The Formation of Unity

Amen. Thank you, worship team. Great job this morning. Appreciate you leading us. If you're our guest, my name is Brian.

I'm the lead pastor here, and we're studying. The book of Ephesians, you can take your Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter 4. And we are going to be in verse 14 through 16 this morning. It's a final section of a subsection from verse 1 through 16 on unity. And so we're going to be kind of wrapping that up this morning.

Glad you're with us. There are Bibles on the racks in front of you if you need a Bible or don't own a copy. of God's Word. You just keep it. It's our gift to you.

Back in the day, when you're 49, you get to say back in the day. And back in the day, I played basketball in college, and we had a team that, if you looked at the metrics of the team based upon who we were playing. you would think that we would have dominated. I was a small college and our front line one year went 676768. Of course, me with a powerhouse 58 out there.

Brought the average down a little bit, but We had a really good I mean, like, we had guys that could play. Um but we stunk. And I'd like to dress it up. And probably, if I was 29 preaching this message, I'd dress it up because the pain was too fresh. You've got to get out a decade from being a loser.

to be able to talk honestly about it. But, and it wasn't our coach's fault. Coach was a good coach. He was awesome. But we were a bunch of egocentric self-centered Bible college basketball players.

Apparently, we had virtue in the class, but when we got on a court, we let our flesh all come out carnally. And We were so disunified.

So disunified, so blaming everybody else. I mean, like this. I remember we went to a tournament one year. And we had a talented team. And we were at a tournament in Iowa.

And there were eight teams in the tournament and we finished eighth. Yeah. And we were easily the most talented team. at that tournament. But our inability to be unified.

cost us unbelievably. In this text, Paul has been building this case regarding unity. And he started off, and in verse 1 through 3, we talked about the formula, we called it, for unity. And that's probably an overreach as a title, but I had four F's, and so I had to keep rocking with it, right? But you had this idea of a disposition, certain character traits in verse 2 of chapter 4, that if you possess these, you're on the road.

toward being able to have a culture that has unity. He shifts In verse 4 through 6, to talk about the foundation of unity that God provides. And so you're rallying the church's unity around things like the central components of the faith, and particularly the Trinity itself, as he talked about the Spirit, the Lord, and our Father. We looked last week at a text that talked about the fuel for unity and the gifts that are given.

So we have a body here that is a gifted body. Every church is a gifted Body. That is that there are potentialities that sit here, and not potentialities that are merely you're good at something. I don't mean that. I mean spiritually gifted body.

I mean a body. that the Spirit has primed the pump for, to be able to do amazing things over against and within the context subversively of a culture that comes against the church. But You could be like my basketball team. We could be that way. We could have gifts galore, but not have the capacity to actually form unity.

Because we can't bring the whole thing together. And so the final three verses that we're going to look at, verses 14, 15, and 16, are about sort of bringing this thing together. In unity. We're going to jump sort of in the middle. Because to do otherwise, we'd really have to go back and read from verse 1.

And so I want to jump to verse 13. And I want to just continue reading from verse 13 forward. In verse 13, it's talking about these gifts of apostles and prophets and teachers and pastors and evangelists that are given to the church. And they're given with a goal. And the goal is in verse 13.

Until we all 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.

Now, last week we finished talking about this verse, and we highlighted two ideas. There's really three different sort of phrases here, but the first dealt with unity and the last two dealt with maturity.

Now, so what I want you cemented in your mind as we walk into verse 14 through 16 is this phrase: unity. in maturity. We could be unified in purility. meaning we could be unified in childishness. We could be unified as a bunch of infants in a nursery.

Ready to usurp our teachers. We could be unified as a bunch of immature junior high students. I'm sorry if you're in junior high here. I'm sure you're very mature. But We could be unified over against.

people in authority if we wanted to. Or we could be unified in maturity. You could be mature. In terms of certain aspects of your own character, perhaps you could look at yourself in the mirror and fancy yourself to be quite mature character logically, but you could really just not want to be around people. Which actually is a demonstration of immaturity, but you could theoretically have certain characterological components all together in your life and knowledge that is pouring out of you in a fountain of biblical wisdom, but you can't get along with the wall.

And you can't appreciate others because you have a vision of yourself that you are self-sufficient. in that. The issue for the church is can unity and maturity find mutual demonstration. or better said probably, is can unity be in maturity? Can we be unified in a corporate maturity?

