The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace

to You.

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And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here's Grace to You, Bible teacher John MacArthur.

Well, we come today to the fourth chapter of Ephesians, and I confess to you that this is a chapter about which I have thought,

maybe more than most other chapters in the Bible.

And it goes all the way back in particular to the beginning years at Grace Church when I was seeking from the Lord to understand what was His desire for a church.

And it was in those days as I was searching the Scripture that I came to the section that we're going to be looking at this morning.

Ephesians 4, 11 to 16.

I don't know that I had really a clear understanding of it even when I went away to seminary.

But in my seminary days I was on the hunt, I have to say, to find the best possible plan to shepherd a church and do it the way God designed it to do in the way Christ wanted His church to go.

And I wound up in this passage more than any other passage.

And I'm telling you that because you need to know it's very hard for me to go over it lightly this morning.

It has occupied much of my life, but I want to give you the overview of these very, very important words.

Let's read from verse 11 to 16.

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 service to the building up with the body of Christ until we all attained 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.

As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men by craftiness and deceitful scheming.

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