Exciting time for our family to be here.
My wife and children are here and I
know Lou and Margaret Clarkson are very glad
to see that because the times I've had
up at Central Gospel Chapel in the last
couple years that I've never been able to
take my wife or children except for one
son this summer and they say, you sure
you're married?
Yeah, I really am married and so I
make sure that Lou had opportunity to meet
my wife.
I'm not sure Margaret's met my wife yet
and I know where she is now.
She left again.
But anyway, we're very glad to be here
and I also appreciate the fact that some
of you are roughing it here this week
and you're actually living in those cabins.
And I know there is a spiritual principle
that when the person who is ministering the
Word of God ought to set an example
for people that are going through things like
that and so I don't know what they
did to me.
But we are staying in this place called
The Inn over there and it's air-conditioned,
got our own private shower with hot and
cold running water and no chemical facilities whatsoever
and two double beds and my daughter's there
with us and if anybody needs a place
for a nap, it goes cheap.
There's only one question I have about this
room.
I checked in there, they said, now who's
paying for this room?
And I said, uh, I don't know.
They said, does McDowell pay for this?
I don't know.
I'll check with them later on.
So if anybody wants room 146, it might
be available to them.
But let me tell you something else about
this camp that is very special.
I can remember back when I first was
dating my wife and she told me about
an experience that she had.
I found out that some things about her
that I really had to deal with.
That when she was about 12 years old,
she came to Mid-South.
And I won't tell you how old she
is, but that's about 26 years ago, five
or four.
And she was here with her mother and
brother and sister and some terrible things happened.
She met a guy by the name of
George McKay, who is the son of one
of the men here, and they went out
someplace here.
You were 16.
Okay.
2016.
And she was kissed for the very first
time here at Mid-South Bible Conference.
So I've always wanted to find out what
this place was like.
I've been checking up on the counselors over
here because I got two of my boys
over there and in the lab.
You watched them.
And second thing about it was that somehow
through the process of things, my wife's brother
got in a little bit of trouble, who
then in turn got his mother in trouble,
who then in turn got them all kicked
out of camp.
I don't know exactly how that worked.
I think it was Hal Green's fault actually.
So you see that we bring a long
heritage here back to Mid-South Bible Conference.
And so our experience here, we're looking forward
to it.
And I do have two boys here and
I have two daughters.
They're over there.
They're making up the 72 on the other
side of the lake.
And I just found out I'm looking at
there's three lakes.
I'm not sure which side of what lake
they're on the other side of, but they're
here in Mid-South.
And by the way, I don't mind going
in the nurseries.
My wife puts me there regularly, putting our
children to sleep, so I don't mind.
So I'm not worried about any curfews.
But we're excited to be here.
I'd like you to turn with me in
your Bibles, please.
We're going to be going through kind of
a series.
And what I would really, I really want
to do this week is to encourage you
in the faith and to encourage you in
the Word of God so that by the
grace of God, when we go home next
Saturday morning, that we will have been built
up in the faith.
Now, if I don't do that, Ernest Woodhouse
will.
So I'm looking forward to it.
And the reason I accept invitations like this
to come to conferences is I hope that
you're willing to endure me so I can
have the privilege of listening to the other
speaker with you.
And I look forward to hearing our brother
Woodhouse.
And I've never met the man, but we've
had some saints in our assembly that's been
under his ministry.
And I'm looking forward to it.
And I really am praying that he does
make it in tonight at 8 o'clock.
It's going to be a long week for
Eddie Schwartz and John Thielen and Lou Clarkson
and Hal Green and Dan Green.
And the only thing I regret about this
conference is I've not had a chance to
see that skit last year that Matt and
Dan and Rod and Eddie Jr. put on.
You remember it?
How many of you saw it?
Oh, I would have loved it.
Did anybody videotape that?
Well, Ephesians chapter four, what we're going to
be doing is we're going to be studying
through Ephesians chapter four, five and up to
verse nine of chapter six, Lord willing.
And so what we'd like to do is
study the first 16 verses of Ephesians chapter
four this evening.
Let's read this together.
I'll read it.
You listen together with me.
I knew I said that wrong.
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech
you that ye walk worthy of the vocation
wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and
meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in
love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the
spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body and one spirit, even
as ye are called in one hope of
your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and father of all who is
above all and through all and in you
all.
But unto every one of us is given
grace according to the measure of the gift
of Christ.
Wherefore, he saith, when he ascended up on
high, he let captivity captive and gave gifts
unto men.
Now that he ascended, what is it but
that he also descended first into the lower
parts of the earth?
