For sermon-prep this week I spent time reading about hot-air balloons. I've never wanted to ride in a hot-air balloon because they seem so out of control. They just kind of float up there with nothing to give them direction. After some reading I discovered that they seem out of control because they are out of control.. You cannot steer a hot air balloon. You can control the height of the balloon by controlling the amount of hot air you fire into it or the amount of weight you carry, but that's it. Your direction is determined by the wind. Once you cut the rope that ties you to the ground you go wherever the wind takes you. In 1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones were the first to pilot a hot air balloon around the world. They left from Switzerland, got up into the jet stream and after a 20 day trip wound up landing in Africa, thousands of miles south of where they hoped to land. The only way to keep a balloon from being blown this way or that by the wind is to keep it tethered to a rope and to keep the rope firmly tied to the ground.

Now I could probably talk to you about hot air balloons all day long. But I won‘t. I brought them up for a reason and that reason has to do with the problem Paul takes up in Ephesians today.

 Let's open our bibles to Ephesians 4:14. Verse 14 is in the middle of today's reading. Later we'll move back up and take the whole passage into account, but I want to start by giving you a feel for the problem Paul addresses. Let's read verse 14: “Then, we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves, blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.”

I used the imagery of a hot air balloon being blown about by the wind. Paul uses the imagery of a boat without a captain, or captained by an infant. In either case the point is that without something firm and steady, the wind takes the boat or takes the balloon wherever it wishes.
 Paul is not really talking about babies, boats, and wind here. He's using these things as illustrations. Who are the infants in his illustration? Look back at verse 14, “then [after the biblical remedy is applied] we will no longer be infants…”. Paul has in mind Ephesian believers in particular, but what he says applies to all believers individually, the church as a whole, and every local parish, Good Shepherd too.

What are the waves and the wind? Look back at the verse, “tossed by the waves and blown by every wind of…teaching“ and not just any teaching, what kind of teaching in particular?

False teaching.

The rest of the verse makes that clear. False teaching blows and beats against the believer like the wind and the sea.

 Why does Paul use the wind and the sea illustrate the nature of false teaching? The wind and the sea are both deceiving and unpredictable. Have you ever been out on a lake on a nice day when after a while you look up, see dark clouds, feel a strong burst of cold wind and realize things have changed and you haven't noticed. Gentle wind and water can change dramatically while you're not paying attention. They can build to storm strength and batter you without warning. Your boat could swamp your balloon be blown hundreds of miles off course.

That is precisely what happens to  biblically ignorant churches, believers, and parishes when confronted by false teaching. They are blown about by every wind of doctrine because they have no core, no rope, no guide, no rock, no foundation. 

 That's why God has given us this book. God inspired the bible to teach lost and fallen human beings about his nature, about creation, about sin and then finally to show us the way of salvation, how you can repent and turn from the way of rebellion that leads to death, invite Jesus Christ into your heart, and on the basis of the death he died to bear the consequences of your sin, be reconciled with God the Father and live with him forever. That is the purpose of this book.
 

That's why, looking back up to verse 11, God “gave some to be apostles and prophets. ” These are not contemporary self-proclaimed "apostles and prophets" but the originals, the ones God inspired to write the Old and New Testamens. The teaching of the "apostles" is found in the NT and the teaching of the "prophets" in the OT.  

 The Church exists to take this book inspired by God, written by the apostles and prophets and proclaim the saving truth found in these pages to the entire world not leaving anything out: That is why Paul goes on to say that God gave “some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers“. Evangelists are called to take the gospel out into the world and bring people into the Church. Pastors and teachers are called to teach the Word of God in all its fullness to those within the Church.

In this way says Paul, if the evangelists, pastors and teachers are all doing what they were called to do then the believer, the Church, the parish, will be rooted and grounded in the truth and will not be blown about by every wind of doctrine.