And I'll remind you what I finished with last week. That the phrase mature manhood there in verse 13 is singular, not plural. And it is a word that is speaking about the development, illustratively, of a boy who moves from being a boy to being a man. And it's in reference here to the church.

So the church is being metaphorized. As one Collected, singular, mature man. That's coming out of chapter 2 in the idea of Jew and Gentile that come together and they create this third entity, this one new man.

Now, the singularity is actually quite important for where we begin.

So we're going to jump into verse 14. And as we do, we're going to look and see six observations concerning how unity in maturity is formed.

So what actually, we've kind of built, built, built to unity, but let's get to the nuts and bolts. How's it actually formed? And that's what 14 through 16 is zeroing in on.

So let's just take this little bit by little bit, and we'll just let the text kind of develop. The first observation is this. Unity and maturity starts with saying no to childishness.

So that we may So we grow, the measure, the stature, the fullness of Christ, we attain unity. Why? What's the ultimate goal?

So that we may no longer be children.

Now There's something embedded In this idea of children, that sort of that you might read past. You'd particularly read past it if you had not had highlighted what I just highlighted for you, that manhood is singular. Children here is plural, and it's clear that he's giving a direct contrast to the manhood. that is expected of the Church as unity demonstrates itself in maturity. Children is plural.

And we learn something in the subtext of this juxtaposition. It's not just about maturity and immaturity, but it's also about individualism and plurality versus unity.

So, will we be the kind of people that arrive at maturity and unity, or will we be? people who are a series of collected children. In plurality. who are doing our own thing. And who are concerned with our own self and our own lives, but don't have the wherewithal to see the collective whole.

I jotted down some characteristics of spiritual children, and I just wanted to throw these up here and just run fast through them. But number one, children is true of children physically, but it's true spiritually. Children are consumed with rights, not responsibilities. What do I get to do? Don't talk to me about what I have to do.

Have feels oppressive. Have gets eye rolls. Have gets. Stopping. Get gets jumping.

Right? Don't talk to me. about what I have to do. Talk to me about what I get to do. Right?

We can tend to be a people. who think far more about our rights than our responsibilities. And so If that's your mindset. That's a note to self about childishness that you might want to visit and eliminate. Secondly, children look to immediate gratification.

They don't look to long-term contentment. What can I get right now? What is off the hood of the car? This is actually crucial in the developmental stages from 18 to 25. And when a young person gets launched out, you can begin to watch.

You experienced this in your life. I experienced it in my life. You watch when maturation starts to manifest. is when they begin to look further down the road and begin to then reverse engineer decisions now that will have an impact down the road, not in the immediacy.

So if you want somebody who is a one man or one woman a wrecking crew, watch somebody in their mid-20s that can't look down the road. They're just gonna kill somebody with their life Because they don't have the capacity to defer something for the sake of something further down. The same is true spiritually. If you cannot defer. For something greater.

You'll remain a in the word here is this nepion you'll you'll remain this child Children resist boundaries rather than embrace boundaries. When you feel a boundary, does it feel like you just want to scree? Or do you say, that's okay? In His sovereign goodness, the Lord has allowed this to come into my life. He must want to keep me out of the gutters.

He must want to keep me out of the gutters. That's a good... thing. Children are me focused. Not we focused.

Right when when I was ten years old My parents looked at me and they said, Brian, I'm an only child, and they said, Brian. you're gonna have a sibling.

Now they were lying. It was a joke. And I began to cry. And the first words out of my mouth were, I don't want to share my Christmas presents with anyone. You can tell I've never had selfishness that needed to be rooted out of me.

Children are me focused, not we focused. Um I don't think this church doesn't do all the things. that I like. I know, me either, and I'm the lead pastor. That's part of what it means, and that's so good.

It's good for me. As the lead pastor to say, Okay, yeah, let's do that. Even if in my mind I think, I don't know if that's the thing I'd do. That's good for me. Because this is in a kingdom.

of one. This is a kingdom of one capital O. And he wants to use a lot of different gifted people.

So we got to be we, not me. Children are vulnerable to being fooled rather than careful in assessment. Right? That's why I cried when I was th ten. Right?

