We Must Fight for Unity: Ephesians 4:1-7

So as a church plant at Covenant Baptist, the thing that Bart and I have been talking about a lot is how do you install the vision?

How do you get your people on board and what are your core distinctives as a church? And there's been a couple of them that we've talked about in the last couple of weeks.

One is that we want to be a church that is founded on and powered by prayer. That's why we meet together and we pray.

That's why we pray a lot during the service. And that's why as a congregation, I wanna call you to pray for your congregants by name, to pray for your elders, to pray for our city, to pray for those who are lost, to pray for family members.

That is one of the core distinctives. But the other one is gonna take a little bit of work, I think, a little bit outside of ourselves, and that is that we want to be a church that desires to work hard at replicating and planting new churches so that we would make disciples right down the street as well as a mile away, five miles away, and then across the whole state and across the whole country and across the whole world, but starting here.

That's one of the core distinctives that we wanna look at. But in order to accomplish that, that's a task that seems well beyond us.

In order to accomplish that, we're going to need to have our house in order. And that's what

Paul is going to talk about as he makes a turn in Ephesians today away from instructing and praying, and he starts his exhortations.

That's where he is trying to urge the people what he wants them to do, the way he wants them to live.

And the first one is that we have to have a church that is unified together. So we'll spend time this morning talking about what unity means and what unity does not mean.

So as Bart taught last week, CBC has to be a bride that's worthy of the bridegroom.

We have to be a church that works. We have to be a church that is purified and beautiful. The way that we accomplish the latter or being a church that's purified and beautiful is that we have to be a church of people in the body that live holy lives.

The way that we do that is through prayer. The way that we do that is through loving one another. The way that we do that is through being grounded in the word so that the repentant heart that we have would be the one that's thrown off the old man who loves sin and embraces the new man who loves righteousness.

But what Bart also said was that we need to be a church that works, that we are a bride who, like Proverbs 31, that always gets applied by husband, say, and wife, why can't you be like this?

What we wanna do is as a church, knowing that we are a church that's been bought by the blood of Christ, that we are his inheritance, that as that church, what we have to do is we want to press the economy of our bridegroom out into the front of the city gates.

That means that we want to take what he has given us in our unity in the spirit, what he has given us in spiritual gifts, and we wanna press those out and adorn the church so that the world would see as a bright light the love of Christ in his church.

Sounds like a grand vision. Sounds like something that Josh Rice, Sid Norbash, we can't accomplish that on our own.

We have to have the power of the Holy Spirit. And that's why Paul, when he starts his exhortation in verse one of chapter four that we read, he starts with a therefore.

Many people have said, I think it's an old Robert Cuppism, and he probably got it from somewhere at fellowship. He said, when you see the word therefore, you need to see what it's there for, right?

What it's there for is, I wanna give you a quick one. I can't stay here long, even though those that know me well know that I usually would.

I'm gonna blast through these. What is the therefore? Paul says, therefore, now do something.

What is the therefore? Well, here they are. In a quick survey of the first three chapters of Ephesians, what we would see is, therefore, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing.

Every single one of the spiritual blessings have been given to us. We have been chosen before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless.

We don't have to try to be holy and blameless. God has chosen us before the foundation of the world to make us holy and blameless.

I want you to pay special attention to this one. Therefore, we have been predestined to adoption as sons.

We are not strangers. We are not people who have been brought in with no family call.

We have been adopted. We have been brought into the family as sons, and therefore, that's gonna carry a theme with us is that we have to be what we are.

We have to be family members. We have been given redemption through his blood. That means that we were condemned in sin and that God came and he took us off the slavery market and paid for us with the precious blood of his own son to redeem us as a people, and not just as a slave bought by a new master, but as adopted sons.

We have been given the answer to every mystery to the mystery of his will. That's why we sit here this morning is because the mystery of the gospel has been made manifest to the

Gentiles. We are here today because the gospel of Christ was not content to stay with the people of Israel, but it moved out into the

Gentiles. We have been made an inheritance. We have been sealed by the Holy Spirit who's a pledge of this inheritance and his adoption.

