"Time to Grow Up" Ephesians 4:13-14 Sunday Morning Worship Service

I recently uh last week went to the ocean with my daughters, my family, and a bunch of our friends.

And we went down to a beach in um south part of North Carolina.

It had a sandbar that was kind of far off the coast there, maybe I don't know, 50 meters or so off the shore.

And so you'd wade through the water and there would be a drop-off in the water where the kids could not touch the bottom, and they'd go through that to get to the sandbar where they wanted to play.

And over the first hour or so in the water, it became very evident about the different abilities of my daughters.

Geneva, the youngest, her favorite thing to do in the water was to have me come out there and to a place where I could barely touch the ground and then to hold her up over the waves.

As the waves would come, I would have to hold her up over.

And if if I didn't do that, somebody else would have to hold her hand and bring her through the waves.

She was not strong enough on her own to get through where those waves were, to the sandbar where all of her friends in the whole world were.

And so it was, you know, it touched your heartstrings to sit on the shore and see all of her friends out there and her just like trying her hardest to get through, but she could not overcome the waves.

And so it took uh grown-ups going out there and lifting her up over the waves to get her where all of her friends were.

Savannah, my my middle daughter, she was out there.

She, rather than fighting the waves, was playing in them.

She had a boogie board and she would duck dive under the waves, and that became her favorite thing to do is to dodge the waves and go underneath them.

And I can't believe how much joy she got just from going under waves for days.

Now, my oldest daughter, Madison, she liked surfing.

She liked boogie boarding.

She'd overcome the waves and get to wherever she wanted to and catch the waves and ride them in over and over and over again.

It's a pretty clear manifestation of where the three of them were.

It would be very silly for me as a dad to look at Geneva, who needs, you know, to be held over the waves and to help to physically get through them, and ask her, why can't you be more like your sisters?

Look at how independent they are, look at how much they can do in the waves.

Why can't you be like them?

And the answer is, Dad, because I'm seven years old.

I'm not strong enough to be like them.

So it'd be very, I think, poor parenting for me to want her to be like her sisters, or for me to look at Madison, the older one, and say, why can't you act more like a seven-year-old, Madison?

I could go out there and try to lift her over the waves and would break every muscle in my back.

It was an epiphany that both she and Savannah are significantly better swimmers than me.

I went out there to help Savannah and she had to rescue me.

There's age-appropriate levels for what they can do.

And you see this in so many different ways, not just in the ocean.

You see it in their conversation, listening to the kids, and we're the bunch of friends listening to them talk.

You know, Geneva and her friends were talking about dragons.

That was the main conversation.

Dragons, the different genres of dragons, breeds of dragons, races of dragons.

I don't know what category dragons go into, but she would if you wanted to ask her.

The older kids didn't talk about dragons.

What a silly thing for older kids to talk about.

And that's the way all of life works.

As you grow up, you stop talking about dragons.

As you grow up, you stop talking about video games.

You know, it's okay for the 10 and 12-year-olds to talk about video games, and maybe okay for the 14-year-olds to talk about video games, but kind of not okay for the 18-year-olds to be talking about video games.

Like, hey, grow up a bit, okay?

With all apologies to 18-year-olds in here who are into video games, but seriously, grow up.

I'm going to read for us verses 11 down through verse 14.

We're going to look at just at verses 13 and 14.

This morning, if you remember about a month ago or so, we looked at verses uh 11 and 12, but I'm going to read the whole sentence here.

He, being Jesus in Ephesians 4, verse 11, gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so 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.

Ephesians 4:11

There's a contrast here that is the main point of this passage, and I'm sure you noticed it when I read it, is a contrast between the mature Christian and the baby Christian.

That there's an infancy in some Christians.

They're new believers, they haven't grown up.

And it's contrasted with mature believers that are mature.

They have the unity of the faith, verse 13 says.

They have mature manhood, the middle of verse 13 says.

They meet the measure and stature and the fullness of Christ.

And this is the contrast that Ephesians 4 is describing here.

