The Fullness of God at Cornerstone

Well, good morning. do we have children still trying to get to children's church? Who do these children belong to? Every head bowed, every eye closed, no one looking around.

I did it. Well, it's good to see all of you here, this morning and what a great privilege to worship the Lord together. before we get underway, looking at, God's word this morning, I do want to, put in a word about the Undivided conference that is, coming up February 18th for all of our singles. This will be at Foothill Bible Church in Upland.

How many of you were at the Undivided conference last year? All right, a few of you. The focus this year is going to be on disciple making and just what that vision is that we find in the great commission, whose responsibility it is, what is a disciple if we are called to make disciples, what is a disciple? What does a disciple look like?

So it'll be a great vision casting time. for all of us. And again, this is for our, singles and the speakers at this conference will be the same as last year, David Forsyth and Bobby Scott and myself and Alex Montoya. So, if you've not yet signed up for that, we would encourage you to do so.

and, January 31st ends the early bird registration discount break that you get if you sign up by, by then. So, there should be some information in your bulletin, about that. And we hope to see you there. Well, let's go to the Lord in prayer and ask his time, his blessing on our time in the word this morning.

Father, actually, we want to do more than just ask your blessing on what we do in the coming moments. We take great comfort in your promise, Jesus, that we're two or three are gathered together in your name. You are there. In the midst of them.

We experience you most richly in the overlap of our lives with one another. And we experience you, your presence and your power richly. In your word, and especially as we open up your word as a community of people who've been called out by you. and are experiencing salvation through you.

Lord, we ask for more than a blessing. We ask that you would be here in this room in the coming moments and that your spirit would would move how he wishes that he would move in me and cause to be said all that the Spirit would want to be said to the church. Pray also that your spirit would move in the hearts of everyone who is here. And that each person would hear what the spirit desires for them to hear.

the needs that are represented in this room infinitely better than I do. Some need comfort and consolation. Others need to be challenged, and some do not know you at all. They are not yet believers in Jesus.

And there are those who, who know you, Lord, and are thriving spiritually. Some are discouraged and they need encouragement, all these needs, Lord. And use this, this weak vessel. Use the few loaves and fish that I offer up this morning.

Bless them and multiply them, Lord, and And feed us with abundance. Do many miracles in this room in the coming 40, 45 minutes. We open our hearts to you and asking these things in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, Amen.

Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians, chapter one. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be The Fullness of God at Cornerstone. The fullness of God at Cornerstone.

And this is a setup for our annual meeting tonight. We'll see how far we get. We would not have time to talk through all these things this evening. So, our annual meeting in a sense begins this morning as we lay some of this groundwork.

for our benefit tonight. The fullness of God at Cornerstone. Why not? Why not?

Why can't we? Why shouldn't we experience the fullness of God in effusive abundance here at Cornerstone? David Platt in his book called Radical Together begins that book by providing for us a remarkable picture from nature. And let me read it to you.

He says high atop the Andes Mountains, the rays of the sun strike ice, and a single drop of water forms. It begins to trace a hesitant course downward, gradually joining with other drops of water to become a steady stream. The stream gains speed and strength thousands of feet below and hundreds of miles later, what were once single drops have converged to become the mightiest river on Earth, the Amazon. Flowing into the Atlantic Ocean at a rate of more than 7 million cubic feet per second.

The Amazon is more powerful than the next 10 largest rivers in the world combined. And it all started with single drops of water. Descending from melted snow or ice, converging into a massive fullness. David Platt in his book goes on to liken those drops of water to us.

And makes the point that by ourselves going through life as it were as a single drop of water in God's economy, we may not amount to much. We may not wield much force in our individual lives. But God has so ordained it. That in his good pleasure, that we don't have to travel through life as a single drop, but he brings us together in the church, and our lives begin to coalesce together into a single whole and together.

We wield a force and we experience a fullness, the likes of which we never could experience or wield living by ourselves. God coalesces our lives together, and we experience His fullness, and we begin to manifest. His fullness in the church. I think that is part of why in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 22, Paul describes the church as the fullness of God.