He that descended is the same also that
ascended up far above all heavens, that he
might fill all things.
And he gave some apostles and some prophets
and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers
for the perfecting of the saints, for the
work of the ministry, for the edifying of
the body of Christ.
Till we all come in the unity of
the faith and of the knowledge of the
Son of God unto a perfect man, unto
the measure of the stature of the fullness
of Christ, that we henceforth be no more
children tossed to and fro and carried about
with every wind of doctrine by the slight
of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie
in wait to deceive, but speaking the truth
in love, may grow up into him in
all things, which is ahead even Christ, from
whom the whole body fitly joined together and
compacted by that which every joint supplies according
to the effectual working in the measure of
every part, make an increase of the body
unto the edifying of itself in love."
And if you read verse 16 very quickly,
it'll get you so jumbled up, you'll just
have a hard time keeping along with verse
16.
And obviously in trying to deal with this
passage in the word of God, we're not
going to be able to deal with the
whole thing.
But I like to break it down into
three composite parts and visualize it this way.
Now we have five children.
I've had the experience of watching each of
these five children in various stages of growth.
I've got one son who's one month and
three days away from getting his driver's license,
he thinks.
No, he probably, well, I don't know, there's
that family crisis coming up here, I can
tell.
But anyway, in watching all of my children
growing up, you watch that they start off
in a stage where they're a baby.
They cry for food, they cry because they
want to go sleep, they cry because they
want to be held, and various things like
that.
But it's one body, it's there, and that's
all there is to it.
And there's not much coordination, there's not much
function, the hand flops around, and every once
in a while they find a thumb and
it actually pokes in.
But there's not much coordination in the effort.
But as the child grows and he begins
maturing a little bit, he finds out that
there are different parts to his body.
That this hand, you know, you sit there
and watch him playing with his hand, you
see that there's different things, and he'll grab
his hands and they start learning different things,
and they'll grab the foot and they'll lift
up the foot and start sucking on the
big toe.
Of course, the older you get, the harder
that becomes, right?
And so then they start learning how to
coordinate those efforts, that they can start doing
things together.
They can get that hand and grab that
bottle or whatever they're going to get, and
they can use that hand.
And as they grow and develop this one
body that's got different parts to it, and
as it coordinates, it's able to do more
and more and more things.
It becomes more effective in what's going to
happen.
And this is the illustration that the Apostle
Paul is using here in Ephesians chapter 4,
that there's one body that has diversity, and
this diversity is meant for edification, for strengthening.
Now, he starts off this passage, you notice,
in verse 1 with a therefore.
And of course, whenever you see a therefore,
I'm sure you've heard it, you ask what
it's there for.
And it's a conclusion, it's inferences that are
being drawn from the first three chapters.
And I wish we could spend the time
in the first three chapters.
I know one man, in speaking through the
book of Ephesians, spent five years on the
first three chapters of the book of Ephesians.
There's a host of deep, doctrinal, rich material
in those first three chapters.
But the first three chapters can be boiled
down to two words, in Christ, talking about
our position, who we are, that you've gotten
saved, you've believed in the Lord Jesus Christ
as your Savior, and the Spirit of God
has joined you to that body, and all
these rich things that we have because of
that.
Now, those three chapters are basically relating our
position in Christ and all these various things.
Then he comes up to chapter 4, and
he says, therefore, therefore, on the basis of
that, I want this to happen as a
conclusion, as an outgrowth of all this.
So it says, I therefore, the prisoner of
the Lord, beseech you.
And you kind of get the idea of
the Apostle Paul, and he's writing this letter
a little bit toward the end of his
life.
Maybe he might live another 10, 12 years
after this.
And he's writing to this church in Ephesus,
in Asia Minor, and he writes them, and
he's begging them.
Have you ever gotten to a place where
you see somebody who's in a particular stage
of growth?
It might be your children.
It might be a younger believer in the
Lord.
And you get to a place, and you
just come up to them, and with maybe
tears in your eyes, and with great urgency
in your voice, you say, I beg of
you.
And that's the idea behind what the Apostle
Paul is saying.
He's laid the doctrinal foundation, but it's not
just to be something in their mind.
It's not just to be something that they
can bat around between their ears and have
absolutely no effect in their life.
He says, as a result of that, I
beg of you to walk worthy of the
Lord.
And this walk worthy of the Lord, he
says, this word worthy is the same kind
of thing that you might ask, that you
might come up to one of these green
hats out at the canteen, and you ask,
what is it worth?
And they say, it is worth to us
$350.
