Chosen to Stand Together

Good morning Hope Valley Church. As always I am so excited to share the good news today as we conclude our sermon series on Ephesians.

Now we're not going to have pretty slides today and that's intentional because I'm not good at doing slides.

Here's a service plug if you are good at PowerPoint presentations, PDF slides, or Pro presenter, holla at your boy. I need somebody to prepare my slides the next time I preach Just for me though.

PD doesn't need anyone he's really good at doing slides but this is definitely a weakness of mine. So if you want to be on the SSPT (sermon slide preparation team) let me know.

The benefit is that you will get the sermon before most people which in most cases will be Sunday morning. I'm joking kind of not really.

Anyway, Due to the limited amount of time that we have we're going to jump right into the scripture.

Turn with me to Ephesians 6:10-24.

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, 19 and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. 21 So that you also may know how I am and what I am doing, Tychicus the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord will tell you everything. 22 I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts. 23 Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 24 Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.

God help us as we study your word to know you better Jesus name Amen

The title of this message goes along with our theme of being chosen and today we learn that we were chosen to stand together. Chosen to Stand Together.

Three points to make it easy to remember when you go back and look at your notes, and we want you to take notes, because Participation is Better than Observation.

Im going to be giving you alot of scripture today and truthfully thats the most important thing i say today so be sure to write all of those.

Alright the 3 points: Who are we fighting?, What are we fighting for?, How do we fight for it?

I. So who are we fighting?

Anybody who has ever been in a fight knows that it's always good to have somebody who's got your back. That at any given time, if you set it off somebody's going to follow up.

But thats just for a fight, if you are going to battle or to war, you got to do some preparation.

You got to know who your opponent is.

If you played on any sports team, you would look at game film to prepare. You would see what the other team does, with their weaknesses are, with their go-to plays are. You would look in your playbook to see what plays you're going to run.

And you do this so you could prepare to defend against it.

Unfortunately as Christians we oftentimes don't study and are very real enemy knows that we don't study and takes advantage of the fact that we don't study.

And we don't study because we don't care to open our playbook called the Bible.

So who are we fighting against. Well Paul doesn't leave much to the imagination and tells us right off the bat we are fighting against the devil. Verse 11 says put on the whole armor of God so that you could fight against "the schemes of the devil."

The text goes on to say that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against evil and spiritual forces of darkness.

And where WE don't study, best believe our enemy is.

He studies your sin patterns, and looks to exploit your weaknesses.

When you get stressed out which the sin that you go to.

Whats The button that needs to be pushed in order for you to lash out.

What don't you have patience for.

Now were not going to go into details about the devil and NO the devil is not under every single rock. Sometimes it's just you sinning.

But the enemy is after something critical to God’s plan.

This fight is so important, that it is going to impact and affect every area of our life.

It will affect our marriages, our parenting, who you work for, who you go to church with.

II. Which leads us to point number 2, what are we fighting for?

Has anybody in this room ever been in a fight and not know why or what they were fighting about in the first place.

I can remember when Sabrina and I first got married I think we were married less than a month because it was right after our honeymoon.

And I remember that as we were going to bed one night, I gave my wife a kiss and told her I love her and turned over to close my eyes.

And as I was closing my eyes, I had said something or either she said something to which one of us responded that's why my people had it harder.

For those of you don't know I’ll state the obvious my wife is Puerto Rican and I'm black. So when she said this I turned over and said how you figure which is slang for you are sadly mistaken.

So then she gives me some examples. To which I sit up in the bed to give some examples. To which she gives more reasons. To which I stand up in our full size bed cuz that's all we could afford at the time to give more reasons.

And we're shouting at each other about whose people had it harder.

Eventually she gets fed up leaves the room to go sleep on the couch. At this point I have no idea what just happened, I can't remember what we were arguing about in the first place and to this day I truthfully don't know what it was that created that argument (it was the devil).

But seriously, although I did not have any Godly men in my life at the time, and I didn't know much about being a good husband, I knew don't let your wife go sleep on the couch by herself.

So I went out there and I told her and begged her to come back to bed to which she replied no. So I went to sleep beside her on the floor, while she slept on the couch. And our perfectly good bed went unused.

Family if we're not careful we will get sidetracked and fight for the wrong things. People are constantly trying to tell you whats important, what to value, what to worship.

God is probably shaking his head, because he already told us whats important in all those things.