Because I was it was easy. to trick me, easy to fool me. We all have fun sometimes fooling children in playful ways.

Well When you're in the community. And you're getting fooled? It's not playful. It's incredibly dangerous. which leads right to our second point.

Unity and maturity is formed as we reject false teaching. It's immediately where he goes. This is why he uses. The picture of children. Verse 14 again, so that we may no longer be children, and then we get this.

Language. Cost. to and fro by the waves, instability. It's one word communicating this idea that we're just the kind of person who is unstable. The only other use of this in the Septuagint In Isaiah 57, 20 reads this way, but the wicked are like the tossing sea, for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.

And then you have this phrase that reads, and carried about by every wind of doctrine. carried about by every wind of doctrine.

Now That word can literally mean to carry something, like you'd carry your cup. Or you'd carry a backpack. But it also is used, and the best sort of mirror usage of this particular usage of it comes from the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, in Ecclesiastes 7, 7, which reads this way. Surely oppression, and here's the way this word for carry is translated. Surely oppression drives the wise into madness.

To drive into madness. The idea isn't, can be used as just carrying something, but it also came to be used as carrying something, whipping it around chaotically. Whipping it around, tornadic activity being carried about. by these winds, drives the wise into madness and bribes the corrupt heart.

So Toss to and fro. carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning. The word for cunning was the word for dice play. for dice playing and then you have by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Craftiness is a fascinating Greek word.

Panorgia. Orgia means to uh capable of or to do works. Pan means all or everything.

So the word means capable of anything. Capable of everything.

So, why is it translated craftiness here? Because, again, it was used as a term for an illusionist. Who does you ever stopped at one of these guys on the street? We were in Nashville last summer. And we stopped at some guy on the street and he invited us over and he had his little table set up there and he starts doing some stuff.

And I mean, I thought, I think one time I caught something that he did with my eyes. But other than that one time, he was doing amazing illusions. in front of us in illusions, we were stepping back going, Got it. Trying to figure it out. It looked like he was capable of doing anything.

with his hands. Deceptive. in front of us, right? Saying this is You've got to be careful of people. and of teaching.

that seems like it's capable of anything. That it maps right onto you.

So I was thinking about this, and I was asked a question at a gathering, it was just a social gathering, by someone in this church a week ago or so. And the question went like this: Pastor, why do you think? That false teaching just seems to be, it's always been prevalent in the church, but it seems to be. remarkably present in the church these days. Why do you think that is?

So I answered him. And I'll I'll give you a portion of that answer. But I've thought a lot about this. And it and even his question doubled down as I was thinking about this sermonically. And so I think it's worth thinking about why is that the case?

Is it just this sort of A friend of mine calls it a scatomania, where people get all worked up about end times and now they start thinking about, you know, it's just worse and worse and worse and I wish we could go back to the good old days. Is it just that? Is it just that? The false teaching just spread because we're just negative about the present? And I don't think that's the case.

I think it actually is more prolific in terms of its scope. And I think there's cultural reasons for it.

So you may have, maybe you've tired of me saying this, but I'll exhaust you one more time. Uh we live in this individualism. Right? As a country. Our country was founded this way.

And that individualism wasn't all bad. Think of the American dream. The American Dream is a pretty good thing. You could come to a land of opportunity and you as an individual could take the potentiality that you had as an individual. You could add a dose of hard work ethic with that.

And the thought was, sky's the limit for you. And you could actualize your dreams in the land of opportunity.

Now, that wasn't childish. That was not a bad thing. That was the antithesis of what we put up in terms of childishness, because in doing that, you're actually looking down the road. You are taking hold of responsibility and you're taking responsibility seriously. But That was a long time ago, and it was not because it was the good old days, it's because we actually had a cultural shift in terms of the way we see the world.

And when, in the middle of the 20th century, toward the latter portion, but particularly the middle, it got going, postmodernism came in and began to soak into culture such that now it just is that's just the normal thing. But as postmodernism came in, it added something to individualism that turned individualism. And what it added was a kind of suspicion. At other perspectives and particularly other big, sweeping, traditional old stories.

So the narrative of the Christian. Faith, the Protestant work ethic in some ways, but certain large sweeping stories now. came to be seen with suspicion because in some way they asked something of me that threatened me. They wanted me to become a we, in a sense. It pressed me away from immediate gratification into a larger narrative that was promissory.

