Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow him today.
I. Don't want to begin with our
confession? I'm going to take just a second
in your heart. Just acknowledge.
Where's your heart? Are you racing?
Are you running? Are you going fast?
Are you sad? Are you grieving?
Are you? Where is your heart?
Wherever you are, that's OK. We come to a Father who sees us
and knows us and loves us and our confession to him is we are
badly broken. Yes, you are.
Grace and peace to you. I've really been enjoying this
Ephesians study. It's deep and it's and it's,
yeah, kind of twisty and windy and it doesn't always go in line
with what we what what, what we think and right and what we've
experienced, what we've seen. But I heard an illustration as I
was studying for this that resonated with me.
I've told before, I've talked about how aside from like my
family and my dog and you all like, my favorite living thing
alive is Aspen trees. I love, I love the Aspen the way
that the leaves are, the, the, the way they attach the
branches. When the wind blows, they
whisper. It's just a very peaceful.
I can feel myself driving into the mountains loving and I see
them. You can see just a picture.
Yeah. Right.
So one of the things about Aspen trees as you as you look and see
how they're shaped by wind, they're shaped by, as you know,
the animals come and, you know, rub their horns or their antlers
on and they scratch them and they scar.
So they all grow up looking different.
But what's interesting about Aspen trees is when you come
across an Aspen Grove like this, or you come down and you see
they're all one Organism. So sometimes an Aspen tree
spread over square miles, really their roots are so intertwined
and so interlocked. They come from one root ball.
And as I was watching this, I thought, this is a great
illustration. This is a great analogy that
Paul's been talking about for the church.
As he's illustrated, it's like we're one, like there's no, you
look at these Aspen trees, you look at these, you know, the
trunks and the leaves. And you're going to go, oh,
that's one and that's the one. And oh, that one's been rubbed
on and that's been scratched by a bear.
And this one, you know, needs water.
And this one's got the lesion. They're all stem from and come
from the same 1. And that's kind of really, if
you could summarize visually, chapters one through 3, that's
what we see. We are because of the work of
Jesus, the redemptive and restorative work of Jesus.
We are one humanity with one spirit in Christ.
We have one spirit that unites us, that brings us together.
And the thing that Paul was and saying over and over and over
again, it's important for us is it's real even if we don't
believe it. And the idea is that Jesus came
and in him all these boundaries and all these barriers were
brought down. And the reality is, we can
actually live like that reality, or we can spend our entire lives
and all of our moments rebuilding what Jesus has torn
down. If we believe what Jesus has
told us, if we believe what Paul tells us has happened on the
cross, it affects the way that we work, the way that we walk,
the way that we live, the way that we.
Move, and that is what chapters 4 through 6 begin to.
Spell out now 4 through 6 chapters 4 through 6.
Don't tell us every single thing that every single spirit,
empowered person and picture will do.
It just tells us an overview like this is what a people, a
person and a people who are animated by the Spirit of God.
Will look like. This is how they'll behave.
This is what their work will look like.
This is what their marriages will look like.
This is what their relationships with their children will look
like. This is what warfare looks like.
This is what troubles and difficulties look like.
But it all begins with this idea, this Aspen Grove reality
that is, we all sit in here and you look around and you look at
the people next to you and they came from somewhere and you came
from somewhere. And I'm looking at some of you,
right? Like some of you came from the
Northwest, right? I'm looking at you, y'all,
Mariners fans, and we're praying for your souls right now.
Some of you have come from the East Coast.
You're Dodgers fans. We're not even praying for
y'all. We're just.
Hoping right, like the Lord will come, but praying for me that I
will have compassion for that right.
But we all come from different places, different family
backgrounds, different socioeconomic realities.
But the truth is in Christ, we all have the same root system.
It's the same life that's flowing.
Through each of us and we want that we want to live like what I
want to say is when those moments in your life that feel
the most deeply, satisfyingly, right when you go, hey, this is
it. These those are those moments in
Christ that you experience. What I'm going to say is we know
that we want that. And I want to affirm and
acknowledge today, it's hard. It's really, really hard to
continue to live and to walk out this reality, this truth, even
though it's what our hearts want, even though it's this ache
that is deep inside of us. We all have these deep ache to
belong to something, don't we? This is why we, This is why
tribalism is such a danger, right?
Because there are groups at our job, in our neighborhoods, on
the TV, wherever we go, there are groups that will say you can
be like us. You can be this, oh sure, you
can belong to us. You just have to look a certain
way or think a certain thing or give a certain amount of money
or do a certain. If you just do those things and
check those boxes, then you can be like us.
And everyone who's not like us, who's like them, well, then
they'll be bad. We seek to belong, and what the
analogy tells us is that you do belong in Christ.