And the Paul's main point in Ephesians 4 is that Jesus descended into Sheol and then resurrected onto the earth and then ascended into heaven.

And when he ascended into heaven, he had freed the captives from death, and then he sent his Holy Spirit to the world in triumph and victory over the grave.

And his Holy Spirit comes to the earth bringing spiritual gifts for the church.

That's the main point in Ephesians 4.

And the spiritual gifts that are given to the church come through the leadership in the church, first and foremost.

He draws attention to that in verse 11.

Prophets and apostles, the founding of the church there back in the book of Acts, and then evangelists and shepherds, pastors, elders, teachers, those kind of things.

And their task then is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

And so it begins with this building analogy that the Holy Spirit, through the leadership of the church, is building up the body of Christ.

And he does that by giving every believer, not just pastors and elders, but every believer spiritual gifts.

We looked at this last time we were in this passage.

The spiritual gifts that are used for the building of the church.

And he's going to switch metaphors here.

He's going to switch from a building analogy to a human body analogy here.

But the first, the building analogy, is that the spiritual gifts are used for constructing the church, for building us up into strength and unity so that we have a firm foundation on built, of course, on the apostles and the prophets, with Christ as the cornerstone.

But now we're switching from the building analogy to a body analogy, which is a, I think, a more helpful analogy for where Paul is going here in verse 13 to 14, that we as Christians need to grow up.

You don't tell a building to grow up.

Come on, building, grow up.

Get stronger, building.

You can't feed a building vegetables, for example.

But people can grow up that way.

You can help people grow up by feeding them and nurturing them and instructing them.

And so that's Paul's point here is that the Holy Spirit gives the church gifts to strengthen us and grow us up into maturity.

That's the main point of this passage.

Paul wants you to understand that the function of the church, remember, this is talking about the church, the function of the church is to help you grow up.

The function of the church is not really anything else.

This is the point of the church, to make mature followers of Jesus Christ.

That's the goal of the church.

The point of the church is not to give you cultural insights.

The point of the church is not to come up with a new, unique, innovative way of doing ministry that'll attract a new generation or what have you.

Those are not things God gave the church to do.

God gave the church basically one task: to cause believers to grow into maturity.

That's the point of the church.

That's what the church is supposed to do.

And he's saying it so many different ways in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

There's pastors and elders and teachers, and they're supposed to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.

You understand this?

If the pastors and elders were doing all the work of the church, then nobody would be growing in maturity.

If the pastors and elders were doing the work of the ministry, then the congregation would be spectators.

And spectators don't grow in maturity.

Only those who are participants grow in maturity.

And so the point of the church is not for the pastors and elders and to be doing all the work of the ministry.

Rather, the pastors and the elders are equipping the saints.

They're instructing the saints so the saints can do the work of the ministry, so the saints grow in maturity, so they grow up to be more like Christ.

That's the point, is that God gives his Holy Spirit to the church to give you spiritual gifts so that you can use those gifts in the church and you can grow in Christian maturity.

Now, growth does not just happen over time naturally.

There is a sense in which with little kids, you know, given enough time, they will grow up.

Okay?

Give enough time, your kids do grow up.

You know, you feed them and they grow up.

But we're after more here than just age growth.

We're after here that more than just you know bone density here.

We're after an actual physiological or spiritual or personal development as you grow up.

And I think it I think it'd be helpful to give another example from Team Johnson here recently.

So one of my daughters, Madison, made blueberry muffins recently.

Blueberry muffins.

And the kids all gather around the table and they were smelled through the whole house.

They were so they smelled so delicious.

We all gathered around the table, and one of them was ginormously larger than the others.

So, what attitude do you think that all of the kids had towards the muffins at this point?

There were no muffins five seconds ago, now there are, and we smell them, and one is huge, and every only the kids, mind you, wanted the biggest of the muffin.

And so it becomes a source of conflict.

Who gets the biggest muffin?

Now, that's typical for children.

You know, adults, of course, you have greedy desires too, but you've become more sophisticated in how to hide them or channel them, or at least aware of them.

