Good morning, church. What a blessing to be here this morning. Man, I'm telling you, as I was looking over the message and getting ready, I was getting a little nervous, because it's like, I just need to remind myself what God's calling me to do here. And I want to be able to communicate in a way that this stuff is understandable, so that when you walk away from here this morning, you know what you need to do in your walk with Jesus this week. I'm a perfectionist and so I want to make sure, Lord, I say it the way it needs to be said in an understandable way. But you know what? I've walked away from the pulpit a number of times just going, oh my. And people are like, we got it, Pastor. So it's beyond our ability to even understand. It's the power of the Holy Spirit. So as we begin this morning, I'm basically gonna pick up and do a quick review of where we were last week because this section right here is just so critical for the body, so critical to understand the purpose of the church. What is it that the church is supposed to be about? So again, I'm asking the question from last week, what is biblical unity? right, based on, and I am on, there we go, based on Ephesians 4, 1 through 16. What I want to do is I want to just do a recap, and for those who are looking at the bulletin and taking notes, I changed my wording a little bit to make it clearer for us this morning. So first of all, in verses 1 through 6, we looked last week about the plea, the walking in unity. And we looked at the regard for unity. So I changed my wording. If you're going, well, pastor, that's different from the wording you used last week. Yeah, I changed it, hopefully, for more clarity. The regard for unity, the idea that we're supposed to make sure we guard the unity of the Spirit. That is our responsibility, not only as a body, but as individual believers. Then in verses 4-6 we looked at the reasons for unity. Why be unified? Because we're all one body. We're all from the same Holy Spirit. We're all put into the body. There's a good reason why. A quick illustration. Each member of the football team fighting against each other when your common goal is to win a game. That makes no sense, right? You're going to work together because you have a common goal. You are a team. In the same way, the church has a greater calling than any sports team. We have this identity and because of that we need to make sure that we do our part to keep unity in the body. And again, last week I just said unity. Unity is not just unity for the sake of getting along. I will never compromise unity for the sake of, or never compromise the Word of God for the sake of unity. We are not to do that, right? But in true unity, we're going to do that because we work together. So I want to pick up on the process from last week. Okay, so we got the plea, we got the regard, we got the reasons for, now the process working towards unity. So what I want to do is I want to walk us back to verse 7 and 11 and set us up for what Paul is about to say in verses 12 through 16. because it is critical in the day in which we live. And I'll just say this off the cuff. I don't have it as a scripture, but as the Lord is speaking to me right now, what was Jesus' prayer in John 17? That they might be one as we are one. And Jesus tells us in the Gospels that they'll know we are from God if we walk in love and we walk in unity, right? And the greatest disservice we could do to the body of Christ and to our Savior is to walk in disunity. So how important is unity to Jesus? It is vitally important. because it models the Trinity. Can you imagine for a minute with me if this were possible? Can you imagine the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit having a dispute and can't get along? Well, I'm going to do it this way. That's not the way I want to do it. That's ridiculous. The reality is because they're our model, it is possible to follow their model by the Spirit and be unified. And how critical is it in our witness to the world today, church? I'm telling you, it is vital. Because the world is lost, the world has no hope. They need to see the unity in the body of Christ, standing on the Word of God together, because that is the only hope they have in this life, and we need to express that to them. So, stepping back, the resources for unity. Ephesians 4-7, to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. The word grace here was really interesting. I was going over my notes and my word studies again today, the meanings of the text. And the word grace here, it's interesting in the Greek, it doesn't mean grace like salvation grace. It doesn't even mean grace that enables us to walk our walk with Jesus, but it really carries with it the idea of enabling and empowering of the Holy Spirit for service because the whole context is here is spiritual gifts. So it's not like, oh Lord, give me your grace to just be able to make it through the day today. That's not what he's talking about here. He's talking about a special power of the Holy Spirit that allows us, out of his grace, out of that salvation, to be empowered to serve according to the Holy Spirit Church. And you know what's ironic? As I was praying about this morning and bringing the message, I'm actually living out exactly what I'm teaching this morning. The