You're a part of something that's bigger than you.
But we split. Over differences.
Surface differences, physical differences, differences in
houses and cars and neighborhoods.
And we're lonely as a culture and as a community.
We're. Lonely social media sort of
scratches that itch, but not really.
It can make it worse. It can make it deeper because we
see people, but we know we're not really known.
Any time that I can just turn off when I want to or they can
turn off when they want to, we know that that's not the true
connection. We want purpose.
This is why people are drawn to their jobs.
This is why people become workaholics, because we know in
their job, their job will tell them who they are, tell them
what their contribution is and what their value is.
And identity gets wrapped up in there.
We want to know our identity. Who are we?
What is it that makes me special?
What is it that makes me unique in this world?
We want to be stable, why do we go too?
Far at work. Why do we worry when the economy
turns? Why do we worry about power
shifts and power structures? Because we want to know that
we're going to be stable. We want to know that the things
that are coming down the road, the things that we're saving and
preparing and working for now, that they'll be there.
That's one of the greatest things with some of the younger
generations right now is they're feeling like, man, we did what
we were supposed to do and now everything seems like it's hard
and hurtful and worrying and what do we do?
Where's the stability in this? And it becomes a generational.
Curse and a fear. We all want to be loved not for
what we produce, but for who we are.
See, the problem is if you just love me because of the way that
I preach, well, someday I'm not going to be able to do this
anymore. If you just love me for what
happens here, well, someday I I'm not going to be able to be
here. And this is going to move on.
If you just love their kids when they're toddlers, well, the
teenage is going to suck for you because, right?
We all want to be loved for what God has put in us, for the truth
that's in us, not just for what we can contribute to the whole,
to the thing. That's why Paul has spent so
much time over the last several chapters on the theology of
this. Because what Paul is telling us
over and over again is the things that we most desperately
want and search for and seek out for have already been provided
for us. The things that will satisfy and
nourish the deepest areas of our soul.
Not that it'll be easy. Not that everything will be sun
shines and rainbows now here in this life and eternity is going
to wipe away every tear. He's going to make every sad
thing coming true. But in this world, we want to
know that we have hope, right? And what Paul tells us is that
we do have hope. Everything has been provided for
us. It's available to you here.
And now the question is, what do we do with it so that we can?
Experience it and that is how Paul starts.
So if you have your scripture, turn to Ephesians chapter 4 and
let me just tell you like. Who?
Like we could do 48 weeks on Ephesians chapter 4.
I mean, we're not going to. I feel like I need to clarify
that because you weren't kind of sure, right?
I want to try to spend a lot of time in the text today because
it it really is kind of a beautiful flowing and what Paul
says and again with his long and smart, you know, sentences,
right? But it really, I guess we kind
of stay into it and and lean into it.
It begins to give us hope, but also direction.
And that's why we start with our confession, right?
We admit that we're badly broken so that when we start to get
instruction from the Scripture, we have less resistance to it
where we can just know like, Hey, my way is the brokenness,
right? Like of course I have sin, of
course I have a preference. Of course I know how I want this
to go, but what I want to look at and go, what does it look
like in here? What does this tell me and what
should it look like? So we started in this in
Ephesians chapter. 4. First word is therefore we've
already seen that such an important word right It means
that everything that's come before is this is that hinge.
This is where it was so because of the fact this.
Apocalypse of Aspen tree. Reality where we are, one where
the dividing line between all of us has been torn down in Christ,
where His church is, is 1. It's the tree, it's the temple.
It's all that. Because of all of that, because
of the theology that we've just been heaped in, I, Paul the
prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of
the calling that you have been called to.
Paul doesn't just say believe, he says I want you to walk in
this reality. It begins with belief.
We have to decide whether we believe that what Paul tells us
about Jesus is actually true or not.
As you look at your friend from a different tribe, from a
different country, from a different socio economic
background. As you look at the person across
the street from you that keeps their yard different than you,
that votes different you, that raises their children different
you. The question is, do we believe
what it tells us here? Because what we believe believe
is important. It's where it starts.
But what Paul says is based on what you believe, you need to
walk in that direction. And what I would say to you
lovingly, gently, is you already do.
You walk according to what your deep beliefs are.
That's the problem and my deep beliefs.
I believe that people. Who are different from me are
scary, and that's what Paul says.
Jesus wants to undo and uncover me, so he says walk in a manner
worthy of the calling that you've been deceived.
Now he tells us how that's going to look.
Walk with all humility. Humility is one of those great
words, right? It's all over the the church,
it's all over, you know, the things that we talk about, the
way we go. But it can become one of those
things that we talk about so much that we don't really worry
about whether we know what it means.
We can talk about humility as talking.