If the leaders are committed to clearly communicating the word of God and believers are committed to learning and living by the word of God, then the wind can blow and the sea can rise, but the house will not fall. As Paul puts it, we will “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

 Now let's change gears a moment. Satan hates God. God loves human beings. Since Satan hates God and God loves us, what do you think Satan‘s attitude toward us is? Hatred. Satan wants to destroy what God loves.

 Satan knows the bible. He knows that God uses it to show human beings how to repent of their sin find their way back into his arms. So he does everything in his power to destroy the influence, twist the meaning, hide the importance, and destroy people's confidence in the Word of God.

 The first thing Satan did in the garden of Eden was to confuse Eve about the content of God‘s Word. What was his first question? It was “did God really say…?”

And those words echo down through time and have been found on the lips of every false teacher to the present day. “Did God really say?” Satan knows that the moment the rope, the lifeline between the Church and the word of God, the believer and the bible, the sinner and the hope offered to him through divine revelation, is cut, we are set at the mercy of the wind, aloft and adrift.

 Once the rope is cut, the father of lies is free to wreak havoc.

The church is held in place by evangelists, pastors and teachers devoted to grounding the people of God in God's Word. But what if you get teachers and pastors who don't have that commitment, who don't believe the Word of God is the word of God or care about teaching it to the people in their charge?

Then the rope that grounds the Church to Truth is cut. Once God's Word is neglected or rejected, there's no way to tell the difference definitively between good and evil.

Being fallen sinners, more often than not, we confuse the two. How do we know what is good, what is sweet, what is light? “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts, therefore I hate every wrong path. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:103-105)

There is only one way to avoid putting light for darkness and bitter for sweet and that is to feed on the sweetness of God's Word to be rooted in his precepts, to walk in the light of his law. Otherwise, you will get lost. Otherwise the church becomes a blind guide Otherwise Satan will have his way with you because you will inevitably accept the evil and reject the good and then you're in serious trouble. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isa 5:20)  

 Now, no one thinks they are rejecting the good and accepting the evil. Satan doesn't launch frontal attacks. He masquerades as angel of light. When he presents a false teaching, he makes it look and sound good and loving and smart and intellectually sound. He calls killing babies, reproductive "choice". He calls sexual immorality, "free love". He calls greed, "good business". He calls pagan idolatry new age "spirituality". He calls selfishness, "self care". He calls divorce, "liberation"; He calls embracing lies about God and the bible, "moderation".

 He's the father of lies and he has persuaded the world and in some places persuaded the church that good is evil and evil is good. And he wants to do that here and he wants to do that to you. James says tSatan roams about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. When lions are scoping out a herd, what do they look for? The infants, the weak, the vulnerable.

 But its one thing for a church to be full of infants eager to grow and mature, most genuine kids are like that, they want to be get big. It's quite another for the church to be full, not of infants but of the infantile, believers who should be mature but who are too lazy to do what it takes to grow. In spiritual terms its like having a room full of 55 year olds who still live with mommy and daddy.

That's what Satan looks for more than anything else, infants content and intent on remaining infantile. Believers who go to church…when there's nothing better to do. Who go to bible study when they find it interesting. Who read the bible when they feel like it. Who pray when something goes wrong. Instead of setting their minds on the noble, good, godly and true, they are concerned most about who got kicked off American Idol last week or the latest celebrity gossip or football stats. That's what Satan looks for because these are not just infants, these are infants who don't want to grow up, who care about what feels good now what really is good and Satan can make his lies feel really good.

 So what are we to do? Well let me ask: have you gotten lazy? I know its summer. I know its hot, but have you taken your focus off God and his word. If so, you are in danger of becoming a big-hot air balloon. Throw down a rope. Devote yourself to growing up in Christ. If you've given up reading your bible every day, pick it up, dust if off and read. Did you let your attendance at bible study slip? recommit to it. Recommit to daily prayer, to worship every week.

That is how you grow up and grow strong and that is the only way Good Shepherd will become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.