150 - Where is God Taking Us? [B]

Where is God Taking Us?
Ephesians 4:13–15
Ephesians Lesson #150
May 22, 2022
Dr. Robert L. Dean, Jr.
www.deanbibleministries.org

Opening Prayer

“Father, we’re just thankful that we have the light of Your Word, that is the written Word, but above all the Living Word, the light of the world, to illuminate our thinking to help us to understand reality as You created it, and as it is, and for us to understand who we are honestly and objectively.

“Father, we pray that as we study Your Word today that God the Holy Spirit will help us to understand what it says, what it means, as well as what it means in terms of our own goals and objectives for our lives, and how we are to order our lives in a way that conforms to Your plans and purposes for us. And we pray this in Christ’s name, amen.”

Slide 2

Open your Bibles with me to Ephesians 4. We’re continuing our study in this extraordinarily significant passage, because it teaches us about why we’re here—why I am here as a pastor-teacher—and why you are here as believers in Christ who understand that it doesn’t end with getting saved. That’s only the beginning. It’s that birth process.

We looked at this last time that this birth process begins with regeneration. It then extends. God didn’t just save us so we can all be happy with Him in Heaven. He has a number of purposes, and ultimately, He is taking us somewhere in our spiritual life. And that’s what we’re looking at in Ephesians 4. It is described in terms of maturity, and it is described in terms of being like Christ. And we need to understand that a little more.

Slide 3

So we have looked at these passages and in Ephesians 4:11 we see the beginning of this. The controlling phrase is that first four words: “And He Himself gave.”

Ephesians 4:13–14 flow back to that main clause. That helps us understand how all this fits together, because sometimes you just get lost in these long sentences of the Apostle Paul. I’m going through some long ones as I’m studying ahead in Philippians, and I have to sit down and do various things like diagram the sentence just to structure his flow.

So it’s that He gave these gifted people “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry,” Ephesians 4:12.

But the ultimate end is that “we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God—and the next step is—to a mature man—and then ultimately—to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” We will talk about that phrase a little more this morning, and that’s positive.

The negative is “for the purpose.” He gave these gifted people for the purpose—that’s that first word in Ephesians 4:14, that is, for the purpose “that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.”

The problem is there’s too many believers who are children, and this isn’t a good word for children. There are good words for children. There are words that can literally mean “children” and words that we use for a child literally, but can also be used in an insulting way to somebody who is 25 years old and acting like a child.

When you’re on an airplane and if the flight attendant has a sense of humor, they’ll say, “If you have any children or those who act like children sitting with you, first you put your oxygen mask on yourself and then on them.” We all know that there are people, nobody here I know, but there are people who just don’t grow up very well, and they’re still at 25, or 35, or 85 still children in a bad way. That’s the idea here. It’s a little bit of a pejorative.

Slide 4

We looked at this last time, and we see that at the instant of faith in Christ, every believer is born again. That’s the terminology that is used by Jesus in John 3:3–5. He tells Nicodemus that he won’t see the Kingdom of Heaven unless he is born again.

Titus 3:5 uses the word “regeneration.” We are regenerated, we are made alive again, because we are born spiritually dead but physically alive. So it’s just a semblance of life that we have as unbelievers. We think we have real life, but we don’t, because we’re not attached to the source, which is God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Second, a number of things happen at the instant of salvation. At that point we are immediately, instantly made a new creature in Christ. The old things are passed away and all things are new. That’s 2 Corinthians 5:17.

Third, we have to recognize that this new life isn’t a life of restriction. This is a sad thing about so many Christians who are legalistic and always thinking about what Christians ought not do, should not do in their opinion. So they make it look like the Christian life is about not doing things that appear to be fun.

That is not what the Scripture says at all. Jesus said, “I came to give life—that is, eternal life at the instant of faith in Christ—and to give it abundantly,” so that we can have a rich, meaningful, significant life and understand what that means. That’s from John 10:10.

Then that abundant life in 1 Peter 2:2 is the result of taking in the Word, that we are to desire the unadulterated … That’s an important word there. It’s translated that it’s the pure milk of the Word, but it’s “the unadulterated milk of the Word.”

