JUN 14 2026 | The Church S1E3 | Maturity

Sea Change Church · The Church · "Maturity" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · June 14, 2026
Ephesians 4:1-7
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Check, you got me, Nick? There you go. I hope you dug that worship. Goodness gracious, right? Just such an anointing on that. So much beauty and power in that, and the team was locked in, everyone from base to Nico on the keys. I was just really blessed by that. So I hope you guys are just stoked on what God's doing, what Chris is leading, and building a team here for worship. And new album is almost ready for you guys, and that'll be out soon.

If you have your Bibles, open to Ephesians 4, 1 through 7. We are in the four-part series, The Purpose of the Church. And I have a slide I'm going to put up. Actually, before I read, I'll read the, let me read the passage first. If you have your Bibles, really want to be a Bible-bringing church, so not just the ones we provide. We use the English Standard Version. That can be your version for church. You can have your own version that you're into that you like, you know the best.

I'd encourage you to read multiple versions as you read through the Scripture to get multiple interpretations. We have Bibles in the back. You can get them. So if you have your Bibles, I want you to be using those. We're going to be in Ephesians 4, 1 through 7. It can be in Ephesians 4 today, also going to be down verses 11 through 13. So mark those as well. The message is called Maturity. And we're going to be speaking about how to mature in Christ.

Go to verse 1, chapter 4. I therefore, a prisoner, circle prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk, circle walk, in a manner worthy, circle worthy of the calling, circle calling, which you have been called. He uses calling and called twice with all humility. Now these are key. Humility, circle or underline. Gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love. That goes towards last week, the unity. Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.

Verse 4. There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But, conjunction, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. This is a passage that talks about the purpose of the church and maturing believers. It gives a little bit of a road map there on what we should be becoming.

You can look at the gifts of the Spirit as well. You can see there's a lot of places in the epistles, especially it tells us the kind of believers we should be. In a moment, I want to, actually I'll do it now. I'm going to frame up in verses 11 through 13 what my job is and what the purpose of the church workers is. But we're all the church, right? So if you go down in your Bibles, this is why you'll need your Bibles because this is not in the notes.

In Ephesians 4, 11 through 13, he said he gave some to be apostles, some prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers, to do what? To equip the saints for the work of the ministry. That's to equip you for the building up of the body of Christ until we all, not just some of us, to all of us attain a unity of faith and the knowledge of whom? The Son of God to mature manhood. You could even put personhood there because I think it's all-encompassing.

To the measure of the stature of what? The fullness of Christ. This is what we're doing, right? Our job as teachers, apostles, prophets, shepherds is to care for you so that we can all grow up in a body to be mature. To do what? To do the work of the kingdom that he has set before us. We're not here to entertain and then you go home or just to provide a little emotional comfort for you, but to build you up and to have us built up in maturity at the same time, that the goal is to the full maturity of becoming like Jesus himself.

This is the passage. Now, you're going to see this more. A slide I want to show you. I really want to make sure everyone knows what we're doing. If you have that slide up there, do you have it? There it is. All right. There's four purposes of the church. Now, you could make six, nine, whatever you want, but I think these are the four that we're going to work with here at the church. And then there's also four corners on which we do it.

You're going to see this. I'm going to have it put up as a poster in the church. I want all of you to understand where we're going and what we're doing. The first is identity. We want you to know who you are in Jesus. If you don't know who you are, you're not going to know where you're going and how to live and who Christ has called you to be. So it's identity. The next is unity. We spoke about that last week. The third today is maturity.

And then after we get those, we move out into mission. That's the four purposes of the church. And we'll continue to go over and over in that until we come into the fullness of Christ and reach the ends of the earth, which is the Great Commission. Now, this happens on four corners, right? So the four places where we engage in these four activities are in your heart. We want God to just own your heart. We want him to take more territory.

We want your heart to know who you are in Christ, your identity. We want you to be unified in a spirit of unity with others through your identity to know that. We want you to be unified. And we want that to happen in your heart. We want that to happen in your home. A lot of you were impacted last week when I said, we can't have a glorious church in sullen homes. Probably some of the most impact and the response I got from you, at least half the response had to do with thank you for speaking about marriage.

Well, it wasn't really a talk on marriage. I threw in a couple, you know, thoughts, a couple one-liners on marriage, but God seemed to use it and let that stick. And so I'll probably move into that a little bit more today. But we want your heart, your home, your local church. We want you to be a part of the local church. Every believer should be in the local church. If you're sick and you can't make it out or there's some reason you can't come to your local church, I get that.

