The End for Which the Church Exists

Thinking back to the ancient world, the world through the

eyes of the philosopher Aristotle was dynamic.

The world that he perceived was dynamic.

It was characterized by constant change.

And he looked around and he he saw.

Everywhere I look, there's things coming to be, there's

things growing and changing, and then there's things passing

away. And he said all of the other

philosophers of his day, the Platonics and the Platonists and

the pre Socratics, he said all none of them can adequately

account for the dynamic nature of the universe.

They can't account for all of the change.

And so from Western philosophy, from Aristotle on, came this

idea that change is intelligible because things are moving toward

fulfilment, things are moving toward a purpose, toward a tell

us. And so this this goal makes

sense for for Aristotle when he looks at an acorn and he says,

what is the the purpose? What is the goal?

What is the, the design of the acorn but to become a great and

mighty oak tree? And when you understand that,

then the cracking and the shedding and the growth and the

all of that begins to make sense.

It's movement toward fulfilment. And This is why philosophers

then will retreat to their quiet studies among their books and

the light their pipes, and they'll begin to ask of all of

the things of this natural world, what is their purpose and

what is their tell us what is their goal?

And we've stopped thinking this way in our church.

We might say we we look at the goal of the tell us, but we're

much more impressed by what is impressive more than the goal or

function. We we look at what impresses us

in the church. We like to measure activity.

How many people showed up to your church on a Sunday morning?

It's the first question we ask people of of another church.

Well, how many people are there for your worship?

How many people were online in your live stream?

How many children and youth do you have in your children's

department or in your youth department?

How many people came at Easter and at Christmas?

How many life groups do you have?

We measure our programs and the density of our calendars.

We say how many classes are offered and what's the

participation rate of your classes?

How many people signed up for the events?

And we love financial metrics. How many giving units does your

church have and is your giving increasing and what's your total

budget? And we even award leadership

positions in our Southern Baptist conventions based on how

much churches are giving to that convention.

And we need to go back and consider again this ancient

word, this ancient concept of tell us or purpose.

Change is intelligible when you know the goal, when things are

working toward fulfilment. And even thinking of Aristotle,

he said the purpose of an axe is to cut down trees.

And if your axe doesn't chop wood, then it's an axe in name

only. And you said look at the eye.

The, the, the point of an eye is to see.

And if you're, if you have an eye that doesn't see, then it's

an eye in name only. And the purpose of an acorn is

to become a great and mighty oak tree.

But what is the purpose of a local church?

And we have to answer this question, what's the goal by

which we can measure growth? Turn in your Bible to Ephesians

413 to 16. Paul uses this ancient word tell

us to describe the purpose of the church in Ephesians 413.

So Paul says not only is the world dynamic, not only is the

world characterized by constant change, but so is the church.

Change is coming, change is inevitable.

Change is healthy. Change is built into the very

design of this body. And Ephesians 4 is a passage

that demands change as we go through it.

It's going to say in verse 13, our unity is increasing.

We're growing in the perfection of knowledge.

And as we're growing, we're changing and we're growing in

maturity to mature manhood and we're growing up in every way.

It says we're changing in every way.

Verse 16, we're growing up in love and change is is happening,

but this, this passage teaches us what we're being changed

into, what the goal is. And if there's no goal, then we

become like verse 14. We're children that are tossed

to and from by every church fad and every argument that we hear

online. And so programs and activities

in the church are great so long as our eyes are fixed on the

goal. Look with me and read with me

Ephesians 413 to 16 to see the goal.

I'm going to start at verse 11 to to lead up to it.

Paul said he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists,

the shepherds, and the teachers to equip the Saints for the work

of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

And here's our text 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 that we

may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and

carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by

craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every

way into Him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole

body joined and held together by every joint with which it is

equipped. When each part is working

properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in

love. So if you're here last week to

to recap, there's a beautiful this is a breathtaking passage,

chapter 4, verse 12 where it talks about God gives pastors

and teachers or pastor teachers to the church to equip the

Saints for the work of the ministry.

That's the tell us of the pastor, the tell us of the

teacher. Our purpose is to build you up,

to equip you for the work of the ministry.

And in light of that amazing verse, he kind of ties together

theologically a couple of really beautiful concepts.

The first one, if you were here, was the ascension of Jesus

Christ. So after he's raised from the

dead, he appears to the 500 and and he goes to the Mount of

Olives. If we think Jerusalem's that

high point, everything is up from Jerusalem.

