Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

Please take your Bibles and turn them with me to Ephesians 4, Ephesians 4.

Recap where we’ve been....

A Book of contrasts

Dead now alive Ephesians 2:1-10.

Far away now brought near Ephesians 2:13.

Formerly two men now one Ephesians 2:15.

Darkness now light Ephesians 5:8.

This morning Paul is going to admonish the Ephesians and encourage them on to greater maturity through another contrast - that of being childish but now mature.

He has just told them that the purpose of church was for the edification of the saints, building them up for the work of the ministry with the ultimate goal being unity and maturity in the believers - measuring up to the stature of our Head who is Christ.

Paul is now going to complete the thought that he began in this paragraph way back in verse 2 as he challenged the Ephesian believers to walk worthy of their calling.

He is also going to complete this one long run on sentence that began for us in verse 7.

He is going to instruct the Ephesian church and us under two main points - Don’t be childish and grow into maturity.

Don’t Be Childish

Paul does a brilliant thing here as he is about to introduce this hard statement to the church at Ephesus.

Notice the shift in his language from the previous verses to now.

In verse 11 he says that He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers - what is implied here?

You - He Himself gave some apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to you the church in Ephesus and every other church since.

He gave them to you for your benefit, for your building up.

Paul was an apostle and while that does not by necessity imply maturity, if he were to include himself in that statement it would be as the one given as a gift not as the recipient of the gift.

He was the one tasked with equipping the saints as he was equipped by Christ.

Remember back in chapter 3 he says “I was given made a servant of this gospel by the gift of grace that was given to me by the working of His power.”

Now I’m not saying this to say that those who have been equipped and given the enabling grace of Christ to serve His church in these roles are somehow super Christians and beyond the need for growth and maturity.

Rather, my desire is to highlight the shift in Paul’s language now as he introduces a hard contrast to the Ephesian church between the maturity that all of them should aspire to and the condition that some of them were currently in.

Look at what he says “Then WE will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching” - he includes himself in this statement implying that he was just as susceptible to being misled as they were.

Even though he was an apostle and charged with preaching and teaching the Gospel, with making known these great mysteries, with planting churches and appointing elders, with travelling across the known world to serve Christ’s Kingdom he was susceptible if he did not persevere in efforts toward maturity.

It is interesting the contrast that Paul has drawn here.

Looking back at verse twelve the picture gives us of what our aspiration is to be is that of a mature man - fully grown, fully developed, a person of full age and stature.

The two greek words that make up our one word maturity here are aner and teleios - meaning man and mature.

Aner can mean man or husband.

Teleios actually carries with it the connotation of not just maturity but perfection.

What a contrast now that Paul delivers as he challenges these believers to not be like children.

Think of the picture that is given here with respect to the challenges Paul has just issued to the church - they were to be equipped, to be brought into maturity, for the purpose of service.

There used to be a time when the kind of mature man Paul is speaking of here was revered and looked up to.

When our heroes were figures like John Henry and Paul Bunyan.

Where having a work ethic was good and being strong and firm wasn’t looked down upon.

Paul expresses this very sentiment in his closing words to the church in Corinth

The NASB translates it even stronger

The word for that the CSB translates courageous is andrizomai.

The root of that word is aner - man, the same word that Paul uses here in verse 13.

But now in verse 14 he tells them not to be children.

What is the picture of a child?

One who is always seeking to play.

One who is not very often at work willingly.

One who is idle.

There used to be a saying that probably isn’t popular anymore that “idle hands are the devil’s playground”.

We are the most technologically advanced generation in the history of the world.

We are the most educated.

We have the most freedom.

Most of us have more Bible translations on our phone than existed in the entire first century world.

We can access solid Christian teaching any time we want from our phones, ipads, tablets or computers.

And yet we are one of the most Biblically illiterate generations there is.

We’re also one of the least active generations in the history of the church.

Is it possible that one of the reasons for lack of maturity in the modern church is the lack of service to our King?

When you’re busy serving you don’t have time to get distracted by all of the false and frivolous teachings that are taking place outside of your church body.

These fads and innovative ideas that assault the church.

