If you would like to turn with
me to Ephesians chapter 4 this evening, I've been in prayer
on kind of which way to go for Wednesday night service and being
directed by the Lord. I would like for us to look at
numbers. The numbers in the Scripture.
Not the book, but literally 1, 2, 3, and what they mean pertaining
unto the Lord. So the first one we have tonight
is 1. I want to look at the number one tonight. But I thought there's
a number that comes before one and that's zero. And so we're
going to be titled the message tonight, Zeros and One. And so we find in Ephesians 4,
in verse 4, there is one body, one Spirit, even as ye are called,
in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, One baptism. One God and Father of all who
is above all and through all and in you all. But unto every
one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of
Christ. Now there is no doubt that one
represents our God. It is the number of our God.
Three also represents God in that it is the Trinity, the triune
God, but one is what our Lord is. He's the self-existing One. He's the self-sustaining One. He's the self-sufficient One.
He's the Supreme, Sovereign, Creator, and Sustainer of all
things. He is the Holy One. The Holy
One of Israel. He is the Master. The One Master
of Israel. He is the Mighty One of Israel.
He is the One Shepherd of His Sheep. The Lord is One. We are
nothing without Him. You know what nothing equals?
It equals zero. We need the One, the Lord Jesus
Christ. Us zeros need to be made known
that we are zeros and we have hope in the One. He is the One
who elected a bunch of zeros. His people, His inheritance is
the zeros. He made them one with Him. Made
them to believe. Made to believe what He just
said in Ephesians 4, that there's one body, one Spirit, one Lord,
one faith, one baptism, one God and Father. God is that one. He is the I Am. When Moses looked
unto the Lord in the burning bush, the Lord told him, Moses,
take off your shoes. for the place whereon you stand
is holy ground." And as they begin to converse, the Lord said,
I want you to go to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let my people
go. The Lord is replied to by Moses. Moses looks at him and
says, Lord, what should I tell them who sent me? The God of
their fathers, what is your name? He wanted to know the Lord's
name. He said, I am. That's the self-sufficient, the singular,
name of the Lord, the One, I am, I am He. Christ said, I am He
that liveth. Behold, I'm alive forevermore.
The Lord, after He was risen from the grave, declared Himself
as the Lord. The Scripture says that He thought
it not robbery to be equal with God. He had oneness with the
Father at all times. He said, I and my Father are
one. We know that one is representing
the Lord Himself because one is only divisible by itself. One divided by one. And so we
see one is independent of all other numbers, and yet all other
numbers exist because of one. If you take away the ones out
of every other number, you'll end up with zero. But if you
don't have a one, then all you'll have is a bunch of zeros. You
know what happens when you take a bunch of zeroes and you put
a one in front of it? You get a pretty big number,
don't you? That's what the Lord did for His people. I heard Donny
Bell mention that at a conference one time and I loved it. We're
just a bunch of zeroes, but we're the Lord's zeroes. The Lord's
bought us with His own blood according to His promise in the
covenant of grace. He took a bunch of zeroes and
He made them something because He put a one as our forerunner,
a one as our substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. The one is
what makes the difference. So how did the Holy One save
sinners? Save the zeros? He made us one
with Him by His own blood. By His own blood begat He us. He gives us a new man in Christ
Jesus, likened to Him. In 1 John 3, it says, When He
shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as
He is. The Lord was mentioning the same thing to Nicodemus in
John chapter 3, and He told him, you must be born again. Nicodemus
said, how can I be born again when a man is old? How can he
be born again? Can he enter into his mother
womb a second time and be born? Christ said, that which is born
of flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I say unto you, you must be born again. The Lord
goes on to say, the wind bloweth where it lifteth, and thou canst
not tell from whether it comes or whether it goeth. So is every
one that is born of the Spirit. The Lord takes His people, the
zeros according to His will, and makes us something by causing
us to be born again. We were elected by the Father,
we were redeemed by the Son, and we are regenerated by the
Spirit. That means born again. That's how He takes a zero and
makes it into something. Born unto Him, the likeness of
His Son. Romans 5.10 tells us when that
happened. For when we were enemies, When
we were enemies, we were reconciled. Now that word reconciled means
made to believe or made acceptable to God. When we were enemies,
we were made to believe. We were reconciled, brought back
to the Lord, to God by the death of His Son. Much more being reconciled. And that reconciled means covered.
