Okay. I want to get my subject
there from verse 15. But speaking the truth in love
may grow up unto him in all things, which is the head, Christ. You know, I've been preaching
a long time. And I've got boxes and boxes
full of outlines back there. But one thing that always concerns
me is how I preach. You know, I don't want to be
mean, don't want to be harsh, don't want to be critical. And
I'm concerned about how I speak the truth. You know, in preaching
is communicating. It's communicating by words. We communicate, and when I'm
preaching, I hope I'm communicating with you. And we communicate
back and forth with one another. And that's what you hope that's
being made. And when our Lord Jesus Christ
was the Word that was made flesh, by that Word God communicated
with the world, with His elect. And He still communicates with
us by His Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. The only way God can
be made known is through the Word, the living Word, and the
written Word. So the Apostle tells us here
to speak the truth in love. And what he means for us is to
hold the truth, maintain the truth, live the truth, living
the truth, and speaking the truth, but his emphasis here is in love. His emphasis is in love. That's
why he told Titus, he said, adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. Make it look wonderful. Dress
it up. You ladies, and we all like to,
you know, we adorn ourselves. He said, well, you do that with
the doctrine of Christ. You do that with the doctrine
of the gospel. Do that with the grace of God,
adorn it. When people see you, that they
understand there's something different. There's something
different about you. Now, we don't want to hold or
speak the truth or dispense the truth in a deceitful way. No, we don't want to do that.
We don't want to use the word in anger. Use our liberty as
a cloak of maliciousness. Find something that somebody
we don't like or somebody that said something that's offended
us or something and then use the pulpit as a cloak for us
to get even with them or to tell them off or to deal with them.
I learned years and years ago that You can't preach to people
who are not here. So don't be preaching to people
who are not here because they're not going to hear you. And you
know where there's doctrinal orthodoxy and there's plenty
of that around. Plenty of that around. But doctrinal orthodoxy
without love is just cold and it's lifeless like a dead body.
And He's told in us here, the Apostle is, that sound teaching
should be held in, handled in, and lived in a loving, gracious
spirit. And His reason is in that verse
that we just speak in the truth in love. The reason being that
we may grow up into Him. We all know what it's like to
grow up. But He's not just talking about growing up. He's talking
about growing up in all things which is the head, which is Christ.
Growing up in Christ. Maturing in Christ. Growing up
into Him. He's the head. And you can't
have a body and function without a head. And so He's telling us
how this body functions. It's through the head and speaking
the truth that we all may grow up into Him. Become full age
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that we may grow up into
Him in love, faith, knowledge, patience, gentleness, goodness,
meekness, perseverance, and grow up into the head, which is Christ. That means give Him all the glory
and grow up. That's what we want to do. We
don't want to just grow up. We want to grow up in Christ.
We want to grow up and mature in Christ. And I pray the Holy
Spirit will help me to show us in these scriptures why we speak
the truth in love. Let's start here in verse 1,
go down through these verses, and why we speak the truth in
love. He says, I therefore am the prisoner of the Lord. Now
he's in jail, he's in prison, he's in a roaming prison. But
he says, I'm not the prisoner of Rome, I'm the prisoner of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And I beseech you that you walk
worthy of the vocation wherewith you're called. And that word
vocation means your profession. That word vocation means your
profession. I beseech you, you walk worthy
of your profession. You know, they call this tech
now, but it used to be called vocational school. And people
went there to get a vocation, you know, to get a job, to learn
a trade. And that's what he's talking
about here. Our profession is Christ. And you walk worthy of
that profession. Walk worthy of that profession
that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we're one in
Christ. We're one in Christ. And do it
with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing
one another. And here's this word again, love.
You all have been putting up with me and forbearing with me
for many, many a year. And I'm thankful for it. You have to forbear with me.
And then he says not only that, but endeavoring to keep the unity
of the Spirit. It's easy for the unity of the
Spirit to be destroyed. And so he said endeavor to do
it. So it's a labor. It's an endeavor. You know when
somebody says or does something, just keep your mouth shut. Pray
for them. Give thanks for them. and endeavoring to keep the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace. If you're peaceful, and
you have peace, then you promote peace. And then look what he
says, but here's why we speak the truth in love, because we're
all one in Christ. One in Christ. There's one body. One body. And that body is the
body of Christ. He's the head of this body. And
we maintain and hold and live and speak the truth in Him to
glorify our head and to magnify our head and to bring honor to
our head. You know it's from Him we have, look over here in
Colossians. Philippians next and Colossians right after that.
Look here in Colossians chapter 3. You know Christ is our life. If we have one, there's only
one body. Christ is the head of that body. So there's only
one. There's not two or three bodies.