If you're one of the hundreds of people online who watch, I get that. Or you're just watching, you go to another church, you happen to enjoy watching here, that's cool. But if you're just a video attender on a regular basis, there's no accountability in that. And you're not, you're adjacent to the local church, but you're not part of the local church. And so part of the local church is a commitment of showing up on a Sunday.

Like, it's not easy. I get the fact that you guys all show up here on a Sunday in this culture is a big deal, right? So once again, no shade on those that say, hey, you know, once a month or whatever, we're going to do a little church at home or invite. That's cool. That's cool. But you want to be part of the body. And the fourth thing that we want to do is we want to go out to the ends of the earth and to see that happen.

And so those are the four purposes and those are the four corners that this happens. I want everyone to be able to explain that so when they say, hey, what's happening at your church, you will know that. We do four things. We do it on four corners. It's pretty simple. And I'm going to continue to reiterate that. So you have your four purposes. You'll see that in the notes. And then the key word today in your notes, there's two words.

One is maturity, becoming mature. And then I added another one. I tend to add another one because I'm not satisfied with just one key word. So I put key words. Conformed. This is what Jesus really in my heart this week was really massaging in my heart. It became the key to my own personal walk through this scripture. The conformity to become like Jesus. Here's your key idea. The goal of the church is not attendance. Although attendance is key.

Don't forsake the gathering together, it says. But there's a conjunction again. Always important after the conjunction. Rather maturity and conformity to the person of Jesus. Now, I had a huge revelation this week that I guess I would have been able to articulate if you would have asked me in the right setting or put it in a test in the right way. But God shared it in a way that I realized I wasn't seeing the destination in the way that I should.

And God just said to me, and sometimes it's a little embarrassing when God gives you a truth that you're like, yeah, I should have known that and thought of it that way. And I guess I could have articulated it. And I guess in my heart I knew it, but I wasn't doing it the same way. And what he said was this. The destination of the Christian life is not heaven. The destination of the Christian life is conformity to the likeness of Christ.

Is becoming like Christ. And the analogy, as I continue to think through that, I realize you have a different trajectory on earth when your whole idea is, I'm not trying just to get to heaven. Angels singing, heaven's going to be amazing. Heaven's going to be amazing. That's awesome. And you're just thinking about heaven all the time. The goal is not to get to heaven. The goal is to be with Jesus and to be one with Jesus.

That's the destination. And that destination can happen now. And if the kingdom of God is going to come on earth, it isn't going to be that we're all heavenly minded. It's going to be that we all become like Christ. Because the nature of heaven is Christ-like. Now let me just give you an analogy that I thought of. Imagine you're getting married, right? And the whole time you're so excited. You're a couple and you're getting married.

You have this beautiful bride and this groom. And they're all ready. And they book a place at the Ritz-Carlton. They've never stayed in any place like the Ritz-Carlton. It's like amazing. It's Laguna Niguel. It's overlooking the water. Maybe you know the one. Or it's the Torrey Pines Lodge or whatever. And they're all so excited. And the husband is just so excited about it. He's never stayed in a place. And he golfs, right?

So he golfs. And both of those places are, you go to Marbella. He golfs, right? And they have this incredible wedding, right? This incredible wedding. And they get, they drive up there and they get there. And he walks in and he's like, wow, look at this hotel room. This is, look. And she's like, oh, yeah, it's amazing. And she's with him, right? Because it's awesome. It's your honeymoon. And he's like, I'm just going to go check the grounds.

I'll be right back. And then she's all, cool, cool. And then he like goes and checks it. And he's gone like two hours. And he's all, and then he comes back. She's all, hey, where were you? Well, you know, the putting green was amazing. So some guys just let me borrow their putter. And I just did some putting. And then I checked the restaurant. And this room is amazing. And she's like, yeah, it's great. I'm glad we're here.

He just, he's like, 100-inch flat screen TV. Let's turn that bad boy on. Woo! I've never seen anything like that. You can see where this is going. It's 11 o'clock at night. He looks over, she's in her pajamas, right? And she's like, got a little tear in her eye. And he's like, what's up? She's like, I'm just going to bed. And he's like, why? We got to the place we were trying to get to. She goes to bed. You see, that's what it's like when heaven becomes the destination and not the person of Jesus Christ.