We have a covering, an atonement. It's the same word as atonement.
We shall be saved by His life. And not only so, but we also
joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received
the atonement." We have been cleaned. We have been washed. The Lord does not see nothings
when He looks at His people. He sees the redemptive work of
His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are declared as perfectly
righteous because of this. Now you look in our text, chapter
4 again, verse 4, And we're just going to go down
through these ones that the Lord's given us in this chapter. We
have one body that's been made alive. We've been given a new
man in Christ, a new body in the Lord Jesus Christ, fit together
in Him. Now, as you all know, a body
is not much without its head. It would be a corpse, would it
not? And we have a head. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
head. It says in Ephesians 5, verse 23, For the husband is
the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church,
and He is the Savior of the body. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself
is the head for His elect. For the body that He has given
unto them, He is the head. We know that there is many members
in the body, but there is only one head, and there is only one
body. Us zeros, I'm going to keep saying
that tonight. And I think we understand that
we're sinners, we are wretches, we're viles, we're nothing without
Him. Zeros. That's what I'm talking
about tonight. We are made one with Christ. I'd like to show
you that in 1 Corinthians 12. A few pages back. We have been made one with Christ. First Corinthians 12 and verse
12. It says for as the body is one
and hath many members and all the members of that body of that
one body being many are one body. So also is Christ for by one
spirit Are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews
or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made
to drink into one Spirit? He said one body in our text,
Ephesians 4. We are one body. And he says
here we're one body baptized by the one Spirit of God. How is that? How are we baptized? With the washing of water by
the Word. The washing of water by the Word. The Lord Jesus Christ uses His
preachers to preach the Gospel, and the Spirit moves according
to the will of the Father to baptize His people by the Word
of God, by His Gospel. Paul stressed the importance
of the Gospel insomuch, he said, but though we or an angel from
heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have
preached unto you, let it be a curse. There's only one Gospel.
And this one Gospel is declared as the redemptive work for the
Lord's people. As the redemptive work for zero,
such as ourself. That's what the Gospel is for.
This one Gospel. But what does the one Gospel
declare? It declares one Lord, one faith, one baptism. There
is no division of the Lord. Do we see that? None of His attributes
are going to be compromised in His Gospel. It is the same message. One. One. One. He is the One. that has made
zeros into something. He is the One that successfully
saved His people. This Gospel declares that Christ
is all. We have been given this one faith
to believe that Christ is all. We have been washed in the blood
of the Lamb, regenerated by the Spirit of God, therefore we only
see the One God. We just see Jesus Christ, the
One God. Do you believe Jesus Christ is
God? If you believe that Jesus Christ is God, you're a believer.
That's the controversial subject in churches that people don't
even realize they're controversial about. Nobody has a problem with
bowing down to baby Jesus. They don't, because they don't
see him as all powerful. He was as much God laying in
the manger as he was hanging on the cross, as he was ascending
back into glory. You must believe that God is
Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is God, and all that entails.
And if you do, you're a believer. The one God. 1 Timothy 2, verse 5 says, for
there is one God and one Mediator. That word Mediator means surety.
One surety. Between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus. You heard me mention this before.
That word surety or that word Mediator literally means that
Jesus Christ can touch the Father and not be destroyed. He can
touch man and not be defiled. He's the God-man. That's what
it took in order to make a bunch of zeros into the one. Into Him
is part of His body. Christ alone bore the elect's
sin as our surety. That's why He said, neither is
there salvation in any other, for there is no other name given
under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved. I love
Acts 4.12 and the language it just said there. whereby we must
be saved? That doesn't mean that because
of something we do, we're going to be saved. That means that
He can't fail in the salvation of His people. We must be saved
or He failed. Do we see that? He can't fail
because He's God. He is the one God that successfully
saved His people. His election, His redemptive
work wrought salvation for His zeros. What is there left for us to
do then? There's nothing for us to do. Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's the declaration that goes
forth. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, don't misunderstand
what men in religion want you to believe, believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ means. That doesn't mean it's something that you
produce or something that you actually do. Believing is passive.
