Join us on a journey of spiritual growth, inspired by the unity and care of ancient farmers. In this episode, we explore the teachings of Ephesians to understand how individuals and the church grow together. Discover your unique role within the body of Christ and how your contributions support the church’s mission. We celebrate the variety of roles in the Christian community, from apostles to teachers, and the strength we find in our different gifts. As we aim to follow Christ’s example, we focus on building deep spiritual connections. Engage with us in this journey, embracing your role in creating a strong and thriving faith community. Let's come together in our shared purpose within Christian fellowship.
Join us on a journey of spiritual growth, inspired by the unity and care of ancient farmers. In this episode, we explore the teachings of Ephesians to understand how individuals and the church grow together. Discover your unique role within the body of Christ and how your contributions support the church’s mission. We celebrate the variety of roles in the Christian community, from apostles to teachers, and the strength we find in our different gifts. As we aim to follow Christ’s example, we focus on building deep spiritual connections. Engage with us in this journey, embracing your role in creating a strong and thriving faith community. Let's come together in our shared purpose within Christian fellowship.
Good morning everyone. My name is Houston. I'm one of the pastors here, man, excited to be with you guys today. I just want to say I always feel like in a passage like this, you heard a lot of things right, and if you've been here through our Ephesians series, this is a common refrain there is too much here to get at in one day. So we're just going to pull a piece of this I think the most important piece, but a piece of this passage out, and so here's what I want to say first, before anything else, I love ancient techniques and practices that are relevant in our modern age. Here's what I mean by that. That sounds like I don't know an obnoxious thing to say, but it's true. Here's what I mean by that.
Speaker 1:I was watching this documentary or YouTube video. I don't remember what it was about South American farmers and ancient farming practices in South America, especially in regions like Peru. I think Brazil too. It's a very hilly land. There's tons of changes in topography I don't know if that's how you say that, but a lot of hills, a lot of mountains, and so ancient farming practices is that the farmers would plant along the sides of these hills and mountains and they had all kinds of different techniques for this. Sometimes they would make these really cool shelves, like they would carve it out of the ground, super cool. But what happened is, as Europeans start coming in and they see these farming practices, what they think are primitive farming practice, they start to introduce them to their quote modern farming practices. And so what that really means is no more farming on the hills or the mountains. What you need to do is you need to find big, open, flat space. It's easier to harvest, it's easier to till, it's easier to irrigate, all these kinds of things. And so they do these farmers. They change their practices, they start farming on big flatlands, even carving out some more flatland to farm on, and I wonder if anyone can guess does anyone know the consequences of that are, does anyone have any guesses Erosion, totally. In fact, it's so bad that mudslides are a very serious cause of damage and destruction in different parts of South America, and not always, but in a lot of places. They can tie this directly to people changing ancient farming practices.
Speaker 1:And so what it turns out is it turns out that these practices, these ways of farming on the hills, of planting and growing on the hills, was not just necessity. It was serving a really distinct purpose. It was actually protecting people and keeping them safe. And I mean, if you're from around here, like up north, especially in the Great Plains, we know this right Like you have a farm, you have this plot of land and you're in this huge wind tunnel that we call the Great Plains and what do you do? You plant rows of trees called shelter belts, right? And the whole purpose is that this growth actually provides support and structure and protection for the thing itself. And maybe you see where I'm going with this.
Speaker 1:But this is the picture of growth that Paul paints in this passage. He says that growth is not just something that is nice, it's not just something that you probably should do. Growth is something that is actually necessary for the structure, for the stability, for the health of individual Christians and the church as a whole. And, in fact, what you could say is that growth for individuals and for the body as a whole is actually the tool that God gives us to be the church, the way that God gives us to be the church, the way that God gives us to protect the church, the way that God gives us to function as the church. So what you could say is that growth is the goal, and now that means a lot of things.
