Turn with me in your Bibles to
Ephesians. We're in chapter 4. For those
of you who have not been with us for a while, we've been going
at this about 27 weeks, and we spent four weeks in February
doing something else, and now here we are in this letter, chapter
4. Last week, we began with this,
looking at what it means to walk in a manner worthy of the calling
of God. And I entitled last week's message,
Walking in a Manner Worthy of Grace. walking in a manner worthy
of grace. And so I want you to just try
to reflect on that for a moment. What does it mean to walk in
a manner worthy of grace? Do you ever contemplate the Scripture? I was speaking with Brother Neil
this morning on this. I asked the question, do you
ever look at the trees? And I remember being a child,
and I swore that I would share this, being a child, and oftentimes,
I probably daydreamed more than I did anything, but I would look
at the horizon of the trees. And those of you who live in
pecan orchards, and you know, let's see, I called it pecan
for so long, now I've moved back, so I have to say pecan. So, pecan
orchard. And you look at the trees. You
just look through the trees. There's nothing to really focus on there.
There's nothing really intricately amazing about them. But when
you're looking, you get to admire the beauty of what God has made.
You can see the sky. You can hear the sounds. You
can watch the leaves fall, the birds and the squirrels and everything
in between that play in that creative way. But most importantly,
when we stop and stare, our minds begin to think. And I remember
those times as a child when I would look into the trees and just
stare into the trees and just find myself in a trance, if you
will, not necessarily a trance, but just this mindless gaze. And it's in that quietness that
I begin to contemplate the deep things of life. It's in that
quietness and that stillness that I begin to consider what
it really must be like to be God, not that I could. But you
know how children believe what they believe, the sovereignty
of God. If one thing I pray, my children
would understand God's sovereignty. And two nights ago, my youngest
began to have a nosebleed. I pick on my youngest today and
not my oldest. And she began to have a nosebleed.
So she comes in, she gets a tissue and 10, 15 minutes later, she's
still bleeding. To understand in her mind the
sovereignty of God, she asked me this question, Daddy, Why
does God make my nose bleed for so long? And why at this time
of night? Why? So in the simplest of things,
our children understand and just grasp the reality of the sovereignty
of God. Why is that that children have
such faith? They even know, in some sense,
and maybe it could be misguided, but in that sense, our children
recognize and understand the reality that God is sovereign,
almost to an absurd extreme, as though God were making the
nose bleed. But we believe that God made
our nose bleed rather than think that He has His hands off of
our lives. We know that God is definitely
sovereign over the history of man. And so with that, I want
to ask you as we get into this text today, have you contemplated,
have you meditated on the Word of God? When you leave here each
week, do you go out into your life and do you sit and listen
or are we too busy? Church, I believe we are too
busy in our own lives, in our own quiet times, in our own actual
times of relaxation and recreation, we're too busy. We've become
too driven to have our mind attacked and stepped on and molded in
some type of entertained way, even when it comes to spiritual
things, to the point where we no longer have the opportunity
to think. And a person that does not think
is a person that is a slave to another man's thoughts. So where
is your spiritual life? Are you just walking on what
I say? Are you walking on the sermon
that you heard years ago? Are you walking on something
you read maybe three weeks ago? Or are you walking diligently
in the Word of God today in such a way that your mind takes time
to think about it? When is the last time you considered
the grace of God and it took you to a place that you could
not move? It took you to a place where you had to just take a
time out from your job or from your kids or from your chores. When's the last time you had
to stop on the side of the road just to contemplate the vastness
of His majesty and His power? When was the last time you stayed
up late at night confessing your sins, only to find yourself just
enthralled with awe and fear and joy at the mighty grace of
God who forgives? The reason we don't have those
moments anymore is because we are too busy and we feel and
the enemy has tricked us into thinking that when we take this
time away to be still and know that I am God, as it says in
Scripture. that we feel guilty because we are not doing what
needs to be done. Friends, I believe that the church is full of all
of us in some sense. We are full of Martha and we
need to be full of Mary. More specifically and more explicitly,
we need to be full of the spirit of God. We need to be praying
that God would fill us with his fullness as we've learned in
the last few weeks. And so the reason that I bring this up is
that it came up this morning in a conversation and it also
It also is important because the very nature of this sermon,
dealing with the unity of the church, is often so agreed upon
by the congregation, we got you, yes, we amen, we get the amens,
and then we walk out the door and that's the last time we think
of it. And what we've done is we've agreed with what we've
heard based on the foundation of our ego and ethnocentric ideals. And what that means is our own
internal or cultural beliefs. And so we've run on those beliefs
and we think we've heard what has been said, but we have defined
it from our traditions and from our own minds rather than from
the Word of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. So are we
going to leave today when I say the church ought to be in unity?
You know, I've never been at a congregation or never met a
pastor, never met a Christian or a professing Christian who
would disagree that the church ought to be unified. But you
know what I found? Is that most people don't understand what
that really means. Most people would say that unity
is the lack of disagreement. Oh, no, we're getting along great.
We're unified. No, that's not necessarily unity. Because as we've seen through
history, division brings unity sometimes when you are not standing
on the solid doctrine. Thank God for the Protestant
Reformation. Thank God for those men who decided
to stand up at the cost of everything that they held dear to proclaim
that the gospel was given by grace to be received by faith.
And it is not of works, it is not of indulgences, it is not
only wrong, but it is wicked for the church to expect money
to be able to pay for sins. And that was the practice of
the Roman Catholic Church during that time. What would happen? If someone had gotten up and
preached and said, no, let's just be unified. Let's just forgive
them and let's just work within this. Well, I'll be straight
with you. We in this point in history may
not have been given the grace of God. We may still be in the
dark ages, if you will, spiritually. But unity, the word unity, if
you will, here in Ephesians 4, and then I'll read the text in
just a moment, it's a word that reveals something about humanity.
It reveals the reality of human depravity and that one will determine
for himself what it means based on how it works best for him.
And when I say him, I'm also meaning her, but I don't want
to use that many pronouns. And how we have unity and what
it costs and to what ends, We are to meet it and find it. We
hear unity all day long. But what does it really mean?