Believing is not something that we physically do because we've
made a choice. You just can't help but believe.
It's a declaration. It's a command. Believe. It's
not a request. We're talking about the one God
that is completely sovereign. Whenever He says it, it happens.
When He says believe, a zero becomes a one and just believes.
Do we see that? He goes from being nothing, being fashioned
under the Son of God. This happened before the foundation
of the world, but by the gospel, it's the same as Him saying,
breathe. and you breathe. Whenever He said, Lazarus, come
forth, that was not an invitation, was it? That was a declaration
of His power, His deity, His is-ness. He declared, Lazarus,
come forth, and Lazarus walked out of the grave. He did. That's
what He's done in putting away our sin. That's what He does
in saving His people. Now back to our text in Ephesians
chapter 4. In verse 4 still, it says there's
one body and one spirit. Even as ye are called in one
hope of your calling. We have one hope. One hope that we have been saved
by the One. That we have been saved by the
Lord Jesus Christ. That is our one hope. He was
the only one that was able to redeem. You remember in the book
of Ruth, Ruth was a Moabitess. And the Scripture says that Naomi,
her mother-in-law, prior to her becoming her mother-in-law, her
husband and her two sons went forth into the land of Moab because
Bethlehem was short on bread. They were having a famine. When
they got there, Ruth and Orpah married the two sons of Naomi.
In the process of time, Naomi's husband dies, Ruth's husband
dies, and Orpah's husband dies. And so Naomi says, there's nothing
left for me here. I'm going to go back to Bethlehem.
And she does so. Orpah decides to go back to her
family. But Ruth had saw the gospel. The Lord had saved Ruth by whatever
conversations or however it transpired, because she said, your God's
going to be my God, talking to Naomi. Wherever you lodge, I'm
going to lodge. And so she followed her back
to Bethlehem. It became harvest time and they went, as you know
the story well, they begin to, and I love how the scripture
says this, it says, her hat fell in harvesting in Boaz's field,
her hat, like it was just a happenstance or a circumstance that came to
pass because of her making a decision. No, the God of this universe,
before the foundation of the world, made this Moabitess woman
go and glean in Boaz's field, that's what happened. And we
know that, well, the providence of that is that it was the lineage
of Christ that transpired from that. As it is, Boaz was one
of the only ones that could redeem her. In order to marry, by the
law that stated you must, in order to marry, she had to be
redeemed. And so, something I wanna back
up on just a second is to understand who the Moabites were. And I
think I mentioned this to you before, the Moabites came from
Lot's daughter. the incest child of Lot and his
daughter when they were in a cave after they were two daughters.
It was the Ammonites and the Moabites that transpired from
there. And boy, they gave Israel a hard time throughout the entire
Old Testament, fighting with them back and forth and whatever
else. But it was all by the provenial grace of God, the providential
grace of God, because this woman was a Moabitess that married
Boaz. that ended up being the great-grandfather
of David, King David. I mean, that's providence is
all that you can say about that. So we know that Boaz went to
redeem, but he had to go unto the nearer kinsmen first. And
as Boaz is walking up, and picture our Lord Jesus Christ, and this
nearest kinsman was the law. That's what it represents here.
And as he's approaching, the law looks at Boaz, and you know
what his words were? Ho, such an One. Ho, such a one. Is that not what
the law said when it saw the Lord Jesus Christ, whenever justice
was demanded for His people? Ho, such a one. Satisfied. Satisfied. The law could not tarnish, and
that's what the man tells Boaz, I can't tarnish my inheritance. I can't tarnish my inheritance
in redeeming her. I can't mar my inheritance. God's attributes,
none of His oneness could be separated or divided in any way.
He had to be just and the justifier, and He did that perfectly in
our kinsman-redeemer Boaz. And He did successfully redeem
His people, His Ruth, His Zero. That's what He redeemed. In verse 5, He says there's one
Lord. This is His title of authority. As such a one, He said, I am
Alpha, and I am Omega, the beginning, the end, the first, and the last. He is the Lord which is, which
was, and which is to come, the Almighty. The Alpha is the first
letter of the Greek alphabet. It means one, does it not? Omega is the last letter. That
means the end. So He's the beginning and the
end, but He is the one that is through it all, that's done it
all for His people. He gets all the glory for it.