Speaker 1:But what I want to do, if you have your passages, pull out to verse 16 of our passage, the very end. We're going to see what Paul means by that. It says we're going to Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to restate that into a sentence that you actually have right here. What Paul is saying is that growth is the goal and that the whole church, by unity and diversity, is growing into Christ for his glory and our good. It's a long sentence, there's a lot there. There's four, maybe five, maybe a hundred parts of that, but we're going to break it down into four questions. We're going to ask four questions today who is growing, how are we growing, what are we growing into and why are we growing? We're going to say the who, how, what and why of growth.
Speaker 1:And before we do that, let's stop and would you pray with me? Lord, I thank you for this day. I thank you for this beautiful weather, for sunny days, thank you that you give us nice, temperate, beautiful days and that you give us hot days and that you've got a good design and that you're good to us, god, and I just pray that as we open up your word and try to unpack what this passage means, like we've already said, there's too much here for us. So we just pray that the pieces that we can pull out, that you'll help us to put them together in a way that glorifies you, in a way that builds us up. And I pray, god, that as we wrestle with some maybe difficult ideas today, that you would be with us and that you would strengthen us and comfort us and really just that you would show us what you have for us. I pray, god, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts will be glorifying to you, lord, our God and Redeemer, and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen, all right, first thing, we're going to look at who is growing. So I already said it in the line the whole church is growing.
Speaker 1:But the question is, what does that mean? Or maybe, specifically, who does that entail? And we see Paul's answer to that in the very first verse of our passage. Look at that with me. He says I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. So, to say it again, paul says I urge you to walk according to your calling. Now, what does that mean? What does calling mean? Now, if you've been around the church for some period of time, you've heard this word. We use this word a lot and we tend to think of it like it means a special thing that God has put on your life, a special calling on your life, and it does mean that sometimes that's not what Paul means by it.
Speaker 1:Here in Ephesians 4, what Paul means by calling is actually everything that he's been talking about in the first three chapters of Ephesians. See, this verse is actually like a pivot, like a turning point for the whole book. We've been talking about a lot of things that are true, a lot of things that Jesus has done, and now, as Paul is pivoting to saying, okay, now, you've heard all that, you know all these things are true. Now walk in a manner worthy of all that truth. So, in other words, we could say that what he's saying here is that, as Christians, we need to walk in a way that is appropriate, that is connected to our identity as Christians. Here's what that means. Well, it means a lot of things, but there's one thing it means it means that this thing that Paul is calling us to is for all Christians right, it's something that is true of all Christians who have been called.
Speaker 1:And that's important, because when we talk about things like growth, when we talk about things like maturing, I mean we can get into this mindset that growth is something that happens in a specific time in your life, but not something that marks all of your life. Like, if we think about kids, my daughter, stella is two and she is growing right now. Right Last week, she had a growth spurt over the weekend and literally two days later she's different, right, and what we can do is we can get in this space where we think that growth is something that, like kids, you grow until you become an adult and then, once you're an adult, you're basically done. Right Now, it's just getting old and dying is left. But that's not the picture that Paul paints of growth for Christians. See, for Christians it's not so much you grow here and not here. I mean, it's not even that you don't grow at first and then grow Like the whole Christian life is growth. It is growth.
Speaker 1:And one of the ways that Paul describes this is that it's like a path, it's like a journey. In fact, you notice what Paul says in verse one. He says walk in a manner worthy of your calling. I think this is really important. Like Paul doesn't say act in a way worthy of your calling, he also doesn't say do things that are worthy of your calling. He also doesn't say do things that are worthy of your calling. And he definitely doesn't say be worthy of your calling. He says walk in a manner worthy of your calling. And this is important because what it means is that the Christian life at the core is a journey.
Speaker 1:And now all of us you know we're going to sentimentally nod and like yeah, it's a journey. Man, like, like, totally, like right. Like we like yeah, it's a journey, but like I wonder how many of us actually like, believe this is true, how many of us actually believe that this thing is a journey, that this thing is a journey? Because if following Jesus is primarily a process, then it means that the goal of our life is not to be a finished product but to keep growing. And again we're all like, oh yeah, good words, but seriously, do we believe that? Do we believe that in our hearts? I don't. I know that I don't, and here's the test. You might not. Here's the test. It's like all of us in this journey of growth, all of us are going to sin, are going to make mistakes, we're going to mess up, and the question is how do we handle that? What do we do with that?