He says in verse 22, and God put all things in subjection under Christ's feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. They're basically three expressions that Paul uses to describe The church. He uses the word church that speaks of called out ones. We have been called out from the kingdom of this world and brought together.

We are a group of called out ones or melted ones as it were, who have converged together into a single entity. He also describes the church as Christ's body, and he also describes the church as the fullness of him who fills all in all. This is our destiny. God looks at us and calls us the fullness.

of God. This is how Paul viewed the church. This is our destiny to live up to. If Paul, for example, were attending Cornerstone and someone said, what church do you, are you a member of?

He might say, I am a member of Cornerstone Church, or he might say, I am a member of the part of Christ's body that is called Cornerstone Church, or he just might say, I am a part Of a local manifestation of the fullness of God. Called Cornerstone. This is our destiny. So why not?

Why should we not experience the fullness of God? One of the things that we do every year is we're getting prepared for the annual meeting is we do some reflecting. And looking at our history as a church. And when I this past week went as far back as our record attendances, Our records of attendance that we have down in the office would indicate what is very clear is that over the years, God increasingly has been, bringing drops of water into this river called Cornerstone and is converging our lives together.

Our records go back to 1988, at least what I could find this week, and, with maybe 2, possibly 3 exceptions where from one year to the next, our attendance dropped. what you observe on the graph is that there is increasing fullness. And with every soul that God brings our way, there is blessing inside that person. There are spiritual gifts, there is wisdom.

There is insight, there is Christ in that person. And as he converges our lives together, increasingly so, we experience more and more of the fullness of God. In addition to that, aside from souls that God is bringing to us, we also, think about what our mission is as a church. We are committed to experiencing God's fullness.

In fact, in our mission statement, Our mission statement begins with the words, we exist to glorify God by experiencing the gospel in all of its fullness. What we're committed to here at Cornerstone is not simply experiencing the gospel, but experiencing the gospel in fullness, and not just experiencing the gospel in fullness, but experiencing it in all of its fullness. Whatever it is, the good that God has given to us in Jesus Christ, we want to experience all of it. We don't want to just taste.

We don't want to just sip. We don't want to just partake. We don't want to just snack. We want to experience the gospel in all of its fullness, and we are nowhere near there.

But that's the journey that we are on towards experiencing deeper and deeper fullness in the gospel. So we ourselves as God's called out ones, Paul says, are the fullness of God. We experienced that in the church and in the gospel, God's will for us is that we experience his fullness. And yet guys, as well as I do, That the mere fact that we're saved, and that we are a part of this church, that doesn't mean that we automatically experience the fullness of God, right?

There are many churches that are not experiencing the fullness of God. They're experiencing a fullness of something else, but not God. And we as a church rightly should critique ourselves and ask ourselves, are we Experiencing God's fullness. It doesn't come automatically.

That's the teaching of the New Testament. What we're going to do with the time that we have this morning is to observe five things in the book of Ephesians that we need to do here at Cornerstone in order to experience the fullness of God and to be a proper manifestation. of that fullness. We not only want to experience the fullness of God here, but we want ourselves as a church to be a manifestation of the fullness of God in this community.

So what do we need to do? Well, let's look at these. Number one, we need to realize that fullness in God in the church is a choice. Fullness in God in the church is a choice that is made.

In Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18, Paul gives us a command, and he says, be filled literally by the Spirit. Be filled by the Spirit, be continuously filled to the full by the Spirit. The mere fact that this is a command indicates that Paul is appealing to our will, and he is calling upon us to make a decision that OK, we will be filled. We choose fullness and being filled by the Spirit.

The mere fact that he gives this command indicates that it's possible for people to not make this choice, and to make the wrong choice to not be filled by the Spirit. I don't have time to to fully break this open, but my suggested rendering of this command is what you see on the screen. in this passage, he's not so much saying be filled with the Spirit, which we actually find in the Book of Acts, and that is a biblical concept. We see in the Book of Acts people being filled with the Spirit.