The only point that's higher is the Mount of Olives.

Jesus is there with the Temple Mount in front of him.

You could see Jericho in the background and there he ascends

up into glory. And Paul cites that that that

theology that ascension by citing Psalm 68.

And he says when he went and ascended into heaven, he sat

down being coronated, being crowned king.

And unlike any other earthly king who then brings tribute

from those he conquers. He says Jesus is not like that.

He doesn't demand anything from those he conquers.

He actually gives tribute to those whom he conquers.

He's a king unlike any other king in the world.

So he sits down and he pours out gifts to men.

And here comes the second point of theology from last week.

He said, spiritual gifts you are given, giftings you are given.

Paul calls it a stewardship of grace.

You're given a responsibility so that we can tie in this third

theological point, which he said was the priesthood of every

believer. You've been given a gift.

Now you must steward that gift. Jesus said to his church in

John, as the Father sent me, so I am sending you.

Jesus was the first apostle, and he sent his apostles, and those

apostles put the authority and the responsibility of of

shepherding our gifts to the local church.

And so you are literally continuing the ministry of Jesus

Christ in his absence. He's seated at the right hand of

God. We've complete and fulfill the

ministry to the world. So those three things end in

verse 12 with with this, with this, these words that begin to

Orient us toward the tell us of the purpose of the church in our

passage. And again, Paul takes this

ancient philosophical word, tell us and he he applies it to the

church in verse 13. What is the purpose of the

church? We're going to ask 2 questions.

This is the first one. The answer began in verse 12 for

building up the body of Christ. The purpose of this local church

is the building up of the body of Christ.

The purpose of Christ Church is building up the body.

We exist for spiritual formation and our passage is going to

elaborate on that goal as you look to our verse in verse 13.

Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge

of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the

stature of the fullness of Christ.

So, so Christ Church exists for spiritual formation.

This local body exists for spiritual formation, the word

formation. You can think of Jesus saying I

am the the Potter and you are the clay and I'm, I'm molding

you into a, a vessel or an instrument for my glory.

Formation means literally a shaping or a molding or a

forming, the process by which something takes on its proper

shape according to an intended pattern.

And you read through the Scripture, there's all kinds of

vocabulary that the Bible uses to describe are being conformed

into Christ. The first one is you're being

conformed. You're being formed or

conformed. Galatians 419 One of my favorite

passages in Scripture, Paul says, my little children, of

whom I am in the pains of childbirth until Christ is

formed in you, you're being formed into the image of Jesus.

And it uses this image conformity and then and then the

word image itself. Romans 829 we are conformed to

the image of his Son. And finally in 2nd Corinthians

318 he uses the word transformation and the the Greek

is literally the word metamorphosis.

There's a transformation that's happening where he says we all

with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being

transformed into the same image from 1° degree of glory to

another. You're increasing.

We are increasing rather as a local body in glory before the

Father. He says you're being formed into

his image. You're being conformed.

You're being transformed and then he adds this word in

Ephesians 4. You're maturing.

It's maturity. You're growing up in every way

so that you are no longer a child but a spiritual adult.

You're growing up from spiritual children to adults and it's that

word in verse 13. That word maturity is the word

tell us in the original and it means completion or perfection

or fulfillment. When when Jesus was on the

cross, the very last words that he spoke was it it is finished,

it's completed, it's done. That is the word to telestye.

It's the same root word. It's completed, it's finished.

So the tell us of the church is spiritual formation.

And as you come to verse 13, I want you to see there's three

prepositional phrases which are three aspects of this goal.

If our goal is spiritual formation, then he kind of

breaks it apart and says, and and this is this is what I mean

by it, 3 aspects of this singular goal.

The first aspect this is we must attain unity and the faith and

in the knowledge of God that's number one attaining unity in

the faith and the knowledge of God and attaining was used in

the ancient world of of reaching a destination means you're

you're arriving at a goal you're reaching a goal and this isn't

the goal of all humanity. This is the goal of those

Christians who put their faith in Jesus verse 12 to equip the

Saints. The purpose of the Saints is to

be conformed into the image of God.

And even in this first preposition, there's there's 2A2

fold aspect. He says you must have unity in

the faith and the perfection of your knowledge.

