God has designed His church to function like a loving family that you can invite people into. Church is
1. not a place to make rules and demands on people
2. a place to nurture growth.
3. a place for shepherds, not generals
4. a place that exists for the purpose of helping people grow and mature from being spiritual babies to being spiritual adults.
It would do us good to remember that Jesus praised little children for their humble and trusting faith (Matthew 18:3,6), He opened His arms so they could come to Him, and warned people not to ever harm them. Jesus loves babies a lot!
But nobody thinks it’s cute when a person remains a baby for too long. If a small child never learns to walk and talk, never figures out how to feed himself, never outgrows his need for diapers, it’s a sign that something is terribly wrong.
God does not want any of His children to remain baby-like forever. Just like every other father does, our Father in Heaven wants His children to grow!
Text: Ephesians 4:11-16.
This is a passage that is going to help us all to understand why our involvement in a local church is so important to our spiritual life. Here we learn what we need to do in order to make sure that we grow up.
Verse 11 spells out four specific gifts of church leadership, each one of which involves teaching God’s Word.
When God gave birth to the church in the First Century, He used apostles and prophets to establish healthy believers by means of writing down the New Testament Scriptures. Today, God continues to build up the size and strength of Body of Christ through the work of evangelists, many of whom serve as missionaries around the world, and pastor-teachers, both of who teach the Scriptures to people.
Question: What’s God’s goal behind a pastor teaching the Bible to people? God’s answer to that question, in verse 12, is that the job of evangelists and pastors is -- "to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up..."(NIV)
Now let’s compare God’s job description of the "pastor" in our culture who is expected to preach, lead, administrate, visit, marry, bury, care, and counsel. In many people’s minds, he’s supposed to be the superman who "does" all of the ministry for the flock, putting out all the fires, oiling the squeaky wheels, and solving all the problems.
But that’s all backwards. Ephesians 4:12 makes it very clear that a pastor’s main role is to equip and prepare God’s people to do the work of the ministry.
My primary job is to help you to grow spiritually so you will become willing and able to do the ministry of the church.
Look again at verse 12 -- This word "prepare" comes from a Greek word [katartizo] which speaks of repairing and preparing a person’s life in order to equip him and get him ready for service.
For example in Matthew 4:21, this same word is used to describe James and John as they repaired and prepared their nets for fishing. It says (v.21) this involved cleaning the nets of seaweed and sticks, then mending parts of their nets that had been torn or damaged, and then untangling and folding their nets so that they would be quickly useable at a moment’s notice. All of this preparation was so that their nets would be ready to catch more fish. [These nets were not being prepared for storage, but for service.]
It gets you ready to be effective fishers of men.
The way it works is that through the process of being equipped, trained, prepared and completed, Christians are restored to their proper dignity as ministers. According to 1 Peter 2:9, if you are a believer, you are a priest. Maybe you see yourself as just a regular, everyday, garden-variety Christian, but God sees you as part of a holy and royal priesthood.
During the Dark Ages there was the distinction between clergy and laity, between priests and lay people. It was contrary to the Word of God.
The Bible calls you a priest! One of the key Christian values/doctrines is "the priesthood of the believer".
What it means is that you and I are spiritual equals. I am no better than you are in the eyes of God. The fact that I went to seminary and wear the title of "pastor" is insignificant.
God gives you authority to do ministry. You are not a second-class Christian. You are a minister. We have an entire congregation full of ministers.
Please don’t call me "Reverend," because only God is worthy of that title.
Ps 111:9
holy and reverend is his name.
Question: "How’s your ministry going?"
The goal of your service for God is, stated in verses 12-13, --It is "so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." NIV
Wouldn’t you agree that maturity doesn’t happen overnight? Maturity takes time. God wants to grow Christian oak trees that are strong and tall, and that will take many years. It takes time to practice what we’ve learned before we can really claim to know it. Simply accumulating more knowledge in your head is not enough; only when you are able to apply your knowledge in your experience can you say that your knowledge is mature.
The only way that you and I can ever grow spiritually mature is by putting our biblical knowledge into practice in the daily experiences of our lives, and that takes time.
Hebrews 5:14 says -- "solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."] NIV
So, what does maturity look like? It looks like Christ. If we are growing in maturity, our character is becoming shaped to be more and more like Jesus Christ. God’s goal is that through our mutual ministry to each other, we will each grow up to become like His first and favorite Son, Jesus Christ. He is the "ideal minister and priest".
But why? Why do we have to keep growing up spiritually? Why can’t we just stay like we are now?
Paul answers that question in verse 14.
He contrasts maturity with immaturity by drawing a stark contrast between baby Christians and mature Christians.
As I read this verse, in my mind there are scenes of a ship being tossed about and swamped by a powerful storm at sea, such as on Swiss Family Robinson or The Perfect Storm. Those kind of hard-hitting waves might be great if you’re a professional surfer, but not if you are a baby on board! A baby would not survive the ride.
