In his sermon 'How to Grow in a Local Church,' Scott Brown emphasizes the critical role of the local church in fostering Christian maturity. He draws from Ephesians 4 to illustrate how the church, likened to a human body, grows through the interplay of various gifts and ministries. Brown highlights that spiritual growth is not a private endeavor but is deeply rooted in community interaction within the church. He stresses the importance of walking in a manner worthy of the calling of Christ, which involves active participation in the church's teaching and service. Church leaders, such as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, are given to equip the saints for service and to build up the body of Christ. Brown calls for self-examination regarding one's contribution to the church and underscores the necessity of each believer being an active part of the body. He warns against living a Christian life according to personal designs and encourages aligning with God's vision for the church. The sermon concludes with a call to prioritize church engagement over personal interests, portraying the church as God's instrument to mature believers and prevent them from being swayed by false doctrines.

Please find Ephesians chapter 4. This is the inerrant, all sufficient, sweeter than honey, word of God. I'm gonna read selected verses from Ephesians four this morning, and we're beginning in verse one, but I'll skip through and then pause in a particular place and then continue. Verse one, therefore, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. After calling us to walk in a way that's consistent with Christ in the church.

Then in verse 7 he speaks of the fact that gifts have been given, but to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. And then in verse 11 we find ourselves hearing how the body grows and I'm going to read verses 7 through 16 or 11 through 16 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 the 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 a perfect man to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head Christ from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to the effective working by which every part does its share causes the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love that will be our focus today But the passage continues in beginning in verse 17 to 22 that we no longer walk as the Gentiles walk.

This I say therefore in testifying the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind and then in verse 25 to the end of the chapter he speaks of the way that we speak and feel toward one another therefore putting away lying each let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another. All of these things in Ephesians chapter 4 are designed to teach us how the body grows and that's the focus of what we're dealing with today. Would you pray with me? Lord, we're so thankful for your word that teaches us how to live in the church, how to live in the world, how to live everywhere, and you're so kind to give us direction. And so I pray that you'd bless our time today.

Amen. Please be seated So today brings us to the the sixth message in our series on the church and of course today my focus is on how the body grows to maturity. That's the focus of this passage. Growth toward maturity in the local church of Ephesus and by implication, ours as well. What we learn from this passage is that the primary tool for your maturity is the ministry that takes place in a local church.

And it begins by speaking about how you walk in a local church because the way that you walk Depends on how you will grow if you don't walk in a manner worthy of the Lord you will not grow And that manner has to do with how you walk in a local church. Now this passage of Scripture has loomed large in my life ever since I was in my teens. For all of my adult life particularly. In the 1970s, I was in a church, in a local church, and our pastor preached from this passage of scripture many times, and I was directed to read various books on the local church. It was a time of revival really in Southern California.

And you had men who were writing books on the local church. You had Ray Stedman wrote a book called Body Life. And it was very gripping to me in my early years One of my seminary professors wrote a book called the church the body of Christ and I devoured Those books and they've really shaped everything I've thought about local church life since then and I haven't been able to get these out of my mind and I would dare say as a result of that you've probably you've heard these principles you know just fly out of me from time to time here naturally because they they really are fundamental for church life and so what what I'm trying to accomplish in this series is To try to reestablish how God has designed his church and how we fit in to local church life, into his design. And so I'm praying, hoping that we'll all be encouraged, we'll all, even if necessary, be delivered from our own designs relating to this particular local church in our own way. It's true that many people, they've always related to the local church their own way.

And so, but God doesn't want to leave anybody in that way. And so, it may happen, and I believe we have very devoted church members here, but it may happen that some of you might in a sense come to your senses and say, I haven't been treating this local church the way Jesus Christ has called me to treat this local church. And so that's why I've been asking in this series, are you relating to this local church in your own way? Have you related to local churches your own way? Have you made it up?

