Well, open your Bibles, if you would, to Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4. We are taking a break from Hebrews. Five-week Easter series titled, Your Changing Body. Yes, I selected that title, Your Changing Body, somewhat deliberately to remind you of those awkward textbooks that you had to read as a teenager. That is where our church is at. I think there might be someone in this room who was born in 2009. If you were born in 2009, you will be 15 years old this year. Our church was planted in 2009. It's 15 years old. We are a changing body, and there's some awkwardness and difficulty with that. And scripture is well aware of that. The apostles knew what teenagers go through, they knew what teenager churches go through, and they addressed those churches in their letters. The book of Ephesians speaks specifically about maturity, what it is that the church is trying to do, where we're trying to go. Paul paints a picture of mature manhood. or mature churchhood before us and says, here's what it looks like when the church grows up. And our church is growing. We thank God for that. We just received new members. We know that there's a difference between growing and growing up. We don't just want to go to go. We don't just want to grow. We want to grow up. And in order to do that, we need to understand what maturity looks like. And that's what all five of these Easter sermons will deal with. Your changing body, maturity in light of Christ's resurrection, and especially Christ's ascension. Paul talks about the ascension, first of all, here in our Ephesians 4 text. So next week, we will go to, oh, let's see if I can remember here. We're in Ephesians this week. Next week, I believe, oh yes, Matthew 18, where Jesus speaks about life in the church. We're gonna try to look at the whole chapter, the parable of the unforgiving servant, and the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep and goes after the one, and Christ's words about maturity in the church to his disciples. And then we will most likely I believe, be the only church in the United States looking at Deuteronomy 23 for Palm Sunday. So stay tuned for that. And then for Easter and the week after Easter, we'll be in Colossians. If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things which are above. So your changing body, five sermons, five weeks. We begin this morning in Ephesians four with Paul's statement in verse seven, To each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore he says, when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. 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 the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, 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 and the cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love, they 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." Let's pray. Father, we have bitten off a big chunk of your word. Help us to chew it, to swallow it, to digest it, to profit from it, to be nourished by it. Let the nourishment of this part of your word flow to every cell in our bodies and be in every cell in this body that you call your church. Help me to speak boldly and accurately. Help us, having ascended with Christ, to receive his gifts of grace, to minister to one another in love. Build us up and help us to encourage one another and build each other up, just as we have been doing. Father, feed us on the truth of your word. Free us from distraction. By the power of your spirit, we ask in your son's name. Amen. Our text deals with two topics, ascension and maturity. The Apostle speaks about ascension in verses 7 to 12, and then maturity in verses 12 to 16. Jesus is in heaven. And from there, he's given us everything we need, not only to grow, but to grow up. He's shown us what it is to grow up. And therefore, because Christ has ascended, we should be mature. Ascension drives maturity. Because Christ has ascended to the Father's right hand and from there poured out the gift of the fivefold ministry, our church can and must grow up to a grace-powered maturity that looks like Jesus. Christ has ascended to the Father's right hand and poured out the ministry we need, and therefore we can and must grow up to the maturity that looks like Jesus. Paul starts by telling that to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Jesus gives grace. Jesus gives unmerited favor, favor from God that you and I did not deserve, that we could not have merited. The standard by which he decides how much you'll get is simply his own generosity. He doesn't have a limited amount. Oh, Wally got 20 pounds of grace, so there's only 10 pounds left for Bob. No. The measure of the grace you receive is simply the gift of Christ. He gives his grace to you based entirely on his own royal generosity. And of course Paul tells us in chapter 1 what that meant. That means we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Jesus' generosity isn't limited. What was that famous thing supposedly? Ten years or so ago, Barack Obama sent Queen Elizabeth II a DVD of some American movie. That was his Christmas present to her. Well, Jesus doesn't give chintzy gifts. He doesn't just