It looked forward at something else down the road. And it shifted individualism from a kind of responsibility to an exclusive right where I could express myself and receive immediate gratification largely through immediate indulgence.

So self-gratification, self-indulgence with self-expressivism. Take individualism and turn it into something now that I have that I value so deeply So intensely. that anything that threatens that is a problem for me.

Now, that in and of itself would be problematic, but the reason for the proliferation is that that got thrown into a bucket. And the bucket is the modern technological society in which we live.

So today If you'd like, you could go on and you could watch in an hour, you could watch 15 different clips of false teachers. On YouTube And you could find one that just Like my little kitty cat that sits on my lap and I scratch her head and she goes Yeah. You just make you feel so good. It'll affirm everything you want affirmed about the way that you look at the world. And then that in the algorithms will give you another one down below it from another guy before you go, oh, there's two guys that think just like I do.

And then there's a third guy and a fourth guy and a 956th guy and a 1275th guy. And now you have curated your own little world with all of the wonderful algorithms provided. And you have a self-affirming community that all think the way you think. Think And you think you're thinking for yourself. But you're not, you're thinking alongside 1,265 additional YouTube teachers.

that are helping self-affirm you. And I hope that doesn't hurt you to say that. But I have to be honest with you, it's killing the church. It's fraying the church. Um When we kind of zero it all kind of down.

In this technological culture, I wrote this down. Churches are vulnerable. And they have even unfortunately become Hot houses And I'm going to be a little direct here, but they've become hothouses for self-assured, internet-educated, self-affirming heretics. Because I get my teaching here. And now it's unassailable and it affirms everything that I came to the screen with.

Mm-hmm.

So this is why It's going crazy. It's going crazy not just because of technology, but it's going crazy because of the accessibility that is available through technology to a wide arrangement of listen back in the back in the mid-19th century. Upstate New York was filled with heresy. all over. They just didn't have smartphones so everybody could take it all in synchronically.

They just didn't have the ability to do it. And now you do. And so what we have to do is ask questions that are much deeper. See, technology can be awesome. in mature hands.

Technology can be a killer. in immature hands. And we have to decide if we're going to be the kind of people that are going to take something that has great potentiality and curate it properly, or we're going to let it curate us. That's the question. Unity maturity is formed as we say no to false teaching.

This is. Paul shunned the idea. of the illusionist. He shunned it. 2 Corinthians 4.2, but we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways.

He's talking about his ministry. We refuse to practice cunning. Dice playing. Or to tear, I don't mean that literally. It means, like, we refuse to play games with our teaching, to kind of soft-sell something or tell you something in this angle, so maybe you'll buy this part, or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.

Yeah. We just decided to speak plainly. And of course In love, and we'll talk about it in a moment, but we just tried to be honest with you. Um Irenaeus had a famous statement about false teaching. He said, he's talking about the Gnostics in his day in the third century, and he said, they try to make the truth seem truer than truth itself.

Or they try to make their teaching, the false teaching, seem truer than truth itself. They say, yeah, we believe everything you believe. But Just a little bit more. Oh. Kitty cat.

Any scratch, it makes us feel so good. Because now we get that self-affirmation. Beware of people who tell you everything that you would like to be true. Beware of that. C.S.

Lewis pointed out to us well that the God of the Bible, part of the argument for his truth is he doesn't look at all like the God that we would want if we were just making it all up. Unity and maturity is formed as we live truthfully. in love with one another. Look at your text.

So that we may no longer be chilled and tossed to and fro by the waves carried about, every wind of doctrine. Um by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, and then this is a little unfortunate. It says, the ESV says, speaking the truth in love.

Now It's not unfortunate in that the phrase doesn't include speaking the truth in love. But the term doesn't say. Speaking the truth and love. The best way to render this would be something like being truthful. In love.

Being truthful in love.

So, in the, again, going back to the Greek Old Testament. Um it's never used, the same term is never used of speaking.

Now There is another verse in your New Testament, Galatians 4:16, that says, Have I then. Become your enemy by telling you the truth. It is used of speaking there. That's the only other use in the New Testament. When you look at the use of the word in total, it means this.

It means Having a truthful life or being truthful that includes your speech, but it's more than your speech is the point.