And you take a look at your wallet,
and you have to decide whether or not
it is worth $350 to you to buy
that hat.
So what we're saying is that there's an
agreement made between the seller and the buyer
that there's an exchange of something that we
say is of equal value.
You say the hat's of certain value, and
they say the money's of a certain value.
And if we're willing to exchange that, then
that is a worthy sale.
Now what he's saying here is, when he
wants us to walk worthy, he's saying, based
on all of these things that we are
in Christ, that there is to be a
corresponding lifestyle, a lifestyle that is worthy of
being in Christ, that is of to be
equal value.
And he begs them to walk, to have
a lifestyle that is worthy of the vocation
wherewith ye are called.
And then he goes on to say in
verse 2, and we'll just take a look
up through verse 3 and then do a
little bit of jumping in this passage, with
all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering forbearing
one another in love, endeavoring to keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace.
Now this word lowliness is used by the
ancients when they're talking about the Nile River.
And we're just up at Willowbrook Bible Camp
a couple weeks ago, and they had a
nice rain.
I guess that was a Wednesday night or
a Thursday night, something like that.
And ordinarily the Willowbrook Bible Camp River is
the kind of thing you can walk through
and may not get all of your shoes
wet.
It's not very much.
But we had this big rain, and all
of a sudden it came all the way
up when Islas Banks came over, washed out
half the campfire, came up and took away
about four out of six rows in the
campfire circle.
And it really went up.
But as soon as that river went back
up, you know, it was puffed up.
It was lifted up.
It started settling back down, and it got
back into this lowly riverbed.
And that's what this word lowliness means.
Lowliness is like running low through the river.
The Nile River might be low, and it's
running lowly.
It's not something that a person comes up
and does like Uriah Heep and David Copperfield,
where it says, I'm a humble, humble person,
and going around and spreading their lowliness.
But it's a person who in the body
of Christ recognizes who they are and who
the Lord Jesus Christ is.
Now, the basis for oneness within the body
of Christ and the experience of that oneness
that we have in Christ, first of all,
is to recognize who Jesus is, and then
secondly, to recognize who we are, and then
see that there's a big difference between those
two.
That the Lord Jesus Christ, being the King
of kings and Lord of lords, very God
of very God, as the Creed says, and
we see ourselves even as the Apostle Paul,
as he started off in one of his
epistles, he starts off calling himself the least
of all the apostles.
But you know, the apostles were the top
group.
And a little bit later on in the
Apostle Paul's experience, he called himself the least
of all the saints.
But least of saints are the in-group,
and the sinners are the out-group.
But then later on in the Apostle Paul's
life, when he's writing to Timothy, he called
himself the chief of sinners.
So that there was a developing loneliness within
the mind of the Apostle Paul.
When we recognize who we are in relationship
to the Lord, then that has an effect
on how we relate to other people, doesn't
it?
We can't come around and say, hey, you
know, I'm number one.
You know, I coached a basketball team.
And what these kids always wanted to be
able to do is to have the winning
bucket inside that basket, and they'd be able
to wave that finger up there like that.
We're number one!
You know, do the Muhammad Ali thing.
We're the greatest!
But there's no place for that in the
body of Christ.
There's withal lowliness, and with meekness, and that
is like Moses.
And this is a person who does not
assume personal rights.
Long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, and
then notice verse three.
Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace.
You know, one of the things that when
doing some studies on the cult, if you
know a number of the cults started, what
happened is that the person who was responsible
for starting those cults saw the division within
the body of Christ.
They took a look and they see, you
know, you all heard that, just brethren.
We got an IRS agent who goes to
our chapel, and I understand that we're something
like number six or number seven.
Now, or Baptist, and not just one kind
of Baptist.
You can be Southern, or General, or General
Conference, or General American, regular Baptist.
I found another one on the way here,
Orthodox Baptist.
I've never seen one of those before, or
Presbyterian, or Methodist.
And you see all these divisions within the
body of Christ, and if people see that
and say, wow, look at that.
I've spoken at a Jewish forum, and they
take a look at the body of Christ,
and they say, well look at all of
these branches of Christianity.
You know, how is it that there's one
body in Christ?
And they see this becomes a source of
discouragement to them.
And you know, I really grieve over that.
I really do.
I grieve over the fact that this oneness
that we have in our position in Christ
is not something that we demonstrate by our
practice.
That our practice is not worthy of our
position.
It ought to be.
And he's saying here that we're to endeavor
to keep the unity of the Spirit.
You get the idea there?
That the oneness of the Spirit of God
in a local assembly, or within the body
of believers, is something that requires work from
the believers.