grace that allows me to get up week after week and give you what you need is not my power, church. It is not mine. I do not have this ability. If you know anything about me, I struggled in school. I had to work hard. My brother's a genius. He's got like 140 or 50 IQ. I don't have that. I had to work hard for everything, right? And so the ability to teach you in a way that's understandable is the Holy Spirit's enabling power in me. My goal, my job, my area of service is to be, and we'll talk about in a minute, to be the equipper so that you guys can serve adequately in the areas that God has called you to serve. This is not my ability. This is God's ability and this is where teachers and pastors and teachers need to keep humble because it's so easy when people are patting you on the back saying, what a great sermon. What a great sermon. You start to think more of yourself and you go, no, no, no, no. I love the encouragement, but you don't need to pump me up too much because I already have to deal with my own pride. But I have to remind myself, like we all do with our gifts, is these are God's enabling power to serve the body in the way we need to. Right? So each one was given that measure to be able to do that. And what I want to do real quickly, and if you have your bulletin in front of you, I have put in the bulletin something that I put together a number of years ago that has the gifts here, the speaking gifts, the serving gifts, and the sign gifts. And I'm not going to focus on the third one today, the sign gifts. I want to focus more on the speaking and the serving gifts in the body, right? And then at the end of it, there is a little thing that God gave me, because I don't know how many of you have taken spiritual gift tests before. I don't like them at all. They're artificial. It's kind of like, well, do you, in this situation, do you consider yourself more like this or more like this? And it's like, honey, answer that for me, because I don't know how to answer it. But God gave me a way to know gifts, what your gifts are, and to be able to use them Right? And I won't read it. You can read it. You're all intelligent individuals. You can read it. And then you're going to hear me talk about, you know, what is my spiritual gift or gifts? Because there's multiple gifts. And then what kind of ministries could they be used for? And then I have the definitions here, on here, that I'm going to give credit where credit is due to a man by the name of Leslie Flynn. He wrote a book a number of years ago called the 19 Gifts of the Spirit. And I'll contend, of the four gift lists that we're going to look at this morning, that there are roughly 19 gifts of the Holy Spirit that he dispersed and will enable the body to use to build the body up. And by the way you heard me say last week I'm actually going to take two of those away because last week I said that I do not believe that the gifts of apostles and prophets still function for today. I'm not a complete cessationist like some are. I believe that the sign gifts are still available but I believe the gift of the apostle and prophet has gone away and it's been replaced in the modern church era by the evangelist and the pastor teacher. And if you want to talk more about that, that was a process for me. I did not used to believe that until about 10 years ago as I was studying. But again, that's God revealing his truth. So I'd love to have a conversation if you're interested about that. And so we've got these four gift lists. And if you want to remember what they are, they're really simple. 4-4-12-12. A simple mind like me has to have something to help me remember stuff. So I always say 4, 4, 12, 12. Romans 4. Or wait, no, 1 Peter 4, Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, okay? And you'll see that as we go through this, okay? So the first one, it says, but to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. So based on what Paul has said in 4.7 of Ephesians, he adds to this in Corinthians by saying that they're given to, they're a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. So just to use my own gifting here this morning, the pastor teacher, the teacher portion of it, what I'm doing does me no good unless you're here. I can preach to open air. And that kind of sounds good, but nobody's responding. Nobody's being built up, right? So in order for me to exercise my gift, it has to be a manifestation of the common good for you. My gift isn't even for me, it's for you. Your gift that you have isn't for me, isn't for you, it's for me. It's for others, right? Paul says it's a manifestation of the Spirit, so it's God's working for the common good. Okay? And then the four gift lists are here. 1 Peter 4. We read it this morning. Right? This isn't really an individual listing of the gifts as it is categories as you can see on the sheet I gave you. Each one has received a special gift. Right? Employing it and serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Now doesn't that make sense? What Peter says based on what Paul says in Ephesians 4, right? It's from the grace of God. It's for we're to be stewards of it. Right? And he continues on, and he lists two categories of gifts. Whoever speaks, so he's talking about a speaking gift, and you can look on the paper that I gave you. Those are