send you one sermon on tape and say, all right, this is all you need. No, he gives according to the measure of his royal generosity. And specifically, the gifts that he gives are outlined here in this Psalm 68 quote, which Paul expounds at length. When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, or he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. Jesus went up to heaven. He had overcome the gates of hell. It tells us that specifically in Matthew 16. The gates of hell will not prevail. That is, Jesus comes to earth. He comes to the lower parts of the earth, as Paul says in verse 9. Jesus descends to hell, breaks open its gates, goes in there, and rescues a bunch of hostages. This is the gospel message that Paul outlines in our text. He's not necessarily talking about a literal visit of the Son of God to hell, but it is very clear that he's using hell to mean the place where all non-believers are, dead or alive, doesn't matter. These lower parts of the earth, Jesus comes down, he breaks open the gates, and he rescues everyone who will follow him. brings us out of hell, out of the lower parts of the earth, and he ascends up to heaven with these captives, and we sit in the heavenly places with him. That's the salvation narrative that Paul tells here and it's told over and over in the Old Testament whether you look at the exodus from Egypt as they descend down into the waters of death in the Red Sea and then come back out the other side or Psalm 18. He sent from on high. He took me. He drew me out of many waters. He set my foot on a level place. He set my feet on a rock. This basic story, God comes down to where we are in the pit of despair, in the clutches of Satan. He breaks open the gate and lets us free and leads us in triumphal procession back up to heaven. He's the conquering hero. And we're the prisoners of war. Except we're not POWs, we're rescued. We're rescued hostages. that Jesus has conquered with his sword and with his bow. So he brings us up to heaven, seats us in the heavenly places at his side, and then gives gifts to men. And Paul describes what these gifts are, the gifts here in verse 11, what our Pentecostal brothers call the fivefold ministry. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Now all Christians believe in the fivefold ministry. Pentecostals will tell you that you don't believe in the five-fold ministry. That's not true. Our disagreement with the Pentecostals is very simple. They believe that the prophets, apostles, and evangelists are all still alive. We believe that they're dead. But their ministry endures. here in the books of the New Testament and the Old Testament. Regardless of whether you believe that there are living prophets and apostles today, every Christian understands that there is no church without prophets and apostles. The prophets who wrote the Old Testament, the apostles who wrote the New Testament, they are the foundation of the church. Jesus, from that horde of captured saints that he had delivered from hell, he sends some to his church on earth to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Now, we could spend a lot of time talking about why Psalm 68 says he received gifts among men, but Paul says he gave gifts among men. There's several different answers there. One obvious thing is that the Hebrew word, receive gifts, can mean to take something in order to give it. You can look that up, say in Genesis 18, Abraham goes and fetches the calf in order to give it to his visitors, for instance. But the bottom line, logically speaking, is that God owns everything. You can't show me something that does not belong to God. Everything that exists is His. All right, we posited that, we all agree on that. Now, if God is going to receive a gift, who is the only one who can give him that gift? And if he's receiving something, he's also giving something, because everything that exists belongs to him. And if we have someone who owns everything, then to give and to receive are the same thing. He gave gifts to men, he received gifts from men, Logically speaking, it's the same operation. Some of you wives run into this on Father's Day and you think, oh, I want to buy him a big expensive present, but it's his money. For him to receive a gift is the same thing as for him to give a gift. Well, that's in a very, very small way an image of where the Almighty is at. He can't receive anything that wasn't already his. And so anyway, we can talk at much greater length about the received gave thing. The bottom line is God captured these Christians. He took them out of Satan's grasp, and then he gives them back to his church as prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. God came to earth as a man. As a man, the apostle says, he went as low as it is possible to go. He went to the lower parts of the earth. And then he ascended as high as it is possible to go back to the right hand of the father. What was he doing? He was on a mission to conquer. And every place that he went now belongs to him. He's been at the top of the universe. He's been at the bottom of the universe. He's been to every place in between. And He conquered it all. He's the fullness of