We have been looking at “Kingdom Qualities for God’s Church”. In doing so, we’ve seen how the church has a divine nature, and how it has a commission from God to witness for Him and to make disciples of all nations. We’ve seen how the foundation of our ministry must be prayer, and how worship is our “Job 1”. Today we will see how God expects the church to be a maturing creation. A mature disciple is a follower of a teacher, a learner. God is calling us to be life-long learners of His thoughts and ways.
We all have things we need to learn in life. “F Troop” was a 1960’s television comedy show about an inept cavalry troop set in the Old West of the mid-1800’s. Ken Berry played its clumsy commander, Captain Wilton Parmenter. One show opened with a scene in which he did not know how to fold a map. He became frustrated and flustered until he just crumpled the map into a ball. After that, he sent for and received the instructions about how to fold a map, but then he discovered he could not fold the instructions! He became frustrated and flustered again until he just crumpled the instructions into a ball.
Our text for today gives us a clarion call to grow and mature in Christ and become His disciples. Let’s look at Ephesians 4:11-24 as we investigate this Kingdom Quality for our church and our lives:
And He personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the training of the saints in the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness. Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head—Christ. From Him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building up itself in love by the proper working of each individual part. Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. But that is not how you learned about the Messiah, assuming you heard about Him and were taught by Him, because the truth is in Jesus. You took off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires; you are being renewed in the spirit of your minds; you put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.
First, Let’s See the Absence of Maturity:
As much as we should be grateful to God for the world that He made for us, we must remember that the world is a broken and dying place. This is understood in the physical sciences as well as in human relationships.
Science has observed a universal tendency in the universe of decline towards dysfunction and disintegration. The term for this is “entropy.“
In one of the earliest scientific papers which discussed entropy, the French mathematician Lazare Carnot said that in any natural process there exists an inherent tendency towards the dissipation of useful energy. In other words, without intervention, things tend to fall apart. Unmaintained vehicles rust. Untended gardens become choked with weeds. Unattended homes crumble. Left to natural processes, things degrade and die and decay.
Entropy also occurs in human relationships as well. Passion cools unless it is rekindled. Discipline fails unless it is enforced. The way forward is lost unless guidance is provided. Unity disintegrates unless leadership unites. Unguided organizations become confused, dysfunctional, and they lose direction.
The story is told of an old and grizzled Army sergeant who was looking forward to retirement. After he received his discharge, he moved off-base and tried to integrate into civilian society. Within a week, he showed up at a recruiting office wanting to re-enlist. When he was asked why, he gestured towards the big window at the front of the office and sputtered, “There’s nobody in charge out there!”
In fact, the world doesn’t know how to think or act. As an example, we can consider what the world has told us about what our proper diet should be. In the 1970’s, Dr. Robert Atkins promoted eating proteins, but then in the 1980’s we were told to eat salads and avoid red meat. Now in the 21st Century, the Paleo diet says we should eat meat again. For every scientific study that promotes a certain diet, another is published that asserts the opposite is true.
In the same way, the world is a poor model for knowing how to act. In oriental cultures, people are rude to strangers, but they are polite to family and friends. Westerners are rude to family and friends, but they tend to be polite to strangers. In the Middle East we can find a long history of hospitality towards strangers, as well as a long history of murderous rage towards them also. In founding the United States, our leaders discovered a genius for political compromise that allowed us to establish a democratic republic, only for our leaders to abandon that genius for political compromise over the issues that led to the Civil War, the bloodiest and most destructive war we have ever fought. Americans managed to fight the last of the Napoleonic-style wars and the first of the modern wars at the same time against ourselves . . . and we laughed at the commander of F Troop because he couldn’t fold a map?
What are we to do? We need to answer the call to maturity.
Next, Let’s See the Call to Maturity:
What Paul was doing here was to issue a clear call for the Christians in Ephesus to grow-up in Christ.
Paul was no stranger to new Christians. On his three missionary journeys he saw an untold number of converts, and he planted an untold number of churches. None of these were instantly mature in Christ and they all needed to grow and to become disciples.