The grammar of this is different. He's saying be filled by the Spirit. In other words, the Spirit is the one holding the pitch contained in which is the fullness of God in the gospel in Christ, and the Spirit is endeavoring to pour that fullness into us. And Paul is giving us a command to surrender.

to the Spirit and allow the Spirit to fill us up with the very fullness of God. And we need to hear that command and say, OK, I think I'll do that. And for us as a church to receive this command and say, OK, we choose fullness. Another thing that we need to do that is tied to this is we need to stop looking in the wrong places for fullness.

If we as a church are going to experience the fullness of God on every level, in every nuance, Then we not only need to choose his fullness, but we need to say no to anything else that promises us fullness. We need to make a decision to stop looking in all the wrong places for fullness. That's why Paul, before he tells the Ephesians to be filled with the spirit, first tells them, stop getting drunk with wine. He knows that he needs to tell them this because if they do not stop making the choice to get drunk with wine, they will be robbing themselves of the fullness of the spirit.

It's interesting that Paul does not try to use scare tactics here and say, stop getting drunk with wine. Don't what that does to your liver? look at this before picture and look at this after picture and, and trying to scare people away from a life of drunkenness. No, what he's saying is stop getting drunk with wine, because when you're doing that, you're cheating yourself out of the fullness that the Spirit is trying to pour in to you, a fullness that you're never going to find getting drunk.

On A cup of wine. Getting drunk with wine is merely one. Example of things that we might choose to look to for fullness. looking to entertainment for fullness.

spending hours on the internet looking for fullness, and you guys know what I'm talking about. You just feel this, this, aching emptiness, and you're just surfing the net just to distract yourself or find something that's compelling. That leaves you with some feeling of satisfaction over your time spent. There are some who look to money for fullness, but amazingly, no matter how much money they accumulate, they never achieve the fullness that they are looking for.

As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, the one who loves money will never be satisfied with money. There are some who are looking to other people for fullness, some relationship to find their value and their meaning. There are husbands and wives that are looking to their spouse for fullness. And finding their value and their fullness in their spouse.

Timothy Keller in his book, The Meaning of Marriage, talks about this Ephesians 5 passage and how right after saying be filled with the Spirit, he says, speaking to yourself, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing, making melody in your heart to the Lord and And being thankful. And then there's another participle that says subjecting yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ, wives, to your husbands, and then he goes on to tell husbands to love their wives. In other words, all of those instructions that he gives in the marriage relationship, he's giving the people who he has first commanded to find their fullness in God mediated by the Holy Spirit.

And then coming to each other.

Out of fullness relating to one another in fullness, Timothy Keller says this, the picture of marriage given here is not of two needy people unsure of their own value and purpose and finding their significant in each other's arms. If you add two vacuums to each other, you only get a bigger and stronger vacuum, a giant sucking sound. And he goes on to say that if you're looking to your spouse for fullness, and your spouse lets you down, it's not simply a grief or a disappointment.

It's a psychological cataclysm.

When we do that. So you don't want to find your fullness even in your spouse, but only in God. There's some who are looking to pornography for some measure of satisfaction and fullness. And yet anyone who has been on that road for any length of time will tell you that that road leads only to emptiness and despair.

In his book, The Way of Purity, Mike Cleveland, we were just reading this this week with a group of guys that are working through this book, and he cites the testimony of a guy named Michael. who was telling about his struggle with pornography and what he experienced while enmeshed in this sin. Listen to what this guy Michael said. He said, I want it to be filled with love and companionship.

But by looking at porn, I alienated myself from any hope of ever finding a lasting love. My heart was empty, and I found the further into porn I went, the further I was from satisfaction and fullness. Notice the language there. He goes into that looking for fullness, but finds that his heart is increasingly empty.

And he is getting further and further away from satisfaction and fullness. This is serious business, guys. Our destiny as a church is to experience the fullness. of God as individuals, and as a church body.

But if throughout the week, we are all just scattering, and we're all looking to our own idols to give us the satisfaction, and the fullness that only God can give, we as individuals will never experience the fullness of God that we were destined to experience. And we as a church, will never live up to our destiny of being the fullness of God. We got to learn to say no to anything else that is promising us fullness. There might be some things that are legitimate, and we enjoy those things, but we don't seek to find our fullness in those things.