the One who fills all in all. He ascended far above the heavens that He might fill all things. That's what Paul is saying. Jesus conquered everything. He possesses everything. He holds and occupies everything. And as this ascended conquering hero, He distributes largesse to us in the form of this five-fold ministry who comes to the church and gives you prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. All right, so because Jesus came down, went up, conquered, gave you what you need, that puts you on the hook to do something. You have to receive this ministry. And what is their ministry? Verse 12, their job is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Now again, there's a debate. Is there a comma between saints and for the work of ministry? That is, does verse 12 list three things or two things? Is it the job of the five-fold ministry to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry and to edify the body of Christ? Or is the job of the five-fold ministry to equip the saints to do the work of ministry and then every member ministry then edifies the body? It's the latter. That is, every member ministry is how we grow. Your changing body, how do we grow up? How do we become mature? It is not by sitting back and saying, Oh, I'm so glad God gave us a pastor teacher. I don't have to do anything. He's just equipping me with a bunch of equipment that I will never use. That's not the logic of the passage. Some fine soul in this church gave us a tent. They gave us this tent seven years ago. You all can guess how many times it's been used. It's been used one time. We actually put it in the attic last week to signify how little we plan to use it. We've been equipped. But are we going to use that equipment? Saints, you've been equipped. But you must use that equipment. God didn't equip you to go on camping trips. He didn't equip you to build roofs. He didn't equip you to raise livestock or whatever it is you do in your day job. He equipped you to build up the body of Christ. You have the equipment of ministry. Ministry is not a professional task that I do while the rest of you receive it. Ministry is something that all of us do and that all of us receive. An equipped saint has all the equipment to do what? To be a saint. That's what you've been equipped for. And Paul will tell us, if you boil it down, the equipment that you have is two things. You have knowledge and you have community. So verses 13 and 14, you have knowledge. You have the unity of the faith. You have the knowledge of the Son of God. You have doctrinal settledness. You are able to resist the counsel of the wicked. He describes all of those things. You have knowledge. That's part of the equipment of the saint. An ignorant saint is a contradiction in terms. I know God, but I know nothing about Him. I know Jesus, but I don't know who He is or what He wants. No, that doesn't work. You've been equipped with knowledge, and then the other thing you've been equipped with is a community. Verses 15 and 16, what does that community do? It speaks the truth in love, and that truth speaking allows you to grow up. The whole body, knit together by every connection, does effective working where every part does its share and causes the growth of the body. Jesus gives you grace according to his royal generosity. This is the movement of our passage. The reason he gives you that grace is because he's conquered heaven and earth. He's Lord of heaven and earth. He sits at the Father's right hand with a host of captives that he rescued from hell. Of those, he gives some who are specifically charged with equipping you, the five-fold ministry. They give you the equipment that you need to be a saint, and that equipment is two things, knowledge and community. Jesus has conquered everything from the tippy top of heaven to the very bottom most point of hell. And on the trip down and the trip back up, he gathered you and he gathered two things for you, knowledge and community. Now we all know Christians who opt out of one or the other of those. In our circles, we're more likely to have the Christian who opts out of community. Oh, I sit at home and I read my theology books, and I watch my theology debates, and I know many, many theological things. And having coffee with a fellow Christian Going to the park with a fellow Christian? I don't know. Not something I want to do. And there are other Christians, of course, who try to opt out of the knowledge. Well, I listen to Christian music. And that's the sum of my Christian faith. Whatever I know about theology, I learn from Green Day and Casting Crowns. And I spend a lot of time with my Christian friends. Well again, I'm not knocking knowledge or community. The apostle says you need both. To flourish in the church, to be a mature church, we have to pursue both of these things, knowledge and community. So let's talk a little bit about what he says about knowledge. Knowledge leads to bodybuilding. that edifying or building up the body of Christ, edifying means to turn it into an edifice, to turn it into this built building. The saints are equipped to do that, to build up the body of Christ. The result of body building, when