Please rise for the reading of God's word. Turn in your Bibles to Psalm 133. Give all your attention now to the reading of God's holy word, the revealed truth. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord commanded the blessing, life forevermore. Now turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. starting with verse three through verse eight. Again, hear the truth of God. For I say, though through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. If prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith. Or ministry, let us use it in our ministering. He who teaches, in teaching. He who exhorts, in exhortation. He who gives, with liberality. He who leads, with diligence. He who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. This ends the reading of God's word and let us remember that all flesh is like grass and all of its glory is like the flower of the grass. The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides forever. And all of God's people said, amen. Please be seated. Let us go to our God in prayer once again. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can come before you and ask for your help by being fed by you from your word and guided by your Holy Spirit to teach us and instruct us. to deepen our understanding of the truth, that you would really, truly give us that spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Christ, and we would grow in that understanding of truth so that we might bear much fruit by your Holy Spirit, by increasing our faith of the truth, and we pray that that would happen. And we thank you that you are faithful to teach and instruct. And we thank you for this book of Ephesians that you've breathed out through Paul and the wonders that we have encountered in it so far. Guide and direct us now, we pray, for the sake of Christ's glory and in his name, amen. So we continue on our journey through this Grand Canyon of Scripture, as it's been called, the Queen of the Epistles. which, by the way, we will take a break from next Sunday being Easter and then the following Sunday with Reverend Schvichtenberg being here and then we'll resume with Ephesians in May. But we've been using that three-word framework of sit, walk, and stand. The first three chapters in Ephesians is really the sit section, dealing with what and who we are in Christ, our union with Him, our position, our rest in Him. And the second section being chapter four, verse one through chapter six, verse nine, you could call that the walk section, and dealing with how we ought to live, what our behavior should be. using walking as a metaphor for living the Christian life. And then the last section, Ephesians 6, verse 10 through 16, stand, our warfare against Satan and our call to stand against this great enemy of ours. and keeping in mind that the walk and the stand flow out of our sitting, out of the sit section, out of our resting in Christ, our union with him. We can't reverse that order. That's not biblical, but that's the religion of man reverses that order, if you will. So we must increase in our understanding and belief of the truth of who and what we are in Christ. and then live that out in our lives. That's what God has called us to do. We've seen so far God's great and grand purpose for the church is that the church be conformed to the image of Christ, both individually and corporately. and by that conformity is meant a maturity, as we saw last week, to a perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That is what God has in mind for the church. Nothing half-hearted, nothing partial. That is his grand purpose and plan, and he will bring it to pass. Of course, the implication for us, practically, is that we must grow up. As Paul will say in these verses we'll look at today, grow up. Now, I was a child in my family home. I had an older sister by a few years, and I was that typical pesky younger brother who annoyed her, got on her nerves, because that's what little brothers do, right? And she would be constantly saying to me, grow up. Why don't you grow up? Well, say that to an eight, nine, 10-year-old, and I mean, well, how do I do that? Comes with time. But that is the command for us as Christians to grow up. In fact, we see the Bible telling us that very thing. If you want to turn to Hebrews 5, verse 12 to 14, it says, for though by this time you ought to be teachers, You need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. And you have come to need milk and not solid food, for everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe or an infant. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. And then we find in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul says, and I, brethren, could not speak to you as spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to babes or infants in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food, for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able, for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? So we're challenged in the scriptures to not remain as infants, as children, in terms of maturity, being immature. We're called to grow up, to become fully developed. to mature in the faith so that we believe and live appropriately according to the truth of God, according to who we are in Christ, that we are living that way. We are walking as God would have us to walk. If you think about an infant, You know, when they're very small, they're not very mobile. They just kind of lie there and cry, and they might flail their arms and legs around, but they're not very mobile. They don't go anywhere. They're not able to walk. And then with time, they begin to move. They begin to roll, maybe scoot, begin to crawl, then maybe walk by holding on to furniture and stuff. And then maybe they take those first few fumbling steps where they're not holding on to anything and they fall down and they have to do that time and time again. And then as they continue to grow older and mature, their muscles get stronger, they gain skill, they might then get involved in sports where they're running races and marathons and maybe even the Olympics. Now that's the progression of our