One Body

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning, we are gonna be in Ephesians chapter four this morning. We're gonna be in Ephesians chapter four if you wanna turn there. If you don't have a Bible with you, there should be a Bible underneath or in the back of a seat close to you. You can also power it up on your phone, Ephesians chapter four. We're gonna be pretty much staying there today. And in Ephesians, we are starting up a, it's kind of a new series that we're calling together in Ephesians today. And we're just gonna be looking at Ephesians chapter four. And Ephesians, as we've gone through it, you can understand the whole book as a book of identity. So what's true about us, Ephesians says is that we are in Christ. And that whole phrase in Christ, in fact it uses the phrase in Christ instead of what we would say like Christian or follower of Jesus or anything like that. It uses the phrase in particular in Christ.

And so it says to us what we are in Christ. In chapter one, in Ephesians chapter one, just to kind of catch us up on Ephesians, right? In Ephesians chapter one, if we are in Christ, we are blessed and chosen by God. We, if we are in Christ, we have redemption through his blood. If we are in Christ, we have obtained an inheritance. If we are in Christ, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. That's all in chapter one. In Ephesians chapter two, in Christ, we have been given particular things. We've been given God's kindness and his grace. We've been given good works that God planned for us to do. We've been brought near to God and we've been given peace by the blood of the cross. We've been given membership into God's household and we are being built together as a temple. Chapter three, in Christ, we have a revealed mystery, which is the promise. In Christ, we have access to the Father

that is revealed to us. In Christ, as a church, we are helping to reveal God's wisdom to the world. In Christ, the eternal purposes that God has set forth are being revealed to us. And then in all of that, as we've been looking through Ephesians chapter one, two, and three, there is a prayer at the end of Ephesians three, and I just wanna read that prayer. It says, for this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, amen. If we are in Christ, that prayer is for us, individually, generally. But as we're gonna see in Ephesians chapter four, as we turn from the first half of the book of Ephesians to the second half, there is a shift in direction. Because we will see in Ephesians chapter four that this prayer is for us collectively.

It's for us collectively. God has a plan for you singularly. God has a plan for people generally, but there's more to that. In Ephesians four, we see that God has a particular plan that only comes to fruition in us collectively. There are ways that God works that are exclusive to a church body, and that's what we're gonna see in Ephesians chapter four. And we usually don't discuss things like this.

It can be difficult for churches to kind of talk about this because it pushes against two things. It pushes against kind of a rugged individualism. Listen, we're in Texas, okay? We're in the come and take it state. Okay, we like our rugged individualism. When you start talking about being collective, somebody starts saying communist and then the whole thing's over, okay? I get it.

However, this prayer is for us as a local church collectively in Ephesians, at the end of Ephesians chapter three, and this is what we're gonna see in Ephesians four. And then also, the reason that it pushes against us, it draws out the necessity of church membership and participation, which can make people feel uncomfortable, make people who aren't looking for that feel like less than. Look, my plan this morning is not to come here and make you feel bad, okay?

If you are looking to become part of a church, what you need to see, you need to see this in crystal clear fashion, that God has planned for you a collective one-body life, that anybody who's looking to be part of a church or anything like that, God has planned for you a collective one-body life. And in Ephesians four, we're gonna see kind of this big picture of this one-body life that we're gonna see this morning in the first few verses, we're gonna see how God calls us into it and how that one-body is inherited and how that one-body is ingrained. God called us into it, our body is inherited, our one-body is ingrained. And in all actuality, what we're gonna see at the end, this is the real church that everybody is looking for. We're gonna talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Let's get started with chapter four, verse one. Ephesians chapter four, verse one says,

therefore, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. So we start with the call. In Ephesians four, one, we kind of start with this call. What is this calling that he's talking about? Well, actually we covered it whenever we went through the first three chapters in Ephesians. In Ephesians chapter two in particular, we see this calling. In Ephesians chapter two, starting in verse seven, in verse seven it says that God has called us to show his kindness and his grace through us. That God has called us to show his kindness and his grace through us, and that that calling leads us into good works. God has called us into good works in verse 10. And then it culminates in verses 19 and then in verse 22, which is a good summary of this. And so I wanna put it up here. Ephesians two, 19 and 22, it says,

so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. This is the call that we see in Ephesians chapter two. This is the call that we see in the whole beginning part of Ephesians, that you're being called into something where you are not strangers and aliens, but now you are part of a nationality. You are part of a citizenry. You are part of a family that belongs to the kingdom of God. In fact, you're being called together to be a dwelling place for the Spirit of God.