We have been made alive when we were dead and we were following the plans of the enemy. We were not dead and neutral.

We were dead spiritually following all the schemes of the prince of the power of the air, Ephesians 2. That means that we were not neutral observance on the battlefield.

We were actually warring against Christ through his old enemy, the devil. But we've been taken from that, taken from that battlefield and put on his team.

We have been washed clean from our former lusts as children of wrath.

Do you walk in that this morning, Christian? You've been washed clean of all the former desires. They have been nailed to the cross and you have been forgiven.

All you have to do is confess your sins and he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. We are men who fear nothing because what can the world do to us?

Our sins have been taken away. We can live as courageous people with a clean conscience because Jesus paid for all the penalty that weighed us down.

We have been seated in the heavenly places in order to be shown the surpassing riches of God's grace.

We have been brought near who were formerly far off, having no genetic inheritance of the oracles of faith.

We had no call by birthright to be called children of God, but he adopted us and he brought us into the fold.

We have benefited as Gentiles. We have benefited from the dividing wall of hostility between God's people of old and us

Gentiles. It's been torn down and we have been made one, all grafted onto the same tree.

And that is one of the reasons why our logo at Covenant Baptist is an olive tree because the tree is Christ and the branches have been grafted into the trunk.

We have been given faith that will result in us walking in good works that Jesus has prepared for us.

And finally, we have been made citizens of God's household. Therefore, therefore, what do we have to do?

Paul picks it up at the start. He says, therefore, what we must do is we must fight for unity.

We have to fight for unity. That's the first thing that Paul addresses the church at Ephesus about is that what we have to do to get our house in order is that we have to fight to be unified with one another.

Ephesians is a letter that starts with those three chapters that I've just skimmed over. And what it's trying to do is it's telling us who we are and how we are supposed to behave given this new identity.

And what Paul knew is that these Christians in Ephesians, just like us today, we're gonna have to fight this battle in our homes, in our church, and in the world.

There is no escape from what we have to do. There's no escape for husbands and wives and children to follow the way

God has set us on our way. There is no escape for people in the church to be unified as the body. And there is no escape in the world that we are to go take the message of Christ to the lost and dying world.

There's nowhere for us to hide. There's nowhere for us to sit and be idle. We have to be a church that works because Christ already worked on our behalf and he still works on our behalf interceding at the throne of the

Father. He has saved us to a glorious work. He's not saved us to be couch potatoes streaming

Netflix. That's not what this is about. He saved us as a people to go on a mission.

We know this and we know that I'm not making it up because as Paul goes through these exhortations that he starts in chapter four, he ends in chapter six telling us to put on the whole armor of the

Lord. In verse 10 of chapter six, he says to be strong in the Lord. I think in the church today, we shy away from these militaristic masculine terms, right?

But Paul has a word for men, women, and children in this book. What we have to do as the people of God is stand strong in the

Lord. It recalls the message to Joshua. It recalls that as Joshua was going to go in and root out the

Canaanites with this little ragtag force that God was going to be on his side, therefore be strong and courageous.

That's what we have to do. And so this first exhortation seems strange maybe except that you have to understand that for any force, for any team, for any family to be effective in the world, they have to be unified.

If we have factions that are warring against each other, it weakens us from the inside and we can't do anything.

Jesus himself said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. We know that the greatest armies are characterized by unity of purpose, by their clear hierarchy, by their belief and buy -in of the soldiers and of the organization.

One of my favorite movies of all time, Gladiator, shows the effect of a great general who can keep all of his men believing in the task and on one purpose.

They love their general and they fight as a fearsome unit of hundreds and thousands of men because of the structure, because there's unity of purpose.

We see it in sports as a good picture of this, that a team that's divided in individuals who are trying to seek their own power, their own accolades, they're gonna work against the team and the team becomes lesser than the sum of its parts.