physical bodies, but we are called to the same, in a sense, in terms of our spiritual walk. We are not to remain as infants sitting on our behinds, just flailing our arms and legs around. We are called to walk, to walk and to run in the faith. So let us look at our text for today, and backing up a few verses to get more context, if you turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 4, starting at verse 11. It says, 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 knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Last week I covered those verses and showed this to be God's great and grand, glorious plan and purpose for the church. And having written that, then Paul says, that, he's bringing in now a conclusion or a reason that God is doing it, that God gifts his church with gifts and offices every member for the edification of the body, for the growth of the body, that, in verse 14, we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about by 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 effect of working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. And those three verses will be my text this morning, 14 through 16. And in that, we shall consider first the characteristics of maturity and immaturity. And then secondly, how we are to grow up. And lastly, what are the results of that growing up or of that maturity? So characteristics of maturity could be described as being unity, stability, truth, love, And Paul says in verse 14 that, again, we should no longer be, and we find all of that in the previous verses and in chapters one and two and three. Paul is describing what we are in Christ, the maturity of the body, the church, and then he says that we should no longer be children. So considering then the characteristics of immaturity, compared to maturity. If in maturity we see stability, in immaturity we find instability. He says that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, like a wave on the sea, restless, agitated, in constant motion, changing, fickle, And that, of course, may be the result of lack of self-control and self-discipline in a child, that they're all over the map, as it were, up and down, here and there, and so on. And as a church, If a church remains in that immaturity, they are tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine that blows through town. All of the fads that come through the broader evangelical church. What is the current fad today? Honestly, I don't even know. But there's been so many of them over the years of various things that another teacher now rises up and writes a book and sells his books and DVDs and conferences, and all the church jumps on the bandwagon, and they're tossed to and fro by these winds of doctrine that blow through town. and that by the trickery of men. So a child is easily misled or deceived. They tend to believe everything they are told. And that's the danger of the internet for believers, is that there's a flood of ideas that come upon us, or there are various winds that blow upon us, if you will, teaching us things, telling us things, asserting things that you find on the internet. And people are carried away, are misled, led astray. And again, that by the trickery of men, he says. That word trickery there might be translated slight, like the sleight of hand that a magician uses. If you've ever seen a magic act, you know, you're watching this guy and he does something and everybody's amazed at what just happened. And the first question is, how did he do that? How did he do that? You try to figure it out, right? Okay, he might have done something. Well, if you've read anything about how magicians do things, you know, they're all very elaborate. and planned carefully tricks that you only see that tip of the iceberg and you are fooled by it, but there's a whole massive underlying structure, if you will, of that trick that he performs. And if he does it right, everybody's just like, how did he do that? But it's that kind of trickery, it's that kind of sleight of hand where you're focused over here and he's doing something else over there and pulls off the trick. Same with those who would deceive regarding false doctrine. Because we are given many warnings in Scripture that there are false prophets, false teachers, false Christs, false shepherds, false brethren, all bringing false information. lies to trick us, to deceive us, and to pull us astray, to pull us away from the truth, to pull us off the path of truth into the weeds of deception. And Paul says this is in cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. It's clever subtlety. It's planned and organized. Its purpose is to deceive, confuse, trick, and to draw away from the path. That is what's out there. And Paul says, we shouldn't be like that anymore. We shouldn't be fooled by that anymore or led astray by that anymore. And we see a warning for this also in 1 John 4, which says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. So we are called to believe the truth and not believe the lie, not believe what is false. But what is necessary for that or what this presupposes is of course that we know the truth. We know what is true and hence can determine what is false. Hence the importance of knowing the scriptures and also sound reasoning. So many false teachers use erroneous reasoning to trick people. And so if we were better And our reasoning abilities, our critical thinking, our logic, if we understood those things better, we're not going to be as easily fooled. We could see through the errors, the invalid reasoning, and so on. But of course, the prime importance is knowing the scriptures. These teachers will misstate the propositions of scripture, or they will make improper inferences from statements of scripture so that they twist the scripture. It may sound good if you're just listening to the words, but it's twisted somehow to fit their agenda, their narrative, their trickery. And that makes it all the more dangerous for people who profess to be Christians. You know, if somebody comes up to you and they're a Hindu and they start talking about Hinduism, you know, you can shut it down right away because you