a sense trapped in the past.

So with all six of those people, is there hope for them?

As I mentioned, these are very common scenarios.

Is there hope for those six people?

And you know, on the one hand, it's very easy to say yes, there's hope for everybody, but on the other hand, if you know people like that, you know how much easier it is to say that there is hope than sometimes to actually believe it.

So I want this morning, as we look at these two verses from Ephesians chapter 4, for you to see that these are not exceptional people, those six.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Those are everyone.

And so if there is hope for anyone in the gospel, there's certainly hope for them in the gospel, because they do, despite their difficulties, which when you don't put a name to them and a face to them, those difficulties take on a profound effect.

But if you take a step back for a second, you realize that is normal life in the fallen world.

And if there's hope for anyone in the world, there has to be hope for them.

And I think hope for them comes from passages like this morning.

Obviously, hope for them is going to come from later on in Ephesians when we get to marriage roles in chapters 5 and 6, and parenting in chapters 5 and 6.

That's coming, but it's interesting.

I think there's almost, in a sense, more hope for those kind of relationships found in little verses like this, as Paul describes what the Christian life should look like.

And I want to just pull out three points to guide us as we go through this.

First, the mandate in this passage.

The mandate here is very clearly said in verse 15, it's the imperative that we are to grow up.

Now it's said just kind of a matter of fact here, but there's an imperatival force to it.

Paul's argument here in Ephesians chapter 4 is that we are supposed to grow up.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

We're supposed to grow beyond the immaturity that was described earlier in chapter 14.

Children tossed to and fro by the waves, carried about by every wind of doctrine, a perpetual immaturity that ensnares people in the fallen world.

Paul's presenting a contrast, saying that when a person comes to faith in Christ, they should no longer be ensnared in immaturity, but they should grow up.

And that obviously is easier said than done.

But here it is that Paul is saying it.

He's saying it really as a matter of fact, that believers should be growing up into the image of Christ.

And here's where you really do need a gospel overview to understand what Paul means by this.

You understand that the world was created with only two humans on it, Adam and Eve, and they did not have marriage conflict at first.

All was well, there was harmony in their relationship.

The world was sinless, and there was joy, there was no embarrassment, there was fellowship, there was rich fellowship with the Lord as they walked in the garden with the Lord.

There was no distance between each other, there was no distance between them and God.

And then sin enters into the world, and death comes along with sin, of course.

They spiritually die the day that they rebel against God and they will physically die later.

And then all of their offspring, namely us, are born into this world with physical death and spiritual death.

We come into a world where disease ravages people, where people do get old and they do get sick and they do die, and into a world where relationships are also harmed by sin.

The fellowship that Adam and Eve experienced is now torn asunder because of sin.

And in every example of human relationship, sin creates distance and conflict.

Even in the closest relationships on earth.

Marriage relationships are most marred by sin.

You sin more against the person you spend the most time with.

That's not a statement about your spouse's weakness, that's a statement about your propensity to sin.

You sin the most against the people you're most often with.

That's a statement about you.

Parents sin against children, children sin against parents, you know, these little two-year-olds, they they can't even drive or anything, you know.

You've got to feed them, you've got to take care of them, and they sin against the person who is doing that for them for no reason other than the fact that they're moderately cute.

They sin against the people that love them the most.

Well, that's true in every area of life.

Sin creates distance, it creates conflict and ushers it into the world and multiplies it.

Sin blinds you, of course.

You don't see your uh foolishness.

You don't you blame everything on everybody else.

It's not your fault.

You're just a victim of your world and of your husband or of your wife or of traffic or of your you know, incompetent boss, or of whatever.

You're just you're the victim here, aren't you?

Really?

That's what sin does.

It blinds you to that.

And that's not an American phenomena, that's a human nature phenomena.

And in the middle of that world, God sends his son, Jesus, who leads the sinless life, who never blames other people.

If there was ever an innocent victim, it obviously would have been Christ, who is entirely sinless, and yet he took on the sins of all who would ever believe.