And how is the church to be unified? Even in our country, we call
our country the United States of America. Those of you who
are interested, we're going through the history of the American church
on Tuesdays at seven. On week four, we just got through
the Great Awakening and we're looking at the results of the
Great Awakening and some of the denominations that came out of
the Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening this coming week.
My prayer for you today is you would understand that being united
in name is not unity at all. We are the United States of America,
but where in this country do we unite? For what cause? What passion? What purpose? Or
is it that we're just on this one big continent we call America,
and we say we are united in proximity? Because honestly, at the Civil
War, the South did not unite as states. They seceded as United
States. They seceded from the United
States of America. And thus, the federal military
had to come in and force them back into the United States. So unity, as far as America is
concerned, is not unity at all, but rather a picture of a federal
head that dictated what everyone else would believe. I think it
is the best for a country, but we say we're united. Where are
we united? And I'm not here to preach politics
at all. I'm just saying that of one place we use the word,
it's not very accurate, is it? In order for there to be unity,
There must be a central point or passion or place or thought
on which to be unified. The states are united in that
they agree by the will of the federal military to be one nation.
A team is united based on the fact that they want to work together
for a common goal. But how is the church unified?
Is it that we do what the country does and we say we want to be
the same church of this city, so let's get together and work
together? I don't believe that's what the Scripture calls for
unity. Is it that we have the same goal, though the church
ought to have the same goal? Let's all say that the same goal
is to just give glory to God. Well, what's that mean in the
first place and how is that actually done? I'll be honest with you,
our theology, our doctrine, our understanding of the gospel of
Jesus Christ will determine what we do with our lives as the people
of God. This portion of Scripture in
chapter 4, verses 1-6 talks about the church as a whole, as one
body, and then 6-14 begins to talk about each individual's
part, and we'll deal with that next week. Though we're unified
as a body, we all have a unique calling and a unique giftedness
that we ought to use in functioning to edify and grow the body into
maturity who is in Jesus Christ. And so what is unity? Look at
the text with me. Chapter 4, verses 1-6, I therefore
of Ephesians, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner
worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all
humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another
in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace." There is one body and 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. In church, I've really struggled. to determine if I'm going to
pick this apart at such a slow rate like I have in the last
six to eight weeks. I'm praying through that. I'm
going to do my best to somewhat exegete that whole spot of three
through six today. I'd like to tell you where I'm
going so you're not stuck. But if I do not finish it, we
will recapitulate it next week. We will just revisit it, if you
will. So we here, we see, champ, we
see this language in verse 3. We ought to be eager. We looked
at the verses 1-2 last week. We ought to be eager. Now listen
to this language. Listen to the plain grammar. Be eager to maintain
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Now you know what
that means? That means that unity is here
and it's glued together through peace. So the bond that glues
us to unity, that unifies us, is peace. And we know what Paul
has argued already in these first three chapters about peace. Christ
has done it. I'm going to help you unpack
this and see just how we are to be unified. Friends, in chapter
3, verse 10, the purpose of the church is to display the manifold
wisdom of God to the rulers and the authorities of the heavenly
places. So if we are not living in unity, in the Spirit, in the
bond of peace, we are proclaiming a false wisdom of God. We are saying, God has created
us. God has established us. God has empowered us. Look how
we're living. Look at God. That's exactly what
we're doing as the church. Look at God. Well, we know what
happens in Ezekiel. When we see the prophet Ezekiel
speaking, we see God speaking to the prophets, speaking to
the Jews, who for years continued to go back into paganism, go
back into idolatry. They did it from Egypt to the
wilderness. They were out there for just
a couple of weeks. Then they're crying because they want to go back
to Egypt. And so time after time after time, because of their
rebellion, because of their disobedience, God puts them into a disciplinary
position of slavery. And so now not only is Israel
enslaved, Israel is enslaved physically, Israel is also enslaved
spiritually. And Israel in Ezekiel's time
is enslaved to the idolatry of the Babylonians. And so here
now we have these Israelites, the people of God, who are worshipping
idols, pagan idols. And God says through Ezekiel,
and I'm just paraphrasing about 30 chapters right now. Well,
not even paraphrasing, I'm just jumping ahead of all this. God
says that, I will restore you Not because of your sake or for
your sake or because of you, because of your worthiness, this
is a paraphrase, but because of my great name which you have
defamed among the nations. That's what God says. So I will
put My Spirit within you. I will take that dead heart and
I'll make it alive. I will put in you the ability
and the desire to walk in My statutes. And you will walk before
Me. I will clean you. I will save
you. And I will set you apart from
the nations, even though you have defamed My name among them.
And I believe, church, that the church of America is defaming
the name of God the way they preach and the way they practice
the gospel. And it's only by God's grace That we're only a
step away from being just like everybody else. So we do not
stand there and go, thank you God, we're not like the church
right there. For if we follow suit according to the parables
of Jesus, He said that those people go home condemned, but
it is the one who cries for mercy who is justified. So let us cry
for mercy. For ourselves and for our brothers
and our sisters in the faith. And so let's look at some of
these words, looking at verse 3, looking at eager. Be eager. I'm going to read the first part
of chapter 1 and put the verb in there to verse 3. So listen
to this. I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling
which you have been called, being eager to maintain the unity of
the Spirit. Now, listen to that. Eagerness. To maintain, there's two things
that you ought to hear there. Do you see that the first thing
that happens in the minds of Americans is that we see that
be eager to maintain, OK, we've got to create unity in our in
our lives. And that's OK. That's what I
did. First time you read that passage, you go, we've got to
create unity. And for years, I'm trying to create unity. We've got to
be unified. We've got to be unified to get to be. And I realize we're not going
to be unified. Not completely. There's no utopia. But we had
to interrupt the young man preaching back in 2001 because he got up
on a Sunday morning. He was a pastor in training,
young guys, about 20 years old. And he preached that God wanted
utopia on earth. And three of us pastors got up
and started walking down the front. And he realized what he'd
said, and he goes, well, I think I misspoke. So he corrected himself.