don't believe the propositions of Hinduism. You know, you are far enough away from that in your thinking that you would stop it. But if somebody comes and they're talking all the right talk, all the Christian lingo, quoting scripture and so on, those individuals, if they're false ones, that's more dangerous because it sounds pretty good, but there's something about it, something a little twisted. And of course, that'll have ramifications down the road. You know, the glory of the Protestant Reformation was that it returned the Scriptures to the people so that they could test the spirits. And they did that, and they saw through and rejected Rome's web of lies and false doctrines. But I would say that that's the opposite of what's going on today, the very opposite. And it's because the broader evangelical church is turning its back on the Scriptures. and following those winds blowing through town and following those false teachers and so on. So then how are we to grow up? So we're to grow up. Paul says in verse 15, but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head Christ. And again, this reflects the ministry of the church This word speaking here, speaking the truth in love, Martin Lloyd-Jones says that this word not normally is translated speaking, but rather professing or holding the truth in love. Holding the truth in love is the opposite of being carried about by every wind of doctrine. And how do we do that? How do we do this? How do we hold the truth in love? Well, first of all, again, we must know the truth. We must be studying, reading the Bible and other books about the Bible written by godly men and women are three forms of unity we can use to help organize our thinking and looking at what the Bible teaches and so on. That's the first and absolute necessary step is knowing the truth. And that requires some walking as a believer, meaning you have to actually take the time, pick up the Bible, pick up those other books, buy those things, you know, and study and read and so on. And then we must hold the truth in humility and recognize that apart from God's grace, we too would be walking after every wind of doctrine, fooled by the trickery and cunning deceitfulness of men, and following after all of those fads that blow through town like a tumbleweed, We would be that as well, there but for the grace of God go I. And so we must recognize, if God has given us an understanding of the truth, that we hold that in humility. Because if given, left to ourselves, we would be as equally deceived and deluded. And we must also hold the truth graciously yet firmly, not using the truth as a club to beat someone with, but out of a concern for their well-being, being willing to profess the truth even if they don't want to hear it. We saw Paul do that in the book of Galatians when he challenged Peter, as well as the Galatians, with a sharp rebuke. telling them, waking them up to the fact that they were beginning to drift away from the gospel into a works righteousness, a false gospel. Now there's another nuance to this speaking the truth in love that I want to mention that I borrow from Reverend Joshua Engelsma, and that would be in terms of our inner relationships within a church, within our body. is that, first of all, speaking the truth in love means that the content of what we speak must be in love, or loving, versus hateful speech, abusive, mocking, ridiculing, wounding speech. It's rather speaking the truth, that content, in love, and the manner by which we do that, in tone and attitude and manner, is not abrasive and obnoxious and demeaning, but rather done in love, in terms of tone, attitude, and manner. And then, of course, the motives ought to be out of love, for the edification of others, not out of sinful motives such as pride, jealousy, bitterness, self-promotion, or even hatred. So that's the challenge, as Paul brings to us, speaking or professing or holding the truth in love that we may then grow up individually and corporately in everything, in every respect, as he says, in all things into Christ, desiring that, pursuing that, striving for that maturity. He then says in verse 16, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies. Jones says this is one of the most complicated statements Paul ever wrote. He's using the metaphor of the church and the human body with Christ as its head. Each member is joined and knit together, parts that are fitted closely together in a kind of harmony, bonded together and all interdependent, like the parts of our physical bodies are all fit together in that sort of harmony. You know, the study of anatomy and physiology is really an amazing look at God's creation of the human body. And you can't help but to be in wonder and awe if you ever study any of that, how the body works. It's so complicated that if one thing goes astray, you know, it could all fall apart. You know, there's the blood clotting cascade. There's like seven steps in this cascade that occur with different hormones and different proteins that end in the clotting of blood, which when you think about it, what an amazing aspect of the body that if you cut yourself, Yes, you address the cut by washing and putting a band-aid on and whatnot, but your body is working to clot that blood in that spot to stop, plug that leak, if you will. But what if something went wrong and your blood started to clot, you know, just willy-nilly, doesn't follow that cascade of events that are necessary? Well, we'd all die. All our blood would clot and you would die very quickly if that were to happen. But that just shows, that's just an example of the interdependent systems in the body that work and move harmoniously for the most part in our circulatory system, our nervous system, our digestive system, muscular skeletal system, all the systems of our body all work together, all are fitted together, every cell doing its part and so on. Now, of course, we know because of sin and aging, disease, all of that can be like falling apart, have issues, and so on. And one day, in the new heavens and the new earth, we will have a glorified body that won't be affected by sin and disease and so on. But again, Paul