Have you made your own version of Christianity up and relating to the people according to your own design and relating to even particularly this local church according to your own design. And so here in this passage I'm really asking the question about maturity and how maturity takes place. And in Ephesians 4 we should be asking, am I growing up? Because God meant for your growth to come through the work that takes place in a local church. That's what the Bible says.

Now you might have been telling yourself that you grow in other ways. And there are other ways that we grow, but the church is God's primary tool for the maturity of Christians. I thought it was interesting just last week I read a headline from the Barna organization 56% of Christians feel their spiritual life is entirely private entirely private well this makes it very clear that it's not entirely private. In fact, it's not even mainly private, at least according to this passage. And so, Ephesians 4 comes to kind of crash into our own sensibilities and our own patterns.

And it tells us that if you're gonna grow as a Christian, it's critical that you enter into a life of interdependence with particular things that happen in a local church. And particularly here the preaching in the local church and the giftedness and the functionality of the saints in the church. But now as you can see in this passage we're dealing with the metaphor of the body and how the body matures. And it's very interesting that, you know, God gives this metaphor of the human body to help us to think about how we function together in the church. God gives us so many metaphors to say this is like that, and that's what he's done with the body.

And he gave the human body as a metaphor. And it's a very fascinating study to consider how the human body grows and you know there are various stages of maturity in the growth of a human body. There's fertilization, there's Infancy, there is childhood, there's adolescence, there's adulthood. And, you know, a baby in the womb is fed by her mother. And she continues on through infancy, and then a mother begins to give her child solid food.

This is the way the church grows as well. And then the Apostle Paul gives us imagery elsewhere. And you have, you have internal forces that cause the human body to grow. You have your genetic makeup, your DNA, these remarkable forces at work in your body that come from the way that God arranged you in your DNA in all of its complexity and then you have External forces that cause your human body to grow you have you have food you have Water and and minerals and vitamins and you have sleep all these things cause the growth and the health of your body and you know in the same way the church grows by internal forces of the very presence of the Holy Spirit is the most important internal force at work in our bodies. And then in the church there are external forces.

There is the teaching of the Word of God. There's the fellowship of the saints. All the things that we do in the church when we sing, these are external forces, when we pray, these are external forces. We hear prayers and these things, you know, they fall upon us and they affect us. And as a result, we grow.

But here in this passage, the body builds itself up. And so you have this metaphor of the human body. And I've been thinking a lot about it lately. And even while my mother was in the hospital last week, I was looking into a book. I was listening and reading a book called The Secret Language of Cells.

And it reminded me of Ephesians 4 and 1 Corinthians 12 through 14 and Romans 12, where this body life imagery is so clearly manifested and I'll just read some of the words in this book that really grabbed me because they really they really do give a window into how the body of Christ works as well. How the cells of the body work much like the members of the body of Christ. He writes this, the greatest secret in biological science is that all of life's activity occurs because of conversations among cells. During infections immune T cells tell brain cells that we should feel sick and lie down. Long-distance signals direct white blood cells at every stop of their journey, their long journey to an infection.

Cancer cells warn their community about immune and microbe attacks. Gut cells talk with microbes to determine who are friends and enemies. Instructor cells in the thymus teach T cells not to destroy human tissues. And he goes on to say that cells are making decisions, the cells in your body are always making decisions in the same way that the cells in the church body do. He says cellular communication is inherently complicated with an immeasurable number of signals going in all directions at once in the midst of billions of cells a particular cell can rapidly make complex decisions and send signals that direct the efforts of many other cells to make our bodies work in amazing ways.

And then he talks about how the cells travel around they they make tracks and they go they they they descend upon particular places. He says travel is not always easy and their tracks are not simple when they arrive at the site, but they manage by using complex navigation modes to transit through drastically different environments. Sometimes without nutrients and oxygen they need constant help via signals from many other cells for these Journeys they may roll or crawl along lining cells The assembled army is soon marching through the blood and tissue. T cells constantly converse among themselves with the many different kinds of cells. They direct, they directly influence, including all other immune cells, blood cells, lining cells, and even some friendly micro, microbes.