And then at the staff meeting the next day, we realized that
he realizes how serious that was. God is not looking for utopia.
Matter of fact, the scripture teaches us very clearly that
there will be no peace on earth. No peace. We will not have seasons
of prosperity worldwide. There will be seasons of despair
and war and rumors of war. And the closer the church looks
like Christ, the worse they'll be hated. And the worse they're
hated, the worse persecution will come. And the more persecution
comes, the more death comes to the church. But we who are given
over to death are alive in Christ. So they're giving us what we
desire most. So what is the problem? The problem
is, is that we've misunderstood unity. first by thinking that
we have to create it. It says, be eager to maintain
the unity. What does that mean? That means
we are to be pressing and working and fighting and praying and
living and driving and pushing to maintain what God has already
given the church. So we who are the people of God
are in unity, in the Spirit, in the bond of peace. And that
peace, as we'll see in a minute, is the person of Jesus Christ.
So here, we ought to maintain the unity of the Spirit. In chapter
2, we've looked at this several months back. It says, "...for
He Himself, Christ, is our peace, who has made us both one and
has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility
by abolishing the law of commands expressed in ordinances that
He might create in Himself one new man in the place of two."
And in this, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to
God, one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility."
And so Jesus came, says, and He preached, Peace to you who
are far off, and peace to you who are near, for through Him
we both have access to what? One Spirit. to one Spirit to
the Father, in one Spirit to the Father, so then you are no
longer strangers, you are no longer aliens, but you are fellow
citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Christ
Jesus Himself is the cornerstone in whom the whole structure is
being joined together. grows into a holy temple in the
Lord. In Him you are also being built together into a dwelling
place for God by the Spirit. So the Spirit of God has unified
the church already. It's done. It is already established. We ought to recognize the unity. We ought to press for that. We
ought to be eager to maintain what God has already done. How
American is it to think we have to build it from scratch? I lived
my life like that up until about 30. I live my faith like that up
until about 30. And it took God taking my mind
from me nearly to realize I could build nothing outside of his
grace and his providence. And I surely couldn't build my
faith, but I ought to be eager to maintain what he's given me.
There's a big difference in maintenance and building. Sometimes we think
it's easier to build, but when you're trying to clear land,
and dig up weeds and get rid of bears and rattlesnakes just
so you can get started to find out where you want to build,
what are you going to do? See, only God can do that, the rebirth. So
we maintain the unity of the Spirit. Therefore, maintain. Another way of stating this is
to preserve. I think a better Greek word for
maintain would be preserve there. To preserve, to hold on to, to
be diligent. He says to be diligent for this
very reason. Listen to Peter. I won't tell
you where to turn. You can turn if you want to, but it's going
to be very quick. Second, Peter one verse five. For this very reason,
Peter, the apostle Peter, makes the same kind of statement in
a different context for this very reason. Make every effort
to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue, with knowledge
and knowledge, with self-control and self-control, with steadfastness
and steadfastness, with godliness and godliness, with brotherly
affection. and brotherly affection with love, for if these qualities
are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective
or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And
in verse 10 it says, Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent
to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities,
you will never fail. In John's first epistle, he says
that these things are written that you may not sin, but if
you sin, you have what? An advocate with the Father Jesus
Christ the righteous, who is your propitiation. It also teaches
us there that we ought to practice what? Righteousness. How do we
practice righteousness? We strive and we urge and we
deliberately try to preserve the righteousness that is whose?
Jesus Christ, imputed to us. We mess up and we put works on
the forefront of our justification when we actually think we can
work in order to please God. You cannot please God with your
righteous acts and labor. You cannot please God. We cannot
please God with our holiness because our holiness is falling
and failing short of the glory of God and His righteous standard.
But He declares us to be holy by giving us a real aroma of
righteousness in this world and in this life, but it's still
not going to appease Him. What appeases Him is the life
of Jesus Christ. So we who are in Christ then
are appeasing to God because Christ has taken our sin and
put it on Himself and He was crucified. And then God is satisfied. Then Christ, who is God and holy,
took His righteousness and put it on us. So mercy, God gives
us mercy and God gives us grace and favor. So God's mercy is
I'm not going to kill you for your sin, which you deserve as
a wage. God's gracious favor is I'm also
going to give you my righteousness through my Son that you do not
deserve and create you to be in my presence. I'm going to
prepare you to be with me. I'm going to make you holy. That's
the gospel. And there's nothing we can do
but sit in awe and believe by faith alone in Christ alone.
And so now we ought to realize, though we cannot, though we think
we must maintain, I mean, we must create, we are really just
maintaining. And how are we doing that? We
are maintaining through some general practices that we'll
see. Mostly through our mind and the knowledge of what God
has already done to establish in His church. And by His power,
as we saw last week, that God will maintain what is happening
in our lives. So He says to be diligent. Also,
to maintain unity. What does it say there? There's
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.
Now, let's take those one at a time. The first is the body.
This means that God's Spirit is the unifier. Therefore, it
is already a present, just as I've already said, and at work
within us. The Spirit of God gives life. The Spirit of God
brings together those who were dead in their sins and trespasses
and brought us to life in Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God is
the one who approves and appropriates and empowers the believer to
believe, live and love according to the commands of Scripture.
We are already united by the gracious power of God through
the Holy Spirit. And that brings us there. We
are one body and one Spirit. We ought to maintain the unity
of the Spirit. It's the work of God. See, the
Spirit teaches us. John says that the Spirit teaches
us all things. Jesus says that the Spirit gives
life. We know that in Romans the Spirit prays for us. We see
in John 3 that the Spirit rebirths and regenerates. And so the Spirit,
as we maintain the unity, part of that is to understand that
the Spirit is at work. To continually remind ourselves
that it is God's power at work already in us that we must hold
fast to. We don't have to do anything
magical for God to work. He's already working. We don't
have to believe in any certain truths in order for God to save
us or to work in us, because He's already done that. So God's
work in us, how are we to continually maintain the Spirit and the unity? How are we to urge ourselves
and to be devoted to that? We do that because the Spirit
teaches. That is called doctrine. The
word doctrine simply means teaching. So we ought to learn the doctrine.
