Sunday, June 2, 2024 Summer Session 1

Ephesians 4 as the Star Passage for Church Unity

Robust with the theme, but Ephesians 4 simply is the star of all those passages, so we'll be working from that, and then referencing the other passages as well as we go to use the analogy of Scripture, make sure we're keeping everything in context.

Our other handout has an outline with some acronyms involved, and I want you to look at Roman numeral 1, which says Christ calls us to unity, and unity is underlined there, and then you have five points going down the acronym of unity, and this is going to serve as our outline for verses 1 through 6, and this unity that we're called to by Christ is the basis for what comes next in verses 7 through 16, where Christ calls us to maturity.

We begin with unity, we proceed from that into maturity, and then we find Christ calls us to renewal in verses 17 through 32. Unity is something that I've thought a lot about because I'm a preacher's kid, and I moved 13 times before I ever made it to college.

My dad was part of the statistics. The statistics are that a pastor will last about three and a half years on average at any given church, but he's also not part of the statistics in that the entire lifetime of a minister is 10 years total before he's just done with the ministry.

My dad lasted about 40-something years before he retired. Now he drives buses, junior high kids, not much different than pastoring small Baptist.

Churches.

But I've thought a lot about unity because I've seen more than my share of church splits and church conflicts. I lived on the pastor's household side of hearing about everything. When I was a young lad, I knew I was going to be a preacher from when I was age seven, so I always had my...I cut cardboard shoeboxes in half and put pews together, and I had all my toys out there and I was preaching to them, but there was always division in the group.

They were always fighting with each other because that's how church was done. But that's not the way that Christ calls us to have unity in the church. So that's what I want us to think about together.

Now in verses one through six, and I want to read that passage to get started, Ephesians chapter four, verses one through six. And we know that this is the pivot point in Ephesians, and there's a whole lot that comes in chapters one through three that bolsters chapter four, and we'll be looking back at those key elements.

So don't worry about the lack of context for this very important therefore in verse one. Let's read verses one through six. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

There is one body and one spirit, just as you were 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. I think already you can tell why this is the premier passage about unity in the church.

I dare say some of you, as you're reading through, might have a sense of uncomfortableness with Paul. Come on, Paul. We can't be all that one. We're so different. We've got some differences between us.

But nonetheless, let's lean into the oneness and the unity that we're taught about here in chapter four. We hear about a calling, and this is important to remember throughout the rest of the chapter. Of course, on your handout with the acronym outline, you'll have the entirety of Ephesians four there on the back in the New King James Version, just in case I lose you with a different version.

You can follow along there. It says, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. Let's think about that calling with which we have been called.

Now, we sometimes can over-spiritualize terms in the Bible. I like to think about the basic metaphor of what this means. Why do you call someone? I don't mean on the phone. It's come here.

You're over there.

I want you over here.

Right?

What you with me. Isn't that the basic idea of a call?

Right?

If I'm calling to you, if I'm calling you, it's not that you're right here. It's that you're over there, and I want you over here.

Okay?

So, when we think about calling, it's a wonderful metaphor for salvation. And it's something that shows up in chapter one. So, if you flip back a little bit to chapter one of Ephesians, and keep in mind the beautiful descriptions of salvation in Ephesians 2, we see why it's important that we are called unto Christ.

So, in verse 18, we have the first instance of the term calling in Ephesians. But it's important to see that Paul has been praying with thanksgiving for the saints in verses 14 and 15. And then we see that he is then making supplication for the church.

So, in verses 15 through 16, there's thanksgiving, and verses 17 to 23, there's supplication. So, verse 15, therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.

Now here's the supplication. Here's how Paul prays for the saints. Might be worth thinking about. If unity is found in praying for one another, what should we pray for one another? Here's a good example.

That, here's what he's praying for, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. Okay, so we have the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and there's a request that we would be full of wisdom and revelation and knowledge.

And what exactly does that mean? Verse 18 explains, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.

And he continues on to say, the power of Christ and the exaltation of Christ as supreme head of the body, head of all things. That's going to be important for us as we work through Ephesians 4, because it's talking about the grace of God at work in the saints in light of the exaltation of Jesus Christ.

Now, Paul says in chapter 4, walk worthy of that calling. Well, what was that calling? It was a calling of grace. In chapter 1, verses 1 through 14, there's an explanation of our salvation has everything to do with God and nothing to do with us.

Look at how powerful and gracious God is, that he was planning our salvation from before the beginning of time. He brought it about through Jesus Christ, all to his own glory, so that God would give praise to himself in saving the likes of us.