Terribly. I say, oh, I'm old.
Nothing. Oh, you don't need nothing.
That's not humility, friend. It's not humility to call what
God has made beautiful, to call it ugly.
That's not humility. That's disassociated from
reality. That's ignoring the truth.
We're going to find what He says about you.
We're going to find what He's done in your life and what He's
doing for you. Humility isn't thinking less of
yourself. Some of you need to make peace
with that. Some of you have been walking
around with some label that your dad gave you 100 years ago that
Jesus has been trying to deliver you from, trying to have you
walk out from, and it's time to still walk out from that.
He says walk according to who you are, according to what Jesus
says. Walk humbly, not thinking less
of yourself, just thinking of yourself.
Yes, Instead of walking through your day going, What does
everybody think of me? Walk through your day thinking,
Who cares? Instead of walking through your
day going, Does everybody notice me?
Is everybody mad at me walking through and go?
I am in the eye of my father. Walk through this world.
But listen, if we're going to do that, if we're going to focus
less on ourselves, we got to start focusing less on the other
people. And that's the problem.
Because when I look at myself, I can get real enraptured with
this, right? But when I look at someone else,
what I see too many times is annoying, frustrating,
discouraging, out of touch, lost.
So he says, walk humbly with your neighbors, walk through and
just go. That person is badly broken.
They. Don't even know it, man.
They think they're right. I don't get to.
Contribute the brokenness. I just get to decide what Jesus
said is they're loves you and I get to decide whether we're
going to believe that or not and walk according to that.
Walk humbly, he says, with gentleness.
I love gentleness. This picture, it's one of the
fruits of the spirit, right? The spirit is in you.
It's gentleness. And the thing I like about
gentleness is the best place to practice gentleness is in the
face of wrongdoing. When I am gentle with my
children, it's generally because they've been terrible and
deserve the wrath, right? And when I instead just say,
hey, but hey, let's figure this out.
We'll be OK, Let's slow down. We'll back up.
We'll do it. This is gentleness.
It it assumes that people in the world are going to cut you off
in traffic, that they're going to stand right in the middle of
the aisle at HEB, that they're going to say that dumb thing on
Facebook that you just. Have to have to sit.
Right. And they just, we just know.
And gentleness says when we walk gently, we look and we just go.
I don't have to tell every somebody every time that they're
stupid because I like it when people don't tell me every time
I'm dumb, right? Like you, You're so gracious to
me. Walk with gentleness.
Walk with patience doesn't say feel patient.
It says walk with patience with people, bearing with one another
and love. This idea of bearing is like
caring each other. And what it means is like, don't
quit on the relationship. Oh, you mean they're a terrible
person. They're probably just in a
really bad season. They're probably just in a place
where the world is scarier than they know what to do with.
What they probably need is exactly what you need.
Not to be abandoned, not to be left alone, be prayed for, to be
encouraged. See, that's what the church is.
We don't quit on each other because we're different.
We don't stop loving each other because it gets hard.
This is to be. This is what it means to be
rooted in this apocalypse. This is what it means to be
rooted in this truth of Jesus's love for us.
It means that we walk in our unity.
That means people should look at the church and see us walking
with people that other people don't.
They should just go, hey, why are you with that person?
Do you know who that person is? And you go, yes, they are one of
my Father's favorite children, and he wanted me to remind them
that they are deeply loved with an eternal kind of love.
What about their? Sin, I can trust that he'll talk
about their sin to them. Thank God He hasn't shared all
of my sinfulness with you, but he talks to me about it.
And we're going to walk in that to be rooted in Christ, right?
And what does it and what does it say, right?
He goes on. So it says we have this unity,
right? He goes on to describe it to
keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.
And now it says, look, there is one body.
There's not a Methodist body and a Catholic body and a Protestant
body says there's one body, body of Christ, there is one spirit,
just as you also were called to 1.
Hope of your calling 1. Lord 1.
Faith 1. Baptism 1 God and.
Father of all. Who is over all and through all
and then all. Did you see what he did with the
ones he says you got one guy and he said how many of there were
there? Seven of those.
You know what 7 is right? Completion.
It was perfection. Why did God created the world in
seven days, right? And what Paul is telling us is,
is in Christ you have this perfect oneness, whatever it is
you think, that keeps you away from the body.
Of Christ that separates you from others you can find in
Christ. It's been a.
Been dealt with one body, one baptism, one strength 1 Spirit 1
Lord and we get to walk in that kind of unity.
See when Paul grew up, he grew up in in part of his Jewish
heritage would have been every day they would have prayed.
It's called the Shema right here.
O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord.