In fact, a fair question. I, I would just encourage you like tomorrow, just for the day, even half the day, if the whole day is too much, just with anything that you are contemplating doing, just ask yourself, will this contribute to my experience of fullness in Christ? Will this advance me? Will this take me deeper into the experience of the fullness of God in Christ?

Or will this have no effect, or will this take me further away from that? We need to ask that question more and quit looking in the wrong places for fullness. So we need to realize that fullness in God is a choice, and we also need to quit looking in the wrong places for fullness if we are going to experience the fullness of God and be a manifestation of the fullness of God here at Cornerstone. Number 3, we need to pray to God for Fullness.

We need to pray to God for fullness. And I think on some of your notes, there's an added idea where we're not so much only praying to God for fullness, but we're asking God to increase our capacity for fullness. It's both that we're asking for. Look at Paul's prayer for the Ephesians in Ephesians chapter 3.

He says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father that he would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit and the inner man. Now, what's interesting is Paul says, I'm gonna ask God to give you something. But before I get to that, I'm asking God through His Spirit to strengthen you in your inner man. In other words, you're going to actually need strength to hold this in.

You're going to need strength to contain this. I'm asking the Spirit to come in and to strengthen you and your inner man, verse 17, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge in order that you may be filled up to all the fullness. Of God. Finally, it comes out.

Paul's ultimate agenda in praying for the Ephesians, is that all of these things that he's specifically praying for, will contribute to them being filled up to all the fullness of God This teaches us that the experience of God's fullness. And having one's life be a manifestation of God's fullness is something that God grants. And it's something that is born of prayer. It is something that is granted in response to the prayers of God's people.

Paul is not content to just write the Ephesians a letter and say, here's some things that I want to teach you about the gospel, and here's some gospel commands that I want to give you. It's like, no, I also want to stop and pray for you because what I'm really after here can only be given to you by God. And it is granted by God in response to the prayers of his people. And Paul says, I want you to listen to me as I pray for you to experience the fullness of God, because I want you to know how to go about praying for his fullness in your own life from day to day.

And again, what you observe in the language of the text is that Paul is not merely asking that God would fill them up with his fullness, but that God would strengthen them and enlarge their capacity for fullness. See, our problem in the church and as individuals is not that we have a God who's reluctant to pour out His fullness. The problem often is that our cup is too small. Our capacity for his fullness is too small.

And so sometimes we're full, and that's not a good thing. We're full because our souls are shriveled and our cup is so small and we are content. And God wants to enlarge our capacity. The psalmist in Psalm 23 says, My cup overflows.

when God, when we come to him with our cup and say, fill my cup, Lord, he looks at our cup and he laughs. It's like, that is not big enough to hold everything that I want to give to you. So he pours and we're like, OK, that's good, that's good, that's good. You can stop.

and he keeps pouring and it overflows, and it makes a mess. And he laughs. He's trying to make the point that I have so much that I want to give you and to bless you with, that there is no cup you can ever put in front of me that can ever contain the love and the blessing, and the relationship and the acceptance and the forgiveness, and the righteousness and the power that I long to pour out upon you. So Paul's saying, I'm praying that the Spirit will strengthen you and your inner man.

So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and that you being rooted and grounded in love. Being fed and nourished by that love of Christ, you can grow and thus be able to take in is the idea to comprehend in relationship with all the saints, the breadth and length and height and depth and to know to comprehend the love of Christ that surpasses, it still spills over. It is still more than we can ever take in. But ultimately, that we, with our soul's capacity enlarged, would be increasingly able to take in more and more of the fullness of God Himself.

Now, so we need to pray for this. We need to come together as a church body and pray for this. We need to come together in our prayer groups and we need to pray for this. We need to come before the God of heaven and say, God, we're interested in your fullness.