We learn what we know God is already doing. We supplement,
as we learned in 2 Peter just a second ago, we supplement our
knowledge with virtue and virtue and on and so on. And so we know
what is Paul saying in Ephesians, the love of Christ. He says,
I pray that you may know the love of Christ. That is what?
Beyond knowledge. So how does that work? In the
Spirit of God. We ought to know the calling of God. Know that
to which you have been called. We need to know the grace of
God. What is the grace? By grace you have been saved,
Paul interjects. Through faith. That is not of
your own doing. But it's a gift of God. So we
need to know the grace of God. We need to know the mercy of
God. The mercy of God. God in His mercy has caused us
to be born again, it says in 1 Peter. Know the election of
God. Know the gospel. We need to know the Son of God.
In John 17, Jesus says that this is eternal life. That they know
you, the one true God and the Son whom you have sent. So in
the only way you can know To have eternal life is to know
God, is to know Christ. And it's not a knowledge of the
facts, as I said last week. There is no place in Scripture
where it tells us in order to be saved, we must believe facts
and figures and truths. We must believe in the One who
is the truth. We must put our faith in the
One who is the source of all truth. We must put our hope into
Christ. Nothing else. No one else. No
other thing. The demons believe in the truths
of Christ, but they tremble, for they will not be saved. It
is not a knowledge of the head that you can agree with that
makes you right with God. It is the rebirth of the Spirit
that that knowledge then meets with a supernatural hope and
faith that cannot be thwarted. We need to know the Word of God.
We need to know the mystery of God, who is Jesus Christ. We
need to know and understand the adoption of how God has saved
us and brought us in. And He calls us His inheritance. So we need to learn doctrine
through the Holy Spirit. So we need to continue to learn and
to grow. The church that does not grow in the depths of the
mercies is a dry, dead church, barely saved. I believe that. And I believe that I grew up
in a dry, dead church, barely saved. And I thank God for saving
me out of that and getting me out of academic justification
and putting me in faith. Devotion. We learn doctrine and
the Spirit also gives us devotion. What is devotion? Devotion is
a passion to continue to do what we do. So the outcome of learning
is living. This is 1 John. The outcome of
learning is living. That which was from the beginning,
that which we have seen, which we've heard, which we've touched
with our hands concerning the word of truth, that we now proclaim
to you concerning the word of life. that you may have fellowship
with us and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His
Son, Jesus Christ, and that your joy may be full. See, here's
all of this. We need to know that the Spirit
gives the knowledge and the Spirit brings devotion. To do what? Let us to continue. That's why
we ought to be urging to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace. We need to be working to continue to do and
feed and nurture and preserve what God has done. Not that He
needs us to. But let me tell you what God
does when He recreates a life. If He takes a rock and turns
it into a bird, it's not going to lay on the mountain. It's
going to fly away. If He takes a stick and He turns
it into a fish, it's going to swim against the flow. If God takes a drop of water
and He turns it into a dog, that dog is going to go dig, or chew,
or pee in the carpet. It's going to do something that
it knows to do instinctively. When God recreates a dead man
and makes him a child, that child hungers to serve the Lord, hungers
to know the Father, and hungers to eat and devour and then to
give the grace of God through the Word to the people around
them. That is devotion. So we ought to be devoted to
do the ministry to which we've been called to do. It's a big
tragedy, and I hope I don't hurt people's feelings, but friends,
I'll tell you what, God has brought me through it. We've been part
of two mega churches and on staff of mega, mega churches, thousands
and thousands of people, millions and millions of dollars in budgets
and programs that everybody in the county could come to three
times and never meet each other. And I'll tell you what that is
not. That is not ministry. That's not ministry. What ministry
is, is what has God called you to do? You, not us. Why is it the field of dreams
is so often established in the church? If we do this, then people
will be ministered to. Well, where are these people?
Well, let's just build it and they will come. No, it doesn't
work that way. You build a Dairy Queen and then they'll come.
You build a ballpark and then they'll come. What you don't
do is say we're building a ministry and we hope somebody comes and
partakes of it. That's just ridiculous. That's not saying I've got plates
and I've got food, but I've got Nobody to cook it. We're just
going to wait till somebody shows up to cook it. Y'all can't eat
until somebody's coming sometime. I promise. Just wait. Two weeks
later, the food's rotted and there's nowhere to eat. We ought
to have devotion to do the ministry to which we've been called individually,
and when there is no champion for ministry, there's no ministry.
We ought to have devotion to answer the call of God, even
if that's to die or be a prisoner of the Lord. We ought to have
devotion to follow the wisdom of God. We ought to have the
devotion to continue to look and see. Look and see. What is it that Paul prays in
chapter 1? Where's that? He says in chapter 1, "...having
the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the
hope to which He has called you, and what are the riches of His
glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable
greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the
working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised
Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand of the
heavenly places, far above rule and authority and power and dominion,
And above every name that is named, not only in this age,
but also in the age to come. That's a breathful. That's a
mouthful. And so in devotion, we look and
we see. We ought to be devoted to good
works. In chapter 2, verse 10, that
He has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. God has
prepared these good works. We ought to be devoted to the
foundational faith that we have. We ought to be devoted to the
suffering of the saints. Be willing to suffer, as Paul
said in Colossians 1, to fill up what is lacking in the suffering
of Christ. As he says here to the people of Ephesus, he says,
do not lose heart for what I'm suffering for. It is for your
glory. It is for your glory. So we ought to suffer with joy
and we ought to be devoted to pray for the saints. We need
to pray for the church. There's much more, but let's
keep moving. We look here at this and we pray
and we says there's one body and one spirit just as you were
called to one hope that belongs to you called one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and father of all who is over all and through
all and in all. But look at that where it says
right before that in verse three, the unity of the spirit and the
bond of peace. Let me talk about peace very quickly before I move
on to the next thing. We've seen this. We've studied
this. We know this. But just as a way of reminder,
this is the unifying essence of the church. Peace with God.