all the speaking gifts. Right? Of which pastor and teacher is one of them. If you're going to speak, you do it as one who's speaking the utterances of God. And this is why I'm so bothered by too many pastors standing in pulpits today, giving you their opinion about the stock market and telling jokes and all that kind of stuff. That is not the job of the pastor teacher, the equipper. It is the job of the pastor teacher to simply be used of the Holy Spirit to speak the truth of God's Word. So if I, you don't have to worry about this, because I'm like, this is God's Word, this is my role, right? So whoever has those speaking gifts, and there's more than just the pastor-teacher, you can see it on the list, right? We're to speak the utterances of God. We're just supposed to tell others what God told us to tell them from His Word, right? whoever serves. So if you have a serving gift, you're to do it as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies. So that in all things may God be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. So there's two categories at least according to Peter. And the reason why I believe he left off the sign gifts. Not that I don't think the sign gifts could be used for today. They're misused. They're abused. I get very cautious when people start, you know, speaking in tongues and that kind of stuff. Not to say that it can't be possible, but it's been so misused. And we see in 1 Corinthians that Paul had to address the issue. And if you look in 1 Corinthians 12, he leaves the sign list, the sign gifts for last. He de-emphasizes those gifts because it was all kinds of argument and look I'm better than you because I can speak in tongues and you only have the gift of helps or whatever. That was happening in the church and Paul wanted to downplay that. So the two gifts that I really want to focus on are the speaking and the serving gifts. And when you get into Romans 12, Right? He gives us the gifts. Right? For just as we have one, we have many members in one body, sounds like 1 Corinthians 12, and all the members don't have the same function. Would you agree? We don't have the same function. And I will, I'll just say this as a side note. I had somebody tell me a couple years ago, I have all of the gifts. Is it really? You have all the gifts, right? Right? Isn't that funny? That means you don't need the rest of the body. We might need you, but you don't need us. And that is not what Paul talks about in Corinthians 12. We all have different, we don't have all the gifts, right? I told you last week, I have, I think I believe I have five of the, I would say 17, because I got rid of two. Five of the 17, how many am I lacking? 12, a lot, which means what? I need you to help me in your gift in an area that would help me to grow in my walk with Jesus. So we are interdependent, right? So that we are many, one body in Christ and individually members of one another. And then he talks about the differing gifts given to us by grace. We're to exercise them accordingly. If we have prophecy, right? It's according to the proportion of, what's really interesting in the Greek, it shouldn't translate his faith, it should translate the faith. It's talking about the gospel faith. If you have service, right? And I'm not going to go over all of these, but you can at least see them, right? These are different gifts that Paul mentions in Romans 12, 4 through 8. Then in 1 Corinthians, he says there's a variety of gifts but the same spirit. There's a variety of ministries and the same Lord. There's a variety of effects but the same God who works all things in all person. But to each one, we've already seen that, is given the manifestation. This is important. This is really critical. So as you're looking at what your gifts might be, if you look on the back of my sheet, it says what kinds of ministries could these gifts be used for, right? You and I, Adrian, might have the same gift, but we may not be called to the same ministry, right? I have the gift of teaching. You know who I like to teach? Adults. I love children, put me on the floor with them, I'll play whatever with them, Don't ask me to teach a young person. That's not my calling. It is my gifting, but it's not my calling. So what Paul is saying is that there are a variety of ministries that go along with having the same gift. Y'all understand that, church? You could be serving in different ministries. By the way, let me just say this, if I could. Is Harrison here today? He is. Can I pick on you just for a second out of love? Okay, Harrison and I, Harrison was here a couple weeks ago, a number of weeks ago, and he was singing. I looked at him and I said, man, you have a beautiful voice. I said, you have the gift of exhortation. I have the gift of exhortation. My gift manifests itself in my teaching. His gift of exhortation comes out in song. When I hear him sing, he doesn't just have a natural ability, Church. Harrison has, I believe, a supernatural gifting. that touches, I know when I hear him sing it, it just goes deep into my soul. That's a super, different, same gift, right? Harris and I have the same gift of exploitation, but it's manifested in a different way. His is in the ability to lead worship and to touch our spirits through the power of the Holy Spirit and draw us deeper into