You don't want to be the one that walks in a room like schlunk, biggest one for me.

Ha ha ha.

You've matured beyond that, which is the point.

Where kids haven't matured beyond that.

Now, kids are not going to mature beyond that unless they're instructed in how to mature beyond that, right?

You know, so it goes through my head.

As the muffins appear, it goes through my head, you know, they're squabbling over who gets the biggest muffins to say something like, all right, who got to choose first last time?

Which is a very poor approach to parenting right there, because that's feeding their greed, right?

Oh, you chose last time, but no, that didn't count because he chose it.

And that's just feeding the idea that wanting the biggest one is a good thing and a noble thing, such a good thing, you ought to take turns doing it.

No, instead it's time to kind of pause and pull the muffin car over here for a second and have a conversation about you want the biggest one.

That's selfishness.

That's greed.

And that's ugly.

That's sinful.

And everybody sees it.

You want the biggest muffin, so you're gonna argue with your sisters about it?

I mean, come on, come on, that's that's sinful.

And I can recognize that sin because I have it in my own heart.

I mean, I'm good at identifying it because I see it, I'm familiar with it.

And so rather than arguing over who gets the biggest and best muffin, how about what's the opposite of selfishness?

Well, it's humility.

What's the opposite of greed?

It's generosity.

So, how about giving away?

Let's rather have a conversation over who do you want to give it to and an argument over who you want to give it to rather than who gets it.

And that's just kind of basic parenting around a blueberry muffin.

I'm sure you all understand this.

The point of it, where I'm going with this, is not the blueberry muffin.

It's that that kind of growth doesn't happen naturally.

That growth requires instruction.

If you're a parent and you want your kids to grow in generosity and not in selfishness, you can't just ignore the fights over the muffins.

That's where you enter in and cause them to think differently through instructing them, and that is what will cause them to grow up.

I'm not talking about they'll just age into middle school students and age into high school students and age into college students.

Unless you instruct them about greed and selfishness, they will age into greedy middle school students and greedy high school students and greedy, lust-filled college students.

Unless you teach them that kind of integrity in their thinking, even with the small things.

The principle is what Paul is after in this analogy with Christians.

You have to be instructed in how to grow up spiritually speaking.

You have to be taught by the church, by the word of God, by older and more mature Christian friends.

You have to be instructed how to grow in godliness.

Otherwise, it will not happen naturally.

You can be going to church for 30 years, and unless you're receiving instruction in your heart, you won't grow spiritually.

Unless you're applying what you hear from the Word of God to your own life, you won't grow.

And that's Paul's point here that God gives the Holy Spirit to the church not so you can be spectators.

He gives you his Holy Spirit so you can grow up to be a big and strong and mature Christian rather than a weak and tiny immature baby Christian.

And it's not just time spent in church that will cause you to grow.

There's all kinds of kids that grow up but don't really grow up, you know?

And the same is true in the church.

So to help you see this dichotomy here, let me give you a little bit of an outline.

We're going to contrast mature Christians with baby Christians here through Paul's language in the first description, the first contrast he gives here is unity versus being tossed to and fro.

And it the way I came up with this outline is if you look at the two verses, it may seem pretty self-explanatory here, but if you look at the two verses, 13 and 14, there is a contrast.

They both have three kind of subpoints underneath of them.

So if you lay out the two verses next to each other, you lay out the subpoints next to each other, there's certainly a contrast.

And so the unity that you see in verse 13 is contrasted with the tossed to and fro by the waves in verse 14.

That's the first contrast here.

There is a unity that comes with being a big and strong and mature Christian.

There's strength and unity, is the concept in verse 13, until we all attain, and that word attain is uh attain is a fine translation, but it means you arrive.

You arrive at this place where you have unity of the faith.

Unity, of course, is united into one body.

There's a unity of the faith.

It's a kind of a strange turn of phrase.

It's very unusual in the New Testament, of course, here to have unity of the faith.

It's used somewhere else in the book of Jude that God has given his word handed down once for all to the saints, is the way it's rendered in the end of the book of Jude.