we all minister, is that the body is built up. And what does that look like? What is the result of knowledge truly so-called? the right kind of knowledge for the Christian. The first thing that this knowledge will bring us to is the unity of the faith. Till we all come to the unity of the faith. The unity of the faith means that we all believe the same things. We need every member ministry until we all agree on what Jesus taught. Now, is the church there yet? Do we all believe the same things? Obviously not. There are many different churches within one single church. There are many different strands of opinion on various questions of biblical interpretation, theological topics, things of this nature. The vast majority of what we believe, all Christians hold in common. And yet, what we disagree on gets a lot of airtime oftentimes. We need every member of ministry, we need to share knowledge and community until such time as everyone agrees. We all have the same faith. We also look for the knowledge of the Son of God. When the body is built up, when we are mature, we will know Christ. We talked about this last Sunday as a new covenant promise. They shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest. The Bible says a great deal about knowing Christ, walking with Christ, keeping in step with the Spirit, obeying Him, praying to Him, communing with Him individually, with your family, with the church. This is part of maturity. A church that doesn't know Jesus is not a mature church. Frankly, it's not a church at all. Paul says that it takes all of us together to know the Son of God. I want you to think about this as a corporate knowing. When we think of knowing, we tend to think of an individual knowing. I know this, regardless of what the person in the pew next to me knows. But, it says we all come to the unity of the faith, we all come to the knowledge of the Son of God. What do I mean? Christ is so large, so full, so perfect, summing up everything in himself, that we can know Christ only corporately. He's too much for any one person to wrap their mind around. Just as we talked about in Sunday school, science, the naming of things, is a corporate project. No one human person could name all the stars or name all the insects. We have whole research bodies, whole universities, hundreds of universities, and teams of scientists all over the world working together to try to catalog all the stars and name all the insects. And in the same way, just to know creation takes all of us. To know the Son of God who made creation, how much more will it take all of us? And thus, in the face of the disabled child, There's an aspect of Christ there. He knows Jesus in a different way, perhaps, than someone with different abilities, different skills, different knowledge. But it is a true knowledge of the Son of God, nonetheless. We know Christ. Yes, obviously, think of the brilliant theologian, the one who's able to refute error, to speak the truth, to sum up the mind of Christ in an excellent treatise or a profound sermon. That's very true, right? That's part of how we know Christ. But we also know Christ by gathering around and loving the middle-aged couple that lost their son. This too is where the love of Christ is shown and known in the church. We know Christ by walking together through difficulty, as well as by the whole aspect of knowledge, right? Knowledge and community. These two are ultimately inseparable. Most of the things you think you know, in fact, virtually everything you think you know, has been mediated to you by your community. And that's true in the church as well. We see the God-anointed magistrate. We pray for the day when the governor of Wyoming is part of a congregation like this one, showing us an aspect of the rule and wisdom of the Son of God. And on and on it goes. In success, in failure, we know Christ together. as a community. So the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God. Mature manhood is what we're looking for. Paul describes that as the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. How tall is the fullness of Christ? What is he getting at? We can say, well, the man Jesus might have been five foot seven or five foot eight. Who knows? Somewhere around there, perhaps. Therefore we want our church to be five foot eight. That's not what Paul means. He says we don't know Christ according to the flesh. The measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ can't be measured in meters, can't be measured in miles or light years. It can only be measured by the glory of heaven. That's how tall the church will have to be. There's a sign at the door of heaven, must be this tall to enter, except it's not a meter stick or a yard stick or a two yard stick. It's saying you have to, the church has to look like Christ to come into his dwelling place. We need to be glorified. That's what we're striving for. That's what maturity is. Paul uses this image of being as tall as Jesus. Help us understand that. Children, so often you measure your maturity. I've seen all of you do this. Well, not all, every last one of you in here, but I've seen many of you do this. You measure your maturity based