He became in a very uh forensic or legal way guilty of their sins on the cross as God imputes our sins to Christ.

He suffers and dies on the cross for our sin, in our place.

He stands condemned as a sinner.

He's mocked, he's abused, he's scorned, he's stripped and executed for our sin.

That word for there is doing a lot of work.

He died in our place, burying our sin.

And he rises from the grave on the third day, and his resurrection does not make everything better in the world.

People are still born into sin.

They're still rebelling against their parents, they're still fighting with their spouses, they're still rebelling against God, even though Jesus conquered the grave.

And generations go by and thousands of years go by, and you're born into the world, and you're born into the world rebelling against God and sinning against those around you.

And then at some moment in time you hear the gospel and you believe the gospel, and this is your conversion.

You put your faith in the gospel, you believe the truth of what the Bible says, you believe the truth about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and you are converted.

This is your salvation, your conversion.

And there's a long period of time between that moment and glorification.

When you go to heaven and the distance between you and God is removed ultimately in heaven, where the presence of sin is removed from you in heaven, there's a period of time between your conversion and your glorification.

And that period of time is where, if you're a believer, where you are now.

And so what's happening in that period of time?

Well, this verses like this that describe what's happening in that period of time.

There's an external focus, namely evangelism, global great commission.

You're supposed to go in the world preaching the gospel to all creation.

That's one thing that's happening during this time.

Another thing, an internal dynamic that's happening during this time, is you are supposed to be growing up.

As the gospel goes to the world, you're left here on the world.

There's evangelism happening, there's missions happening that's externally facing, internally facing, you personally are supposed to be growing in the Lord.

This is what's called progressive sanctification.

Progressive because it goes through that entire period between your conversion and your glorification.

The longer you're alive as a Christian, the more sanctification you should be experiencing, the more you should be growing into the image of Christ.

That's the way this is designed to work.

And that this here is the entire Christian life.

It is designed to work with you growing up.

That's the mandate in verse 15.

You are to grow up.

This is a comprehensive mandate.

Notice what it says.

You're supposed to grow up in every way, it says.

So if you think of a way, you're supposed to be growing like Christ in that way.

This is an exhaustive claim on your life.

There are no secret areas of your life off limits to sanctification.

There's no, you know, Jesus, I surrender most of my life to you, but you have to let me keep this one hobby, or you have to let me keep this one pastime, or whatever your excuse is.

There's your secret thought life, what you think about when you're going to sleep at night, what you think about when you're doubting the truth of the Bible, what you think about in conflict with your spouse or with your kids, or your real secret goal about what you want to be when you really grow up, kind of thing.

There's all kinds of exceptions people carve out in their mind that they try to keep Jesus away from.

But notice verse 15 is very exhaustive.

You are supposed to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ.

To remove ambiguity there, it's repeated into him who is the head, namely Jesus, and the Christ, the Savior, the Messiah.

Christ is the title for Jesus.

He's the sent one from God.

That's what Christ means, Messiah or sent one, the one who is sent into this world as the sinless Son of God who died on the cross for our sins.

That is the Christ, that is the one you're supposed to grow into.

Now, what that means growing into, if you're following the analogy here, is he is the head.

That means he is the Lord of the church, he's in charge, and we're switching to a body analogy here, where Jesus is the head of his body.

At the family level, he's our brother, we're adopted into Christ, we are his brothers and sisters, we're all one family.

But we're not using the family analogy here.

Here, Paul is using a body analogy where Jesus is the head and we are the body, and we grow into that head.

We grow in proportion to it.

You know, something that blew my mind.

I think it was my second child.

I didn't even know this with notice this with Madison, but with my second Savannah, one of my friends told me, like, look, when she's like, you know, a little baby, you can lift up her arm, and her arm doesn't even reach above her head.

It's a crazy baby proportion thing.

You know, their arms are fully raised up and they go right about to their ears.

It's hilarious.