Is 1 God and what Tim Mackie's this brilliant guy, and he's
great. He's kind of gentle kind of guy,
right? And what he says, he
reformulates this as a messianic.
Shema, we do have one God. We have Jesus who is 1 king, and
this is what he looks like. 1 spirit, 1 body, us.
And listen church, this is what we walk in.
You want to know what righteousness is?
Righteousness isn't just being good.
Righteousness isn't just cussing less.
Righteousness is the body, it is unity.
We would go to the temple and the Jewish people would go to
the temple to have their sins forgiven so that they could be
unified together, walking with each other and walking with God.
This is it is our righteousness. It doesn't do us to be any good
by ourselves and hateful are separated and detached from each
other, from the body. So to walk in unity is to live
like the roots are real, even if there's hit, even if they're
hidden. To walk like this connection
among us is greater than whatever would separate us and
divide us out there. That's the kind of thing, that's
the kind of fruit that is the visible evidence of new.
Creation. And that's what Paul's been
getting at. We're a new creation.
What he's done in US isn't just a.
A shade of meaning to something else.
It's something entirely new, something that the world has
been desperately longing. For but yet to see so how does
God empower us to do that verse 7 to each one of us.
Grace. Was given according to the
measure of Christ's gift. This is the thing, right?
This is the mechanism. How does God fill the world with
grace? And we've already been seen it.
We've already been looking at, you know, how he gets grace into
the world. It gives it to you.
What's interesting is maybe it's not interesting.
I just say that a word that's like a verbal tick that I have,
right? What The thing is, the Greek
word for grace here is the word caris.
The Greek word for the word gift here is also Paris, right?
And so it's this idea that gifts are grace.
It's something free that he gives us that is for us, that is
to us. The big thing is that it is
something that is undeserved. And what's interesting now is I
want to notice a very important shift.
So what have we been saying every time it says you, right?
What does that mean? All y'all are so good.
You're Bible scholars and you didn't even notice it, right?
So what he's saying is all this has happened to all y'all.
All y'all have the same roots. All y'all are growing in the
same forest. All y'all are part.
Of God's plan, all y'all have this and now verse 7, but to
each one of you specifically, individually, uniquely to you,
sure we all have one plan, but to you has been given grace.
You have a unique expression of God's gift.
You have a unique expression of grace that differentiates us.
So when we say walk in unity, when I say you walk in me with
me and I walk with you and we walk with Jesus, it means we are
together. It does not mean that we are the
same. It says that He has given
something special and unique to each one of you.
That means that what you have is different from what I have.
The grace that you have for the world is different than the
grace that I. Have for the world.
And I think too many times the problem is that we're all
running out with hoping for one kind of grace.
And the really busy kind of people are out there running and
doing their specific brand of grace all over the place.
And the world looks and goes, that's not really enough.
And it's not that it's not enough.
It's just not differentiated the right way.
And what makes the? Differentiation right you.
When you walk in what God has called you to walk in, when you
don't just absorb grace but you give grace, when you don't just
experience the goodness of God, but you express the goodness of
God in the world, that's how he gets grace out into the world.
It's not uniformity. Jesus hasn't called us to be
robots. He hasn't called us.
To look the. Same and dress the same and walk
the same and talk the same and spend the same he's given.
Each of us a unique gift. He goes on and describes it
Verse 8. Therefore it says talks about
now this is a quote from Psalm 68 and notice what it says.
When he ascended on high, he led captive the captives and he gave
he gave gifts to all the people. I'm not going to go in and
unpack. If you're really interested, you
can go to the what's it called Bible project, Tim Mackie's
Bible Project, and he has this great probably 20 minute
exegesis of Psalm chapter 68 and it is beautiful.
It is worth your time to go look for that and to do that, but I'm
just not going to do it here. The picture that he says here is
he gives shows the picture of a king after victorious, walking
through his town and showering the gifts of plunder with all
the people in the community. So as we look at this now, who
are the The Who has he plundered?
Powers, the powers of darkness that would separate us, that
would divide us, that would keep us from each other.
But what we have here is instead of the people giving gifts to
the king, O King, you have seen this.
This shows us our king and his generosity.
He's plundered the powers. He's conquered all of that, but
he's not a. King who takes.
From you He's a king who gives, He gives gifts to his people.
Now this expression, he ascended, what does it mean
except that he had also descended into the lower parts
of earth? This is Jesus who did, what did
he do? He came, He lived with us, He
died. And he who descended as himself
also he who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he
might fill all things. So he's talking about Jesus.
The work and the ministry of Jesus is the fulfillment of
Psalm 68. He is this king who doesn't come
to take from us. He comes to give from us.
He doesn't measure what you have.
He doesn't walk through and go, well, this is Jacob.
Jacob, the tall, strapping, handsome young man.
