Ephesians 4:13-15

Growing Up

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Welcome to God’s Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.Sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life.

Will you meet me now in the book of Ephesians? Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4, and we'll be reading verses 9 through 16 as we continue our series on The Church Defined. Ephesians chapter 4. I promise we're almost done with this series, only one or two more weeks left. Ephesians chapter 4 verses 9 through 16. Hear now God's Word. “(Now this, “He ascended” – what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.) And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” Brothers and sisters, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.

Well, for those of you who are parents, or for those of you who are grandparents, you'll know what I'm about to say is true. Children, your parents and your grandparents worry, and they think, and they pray, about what type of life you're going to live. Children, will you look here now. Your parents love you. Your grandparents love you. And they want to see you love Christ, but that's not going to be easy. You know what that's like, don't you parents and grandparents? To pray and to think about your children. To wonder what type of men and women they'll grow up to be.

Well, in this passage, God is telling us that there are people who do not want our children, our grandchildren, or even you to be Christians. And so, we need to grow up as Christians. We want to see our children grow up as Christians. We want to see our grandchildren grow up as Christians, but we adults, you parents, you grandparents, also need to grow in Christ. And that indeed starts with being in Christ. In chapter 2 of Ephesians, we saw all about how Jesus Christ is the one who we must be in. We were those who were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God made us alive together in Christ. He's given you new life. He doesn't want you to just remain static. But if you are in Jesus Christ, He wants you to grow in Christ. He wants you to grow in Christ.

So, we first must be in Christ. But how do we grow in Christ? Well, if we want to grow in Christ, we must be in God's Word. If we want to grow in Christ, we must be in God's Word. Look with me at Ephesians chapter 4 verse 13, “Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” When we looked at that passage last week, do you remember that what I was trying to show you was from Second Timothy chapter 2? That God's Word is given by inspiration and is profitable for rebuke, for correction, for doctrine, for training in righteousness, why? That the man of God might be thoroughly equipped for every good work. If we're going to grow up in Christ, if we're going to be a mature Christian, if we're going to be equipped and ready for every good work, we must be in God's Word.

Let me ask you: When's the last time you've read God's Word? Are you memorizing God's Word? Psalm 119 is clear, how could a young man keep his way pure? By taking heed according to Your Word. Your Word I've hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Are you in God's Word? Are you memorizing God's Word? Your growth in Christ is directly tied to your time in His Word. It is in His Word that God teaches us. It's in His Word that He rebukes us. It's in His Word that He trains us righteousness. Are you in God's Word? Are you growing up by being in God's Word?

Now, this is easy to say, but it's hard to do, isn't it? It's easy to say, “Oh, I'm going to start a new workout regimen.” But it's really hard to keep that for more than a day or two, isn't it? It's really easy to say, “Oh, I'm going to start running.” It is really hard to run. Let me encourage you. Have you neglected God's Word? Just take off a little bit at a time. Start with just a little bit. If you need help in Bible reading, we do that every single morning on the church's Facebook page together. If you need accountability, pick someone in the congregation who will read just a little bit of God's Word with you each morning. Will you be in God's Word? Will you sing God's Word? Will you memorize God's Word? Will you meditate on God's Word? Will you hear God's Word? Brothers and sisters, if we're to grow up in Christ, we must grow in our knowledge of God's Word.

But that's not where it ends either. Yes, we are growing up into Christ, but not everybody wants you to. Not everybody wants you to. Brothers and sisters, what Ephesians chapter 4 verse 14 tells us something extremely concerning. Look with me at Ephesians chapter 4 verse 14, “that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the tricky of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.” God doesn't want you to be infants. God wants you to grow up into that mature man, into that mature church, into that mature body of Christ. God wants you to grow up in Christ, but if we are going to grow up in Christ, we must be aware that people are plotting your demise. We must not be infants. The idea here is as if we were babies in a boat without a rudder and put out into Lake Superior and pushed out into the middle of the lake and upon that lake as the winds blow, we would just be tossed wherever the boat goes. That's not what we're supposed to be. We're supposed to be taking hold of the helm as mature people able to steer our faith. That is God's desire for you. So as you're in His Word, there are people who will try to steer you off course.

Now, the imagery that it uses here is really amazing. Have you ever heard of a loaded dice before? If you were to go into some back alley and you were to play with someone and you might be suspect at first if the same numbers kept rolling again and again and again. Why? It might be that they put just a tiny bit of lead at the bottom of the die. Just a tiny bit of weight at the bottom of the die so every time they rolled it, it landed exactly where they wanted it to land. There are people who are trying to demise your faith like that.