So you can't, you can't have a spiritual formation without the

perfection of your knowledge. As you learn this Bible and this

body of truth that comes and, and so when it uses this word,

faith, unity and faith, this is not talking about your personal

trust in Jesus Christ. That's one way we talk about

faith. It's using faith in the same way

that Paul used it in chapter 3 when he said there's one faith,

1 hope, 1 Lord, 1 baptism. Faith is the content of what we

believe, a body of doctrine. We have one body of doctrine

that we're all conforming our minds to, that we're perfecting

our minds around. And so he says we have unity in

this faith. And you go back to Acts 19,

eight. It's amazing to read that

portion of Scripture along with Ephesus because that's where

Paul plants the Ephesian church. And it says when Paul first came

in this synagogue, that city, he entered the synagogue of

Ephesus. And for three months he spoke

boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the Kingdom of God.

He says he reasoned with them daily in the hall of Tyrannis.

This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia

heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

I bring that up to show you when Paul comes to the Ephesians,

look how long spiritual formation requires.

It says he spent three months preaching to the Jews, and then

they continued for two years teaching them every day.

And then he writes them this letter telling them to continue

in this goal of unity and the perfection of knowledge.

And so he writes this church and he says, not all of you are

unified, not all of you have perfected your knowledge yet.

Not everybody understands their Bible yet.

So we're going to press on and submit ourselves to the

preachers and teachers and, and bow the knee to one another as

we as we seek from one another to learn.

And so they devote themselves to the teaching because the same is

true of us. None of us have arrived yet.

None of us have a full understanding of Scripture.

None of us are in perfect Christ likeness yet.

And so we come to church and we learn, we're perfecting our

knowledge. And Paul says when we perfect

our knowledge, it builds our unity.

So we remember this faith and this teaching.

And the second aspect, the second aspect of this goal is,

he says, for the corporate church to become a perfect man.

You can look at verse 13. He adds on to it.

Three simple words to mature manhood.

We're moving to mature manhood, Ian Hamilton says This is so

basic, but we forget that the church is not an aggregate of

individual believers, that we all come together.

Some chemical change has happened where it's no longer a

bunch of individual believers. You are we now the the church is

is us ontologically. And this phrase is is really

important because it teaches we have a marked visible unity of

faith and you have to understand the the communal or the

corporate nature of our salvation.

It says verse 13 until we all attain the unity of faith and

the knowledge of God. So this is not about Isaac

Farley becoming strong in the faith or you becoming strong in

the faith. This is about us.

This is about us becoming strong together.

Paul doesn't say until we attain to mature persons, it's singular

until we attain to a mature man, which means the goal of the

church is not met when you become spiritually mature.

The goal of the church is met when we become spiritually

mature. And this, this changes the way

the Western church thinks about church.

This isn't individualistic. I'm becoming like Christ.

It's corporate. We're doing this together.

And if somebody comes or doesn't come to church, they say I don't

need church because I'm ahead of the church.

I'm further along. They're going to drag me down.

You know this argument, you say you, you fundamentally missed

the the purpose of Ephesians 413.

The whole point is that if you think you've arrived spiritually

and the rest of your church has not arrived spiritually, then

you have not arrived. As it says you've given, been

given gifts, Ephesians 4 for the building up of the body.

Your gifts exist for other people because we're in this

together. We serve one another until we

all reach maturity, and the passage takes seriously the

reality that we've been united. There's no such thing as a lone

Christian working out his salvation or her salvation on

their own, which means there's no individual who says I have no

need of the church. There's no individual who can

say I've got my own personal relationship with Jesus or I

believe in God, but I don't believe in organized religion or

I'm not dependent on other believers.

That's thinking like a a child. Paul says that's immature

thinking. If you think individualistically

about the church, you're a child.

If if you think corporately about the church, he says this

is a sign of mature thinking. This immature logic is exactly

backwards. Paul says we are the church.

And he says the church is so organized that we're we're

united. We're at one living, breathing

body like a forest ecosystem. We're like a, a coral reef.

We're we're we're one and you do not.

And you cannot have your own personal relationship with God

and you cannot live the Christian life without

community. And if you don't believe me, ask

anybody who's tried to pull themselves out of depression or

ask anybody who's just tried to will themselves out of their own

addiction. You can't do it.

You need the church and you've been given gifts, a stewardship

of grace which exists for other people.

And the tell us of the church is spiritual formation, not just

yours. And we are mature when our

entire local church is mature. And you can take that

understanding and go back to all those metrics that we talked

about in the beginning about programs and people and

activity. And you can measure this goal or

those metrics against this goal. Those metrics are still good,

but measure them against this goal of spiritual formation.

The first aspect he said was unity of the faith and

perfection of knowledge. The second one was for the

maturity of the corporate church.