I'm going to give more gifts to him.
But right like, like somebody over there.
That's Jason. He's.
Like he's a little. Funny looking.
He's kind of like Swanny. We're going to give less gift to
him. Here's the thing.
Are you listening? In the Kingdom of God there is
no such thing as meritocracy. You.
Know what meritocracy is, right? You get what you deserve.
You get what you earn. It doesn't exist.
You know what? There's also in the Kingdom.
There is no competition. There's no stretch where me and
Jacob are fighting for the same goods.
There's no stretch where I have to wonder, is Jacob going to get
more because he's better, or because he's stronger, or
because he's faster, or because he's starter?
Meritocracy and competition for glory are entirely out.
Of step with the New Testament, I want to pause and just let
that settle. Meritocracy and competition for
glory and honor are entirely out of step with the New Testament.
So the greater we try to make ourselves look in the world, the
more we find ourselves working against a system that elevates
Jesus. And what it says is he gave
everybody gifts. But since this isn't a
meritocracy and since you haven't earned this, what it
means is the gifts aren't yours. It's not like if you come and
work at your job, the payment that they give you is earned.
These aren't earned. The gifts that you have, the
strengths that you have, the parts of your personality that
really just make people light up, those specific unique things
that God puts in you that that cause change and and growth and
other people who didn't come from you.
It's not for you. It's something that we steward
and now watch what happens. Verse 11.
He gave some as apostles. Notice what it doesn't say?
It doesn't say he gave some the gift of apostleship.
He said he called some to be apostles.
Here's the problem with much of spiritual gift teaching as it
exists kind of in the churches where I've grown up, and
honestly, as I've taught them before.
Spiritual gifts as they've. Come and been taught by me exist
in you need to go find out what just makes you just the most
neat and you just need to like go figure out how all of your
neatness kind of fits in the world.
And that's not what Ephesians chapter 4 says.
It says he gave some people to be apostles.
Apostles are starters, they're expanders, they're beginners.
What that looks like like in context of River City at our
staff, I want to know Pastor Brian Schneider, I think has
this plays this role of apostleship in the sense where
he says, hey, where are we going?
How can we make sure that we get there?
By setting, by establishing processes and systems and
structures to help make sure that the ministry that needs to
happen. We have this great, blowing up,
wonderful ministry on Wednesday night.
That's because Brian has this in this position, in this role of.
Starting things of making sure that there's always a class,
that there's always a teacher, that there's always a room.
He gave some as apostles. He gave others as prophets.
Prophets are not fortune tellers.
Prophets are not the ones who tell you that God's going to
strike you. What prophets?
Do is just say, hey, our God is a God of justice.
Our God is a job as a God who who heals and restores and who
calls the church back to that that.
That's my thing. Right, like when I talk about
things and I push buttons and you walk out and you're like
politically a little uncomfortable.
Good. You should be.
That's my job. That's what I do Now, my
spiritual gift, my primary spiritual gift is to be an
encourager. I love to talk to you and I want
to tell you what God can do in your life.
But mostly what I want you to know is what God can do in your
life is make peace for those who don't have peace.
Lift up those who are held down. Use what you have in this role,
prophet, that's my deal. He gave some as apostles.
He gave some as prophets, some as evangelists.
When I think evangelists are word spreaders, they are the
tellers of the truth. When I think of evangelists and
I think in terms kind of our of our staff right those rounds, I
think of Alyssa, our our worship leader.
When Alyssa leads worship, the things that she says are can you
taste that the Lord is good? You know what that does?
That's an invitation for you to follow to experience something
from from God. My prophetic urge is.
God is great. And you should get in line with
him. Because it'll make your life
better, right? Alyssa's like, yeah, but it's
sweet. Don't you want to taste it on
your tongue? Love it.
We need that. Interesting.
Kind of construct and all of these in the Greek right.
He gave some as the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist, these
next ones, the pastor and the teacher kind of sometimes can
some theologians think that it goes as one as the the pastor
and and my friend Johnny who's code kind of teaching this.
He sent me a a reminder I should probably clarify when they talk
about pastor, they're not talking about me.
Pastor is not a organizational role in in this the a better
word is shepherd. It communicates it's a guy.
If you're in a small group with someone who has called you when
you were lonely, you have experienced shepherd.
Now I teach, right? I teach as part of my as my
prophetic thing. But when we go to our small
groups, that's what we're doing. We're experiencing a shepherd.
And some people are, are like, and I and River City doesn't get
this, but some of the churches are just like when you get sick,
like I need Jason, if I can get to your bed, I, I, I will.