So often what you get in too many pulpits is that it’s adulterate. It’s mixed with that which is erroneous because, as we looked at an article I shared on Tuesday night, we live in a world that has so infiltrated the church and infiltrated seminaries and infiltrated Christian organizations in ways that you can hear it, you know it, and then you read some report and you just can’t believe it.

It is so bad because people have not focused on the Word. They have added the thinking of the world, and that becomes the controlling factor in how they live their lives. They end up just like the Israelites did at the time of the Judges—their lives really don’t look much different from the lives of the unbelievers around them, and in many cases they look worse.

Jesus says that He comes to give us this abundant life. So how are we to realize that abundant life? I think part of it is to understand what God’s goal is for us. So we’re going to take some time to understand this verse and the significance of this verse, which I began with and ended with last time. But because it is a verse that in the English uses a couple of words that are theological hotspots and they’re confusing and people don’t understand them and don’t apply them well, and they have given rise to some theological systems that are not really reflective of what these words mean.

We covered a lot of this early on in the 17^th lesson of Ephesians, and that was three years ago. This is the 150^th lesson. I didn’t think it would be that long. There’s so much here to grapple with.

Romans 8:29 says, “For whom He knew—I have paraphrased. This is my translation—and marked off …”

In the English it is “for whom He foreknew.” Foreknowledge means to know something ahead of time. It is used that way many times in non-theological contexts in the New Testament. Paul would talk about something that we knew ahead of time, and that’s how it should be understood.

“For whom He—that is, God—knew and marked off …” There is something that is happening here that God is marking off those who believe in Christ. It’s a corporate context, corporate concept. It’s not talking about God individually picking who will be going to Heaven and who will not be going to Heaven.

You get into various other words such as “election.” Election, as we have viewed it many times in the Scripture, has the idea of choice, not in the act of a choice, but the selection of qualified people.

It is used by the tribe of Benjamin, that they had a thousand slingers who could hit (paraphrasing into English) a quarter at 100 yards without missing. They were qualified. They just didn’t get to be a slinger and join that elite group because they looked good or because they could hit the target 1 out of 10 times. They had to be qualified. They were called “choice slingers” because they were excellent, they excelled.

That word is described and translated as “choice” in many contexts. But then all of a sudden when it comes to a theological context, it becomes elected, and you drive into this deterministic view of election that really derives from Augustine in the fifth century A.D. He brought that with his other religious baggage before he was saved. But you really don’t see that described in those deterministic ways prior to him. That’s the end of our history lesson this morning.

So in Romans 8:29, “For whom God knew ahead of time and marked off beforehand He set their future destiny.”

That’s the word “predestined.” People think that God is determining who is going to go to Heaven and who’s not going to go to Heaven, and that’s not what it means.

What it means is that God has set the destiny for everyone who believes in Christ, that God’s goal for their life is to make them like Jesus Christ. God’s goal for your life is to conform your character to the character of Christ. That’s the fruit of the Spirit: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.

So what we have here is God’s desire, His goal, where He’s taking you. He’s working in each of our lives to conform us to the character of Christ.

What happens is you have too many believers who are more concerned about being a success in my job or being a success in school. There is nothing wrong with those things. But when they are more important and they take the place of where God’s taking you, then there’s going to be a conflict, and you’re going to be trying to achieve your goals for this time when you’re on earth and God’s trying to prepare you for eternity.

So that’s the point of Romans 8:29. God has set a destiny for every believer “to be conformed to the image of Christ, that He—that is, Christ—might be the preeminent One among many brethren.”

Slide 6

In Ephesians 4:12, “For the immediate purpose of training all Church Age believers to do the work of service—that’s why these gifted leaders are given—toward the ultimate goal of spiritually strengthening the body of Christ.”

Slide 7

In Ephesians 4:13, “till—this states that long-term goal—we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God ...”

Notice there’s no comma there. Those two things are viewed as things that are coordinated with one another, closely tied to one another.