I remember years ago, there was a team out of Detroit, the Detroit Pistons, they had no superstars on that team and they won the

NBA championship against Shaquille O 'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Karl Malone, some of the greatest Hall of Famers that have ever played.

And what happened was that Pistons team knew how to play gritty defense and they knew how to be greater than the sum of their parts.

And a team when it works that way is a beautiful thing. And I think Paul has in mind, he had to have been thinking of the awesome, brutal efficiency of the

Roman armies that would work as one unit together. And so he writes us this as the church, that what we are supposed to do is that we are supposed to be together.

A church divided is an impotent church. A church divided is a church that wanders in lukewarm indecision all the time.

Definitions of unity though, this is critical. We have to define our terms. Definitions of unity abound today in the world.

Lots of definitions. What does it mean to have unity? Is unity total equality and possessions?

Is unity feelings of love for one another? Is unity having unanimous votes on decision making?

Or is it something else? I think today as we examine, we're going to find what type of unity it is that Paul is exhorting the church and begging the church to fight for.

Paul starts this with an appeal where he talks about what his walk in Christ has cost him.

He says in verse one, he says, therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord. This is a play on words that he used at the beginning of chapter three, where he said that he was a prisoner of the

Lord or of Jesus Christ. So Paul has been put in prison by Christ because he's owned by Christ.

He is set about, he elsewhere calls himself a slave of Christ. So Paul is a slave of Christ or is a prisoner to the king's rule of Christ, has to go about and at great cost, he has to proclaim the gospel.

But Paul is also a prisoner in Christ because as he writes the book, he's in chains.

And those chains are the cost of him being a prisoner of Christ because there's nothing else he can do.

And so as a prisoner in the Lord, he writes books that encourage the saints. And that's what

I hope to do this morning is I hope that we are encouraged so that as Colossians 1 .10 says, that we may walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and multiplying the full knowledge of God.

So what is unity? One of the first things that we have to understand as we build up to the definition of unity is that unity is going to be grounded in something.

There has to be a direct object. There has to be a thing that we are unified in. And one of the groundwork things that unity in the church has to be grounded in is that we have to be grounded in walking in a manner worthy of our calling.

Remember that therefore, we've been called to these grandiose things through the son of God that we've been called into his household as an inheritance and because of that calling, we can't just bumble around.

He has an order for us and we are his people and therefore, we have to be unified around walking in the manner worthy of that calling.

What does that mean? I think it's shorthand for holy living. What is worthy of the calling?

It's going out and proclaiming and pushing the King's message as ambassadors for Christ. It's us throwing off the former lust of the flesh that Paul's going to expound on as this book goes on.

He's gonna talk about all the things that we would have to throw off. We are a new people who's been grounded in this calling and that calling is the starter of what starts to give us unity.

He continues in verses two and three. He says, with all humility and gentleness, with patience bearing with one another in love, being diligent to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

A little unpacking there. We start to get a picture of what unity in the church looks like here.

What does it look like? It looks like people who are patient. It looks like people who are humble.

It looks like people who bear with one another. And I wanna draw attention to that one. I'm a member of a large family and we meet a lot and they're all here.

One of the things that you start to understand about being a member of the family is that you have to bear with each other. There's nowhere to go.

And I think that's one of the pictures is that I wanna show here. As Christ's church, as his universal church, people have been saved into the church.

One thing we have to understand about the church proper is we have nowhere we can go. We have to gather with the people of God.

And because of that, we have to bear with one another. Think of it as the deepest, strongest relationships we have between father and son, father and daughter, mother and son and daughter, brothers and sisters, grandparents.

Those bonds are strong. Those bonds are things that are not easily thrown aside.

And so as you start to get the picture, what Paul wants to do is he wants us to, in the church, have that kind of relationship and interconnectedness within the church so that those bonds are not easily thrown aside.