Speaker 1:Parents, when your kid is growing, you know, do you like? Stella is two right and we just gave her this bluey water bottle and she absolutely loves this thing, but it's the kind of water bottle it doesn't have a straw, just like an opening at the top right. So, parents of little kids, you know exactly where the story is going. Stella has, over the course of learning this bottle, has choked probably 123 times. She has spilled the entire contents of the water three times. You know her car seat is wet, she's wet, and every time like we're driving in the car and she's back there just, and I'm like Stella, are you okay? And she's enthusiastic, yeah, like she's having a blast right. And so parents like what do we do in that situation? Like Stella is making mistakes in drinking this water bottle. She's messing up and in fact, she's making a mess right. But what do we do? Do I go back there and start punishing her because she doesn't know how to drink from this water bottle? No, of course not. Of course not, because the goal is not that she can perform right now. The goal is that she's growing, that she's growing towards someone who can use a water bottle.
Speaker 1:And look, it's like funny when we're talking about kids and water bottles. But, man, what about when we make mistakes? What about when we sin? We do something wrong, messed up? What do we do, man, whether we admit it or not? I mean, I think the answer for most of us is we start to say you idiot, you're so stupid, I can't believe you did that. Does that sound familiar? But man, that's not it. That's not the goal of this, because what we need to do is to keep going. What we need to do is keep growing, and that's hard. We need help to do that. And look, knowing that you made a mistake and feeling like you've messed up is good and important, because it helps us go back to doing the thing the right way, right.
Speaker 1:The goal, like, like, if I punish Stella, it's not because the punishment is good and it deserves it. Inherently, it's because I need her to grow right. And this is, this is growth for the Christian life. It's a journey that we're all on. We're all doing this together. It's a journey that we're all on, we're all doing this together. So, again, the Christian is on a journey of growth. So who grows? Every Christian. So the next question is how are we going to grow? How are we growing? And this time we're going to spend a little more time in this section, because there are a lot of answers to that, because there are a lot of answers to that and, in fact, more than is reflected here today.
Speaker 1:What I want us to see is that Paul has put two elements, two key ingredients to growth, in this passage. These two ingredients are unity and diversity. And now look, both of these words are very loaded words. They mean a lot of things in a lot of contexts. What we're going to do is we're going to unpack what Paul means by them and then we're going to see why they're important for us and our growth. So let's look first at unity. Look at verses 2 through 3.
Speaker 1:Remember, paul just said walk in a manner worthy of your calling. He says that means walk with humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. So here's the deal. When Paul says unity, what he's saying is that we, as Christians, we need to try to get along with each other. Right, let me say this a little more intensely, a little more specifically we need to be eager to maintain our oneness with each other, and that's important. You see, paul says keep our unity. He doesn't say get unity, he says keep our unity. And that's because, again, what we read in the first three chapters Do you remember how many times we read about God saving us by Jesus, taking us from disparate places all over the world, different walks, and bringing us together? And he made us one people, one family.
Speaker 1:And so the idea picture here is that we as Christians are actually united to each other. Whether we see it or not, we're family. That's why we call other Christians brother or not. We're family. That's why we call other Christians brother or sister. And so the point is that whether we see someone, whether we know someone or not a Christian, maybe whether we like them or maybe even whether we get along with them. The point is we're united to them, we're one family, and that's hard, that's really hard, man. A lot of us have firsthand experience of the opposite of that. I actually want to name that. This is a heavy thing for us to talk about in a lot of ways, because so many of us have firsthand experiences of disunity, to say the least.
Speaker 1:And here's something I want, just as an aside. Here's something I want all of us to chew on from this, if we're struggling with this idea of unity, is that there are two parts to Christian unity. There is this kind of objective truth and there's also this interpersonal display. So, in other words, unity is both objectively, outside of us, true, and it's something that we can see between us. And so here's what I mean by that.
