The One

Good morning Taylor Street Baptist! I want to thank Deacon Rauch for inviting me to come and preach for you all this morning.

A little about me so you know who is up here, my name is Larry Selvy and I’m a seminary study at Liberty University. With me this morning is my beautiful wife Megan. We have 4 kids who are currently at our home church just up the road at Trinity. Not only am I going to seminary, but I work a full time job too!

I want to start off this morning by being honest. I have not always been as serious and studious about my walk with Jesus as I am today. For decades I was an “average” Christian, I was baptized and saved, but I suffered from a condition that Paul David Tripp, a pastor and author, calls eternity amnesia.

That term means that I focused on the world in front of my eyes, and not the world to come. It causes you to do all sorts of strange things.

This morning, I’d like to ask you where your eyes are? Are they on the woes of this world and the strife that it causes, or are they solidly locked on our Lord and Savior in the age to come?

Today, we’re going to explore a little about that, and what it looks like when our eyes may not be on the one true prize.

But first, let’s pray!

Dearest Gracious Heavenly Father,

We come before You this morning in Your house with praise on our lips. We thank You for being among us and allowing us to draw near to You. We ask that you help focus our minds and keep our eyes where they need to be today. Help us to learn and grow what you would have us learn and grow, and guide us as we study your word together.

We thank You for all those who are gathered here, and ask that You help us grow to be one in Jesus.

In Jesus Christ’s heavenly name,

Amen

Context

We are going to be in Ephesians 4:1-6 today, but I want to start with some very important context.

The epistle called Ephesians was a circular letter that was intended to be passed around, and probably wasn’t directly addressed to the church at Ephesus, although they probably read it.

Ephesus, for that matter, was not a very Christian place.

Was the home of magic of that era

Idolatry was rampant

Other sins and perversions ran amuck

Paul was writing this around the time of the end of Acts, when he was under house arrest in Rome.

The first three chapters of Ephesians

To understand our passage today, you really need to understand the first three chapters of Ephesians

The first three chapters are where Paul lays down the instruction before he turns to practical living in chapter 4

The big ideas you need to understand from those first 3 chapters are:

God’s plan for salvation came from eternity past, nothing surprised Him about how it all unfolded

This means it was always God’s plan to break down the barrier between Jew and Gentile. They couldn’t even eat together, hard to have pot lucks!

The Holy Spirit lives in us and empowers us

Two MAJOR ones:

We were dead in sin, but the Holy Spirit in Christ made us alive

We were once outsiders, but are part of God’s Family (DWELL)

John 1:12 CSB

12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name,

Ok, now that we have all that settled, we can see how all of that changes how we should live, think, and do.

Let’s dig in!

Ephesians 4:1–6 CSB

1 Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope at your calling— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

So, the title of the sermon is “The One”, seems pretty fitting? <Maybe a joke about being new to the pulpit so corny titles are ok>

The One Calling

We start of by talking about the One Calling.

Still, he starts talking about the calling we have received, what’s that about?

The calling is related somehow to the fact that Paul was imprisoned for Jesus

Looking at verse 4, we see that we were called to one hope

And in verse 1, we need to walk in a manner worthy of it

The calling is simply that Jesus called each one of us, sinners who fell short of His glory, from spiritual death to life. He saved us, and the call was the call our hearts heard when tapped them on the shoulder <maybe wordsmith?>

We’ve been made into new creations!

While the call does refer to our salvation, it has another aspect to it as well, our lives.

Our call is the position that God has put us in.

If you have a great life, that’s a pretty comforting thought

If you have a stressful life, you might feel different.

If you’re suffering, that reality may not feel good

However, all three of those feelings are symptoms of needing your perspective checked, you may be suffering from Eternity Amnesia

If our loves are ordered the right way, if God is at the top, others are in the middle, and we are at the bottom, suffering becomes a bit easier to deal with. Those ordered loves, as Tim Keller used to put it, help us keep perspective, helps us focus on the world to come.

Even though life may have difficult patches, and I think everyone has had them, God calls us to it.

Why? God’s strength is magnified in weakness. He loves long odds. If there’s a million to one odds of something that God wants to happen, He’ll choose the person that makes the odds even worse! See, the greater the odds, the greater the glory with the One True God comes through.

But it matters how we walk that walk, how we respond to the call. I mean, could you imagine John MacArthur as a mean spirited man or the C.S. Lewis as a bully?