Now try this with the baby, not like with, you know, preferably one related to you, not a stranger's baby.

It's adorable.

You know, over time, the proportions grow out as the body grows and it all becomes proportionate.

And then towards the end of your life, you get all out of proportion again.

But the image here is you're supposed to grow up into the image of Christ, who is the head.

You're supposed to become proportionate to him.

You're supposed to fill out.

The body is supposed to fill out looking like Christ.

So you, as you grow in maturity, are supposed to look more like Christ.

That's progressive sanctification.

You progress in that your entire life.

That's why the body analogy is so brilliant by Paul, by the Holy Spirit, by God, of course, who designed this to describe the church as a body.

It's alive, it's vibrant, different people have different roles in the body, different spiritual gifts in the body.

We all are joined together, we equip one another, and we're growing up into the image of Christ.

That's the command.

The goal that's mandated in this passage or that's described is conformity to the image of Christ.

Thus, your goal in your spiritual life is to look more like Jesus.

So if you go back to Jack and Jill and Michael and Maria or Steve and Linda, that is their hope that they have.

That in this life they will over time look more like Christ.

There is the possibility for growth.

Possibility is too weak of a word.

There is growth described here as reality.

We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, who is the Christ.

We're supposed to grow up to look like Him.

Now, this is why repentance is key.

Because people don't like to change.

They don't like to change.

At any level, people don't like to change.

They we're creatures of habit.

We like things the way that we are, especially when we chose them to be this way.

We rebel against change.

But if you're being honest, the difficulties in your life are because of your sin, which require repentance.

This is why for you to grow up in every way to into him who is the head, into Christ, you have to change against the grain, against who you are, against the way, you know, how you feel like the things that you love and the things that you are.

You surrender that to the Lord, you hold them with an open hand, and you let the Lord do his work.

That is your hope, that you grow up to look like Christ, and that growing up requires change.

A few weeks ago I said the goal of the Christian life is change, and this is what I meant by that.

You're changing who you were before your salvation and becoming more like the person you will be in glorification in heaven.

That middle time there is where there's progress between who you were when you came to faith in Christ and what you'll be like when you go to heaven.

Make the step as short as possible between this world and the next.

That's the idea.

Grow up to look as much like the heavenly you as is possible.

How do you know what the heavenly you looks like?

You look like Christ.

He's your model, he's your example, he's your pattern.

You grow up looking like him.

So, firstly, the mandate is that you grow up.

Secondly, the means.

The church is the means that God uses to accomplish this in your life.

Now, there's a lot of means that God uses.

The immediate means is the Holy Spirit, who's convicting you of sin.

When you come to faith in Christ, you come to faith in Christ because his Holy Spirit makes you alive.

He regenerates you, he gives life to your dead spirit, and the Holy Spirit doesn't make you alive and then keep going.

It's not like a drive-by regeneration.

The Holy Spirit comes and dwells in you, which means he abides in your heart, in your spirit.

He's applying the truth about God that you're learning from the Scripture to your heart.

And as he does this, he's convicting you of sin, convicting you of righteousness, applying the scriptures to your heart, and so you are responding to the Spirit's work on you by confessing your sins and putting off sin and putting on righteousness is the language we'll look at next week, Lord willing, verses.

17 and Ford is all about that, the put off put on.

Before we even get to the put-off put on, though, Paul intros that with this idea that this has happened happening corporately.

Corporate is just a fancy word for body.

Your corporal meaning meaning body.

This is a corporate activity.

Your sanctification, your progressive growth happens in the context of the church.

So the immediate means is the Holy Spirit who's convicting you of righteousness.

There's other proximate means, you know, you seeing other people make changes in their life and you, you know, want to follow them as they're following Christ, which is a fine means.

You reading Christian books, that's great.

You know, it fills your mind with stuff.

The Holy Spirit applies that to your heart.

There's all kinds of proximate means the Lord uses to conform you to the image of Christ.

One of those proximate means, and the most significant here in this passage, is the church at large, other believers who function with you to encourage you in Christ likeness.