Speaker 1:If you think about a family, we all know families who have all kinds of broken relationships. Families who have all kinds of broken relationships, right, like we all know parents who don't talk to children, siblings who don't talk to each other. They're like clear brokenness and from hard histories of I mean all kinds of things, but there's this sense at the end of it all that, despite how it's displayed, between the two of them, between any two people, is there still a family, there's still something that does actually bind them together, there's still a thing that is true of them. And so what I think that means for us as Christians is that, no matter how damaged a relationship is with another believer, with another Christian that's hard man there's always hope for something to happen there, because even with families like we've all heard stories of these families who have been estranged for so long and then, like, something happens, something breaks through and there's just this incredible repair and friends, like let's think about, like, if that's true of us, how much more so is it true of us because we have a God who restores relationships, who fixes broken things.
Speaker 1:So I just want to say again, as an aside we're talking about unity. This is hard. So I just want to say again, as an aside we're talking about unity. This is hard, but we have to keep hope that God can fix these things, that God can repair these things, and here I think that's important.
Speaker 1:I think it's important because what we see in this passage is that this unity is really vital, and not just for itself, but because what Paul tells us is that unity is actually the foundation for growth. Unity is like the relational glue that holds us together so that we can grow together, because we need all of us to be in on this together, we need all of us to participate, and we need that humility and gentleness and love to hold us together so we can grow into something together and really, like we see this, like we know this, even outside of the church, like we know this to be true, we've teachers here, a lot of teachers here. Like guys, do kids learn better in environments of humility and patience and love, or do kids learn better in environments of hostility and arrogance and brashness? I mean, it's like obviously we know it's the former. It's like this isn't just like a preference thing, like hey, wouldn't it be great if we reunited each other. It's like God made us this way, like we need this and that's how we're going to grow together. That's the environment that we need.
Speaker 1:And so now let's say what do we mean by diversity? And so now let's say what do we mean by diversity? What do we mean by diversity? Again, another loaded word. In our culture, this tends to refer to people who are of different ethnicities or cultures and that kind of thing, and that's an important theme in the Bible. That's an important thing, but that's not really what Paul's getting at here. What Paul's talking about today in diversity is diversity of gifting. Here's what I mean by that. God has wired each one of us in different ways to do different things in the church, and this comes from different things. It comes from our genetics, it comes from our family of origin, it comes from our experiences, it comes from ways that God has shaped us specifically, and the result is that we all come out of this process that we're still in, come out of this process kind of shaped a certain way and to fit a certain role, certain function in the church. And that's what Paul's saying here.
Speaker 1:In this passage he's identifying basically five types of functions in the church, and so what we're going to do is we're going to look at this list and we're going to chew on it just a little bit. Not a lot, this is too much. Again, this is another sermon all by itself. We're going to chew on this a little bit. So look at verses 11 and 12 with me. So these are the five types of Christians we could say. We have apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers, and it says in verse 12, their goal, their purpose, is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
Speaker 1:So what I've given you in your bulletin is a sheet. There's a neat little picture there that I didn't make. So if you don't like it, that's why someone else made it. If you do like it, I did find it and I think that's worth some credit. Uh, no, so so. So what we've got here is is kind of short definitions of each of these five things, and here's the deal Again. This is like we could spend like a two-hour seminar, like diving into these things, and still have just like touched the top of it. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1:What I really want us all to capture man, if you hear anything today, hear this is that growth in the church is something that takes a variety of people, and that each one of us is somewhere on this list, I think, but like gifted to help that happen. This is a job that we all have and we all need to work together in in a variety of ways. And again, paul identifies five here, and so I'm going to break these down very shortly. First he calls apostles. Now, again, this is a loaded word. There are many ways that the Bible uses apostles. What he's talking about here is people who go out and who start new things, people who go to new places, who start new initiatives. These are the people who start new ministries and the question we should ask as a church is hey, who's going to feed the poor and hungry if somebody doesn't go out and start that initiative? And then, with the second one, prophets again loaded word.