But listen, if you want me at your bedside instead of Miss
Jamie or Miss Sharon, you don't know me and you don't know Miss
Jamie and Miss Sharon well enough because when I'm sick in
my bed, I want Miss Jamie and Sharon on my bed, right?
I don't like I don't want right. But the idea is these are these
are the roles, these are the way that the church.
So how does God give his get his grace out into into the world?
He gives it to people. He gives it to the apostles and
he says apostles take these gifts, this grace that I give
you and built a build a structure in a system that
allows for the for the. Grace to go and go to new places
where Grace doesn't exist. Is that you?
Are you a starter? Do you come to me and just go
like, hey, and some of you do, you'll come up to me on a Sunday
morning. Just be like, hey, we're looking
for a small group. I don't really want to go to any
of those other ones. Can I start one and you go to
Brian? You know what Brian says.
Yeah, yeah. Let's go to training.
Let's make sure like that we're on kind of on the same page, but
yeah. Some of you will come up to me
and you'll talk to me like, why don't you talk about?
Oh, that's the prophetic thing. It's that thing.
The idea is God. Has given you something that
gets the grace and gets his spirit out into the world.
Let me see. Make sure that I didn't forget
anything. Right.
Oh, what are those 4? Right.
This is this is great. What's my job here?
To make sure that you get everything that you need.
No, He gave those these positions for the equipping of
the Saints, for the work of ministry, for the building of
the body. He gave some for the equipping
of the Saints. You know what my job is To make
sure that you have what you need to do what God has called you to
do. That's why we have a teaching
team here. I don't.
My goal is to take 12 Sundays off.
You're just like, I wish I got them.
It's not vacation, it's giftedness.
It's so that you know that my gifts aren't different or better
than your gifts. It's so that you know that when
Johnny stands up in here and speaks, he's got a gift.
When Jason Casey speaks, when Rebecca Grieman speaks, we
acknowledge God has put something in them that we need.
And So what we do, when I tell you to go check the Bible
project, it's to equip you to do the ministry that God has called
you to do. And two.
And so listen, the question becomes then, well then, Jason,
what do you do? If I'm doing the children's
ministry and if I'm doing the wars and ministry, Jason, what
do you do? And I just go as little.
As possible. If I can't, no.
Just kidding. Here's the picture look 2001 I'd
had a radical experience with Christ and I woke up and I knew
at that moment my life will never be the same.
And I'm not sure that I have anything to do with the church
because the church had always been terrible and gross to me.
So I was ready for the Lord. I was ready to experience God's
goodness and his grace. I just didn't think it had
anything to do with the church. But my mom, she's wonderful, but
she was also kind of a nag at the time.
So she like nagged me to go to church with her and she's like,
you found Jesus need to go to the church.
And so I had long hair and my hip rope and.
All this stuff, right? And I was going to go once to
make sure just so I could write the whole experience off.
And what happened when I got there is they just loved me.
And they just said, and I just said, hey, can I like, hang out
in the youth ministry because they were younger than me and I
knew that. And they told me they're like,
yeah, you can go lead that small group of middle school girls,
whatever. Do you know what I said?
Let's go, let's go, let's go. You know why?
Because Jesus had done something in my heart and I wanted to tell
Him. And they were.
Like oh, didn't last long I. Eventually got right, But
listen, over the span of the next couple of years, they gave
me encouragement, they gave me training, they gave me support,
they gave me responsibility. And then ten years later, they
sent me here. See, the reason that we're here
is because 20 years ago, a group of 150 believers on the north
side of San Antonio took a shot with some kid in a hemp rope
necklace and they didn't hoard ministry for themselves.
They didn't say, well, if we let him do it, what will we do?
And I can assure you, there's a thriving, growing church in
Selma, TX right now that we came from.
And anything that we took with us, God has more than replaced.
But what we got from that place was love and training and
responsibility. And let me tell you.
About our men's ministry right now, and I'm just going to go on
and on and on. Our men's ministry right now is.
Blowing up. If you show up on a Wednesday
night, you're going to hear about Jesus and you're going to
have guys that are going to talk to you about to sin in your
life, not to judge you or condemn you, but to walk you out
of it. And do you know how that
started? That started with Jaime Martinez
coming up to me about 8 years ago and going, I've got a vision
to see men discipled in Christ Jesus.
And So what I had to say is we didn't have a men's ministry
group at the time. Do you know why?
Because that's not what I do. And I'm not going to fill a hole
that's going to take from someone else.
Let me just tell you, we got the right guy.
The right guy's. Doing the right thing in men's
ministry. He's.
Got a gift you've got to give too.
And what I'm saying is, there's enough grace in the Godhead for
the entire world. He's waiting on us to get it out
and the way that he does it is gives it to you.
We just got to choose. Are we going to fight on
Facebook or are we going to multiply some stuff?