Paul the author of Ephesians was a stickler for keeping the main thing the main thing.

Primarily, the gospel that we were saved by grace through faith in Jesus, reconciled not just to God, but to each other.

And in this letter he wants the hearers of this letter to remember what they were fighting for.

He did not want them to get sidetracked with the arguments of the day, what polarized political issue where the fighting for that day.

OK Pastor Andrew thats great so what are we fighting for and what were they fighting for.

Well if you are familiar with this section of scripture we could easily think this passage is about us fighting individually.

We think that this is about us being a good Christian putting on all the armour and throwing hands with the devil when we need to.

In fact most of the time that I have heard this passage taught it has been from the perspective of us individually. And indeed there is an individual component.

But today I want us to look at this with fresh eyes.

First verse 10 says “FINALLY”.

Man Paul's been trying to get to this point. Remember this is a letter so he has had a lot to say all the way up to this.

As PD has already said throughout this series the chapters and section titles were added for an easier read but this in its original form was a letter.

And when you write a letter you're saying lots of things that you and the recipient know about and all the points of the letter connect.

That's no different here So let's go back to do a quick recap of this letter to see if we can get an indication of what Paul says we should be fighting for.

In chapter 1 of Ephesians we learn that we have been chosen to be blameless and holy adopted as sons reconciled to God and then at verse 10 to UNITE ALL things or some versions say to create UNITY under Christ.

Then in chapter 2 of Ephesians we learned that we are saved by grace (which means we didn't earn it) through faith in Jesus to show God's love and mercy (mercy is we didnt get the punishment we deserved).

Chapter 2 is also where we see that prior to this amazing act we were separated, excluded, strangers, and (and if he could not think of another analogy) foreigners to the promise.

A promise from God given to our father of faith Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 that he would be the father of many nations and all the families of earth would be blessed through him.

And that seemed impossible because one chapter before we became alienated from one another and separated with the debacle of the tower of babel.

Somebody say BUT God. (GAWD!!) But God through the saving work of Christ we, Gentiles with the Jews are now both included as fellow citizens, reconciled to God and to each other verse 15 making one new man or better yet one new multi ethnic family.

So that verse 21 we would be joined TOGETHER to be a dwelling place for God.

This is nothing short of a miracle because Jews and Gentiles (everyone else) didn't like each other and couldn't get along and they couldn't create a bridge of peace because we always end up enslaving each other.

This is the mystery of faith that both people groups could be brought into one.

Then in Chapter 3 with this new found knowledge, this vs 10 manifold wisdom (which literally means varied OR rich variety) of what Christ does for us through his reconciliation, we get to one of my favorite passages of scripture the more I read it.

Verse 17 says that we should be rooted and established in love with power TOGETHER with ALL The Lord's people so that we would know how wide long high and deep the love of Christ is.

You see without ALL the saints: the ones who don't look like me, the ones that are not the same age as me, the ones that don't vote like me.

Without all of them if they are in Christ I can't know the full extent of Christ's love and what he did.

What it meant to breaking down the walls of hostility between each other. To Break Down hatred and preference.

This message would have brought even greater encouragement to the Ephesians because Ephesus at the time was a microcosm of the nations.

Ephesus at the time is where modern day Turkey is and as you can see, its right smack dab in the middle of Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The Nations.

It’s no coincidence that Paul tells the congregation that they needed to stand together and fight for the very thing Christ accomplished through the cross.

So many times, we hear churches say just preach the gospel, dont talk about issues of justice, race, and class.

But Paul makes it very clear that the Gospel impacts all those areas and you cant separate the two.

Hope Valley that's what makes me so excited about this church. A multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multi-class group of strangers made into a family to show the manifold wisdom of God in Denver, CO, but also in the world shout out Hope Valley Pakistan.

Christ already did the work to bring us together, but we have to fight not to tear ourselves apart again.

This is why planting a multi-ethnic church is an awful idea. In fact there are some circles who say you should not do it. They say its takes too much time to get multiple groups of people, from different backgrounds, with different preaching taste, with different musical preference to sit in one place and get along. (and they are not wrong LOL).

Its much easier to build faster and bigger if we reach people like us and well gather the other groups along the way.

Thank you Hope Valley for being God's manifold wisdom that would say otherwise.