relationship with Jesus. Mine is through teaching. And by the way, my family can attest to this, you wouldn't want me singing I will not do it for the common good, I will drive you away if I sing. Okay, that's why I have my mic turned off when I sing on Sunday morning, okay? So anyway, there's these gifts, right? And then Paul goes on to talk about, and I'm not gonna go into all of them, because you can see them here, and you can see them in the handout that I gave you. The word of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing and all that kind of stuff. I'll just say this about the Word of Wisdom. I do have the Word of Wisdom. The Word of Wisdom is a counseling gift. It's a gift that allows you by the Holy Spirit's enabling when like people come to you. Have you ever had people come to you and like looking for like help and wisdom in a search circumstance? People would come into my office for many years and and say, Jim, I need help here. I have no preparation. I haven't heard them say why they're coming. And all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit starts spewing literally verses out of me. And I tell them, you better get yourself a piece of paper because in 20 minutes, I won't remember what scriptures I gave you. That's the power of the Holy Spirit working in that situation where I can help somebody deal with practically an issue in their life from the Word of God. Okay? So those are the gifts, right? And to go back to this, Ephesians 4.11, the equipers. So those who are the equipers, and I would say the evangelists and the pastor teachers in the modern church today, their job is to equip the rest of the body to be able to use their gifts. Right? And so last week, I asked a question, and I was told afterwards, well, you asked the question, how many know their gifts? And people were like, well, I didn't say this because, I don't care if you raised your hand or not. The question is, do you know what your gifts are? Because if you don't know what your gifts are, I would love to help you know what your spiritual gifts are. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't mind offering a class on the gifts to help you, to equip you, so you can better be able to serve in the area that God has gifted you for it. That's the role of the gifted man, is to help the rest of the gifted body serve in the areas they're supposed to serve, right? Now, let's keep going. Okay, so those are the resources for unity. Now, in verses 12 through 13, is the readiness for unity, okay? He gave some as, right, some as pastors and teachers and evangelists, for what? The equipping. The equipping of the saints to get the saints ready to have that unity as they work together. So our job in this role is to equip the rest of the body for what? For works of service? Right? That's the purpose of the equipping, is to get you equipped and ready to serve the rest of the body. Right? And you know what's interesting in 1 Corinthians 12? Paul says, I do not want you to be ignorant about spiritual gifts. Now why would Paul say that? Because they were. And here's the thing, the enemy wants you ignorant of your spiritual gifts so that you won't serve and help lift up the body. Isn't that like Him, right, to do that? So as we learn our gifts and begin to learn how to put them into practice, you know, what ministry is God calling me to based on the gifts? And I'll just say this real quickly, and I'm just going to say it real quickly. God has given me an amazing ability to sit down and talk with you and after about 10 or 15 minutes can help direct you in what spiritual gift you have. It's amazing. It's all God. Right? But here's the one question I ask when I ask people, you want to know what your spiritual gifts are? Answer this question. If you could only do one thing for the body of Christ in your remaining time on earth, what's your passion? What's your passion? That usually will help me to find out what it is, what area of gifting that you've got. And of course, my family all jokes about me. They go, Dad, we know what your passion is, right? Have you known me long enough to know what my passion is? teaching the Word of God, right? That's my gifting, because that's what I'm passionate, and I believe that if you have gifts in a certain area, you will be passionate about those things in terms of serving the body and helping to establish the King of God. Okay, so the idea is for the work of service, that's the purpose, here we go, here's the process of the equipping, to the building up of the body of Christ. to build up the body. We are one to build us up, not to build us up individually, but to build us up together. There's the unity church working together, being built up through the equipers, right? And by the way, I'm not the only equiper in this church. You can have the gift of pastor teacher and not be a pastor. These are offices. These are not offices in Ephesians 4. These are technically giftings. So the only one in the body is not the guy that's doing all this, right? There are others who have that gifting. You could be shepherding somebody in a small group, right? You could have the gift of pastor teacher and equipping people in a small group, not the whole body, right? So our job is to bring about the building up the body of Christ. God's using