We, we would like for you to pour out your fullness and we're also asking you through your spirit to enlarge our souls capacity to take in and experience your fullness. And you might say, well, hey, let's do that. Let's go do that. Let's go to God and ask him for this.

Well, let me just give you a warning. Be very careful with this and be mindful of who it is that we're talking to, and seeking to pray to and ask for fullness from. We observe in the New Testament that to be filled with something is to be controlled by it. In the Gospel accounts and in the Book of Acts, we find expressions of people being filled with jealousy, filled with rage, filled with fear, filled with wonder, filled with joy.

And what that always means is that what they were filled with controlled them. says they were filled with rage, and they, they always act. As they are possessed by the rage or the jealousy or the wonder, or. The fear or the joy.

To be filled with something, to be filled up to all the fullness of God. what that means? It means to be controlled by God. And that is why I think many of us think twice about this.

We, we all want God in manageable portions. Give me a little bit of God. Give me a little bit of Christ. I'll take a little bit of his fullness here, a little bit there, I'll sprinkle this into this area of my life.

And we're pretty much asking God to just sanctify our lives as they exist right now. Rather than, what, God, I give you permission to flood into my life. In fact, I was thinking this week just to illustrate the point, the Hoover Dam is over 700 ft high from the very base to the top. There are trillions of gallons of water on the full side of that dam.

At its base, the concrete is over 600 ft thick. And at its narrowest point at the top, it's 45 ft thick. And so just imagine standing at the base of the Hoover Dam and looking up and seeing this absolute monstrosity and knowing the fullness that lies on the other side of that. And here you stand with a teacup.

And you're wanting, you're wanting your cup to be filled with water. That's what we're doing when we come before God in prayer. In fact, this analogy is so utterly weak. When we come before God in prayer and say, God, we're interested in your fullness.

let's, let's comprehend the size of God. God is so huge that Isaiah chapter 40 verse 12 tells us that he measured the universe with merely the span of his hand. God said When he created the universe, I think I'll make me a universe and I'll make it this big. Now Paul is, or Isaiah is using some imagery here, but he's trying to make a point of the immensity of God, that if the entire universe is merely the span of the hand of God, how powerful is God?

How immense is God? And this being calls himself in the book of Jeremiah, the fountain of living water. So we come before this fountain of living water, this immense and powerful God, and we are asking Him to flood into our lives and to fill us up to his very fullness. We need to be careful what we ask for.

Basically praying for God's fullness. Let's say it this way. Praying for God's fullness is like standing in front of the Hoover Dam. With your wife and children and house and cars and money, and present ways of doing life and ministry and all else you hold dear, and asking that dam to break and accepting whatever happens as a result of the ensuing flood.

And are we really willing to do that, to stand before the fountain of living water and saying, Break forth, oh God, fountain of living water, break forth upon this church. Break the dam, as it were. And here we stand with our wives, with our husbands, with our children, with our cars and our homes and our present ministry structures and our way of doing life in church. We all stand here in total surrender.

And we invite you, God, to break forth upon us, to lavish your fullness upon us. And we right now tell you that we will accept whatever the results are from the ensuing flood. If things I held dear, end up 1000 miles downstream, that's OK. If my children end up in Morocco, that's OK.

If things that are precious to me end up being lost, and buried, it's OK. If the way we do church, if the way we do ministry, the way that we do life, if the way that we do our marriage, and the way that we do home life, if all of that changes, it's OK, God, but we want your fullness, break forth upon us, Oh fountain. Of living water. We want to experience the fullness.

Of God and to make ourselves and our church a manifestation of the fullness of God, then we need to pray and ask for it. But let's pray intelligently, realizing who it is. That we're standing before and what we're really asking for. There's a 4th thing that we need to do.

That needs to happen. Here at Cornerstone, if we are to experience the fullness. Of God and that is we need the leadership of the church equipping the saints for the work of ministry. Basically we need the pastors here to do their job.

We need the leadership. Of this church to do their job of equipping the saints for the work of ministry. Look at what Paul says, and it's interesting how everything he says is sandwiched in between the concept of fullness. He speaks about Christ ascended on high.