The bond of peace. This peace is what glues us together. What is that peace? It's peace
in the mind, the understanding of God's actions on our behalf. It's peace in the heart, knowing
that our affections for this world have now been taken away,
that we still battle with sin. We struggle with sin, but we
do not snuggle with sin any longer. We have been set free to be a
slave to righteousness. That is peace. The hostility
has been torn down. The wall that divides us from
God has been rendered destroyed in the body of Jesus Christ,
the veil, His flesh, as it says in Hebrews. And this peace is
understanding what God has done for us, for His glory, for His
namesake, and the peace between each other through the supernatural
affection for each other by the Spirit of God. So we see that
the Spirit gives peace. We also need to understand, as
we see continually throughout this letter already, is to the
praise of His glory. We call that doxology. How we
urge to maintain and we work to maintain and preserve the
doxology in our hearts. How do we worship? For the Father
is seeking people who worship in spirit and truth. He's not
seeking a personalities who are go-getters and good builders
and entrepreneurs. God never used men like that without breaking
them down first. He doesn't need professionals.
And oh, how professional we can be to the point where in 2004,
I looked at our ministry and I said before my brother elders
and I said, we are working apart from the power of God. Look what
we have built. And I was rebuked harshly. But I really think that
God showed me something there. To the praise of His glorious
grace. To Him be the glory forever. What does Paul say? In the church
and in Jesus Christ forever and ever through all generations.
Amen. And so therefore, then we ought to walk worthy of grace.
We continue to walk as worthy of grace. Those who are not worthy,
who are walking worthy. Isn't that amazing? How are we
walking worthy? By the power of God. Now let's look at this. Verse
4, there's one body and one spirit. And we back up a little bit.
The spirit of the bond of peace. Just as you were called to one
hope. And I'll stop there and we'll talk. This call. What is
this calling? We could talk about the call
forever. I looked at all of this here in the letter to the Ephesians.
And there's so much. We could really just build a
series on the effectual call of God and the call of the saints
by the Holy Spirit of God. But this calling is the effectual
call of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This call saves you. In 2 Corinthians
4, verse 6, which is my favorite verse right now for the last
few years of all Scripture, which says, For God who said, Let light
shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give us the
light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
The rebirth is the shining of God's Holy Spirit into the heart
of the unregenerate. That is the effectual call. Come,
be mine. You're mine. Come. Saul of Tarsus. Saul is like with passion and
with zeal. He passionately persecuted the
way, which was what they called the Christians during that time.
He hated Christ. He had zeal for the law of God. He had zeal for the holiness
of God. He was going to destroy that which he thought in his
passion was defaming the name of Yahweh, Jehovah. And on his way to Damascus, God
shined the light in his heart. And he saw and he believed and
literally went blind in his physical eyes because he had sight in
his spiritual eyes and he believed. This is the call of God. Oh,
Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? This call saves, it reveals sin. In John chapter 4, when Jesus
is speaking to the woman at Sychar who talks about water, and then
who debates Jacob, and then debates the idea of this man being a
prophet, and all of a sudden he starts talking about her sin,
and then she wants to change subject about worship, and then
she says, well, I've heard that Messiah is coming. And Jesus
says to her, I am He. She goes back to her town and
says these words, Come, see a man that has told me everything that
I've ever done. The call of God sanctifies. The
call of God reveals sin. It empowers us to walk before
Him by faith. It brings joy to the lowest of
depressed people. It rests the soul. It produces
affection for holiness and rebuilds the whole man. It recreates the
heart. It regenerates the whole person. This is called the rebirth. This
shining in the heart, the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Christ. This is the call of God. And
so we ought to be diligent. I go back. We need to be diligent.
We need to be eager to continue to work this into our lives,
to preserve this call, to make our election sure, Peter says. We work to show what God is doing
in the power that God is working already within us. We don't work
in our own power. We don't work in our own minds.
We don't work on our own wisdom. For Paul says in 1 Corinthians
that God uses the nothings of the world to bring to nothing
the things that are. It is not wisdom. It is not logic. It is not rationale. As an apologist
years ago, I used to debate people into the dirt. They still never
came to faith. You can't come to faith by agreeing
with the facts. You must come to faith by being
born again. Nicodemus agreed with the facts. He said, we believe
that you are a man come from God, for no one can do the things
you've done except that God be with him. God be with you, Jesus
of Nazareth. And Jesus says, you can't see
me. Unless you're born again, you can't see Me. And quit professing
what you do not know, for you do not know. Let me give you
an example. The Teacher of all Israel is
what He calls Him. And yet you do not understand earthly things?
How are you to understand heavenly things, spiritual things? That
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit. We say and proclaim what we have seen,
Jesus says. Have you seen Christ? Have you seen the gospel? Do
you see Him now? Do you know Him? Do you love
Him? And are you diligent to continue to work out what God
is doing? John 3 back there. It's amazing
what's in John 3 and what people really focus on that they take
out of context. But in John 3, this is the judgment that the
light has come into the world, that call has come to the world.
But people love the darkness rather than the light because
their works were evil. They did not come to the light lest their
works be exposed. But those who come to the light come to the
light so that it may be clearly seen that their works have been carried
out in God. So God is the one at work. We
ought to be eager. This is a desire. What is eagerness?
It's a desire. It's a mission. It's a passion.
See, our life ought to be rooted in an eagerness to be passionate
about living for the glory of God. We need to be on mission.
As we grow and are eager, we then teach others to do the same
thing. To be obedient to the command
of Christ. That's evangelism. June 30th, 9 a.m. right here.
We'll go through a whole five-hour workshop on learning evangelism.
What is biblical evangelism? You'll find that 99.9% of all
the methods that you've seen are unbiblical. And they produce
unregenerate, professing Christians who fall away in a very short
time or work like Trojans to make God happy. And then when
they hear the Word of God, they put their fist in the air and
say, don't you question my faith. Let's pray for mercy. So we have that call. And what
does that call? That call is the effectual call
of God. You are called to the one hope that belongs to your
call. See, we're called to a hope. We're called to a hope, not hopelessness.