The other imagery, there are a few hunters here, a few fishermen here, and Paul uses this, God uses the imagery here of plotting like somebody going out into the field and stalking their prey and being ready, setting up a path, and putting things to lie in that when you come it might be able to shoot you in the liver. That's the idea of this cunning crafty deceitfulness here. There are people who will try to derail your faith. There are people who will try to tell you, “No, God's Word is not pure, but it's mixed with all sorts of errors.” Brothers and sisters, let me tell you, those people come to God's Word with presuppositions, with assumptions and biases against God's Word. And I'll tell you what, if you try to look into anything with those biases, you'll find faults and cracks with it. Now, you have to drive a wedge there and shove it in with a sledgehammer, but they'll do it, and they'll try to say, “Ah! See, see, see, look here!” And in their disbelief, they will try to have you disbelieve. They’ll come to you and they'll say, “How do you know that the Bible you have is actually the Bible?” And brothers and sisters, God has faithfully preserved His Word for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. If you ever get that question and you ask yourself, “Somebody says this is, is this actually in the Bible?” you and I will sit down in the church, where there's Wi-Fi, and I will show you thousands upon thousands of manuscripts, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old of the Bible that has been kept pure. We're able to see that. We don't have some type of myth. We don't have some type of myth that, “Oh, we have this magical book that we can't ever go back in time and look at the originals.” No, we're able to go back and we're able to see the manuscript evidences and God’s Word has been kept pure.

There are others who are tricky. You know those. They're going to come to your house. One of the nice things about living a mile from the church down the gravel road is they don't come here very often. I have to call them, and they'll come to the study. But they'll wear black ties and white shirts and they'll come. And it's craftiness and it's trickiness. If you've ever talked to Jehovah's witness or a Mormon for any amount of time, they will not come out right away with the controversial things. Right away they'll come out and they'll try to build rapport with you. They'll try to point out how similar the things are they believe that we believe. If you go and talk to Jehovah's witness, in the first two times you meet with them, they go through a few chapters that has everything in common between their church and our church. And they'll set you up where you get comfortable with them and then you get to chapter 3, in which they call Jesus “a god” instead of Yahweh Himself. And then you talk to Jehovah's witnesses and you find out that what they mean by “a god” is they’re saying, “He's not actually even a god He's just Michael the Archangel.” And brothers and sisters, you know I'm not one to normally come up here and talk bad about other people, but this is the craftiness of their ways. This is how, if you are not in their word, when Devin and I go and we evangelize to people, it's crafty. And you have to know God's Word, because they will suck you in.

I'm going to give you a principle of understanding the Bible that will undermine a large majority of what they say. When you come to the Bible, there is absolutely clear teaching in the Bible. It's emphatic truth. It's clear statements. And we take those clear statements and we understand unclear statements by the clear ones. Not everything in the Bible is equally understandable. I'm not going to make you raise your hand, but how many of you, when you've read your Bible in the morning before, or even as you've listened to me preach, have looked at a passage and gone, “Got me! I don't know how to make sense of this one!” You have to dig a little bit. How do you understand that? Well, you go to the more clear passages and you understand the principle of that passage by the more clear passages. With the cults, with the people who will try to trick you, will try to plot against you, they'll take obscure passages, they'll take unclear passages and they'll build up their entire doctrine of God around unclear passages. Because when they start from unclear passages, what they're able to do is they're able to build up a whole bunch of theology that will make you scratch your head and you'll go, “Okay, I can kind of see where that fits in with that verse.” But when you look at the other clear verses of the Bible, you realize, “Well, hold on, don't you pull the rug out from under me!” It is absolutely clear what Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!” And Jesus does not turn away from him and say, “Only God is God. Don't worship me!” No! No! We know that Jesus Christ is not “a god” but the only God and we know that He is one with the Father because He's the one who told us so.

There are all sorts of tricks today. People who will try to get you to disbelieve in different ways. There are ancient heresies. We can talk about Gnosticism. There are other ancient heresies, we could talk about Docetism. We could talk about all sorts of heresies that have cropped up since the beginning of the church. And aren't we thankful that God warned us here in Ephesians chapter 4 that people would try to come and lay traps for you? If you want to grow up in Christ, brothers and sisters, I'm going to encourage you, be in God's Word and be ready, be ready, for those tricks. Be ready for that craftiness.

But if we are to grow up in Christ, we must also speak the truth to one another in love. Speak the truth to one another in love, if we are to grow up. Look with me again at Ephesians chapter 4, “that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – ”.