Sometimes, Paul and his team helped people grow one-on-one. For example, one convert was a man named Apollos, who had a great talent for oration. The problem was that he was teaching some things that were not true. Apollos was not intentionally teaching false doctrine, he simply was ignorant of the truth. Two of Paul’s colleagues, Priscilla and Aquilla, took Apollos aside, and taught him more accurately about Jesus, and then he was used by God in a powerful way. Acts 18:27-28 tells us that,
Then he wanted to cross over to Achaia, the brothers wrote to the disciples urging them to welcome him. After he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace. For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating through the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah.
In this way, a loose cannon was turned into a powerful weapon against the powers of darkness.
Paul also mentored his sons in the faith. He invested himself in Timothy and Titus, and Luke, and others. He wanted them to grow in Christ and to help others grow also. We often refer to 2 Timothy 2:2 in relation to this, which says,
And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
And, although Paul and John Mark went through a rough patch after Mark went home in the middle of the first missionary journey, in the end even that relationship bore the fruit of the call to maturity.
Likewise, Paul urged entire congregations to grow in the Lord. In fact, this is the purpose of most of his epistles. Often, the first half of one of his letters was devoted to teaching doctrine with the second half devoted to the practical application of doctrine in the lives of believers. His entire purpose, however, was to call those churches to maturity. We can see that call in the epistles to the Thesalonians, the Corinthians, the Colossians, and here, to the Ephesians. Even Romans, which many Christian writers believe to be a very theological work, is actually a call to the church at Rome to grow-up in the Lord and to work together to grow God’s Kingdom.
Paul’s message to the Ephesians and to us today is to remember we are in the world, but we are not of the world. Because of this, we must learn to live as if we are from God: We must learn His truth. We must learn His attitudes. We must learn His way of treating people. We must learn and apply His way of love. All of this requires that we become life-long-learners.
We have much to learn about God. I clearly remember the testimony of a young college student who had recently come to Christ. She said, “There is so much I don’t know!” This is true for more seasoned saints as well.
After being a Christian from the age of 8, after attending a strong Bible teaching church, after attending seminary, and after being a church pastor for several years, I discovered that there was more to Luke 2 than the Christmas story that Linus reads in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I discovered Simeon, a righteous man who was told by the Holy Spirit to look for the Messiah. I also discovered Anna, a widow who prayed daily in the Temple and who was probably a living connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament. I was amazed and saddened by my ignorance of these important figures in the story of the birth of Jesus!
In fact, all of us can say, “There is so much I don’t know!” It is possible that one thing we will do in eternity is to learn more and more about the majesty and love of God. Why don’t we start that process now?
We also Must See the Goal of Maturity:
The goal of maturity is not just to gain knowledge. The goal of maturity is to change our lives and our way of living.
During one of Alexander the Great’s military campaigns, a soldier fled from battle out of fear. After the fighting ended, the man was brought before Alexander himself. The general asked why he had run, and the soldier admitted he was afraid. Then Alexander asked the soldier’s name. The man replied, “Alexander.” Upon hearing this, the general sternly declared: “Then either change your behavior or change your name.”
We learn the things of God to put them into practice. Knowledge in the abstract is a dead end. I once went to a conference and became certified to teach an illiterate adult to read. It was interesting information, but I have never gotten a chance to use it. Likewise, I went to another event where we were trained and certified to operate in international disaster relief situations. Again, I never had the opportunity to use that information. It was interesting and challenging instruction, but knowledge that is not used is wasted.
So, what are things we need to learn about so that we can do them? First, we need to learn the Bible so that we can share its truth. One training that I attended that I have used was about how to teach. The most important thing I learned there was the truth that the best cure for nervousness is knowledge of the subject. If you know the subject, you only have to relate what you, yourself have learned. That’s not that hard.