Your personal goal is your spiritual growth.

But now, try hard here and not make you the focus of this and just switch it real quick.

Your personal goal is your spiritual growth.

But now there's a secondary thing going on here that you are also supposed to help others grow spiritually.

Notice what it says.

From whom the whole body, coming from the head to Christ, joined and held together by every joint with which it's equipped.

When each part is working properly, it's talking about you.

We learned that in the first part of Ephesians 4.

You are a member of the body.

You've been gifted by the Holy Spirit, by the Father and the Son in heaven, who sends the Spirit, who saves you and gifts you.

You're now part of the body.

You're a brick in the building, or in the body analogy, you're a joint or a muscle or a hand or a foot or an eye or what have you.

You are now a body part, and when you're working properly as a body, you're making the body as a whole grow up in love.

So how does the hand make the body grow?

Well, it feeds it.

How does the foot make the body grow?

It walks it to food.

How does the elbow make the body grow?

It extends to grab the food and retracts to the face.

I mean, your body has some pretty basic functions, most of which involve feeding you.

This is how you grow.

And for you to grow proportionate, sometimes you have body parts that exercise or go for walks or whatnot.

I mean, you can follow this analogy.

It's again a brilliant analogy here.

How God describes the church as a body.

And when every part is working together, it's causing the whole thing to grow.

This is why sin is so poisonous to the body, because when sin is in the body, it slows the whole thing down.

There's a a kid at the pool yesterday who got like a splinter in her hand before she was supposed to swim her swim race, and she's like, I can't swim, I have a splinter.

Part of me is like, you don't, I mean, just get in the pool.

It'll be over in 45 seconds, then we'll deal with it.

But but uh the other part of me understands like your arm is in pain, you don't want to race in a swimming pool.

Your hand hurts.

That's sin in the body.

Sin poisons the body.

And so the rest of the body then works to get sin out of the body so the whole body can function well.

That again is the image here.

We're to grow up into every way into Christ, and this is happening at the body level.

Again, the exhaustive language.

Your body is held together by every joint with which it is equipped.

So that when it's all working properly, it's all growing itself up.

So the mandate is that you personally look like Christ.

The means by which that's accomplished is other believers around you kind of encouraging you to grow, pushing you into the pool sometimes, provoking spiritual growth.

Now, if you're following carefully, you'll recognize that this is going to involve conflict.

Because do you remember what I said a few minutes ago?

That you don't want to change.

But now, you don't want to change, but now the function of the whole church when it's working healthy is to provoke you to change.

So when believers who are around you are serving you like God designed them to serve you, they're going to be serving you in a way that you don't want to be served.

You don't want to be challenged, you don't want to be provoked to grow.

But that's the way the body works when it is working properly.

Side note here, this is one reason I think why so many people love online church.

They get teaching that makes them feel a certain way, and that's the language that they often use.

I love watching that so-and-so online or the you know the satellite campus kind of concept.

You know, I can turn the pastor on the screen.

Oh, I love his sermons, he's on the screen, he's so good when he's on the screen.

But there's no personal provoking of growth.

You know, and even on a satellite campus, you might, through happenstance, start to meet people around you at a satellite campus that could provoke you to grow.

So it's even better at home, huh?

Unless your cat meows, you know, your cat wants food, your cat's provoking something, your cat's demanding something from you.

But that's it.

That's it.

So many people are drawn to that.

They're drawn to how they feel when they watch the you know the sermon on TV, which in itself can be a good thing, right?

You that you at least you're drawn to the word of God.

That's the positive there, but that can't be the period.

It can't just be that you're drawn to the word of God.

That's not the end.

You've got to be drawn to the word of God, and then with the help of the body of Christ, you grow.

So again, the full package.

The content of the sermons and the word of God go into the head.

The Holy Spirit's applying them to the heart.

You're growing.

You need help in the application of that as it's applied to your heart.