In vs. 14, this word "infant" refers to a small child who is easily fooled and taken in by strangers who might offer them candy if only they’ll get into his car. Paul here points out the fact that there are some evil people out there who desire to lead young Christians away from the truth. These people are cunning, crafty and deceitful. Paul warns us to watch out for them so we can avoid falling into their traps.
Every new believer begins the Christian life as a born-again baby, and often, it is in that first year or so after salvation that a person is an easy mark to be fooled by false teachers. These are the people who come to your door in pairs and say, "Hi -- we’re from a cult that doesn’t believe in salvation by grace alone, and we deny the Trinity, so we’d like you to listen to us twist the Scriptures in order to pull you out of your church and into ours. May we come in?"
That’s not what they say, is it? What they really say is, "We are Christians in your neighborhood talking to people about Jesus Christ, and we’d like to come into your home to study the Bible with you."
Do you see how subtle, how crafty, how deceptive that is? It can cause an undiscerning, naive baby Christian to be led astray by a phony, false teacher on their doorstep, or even sometimes, on Christian TV.
Paul describes baby Christians as those who are wavering and vacillating, "tossed back and forth by the waves." The bottom line is baby sailors on stormy seas often sink their ship! It brings spiritual disaster.
That is why it is important that you not remain a baby Christian for very long! That is why you need to cooperate with God’s efforts to help you to grow up!
QUESTION: Do you want to grow up? If so, how? How can we keep growing up? What is involved in God’s ongoing plan for our spiritual growth and maturity as children of God?
In verses 15-16, Paul lists out three ways that God grows up strong Christians, and every one of these three ways takes place in the context of our being involved in a local church.
1. We connect truth with love in communication.
2. We stay closely connected in fellowship;
3. We are willing to do our part in ministry.
Let’s examine each of these three steps to maturity.
First, God wants us to always connect truth with love. Verse 15 should be translated, "Being truthful in love". It’s not just referring to our speaking, but to all forms of our communication: our body language, the ideas we imply, the things we don’t say. If we are to grow spiritually, we must be truthful in love.
Walk in Honesty.
Truth and love must be merged, fused, woven together. It sounds easy, but it’s not. It means, never let your truth be unloving when your confronting someone in conflict. And never let your love be untruthful.
Keeping that balance is difficult, but choosing to always be truthful in love is our first step to growing up. For example, a husband has a big problem with his wife’s shopping habits, and he wavers constantly between truth and love. Sometimes he nags and yells at her about it, being truthful, but not loving.
Other times, he goes into denial or indifference and pretends as though there is no problem at all; it’s his attempt to be loving, but not truthful. But until truth and love come together, nothing much ever happens.
Read Matthew 18:15 – 17
Jesus urges us to be truthful in love. The goal is love and reconciliation in the relationship, but the path toward that goal is to be truthful and up front and honest about how you feel.
Our second step toward maturity is to always stay closely connected in fellowship with other members of the Body. When Paul speaks in verse 16 of -- "the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament", he’s talking about enjoining reconciled relationships within the church. It’s the joints and ligaments that connect us with other parts of the Body as we rub up against each other and lean on each other and cooperate with each other.
These supporting ligaments refer to the times we study God’s Word together and when we serve together side by side. It is these joints in the body that keep all the parts of the Body interdependent on each other.
Some of us need to make that decision to get more closely connected in fellowship with other members of the Body today.
Our third step toward maturity is to always be willing to do our part of the ministry. At the end of verse 16 Paul describes how the Body -- "grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work." As each part of the local Body of Christ uses his or her spiritual gift to serve in a ministry, the result is that the church grows bigger (in quantity) and it grows stronger (in quality) -- but only as each part does its work.
Some of us need to make that decision to be willing to do our part of the ministry, starting tonight.
Most of you are familiar with Paul comparing the church to parts of a body in 1 Corinthians 12.
Have you ever really thought about what part in the Body you play? What is your role? What is your ministry? What is your area of service in the body of Christ?
Whatever it is, you have a distinct and important function within the Body. You are needed within the Body to do what you were designed by God to do. Christ expects you to do your work of ministry or service in a way that will strengthen His church.
So, if you’re one who’s still sitting on the sidelines, God says it’s my job to do all I can to activate you for front line duty. So, I encourage you to get plugged into a ministry, to get in shape for service, to get prepared to do your work of ministry. Why? So that the Body of Christ may be built up as you grow up to become more and more like Jesus Christ.
That is God’s plan for you! God wants you to be involved in your local church because He wants to grow all baby Christians into mature Christians.
Babies are cute, babies are wonderful, babies are beautiful, but nobody wants to remain a baby forever. It wouldn’t be healthy.
That’s why God’s plan for a healthy church is to grow baby Christians into mature Christians. God stimulates us to grow through the process of giving each one of us a ministry, a ministry that forces us to learn and stretch and grow up.
It’s a good plan. Our Heavenly Father thought it up.
It’s God’s healthy plan for a healthy church.