It's this idea that there's this body of truth.

There's this body of faith.

It's the Bible, of course, that's handed to us.

And our strength, our unity is found in conformity to the word of God.

There is strength when you're conformed to the word of God.

There's maturity when you're conformed to the word of God.

That becomes the standard for growing up.

A mature Christian is one who finds unity with other believers because they have unity in truth.

They have unity in what the Word of God says.

Until we all attain to the unity of the faith.

Now, there's a lot that's been said recently about unity.

I preached a whole message on unity a few months ago at a Sunday evening service.

I don't want to recap all of it, except to say that most of the ways that evangelicals use the word unity is totally wrong.

And I know that's a very disunifying thing to say, but I stand by it.

When the Bible talks about unity, it does not mean like-minded in preferences.

I've heard people say, you know, why can't we be unified in who we vote for?

Why can't we be unified in how you respond to COVID?

Or why can't you be unified in this or that or the other thing?

That's not what biblical unity is about.

Biblical unity is not about being like-minded in preferences.

Biblical unity is about being joined together through the authority of the Word of God.

So that when the Word of God speaks on something, you are like-minded with other believers on it.

When the Word of God does not speak on something, you have charity and diversity in how you play out the implications of Scripture.

There's wisdom in how you apply the commands of Scripture to the world.

That's different than unity.

Believers can apply principles to living differently than each other.

That's not what unity is.

Unity is saying what does the Bible say and being united on those core things.

That's maturity.

That's maturity.

To use the kid analogy again, you know, kids argue and quibble about all kinds of things, and that's because they're kids.

As you grow up, you kind of put those arguments aside and you learn how to function with adults and other friends and coworkers that don't think like you on every issue, and yet you can still get a job done.

That's living in the world.

That's a sign of maturity.

And that's what Paul is saying about for the church that you should attain to the unity of the faith.

There is the word of God that is handed down to believers.

Commentators tend to agree that the unity here is the scripture that believers get.

It's the concept that we've received the word of God and now we live it out.

That's what we have our unity.

So the unity that you come here, the strength that you have here, is in being united to other believers that have a common authority.

That's your strength.

Your strength is not in your rugged individualism.

Your strength is not in your, you know, your own personality and the way you're applying your own personality to life and the church.

Your strength is not what makes you you.

Your strength is about what unites you to the Word of God.

Very different than our culture.

You know, our culture says that strength is found in your individualism.

And, you know, your snowflake, you're special, no one else is like you.

You know, live out, be the best you now kind of thing, and that's where you'll find your strength.

That is not biblical strength or biblical unity.

Biblical maturity is not you being the best you you can be, biblical unity is about you elevating the scripture in your mind.

And when you submit your life to the scripture, you grow in maturity.

Let me say it this way.

The goal of Christian life is change.

Let me say that one more time because I I want you to hear it.

The goal of Christian life is change.

For you to change what you're like now, and for you to become more like Christ.

That's the goal of the Christian life.

If you're coming to church with a reluctance to change, then this is going to be a wasted endeavor here at church.

Rather you come to church wanting to have the Word of God search out your heart, wanting to have sins exposed in your heart, motives exposed in your heart, and you confess those sins and you humble yourself and you confess to your sins and you grow in maturity.

So the person who comes to church and says, I don't, I'm gonna be the judge about what is right and wrong, and I don't want to change my life.

I'm happy the way I am.

I'm looking for a church that meets me where I'm at, blah.

You want to be changed by the word.

That's what maturity means.

That's what maturity means.

It's so adorable when one of my youngest daughters says, I don't want to grow up.

I'm happy being seven.

I don't want to grow up, Dad.

I'm like, I don't want she's my youngest.

I don't want her to grow up either.

Don't grow up.

I have my oldest is about to turn 13.

I have been banning her for an entire year.

You are not allowed to turn 13.

You may not.

I will not have a teenager.

I ban it.

I forbid it.

And obviously it's a joke, you know, because there's gonna be growing up.

But you know, it's cute with your own kids.

It's not cute in the church.

Where somebody says, I don't want to mature.