Alright, so it matters, but how do we walk worthy of that call?

The One Way

Absolutely great question, Paul read your mind!

Now we move from the One Calling, to the One Way.

In verses 2 and 3 we start to break down what that worthy walk looks like. We’re going to touch on these one by one, so hang on!

Humility:

This wasn’t something the ancient world thought was a virtue. In fact

Often on Vice lists

The word itself was coined by Christians

It’s not false humility or self-deprecating humor

True humility is recognizing that we can do nothing worthy of God without Jesus. Humility should always be driving you back to Jesus and asking for whatever you need to accomplish the task.

Need to move a heavy rock, pray

Need to paint lines on hot tarmac in the Florida heat, pray

Need to withstand mocking and jeering of a hateful world, pray

Everything in life should drive us to one place, Jesus, so that in our weakness His strength can shine

Gentleness

Gets a bad wrap as being “weak” or a door mat, not what this word means.

This isn’t being weak. One Commentary I read this week while preparing for the sermon said it this way. Gentleness is “strength that knows who it is”.

One commentary I read said it this way “The willingness to be least if obedience to God requires it”

Think about that for a second

When people run, it pretty often isn’t that they are running to be first, just working on not being last.

Patience

This is something we all have run into, and those who have or had kids, parents, spouses, friends, or just interacted with some other human being, you know what patience is.

Why is it so hard?

We are focused on ourselves.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone passing a line of stopped cars on the interstate on the shoulder so that they could “help decongest the roadway”. They wanted to get somewhere they wanted to be. They weren’t thinking about anybody else.

Same is true in our lives. We get frustrated at others when we need to repeat ourselves or move slower than usual because we value our time more than their success.

Impatience is born from a self-focused attitude, from forgetting about eternity.

You can ask Megan, for the first decade of our marriage, whenever she would talk about her day, I would listen for two things, what the problem was, and how I could solve it. As soon as I grasped that, I would cut her off and give her my solution.

If you’ve ever loved another human being, you know that does not work, but why did I do it? I love her, and I want to solve her problems, isn’t that good?

Kinda, you see, she was talking to commune with me, to be close, not to deliver a problem statement. I valued my problem solving above her being able to talk to me, I focused on wanting to be her hero, instead of enjoying that I was her husband.

The wrong perspective can really trip you up!

The next two are the hard ones.

Bearing with one another in love, that can definitely be tough.

Tell the story of dad’s tool boxes when we moved

A burden shared, is a burdened spared. Well… maybe not completely spared, but you get the point.

This works with emotional loads too. When life is hard, and it will be, Jesus doesn’t shy away from that. You are part of a flock for a reason, and part of that is to bear with one another in love!

So how do we bear with each other when it comes to something other than a really heavy box or furniture? Here’s a couple of ways.

If you are sharing the same burden, talk about it to each other. Don’t gossip, don’t disrespect someone, but commiserate with each other about how hard it is. Share that truth, and when you’re done, pray together.

If it’s different burdens, listen patiently, and then pray.

In either case, check in on each other. Don’t let weeks or months go by, if someone is hurting, sometimes being asked how you are means a lot. Oh… and don’t forget to pray.

As you can see, prayer is a major way we can bear with one another.

This last one is perhaps the toughest of all

Ephesians 4:3 CSB

3 making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

Now I want to clarify what this means.

The bond of peace, that’s the peaceful feeling you get when you’re with your flock! When we get together, and that glow that we feel in the light of God’s glory and grace, that’s the bond of peace we share.

Anyone who has been to church functions that didn’t go so well knows that the bond of peace is great, but delicate.

What this is saying is that it’s ok to forebear for your brothers and sisters.

Paul in 1 Corinthians talks about making sure that a stronger brother care for their weaker ones by not forcing their way on them. <Wordsmithing>

That didn’t seem so bad, right? Why is this one the hardest?

One little Greek word: σπουδάζοντες

It’s what is translated “make every effort”

When you see those words, like in 2 Peter 1, it means you and I have to put in effort.

A lot of the things in the Christian life are done in and by the Spirit, but we are partners with the Spirit. When we see these words, it’s God telling us that we need to get in and put ourselves into the game.

It means we have to try.

It means that when little miss Betty Sue who is the oldest woman in the church is getting ready to tell you the story of the Easter of 2013 for the zillionth time, and you know her heart will break if you stop her, you listen.