This is our call. And so when you kind of look back at verse one in Ephesians chapter four, God has called us collectively into this one-body life. And what verse one is telling us, what Ephesians four, one is telling us, is that you need to match your life to your calling. You need to match your life to your calling. Now listen, it does not say, it does not say I urge you to be moral. It says I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of a calling. It doesn't say I urge you to be friendly. It doesn't say I urge you to try really hard. I urge you not to say cuss words when you're around other Christians. It doesn't say any of those things. What does it say? It says to match your life to your calling. And this is different because there is a huge difference between matching your life to your image and matching your life to your calling. You're not matching your life to your Instagram.

You're matching your life to your calling. You're not matching your life to what other people think about you or what you really wanna become. This isn't about hopes and dreams here. This is about matching your life to something deeper, to something higher, God's calling on your life. And you have, and I have a calling into the household of God, a calling into being a temple. A calling into being collectively one body. Verse one tells us match that. Match that, plan for that. How? Look at verses two and three. Walk in a manner worthy of your calling 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. We get two sets of descriptions here. The first set of descriptions is with all humility and gentleness. There's a sense here, it's not being overly impressed with your own importance.

Okay? It's not getting too excited about how you're coming off or how you're being perceived. It's not being overly involved in how many followers you have. It's not being impressed with that. Philippians two, three says don't, it says do not act out of selfish ambition, but in humility, count others as more significant than yourself. Do nothing out of selfish ambition, but in humility, count others as more significant than yourselves. This idea of being humble and gentle, it pairs with the next set of descriptions, which is with patience, bearing with one another, in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And it carries two descriptions of patience. You're bearing with one another in love. Listen, everybody's okay with burying other people in love until they're the one that has to be born. Right? It is difficult to consider. It's tough to know that other people must bear you.

Right? That sometimes you're acting in a way that you don't need to act. I will confess in this moment right here, not one minute before the service was starting, I was at the sound booth and I was near tyrant level. It was not okay. It was not my best look. I could not find the certificates, the science certificates that we were going to hand to parents. And I knew, I was like, we're about to do this. And so I am banging on the table. I'm like, I need to find these certificates. Where did you put them? Ironically, the certificates were sitting right here on the front row the whole time. I had moved them there. I put them back there. I was like, no, you know what? I should put them up here because I'm going to forget them back here. But to my shame,

to something I need to confess, I was very less than gracious with cash and Levi and I'm sure anybody else within earshot. It was not my best look. It was not my best move. It was not eager to maintain the unity and the spirit and the bonds of peace. And in that moment, cash and Levi needed to bear with me. They needed to bear me losing my temper, being overly frustrated for something not that huge. Bearing with others and having others bear you, it means that sometimes you have to respond in humility and gentleness when people are not giving you humility and gentleness. They're not doing things for you. They're not helping you. They're not serving you. They don't see it from your perspective. They're just mad that they can't find certificates.

They just got tunnel vision on something that's not going their way. And so in order for us to be able to do that, it takes humility and gentleness to be able to come beside them and go, hey, hey, what's going on? Let's talk about it. Let's see how we can help. Let's see how we can do this, right? It's tough to know that others must bear us, but they must. Eager to maintain the unity of the Holy Spirit in the bond of peace. This is really interesting because eager to maintain

the unity of the Holy Spirit in the bonds of peace, when you look at that little part right there, it's interesting because the command is not to be united. In verse three, it doesn't say eager to work toward unity of the Holy Spirit in the bonds of peace. That's not what it says. It says eager to maintain it. In other words, it's something that we already have.

