Unity in the Spirit - Brandon Scalf

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Ephesians 4:4 MAIN POINTS:

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All right, everybody, grab your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4.
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Ephesians chapter 4, and we are going to be continuing on in our series through Paul's letter to the churches in Ephesus.
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Ephesians chapter 4, and the title of today's message is Unity in the
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Spirit. Unity in the Spirit, and if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient word, and we will be reading verses one through six.
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One through six. This is the word of the
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Lord. Therefore I, the prisoner in the
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Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being diligent to keep the unity of the
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Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one
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Spirit, just as also you were called, and one hope of your calling.
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One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.
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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen? Amen, have a seat, have a seat.
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If you were unaware, Heritage Church is what we would call a confessional church, and what that means is we hold to a particular confession of faith.
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That is, we have adopted a formal statement of doctrinal beliefs as opposed to coming up with our own, one that had been created in the past.
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The one that we hold to is what is often referred to as the 1689
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London Baptist Confession of Faith. And of course, we affirm that it is not the
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Bible, but it is a helpful guardrail to keep us within the bound of orthodoxy.
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A group of men got together, and they essentially modeled that statement after the
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Westminster Statement, which came in 1646, and they changed it, and baptized it, and corrected some errors.
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But one of the things that you must know about the 1689 London Baptist Confession is that there are some non -essentials that are written down in that document.
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What I mean by that is there are some things in them that do not touch the vitals of the
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Christian faith, at least not in a salvific sense. Of course, one might argue that they are the logical implications and outworkings of a proper understanding of the vitals of faith, but nonetheless, it differs from creedal statements in that way.
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Creedal statements is another thing that we hold to here at Heritage.
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As a matter of fact, creedal statements are the groundwork, so to speak, of a confession.
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The word creed comes from the Latin word credo, which means I believe. And so it is a statement that really is the bread and butter of what the
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Christian faith is all about. Much like a confession, it is a doctrinal statement that gets at the meat.
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It gets at the substance of what it means to be a Christian. Such creeds in the past have been things like the
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Apostles' Creed, or the Athanasian Creed, or even the Nicene Creed.
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And to reject these creeds is to reject the Christian faith. In other words, if you don't believe what the creeds say, then you're not a
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Christian. And see, that differs slightly from that of a confession of faith.
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Orthodoxy is often more broad than we would like it to be, but more narrow than others would like it to be.
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Now, you might be asking yourself, why is this introduction filled with talking about confessions and creeds?
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Well, here is the reason. The Bible is littered with creedal statements.
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So it models for us how we ought to actually think about creeds and confessions.
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Of course, obviously, the difference being that the ones in the Bible are inspired by God, whereas the others are not.
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As a matter of fact, the text that we will be looking at today, namely verse four of chapter four is a creedal statement.
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Some commentators believe that it is actually modeled after a formal statement, while others believe it is just one that Paul created.
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Nonetheless, it functions in the same way. It is a very pithy, short, and yet helpful doctrinal statement that gets at the vitals of the faith.
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But before looking at it specifically, I want you to see that this exists in the Bible in many different places.
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For example, in 1 Corinthians chapter eight, verse six, Paul says, yet for us there is one
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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for him.
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And one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him. Paul says in 1
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Timothy 2 .5, in a similar manner, for there is one God and one mediator, also between God and man, the man
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Christ Jesus. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse three, Paul says, for I delivered to you as of first importance what
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I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture.
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And in 1 Timothy 3 .16, Paul says, and by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness.
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He who was manifested in the flesh was vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, and proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in glory.
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You see, this passage that we are looking at, specifically verse four, where it speaks of one body, one spirit, one hope, one
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Lord, one faith, and one baptism is a lot like these creedal statements that we find elsewhere in scripture.
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And they have something in common, namely that you see here a presentation of what is obviously non -negotiable truths.
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Non -negotiable truths. And today we are going to look at a lot of, although a fraction of what we will address in the coming weeks, a lot of creedal -like statements that are chock full with non -negotiable truths.
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Before we can look at our passage, however, we must ask the question, why is it here, and why is it in this place?
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Why is Paul choosing in this moment to bring forth this creedal statement?
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Well, in context, if you remember, we examined verses one through three last week, and there
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Paul put forth a series of dispositions that we needed to embody if we want to guard or maintain with grit.
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You remember me saying that? The unity that we have in the spirit, which ultimately means putting our doctrine to work or walking worthy.
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And remember, Paul said that if we want to essentially learn how to create peace in the church, preserve the unity that's been given to us by the spirit, well, we must essentially lift the other end of the scale.
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That's what walk worthy means. It means that our doctrine and our practice ought to align, and we ought to live in light of the things that we proclaim.
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The proclamation ought to lead to application. The belief ought to enable our behavior.