So it tells us that the unity of the faith, having to do with what we believe, not the act of believing, has to do with who Christ is, understanding who Jesus is, His person and His work. That’s the focal point of this unity, growing to understand that.

“... to a perfect man—a mature man. It’s not perfect in the sense that we often use it today, a flawless person, but a mature man, and then the ultimate goal is—to the measure—or the standard—of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” We will look at that phrase again in a minute.

Contrast (Ephesians 4:14), in order that or for the purpose that. These gifted people are given for the purpose “that we should no longer be children.” So God has given us those gifted men, so “that we will not be unstable children that are led astray by false teaching and false ideas and false thinking.” That’s the guts of this.

Slide 8

So we saw that there’s this sort of a staircase “of the unity of faith,” “to a mature man,” “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Slide 9

That phrase “the fullness of Christ” is using a Greek word PLEROMA, which has to do with the fullness that is all that Christ is “in the fullness of His character.” It should be understood, it’s the fullness that belongs to Christ, His character, so that the mature person has or is developing this character of Jesus Christ. So that’s our goal, to be Christlike.

Slide 10

1 John 3:2 echoes it in John’s language, not Paul’s language. He says, “Beloved, now we are children of God—in a positive sense—and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him.”

We’re not going to reach that end-goal of being perfectly Christlike until we are absent from this body and face-to-face with the Lord. Until then we’re all going to struggle with our sin nature.

We know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him because at the Rapture we will be transformed, we will have our resurrection body. It will be sinless. We will be glorified, and we will no longer have problems with sin. So that’s when we finally achieve the goal “we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

Slide 11

At the end of this section, Paul will say, “but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head.” That is expressing the ultimate goal: Growing up into Christ, who is the head.

This raises the question that we should ask, “Is God’s goal for my life the same as my goal for my life? Or, am I just too consumed with (if you’re younger) trying to get established in marriage, in a house, in a family, finish my education, or (if you’re older) just enjoying retirement or whatever it may be?” Not that that there’s anything wrong with those things. It’s a matter of priority. What is your ultimate goal?

Slide 12

Now I want talk a little bit about understanding Romans 8:29. This is so important because you really have to dig into this.

A little bit more history. Due to the influence of Augustine, who was the Bishop of Hippo in what had been Carthage in North Africa, he came out of a background of a mixed bag of various philosophies and of various religions, such as Neoplatonism and Manichaeism, which were very deterministic. By that I mean in the god, or gods, or fate determined everything. There’s no such thing as genuine free choice, freedom of the will. And so, what’s often happened is that the word that is translated “predestined” is a word that is taken to be in this deterministic sense.

Slide 13

This is the word group. The third one down is the verb HORIZO. The first two are the same and have the prefix PRO, which means before. So according to the little instant detail window you get if you’re using Accordance Bible Software, it opens this little window that gives you the breakdown of the word, and it just simply says it means to decide before hand, to decide ahead of time.

That’s the same kind of an idea that you have in a more extensive evangelical lexicon, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. It says to decide upon something ahead of time or to predestine. If you understand the word “predestine” in its real meaning, you can get a close idea from it that God sets our destiny ahead of time. Our destiny is to be conformed to Christ. I don’t have a problem with that, but that’s not how it’s understood usually, and I’ll show you some examples.

It comes from the root HORIZO, which means to determine or appoint, as you’ll find it in Hebrews 4:7 or APHORIZO, which means to set apart or appoint. Appointing someone to a position is different from predestination in the sense that it is used often in theology. So, let’s see how it’s defined by various sources.

Slide 14

In the Eerdman’s Bible Dictionary, the word “predestination” says the Greek is PROORIZO.

(By the way, the word PROORIZO is an extremely rare word. I think it’s used only five times in the New Testament, and it’s not even attested before the fourth century BC in Greek. And there’s only one classical Greek usage. So you have a very narrow field of usage, and word meaning is determined by usage. You just don’t have a lot of data to build on when a word is only used 1-2-3-4-5-6 times, something like that.)

But in Eerdman’s Bible Dictionary it is “the divine determination of human beings to eternal salvation or eternal damnation.”