To chase microbes, killer cells must rapidly reproduce and travel throughout the body in hostile territory, often without oxygen and food. And the author goes on and talks about cells will squeeze through small areas and morph their size They'll almost have tracks and crawl up other various You know features of the body but so I think that you know the Apostle Paul, when he uses the metaphor of the body, it rings true. And so each member of the body of Christ is like a cell in the human body. We communicate, we encourage, we comfort, we warn, we seek out, we head off enemies. That's what we do in the body of Christ.

Now, before we move into this text, I just want to briefly review where we've been in this series. Since today is another message. I think that one of the things that has been in my mind about this is what the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy where he said I write these things that you may know how you ought to conduct yourselves in the household of God and the first thing that we began with is Christ's love for the church and we I just urged us to put on the mind of Christ. Think of your local church the way that Jesus Christ does. There's no institution on the face of the earth that is more important.

And are you treating her like the most important institution, the most important opportunity that you have going on in your life? And there's much to be said about Christ's love for the church. And then we said that the church is a community of converted sinners, that the first mark of a church is conversion. And the most important work of the church and particularly of pastors is to help people understand whether they're actually converted or not. And in 1st Corinthians 6 and 9, which is our text dealing with this matter of the church being a community of converted sinners, we talked about the fact that the church is composed of people who've changed.

They used to be drunkards and revilers and extortioners and homosexuals and thieves, but not anymore. They were washed, they were justified, and they are converted. And then we talked about some of the various metaphors in the church to help us to understand the metaphor of the temple, the flock, the church is a vineyard, it's a kingdom of priests, it's a nation, it's it's a structure like a building built of living stones, it's a family, it's a pillar, and maybe the pinnacle of them all is that she's a bride. She's a beautiful bride. So God has given us these metaphors to help us to understand these things.

You know, we're involved in a project. We're building something together as a church and it's not our design. We're building a flock of God. We're building a building of God. And then we talked about what believers do in the church and We talked about how believers love the church from Acts chapter 2, particularly verse 42.

And they continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and prayers. True Christians steadfastly devote themselves to the means of grace in a local church. And it's a steadfast devotion. It's the center of their devotion. All their other devotions are secondary.

And then we turn to a couple of metaphors and tried to zero in on them with some depth. The church as a nation and the church as a family from Ephesians 2 19 through 22 that we are fellow citizens and members of the household of God so the church is like a nation it has laws it has boundaries and and the church is like a family and the relationships are very close. And then most recently I brought us to a prayer for a local church in Ephesians chapter 3. And this prayer is for this church really to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit. The miracle of the church is that she's rooted and grounded in love and she comprehends Christ's love for them.

She's a place where people they they bask in the love of Jesus and they're filled with the fullness of God and and they know that the purpose of the church is to declare to the powers and the principalities that Jesus is Lord so that's sort of a summary of where of where we've been And so we're back to Ephesians chapter 4. As we enter into chapter 4, we recognize that we're in a new division in Ephesians. The first three chapters form the doctrine, the foundation for everything, and then chapters four through six are how it's all applied, how you walk it out. That's why the probably the operative word in chapters four through six is the word walk. You're walking.

You're walking in practical ways. So in the first three chapters you see get the orthodoxy. In chapters four through six you have the orthopraxy, how you walk. So this is the section that we happen to be in now We are walking so That's why verse 1 Says I therefore the prison of the Lord beseech you to walk Worthy The Lord is issuing a call for how you walk in the church. And all of this should cause self-examination.

How am I walking in this local church? And then he speaks of the grace that is given. Each one grace is given in verse seven. And this is really because of the power of the resurrection, because Christ descended and ascended on high, because he's resurrected, because he descended into the grave and ascended. He has given gifts to the church and each one has grace given to it.

That's why we should be growing in grace. And then in verse 11 we learn that He gives men, he doesn't just give gifts, he gives men to the church for a particular purpose. And that's where we'll focus now. We'll kind of slow down in these verses beginning in verse 11. And he gave, And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.