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So the question that it was addressing then is how do we do that?
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How do we maintain that unity, and how do we live in a way that shows our belief to match our practice?
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Well, in Ephesians chapter two and verse three, we see, if you look back here with me, that we do that with all humility.
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That is with lowliness of mind, counting others as more important than yourself.
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Remember, Paul created this word essentially, or at least this word wasn't really around until the time of the
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New Testament because it was not considered a virtue in the Roman world or in Greek thought, it was considered a vice.
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Gentleness was the second thing. Gentleness, that is meeting every situation with a correct response.
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Not being angry when you ought to be excited, and also with patience.
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Being willing to suffer. Being willing to be wrong. Being willing to be corrected, and bearing with one another in love when they are not, by they,
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I mean the brothers and sisters around you are not living as they ought to in light of Christ and pursuing
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Christ likeness. We are to bear one another. Literally to absorb, if you will, some of that pain.
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And then we must be diligent. We must have grip to guard the unity of the
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Spirit and the bond of peace. So how do we stop a church from dying? We listen to those things.
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And how do we kill a church? By ignoring those things. That is the question we sought to address last week.
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But the question that we are looking at today is more so the why question. That's how.
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Now here's the why. And what is the why? Well, the why is
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God. Very pointedly,
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God. More specifically, however, God in his unity and triunity.
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God in his oneness. And God in his Trinitarian nature.
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That is one God and three persons. In other words, if we are to have a unity that is worth anything, where these dispositions are put into play in our midst, it must stand on a sturdy foundation.
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It must be able to stand on something that can hold the weight.
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Because if you've been a Christian for any length of amount of time, you will literally read this in verse two, humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another in love, and say, well,
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I could never match that. I could never do that all of the time.
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But God is God all the time. And God is actually, and here's the beauty of it, the model for how this whole thing shakes up.
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Now, of course, we have to be careful when we speak about the Trinity because we're treading on holy ground.
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And so we must make sure that what we're saying is biblical and what we're saying is helpful.
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But I want you to look at verse four. I want you to look at this text. It says, there is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling.
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But I also want you, even though we're not really gonna touch on it too much, to look at verse five and six, which continues, one
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Lord, one faith, and one baptism. And in verse six, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.
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And the reason I want you to note these three verses because I want you to see, it is very clear, and you don't need a doctoral degree to figure this out, that there are, in fact, three members of the
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Trinity being spoken about here. Amen? Right? We have the
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Spirit in verse four. We have the Lord, Jesus Christ. And we have one
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God and Father. So the Father, the Son, and the Spirit spoken about in tandem.
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All three members of the Trinity are mentioned essentially by name. Now, of course,
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Lord is not Jesus' name. It is a moniker, a title given to him, both by the scriptures, but also by the apostles and those who followed him.
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And in many ways, it was a political statement. It was saying, and we'll get to this more in depth next week, but it was essentially saying,
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Caesar is not Lord, Jesus is Lord. We don't do what
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Caesar says, we do what Jesus says. And if Caesar decides to do what Jesus says, then we'll listen to him, but if he's forbidding us to do that, namely to preach
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Christ, to love Christ, to build churches, well then, there's another
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Lord in town. And he's a better Lord, he's a bigger Lord. As a matter of fact, he's the only Lord. And that is quite honestly what got many of the early
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Christians killed. But something that might be easy to miss if you're not paying attention is another thing that I want you to notice is this numeric imagery that is happening within these three verses, which really is one sentence, especially in the
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Greek. And what's happening here is not much different than that which happens in the book of Revelation.
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You see, I don't know if you know this or not, but numbers really matter in the Bible. And numbers have symbolic purpose.
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And whenever you see numbers, you should ask yourself, what's going on here? Right? Now, of course, in the early 90s, there was a ton of scholarship where many books were written about numbers.
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As a matter of fact, I was looking at some resources in my Logos. There was a book, literally, there was like 900 pages on the theology behind biblical numbers.
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And I was like, that's insane. That's just wild, you know? That's somebody with a lot of time on their hands.
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And so I think we can actually fall into the trap of making too much about some of the numbers that we find in the
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Bible. But oftentimes, many of us in the reformed camp, especially, we wanna get away from some of this bad eisegesis as we see it, and we don't actually take into account sometimes when the
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Bible is trying to use numbers to teach us something. And here, it's very interesting. We see three sets of three, and then we see a sevenfold use of the word one.
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Now, here's why that's important. If he's speaking about the triune God, then why would three be important?
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He's summing up his argument in a Trinitarian way. He's not only presenting the Trinity, but he's doing it in a
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Trinitarian way. See, it's one thing to believe the Trinity, and it's another thing to think Trinitarianly, and it's another thing to believe the
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Trinity. It's another thing to believe Trinitarianly. And so, we are going to essentially address the first set of three, and leaving in succession each sermon after this, another set of the three.