And then finally, the third aspect of this goal in verse 13,

it says is to attain the measure of the stature of the fullness

of Christ. That's a mouthful.

Another way to say it. It could be rendered to the

measure, namely the maturity of the fullness of Christ.

Or we might say it in one word. The goal is Christlikeness.

We're trying to attain this goal.

The goal is Christlikeness, and so he uses this word fullness to

the fullness of Christ. This comes in a lot of ways in

Ephesians, a lot of different contexts.

It's always the emphasis is on the filling up, the being filled

up that comes as completeness or entirety as a result of being

filled. And it says Christ is the

fullness of God and he's filling the church.

And so we're aiming at mature manhood as opposed to being

spiritual children. And our goal together, again, we

have to have a focus. We have to have a pattern.

The pattern is after Jesus Christ.

We want to be like him. Bruce says the glorified Christ

provides the standard at which his people are to aim.

The corporate Christ cannot be content to fall short of the

perfection of the personal Christ, which is is has really

strong implications because there's a great cultural

argument that's going to say when we get to chapters 5 and 6

where it talks about how we are to order our household with

women being submissive to their husbands and husbands loving

their wives and children being submissive to the the husband

and the wife. It's not a cultural argument

because Paul saying right here, when we when we seek after

Christ and when we have this unity, this is what our lives

are to be patterned like. This is what society looks like.

This is the goal for our households.

And you get to see that everything that comes after this

is, is the the goal, the pattern.

This is what we shape ourselves after.

And now that we understand that the goal of the church, the goal

of this church, it's so important.

The goal of this church is spiritual formation.

That's why we exist. I want to ask a second question,

the verses 14 to 16 answer. Why is spiritual formation

essential? Why is this the goal?

Why is this so important? Read with me verses 14 to 16

again, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by

the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human

cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every

way into Him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole

body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is

equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body

grow so that it builds itself up in love. 4 reasons I want you to

see why spiritual formation is essential.

It says it's essential for stability #1 #2 for integrity #3

for maturity and #4 for responsibility.

So it's important for stability says that you might not be

driven to and from by the waves. You're stable #2 integrity that

you might embody the truth and love to this local church, all

of the believers you're in community with #3 maturity that

you might grow up in every way into Christ who is your head and

then #4 responsibility so that each part would contribute to

the growth of the whole. And we'll go through these one

by one. This is why spiritual formation

is essential #1 stability. We are formed spiritually so

that we may no longer be tossed to and fro by the waves and

carried about by every wind of doctrine, every fad of the

Church, every book that's put out, every wind of doctrine by

human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Immature believers are so susceptible to false doctrine.

And he says that's why the stability, that's why the

perfection of your knowledge is so important.

You have to be conformed into his image and conformed into his

image, formed into his image, transformed by the renewal,

renewal of your mind. Because when your mind has been

renewed, then you have the mind of Christ, and the mind of

Christ keeps away from error. It's not susceptible to error.

You can tell truth. So that is a henna clause.

He's saying. So that denoting purpose, it's

essential so that you might no longer be a child in the faith.

And child is the word Nepios, probably where we get the word

nepotism. Nepios is a is a child from

infancy all the way up to puberty.

And as is typical in Scripture, it's not emphasizing the age,

it's emphasizing child likeness, saying that there are are

children who are lacking understanding, they're

inexperienced, they have no insight.

And there are children and adults who are spiritual infants

in this church who are not discerning yet.

They haven't been perfected in knowledge yet, and they are

susceptible to error and susceptible to all of these

things they're going to follow. Paul says in these verses, if

you think individualistically about the church, then you're

still in this category of spiritual infancy.

You don't yet understand. If you think corporately, you're

beginning to get it. And so stability is essential

because Paul says there are men and women and spiritual forces

and demonic forces that seek. I'll will for you.

They seek you and your family harm.

They seek to influence your children.

And they prey on the weak and the isolated.

They prey on the immature. And there's actually three more

prepositions that come here under this this heading of

maturity. And they kind of build to a

climax of their own as they talk about the wicked activity of of

men in this world. And Paul says that error is not

by accident. These are not innocent errors.

Variant teachings are deliberate, and it's part of a

strategy that's designed to lead people away from the truth and

to pull them away from spiritual formation.

Clinton Arnold says in this we can see the fingerprints of the

evil 1. And you see here, Paul, the

first little prepositional phrase Paul writes that we're

not to be carried about by the cunningness of people.