Speaker 1:But what Paul's getting at here is this group of people who have this uncanny ability to just speak the truth that hits right between the eyes, so to speak. These are the people and we know them. These are the people who, man, they know how to call out when something's messed up in the world. These are the people who talk with you for two minutes and they say, hey, did this thing happen to you as a kid? And you're like, oh my gosh, I've never told anyone that before. These are the people who can just nail in on these truths.
Speaker 1:What I want us to see is that maybe this is an important role, Because without the prophets, who is going to tell us that we need to become more like Jesus. Who's going to show us those places where we are falling short and messing up? And then the evangelists I mean these are the people who can't help but to talk about Jesus to anyone and everyone. These are the people who can go into any room and somehow every conversation naturally ends up on Jesus. And again, we know these people.
Speaker 1:And man, what I want us to see is like, what are we gonna do as a church if nobody here is engaging, people who don't know Jesus? What are we gonna do as a world, as a culture? And then shepherds I mean, some of us are wired to care for each other. Some of us, like a shepherd, cares for sheep have been just made to come alongside each other to support each other. And man, what I hope we see is that without people like this, this is a cold place right, this is an uncaring place. This room becomes an almost hostile place to be If the only people we have are people going and speaking hard truths and starting things, and speaking hard truths and starting things. God made shepherd-type people to care for us, to care for each other. And finally, teacher Some of us have been wired to teach, to share truths, to instruct and I mean I don't think I need to say this when would we be without teachers? We would all be children, right, like none of us would know anything, and this thing would come crashing to a halt.
Speaker 1:What I want us to see is that all five of these are really important ingredients for a healthy body. Actually, I'm gonna say this All five of these are important ingredients for a healthy body. Actually, I'm going to say this All five of these are important ingredients for a healthy Christian. We need all five of these things represented in our lives. And, man, we all know churches where one of these is like blown out of proportion to the others. Right, some of us come from church backgrounds where teaching is the only important thing, and what do we have?
Speaker 1:People who walk around with really big heads and really weak bodies, metaphorically speaking, or maybe literally, but you know, it's these people who can't do anything. Nothing happens. No one's meeting Jesus, no one's getting cared for, but, man, they know everything. They know a lot of Hebrew and Greek. What good is that? Or, man, we know churches that emphasize the prophetic voice above everything else, and these are these places where, man, they're speaking out against injustice. They're speaking truths to the world. Yeah, this is good, but, man, it is a hostile place to be and there's not really people growing there, so much as people attacking there. Do you know what I'm saying? We need all five of these pieces because without it, we don't have growth in the body, we have deformity. We need these people and, again, we each Christian needs all five of these influences because we need to be well-rounded Christians. And let me just say this Some people will say like, oh, I'm an evangelist and they're going to use that as like an excuse to never care for somebody, like an excuse to never learn anything new.
Speaker 1:And it's like that's not the picture here, guys. Like the picture is that we've all got this role to play in each other's lives so that we can all grow up into mature Christians, mature people. And so here's what I think when we hear something like this, we can tend to think, okay, this is jobs for some people. Like there's a small subset of Christians in the church who have these important jobs. The rest of us, we're just normal Christians. I just get my fill, I serve, do my part. That's not the picture here, guys, and what I really want to emphasize is that we can think that these jobs, these roles, are only seen in official capacities or in formal settings. But what I want to argue is that really, that's just a small expression of these gifts acting broadly in the church. Here's what I mean by that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to embarrass some of you right now and I'm sorry in advance. I've warned one of you, not all of you. We have some of these giftings. I mean, arguably we all have somewhere on this gifting, but I think we can point to some of these giftings in our body right now and I think Miss Lori right here is a great example. She knew she was warned. It's a great example of this because I think Lori has this gifting of shepherding and caring for people and we all know we all got the Slack message that Lori's like organizing our potluck for a family meal, for a family meeting, so like. We know that she's serving these official capacities. But man, how many of us on a Sunday morning? Or an MC? But man, how many of us on a Sunday morning or an MC like Lori's just come up to you and giving you a big hug and it's like this most comforting thing, man. That is an expression of her gifting, of her shepherding us in a caring sense, and we need that, desperately need that here. I mean I can keep going, I keep going with so many people. I mean I can keep going, I keep going with so many people, but Tina, I got to look.