Why is this verse in this section about the church? Because we need each other. If I start saying funky stuff from the pulpit and it doesn't line up with God's Word, I need you to rebuke me in love. If one of your brothers and sisters sitting here right next to you starts saying something or living a life contrary to God's Word, they need you to go talk to them in love. They need you to comfort. They need you to comfort each other in confrontation. Let me say that again. If we're to grow up in Christ, we must comfort each other in confrontation.

Now, you might sit there and scratch your head, “What in the world?! How do you comfort in confrontation?! You are speaking babble talk here, Pastor!” No, this is what this is talking about. It says speaking the truth into each other's lives. I’ll never forget the time I was getting overwhelmed by some obligations that were happening at school and with work and I remember I was just a young married man, I think Olivia and I had only been married like 3 months, and I had gone to prayer meeting and after prayer meeting, Pastor Micah said, “Hey Bryan, come into the sanctuary.” And as we walked into the sanctuary, turned on a few lights, and we walked down that red carpet, and I sat on the front pew and he sat on the stage. And he sat there and he looked at me and he said something profound. He looked at me and he said, “Bryan, stop being stupid. Go love your wife.” I needed Micah to tell me that I needed to go love my wife more than loving being busy at ministry, or busy at school.

Sometimes you need to talk to your brothers and sisters in the church and we're not just here so we can have coffee and donuts. Oh, we're here to drink coffee and eat donuts, don’t worry, but we're here also to live out Matthew chapter 18. To live God's Word out with each other. To hear from God's Word from each other's lips. To be comforted with each other in love. To say the hard things to each other after we've lived and wept with each other. After we've loved one another, having built up that love for one another, then we are able to confront each other and say, “Hey…” This just happened, I'm not joking, this just happened, a reformed man who I vaguely know, I'm not friends with him, said the exact same things one of these cults said. He was just thinking on his own. He was singing about Jesus's humanity and in His divinity and he said something that one of the cults said that's been a condemned heresy by one of the councils of old. And I was encouraged to see other Christian friends be able to tell him, “No. No, you've sinned in your thinking. Here's exactly what the Scriptures say and you need to repent of that.” And this man did. People brought him the Word. He looked at the Word and he repented of his sin. Will we do that with each other? Just recently, someone in the congregation was telling me about one of their own children who was asking them insightful questions about what was their motivation for how they felt and were acting about a certain way. Children are able to speak to their parents or their grandparents, both in their families and in their faith when they have God's Word in their hearts.

If we're to grow up, we must speak God's Word to each other in love, as we grow up in Christ. And indeed, that is the goal. That is our goal, brothers and sisters, as we grow up in Christ, is that last final point we need to say again that we are growing up in Christ. Look with me at chapter 4 again. Chapter 4 verse 15, “but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ”. Brothers and sisters, we are running with a goal. Brothers and sisters, we are going towards the finish line. Brothers and sisters, we are headed to an end mark, and His name is Jesus Christ. We are growing up, not as individuals, but as a collective body as a church of Jesus Christ, and what is our goal? Who is our object of faith, but it is Jesus Christ Himself. He is the head of the church and we are His body. And as we serve one another, as we use our gifts of ministry, as we rebuke each other in love, as we build one another up, as we steep in God's Word together, we are becoming more and more beautiful to Jesus Christ. We’re not meant to stay as infants, but we were meant to mature. The church was not meant to stay as children tossed to and fro, able to be duped and deceived. But brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is building up His church, His Holy Spirit is working in you. And as we grow together as His church, Jesus Christ receives the glory. And we enjoy Him more and more.

Will you be in God's Word? Will you be growing with each other? Will you be speaking the truth in love? Church, will we be growing into our head Jesus Christ? That's the goal of the church. That's who we are and what we're about.

Let's pray, “Oh, Father, we thank you so much for the blessing it is to sit under Your Word. Father, we pray that You would teach us. Lord, we pray that we would not be those who would now have looked into a mirror and saw who we were and who we are supposed to be, Lord, and then we might go home and forget it. No, Lord, we pray that you would let us know who You are and that we would not just be hearers of Your Word, but we would be doers. Lord, we pray that we would not just be a social club, but truly, Lord, that we would be Your Church. Lord, that sinners would be saved here. Lord, that we would be instructed in righteousness. And that You might be glorified as we grow up into the body of Jesus Christ with Him as our head. In Jesus's name, amen.”

Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website: Sharonrpc.org. We’d love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa 52640. May God richly bless you this week.