One hope in Jesus Christ

Paul’s letter

Magandang umaga po. (Magandang Hapon po)

It's been a while. Some of you may remember me and some of you may be meeting me for the first time, and I've always been hoping and praying to see you again.

It's been five years since I brought my kids here in 2018, and the people who came with me this time are not those kids from then, but we love you in Jesus. We've been praying and preparing for quite some time to be here, and we've had some problems, but we're so thankful to be here.

In fact, I have been longing to see you again, but as you all know, due to the coronavirus, I was not able to come, so I have been waiting for this day to meet you again.

Because I wanted to share with you that even though we live in different countries and have different cultures, languages, and everything else, we are the one in Jesus.

I wanted to share with you that God loves you just like He loves us.

As you can see, I don't speak English very well. But I'm sure that won't be a problem, because God the Holy Spirit, who is in us, has made us one.

I hope God gives us a huge grace.

The church in Ephesus was a place where Paul stayed for a long time and taught the word.

Do you know where Ephesus was?

It was a place that a lot of people loved and came to, just like the Philippines.

Ephesus was halfway between Europe and Asia, so a lot of people traveled to Ephesus every day.

What happens to an area with lots of people?

They always get huge commercial development, but they also get lots of religion, because the reason people were coming to Ephesus wasn't to travel, it was to live there and make money.

When people were preparing to immigrate to Ephesus, they brought with them sculptures of the gods they believed in.

Idols to protect them on their way to Ephesus.

Idols that would make them successful in their business tries in Ephesus. It became a city of idols from all over Europe and Asia.

Paul comes to Ephesus, this city of idols, and he preaches Jesus Christ, and there are many people who accept the gospel and come to believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior, just like you and me.

They are called Christians, and when they know the joy of salvation, they preach the gospel to those who believe in idols, just like Paul did.

The church in Ephesus became a large group of people who decided to believe in Jesus.

But as the church grew, there was a problem they hadn't anticipated: as they became more diverse, they began to become less united and more divided.

Because of their different cultures and languages, they didn't understand each other.

Paul is now in prison, not in Ephesus, and he's hearing about the churches he's planted through letters, and as he reads them, he realizes that the church in Ephesus is not united and is splitting.

That's what I’m going to share with you today, a letter that Paul wrote to the Ephesians from prison.

There's a sentence in verse 1 that we need to pay attention to.

Now where is Paul?

Right, he's in prison. So he's supposed to say, "I am in prison, write to you," but he says, "a prisoner in the Lord," and he's saying, "a prisoner in the Lord”

Could he's been through so much trouble in prison that he's now crazy?

Why does he say "a prisoner in the Lord" instead of "in prison"?

Paul is intentionally using this language to say what the disunited and fractured Ephesian church needs most.

The inability of Jews and Gentiles to mix as one was causing a lot of problems, so Paul uses the phrase "a prisoner in the Lord" to say that even though he is not there right now, you and I are all bound together in "Jesus Christ," regardless of the distance.

You, with all your differences, were able to gather in the church because just as you have been saved in Jesus,

because the one next to you was also saved in Jesus.

So all of you who were saved through the same Jesus were made "one in the Lord".

Paul uses the phrase "locked up in the Lord" to convey that you are all "one in the Lord”.

Being "locked up in the Lord," Paul is trying to show that we are to be a community of one in God.

"Why we are to be a community of one" is explained in chapter 4:4.

We have no hope because we are sinner. But God chose us first and gave us salvation.

He who called us has given us the "one hope".

That "one hope" is that we will be united, says Paul.

Dear brothers and sisters, the "one hope" Paul speaks of doesn't just apply to the church in Ephesus.

God has given us "one hope" in the here and now, too.

We are to be "one in Jesus."

We may be different in language, culture, and everything else, but that doesn't matter.

We are all people who have confessed the same Jesus as Savior.

We have not confessed a different Jesus.

Do you really love Jesus?

Do you believe that Jesus is the Savior who saved you?

If so, then all of us gathered here should be united in Jesus. We should greet each other, talk to each other, and share the grace we have received.

Let's greet each other, shall we?

"God loves you". Thank you.

Why we gather?

It takes three things for all of us who are loved by God to be one.

First, we are one family in Jesus, called into the "one hope".

The church in Ephesus had become so ethnically diverse that cultures and ideas had mingled, and they couldn't be "one."

They thought and spoke according to their own standards, which caused them to argue with each other.

Paul exhorts them to walk worthy of the work to which they have been called.

What does he mean by a worthy life?

It's this: live as if you were family to be one!

The dictionary definition of family is a community that shares a common life, tied together by blood.

The people in the church in Ephesus were not related by blood, but they were united by a common hope in Jesus Christ.

Paul wanted the people in the church to be a family in heaven, sharing their daily lives through Jesus Christ.

Families have differences of opinion and sometimes yell and fight. But they understand and love each other because they are family.

Sometimes differences help us understand each other.

The arguments in the Ephesian church were a way for them to understand each other better. But they were not real family, so it was hard for them to understand each other.

That's why Paul is saying that they should live by remembering the one hope that Jesus gave them.