You need people who know you, who know your weaknesses, who know your sin tendencies, who know your family, who have been in your home, etc., who can encourage you to grow.

That's how it's supposed to work.

Think of a teenager who works at a relationship with his parents where he only sees them to get allowance, to get money.

They pay his car payment, they pay his car insurance, and they he can check in once a week and he can get money from his parents once a week for life.

They don't ask questions about grades, they don't ask questions about what's happening in his room, they don't ask questions about what's happening at school, they ask no questions of him.

At that sense, the parents become basically a functional ATM.

And teenagers would love that setup, wouldn't they?

Most of them would love that setup because they're immature and they don't see the benefit of having people in their life challenging them, specifically their parents.

I fear that many people approach church that way.

They come for what they can get, but they have structured their life at church in such a way that other relationships are off limits.

They don't develop relationships with people at the church.

Unless they have nobody in their life, nobody asking questions, nobody provoking change.

The Christian life should not be lived that way.

That's not a healthy body.

The healthy body, or to use the language instead of healthy that Paul uses in verse 16, when each part is working properly, is the whole body is provoking itself to growth.

It grows like a body.

You don't just jump, you might go through a growth spurt, but you don't just boom, go from age six to age 16.

There are stages along the way.

The body grows, and there are pains when it grows, there are things that you no longer fit in, and some of that growth is good.

Sin no longer looks quite right on you as you grow and you take it off.

I have a friend who's an orthopedic surgeon, and he's told me the most common complaints he gets from people, people make an appointment and come see him and say, It hurts when I do this.

Or whatever, some like elaborate move, you know, arm under their leg, foot over their head.

It hurts when I do this.

I always tell them the same thing.

Don't do that then.

What's your deductible?

Thank you.

If it hurts when you do it, stop doing it.

And you know, there's some truth to that.

Sometimes you have pain in your body because you're twisting it in a way it's not supposed to be twisted.

Stop doing that.

Other times you have pain in your body because you're growing and you're using new muscles differently.

And so you do need that pain looked into.

And that's where the church steps in.

The church helps you as you're experiencing pain and difficulty in your life, the church helps you grow.

Sometimes your life hurts because you're doing something you don't need to be doing.

Other times it hurts because there's sin in your life, or there's immaturity in your life, or you're applying the scripture to your life incorrectly.

And it's so hard for you to tell when it's about you.

And so you need people around you to help you.

And again, when something is wrong in your life, you need the help of others, and that's because you are so likely to locate the focus of your problem is external to you.

You know, if you come home from work and your wife asks you how your day was, and you say bad, why was it bad?

You have a list of everybody who wronged you.

None of your sentences start with the first person singular, none of them start with I.

They're always he did this and they did that, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's so easy to see other ways in life, isn't it?

You see, we say lines like this all the time without even thinking of the spiritual significance of it.

We'll say, traffic drives me crazy.

Just notice the way you say that.

What's dry what's driving you crazy?

Something external to you.

You know, and traffic is insane in this area.

And people in Northern Virginia are insane in how they drive.

It's ludicrous.

Ludicrous.

You know, there's nine lanes at the mixing bowl, and you'll see people drive across all nine of them to get around a truck and then back across all nine of them to get like the truck's enough.

And when you say traffic drives me crazy, it's kind of a reasonable thing to say, isn't it?

Except you're putting something external to you over how you're responding.

Now, it's not literal.

You're not really being driven crazy by the traffic.

You're not gonna end up in a mental institution.

I get that.

Sometimes a nine ninety-five of the mixing bull, I maybe a mental institution would be a good move, but we get that it's hyperbole.

But follow that logic out to more important things in your life.

Like the DC culture is maddening to me.

I can't live here.

The DC culture is maddening to me.

Okay, now you're getting more serious.

Now you're saying the whole culture in this area is impossible for you to deal with.

What is it about you that makes life here so hard?

Or again, get even more at home.

When my husband does this, it drives me crazy.

Again, you're putting it outside of you.