One body. And look what he said here in
verse 3. Colossians 3. Where you are dead. You're dead to sin. You're dead
to the world. You're dead to your own self. And you understand that you died.
Why are you dead? Because you died with Christ.
And your life is hid with Christ in God. Now the life we have
is here with Christ in God. We're in Christ. Our life. Christ is our life. Not the most
important thing in our life. Not the most serious thing in
our lives. But He is our life. There is
no life apart from Him. When Christ, our life, shall
appear, then when He comes, we're going to appear with Him. And
when He goes to glory and appears in glory, we're going to appear
in glory with Him. Because He's our life. There's
only one body. And Christ is our life. And then
He says, not only is there one body, but back over here in our
text, look what He says. And notice how this is capitalized.
One Spirit. One Holy Spirit. One Spirit of
God. And this is so easy to understand.
I've mentioned this before. Everything here is one, one,
one. It's hard to be mixed up and
be confused when your own building was one. Ain't that right? It's impossible to be confused.
Now let me show you the Spirit that quickens us. Now look over
in 1 Corinthians, if you will, in chapter 12 and verse 13. I
want you to see a couple things over here. You know, one spirit,
one body, one spirit. One spirit called us, one spirit
quickened us. One spirit brought us the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. One spirit taught us of Christ. One spirit opened the scriptures
to our understanding. In fact, the scriptures tells
us that the spirit helps our infirmities. And look what he
says here in 1 Corinthians 1 chapter 12 and verse 3. First of all,
verse 3. He said, I want you to understand
this, brethren, when God gives you a gift, and I want you to
understand this, and I don't want you to be mistook about
this, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God, by the Holy
Spirit of God, calleth Jesus accursed. He cannot say anything
wrong against Christ. And he goes on to say that no
man can say that Jesus is the Lord. King of kings and Lord
of lords, that He's the same one as God in the Old Testament.
Nobody can call Jesus the Lord but by the Holy Ghost. Nobody
will acknowledge that Christ is Lord but by the Holy Ghost.
You don't have to put it on a sign. You don't have to put it on your
bumper sticker. You don't have to tell anybody that Christ is
Lord. And He's your Lord. Because nobody
that knows Christ, if you know Him, you know He's Lord. Preachers
preach for years that you know you can be your Savior, but when
are you going to make Him Lord? You can't be saved without Christ
being your Lord. That's the first thing you know
and understand, that He's the Lord. You're bound to a Lord. You're bound to a King. You're
bound to a Sovereign. Ain't we? Yeah. And I'll tell
you, then look what He says down in verse 13. And we're talking
here again, one, by one spirit, all were all baptized into one
body. Now what does that mean? That
means that the Holy Spirit put us in the body of Christ. We
didn't get in the body of Christ by ourselves. We didn't put ourselves
in the church. We didn't put ourselves in the
body of Christ. The Holy Spirit baptized us,
immersed us, and put us into Christ. Whether we're a Jew or
a Greek, whether we be a slave or a barman or a free man, and
listen to this, we've all been made to drink, drink out of Christ,
drink into one spirit. And so I'll tell you what, and
look back over here again, so this is why we speak the truth
in love, because we're one in Christ, one body, one spirit.
Then look back over here again in Ephesians 4. And then He called
us to one hope of our calling. He called us to the same hope
of our calling. Our hope. All of our hopes the
same. Every single person that's been
saved by the grace of God have one hope. And you know what?
Let me tell you something about hope. Hope always deals with
the resurrection. Always deals with the future.
And you have one hope. He called us to one hope. And
what is that hope? That one of these days, because
Christ justified us, Christ sanctified us, Christ gave us eternal life,
Christ we're gonna have eternal glory, but we have a good hope
that one of these days we're gonna go and be with Him. And
how we got this good hope is through grace. And I tell you
what, it's a hope that you, you know, He shed a blood in our
hearts by the Holy Ghost. He gave us a hope. Now, faith
and hope is two different things. Faith believes the promise, but
hope looks for the future. And I've used this illustration
before, and he called us to this hope. We didn't have a hope until
Christ called us to a hope. But this is where I often say
it. You know, Father's off working a long way off. He calls and
says, I'm going to be home on such and such a date. Well, son
gets up and looks out the window and says, Daddy said he's coming
home on such and such a time. Well, when it gets close to that
time, he believes what his daddy says. We believe what our father
says. But then all of a sudden, one
day, on that day he's supposed to come back, he gets up at the
window and slits out the back, sits on the back of the couch
and looks out the window. What's he doing? He's hoping
to see his daddy. Faith believed he was coming
home, but he got his eyes open when daddy comes home. Oh, there
he is! And that's what the hope we had.