Speaker 1:I think Tina has this gift of being prophetic and because here's what, here's what I've heard we were at this, the summer retreat, and we're at this uh, where were we? Up north, somewhere up north Lake Geneva, thank you. We're in Lake Geneva and we're at this dinner table, we're eating together and I learned like four new things that are messed up happening in this world. Like Tina has this ability to like tell you something and to say, man, this is this thing that's happening and this is why I think it's messed up. And it's like, oh gosh, like I've never once put that together and it's just this prophetic voice about things that are messed up in our world. And here's the deal.
Speaker 1:We need people like Tina, whether she ever gets up and speaks in front of a group or not. We need people like Tina to keep telling us, hey, this is messed up. And we need people like Tina to keep telling us, hey, this is messed up and we need people like Tina to say, like dude, that thing you did is really messed up, because, like, without people like that, we just don't see it right. And again, I keep going, but I'll limit the damage to two people. Like, we're in a room full of people who have been gifted certain ways to serve our body and guys, we need all of them. Like, no one is important.
Speaker 1:Paul doesn't say any one of these are like the one to have. We need all you guys, all hands on deck, because this is a big job. This is a big job. We have a big thing in front of us. We have a lot of growth to do. So we've seen who is growing all of us and we've seen how we're growing through unity and diversity.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about what we're growing into diversity. Now, let's talk about what we're growing into. And really, what is probably the wrong question? I mean, really the question is who are we growing into? And the answer you saw it, the answer is Christ. We're growing into Christ.
Speaker 1:What does that mean? Two things here, specifically. The first is that we're becoming more like Jesus, and the second is that we are growing into by attaching to Jesus. What does that mean? Well, let's look at our passage again and look at verses 12 and 13, or with 13, sorry. And so remember, paul just described these giftings. He said the purpose is that we can all build each other up to grow verse 13, until we attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ A lot of things here. Let me restate this we have these gifts in order to help each other, help Christians everywhere, do the Christian life and build each other up until we have unity and until we know more about God and until we look like Jesus. That's what? The measure of the fullness of Christ. That means that we look like Jesus. We're stepping into his shoes, so to speak.
Speaker 1:So, in short, we would say, as Christians, that we're supposed to become like Jesus. And here's the deal. We've heard this phrase, right? I mean, if you've been at Eastside, theoretically, you're hearing at the end of every service, right, we're trying to become like Jesus and we're all like, yeah, yeah, become like Jesus, yeah, but what in the world does that mean? Well, paul gives us a lot of answers, actually too many answers, but he gives us a lot of answers here. We can look at verse 2, where he said that becoming like Jesus means that we become humble and gentle and patient and loving. We could see in verse 3 that becoming like Jesus means that we become more peaceful and united.
Speaker 1:Or that list of giftings in verse 11. Becoming like Jesus means doing what he did. And, man, this list captures Jesus, doesn't it? Jesus went out. Jesus spoke the good news to people who didn't know it. Jesus said hard things to people who needed to hear it. Man, jesus was the good shepherd, jesus the great teacher. I mean, this list in 11 captures Jesus and what he did, and so there's a lot of things.
Speaker 1:What does it mean to become like Jesus? I mean, what I want to just kind of capture from all of this is that what Paul is driving at here is to become like Jesus, means to look more like Jesus, to display Jesus out into the world to other people, to kind of fill the roles that Jesus would have. So what does that mean? Well, I think we have to wrestle. I think we have to recognize that a lot of us, when I say that, are going to hear okay, now. It is your job, in every setting and in every situation, to do what Jesus would do, and some of us are crushed under the weight of that burden Maybe not you, but me. That's heavy, that's hard, because what we hear by become like Jesus is not become like Jesus, but be Jesus and man. I don't know about you, but I'm not doing a good job of that so far.