Our hope is in Christ Jesus and in Christ Jesus alone. This has
affected our lives. Friends, are you called of God? I mean, that's a simple invitation
for you to consider and meditate on this. And if you are, then
how often do you really relax and look at the trees and hear
what God has to say to show you how glorious He is? This hope
is in Christ alone. And it teaches us that we, none
of us, has ever affected life, eternal life, or has never affected
grace, but that faith is a gift of God. The expression of hope
is a life lived for the glory of God, to the praise of His
glorious grace with the people of God for the same end. What?
To give glory to God. This call encounters something. It encounters a life of unbelief
and then it counters the unbelief. So the call of God to the hope
of the believer does this. God calls and we sit in unbelief
like this. And God moves by and we see Him
and we go, ooh, and we turn this way. And He moves by this way
because He's everywhere. And you can say you don't believe,
you can say you can't see, but you are looking, but you are
not perceiving. Why? Because you're not born
again. And so we look and we don't like, and when we finally
decide to dig ourselves a hole and we get in and we cover our
eyes and our ears and we're going blah, blah, blah, blah, we don't
even want to hear, God reaches into that pit and He pulls us
out and saves us. God's call counteracts unbelief
and produces faith. Do you understand that? This
faith produces hope in Jesus Christ. A very highly and specific objective
faith. I'm not talking about mojo. I'm
talking about a very objective, explicit faith. An object. That's what objective means.
A very unique and individual, single object. This call counters
unbelief and produces faith that is uniquely objective in Jesus
alone. It is not placed in faith It
is not placed in works. It is not placed in belief. It
is not placed in process. It is not placed in facts. It
is not placed in methods. It is not placed in church. It
is not placed in ministry. It is not placed in morality.
There is no faith that saves in any of that. It's a faith
in Jesus alone. So if Christ is the object of
faith, then God has surely saved you. And some of you may be brought
to life just by hearing that today. by the grace of God. And so then as we have faith,
what happens? It brings diligence. This is
the hope. This hope brings diligence. What
else brings diligence? Because when we're confronted
with life, what happens? Oh, this isn't what I wanted.
And so we just need to do one of two things. We give up or
we fight. And if we fight in our power,
then we're just should have just given up. But what faith and hope brings
is a diligence to persevere, to understand and trust in the
sovereignty of God and His redemption, which removes all claims and
efforts on the part of humanity. God's redemption takes away any
boasting. Why should I let you into my
heaven? God might. He won't, if He did ask me that. Number one, He's not concerned
with my answer, because it has no bearing on His decision to
save me. Number two, if he did ask that question, it's probably
because he wants everybody around him to see how wrong I am about
what I'm about to say. Because if I don't say anything,
but I should not be allowed in here, except by your righteous
favor through Christ. Because if I say this, well,
because I prayed the prayer to receive you, God, and you've
got to let me in, he'll throw me right into hell. Because I was a good person and
I really believed in you. Well, not everyone who says to
me, Lord, Lord, who entered the kingdom of heaven to depart from
me, you workers of iniquity. Those are the words of Jesus in the
Gospels. Because I will, you know, after
I got saved, you know, I said I did good trying to work in
the church and I preach and I don't think that doesn't matter. Your
righteousness is like a bunch of filthy rags to me. I don't
care how good you are. You have not fulfilled the law
of perfect holiness. You're a lawbreaker and you can't get away with the
law that you've broken just because you've tried to make up for it.
Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. Your righteousness
is iniquity to me. In other words, your righteousness becomes lawlessness
when you're not regenerate, when you don't have the hope. This
call brings this diligence and this call brings glory to God
who gave faith as a gift to those who he gave to the Son, John
6. This hope brings to light the
reality of the gospel and the reality of the new life and the
Christian faith. So let's look at these next things very quickly.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism. Wow. And one father. One Lord. I'll break it down to you quickly,
I wanted to dig into this a little more, but I'll just do it quickly.
Jesus Christ is the only Lord. That's really what that's saying.
There's one Lord, one master, one ruler of all things. Jesus
Christ is one Lord. Let me tell you what has plagued
our world since the 1920s. And I hate to say this, that's
when the Baptists began to grow and from 1920 to the present
day, the Baptists are the largest denomination by far in the in
America. And they begin something And
somewhere up in there, with revivalism, they began to do something and
use something called the four spiritual laws, which tells us
that we can trust in faith to be saved and have eternal life,
but we can still operate without Christ being Lord of our lives.
That's a lie from hell. That is a lie from the enemy.
If there ever was one, it's just as wicked as did God surely did
not say you would die. If Christ doesn't rule your life,
you do not belong to Him. You mean to tell me I've got
to be perfect? Go ahead and try. He'll show you just how perfect
you're not. He'll give you enough change. Choke yourself right
across that bridge. But then in His mercy, He'll
draw you back. So he who says he has no sin is a liar and the
truth is not in him, John says. We have sinned, but we don't
practice it. We don't get up to strive to practice sin. It
is a battle, but it is not. We are no longer slaves to it. And that is part of our growth
in the Lord as we mature. So with this one Lord, Jesus
cannot be Savior if He is not Lord at the same time. It's always
both. He can't save you if He's not
the Master of your life. And yet there are still some
who would claim that He's the Lord, but they do not believe. One can't believe, I'll say this,
I've said it ten times in the last two weeks, in the truths
of Christ and be saved, they must be made a lover and follower
of Christ through the rebirth and thus believe, apart from
reason and apart from knowledge, a divine faith that saves. So he says there's one Lord and
then one faith. Now this isn't talking about
the practice of faith because there's no such thing as one-time
belief. There's no such thing as one-time belief. There is
such thing as one-time salvation. but not one-time belief. If you
believe today and tomorrow, you go, well, I believed yesterday,
so I'm fine the heck with it. You're not a believer. You see
what I mean? And it sounds really funny. It
is funny. But people believe like that
all the time. Well, I was saved 1912. Well, that's not right. 1962. Nobody in here that old.