We're looking for that blessed hope to the glorious appearing
of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe the promise.
And I'll tell you, God gave us a good hope. And I'll tell you,
you know what else he said our hope is? It's our hope that anchors
our soul. That anchors that soul. What would you give for your
hope? What would you give for your faith? Has Bill Gates got
enough money for it? Who's got enough money to buy
your hope and buy your faith? You know why you can't let it
go? God gave it to you. And I'll
tell you what a blessed hope, glorious hope it is. We're always
hoping for Christ to come. We're always hoping that one
of these days He's going to call us home. We're always hoping that. And then look, I tell you, we
speak the truth in love because there's one Lord. Look what He
goes on to say in verse 5. One Lord. Just one. Sovereign, immutable. We have one master. One who orders
all things for our good. And that's our Lord. One Lord.
One Lord. There was an old man named Polycarp. He got converted under the Apostle
John's ministry. And you know back in those days
when the Caesars ruled, and that Caesar was a title. And like
the King or Queen of England, it's just a title. And Caesar put up a statue and
said that you know that commanded him to call Caesar Lord. The
old polycorp said, oh, I can't do that. You are, you're gonna
die. He said, I can't do that. He
said, I've only got one Lord. I've only got one master. And
he's never, ever done me any wrong. Never done me any wrong. And then how in the world can
I turn around and blaspheme him who saved me? And needless to
say, he died 86 years old and they killed him. Oh my, huh? As Christ, oh, one Lord, one
Lord. Thank God that He is Lord. And
then look what He says down here. And He says, not only one Lord,
but one faith. One faith. Now when He talks
about the faith here, the faith He's talking about is not what
we actually believe as say the five points of Calvinist or whatever.
This is not a creed or a system of doctrine he's talking about,
but our experience of faith. Faith that we've experienced.
What do I mean by that? That we've trusted in the Lord
Jesus Christ. We have one Lord and one faith
that trust in Christ. If you know, how can you tell
your faith is real? Christ is the only object of
it. Huh? Ain't that right? My words had
nothing to do with it. If we don't look to anything
we've said or done or experienced anywhere else, our experience
is that we believe Christ. Our faith is that we trust Christ,
we believe Christ. That's why the scriptures tells
us, I know whom, I know whom I have believed. And everybody's
quick to tell you what they believe, but oh my, from now on anybody
ask you what you believe, say, I believe him. Well, who's he? The Lord just told us, I believe
him. Don't go into a whole dissertation, you know, where man's depraved
and limited in talking. No, no. Just tell them, I know
whom my heart believes. I believe a person. I trust a
person. A person died for me. Faith didn't
die for me. Faith didn't save me. Faith never
put away my sins. Christ did that. And God in His
sovereign mercy opened my heart to believe Him. And trust Him. I put all my eggs in one basket. There's no one in this world
of trust but Him. And that's what He's talking
about. Our experience of faith. Then He says one baptism. There
is one body, one spirit, one hope of calling, one Lord, one
faith, one baptism. Now this baptism, this one baptism
under the gospel, there's only one baptism. Only one. And that's water. I know us over
there, we're baptized, immersed into the body of Christ. That's
the spirit that done that. But there's only one Lord that
we obey. Only one Lord we worship. And
one baptism, that's by water. And every believer, one who believes
and experience, that unites them to faith by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you know how they always in the New Testament confess their
faith? Baptism. Water baptism. That's, you know,
it's on the ordinance that people confess their faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ by coming to water. and confessing their faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ by baptism. And I know folks, I know folks
that I believe they've been converted, I believe they've done something
for them, but there's people that's so bashful and so backward
and so, that they don't, they found it difficult to come forth
and, you know, I don't ask for anybody to give up and give a
testimony. We don't do that. But if you want to give a testimony
that you've trusted Christ, that you believe Christ, that Christ
is your Lord, just come to me and say, Preacher, fill up the
baptistry. Fill up the baptistry. Fill it
up. I want to confess faith in the
Lord. I want to confess that Christ is my Savior, my Lord,
my God. I believe He put my sin away. I believe what you've been preaching
for a long time. I finally heard it, I finally
understand it. And I want to confess my faith
in Christ. I want to confess my faith. I
want to confess my faith. And then I tell you what, this
one baptism, I can't stress this enough. You know that I had a false profession for
years. I really did. I didn't know it was false until
God taught me the gospel. Till Christ revealed Christ.