What is it about you that responds in that kind of way?

What is it in you?

What is it that you think you deserve, or what is it going on in your heart that causes you to respond in an inappropriate and sinful way to things that are happening outside of you?

Like that's where the action is.

And you can't see that.

You don't even see it when it comes to traffic.

You're certainly not going to see it in your marriage or in your parenting or in your friendships.

And that's why you need help from other people who can ask you what's going on in your heart.

When you tell the story about what's wrong in your life, you focus on others that are wrong and incompetent and whatever.

But the truth is, for spiritual growth to happen in your life, you need people looking into your heart.

Which you get you don't want, and it's uncomfortable, and that's why spiritual change involves conflict.

It involves people confronting you in your sin.

Check out this verse.

Hebrews chapter 3.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

Same thing from a different perspective.

See to it, brothers, that none of you have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

Encourage one another daily as long as it's called today, so that none of you can be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

Same kind of language that Paul uses here in Ephesians 4.

He uses here in Hebrews 3, same concept of deceit, you know, polluting people's minds, same conflict concept of the body pulling together, but there's some interesting words he uses in Hebrews 3 that I just want to draw your attention to.

He says, see to it that none of you have an unbelieving heart.

Paul's putting the focus in the person.

See to it that your heart is not unbelieving, that your heart is not harboring sin.

Because that's going to grow into turning away from God.

If those kind of conflicts at home are left unchecked, you know, there's coldness in your marriage, and so you start finding refuge in work or refuge in family.

If that's left unchecked, it goes years and years and years, and it becomes adultery, or it becomes divorce, and it ultimately becomes apostasy, walking away from the Lord.

Or you refuse to acknowledge God's sovereignty even over your own suffering and the abuse that you've gone through before.

Over time, that becomes what is God in control of anyway?

And over time that becomes He's not in control of this world, and over time that becomes apostasy, walking away from the faith.

And Paul knows where it's going.

He says, see to it that you don't harbor those kind of doubts in your own heart.

But notice the focus of this command.

It's not that you see to it about your own heart.

It's a corporate command.

Look out for one another.

Look out for one another.

I remember being at a pool once and a kid went in who shouldn't have gone in, and you could tell feet hanging up in the air.

And there's like everybody jumped in the pool.

It's like guys coming in, you know, the kid is out for five minutes, the people still running and jumping into the pool.

That's the image here.

You should be on the lookout for people in the church.

So that no one's hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

And the point here is not outward modification, of course.

You understand that.

Paul's not talking about make sure that everybody's conforming in the same way externally.

Make sure everyone's dressing the same way and listening to the same music or whatnot.

He's not talking about the externals, he's talking about the heart.

Which means it's people that know you that can help you.

All this takes place in the heart.

Thirdly, the motive of all this is love.

Of course, verse 15 and the verse 16, the beginning of verse 15, the end of verse 16.

Start and ends with love, rather speaking the truth in love.

Verse 16, it builds itself up in love.

This is called the theological term for this is a love sandwich.

Maybe it's not the theological term, but it should be.

Verse 15, speak the truth in love.

Verse 16, build yourself up in love.

The meat of the sandwich here is your own spiritual growth and causing each other to grow in Christ.

That's the meat.

It's bracketed by love here.

You grow up in love.

What a contrast with the verse 14, where children who are not concerned about love, children are concerned about craftiness and deceitful schemes, it says in verse 14.

Immature people are held captive, not by love, but by deceit.

The devil comes into the garden and he lies.

God comes into the garden and he loves.

That's the dichotomy here.

Judas betrays Christ and, you know, hands him over to be murdered out of deceit and out of greed.

Jesus goes to the cross out of love.

There's a very big contrast.

That is the contrast between immaturity and maturity.

The immature person is held captive by human cunning.

The mature person is operating based upon love for each other.

So these two verses here are an appeal to the church to look out for one another, to provoke one another to spiritual growth, to encourage one another to put off sin and put on righteousness, to speak into each other's lives.