Now let me ask a question. I want you to think about it this way. When we talk about salvation, I have frequently put up a chart and we talk about the three stages of salvation.

Stage 1 is justification. It happens the instant we trust in Christ as Savior, and we move from spiritual death to spiritual life. So, Phase 1 is justification, and it determines whether we ultimately end up in Heaven or the Lake of Fire. That’s Phase 1.

Now in this definition, are they defining predestination as something that relates to Phase 1 or something that relates to Phase 2, which is the spiritual life? Spiritual life has to do with how you grow as a believer. Some of us grow well, some do not grow well. We will receive rewards for those who have been obedient, and there will be a loss for those who are disobedient, but not a loss of salvation.

So, in this definition, the divine determination of human beings to eternal salvation or eternal damnation, is that Phase 1 or Phase 2? If you say Phase 2, you’re wrong. That’s Phase 1, very clear.

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that the English word “predestination” is from the Latin word praedestinare, which translates into the Greek as PROORIZO for ordain. They define it as “the Divine decree according to which certain persons are infallibly guided to eternal salvation.”

Are they taking that as Phase 1 or Phase 2? (Answer) Phase 1.

Slide 15

Predestination is defined by another dictionary as “Divine and unalterable determination of the salvation or damnation of human beings even before they are created.”

Phase 1 or Phase 2? (Answer) That’s Phase 1.

Predestination in the next definition is “God’s foreordination of persons to a particular end most commonly to a particular eternal destiny and less commonly to a particular vocation or to a particular task.”

That seems to kind of move things around a little bit. This was in Nelson’s New Christian Dictionary. He doesn’t seem to be as strong on Phase 1, and he tends to focus on the ultimate goal. But he doesn’t define it well, because he talks about a particular eternal destiny, and that usually means Heaven or Hell.

Slide 16

In the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology we read the comment that this compound word PROHORIZO is only used from the fourth century BC onwards, and the only thing that they cite from the Classical Greek period is a statement by Demosthenes in (I think) the fourth century BC. The word isn’t used at all to translate any words in the Old Testament, so it doesn’t have any corollary to anything going on in the Old Testament.

Slide 17

So what does Demosthenes say? This is very interesting. Demosthenes is involved in a lawsuit, and the lawsuit has to do with somebody who tried to move the boundary stones on him, so that they could take over part of his property. So he says, “to prove that these statements of mine are true, that he even now declares that the land is mortgaged for a talent, but that he—there’s our word HORIZO—laid claim to two thousand drachmae more on the house, and took the pillars down after the suit was decided. I shall bring four witnesses to know the facts.”

So it has this idea of laying claim to a piece of land. He goes on to say that “he—that is, the mortgagee—had the house marked with stones—in other words he moved the boundary stones and he set the new boundaries.”

So that’s the idea in the way this is used. The only time it’s used that we have from Classical Greek. It has to do with us setting the boundaries of something.

The root meaning of HORIZO has this idea of setting a limit or fixing or setting certain boundaries. So in this sense, God is marking out our boundaries for where He’s taking us as the image of Christ. When we’re pursuing anything else, we’re out of bounds. He is directing us toward this goal of being like Christ. God has determined ahead of time the path that He’s going to take us down and the end goal is to be like Christ.

It’s not to determine whether we’re going to go to Heaven or Hell. That’s Phase 1. This is God working in our life in Phase 2, that He, as Paul says in Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you will continue it until the end.” He is not going to stop working on us until He either takes us home or we are Raptured. So that’s the direction God is taking us.

Slide 18

Now to show how this works, this is a translation of Romans 8:29 by Arthur Way who was a classics scholar. He knew Greek extremely well, and he translates Romans 8:29 this way:

“Long ere this [that is, long before this] He knew our hearts. Long ere this He claimed us (as a man claims property by setting his landmarks [staking out the boundaries] thereon) as though whom He should mould into the very likeness of His own Son ...”

He is saying that God takes those who are saved and He is going to mold them into the likeness of His Son.

Slide 19

So this word HORIZO is connected with this word HOROS, which means a boundary or horizon, or region, and it originally meant to set bounds; and hence, it comes to mean to establish or determine the boundaries or limitations of something. In fact, it’s translated that way in some passages in the New Testament.