He gave gifts to men. It says in verse 10, he ascended far above all the heavens so that he might fill all things. Christ ascended to the right hand of God, and he had our fullness on his brain. That's his agenda And here's what he did to execute that agenda, that vision.

And he gave some as apostles and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry. To the edifying of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature, which belongs to the fullness of Christ. In other words, now we're going beyond just experiencing its fullness. We now take on a stature as a church that is appropriate.

To the fullness of Christ. Someone looks at the fullness of Christ, and then they look at us and go, there's the fullness of Christ. And yeah, that's about the stature I would expect of a church that is feasting on and experiencing the fullness of God in Christ. So notice the links in this chain.

Christ died. He was buried for our salvation, and he was raised from the dead. He then ascended to the right hand of God, and his vision for the church is a vision of fullness. He wants to fill all things, so he gives gifts.

And the gifts that he gives are, he gives apostles and prophets. And for our purposes today, we could say the ministry, the apostles and the prophets is found in our New Testaments. So that's our New Testament scriptures. So he has given us the New Testament, which by the way, points us to the Old, we value the Old Testament.

And read it and study it and believe it. Because the New Testament points us to the Old Testament and shapes how we view it. So he's given us the scriptures. And also evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry.

He's given to the church. This is the next link. So Christ, right hand of God, he gives gifts, he gives his word, and that's perfect. That will not fail.

We don't have to worry about that. He also gives evangelists, pastors, teachers. And for our purposes this morning, let's focus on pastors. He gives pastors or elders to the church.

And if God's vision for the fullness of the church is to be realized, then it's critical that elders or pastors do. Their job of equipping the saints for the work of ministry. We need to say this is our most important job as shepherds or as pastors. To have a vision for this flock as a congregation of ministers and, and for us to give ourselves away to you in any way we can to make sure that you are taught, that you are edified, that you are resourced.

to do the work of ministry. This word equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, that word equipping, is the same Greek word that is found in Galatians 6:1 where it says, my brethren, if any of you are caught in a trespass that you can't get out of, you who are spiritual, restore such a one. And that word restore is this word, equip. This word is big enough to include the idea of restoring someone that is trapped in a sin that he cannot get out of on his own.

The same word equip is used in Matthew 4:21 to speak of some of Jesus' disciples that were mending or repairing their nets. This word also is used to speak of equipping, training, resourcing, providing what is needed, preparing someone to be effective in ministry. This means that for a church to experience the fullness of God in Christ, to succeed in fulfilling Christ's vision for the church, that that church should have biblically qualified elders, and that one of their primary callings is to shepherd the saints into the work of the ministry.

So it's not elders and pastors who are like, what, I'm the trained professional here.

What seminary did you graduate from? Oh, that's right. You haven't been to seminary. I have.

Let me do this. And to where we're the ones who do everything and we believe we're the only ones capable of doing it. Our mission ought to be whatever I know, I'm going to give it away to, to this body. Anything I know, any competency that we possess, our calling from God is to give that away to the people of God so that they can do the work of the ministry.

Our invitation to this body is not just bring people here, and let us, the professionals do what you're not able to do. Our calling from God is to invest in you, so that you can do the work of the ministry. In a competent way that you can live your life in the goodness of the gospel and live out of the goodness of the gospel from the over, overflow of that, that you would be someone who looks around and you see needs in the church and you own those needs and say that need is mine.

And you address those needs in ministry.

We as elders need to do more than just tell our men, lead your household. We need to give ourselves away to our men and invest ourselves in our men to resource them to do that. We as a church, need to do more than tell our wives to be a good mother to their children. or to be a good wife to their husband.

We need to give ourselves away to the women of this church. And one of the ways that that happens in, in the church is through older women, teaching the younger. For this to happen, there needs to be a giving of ourselves away, the leadership of the church, giving themselves away with the mission of equipping the people of God to do the work. Of the ministry All of us and all of you have been called to be a disciple maker.