So the apostle is telling us that the body grows as a result of gifts that are given, and the gifts are gifted men. He spoke in the previous verses about gifts that everyone in the church has. Now he's talking about particular men, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. So in order for you to grow, for me to grow, for the church to grow, there must be different kinds of men in that church. They have different kinds of effects.

Very much like the cells in your body, God gave particular kinds of cells in the church and all of them as you'll notice are involved in communicating the Word of God. That's really the central matter. And all of these are for the preservation of the unity of the Spirit. We'll take some time in another session on the unity of the church. But Here you have an element of the preservation of the unity of the church is that you have men who teach, they communicate the word of God.

And these kinds of men are necessary and They are different kinds of men. They do different things. They actually perform different modes of communication. All from the same source of truth. But the emphasis is on verbal instruction.

That's why when we gather together, we're always engaged in verbal instruction. When we meet here, in the morning, we meet for verbal instruction. In the afternoon, it's verbal instruction. When the men meet in the morning, it's for verbal instruction. When the women meet, it's for verbal instruction.

And when we gather for prayer, actually there's verbal instruction about the whole doctrine of prayer and how and why we should pray. And so you have these various kinds of men. First of all, you have apostles. I believe that he's speaking about the twelve apostles who wrote Scripture and who brought authoritative testimony of Jesus Christ. There are a small number of occasions where the word apostle or apostolosus used a people who were not these apostles.

They were just simply sent. The word means sent ones. But the apostles wrote the word of God and provided it for us. And then you have those who prophesied, these are those who speak the word of God. That's what I'm doing now, I'm interpreting the word of God and declaring it.

Then you have evangelists, These are people who have great attention for evangelists or for evangelism That's their greatest concern you find these people at the abortion clinic you find the street preaching you find them they they just that's what that that's what they're bent to do and they have a particular gift for that. And then you have, and then you also have shepherds. They, pastors and teachers, and whether those are two separate functions or not, we can debate that, but both, this has to do with shepherding. Teaching the word of God and leading the people of God through verbal instruction. And you know all of this means that if the church is to grow, one of the most important factors is that her ears are open.

And when we gather together to teach that our ears are open. Now that's sometimes a challenge because we get distracted, We get discouraged, we get tired, and our ears are sometimes flopping down. And they're not really attentive. You know, I was walking my dog the other day, and we were going along, and off in the distance were some horses. And my dog's ears just perked up like this and his head came up straight and his ears stayed that way for a long time he was very interested in those horses his ears were up and that's what needs to happen in the church We need to have our ears up, ears up ready to go.

If you're going to do that, you've got to discipline yourself. You've got to sort of set yourself to do that. You have to be in the mode of thinking where I'm coming in to hear the teaching of the Word of God. I'm going to be totally on deck. I'm going to be on the edge of my chair.

My ears are going to be up. And if your ears aren't up, you're probably not going to grow much. That's sort of how it works. Now, You know, the elders of the church provide teaching. And I know that there are some who just, they come Sunday mornings and they hear the teaching, they're faithful.

But I want all of you who are in that place to know that if you're just coming Sunday morning, you're only getting about one fourth of the teaching that the elders have intended for you to hear. You're only getting one fourth of it. You're getting Sunday morning, but you're missing what's on our hearts when we teach on Sunday afternoon. We really want you to be here. And if you don't come to Bible study, you're missing another fourth of it.

And if you don't come to prayer, you're missing another fourth. So if you're just coming to Sunday morning, I just want you to understand, I want to sort of put you on notice. You're only hearing one-fourth of the things that your pastors have for your souls. But you grow as a result of hearing the Word of God and that's the whole matter here. And the result is declared here in verse 12.

Something happens when ears are up for the teaching of the Word of God. Verse 12, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ So something happens the teaching is for equipping and there are three words here in verse 12 That stand out and the first word is is equipping and it's a it's a very interesting word It's only used one time in the New Testament, but the root word is used in other places. And it's used in, like for example, for the mending of nets. The teaching is for the mending of the nets of the souls of the people in the church And in this context it has to do with training. The equipping here has to do with training of a church.