Are we going to fight on Facebook about stuff that's
going to be dead in 100 years and dead to us anyway in 100
years? Are we going to get busy doing
things that are going to last forever?
He's giving you a responsibility.
He's giving you a place. Those kids up there in
children's ministry, Those people that you mean.
You don't know how many people have walked.
I know some of them. You don't know how many people
have walked through those doors stoned out of their mind, ready
on their last leg. Husband, wife threw them out.
Can't them? They walk in here.
His last hope. 3 weeks later, we're baptized in the whole
family. You don't know how much that
happens, and I should probably tell you, but it happens not
because of me, not because because of the stage, but
because out there, Because when they walk in, you're number one,
they feel like I belong here. Badly broken, deeply loved.
Not just out of his mouth, out of your face.
Yeah, Amen is right, Church. This is what we offer the world.
Not everybody trying to be me. You.
Being you and walking in that. You know why we don't believe
that God gives us grace? Because we don't practice the
grace that He gives us, the grace to lead, the grace to
humble ourselves, the grace to be a fixer.
That's what grace is. Stewarding.
Grace looks like multiplying ministry.
I'm not talking about a program. I'm not saying you got to go
start on Awana. If you're an Awana starter, come
on, like we'll start that. I'm talking about respond with
love in the place where God has placed you.
I'm looking at some of you who work in schools.
I'll never get to go talk to the kids that you get to talk to,
but I know that Jesus died for every student in that classroom
and you get to love them. Oh, but the principal.
Oh, but the school board? Up.
They're all gross. It's terrible and awful.
You've got grace from the Lord to give those kids.
I don't care what the school board says.
Let me love a kid. I don't care what let let me
show love to somebody who needs it.
It's not just about teaching, it's about multiplying teachers.
It's not just about a big gift, my personality.
It's about what the Holy Spirit doing what God is doing.
It's showing up in this room and instead of showing up on Sunday,
going. Who can who needs to serve me?
Who need who's got like you walk up and just going.
I've got something to give today.
I've got grace to give somebody. I've got a person that I need to
I need to encourage. We don't walk around looking.
Who can I talk to that will raise my status?
Who can I talk to that will make me look good?
When you walk into Target, you're looking for the person
that you can pray for, that you can love, that you can serve,
that you can humble. And maybe you walked out
sometime and you didn't know and you don't know, but your mindset
and your perspective is I have something to offer and to walk
in in this. World and So what that means is
like this is one of the things I look now at our broader culture.
This is kind of where I think Christian celebrity is sketchy
at best at best because John chapter 3 verse 30 write like
John the Baptist says that he's got to increase and I must
decrease right like that's the call for all of it.
Jesus is our hero. Jesus is the one who saves us.
Jesus is the one who leads us and guides us and gives us his
spirit. That's who we walk in.
That's our story. So.
And grace is multiplied instead of hoarded.
The church doesn't stay busy. That's the problem.
I think too many times in the church we're just like, busy,
right? So the church doesn't just stay
busy, it grows up. Look, in verse 13, we're going
to do that, build up the body of Christ until we all attain to
the unity of the faith, right? And we talked about that one,
one spirit, one God, right? Unity of the Faith.
And of the knowledge of the Son of God.
It doesn't mean that we all have.
It means that we all are experiencing God, that we just
know this is a place where we come and we encounter, where we
know God's presence is with us. When you go to HEB and you see
that person and you stop and you pray in HEB, you know God's
presence is there with you. You know He's doing that to a
mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the
fullness of Christ. This is where we go.
This is like Paul's not dialing. He's not pulling back from his
assertion. He's doubling down.
When you show up as the church, when the Spirit of God brings us
together at a birthday party, in a classroom, at your job in HEB,
in the parking lot, wherever you go, it is the literal physical
presence of the person of Jesus capable of doing the things that
Jesus did when he was here. That's.
That's the spirit that's in you. You don't have a light spirit,
you don't have the diet spirit. You have the spirit that
resurrected Jesus from the dead, that brought life to dead
places, that empowers his church.
As a result, we are no longer children tossed here and there
by waves. The analogy, this is an analogy.
The analogy he's going to talk about, first of all, children,
immature, right? He's talking about spiritual
immaturity. What does he say?
Spiritual immaturity is like, it's like a baby on the front of
the boat in a storm. Wild analogy, right?
Like. That a baby can't sit itself up.
It can't hold its head straight. It certainly can't hold on to
anything. And if you're in a storm, it
just bounced all over. It's unstable.
We see this in our culture, right?
Like we see this every time we get freaked out when the news
starts to loves to tell the church what like the latest
problem with our faith is and we all.
Freak out. Oh, what if they're right?