So, by just saying speaking the truth and love, we're kind of reducing something when the word itself and the term is broader. It's not just a matter of saying the right thing. I could say the right thing and be a complete hypocrite. living a lie while speaking the truth. People do this all the time.

So this is about being. Truthful. where things actually match up. They actually connect. Look at your text.

Speaking the truth, or being truthful in love, we are to grow up. In every way, into Him who is the head, into Christ. We'll get to that last part in a moment. For now, I want you to think about what it means to live truthfully. But to do that In love with one another.

So let me give you a couple scriptures. 1 Peter 1.22, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth.

So you're living truthfully, obedience to the truth. Truthful Life. For a sincere Brotherly love, a genuine. love, love one another, and it's my favorite Text, I think, on horizontal love here, like love with brothers. The reason why is the word earnestly from a pure heart, because I've shared with you before, but the word earnestly, if you want to take it as literal as it can be, it means at full stretch.

At full stretch. And there are people you just got to stretch to love. There are people it just ain't easy. And if you think that love should be natural, you don't know love very well. It's why, in a marriage, don't say you fell out of love like it was a treehouse.

I wanna act like you fell in love like it was a mud puddle.

Okay. No, no, no. You make choices. You make choices. Yeah, but I don't desire.

I know. And desire always follows discipline. Always.

So start working. Yeah, but that doesn't feel genuine. I don't care. Listen. Obedience is never natural.

I'm a sinner, man. I don't wake up in the morning and have everything in me that wants to obey all the time. But I got to work at it. And the more I work, the more I work, the more. Guess what happens?

The more I want, the more I want. The more I work, the more I want, the more I work. And there's a relationship that happens of reciprocity between discipline and desire.

So stretch to love people. 1 John 3:18, little children, let us not love in word or talk. We could just speak it. But indeed and in truth. See, it links truth with action.

It links truth with life.

So have a truthful Kind. of life.

So this got me thinking. What does it mean? to be a community characterized by growth. that has as its catalyst Truth and love. That has that as the driver.

What's it mean? Let me list for you four things real quick. Number one, hypocrisy in that community is mitigated, it's argued against, it's done away with, or at least diminished. Probably never done away with, but diminished. by honest vulnerability.

We will be honest about our own Malformation. In other words, I'm going to say to you, I don't have it all together. And I'm not saying that as a tip to go, well, I just want you to know that I'm broken too. He's so winsome, our pastor identifies with us. Yeah.

No, I am you. Yeah. I am you. It's not Feigning an identification for the sake of somehow garnering influence. It's just the truth.

It's just the truth. So I live in a world. Where I get mad. I live in a world where I argue with my wife. I live in a world where I get frustrated in parenting.

I live in a world where I'm tempted to lust. I live in a world where I'm tempted to covet. I live in a world where I get discouraged and disappointed and sad. I live in a world where some mornings I get up and go, I'll stay in bed today. Right?

And if that disappoints you.

Well then This is the first church of great disappointment. But that's the way it works. That's life, man. That's life.

So listen, listen, look up here for a second. Listen carefully here. Can I tell you, nobody's helped by your Christian platitudes. No one is helped by your Bro, bro. It's all good.

God is good all the time. God is good. Nobody's helped by it. And the reason I'll be helped by it is because Cliches Might be true. But they're said shallowly.

They're said without the depth. Yes, God is good. All the time God is good. And that's true in the midst of my weeping. My brokenness.

My heart falling apart. What we need is an authentic representation. of it walking on all fours. without just speaking things.

Okay?

So that's that's the first thing. Here's second. Our group identity. values truthful living and language in a culture of lies. That is that as a church, lifeline community, if we're going to be anything, we're going to be truthsayers.

Truth livers. And we're not going to put up our finger and see where the culture is going and go, I don't know, I guess we We better be careful about that. Because they don't like that. We're also not going to be, let's get real loud now because they don't like that. going to walk forward.

And be truthful. And just be what the church has always been. and not sway back and forth. But just be clear. But that's a group identity.

Now, that's important because here's what that means: that means that if you're not that way, You'll be in a community of people who are that way and you'll feel a disconnect. That's the goal, by the way. Because what happens in that? If your family culture is a family culture of kindness and love, and your wicked, sinful 12-year-old starts acting like a third world dictator, You get the privilege of looking at that young man or young woman and saying to them, You are not acting. in the way that we Ah.

in the way that we act. You get to call them to something. And then here's the hard-edged part. They might look at you one day when you raise your voice. and lose your chips.