God revealed Christ to me. What'd you do? I got baptized. The baptism I had before that
was not real. Couldn't possibly be real. So what do you do? You confess
Christ in the way, the only way the Scriptures tells us to. Scott
Richardson, we went down here to Law Creek one time, down here
in the meeting. He buried me. Why'd he bury me? Because I was dead. Dead to sin. Raised me up to newness of life,
where? In Christ. Ain't that right? So I'll tell you if God blesses
you and you feel like God's done something for you, come and you
tell me that. And then look what he said down
here in verse 6. There's one God and Father of
all. One true living God. He's the source of all of our
spiritual unity. He's the source of us becoming
believers. He is the source from which the
Lord Jesus Christ came. He's the Father of all. He's
the Father of all believers. All believers. I want you to
look with me over here in 1 Corinthians 8. I want you to see something
over here. Let's look at this together. 1 Corinthians 8. Let's learn something here if
we can. You know, He's the Father of
all. Now, He's not the Father of the whole human race. That's
a fact. No, no. He's Father of Jew or
Gentile, male or female. He's the Father of all believers.
All of God's elect. All for whom Christ died. He's
the Father of all. He's the One who begat us with
the Word of Truth. And look what He says here in
verse 5. 1 Corinthians 8, 5. For though there be that are
called gods, see how that's small, whether in heaven or in earth,
as there be gods many and lords many, but to us, one God, to
us, who's us? Us? Us? How many us's are in here? Us? Us, one God, the Father of whom
are all things. And we are in Him and one Lord
Jesus Christ by whom are all things. And we buy Him, we believe
by Him, we're saved by Him. And so He's the Father of all.
Everybody's got gods. Oh, there's all kinds of gods.
They're everywhere. But our Lord Jesus Christ and
God, He's above all. God's above all. And He's in all, He's in all
His people. And He controls and sustains
all things. And then God indwells us by the
Holy Spirit. And then look what He says down
here in verse 4. Excuse me, verse 7. I'm sorry, verse 7. But unto
every one of us, there's us again, Unto every one of us is given
grace. Oh my. Every one of us that has
the one Father, the one Lord, the one faith, the one baptism. Unto us grace is given. You know,
grace is a gift. We don't merit it. We never earned
it. We certainly didn't deserve it.
People say all the time, how are you doing? Well, I'm getting
better. I'm better than I deserve. But listen, there's not been
a day that you ever draw the breath that God didn't give you
something more than you deserved. In fact, you never deserved anything.
None of us ever deserved nothing. If we got what we deserved, what
would happen? What would happen to us if we got what we deserved?
But grace is given. Oh my, and then look what it
says here. According to the measure of the
gift of Christ. What do you think His measure
is? Huh? Oh my, given. How much grace
does He give you? All you need. All you need. And it's given by a measure of
Christ. How do you suppose our Lord's
measure is? You know everybody, all the women
here got measuring cups. Spoons, cups, quarter cups. You know you got all these measuring
things. But listen, Christ measures the grace that he gives us. And
how big do you reckon his measure is? Huh? Oh, He gives us His
measure. And oh, how big you suppose it
is. Now how does He give us these
gifts? He gives us grace. Everything
given to us is given to us according to Christ. Then He goes on to
say, and this is a parenthesis. Wherefore He saith, and He gets
this out of the 68th Psalm. When Christ ascended up on high,
when he went to the cross and went back to glory, he led captivity
captive. Everything that held us captive,
sin, death, hell, Flesh, everything that held us in captivity. Law, justice, truth, righteousness,
everything that held us captive. Christ ascended on high and he
took everything that was against us and he took it captive. He
took death captive. He took sin captive. He took
justice, He took law, He took righteous, He took all these
things that was against us and He let them captive and took
them up to glory. Huh? But now He ascended, He
had to first come down here and descend and do what He did. He
can't give us gifts unless He accomplishes by His death everything
that was against us. And so, oh my, so that's how
come He gives us gifts. And He that descended that came
down here to the Lord. Now listen. Down here to the
earth is Christ came all the way down here. And He that descended
is the same also that ascended up far. He's way above everything
in heaven and everything that's above. And He did it that He
might fulfill all things. Might fulfill all things. So
that's how He gave us gifts. He bought the gifts for us. He
paid for the gifts for us. Now let me just quickly say some
things about these. Here's some of the gifts he gave
to the church. He gave some apostles. There's no apostles since the
apostles are gone. And he gave some prophets. He
gave some of them the ability to be a prophet. And a prophet
is the same thing as a preacher. And some evangelists, people
that travel around preaching. And some pastors. And some teachers,
not everybody can be a pastor. They're not called to it. And
a pastor and a teacher is one and the same. And the reason
he gave these gifts is for the perfecting of the saints. So
that you can grow up for the work of the ministry, for the
edifying, the establishing, the building up of the body of Christ.