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So, here, if you don't get what I'm saying, look with me here, I'll show you, and it'll be a lot more easy, okay?
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In verse four, it says, there is one body, one spirit, you were called in one hope, okay?
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You see that? That's three. Three. Verse five, one
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Lord, one faith, one baptism. Another three, that's speaking of the
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Lord Jesus, and then we have the God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
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You see that? Another three. So, three members of the Trinity with three ones happening.
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Now, there are seven ones, and here's why that's important. Seven is complete or holy number in the
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Bible. You see this a lot in the book of Revelation. And so, what Paul is doing here is he's trying to say, like, this is ground zero.
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This is the foundation. This is the fundamentals of what you need to understand if you are going to be a church that is going to stand against disunity.
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Understanding this, then, not specifically the numbers, but this particular passage, this specific set of verses, is crucial to our
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Christian life and practice, especially as it pertains to life in the church.
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Now, you might be saying, okay, I get it. I understand. Didn't you just tell me last week, though, that this was going to be the start of kind of a division within the text?
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Remember, you said, Pastor, that chapter three ended kind of this doctrinal piece, and then chapter four was going to lead us into more of this practice piece.
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We're gonna move from doctrine or orthodoxy to practice or orthopraxy.
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Right, that's what you said. That is what I said. And it's true, okay? But here's the thing.
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Paul never actually divorces theology from application or doing, and he oftentimes doesn't divorce doing from doctrine.
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If you remember, in chapters one through three, you did have little small pieces of things to do, right?
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We were told to remember, as Gentiles, in verse 12, that we once were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.
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We were strangers to the promises of covenant, and so on and so forth. And there were other things that came to be.
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But what Paul wants you to wrap your mind around, before we actually get into talking about what it means to be a member in a church and what it means to have a church and what leadership does in the church, he needs you to understand what the church sits on.
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And it's not our ability to achieve two and three. It's not our hobbies.
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It's nothing we can manufacture. It's God himself. And if it's God himself, that changes everything.
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Changes everything. So the first thing that I want you to see is one body. One body.
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That's the first thing he says here. As a matter of fact, those are the first two words. If you are using a
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Legacy Standard Bible or a New American Standard Bible, you will notice that there is a supplied, a supplied set of words.
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Of course, it's helpful. Helps us to understand it better. But there is, it's not in the original text.
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He just starts off one body, one spirit. Linking it back to what has previously been talked about.
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There's one body and one spirit, this says. So let's look at it by this text.
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One body. What does it mean that we are one body and why does it matter?
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And why is Paul causing us to think about this? Well, this isn't the first time that we've seen the word body as it pertains to the church.
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As a matter of fact, it's the first thing that the church was mentioned as in chapter one, verse 23, which says that the church is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
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Now, of course, the church is seen as many different things. For example, the temple, the new temple wherein
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God now dwells. It is the sanctuary in the Lord.
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We are the family of God, but here's the deal. What he wants you to understand when he says body here is that first and foremostly, it's a living organism that exists much like an actual body where Christ is the head.
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And he will make this more clear when we get to Ephesians chapter five, verse 23, when he says for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body.
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But of course, this is not the only place that the church is called the body. For instance, in Romans chapter 12, five,
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Paul says so we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of another. And in first Corinthians chapter 12, verse 27, he says now you are
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Christ's body and individual members of it.
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Here's why that's important. It's important to understand that when it says that there is one body, it's saying that there is one living organism.
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It's saying that the church is not something that is simply manufactured by our own will.
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It is not something that exists so that we can gather around in little holy huddles where we all prize and prioritize the exact same things outside of the scriptures.
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In other words, it's an organism and it's not a community built around hobbies. It's a thing that grows organically.
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You did nothing to be born. And all you needed was to be said stained, fed to make sure that you lived and continued to grow.
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Church is like that. It is a body that exists because of the blood of Jesus Christ and because of the spirit that holds us together.
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The spirit that has made us Christians and made us the church. More than that, it's not just a living organism.
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And by the way, before I move on, I wanna say this, that the reason that's important is because he's gonna go on to speak about and has done this in first Corinthians chapter 12, speaking about different members in the body.
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If you're gonna understand how you function in the body, how you are to be a church member, how you are to function in the
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Christian life, then you need to understand how you exist in the broader scope of everything, right?
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If you think about the church as a body and not just a place to come, then you understand that you have a vital role to play in it.
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And you understand what it is you have to do, why you have to do it, and how important and needed you are.
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Of course, understanding that Christ is the head. But it's also an entity.
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It's an entity that is a manifestation of the heavenly reality that chapters one through three have really done a great job at pointing to.
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It is an entity filled with saints of both the past, the present, and the future.
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It is a mystical union that exists.