I I like me the way I am.

No, please know.

You need to grow up in the faith.

You do that by conforming to the image of Christ.

Now, this is contrast.

The unity of strength here is contrasted in verse 13 with the verse 14 with someone who's tossed to and fro by the waves.

This is why I opened with the illustration about Geneva in the water.

The waves batter her this way and that.

She's not strong enough to stand against the waves.

She tries to swim against them, they'll carry her every which way.

That's the way it is in the Christian life as well.

Immature people, if they're not connected to the truth of God's word, if they're not connected to the protection of a church, immature people get tossed to and fro by every passing wave of doctrine.

Every passing trend in society takes them this way or that way.

That's a sign of immaturity.

You find a new book that has a new doctrine, and you're like, oh, sure, I believe that.

You have whatever is in vogue in society, you you fall for it.

This is what Paul warns against.

By the way, after he wrote the book of Ephesians, Paul had a long pleading with the Ephesians elders, and he tells them in Acts 20, verse 29, I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you.

Acts 20:29

They will not spare your flocks.

This is written to the Ephesian elders.

And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

Therefore be alert.

Paul says, There's going to be a time where people in your own church will grow up.

And they will come with new teachings.

They'll twist the given word.

They'll twist the words that I gave you, and they'll make new teachings, and people in your own congregation will fall for it.

He tells the Galatians, oh, you foolish Galatians, I'm astonished at how quickly you believed a different gospel.

That should rattle you, shouldn't it?

This is a church that was ministered to by both Paul and Peter.

And Paul tells them, I cannot believe it.

I'm actually, I know there's false teaching in the world, I know it, but I am gobsmacked about how quickly you fell for it.

I would have thought it would have taken a generation for you to leave the faith, but no, you believed a different gospel so quickly.

There's a tendency inside of immature Christians to fall for whatever the newest fad is or whatever the newest doctrine or teaching is.

Unity, on the other hand, does cause schisms with the world.

Unity says we're not going to do whatever is in vogue for today.

We're going to stay united to the Word of God.

Children are often caught up in newness.

It's new doctrine that sweeps people away.

Novelty in the church is not helpful.

I was thinking this week one of my kids asked me what my first video game was.

I thought I I think it was this video game called Pong.

Do any of you remember Pong?

I think it played with a dial.

Do you remember this?

I think that was my first video game.

And that I think broke immediately.

It was replaced with Zelda and Super Mario Brothers, and there haven't been any good video games invented since then.

And I remember, you know, whenever there was a new game out, me and my friends when we were in middle school really wanted to buy them.

My dad would, you know, make me save up my money to buy them, and we'd be so excited about this new video game.

And I can't even name them anymore.

They're gone.

In the trash heap of history right there.

There's something inside of us that's always chasing for the new things.

And some of you have that as an adult too.

The new iPhone comes out and you're like, I need that one now.

Yes, mine.

Next year a new one comes out.

I need a newer one.

Next one, I need the newer one.

I mean, that's a very immature way to lead your life.

And you know this, right?

It's an immature way to lead your life.

That attitude drifts into church where there's this fixation often in churches to do the newest thing or the newest approach to ministry, the newest this or the newest that.

That leads to immaturity.

People ask, what's your favorite Christian author?

Somebody who's dead.

New author's bug.

New songs tend to be lame.

That's just my own attitude towards it.

But there's some truth in it that I hope you see that when people are writing from the present tense, when they're writing about the cultural fads and the cultural navigation today, with how you should navigate this, you know, culturally unique moment, it tends to be gross.

The mood prevalent in much of evangelical churches is a desire to be the most stylish, the most hip, the most novel approach to ministry in the history of Christianity.

Churches that want to pursue youth and pursue the new generation.

And it's like they're an advertising firm for the Super Bowl after a target demographic of young people.

In the Bible, old age is associated with wisdom, by the way.

Old age is what you should pursue, not youth.

What draws godly young people to church should be godly older people.

Pursue that.

That produces an immature church.

Well, this is the first contrast, unity versus someone who is tossed to and fro.