Speaker 1:In my experience. There's only one of him, and this is the thing is that when we hear become like Jesus, we lose the fact that this is a goal, that this is a journey, that this is a fullness, a mold that we're fitting into rather than something we have to be at any moment. This is the direction. This is why we say at Eastside our mission is to love, live like and speak of Jesus. It's a mission, it's not an accomplishment. We want to live like Jesus, we want to become like him, we want to glorify him by saying man, he is the one that is worth imitating. Man, he's great, he's the greatest, he's the best, he is worth giving our whole lives to. Let me say this that's all well and good. That's good to say who needs to grow, it's good to say how we grow and it's good to say what is the goal or what are we growing into.
Speaker 1:But, man, my guess is that most, all of us in this room need to hear why we need this growth, because, again, this can feel like a heavy burden, but here's what I want you to hear here we need growth as Christians because we desperately need to attach to Jesus, and that's what Paul is driving at here in this passage. Look at verse 14 again with me. I want to grow, become like Jesus so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. You see what Paul says. He says we need to grow to attach to Jesus so that we're not tossed to and fro by the waves. I mean, I'm sure you get this picture, but it's like.
Speaker 1:Imagine the scene of like a person in a little boat in a big storm. I'm sure well, some of us maybe, but I'm sure most of us have not experienced this, but I feel like it's such a vivid image, like I'm sure you can put yourself there and the storm is like throwing you around and you're holding on for dear life on that boat and the wave is just throwing you left and right and, man, that wind is just whipping around you and your ears are ringing. You can't hear anything. I mean, what a disorienting experience Because, like, one minute you're upright, another you're sideways and then, before you know it, you're in the water. It's an insanely disorienting, destructive thing, granting destructive thing.
Speaker 1:I mean I wonder how many of us experience the Christian life like this man? How many of us experience life like this? Like life is us being in a small boat, big storm, and those waves are just throwing us around. In a small boat, big storm, and those waves are just throwing us around, and how many of us are taking in all the information we can and there's so much coming at us. It's like wind ringing our ears. Did you hear this new Bible study? Did you read this new article? Did you see this new video? And it's just like your head's spinning. It's too much video and it's just like your head's spinning. It's too much.
Speaker 1:And the truth is that, for all of these things that we're taking in, for all the stuff that we're learning, for all the hard we're trying to hold on, man, this storm is big and it's taking us down and it's taken us down. Friends, we're growing as Christians, because we all know exactly what that's like. We are all out in the sea little boat, big storm and it's chaotic, it is scary, it's disorienting and what we desperately need is to attach to something or someone who can hold us steady. That's what Jesus is, and I don't know if you see this picture in this passage. We're supposed to grow to attach to Jesus and in verse 16, paul says that the whole body, joined and held together by the joints with which it is equipped, it's trying to attach to Christ. And this is weird. This is a bizarre picture, but it's like the picture of a body on an autopsy table picture. But it's like the picture of a body on an autopsy table and everything is segmented off and, as gross as this is, it's like each body part is trying to reattach no-transcript. It's like being an ear with no head. We are out, we are useless, we are lifeless, we are detached, we don't serve our function properly and man, anything that comes along and pushes us around, is going to have its day right. This is why we need Christ the head, because we need to attach to him, because we need to hold on to him, to him, because we need to hold on to him. In other words, life without Jesus is like trying to hold on to a little boat in a big storm, or life without Jesus is trying to survive in the mudslides of South America. It's hopeless, it's too big. What you and I desperately need is to hold on to Jesus, because here's the deal he's not shaken by that storm. He's big, he's really big. He's so big that these winds are like nothing to him. I mean, these waves, they're not knocking him around, they're not pushing him around. He's big and he's safe. He's safe. The Bible says over and over he's safe.
Speaker 1:And there's a story in the Gospels the disciples are in a boat with Jesus and they're in this scenario. A storm has come and you know they're not just like in the storm. They're sinking, the boat's going down and they're panicking, they're freaking out Because they're dying and they're like where is? And they see Jesus. Do you remember what he's doing? He's sleeping. He's sleeping on the boat. What a wild scene. But why is he sleeping? It's because he's not scared of the storm, he's not afraid of this. And they wake him up and they're like Jesus, we're dying here, don't you care? Do you remember what he does? He says he rebukes the storm man. It's like parents when you look at your kids and you say don't make me come over there. That's what Jesus did. He said don't make me come over there. And the storm stopped. Do you remember what these guys did afterwards?