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And I know that you're good reformed people, and so you don't like the word mystical. But your problem is not with me, right?
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It's with the Bible and many theologians. It's not mystical in the way that, say, New Age would talk about mystical.
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It's mystical in that it's otherworldly, right?
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How can we, if you remember months ago, be seated in the heavenly places with Christ and also be sitting here in these pews living the
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Christian life? It's a mystery, it's mystical. It's a beautiful union that exists outside space and time.
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1 Corinthians 12, 13 says, "'For also by one spirit we were all baptized "'into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, "'whether slaves or free, "'and we are all made of drink of the same spirit.'"
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So this entity is filled with Christians of the past, present, and future, but it's also filled with people who are not the same.
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And we are all made to be one new man. Remember, if you look with me at verses 15 and 16 of chapter two, it says that, "'Jesus abolished in his flesh the enmity "'the law of commandments contained in ordinance, "'so that in himself he might create the two "'into one new man, making peace.
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"'He might reconcile them both in one body to God "'through the cross, having in himself "'put the death, the enmity.'"
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Put the death, the enmity. So another thing that a body is is one cross -purchased body.
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So it is a body, it is one that is living, and it is one that is an entity, and it is one that is purchased by the blood of Jesus.
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I mean, you saw that, literally, in the thing that I just read in verse 16. He made them a body through the cross, through his blood, through Jesus' blood.
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This is made more clear, I don't know about more clear, but it's made clear and helpful in Ephesians chapter two, verses 15 and 16, like we just saw, but throughout the entirety of the scriptures, and this is helpful because it shows us that there can't be more than one church or one body, any more than there can be one
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Christ. If Christ died for that thing, that church, then there is one thing.
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So what kind of a church are we talking about here? Are we talking about heritage?
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Are we talking about the ones who agree with us? Are we talking about our denomination?
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These are questions that we have to ask if we're thinking about the church. What is Paul speaking about here?
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When he's talking about a body, is he talking about this body? Because when we talk, we say our body, that heritage.
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Is that wrong to do? Well, it depends on how you answer the question. Well, it is very evident to me that the scriptures, and specifically
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Ephesians one through three, and now as we get into four, that Paul is saying that this church here is one that is universal and invisible.
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It is one that is much larger in scope. It is one who believes the essentials of what we are discussing here now.
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It is one that believes what the Bible teaches. There, in other words, has always been a true church.
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There will always be a true church, and the church will continue to grow, will continue to put dents in the world, and ultimately will come to fruition in the consummation of all things, and it is not going to die anytime soon, and it is in all places underneath the umbrella of many different tribes and nations.
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It's not just heritage. Now, that's important.
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That's important to note because it helps us to understand things like the Lord's table, for example. One of the things that I say oftentimes when we come to the
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Lord's table is I will say, if you are visiting from another church, or if you're not a member here yet, and you love
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Jesus, we're gonna invite you to the table to partake with us. Why? Because it's not our table. It's Jesus' table, and it's for everyone whom he has shed his blood for.
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I cannot, I cannot withhold Christ's supper from Christ's people because he died for them, and it exists broadly outside of this.
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People who do not hold to the 1689, though they should, it's much broader.
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It's much bigger, which means it's also much more beautiful because iron shoppens iron, and one of the things
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I love most about even my group of friends, I have a group of friends that span all different type of tribes when it comes to kind of the
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Christian sphere, as it were, and I love that. Sometimes I get hate for it, but I love it because I get to learn and be sharpened, and hopefully
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I get to teach other people, but I understand that the body of Christ is bigger than heritage. The body of Christ is bigger than my own understanding of what the scriptures are teaching.
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Now, that's not to divorce it from doctrine. That's not to divorce it from what we're talking about here, right? We've already seen that he cares about doctrine.
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He's putting doctrine forth, so there are some non -negotiables, and those things are found in these creedal statements.
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They're found in the scriptures. One thing to contemplate, however, when we think about this is to contemplate the reality that just because there's a universal church doesn't mean we neglect the local church, right?
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Because a lot of people can get on board with what I'm saying here, and they can say, well, amen, yes, universal church.
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Amen, bigger than heritage. I love my brothers and sisters out there. Well, if it's the universal church and it's invisible, then
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I don't actually have to be a part of a local church, and I don't actually have to submit to leadership in a church.
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I don't have to do any of that. You know why? Because the universal church is what matters, and not the local church. Of course, the universal is not local, but that kind of argumentation misses actually the entire point of what
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Paul is saying. It's a huge hermeneutical blunder, and what
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I mean by that is, well, let's just pause for a second, ask this question very easily. Who in the world is
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Paul writing to? Is Paul writing to the universal church? No certainty in this room.