And he done all this till we all come. Do we all believe? Do we all rejoice in? Do we all
come? Do we actually all believe exactly
the same thing? And this is in the knowledge
of the Son of God. We come to where we all understand
and believe the Son of God. And then we grow up and He teaches
us and we grow up and we become a full grown man. That's what
He's talking about. and unto the measure of the stature
or the age of the fullness of Christ. And this reason being
that we have no more children. No more children, tossed to and
fro. I had my great-grandchildren this weekend, and my great-granddaughter
was coming over, dropping her off, and had the boys. And the
first thing Dylan Bentley said was, I don't like Riley anymore. The last time I was with her,
she slapped me. So as a child, tossed to and
fro. Riley walked in the house. Oh, Sissy, Sissy, Sissy. I never
saw or forgot just that quick. And as you know, you've seen
kids do that when they're little. I don't like him anymore. I don't
like that one. He said, now, we're not going to be that way.
Not the people in the gospel. We're not going to be that way.
Uh-uh. No, we're not going to be that
way. We're not going to be carried around. Men ain't gonna use the
sleight of men. They're not gonna deceive us.
And they lie in craftiness. And they lie and wait to deceive
us. And oh, listen. He said, I want
you to grow up so you won't be deceived. That you won't be led
astray. That you won't be a child. You've grown up into a perfect
man. Grow up into the knowledge of Christ. Huh? And oh my. And then He said that He might
fulfill all things. That's what He said. Verse 10,
that he might fulfill all things. And those were the things that
he fulfilled for you and me, our Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
why we speak the truth. I hope I speak it in love. I
hope that we have some understanding of the knowledge of Christ. And
I hope that we'll, as we grow up, And we'll continue to grow up
in Christ. But we speak and maintain and hold and live the truth because
we love our Master. We love our Master. We love the
Lord Jesus Christ. You know, whenever a man was
a slave and the Master was going to let him go, had him in bondage
or some way, owed him some money and he kept him. And the Master
said, well, you can go out now. You're free. He said, I don't
want to go out. I love you. They took him to
the door post, and they took it all, and they drilled a hole
in his ear. And that told him that he loved
his master. Oh my. And that's why our Lord Jesus
says, lovest thou me? And then we love his message.
We love the message of grace. Free grace, discriminating grace,
effectual redemption. We love the message of the perseverance
of the saints. And oh, we love our Lord's manner.
manner of dealing with us. Have you wanted anything since
you've trusted Christ? Have you wanted anything? Have
you wanted anything? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want. And we love not only that, but
we love his people. We know we've passed from death
unto life. Why? Because we love the brethren. And we love His Word. His commandments
are not grievous. We love His Word. There's nothing
like His Word. And I hope, and by God's grace,
never ever speak the truth in hatefulness or pride, pride of
race, pride of face because of who I am or where I come from,
or pride of grace because I've got something somebody else don't.
Hope will never speak it in malice or envy, greed or covetousness. And He says to speak the truth
in love, maintaining the truth in love, holding the truth in
love, living the truth in love. And we'll grow up, we'll start
growing up, growing up unto Him in all things. He never told
anybody, you know, even that somebody that's 30 years old
said, boy, you ever going to grow up? You ever going to grow
up? Well, that's what he said. Let's
all grow up. Grow up where? In Christ. Grow
up in the knowledge of Christ. Grow up until we're in the fullness,
the whole congregation, the fullness. Measure Christ and we all grow
up into that fullness of Christ, mature belief. Wouldn't that
be wonderful? Wouldn't that be wonderful? To
grow up into Him? Lord Jesus, we bow our hearts
here before you again. Thank you for your mercy. Thank
you for your grace given us in Christ. And oh, Lord, you gave
a full measure. You measure out to us every day
the grace we need, the grace sufficient, the grace that upholds
us, the grace that enabled us to persevere, the grace that
enabled us to be, believe. Thank you for that grace and
that gift that you give us. Thank you that you're the measure
of it. It's not us that measures grace. You measure it. And so Lord, you give us grace
as we need it. You always have and we believe
you always will. God bless these dear saints and
cause the gospel to find heart and lodging in the hearts and
minds and understanding. We ask these things in Christ
Lord, our Lord Jesus name. Amen. There is a name I love
to hear. I love to sing its praise. It sounds like music in my ear. The sweetest name on earth. Oh, how I love Jesus. Oh, how I love Jesus. Oh, how I love Jesus. Because he first loved me. Amen. Amen. See you tonight,
6 o'clock, God willing.