That's what it means to bear with one another. We're gonna annoy each other. I was up on the ladder working on that outlet right there for about an hour and a half last night because it wouldn't screw in and Jake started making fun of me and I could feel the anger rise, but here's the thing, right?

We have to bear with one another. I can act unpastorly and blow off some steam and then

I have to repent of my sin and guess what? He's still my brother. He's still my brother. That's the idea in the church.

Gentleness means using the least necessary force with each other. We don't kill a gnat with a sledgehammer.

Patience, that means that we don't boil over quickly. It means slow to boil. Patient means being careful and kind and slow to anger with one another.

Bearing with one another, I've just described and I think we start to see what does unity look like and then we get to the home run because in verses four through six,

Paul in a very focused way tells us what our unity is completely based on and here's what it's based on.

It's based on one body and one spirit. It's based on one hope of our calling.

It's based on one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father who is over all and through all and in all.

Let's start with the end first. There's nowhere to escape God. There is nowhere.

He is in all and through all and what we have to understand is that as we've been bought into this calling, that we all serve one

Lord. The Assembly of God church down the street serves one Lord. The Sonoran Baptist serves one

Lord. That one Lord, that one calling means that there is a unity of purpose in the gospel.

So let's take them all and look at it. If we are all fixed on the same point, then we all walk towards that point and that creates unity.

Does that mean that we don't have disagreements? It does not mean that because family members are always going to have disagreements.

It doesn't mean unanimous votes every time because family members are going to have disagreements.

In the church, we're going to have different opinions but we're not allowed to have different callings and we're not allowed to have different gods and we're not allowed to have different baptism and we're not allowed to have different faith and we're not allowed to throw off being gentle with one another and bearing each other's burdens.

So the idea here is simple. What unites the Kansas City Chiefs? Winning a football game.

What unites the Roman military? Taking over Europe. What unites us as the church?

The King's calling of the Great Commission. That wherever we are, wherever we meet as the body of Christ, that we have one mission.

And churches, if you look at our mission statement on the website, you're going to see that it's a variation of every other church who claims the true gospel's mission and that is that we want to make disciples of all the nations and we want to baptize them in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and we want to teach them to observe everything that Christ has commanded them. And how do we do that?

Knowing that all authority has been given to him and he didn't give it up and knowing one more thing, that he's with us always.

That is a comforting thought, isn't it? That as the church at Covenant Baptist, we are not a bunch of men who are trying to paint walls, wire ceilings, and a bunch of women who are trying to tape and paint walls and run their arms out and take care of kids, that we're trying to do this with our own paddling, trying to make this all happen.

We are a church that sinks or swims based on God's authority and his power to accomplish what he's told his church to do.

That's all we have to do. So how do we have unity? We have to remember what we are and who we are.

We have to remember that there's one gospel by which man is saved. And that gospel tells us things.

It tells us that Christ is king and that he has given the peace message for the world. That's what gospel means.

It's the good news of the king, the good news of peace of the king. And this king is a different kind of king than Caesar Augustus because this king did not win peace by slaying his enemies.

He won peace by being slain himself and his blood pouring over to cover the sins of his people.

And he died on that cross to deliver the good news and the gospel proper that is this, that Christ has died so that you may live.

That his blood was shed on that cross so that we can have peace and reconciliation with God and father who created us and who made us in his image.

That's the one gospel. There's no room for taking away from it. There's no room for adding to it.

There is no work that can be added to it. The gospel is simply this. Christ is king. He died on the cross.

Believe in him today. Come and receive. Come and eat at his table. We have one faith and the faith is simply this.

The faith is that God has secured the victory. That Christ died on the cross. That Christ ascended.

That he sits at the right hand of the father today. That's the faith we have. What is the one baptism? The one baptism is the believer's baptism.

That's that we have been dead in our old self and raised to life as a new person. That what was old has been sunk into the sea.

It's a beautiful picture of what Micah says where our sins were tied up in a bag and thrown into the deepest part of the ocean.