And yes I am so happy about what we look like, but I'm more excited about what we become if we learn to fight for unity. It's like pastor Donnell said it's our inheritance. Not just something you get, but something you become.

It seems like a utopia now, but can you imagine the inheritance of what Hope Valley will become if we maintain the unity in Christ through political elections, through social injustice, through helping the poor, through welcoming the outcast.

Will you stand together?

ALright we got to keep going. Chapter 4.

Now that we are given this new life and we're compelled to walk it out every day. Verse 3 says that we should be “eager” or some versions say “MAKE EVERY EFFORT”. Now if someone says make every effort that would be something of note right.

Paul says “make every effort” to keep/ preserve the UNITY through the bond of peace (that bond of peace to me is the gospel).

And we do this by being humble and gentle bearing with one another being patient because we are ONE BODY.

For some of you, Just being here is going to be hard because there's so much pain you’ve experienced, so much justice not served. And you come here and you might feel like you see the face of your oppressors.

Others might feel like their story isn't even heard and others are completely oblivious to it all.

Paul was not ignorant of those thoughts when he spoke to the church in Ephesus, nor should we.

Alright we got to keep going. Almost there yall chapter 5 All the way through verse 9 of chapter 6 talks more in depth about how to be God's unified people, and the capstone lands at verse 21 telling us to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Submit to your fellow Christian brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, parents and children, bosses and workers

And then Paul says “FINALLY”.

Family I believe that Paul was asking this new group of Christians, people from every nation to “MAKE EVERY EFFORT” to preserve the UNITY to include standing and fighting. To protect this house as the old Under Armour commercials use to say.

And this was not new concept to the Christian faith.

In fact, unity was so important to Jesus that he spent some of his final hours praying that his followers would remain in UNITY, because this is how the world will see his glory. John chapter 17 verses 20 to 23.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

This is why the devil schemes are launched against the church. To divide us from each other and from God.

To try and thwart God’s faithful promise to unite all nations under Him. To distort the image of God and his wisdom through the church.

Therefore there is no coincidence that at a time when the world is so chaotic divided the church is so divided.

God's people were supposed to be the model not a mirror for the world.

In other words, God’s people were supposed to show godly marriages, good parenting, working relationships and how to care for the poor.

Instead the world sees us fighting about the wrong thing, upset and worried about how somebody voted on a certain issue

But won't even think twice about their brother and sister in another country who's worried about whether or not their church gathering is going to get shut down.

The world should see God's power and glory shining through us,

But when we allow divisions to seep in and break our ranks. The world only gets to see the same dysfunction it's trying to escape.

Unity is going to require us not just seeing each other on Sunday, But truly stepping into somebody else's world.

I have already heard stories of this happening here at Hope Valley.

People of different races, gaps in ages, even language barriers so few words can be exchanged, but it is being felt.

Strangers reconciled into a family. That's how we maintain the unity. Thats a love thats INCORRUPTIBLE as Paul says at the end of chapter 6.

Family, don't bend to the worldly pressures that try and create a new standard.

That try and force everybody to agree to this standard of their own making AND cancel anyone else who says otherwise.

What if God had decided to cancel us? We have turned our back on him time and time again. We have chosen other paths multiple times.

Yet he did not cancel us. He chose us even in the midst of our own sin.

Family we were CHOSEN to Stand TOGETHER and fight to maintain this UNITY provided to use through our reconciliation in Christ.

Will you hold the line? Will you maintain the unity?

Which brings us to the final point.

III. How do we fight for it?

We have to fight with the resources God has given us.

And the good news is we don't have to worry if we working with defective equipment.

We don't have to worry will these weapons really work, because way back in Ephesians 1:19 we learn that his power is immeasurable and far (not a little) above all rule, authority, power, and dominion in this age to come.

Everything is under his feet. The devil knows this too, but worries little because we don't read our instructions nor do we put on the armor that is used to defeat all of his schemes.

The devil's power is not greater than God's but he is more than happy to act like it when we don't rest in the power and might of our savior.

We need to stand firm in Christ's victory. We need to stand together.

Now even though we know who the star is, and who we want to shoot the game-winning basket at the end of the game. We still have to go out and know the one play that we're going to run.

Even though the battle is won, even though we know who wins the game we still have to put on the uniform.

So the uniform that we wear is a metaphor for the Roman soldiers uniform and I’m going to go quick on this part because there are a ton of messages on this.