They're not right. Stop.
For me, the analogy is The Da Vinci Code, right?
Like it came out and church just went bonkers, right?
Who's the Antichrist? Every time it's like that's,
that's not it. That's being tossed around by
every, what does it say? Wind of teaching, wind of
doctrine, the trickery of people by craftiness and deceitful
scheming. That's what immaturity looks
like. Immaturity is being manipulated
by fads. It's being manipulated by
outrage. I love you so much man.
If you turn on the TV night after night and every time you
turn it on, your heart gets angry and you get madder or you
get more afraid and if you come back and turn it on, you're
being manipulated. I would love for you to not have
to deal with that anymore. And I would love you to know
it's because Jesus hasn't invited you into that.
He doesn't need you to obsess over what's happening around the
world. I'm not even very good at
dealing what's happening upstairs in my kids bedroom and
released from having to solve and to fix the world, he said.
But instead speaking the truth and love, we are to grow up in
all aspects into Him who is the head, that is Christ, from whom
the whole body being fitted and held together by what every
joint supplies according to the proper working of each
individual part, causes the growth of the body for the
building up of itself in love. I want to talk real quick about
a word that's going to show up in a couple of chapters and that
is the word head. OK, so the word head is the
Greek word kefali, right? So it's going to show up in our
conversation about marriage and we'll unpack that at that point,
but let's just see what it looks like.
I want to tell you some literary background, right?
So what 1 of this was written in ancient Greek, 1st century
Greek. So Paul would have written words
according to the custom and the language that they were used at
the time. And so as you read and you read
some literary criticism, what people have read, lots of
ancient Greek works says in the Greek language there is no usage
of the word kefley to express authority.
It is always in the Greek used to express to mean source.
Like if you go to land a park right before you go to Panther
Canyon, down there on the left it's the headwaters of the Komal
River. It's the source of where and as
we look in here, what Paul has in this passage, it doesn't.
I'm not, you can't always apply everything to every single
passage. But in this passage, clearly
where it talks about Jesus as the head, it's talking about the
source. And so we are to grow up into
him who is the head, who the whole body is being fitted and
held together. We have this picture of the head
and everything else coming and flowing out of that.
In the Hebrew, Paul is a Jewish guy, Paul in the Hebrew, it
sometimes can mean that. It can mean authority.
So when we get to that passage, we're going to unpack that.
But for right now, the idea is everything that we are and
everything that we have flows out from him.
And that's why this matters, because this maturity which
comes from speaking the truth and love, which comes from being
in our place, which comes from walking in grace, right, that
brings us that kind of maturity, brings us the stability that we
need. We don't anymore need our
addictions. They don't leave.
And once we get free from the addictions, we're free from all
the condemnation, from all the grace, from from all the the
shame. And what happens is we get to
steadily progress and. Grow in grace because we know
that we are loved and that this is a place to get healthy.
We find our purpose in him, in this body where grace comes.
We know that every pain and every pride is able to help
others experience grace as we express it, as we walk in that.
Now, I do want to say, if you're someone who's winning at life
down here, this may not be good news for you.
If you're winning and you're at the top of the food chain and
the top of the ladder and you've got more and you don't ever have
to order, this isn't good. This is like Nicodemus, right?
And Jesus told Nicodemus, you got to be born again.
Nicodemus didn't want to be born again.
He's like, thanks, I'm doing just fine.
Unfortunately, this is the thing.
If we want to live by grace, by what is given to us freely, we
may have to let go of what we can force and what we can do
ourselves. And maturity is about emotional
and spiritual growth and health. Because you're in an environment
of truth and love, you get to both receive it but also give
it. So at the end of this first part
of the second-half of the book of Ephesians, Paul gives us a
summary of our mission as the church and your mission as a
follower. Are you ready?
Walk in unity by stewarding grace or the maturity in Jesus?
Will you pray with me, Jesus? Help us to walk in unity.
Help us to consider one another more highly than ourselves.
Help us to think less of ourselves and more of you and
more of others. I pray that you would help us in
our groups to understand and find out these roles and these
purposes and these missions. And I pray that we would be
equipped to grow up into you and Jesus.
I pray that we as your church, as we think about moving, as we
think about building buildings and new people coming in, Lord,
they don't just need a place to go, they need a place to belong.
They need your body. So I pray, Father, that you
would prepare us for those that aren't here yet, that we
wouldn't just build a physical structure a mile down the road,
but that You would be building your temple in us here.
Jesus, we ask these things in your name and for your glory.
Amen. Thank you for joining us today.
River City Church is all about experiencing and expressing
God's love in our lives and community, and we hope that
you've been able to experience that today.
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May the Lord bless and keep you in all grace and peace.