Slide 20

For example, in Acts 17:26, “And He has made—that is, God has made—from one blood every nation of men …”

Now just as a side point there, that means every human being comes from the original source of Adam and Eve. There are no real races. We’re all the human race, and we have all been made from one blood. There is no basis for racism at all.

“He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined—or has established—their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.”

See that’s the New Testament foundation for biblical nationalism. God determined that there would be nations. That goes back to the Tower of Babel when God scattered the languages; and to show that that’s just not an Old Testament concept, Paul is making it clear in Acts 17:26.

But the point is the word usage there is translated as “has determined,” but it’s God “established their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.”

So that’s what this is talking about. God is the One who is going to keep us in bounds in terms of directing us towards the image of Christ.

Slide 21

In Acts 10:42 we have the word again, “And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained—the Holman Christian Study Bible translates that as ‘appointed,’ and that’s what I’m arguing for. This word has that idea of appointed—by God to be Judge of the living and the dead—that’s referring to Christ.”

Slide 22

Then Acts 17:31, again we see that it has the sense of appointed, “because He has appointed—it’s a different Greek word there. It has the idea of fixed—a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained—and the NET and Holman Christian Study Bible both translate that as ‘appointed’] …”

The reason I put that in there is to show you that I’m just not making this up out of whole cloth. I’m not trying to take a preconceived theological system and force it into the translation of the text. I’m working within the information that is given in all the major dictionaries, lexicons, and translations, so it conforms to what is there even though it is not always well done in some other translations.

Slide 23

That takes us back to Romans 8:29, “For whom He foreknew—that is, knew ahead of time—He also appointed beforehand to be conformed to the image of His Son.” (ASV)

God said, “Those who trust in Christ as Savior, they are the ones that are destined in My plan to be conformed to the image of Christ.”

Slide 24

In the Basic Bible in English, it translates Romans 8:29, “Because of those whom he had knowledge before they came into existence, were marked out by him—see they set a boundary like setting the boundary stones going back to Demosthenes—to be made like His Son.”

Romans 8:30, “And those who were marked out by him were named …”

Slide 25

I have translated Romans 8:28–30a this way, “…  know that He brings together for good all things, for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. For God knew His own before creation, and also appointed before hand that they should be spiritually shaped—conformed spiritually—into the character of His Son, that He might be the first-born among a large family of brothers; and it is these, that He appointed beforehand, whom He also called.”

I think that helps break this down. I think this traditional theological deterministic language is going too far in the way it is translating the Greek text.

Slide 26

So the question is, what has God set as the goal for our spiritual growth?

We say, “Okay, I trusted Christ, I’m saved. Now what?” (Answer) We are to be conformed to the character of His Son. That’s what God is doing in each of our lives.

Slide 27

Romans 8:29, as I’ve just gone through, that we should be spiritually shaped into the character of His Son.

Slide 28

Then we come to Ephesians 4:14. The top translation is New King James; the bottom is the Holman Christian Study Bible.

The New King James captures the sense of the first word in the Greek by stating it as a purpose clause: “that we should no longer be children.”

The Holman Christian Study Bible translates it “then.” They want to take it as a result, but it’s really more purpose. But it gets ambiguous because there are some things that “this is the purpose,” but it also is saying “this is the result.” So, purpose and result at some point come close together where it gets a little subjective as to whether you take one or the other.

Slide 29

The Greek preposition here indicates the purpose. The purpose goes back to that opening phrase, “He Himself gave—He gave those gifted people for the purpose—that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and carried by every wind of doctrine.”

So the reason God gives pastor-teachers and evangelists to the church to equip the saints, part of it is that they not be immature babies, even though they may have been Christians for a while.

Slide 30

The word that we find that is translated children is the word NEPIOS.

The trouble with some words is that they have a literal meaning, which can be good. But they’re also used in a negative way as sort of an insult, something quite pejorative.

For example, you may use this word NEPIOS in its literal meaning of someone who is young, an infant up to puberty. It can describe that in a very literal sense: This is a young person.

