Maturing in Unity

Open your Bibles with me to Ephesians chapter 4 which is on Page 1171

-We’ve been in chapter 4 of Ephesians now for three weeks. We have seen what it looks like to strive in unity together as Paul wrote in verses 1-6 and last week Pastor Birk brought us a message on what it looks like to be serving in unity from chapter four verses 7-13. This week we are going to be continuing in chapter 4 looking at verses 14-16 where we see the church should be
Maturing in Unity.

-This is all a part of our series, building on our heritage which is this years theme as we celebrate Faith Church’s 60^th anniversary.

-Now it’s clear that God sees unity as something that is important because much of this fourth chapter of Ephesians is centered around this topic of being united with other believers. This passage in verses 14-16 is helpful to us because it gives a clear picture of what we should be avoiding in order to be maturing in unity and what Christians should be actively engaged in if they are to grow and mature in the body of Christ.

-Paul says we should be avoiding false doctrine that is deceptive and crafty and instead we should be speaking truth or true doctrine in a loving manner to one another. And if we do that, we will continue to grow up in maturity with one another and we will experience a building up together in love.

-And Paul does this in a really interesting way. Paul commonly uses illustrations to make his points and here he uses three different illustrations in these verses to paint a picture of what this looks like.

1. Children – We are to grow up in our faith like how a child grows up

2. A ship on the water – We should not have spiritual lives that would look like a ship being rocked back and forth on the water. Rather we should have stability

3. The anatomy of the body – This is a common illustration used by Paul in multiple places in the New Testament. Christ is the head of the body and all the other parts function together in union with one another.

-Follow along with me as I read in Ephesians chapter 4. We will start at the beginning of the chapter and go all the way through verse 16.

So, this morning we are going to be looking at…3 traits of a church maturing in Christian unity

And the first is that,

I. Remain stable when presented with false doctrine (v.14)

Ephesians 4:14

¹⁴ As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;

One of the largest assaults on the Christian faith is false doctrine or false teachings about God and man. You don’t have to go far and wide to find false doctrine. It is constantly coming to you and one of the best ways to protect yourself from it is…

By understanding the true doctrine

When you know the real thing, you can more easily identify something that is fraudulent. Probably the most widely used illustrations on this topic is the concept of studying to be an agent whose job is to identify counterfeit money. There may be value in understanding the common characteristics of a counterfeit one hundred dollar bill but there is far more value in knowing everything about a real Benjamin Franklin.

I’m not convinced the people at Payless who hold a 20 up to the light really know what they are looking for but someone who’s job is to know when a dollar is genuine, that is the person who will know when they see a fake.

And so it is with the Christian. You don’t need to know all of the phony doctrines out there. They best way to defend yourself against lies is by understanding the truth and understanding it well!

Just think about the Bereans in Acts chapter 17. They heard the words of Paul and they made sure Paul’s words were true by evaluating them against the Scriptures.

Acts 17:11

¹¹ Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

When you think about your children, what do you want their minds to be filled with. I’m sure you want your children to grow up one day and be mature in the Lord.

Now think about the children in your neighborhood. You surely want them to come to Christ and to grow up in the Lord. We want all the children in our town to be Bereans. People who know the truth, have stability in their walk with Christ, and live lives that give Him glory.

VBS plug – would you consider signing up to serve at VBS?

By recognizing when there is deceit

Ephesians 5:6

⁶ Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Just like a counterfeit bill, the whole point of false doctrine is to deceive. It tries to masquerade as truth from God but it really only consists of lies and deception.

Maturing in unity happens when we are…

II. Be committed to speaking the truth in love (v.15a)

Ephesians 4:15

¹⁵ but speaking the truth in love,…

This passage is often quoted in biblical counseling contexts like here at Faith Church and rightfully so. We should always be speaking in a way that both communicates truth and a love to the person we are talking to.

When you think back to how Paul started verse 14, it is interesting to contrast speaking the truth in love with the idea of being a child. Because children are often one or the other, but they are typically not both.

A child can be very truthful in their speech, truthful to the point where there is no filter. For example, have you ever ask a child if they enjoyed their older sibling’s band recital? One thing is for sure, you’re are going to get the truth. “No, it was really boring.”

But on the other side children can be very loving in the way they show affection and in the way the express their emotions. What kid has not said to their parents, “dad and mom, I love you so much I’m going to live with you forever!” That’s a sweet sentiment but not exactly the truest statement in most cases.

So you have to have both. If you have only truth then you are cold and harsh and if you have only love then you are just emotional and sentimental.

First, let’s think about truth.

Communication grounded in the truth of God’s word

It’s not hard to make this connection. If we want our words to be true, they must be modelled after the only words that are perfectly true.

Just look at what it says here in Psalm 19 about the word of God.

Psalm 19:7–11

⁷ The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. ⁸ The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. ⁹ The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether. ¹⁰ They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. ¹¹ Moreover, by them Your servant is warned; In keeping them there is great reward.

We want our words to be true! To be perfect in the sense that we aren’t communicating error or falsehood.

Notice, the opposite of not being deceived by false doctrine is not just taking in true doctrine, it’s taking it in to the point where that is what is the overflow of your mouth.