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Is Paul writing? No, he's not, right? Like, we get it as a part of the universal church because he wrote it down, and it was preserved by the
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Holy Spirit. It was written, right, as he was carried along by the Holy Spirit, and so God meant for us to have it, but it was a letter to a local church, or some scholars believe a group of local churches, and so what
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Paul is getting at, even before you start doing all these hermeneutical gymnastics, is to say the way we think about the universal church should impact the way that we think about the local church.
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Right? Because he's going to go on and talk about how we are to serve one another, and why certain people were given as gifts to the church, like pastors, and evangelists, and different things like this, moving on down here to things in verse 11 and 12.
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And as we look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12, also, it talks about members having different gifts that serve the body.
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Well, what body are you serving, especially continually, if you're just out there loving the universal church?
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Nobody. Who's helping push against your sin? Nobody. Whose sin are you helping push against?
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Nobody's, right? You're a law unto yourself, you're a church unto yourself. So yes, there is a universal church, but local churches are visible expressions of that invisible reality, visible expressions of that universal reality.
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But that does not mean just because you are part of a visible church that you are actually members of the universal church.
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You can, in other words, sit in pews and not be saved. So if you're going to be in a body, the body, you must actually understand what that means.
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And here's the rub, here's the payoff. If we truly understand the doctrine of the church, any idea of competition, rivalry, self -seeking, self -importance would be utterly impossible.
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Martin Lloyd -Jones says it would be ludicrous in his commentary, which is a good word for preaching.
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Ludicrous, it's ludicrous, right? If we actually understand that we are one body underneath Christ as the head, and we are unified by the spirit, which we'll get to in a second, and made a body of believers, and we're actually dependent upon one another, and we need one another, like the knees need the elbows, and the feet are needed for the body to move forward, and the hands needed to grab food, the stomach is needed to eat food, and that's how we ought to think about us.
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Each one of us serves a different purpose, and none is more important than the other. Well, you might say, well, you know, yeah, but hands are so much more helpful than toes.
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Well, I've heard, I don't know if this is true, but I've heard that if you have like one or two toes cut off of your foot, like you actually have to learn to walk again, because your body doesn't understand how to walk properly, and then your other toes got to make up for it.
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So nothing, we need everything, even as insignificant as it might feel.
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The body needs everything, and if anything is lost, it suffers.
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The church is the same exact way. It's a body just like that.
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Children, would you look at me for just a second? Did you know that even though you come to church here on Sunday, you have brothers and sisters in Christ that exist in a much bigger body, a much bigger church called the universal church.
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It's a beautiful reality. It's a beautiful reality. The second thing that he says here is, not only is there one body, but there's one spirit.
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And we touched on this when we looked at Ephesians 2 verse 18, when it said that for through him, that is through Jesus, we both have our access in one spirit to the
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Father. But what I love about this succession of seven ones is that it shows us that there's no other option.
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There's one body, right? So if you're outside of that, you're not in the body. And there was one spirit.
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So if you were outside of that spirit, you are not in the spirit and you are not a part of that body. So it's very accurate, very pointed, very helpful in discerning, very easy.
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It's a very easy math problem. Are we in or are we out? Are we in the spirit?
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There's one spirit. And if you remember, like we said last week, this is not speaking of spirits, like the spirit of the age, for example.
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You know, speaking about something metaphorically, something in the air, proverbially.
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It's not even speaking about spirits that will be talked about in Ephesians chapter six or in first John chapter three, when it says that we are to test the spirits.
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There are many spirits, many false spirits, but there is one
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Holy Spirit. There is one Holy Spirit. And this
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Holy Spirit is the one that created and sustains our unity.
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It is His indwelling. It is His binding presence that gives the church its essential oneness.
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You see how these things are linked, right? There's one church, and now the spirit is put forth here to show us that when
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He indwells that body, which He does, because there's only one body, and it is
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His binding presence that gives the church its essential oneness, as the spirit is one with both the
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Father and the Son. And how does
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He do this? What does the spirit do? Well, it brings us into fellowship with one another, first of all, and it creates the body.
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It creates the body, and it sustains the body, and it is what binds us in unity.
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It creates the body. There is one body and one spirit.
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In other words, believers are members of the body by virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit. Now, some of this is review, but in order for us to understand how this is going to play out, we're going to revisit some of its concepts.
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The spirit creates the body by creating Christians, and that has been
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Paul's argument from the beginning. Paul rehearses ideas because he wants them to go deep, and he wants you to understand, yes, of course, we're going to talk about orthopraxy.
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We're going to talk about what it looks like to be a church member in terms of actually what you do and how to worship properly and so on and so forth, but first you need to understand how
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God creates His church, how God creates His body, and He does that by essentially creating the
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Christian. Not essentially, He does that by creating the Christian, and He does this firstly by convicting
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Christians of sin. Convicting Christians of sin. Now, of course,
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Paul is preaching the positive, like what Christ has done, and these are all beautiful things, but elsewhere,
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Christ also teaches about what the spirit would do even more so in depth than even the book of Ephesians.