All of us, when we were growing up, would be out doing something with some of our peers when we were in early adolescence, and there would be somebody who’d start whining about whatever was going on, and somebody would turn around and say, “You’re just acting like a baby!” Well see, “baby” has a positive, objective, literal connotation of someone who is just an infant. But you can call somebody who’s 13 years old a baby, and it’s not a good thing.

There are several passages in Scripture where this word is used to bring out that negative idea, that it is somebody who ought to be mature and acting their age, and they’re not. They’re acting like a self-absorbed infant.

Slide 31

We see this in a couple places like in Proverbs 1:32, where the Septuagint uses the word here for “simple,” “For the turning away of the simple …”

Now the simpleminded in Proverbs is not just somebody who’s just somebody who’s naïve. It’s not a good thing to be simpleminded. It’s in contrast to those who are wise, who are applying the Word to their life.

“For the turning away the simple will slay them ...” Notice it’s in parallelism with fools in the second line “… and the complacency of fools ...” So here it definitely has a negative connotation.

Romans 2:20, “an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes …”

Notice there’s an appositional phrase there, “an instructor of the foolish …” Instructors is paralleled to teacher; foolish is paralleled to babes. So it’s used there as those who are foolish and immature when they ought not be.

Then the one that I think is of most significance theologically is 1 Corinthians 3:1, and the problem is how so many people take it literally and think that the contrast in 1 Corinthians 2:9–3:3 is talking about immature or brand-new babies in Christ, as opposed to the fact that what Paul is really doing is he is just reaming out the Corinthians.

They’ve been believers for three years, and he’s saying is, “By now you should be mature, but I have to talk to you like you’re men—flesh, sinful, carnal men.” He calls them NEPIOS. “You’re babies! Grow up! Quit acting like you’re two years old and grow up! You have great Bible teaching. You’ve been taught the Word, and you’re still arrogant, you’re divisive, you’re living no differently from all the unbelieving pagans around you, and you need to grow up.”

In 1 Corinthians 3:1 he says, “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people—that is, those who were walking by the Spirit—, but as to fleshly babes in Christ—these whiny, self-absorbed, out-of-fellowship Christians.”

But you see how easy it is in the English to see this as well. The spiritual would be mature in contrast to babes which is immature, and that leads you to a distorted view in terms of your understanding of the spiritual life process and, indeed, the fact that being spiritual is one who is not only regenerate, but one who is walking by the Spirit.

Slide 32

Ephesians 4:14 goes on to say that children are characterized by two things: They’re tossed to and fro; and second, they’re carried about with every wind of doctrine.

So this first word is a very dramatic word. It’s a word that is used to describe a ship that is out on a storm-tossed sea; that the waves threaten to turn it over, capsize the vessel; they’ve lost control, maybe they’ve lost the rudder; they don’t have any direction; they are tossed to and fro,

Slide 33

And that second word indicates that that they’ve become somewhat aimless. They’re carried about with every wind of teaching. The idea is that the wind comes from all kinds of directions, and they just go whichever way the wind blows, and they don’t have a rudder to take them in one direction. They’re no longer stable and they have been taken off course.

This is the description of NEPIOS. Every time you hear somebody say something about the Bible, they just say, “Well, the Bible says …” and they think whatever they say after that is true. They have no frame of reference. They have no discernment. They have no way to critically evaluate what somebody says. So their knowledge of the Scripture is almost nothing. And when they hear anybody talk about Jesus, they think that’s wonderful.

We have mega-churches that dot the landscape in every major city, every small city, every state in this union, and all over your television sets that are teaching false doctrine. And you know people sit there by the droves, because otherwise they wouldn’t be getting all the money coming in that they do to stay on the air. It’s just amazing how many people fall for this because they want to go and listen to somebody who tells them what basically validates what they are doing or what they want to do, and not somebody who’s teaching them what God’s Word says. So they’ll be attracted to people who just want to boost their ego and not tell them anything about sin or forgiveness or spiritual growth or get into the Bible in any way, shape, or form.