And the word cunningness in Greek is literally the word dice

throwing. And it means cheating literally

and not only following that. It's more than just cheating.

It's deceitfulness. This is by deceitfulness.

Deceitfulness is the word navery or villainy or trickery or

craftiness. That's why Jesus says there's

going to be sheep, wolves in sheep's clothing.

They're going to come in and they're going to try to

introduce false doctrines and they're trying to upset our

spiritual growth and to pull you away from the truth.

It's cheating, it's manipulating, it's gaslighting,

it's praying on the spiritually vulnerable.

And so the devil and the world are looking for isolated and

vulnerable Christians who are weak in their faith because

they're wanting to prevent this process of spiritual formation.

How do they do it? They try and pull you out of

healthy churches into more open and affirming churches where the

doctrine is more shallow and you're not going to learn as

much. You're not going to be built up.

And they're going to do it in the name of God and in the name

of Jesus Christ. And they're going to redefine

biblical terms like love and justice and mercy so that they

can pull away your Christian service and make it less

faithful. And they're going to redefine

sin. And they're going to tell you

that what is good is evil and what's evil is good, hoping that

you'll participate in their wickedness with them.

And they're going to mingle theology with philosophy and

wisdom of the world, and so poison the purity of the truth.

And they're going to flood your thinking with worldly, godless

perspectives. There's a quote from Spurgeon

that he said years ago that stuck with me.

It's perfect for this context. He says people will believe

anything if you put it plausibly before them, which means if you

write a book, people are going to believe anything because it's

in a book and you've got a little PhD by your name.

People believe anything if you'll take your logic and

you'll put it in a good little argument and craft it just right

that anybody will believe it. And that's true.

So Christians, we have to be discerning and we have to be

wise. We don't believe things just

because people put it plausibly before us.

And finally, Paul says in deceitful schemes, and this is

kind of the climax, so we're towards schemes of error.

People use deceitfulness for their own plans, which are

characterized most of all by the error, and they love to use the

scriptures to introduce it. And the the error is propagated

with the intent of luring others to embrace error by trickery and

with deceit. I think most frequently I see it

in our day under the phrase love your neighbor and the world will

throw all kinds of things under love your neighbor of of don't

show up to church because you might spread COVID.

Love your neighbor, wash your hands, love your neighbor.

Don't drive an SUV because it's bad for the environment.

Love your neighbor you throw anything under love your

neighbor. Forget it.

Why did Jesus say that we love our neighbor, our neighbors,

vulnerable people who we see in need and we move to help them.

It has nothing to do with masks or washing our hands or fossil

fuels, right? We they will lure us away with

all kinds of doctrine and they will use scriptures.

Christians, we cannot be deceived.

We saturate our minds with the truth.

We have the mind of Christ. We are protected by knowledge

and truth grounds us, so we're stable.

Spiritual formation provides stability.

The second thing spiritual formation provides is integrity.

Integrity. This is why he says speaking the

truth and love. He moves on and speaking the

truth and love. This is what we are to do within

this body of believers and it goes so much beyond just

speaking. The word itself incorporates

your speech and your conduct, which is why some translations

translate this verb speaking as being truthful or dealing truly

more than speaking the truth in love, they'll translate it as

confessing the truth in love. There's a pastor in our PLBA.

He says every time he meets a new believer, he puts him in one

of two categories. He says they're either a grace

giver or a truth teller. He says it's, it's one or the

other. And I think that's true.

We all tend toward one or or the other.

There's a, there's a pride that comes from being a bold,

courageous Christian truth teller, right?

We all desire that. And to give grace can feel weak

or soft to some people. And then there's the others.

There's the grace givers. And there's a joy and a peace

that comes from forgiving and overlooking sin and showering

people with grace. And it can feel harsh or

unloving to wound with hard truths.

And what Paul's saying here is you as a Christian have to find

balance. Every Christian is balanced in

this way. Truth without love is cruel and

cold, and love without truth is aimless and deceitful.

That's right. And we say neither of these

extremes is the fruit of pure and undefiled Christianity.

Christianity to find balance. So integrity goes beyond just

being correct or thinking the right things.

Integrity is about confession and character.

You're uniting your belief with your conduct, so it's being

truthful, it's dealing truly, and it's confessing truth and

love. You have to be wise as a serpent

and innocent as a dove. You have to be bold as a lion

and gentle as a lamb. Integrity, Spiritual formation

is also essential. 3rd for maturity, he says verse 15, we

are to grow up in every way and to him who is the head and to

Christ we are to grow up in every way.