Another thing that we must learn is how to become united. As Abraham Lincoln paraphrased Jesus, “A house divided cannot stand.” If we learn what truly matters, we will not be splintered by diverse interests and beliefs. A denominational leader I know was called to serve a fractured and fractious group of churches. He led them to become more involved in missions, and he found to his delight that their focus on missions unified them.
We need to learn how to become mature and reflect that maturity in our actions. When the church that my wife and I grew-up in lost our pastor, our worship leader stepped up and provided great leadership to the church in the interim time. We all knew that he was musically talented and that he was a good worship leader, but we didn’t see his depth of maturity until he had to step into the gap when we were without a pastor. Engineers test the strength of materials by stretching them and by putting them under pressure. Our worship leader was stretched and put under pressure, but he passed the test because he had matured.
We need to learn our spiritual gifts and how to use them for God’s kingdom. Paul told Timothy,
Therefore, I remind you to keep ablaze the gift of God that is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.
I clearly remember that same worship leader talking about a gifted musician and singer who had once been involved in leading worship, but who had stepped away from the church. Over a period of time, but not a long one, that person’s ability to sing deteriorated, and then it disappeared. The lesson that our worship leader took away from that was that gifts are like muscles. If we use them, they develop and mature, but if we don’t they atrophy and become weak. All of us in Christ have at least one gift, and like Paul taught Timothy, we must keep it lit up for service to God!
One other thing we need to learn is how to become Godly people and how to act as Godly people. The behavior of the soldier who had the same name as Alexander the Great reflected upon the emperor. In the same way, we are Christians, and we bear the name of Christ. What we do reflects on Him, for better or worse. Also, the strain of living in a way that is not natural to you is great, even debilitating, but if we learn Christ, then it will become second nature to live like Him!
We have seen the absence of maturity, the call to maturity, and the goal of maturity, but how can we mature? What can help us grow-up in Christ?
Finally, Let’s See the Tools of Maturity:
We need tools to do the work of maturing. Every job requires the right tools to complete the work. I remember seeing a mechanic in Africa who arrived to do some work on a neighbor’s vehicle. His tool kit consisted of a blue plastic carrier bag from the local shop, which contained a kitchen knife, a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and a few strips of rubber from an inner tube. I am not disparaging his efforts, and in fact he was able to repair the vehicle, but this was despite his tools, not because of them!
We have so many tools at our access for growth and maturity. First, we have the best manual of all, God’s Word. Next, we have prayer, which is our technical help line. Third, we have well-trained instructors to teach us, pastors, deacons, teachers, and elders. Finally, we have the Holy Spirit, who is our live-in, full-time mentor, the one Who teaches us from inside our very own hearts, and minds, and lives.
Have you ever seen inside one of the car haulers that NASCAR teams use to transport their race cars? Inside of one of these 53-foot-long trailers is space to hold up to three cars, but along both sides are toolboxes. Those teams bring to each race an untold number of tools. These include hundreds of hand tools like wrenches, sockets, torque wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, etc. They also bring dozens of power tools, including impact guns, drills, grinders, and air tools for quick repairs. Finally, they also bring specialty equipment like alignment tools, suspension tuning gear, engine diagnostic scanners, and welding and fabrication gear and much, much, more. Those are great assets if they are used, but they weigh more than a ship’s anchor if they are neglected.
In the same way, we must use our tools as well. We must read the Bible, attend Bible study, and pray and reflect on God’s Word. Like our spiritual gifts, if we neglect our tools, they will not do us any good, and like the principle of entropy dictates, they will eventually deteriorate into uselessness for us.
Conclusion:
Jesus was not just a model for us, He is our Savior. That said, Jesus is our model to follow. At the wedding at Cana, Mary told the servants to do what Jesus told them to do. We know that the baby Jesus grew in wisdom and knowledge and in favor with God and man. We must do the same!
So, let’s not be a bunch of hapless people from “F Troop”! Instead let us grow into disciples of our Lord, and confident and competent members of His Kingdom and His Family!
Every blessing,
Dr. Otis Corbitt
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