And they might say, hey dad, hey mom. That's not how we act. And you're gonna wanna spank 'em. And you're going to have to receive. Because they got the family culture.

Okay, they got the family culture. Truthful and loving relationship exists prior to correction. helping texturize the corrector. and transform the receptor.

Now let's question. Do you receive correction from people who you know love you better than people who you think don't?

So of course you do. Of course you do.

So move toward. Move toward. Saturate in love. Let that be what defines it, because then I have the suspicion. that you might be out for my best interests.

Otherwise, I think you might just be a griper. You might think I'm just a judger. Right. But if I've invested If we've cultivated something. If there's proximity.

Now the vocalization of correction now is meant and it helps transform the receptor because the corrector has gotten his or her mind and life around the right context for correction to be disposed. are dispensed. Correction includes healthy shame, not toxic shame. That may sound odd to you.

So I read a book that was recommended to me by a couple people called The Other Half of Church. And like any book I read, I don't agree with everything in it, but I really did enjoy it, and I felt like it was really, really helpful. in a lot of ways. It's written, co-authored one guy who's a was a pastor of spiritual formation at a larger church in Colorado, and then he was like uh the uh training people in different ministries. Um and then the the uh other guy that wrote it is a neuroscientist who also has a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies or Theology.

But he has a PhD in clinical psychology and he's a neuroscient uh neuroscientist in that field operating and assessing the bi biochemistry of the brain.

So it's kind of a fascinating book. I wanted to read to you something from it about shame. Because when I say shame There has become a tendency, even in the pop psychology of the church, to resist shame. Shame is almost only bad. We even say things like, if you feel shame, that's the devil.

If you feel shame, that's the devil. Is it? Is it? If I scream in my wife's face this afternoon... And I feel shame.

Do I just need to get over that shame because that's the devil beating me down? Can you imagine a world where I did that and I had no. Shame? Uh I'd be on my way to being an abuser.

So let's think properly about shame for a moment. There's toxic shame. But then there's healthy shame. And they're actually important, and he makes the case that they're actually quite important to even your brain science. When a church believes that all shame is bad, we are depriving our community of a strong driver of character change.

We either avoid giving reprimands altogether, or we try to correct people without shame.

So we stumble over ourselves at this point, and we do everything we can to make sure that George doesn't feel very bad when I talk to him, because the last thing we want is George to feel bad and feeling bad.

So now what happens is I don't actually get to the real issue because they dance around it. That's not it's not saying be a bull in a china closet. The whole context here is being truthful. in love where you're operating in one another's best interest. In our training, this is one author talking, in our training with Jim, that's the other author who's the neuroscientist, we all pushed back when he started talking about shame, but he was adamant.

He replied bluntly, without shame, the sense that we are displeasing people, our character has zero motivation to change. This was so new to us, and I asked him to explain again. He said that there is a lovely little system in our brain just above our right ear that determines whether we are going to make a change. The brain corrects problems only if they cause discomfort. That is some kind of pain.

For the brain, the right saying would be, no pain, no change. The bigger question revolves around why shame? There are seven kinds of relational pain wired into the brain. Like all kinds of pain, they are both a warning that something is going wrong and a signal to make a corrective change. The common problem is that we try to stop the pain without making the relational repair that would correct the cause of the pain.

This is like taking the battery out of the smoke alarm to stop the noise, but not finding out why that alarm is sounding and correcting the problem. Shame, then, is the pain signal related to our character and behavior when our behavior becomes something others want to avoid. Toxic shame. Which, as he points out, gets most of the attention in public, happens when we're told that there's a problem. We don't like your character right now.

But no relational solution is provided. Here's toxic shame. Toxic shame, something like this. Billy? Billy's a 12-year-old.

You are driving us nuts. Go to your room. That's toxic shame. Why? Because here's the message you sent: Billy, your sin is so bad, we can't handle your presence anymore.

We need you away from us for us to be able. to keep our wits about us.

So we'll protect ourselves and let you know that you should get away from us and our life will be better when you're removed.