This is what we already spoke about, but we'll say it again.

Your maturity is not self referential.

This isn't just about you and your walk with God.

Maturity is the goal of the passage to tell us of the church

is mature manhood. It's the end for which we were

designed that we might together grow up into one mature man.

And fourthly and finally comes with it.

Spiritual formation comes responsibility that each part

would contribute to the growth that says so that the church

will build itself up in love. There comes a point where the

snowball begins to roll down the hill and the church builds

itself up. Our growth, Paul says, is

dependent on every member participating.

It takes everyone of us participating.

Go back in your minds to Genesis 49.

There's a legendary question that God comes and he says to

Cain in that passage, where is Abel your brother?

And Cain says to him, am I my brother's keeper?

And I'm here to tell you today that in this body you are your

brother's keeper. You are responsible for the

spiritual growth of every believer in this church.

And I ask, who are you seeking the maturity of?

Who are you looking at the spiritual growth of?

Who are you taking responsibility for?

Look at verse 16, from whom the whole body joined together and

held together by every joint with which it is equipped.

Mythbusters had an episode where they, I'm looking at this, this

passage, these two verbs in verse 16 joined together, held

together. They had an episode where they

took 2 phone books and they set them side by side and they

folded all of the pages of 800 pages of a phone book 1 to

another. And at the final product, they

couldn't pull it apart. And so in Mythbusters fashion,

they sawed holes in it and put ropes on each side and they

pulled as hard as they could and they couldn't take the phone

books apart. And so they got two cars and

they hooked the cars up to the phone books and they pulled it

apart. And I've just seen it.

They try and pull it apart and they won't pull apart.

And so again, Mythbusters fashion, they get a tank and the

tank finally can pull apart this phone book.

And so these two verbs, I want you to think of this joined

together and held together. Again, if it's 2 pages folded

together, it's it can be pulled apart, 8 pages, 20 pages.

This is representative of this church.

When every member is holding together the body, Christ says

the gates of hell cannot prevail against this church.

That happens not with one or two members.

We are held together by Jesus Christ when we serve one

another, when you are showing hospitality to me, when I am

teaching you, when you are giving and all of the members

are building the body up, the gates of hell cannot prevail

against it. That's what it's saying.

We build each other up. It's joined together, it's held

together when every member of the church is doing their part,

taking responsibility for the health and the spiritual

formation of the church. And now you can look inwardly

and ask yourself, what are the ways that I can seek the growth

of other people? You are responsible.

You are your brother's keeper. Now what are you doing to see to

the growth of this congregation? Consider your spiritual gifts.

How can you build up the church? Because Jesus says we are going

to be at this until we all attain Christlikeness and that

is in the end we're going to be doing this until Christ returns.

And this growth, like the growth in Acts when the Word goes out,

spiritual, spiritual formation comes with the growth of this

body as the word increases, but also it's numerical growth.

And in Acts, it talks about the numerical growth by the Word,

increasing among the people, spiritual and numerical growth.

The church expands and churches are planted and Christians are

brought into the fold and Christians are serving according

to their gifts and believers are being built up.

And our unity and our fellowship and our love is increasing.

And the world perceives these things and they glorify God.

And the the plans of the enemy and of Satan is frustrated.

They're frustrated. And our people become spiritual

adults and are so protected. And the church is blessed.

And we walk in stability and integrity and maturity with

responsibility. This is the church in its purest

form. This is the truest expression of

this local body. The tell us of the church is

spiritual formation and all of the blessings that we seek flow

from that. And so submit yourself to the

word of God and serve and submit to this local body.

And Paul says when each part is working properly, it makes the

body grow so that it builds itself up and love and pray with

me. Let's pray for that.

Lord God, may we not despise your incarnation, May we not

despise your ascension, that you are so gracious that when you

were seated at the right hand of God and became king, you did not

demand anything of us, but gave us gifts, gifts that we might

complete your mission. Lord, we are those who are here

to preach, to serve, to be hospitable, to give.

God give us the the courage and the confidence to do that, to

put away our childish things so that we may become mature

adults, so we can conform ourselves according to this word

and sing it and have it sung over us and study it.

Lord, build up this church. We've seen how to do it now.

Spirit, help us do it. God, we love you.

We ask all these things in the name of your son, Amen.

Thanks for listening. You'll learn more about Heritage

Church. Or if you'd like to respond to

this sermon, visit our website at www.heritageshawnee.org.