Speaker 1:They said who is this man that the storms obey him? And I'll tell you who he is. He's the son of God, the creator. He's the guy that made the storms in the seas and he emptied himself. He gave all of that up to become weak and fragile with us and then he lived with us. But he didn't live like us, because he lived perfect. And then he died. He died at the hands of corrupt rulers, he died at the hands of spiritual evil, we would say.
Speaker 1:According to this passage, he let himself be taken by the storm and then he rose from the dead. And it says that he didn't just rise from the dead, he went up, he climbed to the top and he's seated now at the right hand of the Father on the throne over all of creation. He's the top dog, number one in charge, the biggest guy and guys. It says that he brought us with him. That's what Paul says in verse eight. He says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. He brought us like captives. We were captive to that storm. He took us with him. He rescued us, rescued us from the storms of life. He's holding on now and, by his grace, he's given us gifts so that we can help each other hold on to him.
Speaker 1:Why do we grow? We grow because we need to learn how to cling to Jesus through the storms of life, and the truth is that we need all hands on deck. This is a big job. We need everyone's unique gifting to do that. So I'm going to end with this.
Speaker 1:First of all, if you feel like you're being thrown around by the waves, by the storms of life, man, I want you to hear one thing Whether you know Jesus or not, he is definitively the only thing you can cling on to that will help you through that storm. He's the only thing that is big enough and stable enough and safe enough to get through that. If you want to know more about what that means, come find me, ben. Somebody, find somebody, let's talk about it. And lastly, if you are a Christian I want you to hear. Let me say this I want you to consider one thing and I want us to do one thing.
Speaker 1:First, consider that growth as a Christian does not mean knowing more or performing better. Okay, let me say that again. Growth as a Christian does not mean like accumulating more knowledge or even doing better things. Growth as a Christian means becoming more like Jesus and that means it's a whole person thing, it's a whole body thing. Deuteronomy 6.4 says love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength. This is a whole person thing and, again, we need this diverse group of people to do that. And so, to that end, I want you to consider what is your role to play in that. It's easy to see people who are in like positions or functions, formal functions, and how they might do these things, but again, as we pointed out, like we need that at every place in the church. So consider that.
Speaker 1:I want you to consider where you might be gifted, where you might be wired and how God might have put you here to do something important to serve us. And the thing I want you to do is this Take inventory. Take inventory of this list of five roles in the church, and what I want you to do is don't think of it so much like a personality test, like it's going to tell you something that's like oh, I'm this way. That just is the way it is, and it's not even really just like a gifts test. What I want you to think about it more is that this is man, what God might have specifically called you to do in this body, like the place that you fit in here, and so it's less about like, who am I, and even less about what can I do, and more about what does God want to use me to bring about? Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:So this is big, this is hard, and here's the deal. You should go out and you should think about that. You should read this passage again, read this list, read the edition in the bulletin, and the thing that I think you need to do is you need to get together with somebody else and talk about it, because, as much as we like to say we know ourselves like none of us knows ourself right. We need others around us to help us to see those things, because, again, this is a group thing and you're never going to figure out how you fit into a group in isolation from that group. And when I say it that way, we're all like, yeah, of course, but we do it right, we all go home and we want to take the test on BuzzFeed and have it tell us who we are, and that's fine if that's what you like to do.
Speaker 1:But for this specific thing, I think we should all take inventory and then I think we should try to find somebody we can process this with. Let's see, do they see this? Do they agree? Because, again, I don't want us to get hung up on any specifics of this thing. What I hope we all hear at the end of the day is that we've got a big job in front of us. Whether it's at Eastside Church or just Christians, we have a big job and we really need all hands on deck to do it, and you have a role in that. So let me pray.