us to bring that process about. And then look at the product. until we obtain the unity of the faith. The faith. Notice it's in a particular article, the faith. Not just faith, but the faith. What's he talking about? The gospel faith, the faith it's found in Jesus Christ through his word. Our job is to help to do that so we can work together, the Holy Spirit can do that as we're serving, to be one in the faith. Believing what God's Word says, believing the gospel faith, and then, I love this, until we all attain to the knowledge of the Son of God. It's interesting, I was looking at the word knowledge this morning in the original language, and this is the connotation it carries. Precise and correct knowledge of whom? The Son of God. Can you see that this is a process, church? How many of us has fully attained full, precise, and perfect knowledge about Jesus? No hands going up? Okay, good. It's a process. We are growing in our understanding, our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Can I ask you this? As you were in God's word this week, did you learn anything new about Jesus? I was in the Gospel of Luke where he's like, he's like raising people from the dead and he's casting out demons and all this kind of stuff. And I saw something even this week that I had missed before. I was like, whoa! Jesus! Hello! Right? That's the goal here, is to help equip the body so that we can get to that place where we have more and more precise and correct knowledge of who Jesus Christ is. And by the way, you know when this process really ends? It's when Jesus takes our breath away. So if we think we've arrived, we need to do a spiritual check. Paul says we press on to that maturity in Philippians 3. You know, I joke with people all the time in terms of knowing God's Word. They'll say, oh, you know God's Word so amazingly. It's like, yeah, okay. So if you wanted to look at knowledge from the perspective of like kindergarten through PhD, you know where I think I'm at right now? Maybe a college degree. I got a ways to go. It's a process, church. So it's to the attaining the knowledge of the Son of God, Right? That full and precise and correct. That's why we have to study His word. To what? Here's also the product. To the mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. And God showed me this morning, what I was studying this morning was that the process of maturity is what we call sanctification. We are being sanctified individually, church, but we're also being sanctified as a body together. We're growing together. And so if you were to ask yourself, well, how mature am I? Right, and then how mature are we? Because if you can have a pocket of individuals who are mature in their faith, and you can have a pocket of ones who aren't, we got a problem. Why is there a group that's mature in their faith and growing and maturing, and a pocket that's not? Church leaders, we have a responsibility to make sure that every member of this body, and I don't mean artificially a member because you signed your name somewhere. I'm talking about members of the body of Christ. We have a responsibility, elders. We have a responsibility to make sure that every member of this body is growing and maturing in their walk with Jesus, and church, there is only one way to do that, and that's this. The Word of God. This is why I'm so adamant about teaching people the Word of God and how to study God's Word. It's because we have a responsibility to make sure that every member is maturing and growing because we will only be mature as a body as we are individually. You see that? And the other thing that God showed me, this was so cool this morning, that unity is the proof of maturity. That's, I learned something new this morning church. Unity is the proof of maturity. So if we're immature, we're not gonna be unified. If the more and more we become unified as a body, the more and more that proves how mature we are as a body. And you know what the reality is? Why are we even concerned about this? Because we want to bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't wanna cheapen his grace that he gave us on the cross and gave us to serve the body to build it up, church. I am serious about this stuff. and I pray that we are as well, okay? Then he goes on in verses 14 through six, I don't even think I flipped through this. Well let me show this, let me just show this before I move to the last section here. Romans 8, 29, talking about the maturity which belongs to the fullness of Christ because the goal is for Jesus to grow us up to be like him. You know the word disciple right you've heard the word disciple before in the in the the Gospels the word disciple means one who is a learner of or a follower of and the disciple was one who would imitate both the doctrine and and the lifestyle of the master, the rabbi. Jesus, the ultimate rabbi, right? And so the goal is if we're followers of Jesus Christ, we are supposed to be imitating his doctrine and his lifestyle to become more and more and more like Jesus. That's the sanctification process, church, right? And I love this. Look at what Paul says in Romans. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the what? The image. of his son. Romans 8.28, I'll just give you a quick one. You've heard me share this before. When our son died, I looked at Romans 8.28, and I kept going back to God and saying, well, God, what good can come out of this? And I was looking for, oh, maybe my dad'll get saved, or maybe this'll happen, or maybe that. And one day, the Holy Spirit said to me, he said, Jim, the answer's right in front of you, in verse 29. Why? How can I turn the good of losing your son into good for you? So that you'll become more like Jesus Christ. And I don't want to get into any theology at this point, but I truly am convinced from God's word that the death of my son was allowed so that I could become more like Jesus. And for that church, I give him the glory. I give him the glory. Whatever happens, God wants us to become more and more like Jesus, which is why he allows trials and tests in our life. The only way I can explain testing and trials is that God wants to teach us something and he wants to make us more like his son. Question is, are you gonna allow him to do the stuff in your life that you may not like so that you can become more like Jesus in maturity? How? That's a tough one. And by the way, an immature person can't answer yes. As we're maturing, we can say, yep, I don't like it, but bring it on, God, because if that's what it takes for me to be like Jesus, right? And then I'm not gonna read this whole thing. But Philippians, you know this text, right? He says, I count all things as loss in terms of the surpassing value of knowing Christ. Jesus my Lord, right? Everything that I gained is rubbish. All he cares about is becoming like Christ. Right? That's Paul's heart. I want to know him and the power of his resurrection, which means I want to be able to understand and live out his resurrected life in my life right now. I want to look more like Jesus. That's what Paul's talking about, right? In Philippians. And he says, listen, I don't regard having laid hold of it. One thing I do, I forget what lies behind. Reach forward in the word reach here. Any runners in here? Any runners? I used to do 5Ks. The one thing you wanna do, because you wanna better your best time, or you wanna beat the guy behind you, you're stretching your neck across the line. That's what Paul's talking about. I'm gonna stretch my neck across the line toward Christlikeness. That is what it's all about. Now, in closing, in this last couple of verses, he says, as a result of this happening, through the equipping, we're no longer children. You know what's interesting? I was reading the original language this morning. I don't read Greek, but I was reading the translation of it. And it was really interesting, the word teleos here. He says, as a result, we'll no longer be children. Teleos in the Greek, which means immature. How many of you would agree this morning that little children can be immature? Right? I don't know why you'd say that, right? fighting over toys and not getting along and all kinds of stuff. So you see, you won't be like that anymore. And then he describes what he means by that. Tossed here and there by the waves. Anybody been on a boat recently that was tossed to and fro by the waves? There was no mooring, there was no anchoring, there was, right? Lisa and I could tell you a story about being in Canada years ago when we first got married, being on a lake, literally in a canoe where the waves were like two feet over the boat and we're both like. tossed to and fro, you had, I mean even our paddling was like almost in vain, right? Tossed to and fro by the waves and it literally means in the Greek, the toss here by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine carries with it the idea of being tossed about in circles. So he says if we're growing up and we're coming together and moving in unity toward faith and that knowledge and growing in our individual relationships with Christ, we're growing together as a body in unity looking more like Jesus, right? If that's happening, you won't be tossed about in circles by every wind of doctrine. Oh my goodness. Every wind of doctrine. All you gotta do, if you don't believe that, go and listen to what people believe about the Book of Revelation and their interpretations. I tell my students, I said, you can't go listen to anybody else's teaching until you've studied it once for yourself, at least, to get yourself grounded. Then, if you wanna be a Berean and go out and listen, because there is, I don't trust most people that teach through the Book of Revelation today. In all honesty, there's so much wind of doctrine all blowing all over the place. And you hear people say, what do we believe? Right? And I love, he says, tossed here and carried away out by every wind of doctrine. The word tossed here, about, means to be agitated mentally in your mind. carried about by every wind of doctrine that's blowing all over the place, right? By the trickery of men. The word trickery here means slight, S-L-E-I-G-H-T, and it really means dice playing. Isn't that interesting in the Greek? It means to roll dice. The other thing, when I saw the word slight, I thought about a magician, sleight of hand. How we can easily be tricked, right? Do you have any friends that do illusions and stuff? Do you know anybody that does that? They said it's actually not that difficult. I can get you to think you're seeing something because the hand is quicker than