In this case, a local church, the Ephesian church. And then The next word is the word ministering, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry. And the teaching is designed to activate the saints, to set the saints in motion, to set the saints to do the ministry. And the word that the apostle uses is the same word for deacon. I think that you have two kinds of deacons in the church.

You have capital D deacons and you have small d deacons. And everybody in the church is a minister. The word deacon just means minister or servant. And Deacons are servants and every person in a local church functions as a servant, as a deacon in that sense with a small d. That means that the church is not like anywhere else you go.

It's not like going to the theater. It's not like sitting in front of your television set. In the church you are a servant, you're not just a passive listener, and the teaching is designed to activate you, to draw you into serving, serving one another. And because all our servants, in one sense all our deacons, Jesus said that all of us are brothers. And so we have this kind of relationship with one another.

And then the third word is edifying, for the edifying of the body of Christ. This has to do with building up. It's like building a building. Some of you love to build buildings it's a great thing but everyone in the church is a builder and the preaching is is designed to set you at work to build be a builder hear the preaching and go build that's the idea That's the only reason we preach really. Save souls and build.

That's why we do this. And you know, it's the most important thing you'll ever do in your life as a Christian is to build up the church. You're building up the only eternal institution. It's more important than your work. You can build your business than you should, but you need to recognize your business is gonna go away.

But the church and the souls in that church are not going to go away. It's kind of like your children. Your children are eternal souls, and it's very critical that you focus on them. You know, the building up of the body of Christ is more important than your hobbies, any of your hobbies. And it really is even more important than your business.

You've got to do both of them, but you have to recognize there's a matter of importance that's so critical here. You're edifying the body of Christ. And I want every member, every person, every attender of this church to be a builder. Because one person can't do it all. God has designed that there would be teachers who would incite the church to build.

And I hope that's the, you know, I hope that's what you are hearing from us, you know, week to week. And the truth is, you know, people often are more concerned about their hobbies than they are the building up of the church. And I'm not against hobbies. You know some people are more interested and more more devoted to their bodybuilding than they are the church bodybuilding. I'm not against bodybuilding but it has to do with prior, but if you prioritize your bodybuilding and don't prioritize the church, I'm here to say you're way out of balance on that.

You should be doing both. So, the question that every true Christian asks when they come to a church is they ask how can I serve this church? And it can be a problem in a church like ours Because what's happened in the modern church is that she's invented all kinds of positions and titles and they call that ministry and much of it is but the New Testament knows nothing of titles and ministry slots. We are all brothers and sisters who are filled with the grace of God. It's an organic unity, it's an organic ministry, it's an organic servanthood.

It's not corporate, it's not based on your title, It's not based on your position. All our ministers in a local church don't wait for a title, but it can be frustrating with people who come to our church because they want a title. They want to be a youth minister or a Sunday school teacher, but we don't have those titles here. And what we want to encourage this church to do is that every joint would supply, every member of the body would supply the ministry. And that that puts a lot on us doesn't it?

And why is this important? Verse 13. It's so important. Verse 13. Till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, to the measure and stature of the fullness of Christ.

So here's the logic. The teaching should go on until we all come to the unity of the faith, until we all come to be a perfect man until we are all in the fullness in the statue of Christ. When's that going to happen? I think it means that we're going to be teaching for a long time because we're not there yet. We haven't attained to the statue of Christ yet.

So the teaching is going to continue until the statue of Christ is complete, which actually isn't going to happen until we face the Lord in heaven. And so God sets the teaching of the church to be a central matter until he comes. But there's this process of perfecting. And as imperfect as the preaching always is, I'm so aware of that, more than you know, but as imperfect as the teaching is, here's what I believe, it is so critical that even the imperfect teaching of the shepherds is critical for your becoming like Jesus Christ. Even when you hear something off beat that the pastor says, that's even good for you.