You are not in this life for you, but for Jesus. Jesus loves Betty Sue, so much that He died for her, so if listening to her story, while it puts you out, makes her feel the love of Jesus, then it’s worth it. Remember, Jesus loves Betty Sue, and He also loves you.

This is a lot, right? We have a calling, and that calling is often something that isn’t so nice. Not only that, but to walk worthy of our calling we need to be humble, gentle, patient, bearing with one another in love, and work hard to keep the unity?

It’s hard enough to get out of bed some days.

This is why the context was so important! Remember, we covered that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us? That Jesus controls everything? These are important to understand!

The One Source

In fact, they’re so important that Paul wrote it out in verses 4-6.

Here, we see the One Source, which helps us walk in the One Way of our One Calling.

We are going to talk about the power of one here. I know it sounds like a song, but it’s serious, one is all any of us need.

You see, in verse 4, we see there is ONE body, ONE Spirit, and ONE hope.

The one body is the universal body of Christ across space and time. It is connected by the One Holy Spirit, who is eternal, ageless, and ever present. This gives us the One hope of salvation, to be united with our heavenly Father in HIS family. To be with Him without pain or toil, to rest in Him.

In our darkest times, in our toughest days, we are part of one body. When the world has knocked us down, and threatens us, we are empowered by one Spirit. And when life seems like it can’t get any worse… we have that one hope. It’s powerful.

The world needs dozens of things. People outside of the church are never part of one anything. Even their marriages are more like 2 trying to be 1. They don’t know what it is like to know that the person sitting in your row is going to the same place. That person is a sinner, just like you. That the same Spirit that is in you, it’s in them. It’s a feeling that is really hard to describe, but it’s the fellowship of the church. That’s church with a big C, the universal church.

How are we assured of this one body, one Spirit, and one hope?

Verse 5, we have One Lord, One faith, and One baptism.

We all serve and love Jesus. That’s the key. He’s the assurance of our hope. You see, when we have the one faith in Jesus, and we have one baptism, we are aligned with Him. Here’s what I mean.

What are the requirements for salvation? From Romans 10:9

Romans 10:9 CSB

9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

To confess Jesus is Lord with your mouth (That’s the One Lord part)

Believe that God raised Him from the dead (that’s the One faith)

You are saved.

What’s it mean to be saved? We get to go be with Jesus when this age closes right? How do we do that?

The resurrection

How do we show that we are aligned with Jesus? We are buried with Him in death and raised to walk in newness of life. We are baptised.

One Baptism, so we get to the same resurrection that Jesus was first fruit’s of. We have one faith in our one Lord, which ensures we get there.

Jesus paved the way, and that is how we are assured of our one hope.

Ok, that sounds great, but who is really powering this one hope? There’s a lot of moving parts right?

That’s the One Source, from verse 6.

Ephesians 4:6 CSB

6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

If we say it a different way:

The One Source, our God and Father, is above all, through all, and in all

Because of that, Our Father made it so His begotten son would die and be raised for our sins so that we could be with Him. That is what we confess when we are baptised, we symbolically are buried with our adopted older brother Jesus.

That one baptism leads us to one faith in Jesus, whom we confess as our one Lord.

That one Lord secured our one hope

That one hope is brought to us by the one Spirit

And that one Spirit brings us together into one body

But to be one body, we need to be at peace, and work hard to maintain it.

That means we need to:

Bear with one another in love

Be patient with one another

Be gentle and humble with one another

If we do all that, we are walking in a worthy manner of our call, which is where God put us.

That’s how we go from our God and Father to our daily life. It’s a long chain, but it’s strong.

Conclusion

Our one hope, to be with Jesus in the next age face to face, is what we are called to, and it is what we need to keep in view.

When you suffer from Eternity Amnesia, you forget that you have that one hope in the next age. When you forget that hope, you think this world is all you have. When you think this world is all you have, you become willing to be like it to stay in it.

That hope, planned for by the Father, secured by the Son, and communicated by the Spirit, is incompatible with that amnesia!

We fix our vision by doing the three things every Christian is taught from our first footsteps in Christ, until He calls us home, we talk to and listen to God with each other.

We talk to God in prayer.

We listen to God in scripture.

We feel God when we’re together.

If you feel like you’re getting a case of Eternity Amnesia, or that your brother or sister is, do those three things. It’s a sure-fire remedy. Pray, Read, Gather.