That's the one baptism. It's the baptism of new life. It's the baptism of being saved by the blood and the water.

It's the baptism that says, Lord, our old life is over. We follow you today.

We're called in the hope of that. So what does disunity look like?

I think it's instructive here to look at the other side of the coin, right? We have to look at enemies of unity.

So remember, unity is one calling, one gospel, one faith, one God. The enemies of unity are this.

It's having different missions besides the one that God gave us. We don't get to make up our mission statements.

And vision is how we see the mission being accomplished in our corner of the world, right?

We're not allowed to have different missions as the church. That is a recipe for disunity. We are not allowed to have platform -seeking.

That means that the goal here cannot be to occupy this pulpit, to proclaim the word of God, hoping that I would grow in influence and grab the love and the adoration of the masses to come in and see how great

Josh Art. That kind of thing has to be looked at, pulled out on the counter and looked at for the ugliness that it is.

How would a weak vessel who comes up and who tries to proclaim the name of Christ, that man cannot be sullied by his pride and his platform -seeking.

It has taken down many a church and it has caused disunity in many churches and destroyed them and God took away their lampstand.

We cannot have the seeking of praise and accolades from men. We don't fear man, but we also don't seek the praise and accolades of man.

One pastor who's dear to me, Matt Truella, he was preaching through Acts and he said at one point, be careful of the men who glorify you and say, oh, you're doing such a great job.

He said, those are the first men that'll be picking up knives to throw them at you when you turn around. The accolades of man are fleeting.

The accolades of man are cheap. Remember what Christ said, he said, don't let your left hand know what your right is doing because what we do in secret here, what we do on the mission brings great reward in heaven and we need to spend our time building up heavenly treasures, not seeking the cheap adoration of man.

We do not need to think ourselves as another enemy. We don't think of ourselves as more important than other parts of the body.

The pastor is not more important than the plumber. The worship leader is not more important than who's setting up communion or who's getting flowers or who's greeting at the door.

There's not levels of accolades that we need to seek within the body. There's not gifts that we should be envious of in the body.

We all have to do our part, more on that later. Another recipe for disunity is to forget our helpless condition before salvation, to think that God was lucky that he was able to choose us to be on his team in time, right?

We were not the first one chosen. We should look at that and say and go, Lord, why did you choose me?

Why did you predestine before the foundation of the world to adopt me as a son? I can't think of a good reason.

We cannot be quick -tempered and impatient with one another. And finally, we cannot purposely create factions.

When you try to get a group of people to go against another group of people in the church, congratulations, you're off mission and you are doing the work of Satan at that point.

That's how the church gets divided. So practically speaking, as we look at verse seven,

I wanna end here with talking about how are we to be united in the church? How do we practically accomplish this?

First, we have to follow the model of Paul in this letter. Here's what he does, and I got this from John Stott. He said in this letter, what

Paul does is he instructs and then he intercedes and then he exhorts. He instructs, remember, what is he instructing?

That's where we started the sermon. He instructs, remember what God has done, who you are, and what we have been commanded to do.

That's the instruction. We need to go back to that well over and over again. Then he intercedes. He prays two times before we get to chapter four.

He prays for them to have spiritual sight, for them to have a clean inner mind, to have renewal in the word and unity in the body.

And he prays that they would be able to see the riches of Christ that he has lavished on them. Because oh, if you can see those riches, the rest of this stuff is meaningless.

That's what Paul knew. As Paul was taken up to see heaven and then came back to minister, what Paul understood is if you could just see what

I've seen, that you would throw your life away as a drink offering. It would not matter. You would not fear death at all.

That's how he can write in chains. That's what he prays for his church. And finally, he exhorts.

He urges and calls people to task when the signs of disunity come. We have to confess our sins to God.

We have to confess impatience with others. We have to be held accountable as a body to purpose and vision and mission.