This command says that we already are united. And this is how we match our lives to the calling of being one body. We must see that our unity is inherited. It is given to us. Right now, right now, our church, we are bound by Holy Spirit peace as one body. And the Holy Spirit doing that enables us to be humble and gentle. The Holy Spirit doing that creates layers of patience as we bear one another in love. This unity then acts kind of like a gravity well. This unity that the Holy Spirit is already doing, these bonds of peace that the Holy Spirit is already having right there, as we maintain that, what's happening is we are all being drawn together. And sometimes, whenever you're drawn together, you kind of bump up against other people's rough parts. You kind of see when you're closer to somebody, you see more mistakes, you see more flaws. Sometimes, sometimes it's when you're looking

at somebody from really far away, you can't really kind of make out all the detail or anything like that. You're just like, okay, yeah, you can kind of describe them in a particular way. Maybe they're wearing red glasses, or they have long hair, or they have brown hair, whatever, whatever clothes they're wearing. But then when you get closer, you can see small details. You can see flaws. Whenever that unity starts to pull us together, it sometimes can be difficult. But it does pull us toward each other. In fact, the next verse says it much more eloquently. It says, there is one body. We're not gonna get to that verse just yet, but what we need to understand is that it's not telling us that we should be. It's not telling us to work hard at creating and fostering this kind of unity. It says that it's already true. And it says that we need to match our lives to that calling.

I would ask you to consider, as you are one body with other people in a local church, if we're gonna do that, if you're gonna be one body with other people, it's a pretty basic requirement, but it's sometimes as difficult to manage. It's to show up. That's really it. It's just showing up. It's showing up whenever people are in need and when they're not. It's showing up in their living room and at their office place. It's showing up on Sundays whenever we're meeting together and in Home Group, whenever we're meeting in homes. Being one body demands our time and it demands our personal space unapologetically. Like I get it, you feel like you're super busy and don't have time for things. Everybody feels that way, right? You make time for what's important. You just do. That's a fact of life. You could say, well, these other things are important, I just don't make time for them.

Well, the truth is they're not that important. When you show up, when you show up to other people's lives, you demonstrate a unity that is often surprising. When you remember birthdays, when you are there when people need you, this is why we have Home Groups. This is why we have worship services. But I will tell you, the national average for attending a worship service, national average, 1.6 times a month. 1.6 times a month is the national average for somebody who says I'm a part of this church to be a part of worship services.

And I'm just gonna be clear, we need to show up more often than that. It takes more than that. And you might say, well, how often? What's the number, Drew? I would just say, often enough to say with a clear conscience that you are one body with these people. Often enough to say with a clear conscience that you know their names, you know their kids' names. Maybe you know their profession, you know their background, you know their story, you know something about them. And if you've just started coming here, great. Really glad you're here. I'm not trying to shame you for not knowing people's names. It's not really the point. The point is to say that we are one body. And a basic way that we express that is just by showing up more than 1.6 times a month. And if we are, if our one body is inherited, if there is one body, if that's just true of us, if it's given to us like we're talking about,

it means that when we drift, we drift away from unity. When we are asleep at the wheel, we tend to grow toward selfishness. When we are not focused in, when we are not helping to maintain that unity, when we drift, we drift toward ignoring what other people need. That's where we drift, that's where we go. We forget what other people need. We quit showing up and we forget about people. This one body, we are called into it.

It is given to us as an inheritance. And lastly, I wanna say this one body is ingrained in us. And this is kinda where Ephesians four sticks to landing. Look at verses four through six. Ephesians four, four through six. There is one body and one spirit. Just as you recall to the hope, to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is overall and through all and in all. To describe the church as one body, Ephesians four goes straight to the Trinity. The positions, it positions the different persons of the Trinity with the different truths, the different kind of parts. So the local church and the Holy Spirit are kind of paired up in verse four. And it points to that call again. And it says, look, you are one body. Of course you're one body because you all share in one Holy Spirit and you're all moving toward

that one hope. There's not several Holy Spirits, there's not several hopes that we're calling. You are one body because we have one spirit and one hope that we're working toward, that we're called toward. The Lord Jesus and faith and baptism are all lumped together because we worship Jesus Christ the Messiah. He's our one Lord, we worship Him, we worship God, our one faith. And the word faith here, the way it's kind of positioned, it's talking about the substance of what we believe, the content of what we believe, okay? And our faith, the substance of what we believe is singular, obviously there's many parts to that, but it is not two different faiths, three different faiths, it's one faith. And our one baptism demonstrates that we believe the same things and that we follow the same Lord. We don't have several different kinds or types of baptism. Baptism for like lower level Christians

and baptism for higher level Christians. We don't do that. There's one baptism. Because there's one faith and there's one Lord Jesus Christ. And we have the Father God paired together with this complete sovereignty that the Father God directs, He guides, He pre-determines, He plans, He makes things happen, He causes things to come into existence. He causes things to kind of intersect in particular ways. Our life together as one body is ingrained in us. Our church as one body is given by the Father, it's paid for by the Son, and it is united by the Holy Spirit. Our local church, little old us, we are, it is given us, our one body is given us by the Father, paid for by the Son, and united, held together by the Holy Spirit. And it's interesting when you look at what happened when the church first started, what happened when the church was first born, if you look in Acts two,