on how high you are, how tall you are compared to your parents. And that day when you're taller than mom, ooh, I'm mature now. And that day when you pass your dad, now I'm really mature. Paul says, you want to grow up and be as tall as Jesus. That's the height that we're looking for. Not just being taller than your earthly parents, but having that same glory, that same perfection that the Son of God has, that's maturity. He describes maturity further in terms of doctrinal settledness, not being tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. The winds of doctrine, that is different teaching that comes out of the mouth of different teachers, where so-and-so says, do this, and the other guy says, do that. I've told you many times the rumor I heard about the church in Wright. One pastor came and said, television is awful. Throw out your TV. And everyone in the church threw out their TV. Then the next pastor came, and he was a major Broncos fan. And he said, let's all gather together and watch the Broncos every Sunday afternoon. And everyone in the church went and bought another TV. And they all started watching the Broncos. That's being tossed about by every wind of doctrine. It's a small scale, but we all know those people. Last year, I was a Quaker. This year, I'm Lutheran. Next year, I'll be Roman Catholic. And the year after that, I will probably be an Anabaptist. And I'm just trying on different visions and different denominations for size. And someday I might settle down, but maybe I won't. Paul says, don't be like that. That's not the mature Christian. The mature Christian is settled in his doctrine. He's also able to resist the counsel of the wicked. He speaks of this as the trickery of men, the cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive. I don't think any of us fully understands the size of the marketing guns that are trained upon us, trying to sell us the world's vision of what the human person is. You are a consumer, period. What's the largest information gathering enterprise ever devised by man? Every one of you is participating in it right now. As far as I know, everyone in this church over the age of 18, except one, owns a cell phone. And that cell phone is reporting its location every few seconds. And that location is being logged and it is being sold at auction to the highest bidder, all for the purpose of serving you advertisements that may or may not be relevant to something you want to buy in the hopes of getting you to put your thumb on that ad and go and buy something. It's happening all day, every day. I just read this week, for what, about $300,000 a month, the Pentagon is legally able to buy the location and travel habits of every American citizen, updated moment by moment. It's perfectly legal. And it is incredibly cheap. And you're all participating in it at this very moment, all for the sake of the almighty dollar, and that is what Paul speaks about here, the trickery of men, the cunning craftiness by which they lie and wait to deceive. None of you goes and puts your phone on the charger thinking, all right, this will help the ad companies. But that, of course, is what it's doing. I'd call that the trickery of men. I'd call that cunning craftiness. I'd call that deception. and yet we all participate in it because the phone is so valuable to us anyway. Psalm 1 calls that walking in the counsel of the wicked, listening to the advertisers who are attempting to sell you a vision of the human person and the world, and to say you exist to buy stuff, to consume. We've talked about this, the product refresh cycle and all of that stuff. The world does that nonstop, day in and day out. And Christian maturity looks like the ability to resist it. To not click on the ad, to resist the vision of yourself as a consumer whose desires ought to be catered to, to say no to the notion that the world is a giant supermarket where every product ought to cater to my taste, or at least some product ought to cater to my taste, We don't believe that. And the more we grow in maturity, the more we'll be able to resist that trickery of man and to say to the counsel of the wicked, no, I don't believe in you. I reject the counsel of the wicked. My counselor, right? Your testimonies are my delight. They are my counselors. Psalm 119. That's maturity in the church. That's what we're looking to be. unified in faith, knowing the Son of God, mature manhood, doctrinal settledness, freedom from the counsel of the wicked. How do we get there? Community. Paul outlines three things that constitute our community. The first one of them is one that you've known, that you've said many times, speaking the truth in love. We all know how hard this is. It's much easier to either speak the truth or to love. I just love you. I want what's best for you. I enjoy your company. And so I will never tell you anything hard, anything true that you might need to hear because, frankly, that would ruin our relationship. Oh, I thought it when he said such and such, but I wouldn't say that. Well, right, there's a good measure of that that needs to be happening. But we also have to speak the truth in love. The pedantic wretch wants