We have to kill pride and unbelief. Those are practical things we have to do. We have to watch for them in one another, not so that we're spiritual umpires with each other, not so that we're policemen blowing whistles at each other when you see something, but so that when we start to see sin in our brother, that we get that confessed and taken care of.

That sin, sin is the festering ground that breaks a church apart. He says, but to each of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

We all have a part to play in the church. We have been given this grace and measure out of an inexhaustible source.

There is no shortage of God's grace. It is inexhaustible. It is something that we cannot even imagine how much of it he has and that he gives to us.

But in Romans 12, Paul, I think, gives a window to what he's talking about in verse seven. Unity, what does it mean that we've been given grace in measure, right?

That's a strange thing, especially in comparison to one another. Didn't I just say that we don't lift ourselves up as factions or envious of other's gifts?

Here's what Paul says in Romans 12. He says, for through the grace given to me, I say to each one of you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound thinking, as God has allowed to each a measure of faith.

For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another, but having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

We have different gifts. We have different gifts. And as a church planet, we're gonna need all your gifts.

We're not gonna need to despise other people's gifts. We're not gonna be envious of other people's gifts.

What we're gonna understand is that if we are one body, then we have need of all of those members of the body.

That we don't think ourselves as more important than one another and that we remember, remember here, we're given different gifts, but what are we?

We're individually members one of another. It's intertwined.

And the thumb can't do things the pinky can do and we don't need a Frankenstein monster that has three arms and no legs and a couple of toes.

We need to be the full functioning body with Christ as the head. Christ has claimed that position.

I don't get to be the brains. Christ is the brains. I don't get to do that.

There is no one elevated to that state. He is driving the ship. There is a great temptation to strive for other people's calling.

And in leaving us here with a vision here, to be clear, the vision here is that we would be able to raise up elders, to disciple them and train them so that we would be able to replicate and plant churches near to us and spreading out across Northwest Arkansas.

So there's some questions that we need to think about as we look at that vision. Question number one is, are we prepared to lose people in this body to go plant churches?

We're gonna have friendships that change as time goes on. We're gonna lose elders that we love hearing preach and sing as time goes on.

Are we prepared? Are we prepared to train elders and beacons and endure the risks, hardships and heartbreak that this can open us up to?

Because men are fallen and men will disappoint. And there'll be men who go through an elder qualification process that fail out at the end and leave the church.

It's gonna happen. There'll be elders who come in here and who disappoint us.

It could be me. I sure hope not. But we have to be prepared for the risk that it takes.

Are we prepared to cram into this building until we can split the church with visible core groups to start a new body and a healthy passion?

We're gonna lose talented members of the body if we're gonna fulfill the vision. Are we prepared to work, work, work, to stay razor focused on this vision when other good things tend to grab our attention and distract us?

It's intoxicating getting bigger. It's intoxicating with more people hearing you sing and more people hearing you preach.

Those are good things, but that's not the vision of this church. Are we prepared to not get distracted by the needs of the moment and take our eyes off the vision to expand?

Finally, are we prepared to commit ourselves to praying for each other by name, to sacrificing our comforts for the sake of the vision and living truly as prisoners of Christ?

I believe resoundingly that we are, but we have to continue to recall who we are, what we must do and hold true to the task so we do not forget our calling.

Our history is God's people and go with a zeal to make disciples, starting in Springdale, but reaching everywhere that our feet step.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the church.

What a blessing it is to see a small picture in a shadow of the unity of the

Trinity of the Godhead, Lord, that you are perfectly united, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We will not be that on this earth.

We will never be that unified, but Lord, I pray that we would be active in fighting for unity, that we would put to death impatience, that we would put to death envy and factions, that we would put to death mission drift, but Lord, instead that we would be people of courage who hold each other accountable, who love each other, who don't despise each other's gifts, who do not despise humble beginnings, but who love each other, who lift each other up, who treat each other as beloved neighbors.

Lord, prepare this church for the hardship that she has to go through. We do that knowing that we have your grace and there's no end of it.