yeah, the birth of the church, and the Holy Spirit is going out fresh on people. And what did they do? What did they do? They gathered. It's the first thing they did. That's the first thing they did. Acts two, 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers. Couple of verses later, all who believe were together and had all things in common. They were selling their possessions. They were distributing them to all as needed. The next verse, all the time they were attending worship service together, they were breaking bread in their homes, they were receiving their food with glad and generous hearts. They were together. They gathered. And let me just put it in a different way. If we cancel services tomorrow, let's just say, I don't know, we felt like it. I don't know. We canceled services from now until the end of the year.

Okay? If we canceled services tomorrow until the end of the year, the Holy Spirit himself would find a way to gather us somehow, somewhere, some way. Because as Christians, we are drawn together in these pockets that we just call local churches, right? We're drawn together as families. What happened when the first church was born? Families sprouted up, spiritual families. People were coming together and sharing things. They were acting like family with one another. The reason that happens is because the unity is given to them, it is ingrained in them. It is part of who God is.

And because we are his family, because we are his children, because we are called into that life, that is something that we will supernaturally gravitate toward. We will gather. The unity of the local church is as real as the trinity of God himself. Because it's based on it. This is why when Jesus prays for us to be one, he says this, that this act of us being one is somehow how the world will believe. Look at Jesus' prayer in John 17. John 17, 20, and 21. It says, I do not ask for these only. In other words, I don't ask for these disciples only, the 12 that he's looking at. I don't ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, okay? So if you're keeping score at home, that's us, okay? It's us. We've believed through their word, through the disciples' word. So it's not just for the disciples, it's also for those who believe in me through their word

that they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Look at that. That is Jesus saying, as I and the Father are one, it's part of the Trinity, right? The same way that we're united, I want you guys to be united. Why? To have fun? To throw really cool parties? To have really great worship services? No. So that the world may believe that you have sent me. Our unity is a testimony. And you can see it, when people honestly complain about church, and I don't mean complaints about the music

or complaints about the theological distinctions or complaints about the carpet, I mean honest complaints. I mean real stuff. Like when people complain about church, what do they complain about? They complain that it's fake. The true disappointment in any church is that they're fake. Is that they're not a real family. Is that they're a cardboard cutout of one. And I would say that's the most damning insult the church could ever suffer.

Is that they're fake. They're not really reflecting the Trinity. They're not really saying like, yeah, we are a spiritual family. We do know one another. We do care about one another. We do invest in one another. If they're not saying that, what are they doing? What are they being fake for? Maybe it's just people, maybe it's just people pretending to be spiritual for social acceptance.

Maybe it's a church with leadership that has their eye on like just getting a ton of money and building a ton of buildings. Maybe it's people just being religious so they can look down on other people. I don't know, there's a host of reasons to be fake. There's a host. And when you hear that complaint, when I hear that complaint, it really bothers me. I really hate it not only for the church that's fake but also for the person that had that experience, right? I mean, we got a lot of church hurt in Burleson. We got a lot of people who have been a lot of places and they kind of did their best to experience and be part of the family and kind of put themselves out there a little bit. But what they found was basically that the church was just like super thin, just skin deep. That it really wasn't about investing in people and being invested in. It really wasn't about being united

like the Holy Spirit calls us to be united. The real church that people are looking for is a one-body church. It's a church where people show up and they are caught in something bigger. I will tell you that our church at this point is kind of at a crossroads. Either we're gonna be a church that shows up or we're not. Either we're gonna be a church that is maintaining the bonds of peace in the Holy Spirit or we're not. Or we're ignoring people.

We're either gonna be real or we're gonna be fake. What I wanna do now is I just wanna end with this prayer again in Ephesians chapter three. And as I prayed, I prayed that you would pray along with me. I pray that you would hear it and that you kinda prayed along with me. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Ephesians three, 14 through 21. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you local church, you South Burleson Baptist Church, that he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you church, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know, to deeply know the love of Christ

that surpasses knowledge, to experience that. That you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Amen and amen. May that be true of us. Let's stand as we sing.