1962. So in 1962, I believed in Jesus. Well, where are you
today? Well, I'm just sort of floating aside. Really? Can you have 45 years
of not believing and say that you're a believer? No, because
even in David's sin, he believed. He acted in unbelief. But he
was a man after God's own heart after he murdered Uriah because
he slept with his wife and had an illegitimate child with her.
But he was restored, he repented, Psalm 51. See, that's the heart
of someone who is a child of God, not someone who goes, I'm
alright, I believed back then, I'm forgiven. Repentance is required
and it's not one time either, it's always. We are always in
a state of believing and trusting in Christ. We see sin in our
lives, we're repenting and we're trusting that Christ, if you
haven't saved me, then I'm not saved. There's no way that I'm
going to make it if you don't bring me out of this darkness.
You have saved me. And you alone have saved me.
That's faith. That's one faith. That means that there's one belief.
There's one way. This is an objective essence
of what is believed, not an individual, one-time thing. That's not what
he's talking about there. There's one faith. There's not many faiths.
There's not many ways. There's one way. Only one reality
of redemption. Only one reality for all peoples,
Jews and Gentiles. There's not a way to save Jews.
There's not a way to save Gentiles that's different. And then you've
got these people. So we do that in our evangelism. Well, I'm
going to reach these people over here. And I know they're in the
middle of all these other people. I'm going to reach these people.
We're going to do it this way. Well, that's the methods. And
you go ahead and do what you think you want to do. Romans
10, 17 says the only way people come to faith is to hear the
words of Christ. So if you're not preaching them the Word of
God, they're not going to get saved. They can see your love,
and they can come to a place where they love what you do,
and they love what you do for them, and you can tell them it's all Jesus, and
they can love Jesus through you, and then they'll go to hell,
and they'll be none the wiser until they get there. So when
we see this one faith, this is a faith that is for all people,
not different faiths and different ways and different eras. God
did not save people differently in the Garden of Eden than He
saves people today. One thing. And Colossians passes
it this way, if indeed you continue in the one faith, stable and
steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you
heard. Oh, yeah. Which has been proclaimed in
all creation under heaven and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
Do not shift from the hope of the gospel that you heard. So
we see one Lord, one faith and one baptism. This is a single
and permanent uniting with Christ in baptism. Yes, it does also
refer to water baptism, but water baptism doesn't save you. And
it's not talking about being baptized one time or any particular
method or way. It's talking about the identifier
of a profession of saying, I am in Christ. It doesn't matter
whether you do that. It doesn't matter. A lot of people
say, I'm in Christ. A lot of people come to the baptismal
waters and they're just wet sinners who were lost. But those who
are truly regenerate, baptism is a way of identifying publicly
with Christ as part of the first act of obedience, if you will.
And so there's one baptism physically, if you can, to say, hey, I'm
baptized into the body of Christ by proclaiming. When you're baptized,
then you are under the fellowship and the accountability of the
unity of the body so that you might grow to the praise of His
glory. And when we step out of line, we're encouraged and we're
disciplined and we're brawled under like a broken arm. We get
slung real tight. and we're taken care of until
the cast comes off and then we grow some more. And when the
arm's messed up, we really can't do everything we should be doing
as a body. That's what sin does in the church. We don't chop
it off. But if the arm gets gangrene and refuses to heal, we flop
it off and we throw it out in the woods. Such is the essence of
the church. If we're baptized, we have died
with Christ. That's what it represents. It
represents that we, in our heart of hearts and through the power
of the Holy Spirit, have agreed that God has saved us, and we
are being baptized, which is buried with Christ, raised to
walk in newness of life. So the old man is dead, the new
man's alive. It's a parallel. It's an image. It's a shadow of Christ's burial
and resurrection. It's what God has done through
Jesus to save us. It's a picture. It has no saving
grace. It is not a sacrament. Baptism
cannot do anything for you. It cannot give you the grace
of God. But if you have the grace of God, you will want to be baptized.
But most importantly, and I think more specifically in this text,
he's talking about this act of obedience But specifically, he's
talking about the spiritual baptism. The spiritual baptism. And what
I mean by that is that you are in Christ at salvation. The thief
on the cross was baptized into the body of Christ. When by faith
he was saved because Jesus saved him. He scoffed at him and then
Jesus saved him. He didn't save the other one.
He saved this one. Why? I don't know. Was he smarter
than the other thief? They were just a bunch of thugs,
just like us. Was he smart? No, he wasn't smarter. God's
grace was given to the one and not to the other. Why? I don't
know. The Scripture doesn't tell us that. But why do we question
God? Why does the crayon not jump
up and tell the child what to draw? Because we burn that sucker. And that's what God does when
we feel like we have the right to tell him what to do. Baptism
points to the death of the flesh as Christ died and being raised
to life. It tells others I have died and now Christ lives within
me, but spiritually. Apart from baptism in the water,
baptism occurs at the new birth, being part of the body of Christ.
This scripture is speaking of the first and final induction
into the family of God through God's Holy Spirit. One baptism. In other words, you become part
of the family one time and that's it, you're always in. That's
why in the Great Commission, the Great Declaration, if you
will, Matthew 28, it says to baptize in the name of the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit, single name, three persons. So God, the Father,
in closing, God. The father. One God and father of all who
is over all and through all and in all. All creation. God is the God
of all, God is through all, and God is in all. Do you see those?
Let me give you, these are some theological doctrines of who
God is and how He operates. God is the God of all, just like
I read to you Isaiah 46. Isaiah 46, it says, I am God
and there is no other. I am God and there is none like
me. Listen to this. God speaking. Declaring the end
from the beginning and from ancient times, things not yet done. My
counsel shall stand and I will accomplish my purpose. Calling
a bird of prey from the east. God's calling a bird of prey
to the east. The man of my counsel from a far country, just like
he did with Abram, I have spoken and I will bring it to pass.