And then he says, therefore, I'm going to pray this way for you all. So that's important to keep in mind. We are to walk worthy of that calling, a calling, walk appropriately to the calling, as a calling of salvation.

I was over there. Now I'm here. I was a stranger from God, stranger from the scriptures, stranger from the promises and enemy of God. But now I've been called to him by the grace of God, by the power of God, by the sovereignty of God.

And now I need to walk appropriately to that calling. And what does that look like? And the very first thing he does is talk about unity. If we can think about it in the big picture, the big picture is this.

If we all got in the same way, nothing but the grace of God, then we have a lot in common.

Right?

If we didn't all get in the same way, but we came in through different doors by different merits and different measures, then we have a lot to fight about. But if we all came through the same door in the same way, we have a lot in common.

And so he starts off by talking about unity. Now the first point that we have here in our outline, the you, is write down urgent plea, an urgent plea. Paul says, I beseech you. Now, beseech is not a word that we use very often, but it's an idea that we are familiar with.

It has the idea that if I'm going to beseech my brother Terry, it's because how that goes is I'm going to try to urge him and encourage him, I'm going to call him to something, but on the strength of our existing relationship.

Because we are brothers in Christ, because we have spent time together, because we went hunting together, and everything about that relationship that we so enjoy in our fellowship in Christ, based upon that relationship, I'm then going to urge him and compel him.

And the picture is that I'm going to extend my hand and grab his wrist, he grabs my wrist, and I'm going to pull him up alongside and past. That's the picture of beseech, urge. In the Greek, it's parakaleo.

You might know that old word for the Holy Spirit, paraclete, the comforter, who comes alongside and calls us forward. And that's what Paul is doing here. He's urging them. In fact, it's the very first word in the original text.

He's putting a bold underscore by putting the word first. He's saying, I am urging you, beseeching you. There's an urgency to this call. What's the emergency, Paul? Where's the fire? Is there some great fight going on in Ephesus?

No, it's not the urgency of the circumstance. It's the urgency of its importance. It's so vitally important that there be unity in and among the saints that Paul is this insistent. He's putting a high, high priority on it.

Of course, Jesus did too. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for one.

Another.

A new commandment I give unto you, that you would love one another even as I have loved.

You.

So, there's a need for unity. There's this urgent plea. Secondly, the end, and we see this in verse one and in some in verse two as well, is a necessary posture. So when Paul says, I urge you, I beseech you, he's doing so humbly.

He doesn't say, I am Paul, the apostle endowed with authority of Jesus Christ. I command you to be unified. Didn't take that approach, did he? He said, I'm a prisoner of the Lord. That's a very humble thing to say.

Is he in prison currently? Or is he just always in prison? That's just like, yeah, I'm just a felon. I'm always in and out of prison. But basically, it doesn't matter if he's in behind bars or not, he's always arrested by Christ.

It just doesn't matter where he goes. He's just the prisoner of Jesus Christ. And it's a very humble thing to say. So he humbles himself. He calls himself the prisoner of Christ. And then he says, I'm urging you.

I'm pleading with you. That's a very humble thing to do. He's not coming at a top down. He's coming lowly before them. And that's the necessary posture. He had ministered to the saints in Ephesus for three years.

He knew him pretty well. He could have been trading on his authority, but he traded upon his lowliness here. And why? One does not pursue unity from an authoritarian, bombastic posture. You can achieve uniformity, but you will never know unity.

You can come with great authority, and you can try to force everybody and shame everybody and guilt everybody into having the same haircut, same dress code, same translation. You can't. That's not unity.

That's uniformity. You can try to force everybody to go hide in their houses and wear masks and stop working by threat of fines backed up by bullets. But that's not unity. That's uniformity. It comes from tyranny.

The unity we find in scripture for Christians is one that involves liberty. Liberty in Jesus Christ. The unity we have is in the liberty of Christ. And that's what we're after. We're after the unity. And this begins with lowliness.

That's the necessary posture. And this is the very first of several characteristics listed in what is the I, the indispensable pattern. The very first thing on the list is lowliness. Paul says, With all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.

You see that pattern? He begins with lowliness. With all lowliness. Lowliness. What is lowliness? Lowliness is not the picture of the monks in Latin America walking along the public street with thorny sticks and whips, beating themselves as they go to a mock crucifixion where they expose themselves in bloody array, trying to appease God.

It has more with the marriage of Roman Catholic theology with ancient Aztec mythology than it does with the Bible. The self-flagellation of Latin American superstition is not in view here. Neither is the self-flagellation of the Wokies declaring to everybody how ashamed and terrible I am because of my heritage.