Second contrast, knowledge versus chasing the wind.

If you look at verse 13, unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God.

Knowledge of the Son of God.

Verse, verse 14, tossed to and fro of the waves, verse carried about by every wind of doctrine.

So how do you keep from being swept away by every passing church growth fad?

You keep from falling for that kind of silliness by growing in your knowledge of the word.

That's the contrast here.

Again, verse 13, knowledge of the Son of God.

The way you get deep roots in the truth is by filling your head with the truth.

And of course, you fill your head with the truth.

If you're a believer, you're filling your heart with the truth, you're filling your life with the truth.

We're not talking about just head knowledge here.

That's not what Paul is advocating for.

He understands that if you possess the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is taking the knowledge of the Word of God from your mind, applying it to your heart, and you're living it out in your life.

So if you want to grow in maturity, you fill your mind with the word.

That's his prayer here for the Ephesians.

He's telling you, I want you to grow up.

And the way you grow up is by growing in the knowledge of the Son of God.

This is how he prayed for the Colossians, too.

Colossians 1 verse 9.

Colossians 1:9

From the next day, or from the day we heard of you, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

That's how Paul is praying for believers.

Paul wants to pray for a church he loves, he prays that they would be filled with the knowledge of God.

How do you grow in the knowledge of the word?

You read the word, the word grounds you, you apply the word in your life.

The contrast here, knowledge of the Son of God, is contrasted with blown about by every wind of doctrine.

You know, it's immature believers that are led by their feelings.

They say, I know the word says this, but I feel like this is right.

No.

Please don't be led by your feelings.

That's immature.

You understand this in marriage.

A wife doesn't want to be led by a husband who is led by his feelings.

Because there's no stability in leadership then.

The husband says, Today I feel like we should do this.

Tomorrow I feel like we should do this.

Very difficult for a wife to follow a husband who is led by his feelings.

The same thing is true in the church.

If you are led in your relationship with the Lord by your feelings, you will be doomed to immaturity.

Because today you feel great about Jesus.

You feel, oh, you love Jesus and all is well in your life, and you had a great quiet time this morning, and you memorize Psalm 19, and the heavens declare the glories of God, and you're just loving life.

And then tomorrow you wake up and you're feeling sick, and you know, you get in trouble at work, and you didn't have a devotional time, and you're not, now you're not feeling like you're in tune with Jesus, and now you're questioning everything because you're being led by your feelings.

You don't feel good, and so you question the truth of Jesus, and you know, you don't even know if you're a Christian because of how lame you feel today, and then tomorrow you bounce back up when you have a better quiet time.

That's a very immature way of leading a Christian life.

You should your Christian life should be led by what you know to be true.

What do you know to be true?

What the Word of God says.

And so you read it and you believe it and you internalize it and you live it out.

That leads to maturity.

Verse the person who's led by their feelings, versus the person who's led by whatever the cultural issue is in the world today.

Paul says, I count everything as lost, Philippians 3, verse 8, for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord.

Philippians 3:8

There's this contrast between knowledge and being blown about by every wind.

I was thinking, what does it mean to be blown about by every wind?

Well, wind is a word that's often used for whatever's in style at that moment.

I had uh somebody tell me that he was at a church, he was an elder of the church, and the pastor said, Listen, what we need to do is we need to figure out what philosophy of ministry the Lord is blessing in our world today, and we're gonna do that philosophy of ministry.

The Lord is blessing churches that have this philosophy of ministry, let's do that.

And then that runs out after a while, and then we're gonna jump to another philosophy of ministry that's the Lord's blessing over there and then over there, and then over there.

So multi-site churches are cool, we're gonna be a multi-site church.

Calvinism is cool, we'll be Calvinist.

You know, political activism is cool, BLM is cool, we'll be that we'll be that.

You know, that that runs out, and we'll go back to, you know, a counseling ministry.

Counseling ministries are cool in other churches, we'll do that now.

And you're bouncing every conceivable kind of ministry based upon what growing churches are doing.

That's what it means to be blown about by every wind.