God promised to Abraham, thousands of years ago, that through you, all the nations of the world will be blessed. In the book of Revelation, we see that people of every tribe and tongue and nation is around the throne and they're praising the Lord Jesus Christ. Every People from every nation and people group will stand around the throne praising Christ one day. There will be some from all peoples who are saved.

I was reading a couple of weeks ago that of the 11,000 people groups in the world, there's over 6000 of them that have no gospel witness or very minimal gospel witness. And Jesus Christ says to us, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. And here's your mission, go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations, of all the peoples, of all the people groups. To serve this mission of one day having people of every tribe and tongue and nation and language around my throne worshiping me, to where every one of us in the church are excited about that vision, and we want to do our part to see to it.

That this vision comes to pass. And our job as elders is not simply to be the ones engaging in that, though we should. Our job is to equip you. To do the work of disciple making and leadership, and living your life and the good of the gospel and ministering to others out of that.

There's a 5th and final thing we need to do if we are to experience the fullness of God, and this is the last link in the chain, we need every member doing the work of the ministry. We need every member doing the work of the ministry, says, and he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers for the equipping. Of the saints for the work of ministry to the edifying of the body of Christ, until we all attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man.

To the measure of the stature which belongs.

To the fullness of Christ. We need a congregation where there's no one who merely attends. We need a congregation full of ministers, where you realize, I am in the ministry. I come to church.

I'm a part of this church body. for the explicit purpose of getting equipped to do the ministry, to execute the ministry plan that God has for my life, and to minister in the church to your brothers and sisters in the Lord, and to minister on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ to those who are right now lost and in need of salvation and need to hear the truth of the gospel. And Paul says, you do the work of the ministry until we all attain to the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, a mature man, to the measure of the stature that belongs to the fullness of Christ.

You say I'm so immature, I shouldn't be involved in ministry.

Paul says, no, you're supposed to be involved in ministry until you reach maturity. You say I would be involved in ministry here at Cornerstone, but the people at Cornerstone are so immature. The knowledge here is so lacking. The unity here is lacking, faith is shallow.

They're not experiencing the fullness of God. I don't want to minister here. No, the calling is minister until we all together achieve these things. Greg Harris At a parenting seminar I went to over a year ago with my son Benjamin.

he made an interesting statement. He says, train your children until you like them. And it's the same way. in the church, love one another, minister to one another, be a part of this rough and tumble journey of growth and maturity and sanctification.

Until we reach maturity. Yeah, you look around, so many people are immature, and, and you probably are too. But we each do our part, and together, God brings us to maturity. It says in Ephesians 4:16 that the whole body.

The whole body Being fitted and joined together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part. Causes the growth of the body for the edifying of itself and love. All of us, this is the last link in the chain. Christ has given us gifts.

And among those gifts are pastors and pastors need to do their job of equipping the saints for the work of ministry. And then the saints need to do the work of the ministry. And whatever capacities God has burdened and impassioned them. And gifted them, ministering to their brothers and sisters, ministering Christ's love to the lost until the church reaches a place of the stature that belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Let me ask you to bow your heads. Let's go to the Lord and let's just ask him to help us to To live, to do church in this way. God dreams big things for Cornerstone. Dreams of fullness that we experience, dreams of us being a wonderful God glorifying manifestation of his greatness and His fullness.

Are we willing to accept and embrace that divine destiny? Father, we, we thank you for the vision that is in your word. We fall so far short of what we see, but that falling short, Lord, only causes us to turn to the cross and partake of the fullness of grace and forgiveness. Lord, everywhere we turn, there's fullness, even when we fail.

Help us, help us, Lord, to choose fullness in you, over fullness in anything else, to choose fullness in you over just settling for little puddles of your goodness. May we pray for you to enlarge our capacity for your fullness. May we be shaped and transformed by the flood of your fullness through this church body. Help us as pastors to do our job as you have called us to.

And help every member of this church to be an effective and powerful minister for Jesus Christ. That we might experience your very fullness. We thank you for the opportunity, Lord, to give up our offerings to you, receive these funds and do much with them for the glory of Jesus. And we give ourselves to you in the name of Jesus.

And all God's people said, man.