You see, when we make that subtle shift, and it's so easy to make that subtle shift, it's almost a deception that it'll make living about trying to meet some goal or have a destination. But heaven is not the destination. Heaven is the location. The destination is Jesus Christ. And you want to know what? It's a lot easier to get to heaven than it is to be conformed to the nature of Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus did all the work to get you to heaven.

You do that by confession. But the destination of Jesus means conformity, which means saying no to yourself and becoming like these words here. Let's go back to the scripture. Verse 2. With what? All humility and gentleness and patience and bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bonds of peace, eager to maintain that unity. In your relationships, the first thing you are, you are eager to like overcome the wall of hostility that is between you and your spouse or you and your children or you and your business partner or whoever it is.

Last week, the challenge was to in some way move closer to someone that you had been separated from. And I said you didn't have to like show up at the door and knock. Could have been prayer. But hopefully some of you did that this week. And so that means you're becoming like Christ. Go to verse 1. Paul says, Therefore, a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner of the calling which you have been called with all humility, gentleness, patience, bearing up with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

And so this is a nature that looks like Jesus. As a person in the church, your goal is to look more like Jesus every single day. Remember those little hand wristbands? What would Jesus do? WWJD. And they were super popular for a while. And some people liked them. Some people didn't. But it asks a really great question. In this situation, what would Jesus do? You live in an adolescent culture. We live in a culture that esteems the experiences and the dopamine rush and the vibe and the feelings and the allure that comes with everything 17-year-olds do.

You will see this because, I know tons of people don't use Facebook as much as they used to unless they're selling something anymore on the marketplace. But it doesn't take long for me to go and look through all my friends from the various high schools I went to because I got kicked out of so many. So I got a nice sampling of San Diego high schools. Valhalla, Christian, Claremont, Christian. We can go on. Francis Parker.

They all loved me and kicked me out. It doesn't take long to go back and see multiple people that looked no different than they did when I knew them. I haven't seen you for 40 years. You know, you see these people in high school and they're like so cool, right? And then you go to the 20-year reunion and they're the same person. But for some reason, it's not that cool anymore. I don't know why. It just stopped being cool when you're 50 and you act like you're 16.

I had somebody come into my office recently and they've actually made a massive shift to maturity. And they said to me, you met with me 10 years ago and they said, you told me if I don't change my ways, I'm gonna be in the same place in 10 years. And you know what? It's 10 years later and I'm in the same place. That's true because maturity and conforming to becoming like Christ is way more difficult than it is to go to heaven.

And so, because it requires a choice on your part for self-denial. It requires you to say, I no longer want to act like a 17-year-old. You can only have certain elements of your life but you want your marriage to look different when you're 75 than it did when you were 35. Unfortunately, so many marriages become less unified as they move further. They are no longer in love with their first love. They're no longer satisfied by the breast of the dough that God has given them as it says in the scripture.

Or they're looking at some other thing that they've created and I would say oftentimes this will happen in marriages all the time. Your marriage will create a culture and an environment that becomes the destination. You go on great trips. You're part of a small group. You go to kids' soccer. You coach your kids' soccer team. You guys have great Christmas. Your house is amazing. You finally got the house that you wanted.

Whatever it is, it becomes this thing and you're living in the destination but you're growing further and further from each other. And so the destination in marriage is not the thing that you're creating although the culture of a marriage matters. Surrounding your children as I've seen with my daughter that was up there with great families that they can look up to and great pastors and mentors. That's the culture. That's the location of your marriage.

But in your marriage, if you're not becoming more like Christ because when you come together in your marriage, especially physically, in the physical element of your marriages and so many marriages just stop that completely, when you do that, you are conforming to the image of Christ and it is supposed to be a model of what Jesus looks like. Not just the husband looking like what Christ should be like. Not just the wife.

But if you are not having a marriage that looks more like Jesus, then you're not living in the way that Christ has called you. Now there's a lot of nuance to that with husbands that don't follow Christ and the whole thing. But that's the nature of what it's called to be. So Paul is saying that. And so as we look into Romans 8.29 about this idea of maturity, and that was just the marriage maturity, we're speaking once again to us as individuals.