is using that as an analogy for the spiritual body of Christ, the church, that as we've talked in last week and the week before, that there's not just one big eye or one big hand, it's all of us have a part to play. And all of us need to discover what that part is, cultivate that calling and gift, and utilize that by, as he says, by which every joint supplies, that we are all contributing to the unity of the body so that we have that harmony then and that synergistic process of our joining together that results in growth, growth in terms of the body. And he says, now if we don't have that, of course, is when we have the disintegration, decay, disunity, disharmony, in like in a physical body, that usually results in death. In a church body, that can of course result in divisions, splitting of a church, or the completely, you know, the end of the church. The church just closes its doors and it's gone. People are dispersed and it's done. Paul says, this is according to the effective working by which every part does its share. Every cell in the body, every member, again, has its role or function, and that effective working means operating by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, recognizing that We can't do this in and of ourselves or with our own strength. We have to be crying out to God for that strength, for that power of His Holy Spirit to enable us to do what He is calling us to do in the body. Every part doing its share. Again, no spectators in the body of Christ, no appendixes no vestigial organs that don't have a function in the body of Christ. Every person has a part to play that's a part of the body of Christ. That's what Paul is teaching here. And as all of that happens, that will have a result. And our third point, the results of maturity, Paul says at the end of 16, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Growth as an increase in size, number, value, or strength, extension or expansion. And we usually think of growth then as a positive thing, and Paul is referring it here as a positive thing. We also have to keep in mind that not all growth is good. We might think again of our body, a tumor, a cancerous growth, which is wild, uncontrolled, purposeless, and unchecked. That kind of growth will spell death for the body. And it's that kind of growth that we don't want. And when you consider the broader evangelical churches and the megachurches that have come out of the so-called church growth movement, which had its focus on numbers and growing in numbers, so that some of these churches would be 10, 20, 30,000 people being members of this church. That sort of wild, uncontrolled growth, but not a mature growth, not the kind of growth or maturity that I've been talking about already, spiritual growth and maturity in the faith, but rather growth for the sake of numbers by the tickling of ears and the providing of services that get people to come in and be entertained for an hour and throw their money in the pot, you know, that sort of thing versus growing in the faith, being joined to one another as we are and that growth, that edification of itself in love. It is better to be small and more mature than to be large and immature. So to edify means to instruct, especially as to encourage intellectual, moral, and spiritual improvement, to build up in the faith. And as the members of Christ's body are doing that, ministering to one another out of love, out of a desire to help others grow, communicating the truth to one another, If you think of truth as being the blood of the body that will give its life, sustain it, and nourish it, then the body will thrive and mature and grow as Christ would have us grow being conformed to his image. So as members together in Christ's body locally and universally, we need to be diligent in terms of practical application We must be diligent to know the truth, as I've already mentioned, to know God's Word, to study it and be able to share that with others, encouraging one another in the faith and taking advantage of all the opportunities that we may have in this local body in terms of, of course, coming to Sunday morning worship and men's study, women's studies, Sunday school, you know. other opportunities that we have or other things that you can plug into, you know, listening to sermons on Sermon Audio, books, reading books written by godly Reformed men on the faith, you know. Again, that is primary. But secondly, as I've been mentioning the last couple of weeks, is knowing your gifts, discovering what your gifts are, asking God to show you, and then cultivating them and then using them for the edification of one another. And lastly, of course, is praying, undergirding all of that by prayer. Praying the prayers of Paul in Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 3 and Colossians 1. Praying those prayers for yourself, for your family, and for our church family. So again, that Christ's body, the church, both locally and universally, will grow into that measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That's God's purpose and plan. It will happen. It is certain. And we are part of that as He motivates us and changes us so that He will be glorified in all things. Amen? Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this truth in your word that we are part of the body of Christ and that you have gifted us and called us to a particular function and calling. We pray that you would help each one of us to discover what you would have us to do to cultivate those gifts you've given to us, that we would utilize them faithfully to the edification of the body of Christ, for that increase in growth and maturity, and again, you would be glorified in our midst, and that you would use us as a witness to the world around us, and you would use us to gather in your elect by, again, the holding of that truth, the professing of that truth in love to others. Help us, Lord, in our weakness, help us in our lack of desire and motivation, forgive us for those things as well, and energize us by your Holy Spirit so that you would be glorified in Christ's Reformed Church and through us to others, for we ask this in Christ's name, amen.