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Now, the book of Ephesians gives us the background, that we are dead in our transgressions and sins, chapter two, verse one, that we formally walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, and then it tells us in verse four that God stepped in, being rich in mercy, and the great love with which
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He loved us, and He caused us to be born again, but somewhere in there, in the order of salutis, we need to be convicted of our sin.
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John 16, eight says, Jesus speaking here, speaking of the Holy Spirit, when
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He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.
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So how do you know if you are in the body, and how do you know if you are in the spirit?
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Are you convicted of sin? Have you been convicted of sin? You see, too many times, pastors and preachers get up, and they will say, you wanna be a part of the church?
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Come be a part of the church, and then the church falls apart. Why? Because they were actually trying to raise up, train people who were never actually saved in the first place.
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They were building their ministry around goats and not sheep. They were building their ministry around people who had not actually been convinced of sin, and the ravageness that it is, and not only that, your need to be convicted of that sin, and being willing to put that to death, because not only here does it say that He will come, and He will convict the world concerning sin, but also righteousness and judgment.
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That is, they will be overblown with the holiness of God, and they will understand that there is coming a day when we will stand in front of Jesus, and we will give an account for all of the deeds that we have done in our body, and then what happens?
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What happens then? When you actually are confronted with your sin, and you actually understand
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God's holiness, and you actually understand that you will stand face -to -face with Jesus someday and answer for those sins.
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What is the natural outworking of such a heart? Well, here it is.
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You go, oh no, but like with tears in your eyes, because we know that sin separates us from God, and we know what
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Psalm 5 says, that God hates all who do iniquity, and we know that He has promised to crush the evildoer, and He will, depending on how you read the last couple chapters of Revelation, come back with a sword in His mouth, but I believe that sword has already been unsheathed, and He is conquering
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His enemies, taming His enemies right now through the preaching of His beautiful and merciful gospel, and so when you are confronted with that reality, when you see that I am actually the thing that chapter two tells me about,
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I become convicted of my sin, and something happens, so what else does the
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Spirit do? He regenerates. Now, I'm gonna say some things here, and what I want you to understand is
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I'm not actually teaching you what happens in succession, okay? I know that very easily we can fall into that trap, and I can go, here's the list of things
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I want you to consider, and then you'll think, oh, here's what happens. I'm convicted of a sin, and then I'm regenerated, and then, no, no, no, right?
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These things all kind of are like a pound cake, if you will, right?
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A parfait. They're all together somehow, and what that exactly looks like,
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I'm not sure. We have an order of salutis, and to some degree, there's some logical outworkings of one comes after the other, but some of them, they happen at once, or, you know, it's called conversion, right?
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And so, regeneration does not come after conviction of sin, but it at least involves the other, or comes before.
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I think we would argue as Reformed people that the regeneration comes before, and so what is regeneration?
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Well, after we have rightly been brought down, have rightly been humbled, and humiliated by our sin, we can come to the grip with,
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I think we've been regenerated, and what I mean by that is, nobody without the gift of God's free grace would ever agree with the
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Bible about their human condition. You cannot say that you are nothing before God, right?
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We're ate up with pride. We're ate up with thinking the world is all about us, and yet we've been regenerated.
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That is, as John 3 teaches, Jesus, actually, children, look at me, I got a question for you.
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John 3, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, and he's a
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Pharisee. He's one of the bad guys in the story, so to speak, but he's actually trying to meet with Jesus and talk to Jesus, and although he's got the wrong answers, at least he's seeking some answers, and he said that the
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Holy Spirit is like something. Do any of you remember what that is?
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It's like the wind. He says it's like the wind, and it blows back and forth, and we don't know which way it goes.
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Such is regeneration. He's teaching regeneration. When the light bulb comes on, and when you believe
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Jesus, the Holy Spirit did that, and he did it how he wanted to, when he wanted to, that would bring the most glory to Jesus Christ, the righteous.
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Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, more specifically, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
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So there is one spirit who brings us into fellowship by regenerating us.
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You can't will yourself in to being a part of the body. You can't will yourself in to being in the spirit.
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It must be given by a sovereign God with a sovereign arm who decides to do you good, but he brings us into one body as well.
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1 Corinthians chapter 12 shows us this, right? There are a variety of gifts, but the same spirit, and there are a variety of ministries, and the same
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Lord, and there are varieties of workings. You see, a lot of ways, this is a parallel passage, but the same God who works everything and everyone, but to each one is given the manifestation of the spirit for what is profitable, for to one is given the word of wisdom through the spirit, and another, the word of knowledge, and he keeps going on about these spiritual gifts, and so more than that, he doesn't just save you to be saved.