He has the power to decide to make a vessel of honor or a vessel
of dishonor. He is the one that can do that.
You and I can even will away a cold, can't we? But He can
will anything that He so chooses. The earth is His and the fullness
thereof. He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. Everything consists by Him? Yes,
everything, even salvation. There's just one salvation, did
you know that? There's not many salvations.
There is one salvation in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ,
that's it. There's only one way to the Lord,
to the Father, and that's through the door. Christ is that one
door. He said, I am the way, that's
one way. The truth, that's one truth.
The life, that's one life. Our life must be hid in the one
so that He does not see us as a zero. so that He does not see
us as a sinner, but He sees His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord only saves zeros. Men, by nature, believe that
they have some kind of a fraction, that they're not a zero, that
maybe they're a .0001, or maybe they're good enough to be a quarter
of one, or maybe they believe they're God Himself and they're
a one. It's just not the case, brethren. All men are created
nothing. Our righteousness is filthy rags.
Nothing. Zeros. 100% nothing. You can
multiply zero. You can divide zero. You can
multiply and divide anything by zero and you'll still get
zero. Multiply anything by zero and you'll still get zero. But
thanks be to God, you put a one in front of a zero and it becomes
something. It becomes something. There is only the Lord's zeros,
His sinners, that He hath saved by His own blood. He is the one
Lord that did this. He does it by giving us one faith.
You'll notice the next thing that he says, one Lord, one faith. He does it by giving us the one
faith. Paul said in Galatians, I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless
I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me. And the life I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God. who loved
me and gave Himself for me." So whose faith is it? The faith?
This one faith? It's the faith of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Where does it come from? He produces it. He produces faith
for His people. The faith of Christ. This one
faith. Who does it always look to? It
always looks to Him. It never looks to ourself. And
who gets all the glory for it? He does. He gets all the glory
for this one faith. Next he says there's one baptism.
Now men have misconstrued baptism in making it a work that is part
of salvation. And it is not part of what saves
you. I want to be very clear on that.
If that's the case, the thief on the cross has no hope of being
in heaven. He has no hope. But what did the Lord tell him?
Today thou shalt be with Me in paradise. They're both hanging
there on the cross. Both of them are dying. And the
Lord gave him the confirmation that today you'll be with Me
in Paradise." They didn't have time to baptize Him, did they?
So men have made this a work, something that they produce or
something that they do in addition in order for them to be saved.
But you can go dunk in a pool all you want to, and that does
not save you. It does not cleanse you or clean you. So why do we be baptized? Why are we baptized? Well, the
Lord said to the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, they
came to him and said, Lord, whenever you enter into your kingdom,
let one of my sons sit on your right hand and on your left.
And the Lord said to them, Matthew chapter 20 and verse 22, you
know not what you ask. Are you able to drink of the
cup that I shall drink of and to be baptized with the baptism
I am baptized with? You know what they told him?
We're able to do that. We're able to drink of that cup
and be baptized with that baptism. He already told them, you don't
know what you're saying, but the second time they really didn't know
what they were saying, did they? And he said unto them, ye shall indeed
drink of my cup and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized
with. So why are we baptized? Because Christ was baptized in
the fire of God's wrath upon the cross. Christ died for his
people in the watery grave of our sin, and the Lord hath highly
exalted him and resurrected him, being satisfied with his sacrifice. So our baptism literally represents
when he died, I died. It's an outward confession of
what he has done. That's all. That's all that it
is. Furthermore, we're commanded to be baptized by the Lord. He
said, go into all the world, preach the gospel. He said, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost. Paul gives us clarification on this baptism in Colossians
2 verse 12, and he says, "...buried with him in baptism, wherein
ye are also risen with him through the one faith of the operation
of God, who hath raised him from the dead." Brethren, this one
baptism is very simple. Whenever we are baptized, we
are confessing Christ is all in salvation. That's what baptism
is. That's what it means. Confessing
Christ, that's all. It doesn't wash away your sins.