Roman soldier started with a belt and everything was tucked into this to held together with it. Similarly our belt of truth holds it all together when the enemy comes with lies to break us up and pick apart what God had put together.

The Roman breastplate would protect the chest, the heart, and other vital organs.

Righteousness which means to be made right with, was accomplished through the mighty work of Jesus.

We wear our breastplate when we live like we've been made right with God. Being reconcilers and loving our neighbor.

But when we live recklessly and sin we leave ourselves wide open for the enemy to strike us right where we are.

Unforgiveness in our hearts leaves us wide open. Bitterness on a Sunday morning leaves us wide open. For getting to love our neighbor leaves us wide open. Put on your breastplate of Righteousness.

Now all soldiers need to have good footwear Sandals (jordans of the day) ready to move, but also it would allow them to stand firm when under attack.

The gospel is supposed to be moving with us as we take the good news to the ends of the earth, but it also gives us peace knowing we didn't save ourselves when the enemy questions while we're Even spreading the message in the first place.

Then the shield. My favorite part of the armor. This is really the only other slide I got. The Roman shield like many other civilizations shields, the Trojans the Spartans the wakandans was meant to connect with one another to make a bigger protector shield.

So our shield of faith can extinguish ALL the arrows of the enemy and when we connect together we create a better barrier.

But if we allow ourselves to be separated by not holding fast to our faith that we've been reconciled, gaps begin to exist and arrows will start to hit and make us fall.

When we make the connection announcements don't just tune them out like it doesn't apply to you.

Maybe you got people in your life but the neighbor next to you doesn't. Find them help them pick their shield up because we need each other.

We are better together than wandering alone in this world. The Christian faith was never meant to be done by ourselves.

I know you've heard you are your own church and wherever you go you bring the church,

BUT we are just pieces of the building and we were meant to come together where he dwells. A beautiful multi-colored temple, with old brinks and new bricks.

When we connect in faith, rejecting classism and racism; valuing the worth of every man and every woman under God.

No weapon formed against us shall prosper, the gates of hell though they come shall not prevail. For the one who promised is faithful and he gave these spiritual weapons to protect our unity and his promise.

Then the helmet of salvation. The helmet would protect the head. The control center of the body.

If we are living by our own means and we fall, and we can think this life is hopeless.

But when we remember that Jesus is our savior we can be hopeful.

All of that armor up to this point is defensive.

And that makes sense because we don't have to win anything we just need to maintain or defend what was already won.

That's why in this passage Paul says stand 3 times. And and the 4th time came when he said after you have all you can to stand, Stand therefore.

But there is one piece of armor that is an actual offensive weapon.

Family when it's time to throw hands with the enemy and our unity is under full frontal attack. It's time to squad up and hit the enemy right between the eyes with the word of God.

And you don't have to worry if you're not that versed or strong and your command of the word. Throw it anyway you got back up with your spiritual family.

I'm a small guy. But I feel so big when I got Anthony and Brennan Tim and Larry Denzel taller than me, if they are near me. I wish somebody would.

But while I'm being funny about physical protection, those same men can provide scripture that can push back the devil.

Using the word of God reminds the devil that we are standing in Christ victory, and reminds us what we are fighting for.

CONCLUSION:

We have to close so let's talk about how to get the armor because this is not something you can just ship from Amazon.

And we get the armor through prayer.

Now I don't have time to talk about praying in the spirit I'm already running short on time.

One thing I do want you to REMEMBER is this, when we pray it says that we should pray verse 18 AT ALL TIMES.

When should I pray for my church? at all times, when should I pray for my brother and sister in Christ? at all times, when should I pray for my marriage? at all times; for my children at all times; for my pastors at all times.

Prayer is not a last resort, it's the only resort to obtain the spiritual weapons Jesus left for us to stand together against the forces of evil.

This month we started to pray for five. So now you got no excuses, because I just gave you a laundry list of things to pray for pick a day each week to pray for one thing for 5 minutes each day.

5 minutes praying in the spirit, will move more mountains than 5 minutes of you just trying to muscle through your circumstance in your own strength.

Pray at all times.

You know that saying dont bring knives to a gun fight. Don't bring flesh and blood to a spiritual fight.

Pray.

Let's end this by praying together.

This is what Paul asked for so he could continue boldly proclaiming this mystery, this ministry of reconciliation that we now carry.

So lets pray