Romans 8.29 says, for those whom he foreknew, he knew you before the creation of time, the scripture says, he also now has predestined you to be what? Conformed to the image of his son so that he might be firstborn among many brothers. That has an outworking to evangelism that you would be conformed. That word conformity in the Greek there means like clay to be actually shaped into something. That you were one thing and you were being shaped and changed.

Now this often happens through trial and adversity, but what I have found is that it is not easy, but it is possible to go through very difficult trials that God has allowed and not mature. You continue to go to your habits, you continue to go to your addictions, you continue to go to the things that will not mature you because it is perseverance. The Bible speaks about perseverance, self-denial, not going to those easy escapes, having faith, waiting on Christ, sitting next to the Lord so that he can put your enemies as a footstool underneath your feet, it says.

It's when you do that, you persevere. And that perseverance leads to maturity and that maturity leads to what? Hope. But I will say that if you continue, if we, let me use myself as well, continue to go to our little plan B in the midst of trial, you will not mature. God will get you through it, you might be thankful that he got you through it, he does these things, but you don't come out of it looking any more like Jesus than you did going in.

You might be a little more battered, a little more torn, you might have a couple little things you picked up on the way, a couple insights into God, but you are not becoming more like Jesus. That's what we're doing here. And I was asking the Lord today, I was, this week, I've been saying, God, this is a big point for me, because for some reason, I've been seeing heaven as the destination, but if you would have asked me theologically on a test, I probably would have gotten it right, but I wasn't living it right.

And so I began to say, I want to be more like you today. What does that look like in the line at Ralph's? What does that look like at the hours of your day that you have the most temptation? And all of us have a, Satan knows, or it's the week, or there's a time, or whatever it is, what does it look like to be like Christ in those difficult moments? John, 1 John 2, 6 says, whoever says he abides in him ought to, what, walk in a same way in which he walked.

It's walking in the way Jesus walked. I put it as a quote, many people settle for looking Christian rather than becoming Christ-like. In 1987, I got a little bit of money. I think I got $28,000 given to me when someone passed away. It's a lot of money. I think I was like 18 or 19. I spent it in three months. $5,000 went to Del Mar racetrack. Not even a lie. I just look back, I'm like, dude, that was a down payment, bro.

What's up? Like, I could have got such, okay, nonetheless, I look back at that and I'm just like, ah! And I went down to Fashion Valley and I picked myself up this beautiful Submariner Rolex. Oyster, perpetual motion. It's that deep blue with the gold and the silver. It can go down to like 3,000 feet, right, or something like that because I spent a lot of time at the depth of 3,000 feet in the ocean. I needed that. If you would have walked into anywhere, people would have known.

Like, if you would have walked into a jeweler, he would have known that it was real, right? But I've also been in Rome and seen the exact same watch being sold by dudes on the street corner, which was weird because I thought you, like, would have to, you know, you know, have it behind bars or whatever. And so, I ended up selling it. I don't even have that watch anymore. I'm super bummed. And long story short, you could put this watch on you got in Rome and 95% of people, 99% of people will not know that that is not a Rolex, that that's not a Rolex Submariner.

But if you take it to someone who knows, to a jeweler, they will quickly know. Just by the way, one little detail, there'll be multiple details. They'll just know. I want to say when it comes to the judge, the one who judges us, God himself, there is no way to pass off a Italian knockoff for true Christ-likeness. And what God is calling us to be conformed to is actually to be shaped into that time piece or into that pot or to whatever you want to call, whatever analogy you have for forming and creating.

He wants to create you into that. But you have to work with him. You're like, well, I don't know how to do it. I've tried and tried and tried and I keep having this temptation and I can't overdo it. And I asked the Lord about that. I said, okay, Lord, what about that? He said, I will provide a way out of every single temptation. He says that. And there is a moment when you can walk away from it. That's what the scripture says.

And I have found that to be true. I have also found that to be true in my younger days that I would, if I really wanted to do something, I would wait until that moment that he gave me to walk away from the temptation passed so I could step into the temptation. When I was trying to get sober, when there was all these issues, I remember he would give me, all of a sudden I'd be like, hey, I don't really need to go smoke pot right now.

I actually feel like I don't need to. Like, woo, God, thank you so much. And I'd be like, but I want to. And so I'd wait it out. I don't know if that makes sense to anybody else or am I just being too honest. I'd wait it out until it went away, until the conviction went away and then I'd go get high. Like, he will give you a moment and that's how you do it that we might conform to be more like him. Coming in for a landing here, then there's five marks of maturity.