Self-flagellation. I'm just a terrible, horrible person going around and saying, in fact, here's how terrible.

I am.

Look at all of this. Lowliness is not drawing attention to yourself. Eeyore was not lowly. Eeyore was a self-centered, crisis-loving, joy-stealer. That's what Eeyore was. Minnie and Eeyore, obsessing over his tale, makes the story all about him.

Winnie the Pooh is just trying to get some honey. Piggly's just trying to play. Eeyore makes the whole story about him. He's not lowly. He's exalting himself. Behold my problems. That's not lowliness.

That's not lowliness. Anybody who does that is being much more self-conscious than they should, always self-manifesting. For the fishermen in the group, there's a great deal of difference that you do with your tackle if you're going to fish for trout or catfish.

Correct?

Catfish are on the bottom and rarely make an appearance at the top. Trout are on the top and you're trying to catch them as they jump out of the water. Lowliness is the catfish who rarely presents the self to the surface.

I'm not going to make this conversation about myself. I'm not going to make this issue about myself. I'm not going to put myself forward and mark my territory and make it about me. Either self-promotion or self-loathing, either one, it's just, meh.

And the trout's always splashing at the top, always making a big ruckus. God forbid it's a dolphin, making a lot of noise. Lowliness means you don't put your self-consciousness and your self-manifestation anywhere on your top ten priority list.

I've known people who didn't even make their top 25. And they are wonderful people. Lowliness and gentleness. Gentleness goes along with lowliness. It does not mean weakness. Gentleness is not, speaking of some flower that can't survive if you barely touch it.

Gentleness is that old word meekness, and those of you who know that classic definition of strength under control may remember this. Gentleness is the idea of restraining expression and reserving energy in light of God's sovereignty.

You are restraining your expressions, and you are reserving your energy in light of God's sovereignty. We're not going to despair with our expressions, and we are not going to dive into great amounts of anxious energy.

We are going to respond. We will say things. We will do things, but they're going to be governed by the fact that we know that God's.

In charge.

It's okay. We're going to respond humanly, but we're going to respond trustingly. And that is gentleness. Lowliness and gentleness is captured together in Jesus' invitation in Matthew 11, 29, "'Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my burden is light, for his yoke is easy. He is gentle and lowly in heart.'". Sometimes we might distrust that approach, that we would be lowly and gentle.

We would think, the best thing for me to do is to be assertive and take control. If I'm not doing that, then I'm not being responsible. And in that case, if we're in the context of thinking about unity within a family or unity within a church, that can cause disunity when we are not allowing our expressions and our energies to be governed by our trust in the Lord.

Longsuffering is the next word, and longsuffering is, the best analogy that we've got is holding your liquor. Now, that probably doesn't apply to most of you in your experience, however, anger and alcohol in the Bible are treated very much the same way.

There is no commandment against alcohol in the Bible outright, and there is no commandment against anger outright. But boy, are there lots of warnings. Boy, are there lots of warnings. And those things are present, but they should never, ever take control.

Right?

Put it this way, longsuffering is not the idea that you are going to be without suffering. Oh, you're going to suffer. It's not the idea that you're going to be without offense. You are going to get offended, but when that happens, don't let it impair you, you see?

Don't let it impair you. Take over your vision, take over your reasoning, take over your direction, and keep you from being unified and loving. Longsuffering. Another word picture is being long-nosed.

Long-nosed.

Long-nosed, yeah, because when you get angry, you do this, and your nose gets short. And if you're going like this, then you're not being long-nosed, so keep your nose long. And the last is forbearing with one another in love, loving forbearance.

In this, we're thinking about Christian forbearance. Now, Christian forbearance is not that moral superiority where someone says, I'm not going to deign to respond to that. I won't dignify that with a response.

I'm going to go on because I'm above you and beyond you. It's not that. That's not the forbearance we're talking about. We're talking about a kindly feeling and regard for the other on the account that we belong to the same body of Christ.

That kind of loving forbearance. Now we will pick our study up next week with the letter T, and I'll let you meditate on the acronym a little bit more, A Toilsome Peace. And that's what's coming up next, and we'll look at that and then move into the why.

And think about this passage from verses four through six, where seven times we're told that we are one. We are one. We are one. We are one. And we're going to look at that next time. Okay, let me close this with a word of prayer.

Father, we thank you for the time that you've given us in your word. We thank you for this urgent plea that we have to be at one together in Christ. Lord, help us to glorify you by following your word in this matter.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, we're dismissed.