It is not an encouragement for you to be obnoxious to other believers, but it is an encouragement for you to show love to them.

Imagine a car mechanic who hates cars.

He's so upset every day he shows up and he's like, There's cars broken here, lined up, cars that don't work.

A good car mechanic would actually like cars or even love cars and want them to work well.

Or a judge that is just so upset that lawsuits exist.

Can't you people just figure this out yourself?

They would lose their job.

They love justice, they love the intricacies of the law and applying them to complex situations.

Or a doctor who's angry at sick people.

What's wrong with you?

You keep getting sick.

Make my job so hard.

A Christian's attitude towards other Christians who are caught in immaturity or caught in sin should be one of love.

This is an opportunity to help you grow, to see where you're struggling and to encourage you.

That can only be motivated by love.

If you love someone, you want what's best for them.

You don't want them to be stuck in their immature life.

You want to see a person who's struggling be rescued and be encouraged.

You want to spend time with people that you love to help them grow.

I mean, use twice here the word love in verse 15, verse 16.

It should remind you, 1 Corinthians 13.

The love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, is called, 1 Corinthians 13 is all about the nature of God's love lived out in our human life.

It comes right after 1 Corinthians 12, which is all about spiritual gifts operating in the body.

It's the exact same structure.

And in 1 Corinthians 13, it talks about how the body, when it works together, grows out of immaturity and into maturity based upon love.

These are two little verses here that capture the relationship of 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 perfectly.

The body works together, it models Jesus Christ as we pursue love.

Love provokes growth in us.

Greater love, Jesus says, has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

This is how we love each other.

We serve them with our lives.

This becomes our model for loving others, that Jesus comes from his sinless heaven to sinful earth.

He walks with us, he listens to us, he empathizes with us, he identifies with us in our suffering without excusing our sin, and he provokes change in our life as an act of love.

That's how we encourage one another for spiritual growth.

We enter each other's lives, we enter each other's worlds, and we encourage one another out of empathy, out of understanding where the suffering is coming from, of course.

That's how Jesus loved us without excusing sin.

So you go back to Jack and Jill, and obviously they're both finding their identity in the wrong place.

They're both framing the problem around how their spouse is distant and cold compared to what they want in their life and what they deserve.

And it would take somebody who loved them tremendously to have the courage to tell them that.

Or Michael and Maria are both framing their problems around the path of least resistance.

They're starting with what works in their mind rather than what the scripture says.

And you would have to know them so well to say something to them.

Or better yet, you would have to know them so well for them to ask you for help.

For Steve and Linda, Linda's obviously a victim.

But the problem in her marriage is not what happened before, but how she's thinking now about it.

What does God call her to believe now?

Again, you would have to be tremendously close to her to say something that directs to her.

To ask the kind of questions to ask her questions like, what do you believe about God's sovereignty over your life?

What do you believe about how you're responding now?

And in all those scenarios, it's so much easier when the person who's struggling asks friends for help.

Ask friends from church from help.

And if someone does ask you for help with their life or with their marriage or with their issues, listen with love.

You ask questions, you enter the world of the person suffering, you listen and you commit to being a friend who remains and helps.

Helping them see the problem in their hearts, not in the world, but in their heart, and helping them apply the gospel, namely that you're a sinner, that God has forgiven you of your sin, and that forgiveness causes change in your life.

We put God's desires over our own desires, that's sanctification.

We put our desires over God's desires, that may be normal and it may be natural, but it's fatal.

And it takes someone who loves you to help you see that in your own life.

Lord, we pray for the grace to love each other well.

We pray for the grace to forgive each other when we sin against each other, when we say things that are dumb or wrong or misguided.

To be forbearing with one another.

We pray for the grace to cultivate relationships that are healthy.

And we pray that you would cause each other working in this congregation to provoke one another to growth.

To godliness, to love and good deeds as long as it's called today.

Guard us from having a sinful and unbelieving heart and help us grow into the image of Christ.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.