I need to remember that Jesus loves me as I love him, so I can accept the other person into my family.

Paul is talking about living worthy lives.

The first part is to live as if we were family, treating each other with respect.

Second, those gathered together in community are to tolerate one another in love with humility, gentleness, and longsuffering.

It's really hard to understand and embrace people who are different from us, because there are times when we lose, and there are times when we feel foolish. So Paul says that when we try to embrace others in love, the Holy Spirit binds us together "the unity of the Holy Spirit in the bond of peace."

He's saying that God keeps our hearts so that we can embrace.

In other words, God protects our hearts so that we can embrace.

You've already had experiences of tolerating, embracing, and loving one another in that way. You've certainly had experiences where you've been "the unity of the Holy Spirit in the bond of peace."

When?

Last Thursday and Friday we split into teams to share Jesus. Was it easy or difficult to share the gospel, did you feel comfortable communicating with each other?

It's hard to have a conversation in another language, and we had to share Jesus, and we had to translate from English to Tagalog, and there were definitely limitations to speaking in English among the team members, and maybe there were moments of frustration, irritation and hurt feelings.

I looked at your faces with concern, and you're smiling, and you're trying to communicate with us from Korea somehow, and you're translating it into Tagalog.

And then yesterday, today, we're worshipping together.

You were willing to give us a place to worship, to praise and worship and glorify God together, and so here we are, worshipping together in this place.

How?

Because we are "the unity of the Holy Spirit in the bond of peace."

We are showing service, humility, patience, and love for one another.

Some people came with me before we came here.

They said that we couldn't understand english sermon. So I said when I preach in English, the Filipino saints amen, you should amen with them, and when they laugh, you should laugh with them. so they said we are going to watch other’s reaction.

So here we are, giving space and yielding to each other in worship and enjoying the same graces from God.

It doesn't matter if we knew each other before we met, we were already connected in Jesus before we met, already part of the heavenly family because of Jesus who gave us "one hope".

We were already "the unity of the Holy Spirit in the bond of peace."

The final goal we should have is "perfect unity" and "oneness" in God.

Ten years ago, I went to SRM University in Chennai, South India. I wanted to come back to the Philippines, but God sent me to India instead of the Philippines.

I found it difficult to keep my faith in God in a place where there are so many idols and religions, so I prayed to God to send me partners to pray with me every day.

One day, as I was walking around the university, I heard a song that I had heard many times coming from far away. I followed the sound and walked down the street to a prayer hall, half of which was used by Christians and half by Muslims.

After that, I started going to the prayer hall every Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. There were about 30 people, mostly Indians, some Africans, some Asians and me, and we would worship and pray.

One day, African friend was leading the service, and she didn't speak much English like I did, and she was sharing a prayer request, suddenly she started speaking in her tribal language, and me and my Indian friends had our eyes closed at first, and then we opened our eyes and looked at each other and exchanged glances like, "What should we do?"

And then we closed our eyes again and prayed to God.

"Dear God, my friend is crying and sharing a prayer request, and I want to pray with her, please help me. I want to pray about what she's praying about."

And then my heart and my Indian friends' hearts started to heat up, and we cried and prayed for a while.

After the prayer session was over, we went over and asked her, "Is this what you said we should pray?" And she was so surprised because she didn't know how we understood it.

I suddenly remembered a sentence.

"I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the Holy universal church, the communion of saints" the statement of faith we were saying.

It reminded me of a sentence in the Apostles' Creed.

Why saints can have fellowship with one another.

Why the saints can come together in the holy communion.

I realized that it's because of the same God, the Holy Spirit, who is in my heart and in yours.

It was because of that Holy Spirit that I was able to pray and understand words I had never heard before.

Verse 4. For the body and the Spirit are one.

Verse 5. The one who led, the one who believed, the one who baptized.

Verse 6. For there is one God, the Father of all.

We are united in Jesus Christ

We live in different countries, speak different languages, and have different cultures. Maybe we are people who can't be one. We will never understand each other.

But here we are, gathered in one place, singing, sharing the word, and praying.

How is this possible?

It's because, as we read, it's the same one who has called each of us.

The Bible is clear that there is one body, one Spirit, one faith, one baptism, one God.

We believe in the same God, read the same Word, and live with the same Holy Spirit in our hearts.

The reason we can profess the same faith together, regardless of race, upbringing, language, or anything else, is because there is only one God.

He is calling us here to be united in the same way.

We worship today and then we go back to Korea on Wednesday, and we don't know when we'll be able to come together again to worship. But even if we never meet again, even if we are far apart, we are one family in Jesus, "bound together by "the unity of the Holy Spirit in the bond of peace."

The reason we are here, the reason you have accepted us, is the same. We are here because the one God has called us together in the "one hope".

God has brought us together and given us the "one hope".

That one hope is to remember that we are one family in Jesus and to be united in God as we serve, love, and embrace one another as we do now. He has called us to know the joy of that one hope.

May our hearts be filled with the love of the Holy Spirit.

And may we all become more caring, serving, and helping each other, becoming one in Jesus, in Jesus' name I blessed.