It's not just something just because we show
up at Mid-South Bible Conference that it
automatically happens.
You know, it's going to be a chemical
reaction, and we're going to have harmony.
He says no, that's not the way it
happens.
That there is to be an endeavoring.
It's a hard work where oneness of the
Spirit is produced.
Now, the Spirit of God is illustrated in
the baptism of Jesus by a dove.
Now, I don't know much about doves, but
this much I know.
That if you get close to a dove,
and you come up and you clap your
hands, what's the dove going to do?
It's gone, right?
I mean, if you're out quail hunting, which
is related to doves, you don't go squashing
the bugs, right?
You go through it quietly, because loud noises,
loud clatter, arguments, discussion, and all the different
things, what's going to happen to those birds
that you're hunting?
They're going to take off.
They're going to leave, and you're not going
to see it.
And I think that's kind of maybe an
illustration that we have here, that the unity
of the Spirit is something that we work
hard to keep, to protect, to guard.
And if we don't, then we're going to
find out that the oneness of the Holy
Spirit is going to be something that leads
very readily, very rapidly.
So, he's encouraging, he's begging them to keep
the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace.
And then he talks about the sevenfold unity.
One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord,
one faith, one baptism, and one God and
Father of all.
But then he goes on to talk and
say, okay, now there's one body.
Like, we're born into this body.
But then he goes on to say there's
diversity in this body.
This body is different.
Now, you take a look out here, and
our brother Hurley Dixon here, and I've never
heard our brother sing before.
Now, there's two verses in the Bible.
One says we sing a new song unto
the Lord.
And the other one is we make a
joyful noise unto the Lord.
Some people have been gifted by God to
sing a new song.
That's not my gift.
Some of us make a joyful noise unto
the Lord.
And those of you who can sing new
songs, would you sing louder, please?
I'll try not to drown anybody out with
a joyful noise.
But there's diversity within the body.
Just take a look at all the people
out here.
Man, there's a tremendous variety of people out
here.
And that is part of the body.
And he talks about that.
That every one of us is given grace
according to the measure of the gift of
Christ.
There's diversity.
There's differences within this body.
And he talks about these various gifts.
But what I'd like to go on is
to the very end here, beginning at verse
12, that this one body which has diversity,
and this diversity, by the way, that there
is no importance laid on one part of
that body in relationship to the other.
But now let's take a look, beginning at
verse 12, that this unity which exists in
diversity is to produce what?
The perfecting of the saints for the work
of the ministry, for the edifying of the
body of Christ.
That this is to produce perfection.
That it is to produce a perfecting of
the body.
Now, it's so easy, isn't it?
Now, I am not a fan, by the
way, of these positive preaching type preachers.
They're always talking positive.
And they won't talk about sin.
They won't talk about depravity.
They won't talk about judgment.
They won't talk about the holiness of God
and things like that.
Yet, you know, there is a reality that
within the body of Christ that, in a
sense, understand the terminology in which I'm thinking.
That to become a member of our club,
what do you have to do?
You have to admit that you're totally depraved.
You're lost.
You're going to hell.
And there's absolutely no hope in your life.
And that's what you've got to admit.
You've got to admit that you're a sinner
to become part of the body of Christ.
Now that you've become a part of the
body of Christ, what do we do so
often?
We keep reminding people how depraved, how sinful,
how bad, how wicked they are in their
behavior.
And yet, what we need so desperately in
the body of Christ is the building up,
the perfecting, the edifying in the body, the
strengthening of it.
Rather than coming, you know, it's very easy
for people to go out to Ruby Mountain
out in Colorado Springs, west of Colorado Springs.
And you go out there, and you get
your hammer and your little chisel, and you
work on it, and you chip away at
it.
And you try to look for these little
garnet stones.
But the only way to that mountain, everybody
goes to that mountain.
And what do they try to do?
They take their hammer, they take their chisel,
and they chip away at it, trying to
get the garnet stones, get the precious jewels
out of it.
And I think that's what we so desperately
don't need within the body of Christ.
What we need, not is the chipping away,
but the building up of one another for
the edifying of the body of Christ, till
we all come in the unity of faith
and of the knowledge of the Son of
God unto a perfect man, unto the measure
of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
Now, one other statement I'd like you to
take a look at is in verse 15.
But speaking the truth in love may grow
up into him in all things which is
ahead, even Christ.
Now, what we're going to be looking at
as we develop this theme through the book
of Ephesians is that this one body, which
exists in diversity, is going to produce maturity
in the body.
It is going to produce Christlikeness.