And you know every once in a while, you know certain pastors around here might say something a little offbeat Do you Well, we're all growing together to become like Jesus Christ, you know, even the shepherds are being perfected as well. And so the goal of the teaching is that we assist one another to become like Jesus Christ. We become mature. You might say that the whole thrust of this passage is growing up, becoming mature. And the teaching is designed to make you more mature.

So get your ears up. It's designed to make you more mature, as imperfect as it might be. And what we are learning here is that God gives a gift to the church, and that gift is in the form of people who communicate the word of God. It's a gift to you for your growth, for your maturity, so that you would grow up into Jesus Christ. And all of this happens in the proximity of a local church, in proximity to other believers.

Where the believers are together and they're praying for one another, they know one another, they're practicing hospitality, they're seeking one another out. That's why the letters to the churches were to local churches, to the local church in Corinth, to the local church in Philippi, to the local church in this case in Ephesus. And what God has designed for his people is that they would have a concentration, a localized concentration of their life. You know we're all built in such a way where we want to be involved in so many things. We're just built that way.

Sometimes I thought I wish I had 10 more lives I'd like to do 10 more different things in this world but I only have one life and and and and it's and it's highly highly localized you know John Calvin he talked about that he says the human The human ambition longs to embrace various things at once. And then he says, he says, but the problem with that, with that human inclination, is that we have objective callings. They are localized callings. They're highly focused callings. And he says they are assigned by the Lord as a sort of a sentry post, so that he may not heedlessly wander about through life, going from this thing to another, this church to another, this...

But no, a localized, focused ministry of your life. And God does that with every... I mean, he gives you a family, and he gives you the family of God. This is the localized focused ministry that God has for his people. And in order to grow and please please get this, in order to grow, you ought not come with your own agenda.

You ought not come with your own vision of the church. Come with God's vision. Come with God's design. Come to do the church the way that God has designed the church to be done. And it's so easy for us to go to drift off into our own way of going about being part of the church.

Let me say it a different way. God has set up his church for a specific purpose to get in the way of your life. God is inserting Himself into your life. He's getting in the way of your life. He's getting in the way of your hobbies.

He's getting in the way of your priorities. He's getting in the way of your passions. He's getting in the way of you. And God uses his church to get in your way. It's a little bit like Balaam's donkey to stop the man.

What we're doing in this church is explicitly designed to get in the way of your life. But when we get in the way, we want to bring the sweetness of the word of God. We want to bring something that's true. And when we call you to pray on Wednesday night, we want to get in the way of your life. We're saying stop what you're doing and come and pray.

We want to get in the way. That's what we're supposed to do. You know when we have when we have preaching on Sunday afternoon we want to get in the way of your life. We want you to modify your life because the teaching is so pivotal that it causes you to mature and we're most concerned about your maturity. And then in verse 14 there's a profound effect.

And what's the effect? It's that you're not thrown around by everything in this world. We don't want you to be jerked around by every wind of doctrine, every threat, every fear, whatever. Verse 14, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro, carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. So, You know, we want to get in your way so that you're not thrown around.

That's the idea. So the church is the place where you grow up and you're strengthened. And your growth actually hinges on whether your ears are up for the Word of God. And you know the growth takes time till we all come to the measure and stature of Christ. It's a lifelong project.

And it's actually a good thing that it's a lifelong project. You know, it takes years to grow an oak tree, but it only takes a few weeks to grow a squash. And so the time factor is good, the longevity. Spending a long time in the Word of God, in the Church of God is like growing an oak tree. It's not anything like growing a squash.

You know, many of you are bringing children here into these services. And the fact that you're bringing them is very important. I would say it's the most important place you ever bring your children and most people they're not thoughtful or diligent about how they bring their children to church and I'm here to say be very thoughtful and diligent about it. Bring them to teach them. Speak of them, speak of it before and even during and after.

Coach them, walk them through the teaching. Don't let them just sit there like cabbage heads. You need to engage them and teach them. And when you walk out of here speak of the things that were taught because we don't want them to be thrown around either by this world, by every wind of doctrine and every threat and every fear that comes across their life. We want them to be solid like an oak tree, not like a squash.