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He saves you to a body so that you can actually serve, and be helpful, and to actually be a part of something that is organic and growing, and helpful to both your soul and future souls of the saints who are yet to come to him.
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The last thing that I want you to see, the last thing that I want you to see in closing is one gospel, one gospel.
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So we've seen the one body, and why that is important to consider.
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We've seen the one spirit, and now, one gospel. He continues on in verse four and says, just also you were called in one hope of your calling.
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Now, this is not the first time or the second time that we have run into this concept of calling, but there is a slight twist here, although it was brought up one other time, if you remember, in chapter one.
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That is, this hope of our calling. In chapter four, just in a few verses earlier, in chapter one, we are told to walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called.
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And what did we say that calling was? That calling was a sovereign calling, a calling that was given to all who bear the name of Jesus Christ, where they've been called out of darkness into marvelous light, and they now walk in a newness of life, and it's because of that that Paul can then say, so walk worthy, walk worthy.
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But here, it says there is one hope of your calling, one hope of your calling.
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Now, when we think about calling, the Bible talks about calling in numerous different ways, and in some ways, we're called to be holy and blameless before him, as Ephesians 1 .4
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said. If you remember that, we are called to become conformed to the image of his son,
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Romans 8 .29. And of course, this will be fully realized when we see the glorified
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Christ, as 1 John 3 .2 tells us. And the spirit who has placed us in one body, he also guarantees our future glory.
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So very pointedly, this idea of hope is pointing to something that hasn't happened yet, while also pointing to what has happened.
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And what do I mean by that? I mean that the call was designed before the foundations of the world.
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And that call brings you into fellowship with Jesus Christ, and it brings you into fellowship with the universal church, and if you are paying attention, it ought to lead you to a local church where you can express visibly that thing that the visible church holds together by the spirit, because of Christ's blood.
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It's also future in nature. In other words, it spans the gospel.
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It is the hope of the calling with which you have been called. It is the hope of that sovereign arm, doing sovereign work in your very unsovereign life.
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In other words, it is a single glorious destination. I want you to look with me if you have a
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Bible. Turn with me to Romans chapter eight, Romans. Romans chapter eight, and I do want you to eat your eyes on this, because I want you to see how beautiful it is.
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Romans chapter eight. And in Romans chapter eight, beginning in verse 28, it says, and we know for those who love
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God. Now, let me stop there for a second, and let me ask you this question in light of what we've said today, and in light of everything you've heard in the book of Ephesians thus far, who are those who know
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God? Those who have been sovereignly chosen to love
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God before eternity began, and those whom the spirit has hunted like the hound of heaven and gotten them.
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And then, what, right? For those who love
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God, for those whom he has went after, all things work together for good. For those who are called, see, very important word there, according to his purpose, not your own, right?
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Not your hobbies, right? That's one of the things that's beautiful about this hope, with this calling with which we are called.
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We are not rallying around our purposes. We're not rallying around how we feel about, for instance, a specific political party, although we should have a very firm stance that we don't vote for one of them.
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Catch what I'm throwing down here, all right? All right, we're not one of those squishy churches, right?
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If you, that's another sermon for another time, but we're not rallied around political parties.
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We're not rallied around what we feel about gun rights. We're not rallied around our skin color.
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We're not, we're rallied around his purposes. We're rallied around his gospel. We're, if you're paying attention to these three verses,
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God. And we know that for all those who love
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God, all things work together for the good for those who are called according to his purpose, because those whom he foreknew, foreknew, right?
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Another way you could translate that as foreloved. It's not saying that for those who he knew would love him. No, we've already established using great biblical theology, looking at the book of Ephesians, that God goes after and he knows because he chooses and he chooses because of his glorious grace.
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He also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers.
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And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified.
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And those whom he justified, he also glorified. You see here that this glorified is in the past tense.
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And what that indicates to all of us and what it should cause your heart to be raising affections for is the reality that it's as good as done.
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If God has chosen to extend his sovereign arm to you, to pull you out of sin, hell, and damnation, and to place you into a body of believers by his spirit, do you think he's going to let you walk away?
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No, he is not going to let you walk away. And he's not going to let you walk away because he foreloved you, he foreknew you, he called you, and he will, in fact, glorify you so much that he's willing to break grammar and syntax to tell you that.
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It's as good as done. And so this hope here is a sure hope.
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And this is a difference between the way, for example, the New Testament writers thought about hope and the way that we think about hope now, right?
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Because we might go to the doctor or something might be going on in our life, and we say, well, we hope this doesn't happen, or we hope this happens.