Verse one, once again, I won't read it again, I've read it multiple times, go to the word humility in verse two, humility. Being humble, saying to the Lord, I am a sinner, saved by grace. I deserve nothing but hell, but through the grace of Jesus I have been enthroned with Christ. Knowing who you are and your identity. Satan wants you to get you to sit on the first part and have humility turn into shame. Right? I'm a sinner.

Yep, you sure are. He's going to accuse you of that. But humility is knowing the rightness of your position and knowing that you are enthroned with God and have authority in the heavens is not being unhumble, is that the right word? Having a lack of humility. It is just knowing who you are. It's actually, it's actually humility to say I have nothing in my own but in Christ I am enthroned with him and I have been given dominion and I will judge the nations.

We will even judge the angels, the scripture says. And so to stand in that position, that's humility. The more you humble yourself, the more weakness you have, you will be strong. Live in that. We talked about that last week in relationship. Stability. The Christian who follows Jesus will find a measure of stability that does not feel like you're constantly walking on eggshells or next to a cliff or on a tightrope or always in survival mode.

There are seasons where Satan is just attacking. A lot of us in our church, there's a high amount of attack on our church right now and our leadership staff. There's a lot of health issues. There's an attack on our body right now that we haven't experienced in the last six months that I hadn't experienced the entire 12 years I've been here. And so we need you to be praying for us as a staff. Multiple hospital visits, like just a lot going.

And with you as well. There's sickness in our congregation. We need to pray. So we need to be praying and unifying on that. But in the midst of that, can we find stability? And when you follow Christ and you act like Christ, you will find more stability. I'm not going to say you're always going to be like just, you know, nothing can shake me, right? But there is more stability and you'll see yourself maturing. The things that used to knock you off don't knock you off anymore.

The triggers that used to work don't work anymore. I had to do some rifle training a long time ago and I found out that they have a thing with guns, I didn't know this, that they have a trigger pressure and that gets lighter or stronger. And so they have like a three pound, take three pound pull to have the, you know, for the target practice to go off. There's a five pound pull, a seven pound pull. It takes more and more pressure to actually release the, you know, to shoot the gun.

And what I have found is when we follow Christ, the things that triggered you take more trigger pressure than they used to, which is a good thing. Like the thing that used to just set you off, you know what I mean? Like a look, like your, you know, your wife would look at you and be like, ah, you looked at me. You know what I mean? It'd be like, okay, I look at you all the time. You know, then it would be like she'd have to say it, you know, she'd say something and she might have been in the right, she might have been in the wrong.

Wives can say things that are in the right that can tick a husband off, right? Or vice versa, totally vice versa. But pretty soon you get to a place where you're bearing with one another to like, you basically would have to put your foot on the trigger to like push that, it's like the safety's on because you're no longer triggered by that thing anymore. That's maturity in Christ. They say that couples have three to five arguments that just circular in different ways.

You have three to five core arguments in your marriage and they'll never be anymore and every other argument is about those three to five arguments, right? And I have somewhat found that true. As a couple, we need to be praying together and working together in Christ, studying the scripture together, praying together, doing counseling if you need it, whatever it is so that we can grow in the next one which is love. To love for one another.

We love our spouse as we were supposed to love Jesus Christ. But I don't want to love my spouse just because she, I want to be like Jesus. I want to love my spouse because I want to love my spouse. And I want to care for her and that love can grow dim if we don't work on it, especially the older as we get. And then final, in Ephesians 4.12, final thing, it says, and he gave himself, oh I already put that in there, go to verse 12, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up the body of Christ.

You were the saints. I know we've heard of Saint Ignatius, we've heard of all the other saints, and it's great. We can say that they were really good saints, but the scripture is clear that there is a priesthood of all believers, that all of you have a role as a priest and all of you have a role as saints in the kingdom. We will all be sainted and we are saints now because of Christ. And so our job is to build you up that you might do that.

And there's a couple ways right now we're building you up. I just want to give you these things we're doing. One, Tuesday nights, you can still jump in on Pastor Josh's class, which is the Freedom in Christ. And then tonight, Mike Powers does a class on discipleship essentials. So here's your practical takeaway. This week, choose one area where you know that you don't look like Jesus yet. Yet. I love that word. And intentionally practice Christlikeness in that area every single day.

Amen?