Now you say, well, that's not really what, no, it is what you're saying. You just didn't say it with your words. But trust me, when you did that for the 20th time, Billy got the point. And Billy got the point that mom and dad can't handle Billy's sin and don't know how to love him in his sin and can only love him when Billy is the heck away from them. That's toxic shame.

Without a relational solution pulling people in, people will eventually try to silence the pain with something. The common ways to pull the battery out of our emotional alarm are what we call. Know what it is? Addictions. I can't handle the fact that I feel shame when I have this in my life.

I don't feel shame anymore. I feel shameless. Healthy shame lets us learn character when it's combined immediately with a relational solution. Relational pain signals need relational solutions. Here's the whole point: the point is.

When I correct, I do it in the context of relationship. Because if it's not in the context of relationship and if it's not a relationship that retains itself subsequent to the correction, then the person is going to get the message. And the message is, I don't like you, get away from me. I'm ashamed to be seen with you. I'm ashamed to be connected with you.

That's toxic. That's harmful. That's hurtful. By the way, when you sin, As a Christian and you feel shame, if I screamed in my wife's face and I felt shame, Mm-hmm. The Gospel tells me that I'm still welcome with him.

I'm still welcome with the Father. Christ still receives me. I don't have to run away from him. I don't have to hide. I'm not Adam in the garden.

I'm the opposite. I can come to him. I can lean in. to him. If you scream in my face.

and you feel shame. My job? Is to not let your screaming define the relationship. And neither is it to let you get away with it. It is to correct you.

and to move toward you. in hopes that the relationship Can be fully restored to what it was in love. That's what it means to be a community who's being truthful in love. That's what it means to be a family, just being truthful in love. That's how you have unity.

But do you see how your individual enterprise will war against everything we just mentioned? It'll push against all of it. Look back at your text. We're going to zip through these final ones very quickly. Verse 15 again, speaking truth and love, we're to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.

There's two things to note there. First, Christ is the head in this text means he's the source. He's the source.

So, what is the source of?

Well, he's the source of what the context was: all the gifting that was provided. They were gifts measured out verse 7. By Christ. He gave them according to his metric. We looked at that, his measure.

He dispensed them. But We are to grow. in every way into him. What does that mean? If he's the source, here's the idea: he's the source or he's the ground of all that we have, and then he's the goal.

of all that we're maturing toward. He's the goal of all we're maturing toward. It's like the church in this metaphor is sort of like the little kid that looks at their dad and starts eating healthy and starts running and exercising because the goal is: I want to be strong like dad. I want to be nourished so I can be like that. It's a picture of Christ, who is the one that we grow.

Into. We grow into. Similar metaphor used in Colossians 2, 18 and 19. in a context about false teaching too. Let no one disqualify you.

Don't let somebody tell you you're not a Christian, insisting on asceticism that is that you gotta do this, this, and this, and deprive yourselves of this, this, and this if you want to be a real Christian. And worship of angels. Esoteric kind of stuff. Going on in detail about visions and puffed up with reason by his own sensuous mind. Don't let somebody get their individualized teaching that has made them feel better.

Start talking about things that the Bible doesn't talk about, reaching out into areas the Bible doesn't speak clearly about, and acting as though they're an authority, not holding fast to the head. They're not the head. Jesus is the head. From whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

So He is the source, and he is the goal for our growth. It all comes from him, cycles itself back around, so that we get gifts from him, that then we look like him, we imitate him. In the way that he is. Number five, unity and maturity is formed. as we individually take on our contribution to our church identity.

Verse 16. from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped.

Now remember. You got to go back to verse 11, see those gifted people that are given as gifts. And he's saying, you've got these gifts and these gifted people, and you're functioning as a body, and each part is doing something, and it's held together by these, and the word is joints. Here. That's okay in some ways because an interpretive translation is trying to keep the metaphor of a body.

Right? But here's what the word Actually, it means when you go back into the Old Testament, the Greek Old Testament, how it was used. The term was actually used a lot regarding leprosy or diseased skin. that was transmitted by contact.

So it was this thing transmitted by contact. And then when you look at it also, not just in the Greek, Old Testament, but you see how it was used even in Greek writings, in Greek philosophy, Aristotle. Aristotle had a couple of different words for connection. He had one that he referred to as cohesion, things coming together, almost morphing together. And then he had another word for contact.