In recent years there’s been the Daniel Diet, the Prayer of Jabez, The Shack and many others - all distractions from real maturity.

Today we have churches that remain closed or have chosen to embrace the meta-verse and now hold services in a virtual reality world.

And I agree with Paul that we, meaning those in the pulpit are just as apt to fall victim to these waves of false teaching as others and the danger of that is that when we give in we exponentially exacerbate the issue.

When the pulpit teaches from weakness, weak people are the result.

Anemic, starving sheep are the result.

Oh for men that would just preach the Word of God to equip the people of God so that we wouldn’t fall victim to all of these winds and waves of teaching.

I think of the feather at the beginning of Forrest Gump - what a delightful picture that gave at the beginning of that movie as the feather just floats this way and that on the breeze until it gently comes to rest at Forrest’s feet.

The air of innocence and freedom.

But we aren’t meant to be that way as believers - blown here and there always following the latest fad.

And as you can tell by the movie reference we’re never on the cutting edge anyway.

The church always lags behind the world in coolness by at least 20 years.

Paul probably had in mind the ship that he was on as he was travelling to Rome.

Acts 27 chronicles the story of that ship’s ill-fated voyage and how it had been driven by the wind and the waves, tossed across the Mediterranean until it finally came to crash into the island of Malta.

I remember being in a storm as a young sailor crossing the Atlantic.

We could stand in the ship and watch as we rode up and down massive waves, counting the seconds of ocean and then the seconds of sky.

It is the image of wreckage and carnage - the view of those who have shipwrecked their faith the way Paul refers to it in Galatians 5:4 - when he writes that you have fallen away from grace.

He is saying that they have shipwrecked their faith.

In the case of the church the wind and waves are the result of human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.

The word for cunning is kybeia (cubea) from which we get the word cube.

It was a word used for the dice that was used for gambling.

The word should ring in our ears as the way that the serpent is referred to in the Garden - the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals.

Paul uses this word in 2 Corinthians 11:3 to refer to Eve being deceived by the cunning serpent.

The teachers Paul is referencing here have determined that their cleverness is better than God’s wisdom and so they attempt to grow and develop the church according to their own methods and ideas - and the church at large falls for it like the little children of Hamelin.

300 Quotations for Preachers (Inability to Discern Doctrinal Differences)

Inability to distinguish differences in doctrine is spreading far and wide, and so long as the preacher is “clever” and “earnest,” hundreds seem to think it must be all right, and call you dreadfully “narrow and uncharitable” if you hint that he is unsound!J.

C. RYLE

These teachers - as like-able and affable as they maybe are servants of Satan.

The question I always have in the back of my mind is do they know?

Does Joel Osteen know that he is teaching damnable heresy or is he himself deluded and duped into believing his own teaching?

Does Steven Furtick know that he is teaching false doctrines and heresy or is he also just deluded into believing a lie?

Does Andy Stanley know that he is teaching a weak Gospel that leads people astray or is he just deluded into believing a lie?

These clever men with all their cunning are employing the techniques of deceit - the methodia - the same word that Paul will use later in chapter 6 to refer to the machinations of Satan.

Ephesians 6:11 says to put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes (the methodia) of the devil.

And oh he has perfected the method - just make it seem as loving as possible and you can sell anything.

Grow Into Maturity

Paul shifts gears now and returns to his charge to his readers that they grow towards maturity.

He tells the believers that they are to speak the truth in love.

This is something that unfortunately is often reversed in our world - it seems that it is the false teachers that are speaking with love and that, even if we might be speaking the truth, that Christians are anything but loving.

There is such a thing among reformed theologians called the cage stage.

The blogger Tim Challies defines cage stage this way - A Cage-Stage Calvinist is someone who has learned TULIP—the five points of Calvinism—and goes on a relational rampage.

They attack, bludgeon, and judge their brothers and sisters in Christ who don’t line up with TULIP as they do.

The problem isn’t that their theology is wrong - it is that their relational method is so confrontational that often they burn bridges and destroy relationships in a quest to get their truth across.

In many ways the world views all Christians as “cage-stage”.

The struggle with this is that not only do we disparage ourselves but we often disparage the name of Christ as well.