the eye. The sleight of hand, right? So you're really not seeing anything really that impressive, but because I can trick you by the sleight of hand, you think you're seeing something. That's what Paul's talking about, the trickery of men, the craftiness of deceitful scheming. That word craftiness and deceitful scheming carries with it deliberate planning. I'm gonna tell you this, that false doctrine by false teachers is not an accident. It's purposeful. Read Jude, read 1st or read 2nd Peter, where they talk about false doctrine. It is all deliberate planning to trick their people that are listening to them, right? Which is why we need to be Bereans so that, not that I would, but so that I can't stand up here and trick you into something. I don't want to, I would never do that, Lord willing, on purpose, never, never, never, never, never. But how are you gonna know what you're hearing out there, if it's really of God, because you've become mature and you're growing in your faith. And then he finally goes, but we are to grow up in him who is the head, even Christ. So the ultimate goal is to grow up into the head, into Jesus Christ himself, not just individually, but as a body. And I love what I read this morning. where it says we are to grow up into him who is the head, even Christ, it really carries with it the idea that our growth is according to his example. That's all he's saying. Our growth is according to his example, and how does it work? He's the source or the object of our, he's both the source and the object of our growth. He's the one that helps us to grow, but he is the one that is the object. We wanna be like him, and how does it happen? Speaking the truth in love, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by every joint supplies. He's using a physical illustration here, like our bodies, and he's talking about an ongoing process. This doesn't end until we get to heaven. We leave here, right? According to the proper working of each individual part. So yes, we're talking about unity of the body, but it has to happen as each part does its job. Would you be okay if, and I'm not a mechanic, but would you be okay if I said, you know, I think your car can still work if I pull a couple of pistons? Would you be okay with that? Probably not. In the same way, each person in this body who is a born again Christian is absolutely significant to the growth of this body. How many times have we had the devil tell us, oh, you're insignificant, you don't really matter, right? Not according to Paul. Every one of us in this body is significant in terms of our growth and our serving the body. If every part it's doing its job individually, then the whole body functions the way it's supposed to. And it builds itself up in love. And so here's, I'm gonna conclude. I don't think I have any cross-references, nope. So I'm gonna conclude with this. Let me ask this quick question. Was this understandable this morning? Were you able to grasp what Paul is saying here? Okay? So here's the question. What are we gonna do with this? Here's my questions for us individually this morning, church. How are we contributing individually to the unity of the body? Don't look at the person sitting next to you. Look at the person sitting in your seat and saying, how are you contributing individually both in the walking in unity and the working together in unity? Are we walking in a manner worthy of the calling by preserving the unity and the bond of peace by walking in humility and all the other things that Paul mentions in those first three verses? Are we growing up to maturity and serving, doing our part for the growth of the whole body? And when we do, then this church is going to look exactly the way Jesus wants it to look. Every single person in this body who is born again is significant to the growth of this body. If you're sitting here today and you don't think that you really can contribute much to the body, shame on you in a loving way. You are so significant to this body. My job as one of the equipers is to help you know what your gifts are so I can help you to grow and to serve so you can serve the body of Christ. I am available. You know how to get in touch with me. Right? I want to do whatever I can to help you grow individually and help this body grow the way God intended it. Would you agree with me, church, that this is what God wants for Bark River Bible Church? Let's pray. Father, we thank you and praise you. We love you. We just love your word, which is so incredible to understand it, Lord. I pray that I've communicated in a way today that's understandable to every person here today. so that we can do our part and work together to walk in unity and work toward unity as we individually grow and as we serve one another in the body so that we can be used of you to reach others with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now send us out. Don't let us walk away from this message and go, oh, that was a nice word, whatever. Challenge each one of us, Lord, to walk away from this text and go, what is my part? What do I need to be doing to help this body to grow? And all of it, Lord, not only for the good of those who are gonna receive the ministry, but also for your glory, Lord. In Jesus' name, and all God's people said, God bless, have a great week.