And that's this word. Afe. Contact. It's the idea.

So here's what Paul is getting at. You do your part as an individual. You do your part as an individual. You exercise your gift as an individual. You contribute to the body as an individual.

But you have to. come in contact with one another. You cannot B is a Inner body. and be isolated from the other members of the body. You have to be In connection.

to one another. And that's his point of emphasis. You have a church identity, and the church identity is dependent upon two factors. You owning what you need to own. And you connecting with others who are also owning what they need to own.

That's how body life happens. It doesn't happen. by the proclivity that many of us have, which is when tension emerges, we isolate and cease doing our part because they're not doing theirs. It's like go to the marriage analogy. You want to kill your marriage?

Do your own thing and isolate. There you go. I just unpastored you, as I was telling somebody the other day. I just deconstructed your marriage. Isolate and be an individual.

That's how you kill it.

So what does that mean? To have a healthy marriage is just the opposite. Connect and be communal.

So it is with the church. And that's your individual resp, we have, and every staff member has a plaque. little frame thing on their desk and it has 14 statements on it. It used to have 13 for years, and then I added another one. But it has 14 statements, and they are what we call our staff plumb lines, right?

The plumb line, how you measure a wall being straight. They're the things, little phrases.

Some of them, you read one, you'd go, huh? But they're little phrases, and when you put them all together, that's the culture of the staff. The culture of the staff is in that frame.

Okay, here's one of them. One of them says, be amenable to one another. Meaning looking. to be kind. and help each other.

Be amenable to one another. Comma. accountable for your area. You have a little silo. It's not a hard, fast silo, but you're responsible for certain things.

So you take responsibility for your area. And then the final part is, be amenable to one another, accountable for your area, absorbed in the whole. Do all that with a view to the whole thing moving forward. Take your individual responsibility, your point of contact with kindness, truthful living in love. Absorbed in the big vision.

That's how a church moves forward, not just the staff level, but it moves forward that way in all levels. Final point: unity and maturity is formed from within. Through the resources Christ has afforded us. Look at how the text closes. Again, beginning verse 16, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it's equipped, when each part is working properly.

makes the body grow.

So that it builds itself up in love. It's a picture of sort of a self-generation. See the word properly there? It's actually the same Greek word that was used earlier for the measure of Christ's gifts. It's the metric, that each is working according to the measure that was dispensed, the metric that was given.

It goes right back to where he started in verse 7. about the fuel. That is, that Christ gives gifts. He gives them in a way that he wants to give them, and he gives them with the intensity and measure that he chooses to give them. then having dispensed them, we become a body that has self-healing properties.

Right? If you get injured tomorrow. Your body will go through a proliferative stage of healing.

So you you twist your ankle. In the proliferative stage, your cells, good cells, will start to divide, and as they divide, they will begin to replace the damaged cells. Then you will move into a second stage of healing that will just happen naturally in your body, which is a remodeling stage. And in that remodeling stage, those cells that have been are replacing the damaged cells will begin to grow in terms of their health and their maturity. Your body will do that given time.

On most normative injuries, because it has within it, it was designed by God. To have particularly intrinsic healing properties. Doesn't mean you don't need to go to the doctor, doesn't mean he doesn't get you on that path in a quicker way. But he also is working with your body. He's not merely doing something to you.

But he is working with the bent of your self-healing properties. That's just the way we were made. The church is made as the kind of entity, it's the beauty of it, that can self-heal. It doesn't have to self-destruct. It can self-heal.

But it can only do it. As people take seriously their individual responsibility, Four. not themselves. But for the we.

So that it is, it is for the we and with an eye to the we in truthful living, that point of contact. has an absolute Engine. Of growth and maturity, that given enough time, people will look at a church like ours and they'll say, that church looks a lot like we thought Jesus. Was like when he was on earth, and Jesus is like as. The groom to the bride.

as the Lord. over the subjects. Father, I pray that you would help us to be a church. that reflects that. Oh, how we want to be the kind of place.

Where Uh Non-cliched. Truthful. Loving Countable. Yeah. Living exists.

And Lord, there's a lot of work in that. That is hard. I want to be an isolated individual.

So help me as a pastor to lean against the baser urges of my own nature. and help my friends here to do the same. for your glory in Jesus' name. Amen.