He washed away your sins by His own blood. He hath purged our
sins, the Scripture says. So we confess Christ in baptism
because we're commanded to, confessing that He is all. Now in verse 6 of our text, it
says, and Father of all, who is above all, and through all,
and in you all." The Lord said this in John 17, and this is
life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God. Now we know John 17 is the intercessory
prayer of the Lord unto His Father. Brethren, a lot of times men
will call the Lord's prayer It's actually not the Lord's Prayer.
The Lord's Prayer is John 17. When the Lord said, Our Father which
art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That's not the Lord's Prayer.
The disciples came to him and said, Lord, teach us how to pray.
And he said, well, as often as you pray, you pray this. This
is our Lord. This is an instructional prayer to the disciple. The Lord's
Prayer is found in John 17, and he says, and this is life eternal,
that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the
earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And
now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the
glory which I had with thee. before the world was. Christ is this one God that He
says here. One God and Father of all. This
is Jesus Christ Himself as He's praying to His Father. The Lord
is the only one. I want to say this, and this
took me some time to try to figure out how to say it right, but
I want to say this to you. God is the only one that can
take one and divide it into three parts, and that's what He does,
but yet it still remains one the entire time. Now, I don't
understand that, but that's exactly the truth of who the Lord is.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And these three
are one. There is no doubt of that in
the Scripture. These three manifestations make up the Lord, and the Lord
Jesus Christ Himself is exalted as the Christ, the one God. We
just declare it. Jesus mentioned that I and my
Father are one in John 10 and verse 30. We just declare it,
and the believer believes that. This one God and Father of all.
He says, for in Him, Jesus Christ, will all the fullness of the
Godhead bodily. That means He was all three parts
at one time. Is that what that means to you? The Godhead means
there was nothing above Him, and there was nothing below Him.
He was all. The Lord Jesus Christ was the
full manifestation of God bodily. And ye are complete in Him is
our hope. Ye are complete in Him which
is the head of all principality and power. Complete means one. We are eternally one with Christ. The Lord became a man to take
His sinners, His elect bride, His people, His zeros, and unite
them as one unto the Lord Jesus Christ. We're no longer seen
as zeros. We're seen as precious in His
sight. In closing, I want to quote Isaiah
57 for us. Verse 15 says, For thus saith
the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy,
I dwell in the high and holy place with Him also that is of
a contrite, and that word contrite means dust. Dust is pretty close
to zero, isn't it? If you think about what we are,
that's where we came from, that's where we're going to return to,
is dust. Nothing. He said, I'm with Him, with Him
that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit
of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Now
get this, the first time He says contrite, it means dust. The
second time He says contrite, it means smitten. He's saying
unto you and I that He's going to revive the heart of those
who died in Christ. He's going to make them one in
Him, to resurrect them from the dead, to make them one with Him. This is what the meaning of verse
7 says, that every one of us is given grace according to the
measure of the gift of Christ. This gift of Christ is faith.
This is how He does it, by reviving our cold, dead hearts when we
were dead in trespasses and in sin, and giving us a new heart
that looks unto Him. Taking out the old one and giving
us a new one. He causes us to realize He is
the One that made elected zeros one with Him. Made them something. He's the only One. Think about
the creation of earth. Think about the creation of the
universe. And think about the creation of the life that He
gives us in Christ. He's the only One that's ever
made something out of nothing. That's what salvation is of the
Lord. I'm glad I have no part in that. If I'm a nothing, I
can't become something. But because of what He done,
He made us into something. Isn't that glorious? He made
us into something. Furthermore, He made us one with
His Son so that He sees His Son when He sees us and loves us
just as dearly as He loves His Son. We have been made to know
that there is one body, one spirit, one Lord, one hope, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all. He is the one Shepherd,
and we are His one flock, His sheep. We are one fold in Him. Verse 7, one more time, says,
But unto every one of us, His elect, His people, is given grace
according to the measure of the gift. What is the gift? The gift
of faith. the gift of God, of Christ. The gift of faith sees Christ
as all. The gift of faith causes us to
see that we're a bunch of zeros, but there's a one in front of
us, that we have become something. I'm so thankful for the grace
of God that has made zeros into one. Aren't you? Father, we pray
that You would bless Your Word. We hang our hope upon You and
Your finished work. It's in Christ's name we pray,
Amen.