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And essentially what we're communicating to ourselves or the people around us is we don't know what's going to happen, but what is going to happen is up to the
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Lord, and it really could go in either way. No, this is a hope that is as rock solid as God himself built on the triune
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God of the Bible, who is one spirit, who is one Lord, and who is one
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God and Father. So our ultimate destination is the consummation of our spirit union with Christ to be forever with the
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Lord. This is why David in the Psalms, for instance, could exclaim in multiple occasions, I will be in the house of the
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Lord forever. How do you know you will be in the house of the Lord forever? Because there's one gospel, and it is that gospel that we rally around.
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It is that gospel that we proclaim. Yes, other things matter, and yes, we care about other things, but they're not the most important thing.
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The most important thing is the gospel. We love being involved in abolition ministry here.
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We love being involved in other ministries here, where we're trying our best to push back the darkness in this world.
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Wherever Satan's thumbprint is on, we're trying to wipe it off and cover it with Christ. And do we want a
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Christian nation? That seems to be the talk of the town. Of course we want a
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Christian nation. We want Christian politicians. We want Christian school teachers. We want Christian nurses.
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We want Christian doctors. We want all of that. But you know what we want more than abolition to be successful, more than a
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Christian nation to be had, more than anything, our families to be healthy. You know what we need and prize more than that?
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The gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is what does the transforming. It is the sword coming out of Jesus' mouth, and it is the thing that is slaying this world.
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And if your priorities are upside down, then of course the church is gonna blow up. But when it's built on the one hope of our calling, the gospel of Jesus Christ and the life of a sinner, well, then we can have a lot of tolerance for people around us.
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And by that, I mean biblical tolerance, not tolerance that the world is talking about, where we just get, you know, everything's cool.
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We'll get along to get along. No, the gospel drives us to the scriptures.
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It drives us to Jesus, and it drives us to unity. And the spirit uses that very gospel.
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What's so beautifully providential about the text that Pastor Corey read before we even got up here is that's
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God's plan A to save the world, the preaching of the gospel, from the pulpit, from the sidewalks, in the highways, in the byways.
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I don't wanna Christian anything by name only. I wanna
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Christian everything, because people have been transformed by the Holy Spirit, have been placed into a body, and that body doing the work that God has for that body to do.
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That's what I want. And that's something that we can rally around.
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Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And that's such good news.
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And for those of you who have not bowed your knee to King Jesus, I want you to listen to this last part. It's good news because if you remember, if you remember, which actually was the first command in Ephesians, we were at one time cut off from Christ.
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We were alienated from the citizenship of Israel, verse 12, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.
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Friends, if you do not love Jesus, if you do not know Jesus, this is still your reality. You do not have a hope to come.
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The gospel is not being accomplished on your behalf.
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You don't get to look at the glorified and assume that you will be there with them.
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And by the glorified, I mean the glorified in the text that I just read, Romans chapter eight, verse 8 -29.
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There's no hope outside of Christ. There's no hope outside of his gospel.
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You see, oftentimes I tell our church members, this hard world that we exist in, this harsh realm, as you could call it, is as close to hell as you'll ever get if you love
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Jesus. But if you do not love Jesus and you are without hope in the world, this is the closest thing to heaven that you will ever experience.
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And you might be thinking, I don't need Jesus, I don't need hope, right? Because we just get buried and return to the dust and get eaten by worms and that's it.
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But friend, let me love you enough to tell you that it's plain pride and ignorance, and the
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Bible makes clear that we will someday stand before Jesus, and if we have not repented, he will shove us down, cause us to bow before we melt like a wax figurine before his holiness.
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But he extends now an offer, even in this sermon, even in this text, that hope can be yours through the gospel, so long as you bow your knee, throw down your crown and love this
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Christ and throw yourself down at his cross, recognizing by the power of the spirit, your lowly estate, your sinful nature, your deadness, your inability to respond to spiritual stimuli, but if you want future hope and you want future glory and you want to be justified in the side of the
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Lord and live with him for eternity and you want to reap some of those benefits now in your own life,
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Jesus has come to him and grab hold of this hope, because there is only one, that's it,
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Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the father but through me.
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So do you want hope? Then Jesus is your only answer. And so friends, how do we start living like the church?
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We understand God, we understand God and his triunity, we understand that God has one body, he is one spirit and he has one gospel that saves, sanctifies and propels his people into a lifetime of piety.
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Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you and we thank you for your church and we thank you for the grace that you have extended to us and Lord, I pray if there's anybody in here today who has not bowed their knee to you, does not love you, does not see the beauty and glory of your universal and local church that you would just change their heart this morning and that you would cause them to have a heart that beats red with blood for you and hates what you hate and loves what you love and Lord, I ask that you would raise up gospel preachers in our midst and that you would help us to equip them to take the message of Jesus Christ into the highways and the byways and that you would help us to be a body that leans on one another, loves one another, nourishes one another and we ask this all in your name and Jesus' name, by the power of your spirit, amen.