Turn please to Ephesians 4 this morning.

We've been speaking on the subject for a few weeks now.

What is this number 3 or so?

On what subject?

The subject of growing up.

Growing up.

Ephesians 4 is our master text.

Ephesians 4 verse 11 says he gave some apostles and he gave some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers.

All of these are gifts from the Lord to his people.

For what purpose?

For the perfecting.

Now let's just stop right there.

The word perfect is a, I don't know, it's a word that so many people in modern times do not think right about when they read in the Bible.

If you look it up even in the English dictionary the word perfect has to do English definition

without fault without flaw flawless and so when people think about perfect and they think about you being perfect or me being perfect, usually people say, well, nobody's perfect.

And the implication is that nobody could be.

Because nobody can be without mistake, without flaw, flawless.

But if you say that and believe that, then you just ignored numerous scriptures,

including those that command us to be perfect.

If the Lord told us to be perfect, we must be able to be perfect.

And it comes back to understanding what the word means in the Bible as opposed to what we use modern vernacular.

Another word that's used in the same Hebrew word instead of perfect is the word complete.

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