Whatever is working in the world, you imbibe in the church, and that will make you immature.

So, how do you fight that?

You fight that by growing in the word.

Hebrews 5, 13, Paul says it this way for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he's a child.

Solid food is for the mature, for those who have, by their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

If you're drinking milk all the time, it's baby bottles are great if you're a baby.

But at some point you put childish things behind you and you grow up.

Third contrast.

Christ first deceit.

Verse 13 to mature manhood to the measure and stature of the fullness of Christ.

Let's contrast at the end of verse 14 with human cunning, craftiness, and deceitful schemes.

And here we arrive at the pinnacle of this passage.

Paul is saying he wants the church to grow up into maturity so you look like Jesus Christ.

It says mature manhood.

That word mature there, it's the Greek word telios, which is one of the names of one of our ABF groups.

They're not here.

If you're in Telios, you're in the wrong room right now.

Uh they'll be here second hour.

But that's what that word means.

It means maturity.

It means somebody who is mature, grown up in maturity.

Here it's compared to Jesus Christ, to mature manhood, to the measure and stature and the fullness of Christ.

Because you understand this, you never reach full maturity in your life.

You're always growing.

You've never arrived.

You've never arrived.

You're growing intellectually and spiritually your entire life because you're growing into the image of Christ.

So you're going to keep growing until you depart this world and go into the next.

Then you will see him and you will be made like him.

But in this world, you see but dimly in a mirror.

And so you're constantly growing because you don't see yourself accurately.

It's you strain to see Jesus accurately through his word.

You're always discovering new sins in your life.

And so you're trying to conform yourself to the image of Christ.

Somebody asked me recently why I often, before I preach, pray that this passage would be used to conform us to the image of Christ, where I'm getting this idea that we should be conformed to the image of Christ.

This is where it's from, right here.

That you would apply the word of God, and so that you grow as you grow in the knowledge of the Son of God, you would grow to look like him.

You feed yourself the word, so you grow to look more like Jesus Christ.

And you will never arrive in this life.

You grow by feeding your mind the word of God because you have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2, verse 16.

1 Corinthians 2:16

Who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ.

Believers, because you have the Spirit of Christ, you have the mind of Christ.

And as you read the Word of God, you can understand what Jesus thinks about the world.

You have his mind.

And as you think like him, you become like him.

That's in contrast with the way the world wants you to think.

And when I say the world wants you to think, you know, who is the world?

What do they want?

The world, meaning the world's systems.

Capitalism and materialism and the systems that govern the world does not have your best interest in mind.

Yeah, I'm a fan of capitalism.

It's better than, you know, the alternatives, but believe me, capitalism does not have your best interest in mind.

Capitalism wants your money.

It wants to exploit you.

It wants to offer you things that will distract you from your relationship with Christ.

And it's a bunch of lies.

It's in contrast with being like Christ.

Colossians 2, verse 8 and 9.

Colossians 2:8

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit.

There's this language of captivity according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world.

There are these basic spirits that are operating in world systems that want to take you captive for their own end.

In contrast to that, Paul says Colossians 2, verse 9, that's not according to Christ.

Colossians 2:9

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

Or back in Ephesians 4, you have people that are held captive by cunning and craftiness and deceitful schemes.

That's in contrast to being the measure and the stature and the fullness of Christ.

So there's always going to be a conflict between the demands of Christ and the demands of this world.

It will never, in other words, be cool to be a Christian.

It'll never be cool to say what the Bible says about life and to be accepted by society.

I remember after 9-11, there was this thing that CNN kept doing.

They would bring like famous Christians on, and I know there's no such thing as a famous Christian, but they'd bring like big name pastors on, CNN, and they would ambush them with questions like what happens to people who die that have never heard the gospel, or you sin, they all go to hell.

And if at that era in American history, it was not very politically correct to say people that have never heard about the gospel go to hell.

It was like super arrogant to say.

And so there was this parade of pastors that were placed on CNN that all were finding new and creative ways to dodge answering that question.

Do you remember this?