And you know, I, I, Okay, I really want to be an influence in your parents' lives. I want to influence you in the way that you take your children to church. I want to have an effect on you. I don't want you to just bring your kids to church. I want you to bring them with tremendous intentionality and teach them alongside of the the preaching of the Word of God.

And the Bible makes that very very clear. The Bible commands your parents to teach your children when you sit in the house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Let there be no cabbage heads who just sit around, couch potato children, because their parents won't let them live that way. And I'm here, I'm here, I'm standing in your way, I'm saying look, do not just bring your children to church, instruct them, bring the Word of God to them, help them understand the complex words and things like that that you've heard in the preaching. And then in verse 15 there's another result of it, but speaking the truth in love may grow up.

So we're growing up, We're speaking the truth in love. In other words, the preaching takes place and then the people begin to speak to one another and they speak to one another well. And they grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ. The apostle uses a really interesting word here when he says grow up. It's to increase to an extreme limit.

It's like hyper growth. You know what hyperspace is. This is hyper growth that you might grow up that the church is like a hot house of growth and You speak to one another Truth coming out of our mouths toward one another This is why you should let the word of Christ dwell richly within you so that you have something to give, something to say, something to speak, rather than being empty-headed or actually being full-headed of empty things. But we speak to one another and the body grows by the word of Christ and the whole logic of this chapter is that and we'll get to this in another session, but We are in him. He is in and us The word of God is growing in us and we speak the truth to one another in love.

If we love one another, we'll speak the truth, not the empty headedness that exists in our brains, but filled up with the knowledge of God. And then in verse 16, every part of the body supplies What causes the growth for 16 from whom the whole body joined and knit together? By what every joint supplies according to the effective working by which every part does it share causes the growth of the body for the edifying of itself and love." Wow! Every joint supplying, you know, every foot, every knee, every arm, every head, every brain supplying what it can supply, every part of the body. Well, here's another reality.

Pastors cannot be content until every joint is supplying what it was designed to supply. Every every joint supplying you know it reminds me of my mother and there's an upcoming surgery in her life. And so in the next couple weeks or so, my mom's going to have a surgery because she has a small section in an artery that serves her brain that's partially blocked. It's not totally blocked, but it's partially blocked. And it's just one little section in her artery.

And it's just constrained and it could kill her. Or it could make her not be able to talk or walk or think. But if it's not, if it's not, if it's, if that one little teeny section, little small section of this one artery that flows blood to her brain, if it's blocked she could die or live, you know, the rest of her life unable to do hardly anything. It's interesting, you know, we were talking to the doctor about this and he said that that blockage has probably been around for a while because the body compensates And there were blood vessels from the left side of the brain that were working their way over to compensate, to deliver blood to the right side of her brain. And he said it was called collateral circulation, where alternative paths develop in the body.

The body goes to where the need is. That's what T cells and white blood cells do. But the human body really gives a wonderful picture of what the Bible teaches about the body of Christ, that every joint supplies. It's so critical that every joint supplies. And all of this has to do with the maturing of all of us.

And that's why at the very beginning of this series I said that your spiritual growth depends on the health of your local church and the health of your local church depends on your personal spiritual health. Now all of this means that every Christian should be a churchman. And there is a way to walk in the church. And I want to ask all of us, are we walking that way? Are we walking in a manner worthy of the calling of Jesus Christ?

Functioning as grace has been given to each one of us, according to the measure of Christ's gift. So that's how the church grows. And I pray that God blesses us with such energy for these things. That we would have the kind of growth in a church that God has designed. Would you pray with me?

Father, we are so thankful that you have put us in your family, in your church, in your building, in your vineyard, in your body. And so now I pray that you would take these words and use them for the purposes that you intended them in Ephesians 4, that every joint would supply what the body needs and the teaching would be clear and true and it would mobilize all of us to walk in love as you've designed. Amen. Thank you.