to make sure all his facts are correct because he likes correcting people. But the one who speaks the truth in love cares about people enough to give them correct facts. You see the difference. You know the difference intuitively. I love you, therefore I speak the truth to you. That is the bottom line of Christian fellowship. The second thing that we need in terms of community is what's said in verse 16, the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies. This joined and knit and joints, what is Paul talking about? A better way to think of this is not just as joints, right? You think, oh, the elbow, the knee, that's the most important part of the body. Paul is talking rather about connections. Every place where there's a connection between one cell in the body and another is a place of growth. The Risen Ascended Christ pours out grace on you. If the grace stops there, it isn't doing much. Grace needs to flow from you to the next Christian, to the next Christian, to the next Christian. We need to complete the circuit, in other words. There are switches in this room. Those switches are connected back to WIODAC and surging energy from the power plant shoots down the wire and it comes to that switch and if I shut the switch off and break the connection. That surging energy does nothing. It might still be in the wire, but only when I open the switch and allow it to flow through the filaments in the light bulbs and create the light, does that energy do anything in this room. In the same way, energy from Christ, the grace from Christ, comes to you. And if you switch off and break that circuit and don't pass the grace on to the next Christian, don't connect with the next Christian, don't connect with the person in the pew next to you, that grace from Christ stops dead. So don't think, well, I'm not an elbow, I'm not a knee, therefore I'm not a joint in the body. No, he's talking more about what you might think of as connections in the brain. Every neuron has to connect to the other neurons for the brain to work. Every cell, every member has to connect to the other members for the church to work. That's what we're doing here. Every connection in the body is good, right? Tapping another mom on the shoulder and saying, hey, can we go to the park together? Asking one of the guys, you want to go shooting with me? You want to fix my car with me? You want to hang out together and play Call of Duty? Every connection in the body. Paul doesn't say these have to be what the world regards as good connections. Let's go to a charity auction and do noble things. Any connection is how the body grows. It causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. And that's what we have to have. Every member ministry won't happen when you think, I gotta go minister to those church people some more. If that's your attitude, you will burn out of ministry very, very quickly. Every member ministry can only be sustained by knowing the Christ who descended and ascended in order to give you every spiritual blessing. I love to be with my church family. He's not saying you have to stop being an introvert. That's not the message here. He does say you must love one another. You have to pass on and connect with that grace from Christ. Ascension drives maturity, brothers and sisters. Our changing body, how do we grow up and not just grow? We have to know the Christ who ascended. We have to understand that our maturity is not going to come by adding programs and activities, it's going to come from Jesus' work. Our work is necessary. It's good to host people in your home. It's good to bring food to potlucks. It's good to bring meals to those who are suffering and sick. It's good. to ask for help when you need help or to receive help when you need help. And I'm hoping that we can launch some programs along those lines that will encourage hospitality between members of the body, that will help us take care of our members who are getting older and don't have local family. We need to think about these things and do these things. That is every member ministry. That work is powered by the grace of Jesus. We'll see this in more detail next week as we look at Matthew 18 and Jesus' insistence that you must forgive anyone who sins against you. Our power to minister comes only through the grace of Christ that we pass on to one another. He knows it all. He's conquered it all. He's been from the top to the bottom and back. He rules it all. He rules you. And that's where your power and ability to love one another and to grow up to his maturity comes from. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the knowledge and community that your son has given to us. We thank you for his tour of victory from the throne of heaven to the gates of hell and back. That he did not leave hell alone, but that he brought us with him. That he rescued us from the devil's clutches and from the trammels of our own sin. Father, thank you for the grace that we have in your son. Help us to show that grace to one another, to live and to love as you have called us to live and to love. Father, grow us up that we might look like Jesus Christ. We pray these things in his name, amen.