They come up with these outrageous ways to avoid answering the question because I don't know what their goal was, to be invited back?

I mean, though, I don't know what the goal of that would be.

I mean, it's kind of pretty simple Christianity here, that there's no salvation apart from Christ Jesus.

Those who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

It's a pretty basic question for a Christian to answer.

And yet they didn't want to answer it, and they didn't want to, like, you know, blaspheme on the air and, you know, give the alternative answer because they know enough about the Bible to that.

So they were trying to become creative with, like, you know, who am I to judge each other person?

That's not what they're asking.

There's this idea that if you can figure out the right way to word things, then you'll be accepted in the world, and it won't happen.

It won't happen.

That's an immature believer who thinks that they can say things in a way that the world will approve of and that the world will accept.

A mature believer is not asking himself the question, what does the world want to hear?

A mature believer is asking the question, what is true?

What would Jesus say?

Because I want to speak like him.

And to speak like him, you have to think like him, which is good because you have the mind of Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and you feed your mind the word of God.

So here's the overarching question for the church.

What should the church be doing?

The church should be cultivating mature believers of Jesus Christ.

The church should not be looking for new and novel ways to do ministry.

The church should not be looking for a new approach to ministry to reach the young, the next young lost generation or whatever.

That's committing yourself to a fool's errand and it will produce a generation of immature Christians, not a generation of mature Christians.

The church should not be asking what works to reach people.

The church should be asking what works to make mature followers of Jesus Christ.

What is true?

The church should not be asking how can we look more like the world?

How can we sound more like the world?

How can we be more appealing to the world?

The church should be asking, what does it take to make those that are here grow into mature followers of Jesus Christ?

Because that's what God has called us to do.

I can't help but think that underneath the idea that the church needs to invent new ways to do ministry or new novel concepts to approach the world, underneath that is a sneaking suspicion that Christ is not enough for what he's called us to do.

But Christ is enough.

He is our pattern, he is our desire, he is the one that shows us how to do ministry.

And so this phrase back in verse 13, I want to end with this to mature manhood, the measure in the stature and the fullness of Christ.

He becomes our pattern and he's our savior.

Understand this.

We're born into this world sinful and wicked and separated from God.

Christ comes into this world righteous and holy and perfect.

He dies on the cross, bearing our sin, bearing the wrath of God, the punishment on the cross for our sins.

He bears them in his own body.

He's crucified and he's resurrected on the third day, and he lives in heaven at this moment.

Mature people from the world standard do not believe that.

Wise people from the world standard reject that truth.

They reject that Jesus is the only way to heaven, they reject that he is God in human flesh, and they reject that he died on the cross bearing the substitutionary atonement for sin.

They reject that because they say that they are smart enough, good enough, and intelligent enough on their own and that God will show them mercy because of how smart they are.

So the very basic principle of Christianity is hostility towards the world.

But when a person believes that, when a person believes that Jesus died on the cross for their sin, there's no salvation apart from Christ, at that moment they become a new creation.

Whether they're 80 years old or eight years old, at that moment they become a new creation.

And at that moment, they become an immature Christian.

And then, be it 80 or 8, they feed their mind the Word of God and they grow in maturity for the rest of their spiritual life.

So ask yourself, what do you want to look like when you grow up?

The answer, I hope, is the image and the fullness of Jesus Christ.

Lord, we're thankful that you have given us this pattern to follow.

Jesus is not just our childhood pattern, but our lifelong pattern.

Jesus grew in knowledge as he himself devoted his mind to studying scripture as he was a child.

Though God in human flesh, knowing all things, he did grow in human capacity, ultimately ending as his death on the cross, his burial and resurrection.

Lord, we want to follow that same pattern.

We want to grow like Christ.

We want to fill our minds like he filled his.

We want to pattern our life after his growth.

We want to become the measure and the stature and the fullness of the mature man in Jesus Christ.

I pray for anyone here this morning that has never believed your gospel, that has sought maturity on their own, in their own terms.

I pray this morning they would confess their sin.

They would believe you.

And they would be saved.

I 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.