Listen to me. Listen to me. I bring near my
righteousness. It is not far off and my salvation
will not delay. I will put salvation in Zion
for Israel, my glory." God is the God of all. What did Job
do? He started to question God. And what did God say? Well, let
me ask you a few questions. Where were you when I hung the
stars and named them? Where were you? You know, I've
created things, Job, the behemoth. I've created things, Job, that
live in the Water, that if He just swam by you, He'd swallow
lands. He'd destroy ships. There are
things that I've created that are creatures that would baffle
your little mind, Job. And I've put all that there is
in place. And what does Paul say? Jesus
holds it up by the word of His mouth. The universe is immeasurable.
It is infinite. And yet God holds it. He's the
God of all, okay? Get that picture. through all. What does that mean? That means
He permeates the hearts and the lives of man. He works His counsel
apart from man's choices, and He works His purpose apart from
man's desires. He places history on His line,
and He affects and causes all things to work for His pleasure.
This is the God who is in all. Judas didn't trick Jesus. raised Judas up to betray him. Pharaoh did not seize the Hebrew
people. God gave the Hebrew people to
him to be slaves so that he might show his glory in rescuing them. He saw, I hated Jacob, I loved. I will do what I want to do.
He's through all. And I was, excuse me, in Ephesians
2, 10. Excuse me, 1, 10. Christ. Listen to this. In Him we have
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses
according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon
us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery
of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in
Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in
Him, things in heaven and on earth. See, that's what that
means there, that He's through all. Now, let's look at the last
one. He's in all. What does that mean? That means
He's in all. He put all things under His feet.
He gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is
His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. We just
saw that Paul prayed. And what Paul prays, friends,
remember, always comes to pass because Paul prays in the will
of the Father. When you pray in the will of
God, it's always yes. You never get a no when you pray
in the will of God. Ever. It's always yes. Lord,
Your will be done. I pray that You would put in
my heart Your will for me and for this, and I pray that You
be glorified." See, if you pray for God's will to be done and
for Him to be glorified, you pray for what He's already promised
to give you because He says He would, it's a yes. It's a beautiful
picture. We are one body in Christ Jesus. Christ is in us to be filled
with all the fullness of God. If we are truly one body in Christ
then, We will see and be unified in
the foundation, the purpose of our existence. We will adhere
to the unity of doctrine, to the humility of the spirit, to
the affection of the brethren. We will accomplish this by what? By the power of God who has saved
us and will continue to equip us to what worthy of the grace
to which we've been called. The question is, Are you? See, next week we will look not
at us, but at you. At me. Are you truly filled with
the fullness of God? Are you endeavoring and desiring
to preserve what God is doing? Church, we're not here to do
church. We're here to be the church.
And that's so cliche, but you see, that's what Paul is saying.
Are we unified in doctrine? I've heard my whole life, and
my last thing, I've heard my whole life about there are essential
doctrines and then there are secondary, non-essential doctrines.
I don't believe there's any such thing as a non-essential doctrine.
I believe people say, well, do we baptize, you know, once, twice,
three times, sprinkles, flash, hose? What do we do? We throw them off a bridge and
fish them out. That's not a doctrine. That's
a practice. It's a practice. And what's best?
Well, we're not going to throw our Presbyterian brothers in
a fire because they sprinkle people. But I don't want to be
sprinkled. That's my conviction, but that's
not a doctrine. You see, that's not even an essential debate.
If you don't want to be Baptist, then go over there to Presbyterian
church. And if you are scared to death of being dunked, I'll
sprinkle you. I sprinkled a woman who had cerebral
palsy. She could not get in the water as bad as she wanted to.
We knew if we put her in a pool, she's like, I'm getting in a
pool. She drowned. We couldn't hold her up. So I took five gallon
bucket. And I poured it over that woman's
head in a kiddie pool in the middle of our gymnasium. And
the 10 of us just sat around and wept and sang hymns for a
good 20 minutes. It was a beautiful time. She couldn't be dumped. We dumped her though. There wasn't
a spot. If there's any spot that's not wet, we'll wet it. But does that matter? In essential
doctrines, there may be non-essential doctrines that we might think
like, is God sovereign in salvation? That's an essential doctrine.
Is man born and conceived a sinner? That's an essential doctrine.
Because if we don't believe these things, and the reason I say
that is because our churches, our evangelical churches, Monday,
tomorrow, will begin a debate in New Orleans, Louisiana. And
there are resolutions on the table that will decide the future. of the national convention for
our churches. We are autonomous. We have no
bishops. We have no oversight. It's a mutual adherence to missions
and evangelism and accountability through the local church cooperating
together. That's what it means to be Baptist.
But in the world today, there is a divide from orthodoxy based
on tradition. And if we aren't unified in doctrine,
we're not unified at all. As a matter of fact, if we want
to say that we have a stake and a requirement to boast before
God for something that we do, or if we have an opportunity
to say that we are truly not sinners until we sin, then we
are ignoring the whole of Scripture and we are in danger of preaching
a false gospel. I'm not going to say that we
are, but we're in danger. And so next week as I look at individual
things, I'm going to deal with a few of these. And so pray. That's sitting fun and games.
I mean, the Word of God is not funny. Being in the church is
not funny, although it ought to have some fun times in it.
It is a grave responsibility. We have been called to display
the wisdom of God. Do you want to defame the name
of God? I don't. And yet so often I do, sometimes even unaware.
But by His grace, He sustains us. We as a church want to do
what is right for His glory. If you find yourself here today,
I pray that you are truly, indeed, a believer in Jesus Christ. And
if you are not, may God give mercy to you. May God grant you
ears to hear and eyes to see that you might savor and cherish
and adore him and come to faith and believe. And your life will
be transformed forever as you are baptized into Christ through
his grace. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful. for Your Word, to be able to
know You, to be able to live for You, to be able to love You.
Lord, I thank You for all who are here today. Father, I pray
for our brothers and sisters afar. I pray for ours who are
up the hill and down the street and across town and the next
county over. I pray for the churches and the
congregations all over the world. Lord, would You please just bring
revival? Would You bring a great awakening,
the third great awakening to America? We need it. But Father,
your will be done, not ours. Lord, let us be obedient by your
command and by your call. And let us endure and strive
to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace,
always resting in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That we might
give glory to you. Through all generations. In his
name. Father, it is in his name that
we pray, Amen.