And it’s not that we are just walking around reciting Bible verses. It’s that all of our words would line up with what the Scripture teaches about any topic.

Communication focused on loving others

Here are three examples of occasions when it is hard to speak the truth in love.

1. The first is when you are viewing yourself as more important than the other person.

Philippians 2:3–4

³ Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; ⁴ do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

If we view ourselves as the most important person in a conversation, we will surly struggle to share the truth in love.

That is because you are going to be thinking about what is best for your own interests, not the interests of the other person!

I often spend every other Saturday morning on workdays the in Northend of Lafayette working on affordable housing and it’s a blessing to have all sorts of volunteers come out and serve with us as we seek to do community development. Well, a few weeks ago there were four college students that came to serve with us, and they were a part of a Christian fraternity on campus. They were studying engineering, finance, and other degrees that had nothing to do with home construction so there were all learning how to build a wall together.

So, you have four 19 year olds that are putting together this wall on the floor so that after it’s all put together they can put it in place, nail it, and then move on to the next project. And they were using a framing nail gun that was powered by an air compressor to nail the boards in place. Well, measured everything out, made sure everything was the right lengths, and then they started nailing away.

They nailed one side together and then they lined up the other side and started nailing and it was about half way through the second side that they realized they had done it all wrong. They had measured both sides so that everything was lined up except they accidentally flipped one side so then everything they had just nailed with a nail gun was crooked and at an angle instead of being straight up and down, you know, like a wall.

And the looks on their faces said it all. They knew that they had made an honest mistake as people trying to serve and help but they just kept looking at this nail gun and saying, “How are we going to get these nails out this?” “We just shot these two by fours with a dozen nails on one side and now we need to figure out how to pull them out!”

Well, that’s about when I walked by and saw that they were in a bit of a pickle. Now I am by no means an expert on these kinds of projects. If I was going to build a wall, I would probably make it crooked as well. But I’ve been on enough of these workdays enough to know some, well creative ways, to solve problems like this.

And so I thought, “I know the tool for this job.” I went around looking for this tool, it’s a rather new tool, the concept of it is revolutionary, and the engineering is quite magnificent. I found what I was looking, walked into the room with the college students, held up a hammer, and said, “guys, why don’t you take a step back.”

I took 6 or 7 swings against of the side of the board that they had nailed and POP the whole side came off. If there’s anything I’ve learned doing construction is that if duct tape won’t fix it a hammer probably will. If the board won’t fit, just hit, if the nail won’t go in, just keep hitting it again, and if the cinder block is too big, just hit it and make it into a bunch of smaller cinder blocks. Now hammers and forcing things into place works great on the jobsite but you know one thing it doesn’t work well on? -Relationships

1. Another one of the most common reasons why we don’t speak the truth in love is that we try to use a tool like a hammer in a relationship and that hammer we can call anger.

Anger is like forcing your way through something. We often see it as a tool to solve a problem. Well this isn’t going the way I wanted it to go, I’m just going to get angry about it until this goes how I want it to. The problem with using sinful anger as a tool to solve problems is that you are not going to end up solving the problem God’s way!

James 1:19–20

¹⁹ This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; ²⁰ for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

When we believe that anger is a legitimate way to get what we want, speaking the truth in love doesn’t happen very often or it doesn’t happen for very long. You might try to speak the truth in love but then after a few minutes of that you might say, “Well, I tried that method, now let’s see if getting angry about it will speed things up.”

To speak the truth in love, we must be always willing to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.

1. And a third reason why we often don’t speak the truth in love is that we are afraid. In particular, we are afraid of what the other person may think of us.

Proverbs 29:25

²⁵ The fear of man brings a snare, But he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted.

Do you know what a snare is? A snare is a little trap for birds. It’s a device made to trick a bird by using some sort of food as a lure so that they step into this trap, it grabs their leg, and then they become food! It is catching something by using deception.

And so fearing people seems to have a lure to it. If they like me I might get all these things or if they didn’t like me, I could lose all these things. But what is the deception? They deception is that there will be blessing from trying to please other people because you fear them but in reality it only leads to destruction.

If you fear someone, whether it be your friend, your brother or sister in Christ, or even someone in your family, you are going to have a really hard time speaking the truth in love.

First because you might be very hesitant to tell them the truth if that is something they won’t like but also because you are not really loving other people in the moment you are fearing them. It is incredibly hard to love someone you are afraid of because you think of your interests long before you think of theirs.

Now when it comes to speaking the truth in love, it is obvious that…

Christ is our example of this kind of speech

Think about what Jesus says here in John’s gospel…

John 8:29

²⁹ And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.

-Explain the different kinds of people Christ talked to and how he spoke in truth and in love

III. Embrace your role in the body of Christ (v.15b-16)

Ephesians 4:15b–16

…we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

Christ is the head

Colossians 2:19

¹⁹ and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.

Your role is important to the body

1 Corinthians 12:14–27

¹⁴ For the body is not one member, but many. ¹⁵ If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. ¹⁹ If they were all one member, where would the body be? ²⁰ But now there are many members, but one body. ²¹ And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; or again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” ²² On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; ²³ and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, ²⁴ whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, ²⁵ so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. ²⁶ And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. ²⁷ Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.

This is growth grounded in love