So this is what happens. They have no discernment whatsoever. They are completely unstable, and this leads to problems.

We talked a little bit about this one word on Tuesday night being DIPSUCHOS, they are two-souled. They are so filled with the thinking of the world and so conformed to the thinking of the world that that leads to instability in their lives. If your thinking is too conformed to the world, then it’s real comfortable because you’re not grading against the culture, and you can go along and get along. There are a lot of believers who are that way.

I don’t know too many that I would think would go that way in this congregation, but you look at the broad perspectives. That’s what this report that I read from the other night from Arizona Christian University dealing with this worldview inventory on wolves in shepherd’s clothing revealed.

Even pastors. I can’t tell you how many pastors. Sometimes I just get nauseated when I get alumni reports from Dallas Seminary, and I read what some of my classmates are doing and have done. I’ve talked with some of my own classmates that I see from time-to-time, and they can’t believe it either.

I remember when I was researching John Wimber and the Signs and Wonders Movement. I went to this spiritual warfare conference for research purposes and ran into half a dozen guys I’d gone to seminary with, and they were just so excited and just lapping it all up like it was the greatest thing in the world. I was just appalled! A couple of them I had been fairly close friends with, and they were just so far removed from what they had believed 10 years earlier that it was shocking. But that’s what we are as a culture. People are influenced by the culture, and they would rather conform to the culture than be conformed to Christ.

So this is the problem. They are NEPIOS. They are unstable because they don’t know the Word. It is through the Word that we are sanctified. It is through the Word that we are mature. It’s through the Word that we come to understand truth and understand reality as it is.

Slide 34

It’s further described here as trickery, cheating, or deception, “by the deception of men.” And the great deceiver is Satan. Satan is the father of all lies. So when you listen to the false teaching that comes out of pulpits, then this is just satanic deception. They are self-deceived. Satan further deceives them, and this deception goes out over the airwaves and from the pulpits.

This is one reason why historically seminaries never last more than about 70 or 80 years. I can see it in the seminaries I’m familiar with, is that over that period of time, through satanic attack they conform to the world and the thinking of the world.

Slide 35

So the trickery of men in the “cunning craftiness.” This the word PANOURGIA, which has the idea of that which is deceptive, that which is a defraud; and then it’s modified by METHODEIA, which is where we get our word “method” from. It has to do with strategies.

They are deceived by men. They are cheated by men in the cunning craftiness of these deceitful strategies.

And that’s the difference. In Ephesians 4:13 we have the picture of the believer who is growing, the believer who is advancing and being conformed to the fullness of Christ. In contrast in Ephesians 4:14 to the believer that stays immature and is deceived by Satan.

Next time, we will get to the last two verses, and just as a foreshadowing verse, Ephesians 4:15 begins with love and Ephesians 4:16 ends with love in contrast, “but, speaking the truth in love,” and then it talks more about how the body of Christ grows together.

Closing Prayer

“Father, we thank You for this opportunity to study in Your Word today, and we pray that each of us would be honest with ourselves about where we are. Are we seeking Your goals, Your objectives for our life? Is our desire to be conformed to the character of Christ or is our desire to live our lives in ways that give us comfort and our idea of security, or are we focused upon glorifying You in every aspect of our lives and of our thinking?

“Father, we pray that if there’s anyone here that is either physically present or listening as a recording who has never trusted Christ as Savior, the first thing, the most important thing, the most important decision in life has to do with our eternal destiny. Not only does it shape our eternal destiny to be in Heaven rather than the Lake of Fire, but it transforms us now so that we can actually begin to experience that abundant life, to realize that fullness of living from the fullness of Christ that is ours, as we study Your Word and as You work in our life to conform us to His character.

“Father, we pray that You would open peoples’ eyes to the truth. Give us the courage and the objectivity to look at our own lives, our own thoughts, our own plans, to determine which way we wish to go—to pursue Your glory, to pursue the same objectives that You have for us, or to struggle against Your will and to seek that which is simply a mirage, but has so captivated us. We pray that we might have that courage and honesty to look at reality as You described it. And we pray these things in Christ’s name, amen.”