It is going to produce perfection.
It is going to be an edified body.
So what happens here is, now, if you
take a course in physical therapy or take
a course in physical education, that you don't
start off children by teaching them how to
golf, do you?
If you want to teach a child a
sport is you give them a nice great
big beach ball, right?
And a nice soft beach ball or a
soft blow-up ball, and you throw that
to the child and the child, and they
grab it like this, and it hits their
hands, it's flying off there.
You pick up that beach ball and you
throw it back to them again.
And pretty soon, I was having fun the
other day with my little three-year-old.
She had a little wiffle ball, a little
bit harder than a beach ball.
I got back about six feet and I
threw it to her, and of course I
made her put her arms like this, and
right there in her arms, and it hits
her arms and she gets it.
And she's so happy when she's able to
grab that ball.
But now I'm getting to a place where
I've got some boys, I can get up
that ball, I can take that, I can
throw it as hard as I can and
throw it to them, and man, they catch
that ball and tag the guy out at
third or whatever they want to do, and
they throw it back to me and I've
got a duck.
Because they have gone to a place where
they have outfitted.
By the way, I do want to be
on a softball team.
I do want to, might be backstop, but
I want to be on a team.
But, you know, there is a development that
is, as there is growth in this body,
as the body is maturing, it becomes more
able to accomplish more things, that this body
is stronger, and this body has got more
coordination, this body has got more skill and
more development within it.
And so what is happening here, as this
one body is being built up, there is
a development, and that development is making us
more like the Lord Jesus Christ, because He
says, unto a perfect man, that you may
grow up into, or unto Him.
Now that word perfect is the same word
that is used back by the Lord Jesus
Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.
He says, Be ye therefore perfect as your
Heavenly Father, or as your Father in Heaven
is perfect.
It's a standard of maturity.
It's a goal by which we are to
measure ourselves.
And so we see that the goal is,
yes, maybe we started off as young believers.
Maybe we started off as infants.
But as this body develops, what happens?
It begins reflecting the maturity of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
As this one body, with all of the
functions of it, functioning together and the diversity
of it, what it produces is a perfect
man.
Now there is a place where this perfect
man is an individual, but that's not what
Paul is talking about here in the book
of Ephesians.
The book of Ephesians doesn't so much look
at the individual as the individual in relationship
to a group.
That there is a place where we as
individuals, like in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, are
to be perfect or mature, as he talks
about in chapter 2 verse 6 of 1
Corinthians.
But there's a place where these believers come
together and, as a group of believers, reflect
the perfection of God Himself.
There is a maturity.
There's an edification within that body.
And the perfecting of the saints unto this
perfect man, unto the stature of the fullness
of Christ, the growing up into him in
all things, that the standard by which he
is wanting us to be is a standard
of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Now, having said all that, and given that
as a goal here in the first 16
verses of the book of Ephesians, what he's
going to go on to do from there
is, he's going to begin discussing specific areas
and how we are to relate to that.
In fact, if we look at the end
of chapter 4, we're going to see, and
what I'd like you to study for tomorrow,
if you have a little bit of time
to read, is read chapters 4 verses 17
down through verse 24.
He's going to talk about some principles on
which this is to go.
But he goes on and he talks about
how we're to do this with our tongue,
how we're to do this within our family,
how we're to do this in the job
market, this principle of unity, diversity, and edification,
that this stature of the fullness of Christ,
that we might all, individually but as a
group, reflect the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that's my goal, is that as we
leave Mid-South Bible Conference, that the Spirit
of God will have done a work in
our lives so that the ranger, the campers
down there in their tents, or whatever, might
see something that is being accomplished.
We are, I assume, all believers.
All believers?
Maybe not.
And if that's not true, we trust that
that would change by the end of this
week.
But believers that are all different, and all
different, together ministering to produce Christ-likeness in
our group.
Christ-likeness as individuals, but Christ-likeness that
when people, as the Apostle Paul said in
1 Corinthians 14, when an unbeliever would come
in and see the working of the Spirit
of God in their midst, they would fall
down and say, God is in you of
a truth.
Let's close in prayer.
Father, thank you for this opportunity that we
have of being here this week.
I know some people have driven a long
way to be here today, and they're tired.
I pray, Father, that you would give them
a good night's rest tonight.
But Father, we look forward to having Jesus
Christ be reflected in our midst, that he
would be glorified, that he would be honored.
And Father, I pray that we would encourage
one another in our growth, that this oneness
that we have in position will be one
in our practice, and that though different, we
will seek to edify one another to be
more like the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we pray this in his name.
Amen.