Walking Together

Exalting Jesus In Ephesians A Healthy Body

A.United by divine calling (4:1)

B.United by Christlike conduct (4:2-3)

C.United by gospel confession (4:4-6)

Live/Walk Worthy vs 1

You/Me

One of those small annoyances of life but big thing when you are dealing with it is when you go to grocery store and you get a buggy or a kart and one of the wheels is janky. It doesn’t work, you either stand their like an elitist testing all the other buggies or just decide to deal with it and keep going. If you are lucky you just get a squeaky one. But if you are not, you get one that makes a noise and also pulls the whole thing to the side. Like a bad alignment. That’s frustrating because it is out of wack, it is hard to go in the direction you need to go in, hard to accomplish what you came in there to do. Isn’t that crazy - 4 wheels. Three are fine even good you might say but one is out of whack and the whole thing is messed up. I don’t know maybe you should just throw that cart away or fix the wheel but is it worth it? I am not sure.

Groups of people are like this. Your whole day can be messed up because one person in the group is out of whack.

Like if you are trying to decide what to eat as a family. Let me just say from the beginning this is a bad idea. I am all for team decisions but not when one of the team mates is 4. I just don’t really make any decisions like that. Sometimes Jacki and I will start talking about what do you want for dinner, one of the boys will pipe in I want fill in the blank, then another will over hear that and assume they have a vote, so they say no I want blah blah blah. This is when I will jump in and say - This is going to be a mom and me thing and then yall can just go and eat what we decide. How about that? But let’s say you want to be all one person one vote about it and you are really trying to make everyone happy - but there is that one child or parent in a cross mood. Everyone else is fine but that one is throwing a fit and you are thinking, I am going to get rid of all of you and start over. God did it in the days of Noah. Seems like a plan. Now you are having a hard time accomplishing the plan and one person is dragging you to the side.

Pt> God and the Bible have some opinions about this topic here.

PRAY//

Series Intro - if you are new, this is a great time to be here, we are starting this new series looking at the second half of Ephesians. The whole point is to show us a way to live that is in line with Jesus, as he puts it walk this life.

TEXT

What is the worth of Salvation. vs 1

What is a Christian calling? Do we all have it or is it for special people and how does that unite us?

The Calling he references here is the calling of your salvation. In 1:18 Paul writes that he prays that the yes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of your calling. If you are a believer, if you have put your trust in Jesus, you were called. You have been called by God out of darkness and you have responded with trust.

All believers have this calling. It is not consistent with the Bible to act as if you have not been called. Sometimes I will see things or hear people talk about being called into Christian Ministry - everyone is called in to that. As far as vocational ministry is concerned I think you might have opportunity, God given abilities and skills that serve the church vocationally and you use those for that season. Sometimes your whole life. But make no mistake, everyone who is a Christian is called into Christian Ministry. It’s not optional. Like you are waiting on some special divine letter from God, notarized by the Holy Spirit. We have made the idea of a calling to be something that is special and reserved only for preachers or missionaries but that is simply not the case, we are all called by God out of darkness and into light.

*This last week there was some confusion. I had emailed a guy some questions. He then called and said - I am confused we talked about all of that last Friday. I said friend, if you had a conversation on the phone last week, it wasn’t me. I haven’t spoken to you in a few months. He went back and checked the log, he had confused me with another guy. I didn’t get that call. It’s not like that with Jesus. With ministry, with care for others, or sharing the Gospel or serving the church. You aren’t waiting on a call, you didn’t miss the call if you are not serving you are either unaware or ignoring it.

Then, that would imply, that we are then instructed to live a life worthy of that calling - our salvation. A few things to note.

Living worthy of a calling is not to say anything about the worth of the person. Whether you live a life worthy or not, you are worth a great deal. Jesus shed his blood for your redemption, your worth is in the finished work of Jesus.

It is however to speak to the worthiness of the call. How much value do you put on the salvation Jesus secured with his sacrifice? Then to that standard live.

*If a police or law enforcement officer were to do something wrong or abusive and their badge was taken away from them we would understand. Because their actions do not suggest they value that badge to the level it should be valued. The worth of that badge and position is such that it should affect the way the officer behaves right? Our calling of salvation is worth far more than that.

It is also is not saying to live in order to be worth that calling. Again it is not your worth. Not your worth as a person. So Paul’s admonishment here is not that you have been given free, grace, this gift of compassion, so now go and earn it. No, you don’t earn your salvation before or after you receive it.

{S} So given that all believers have this valuable calling from death to life and that we are instructed to live consistent with that worth

So to live worthy is to live in a manner that is consistent with the unmeasurable value of our salvation.

While you life is affected, the implication here would be in all the things you do.

(T) how does one, who has believed in Jesus as their King, live a life consistent with the worth of salvation?

Work at Unity. vs 2-3

The answer is in verse 3, make every effort to keep the unity. Making an effort toward unity is the characteristic of a person living worthy of the Gospel.

gentleness

A. This unity is created by the

A. This unity is established by the Holy Spirit, not by men. The commonality of people who have been adopted by God is the strongest bond. It is what glues the differences together and why it is so unthinkable when they fight amongst themselves. This means that any other unifying mark should be abandoned when it stands in conflict of the Gospel. Those might be politics, nationalism, regional identity, sports, interested, race, education, economics.

patience

In the United States we have very strong regional affiliation. Our country has long been divided into sections. Those on the Coasts are different than those in the middle. Those in the North are different than those in the South. We sometimes like to poke fun at the other regions. They can be divided even further - Northeast, Northwest, Midwest, Southeast, Southwest and even sometimes folks with throw in that Mid-South and of course Florida. But think about this - You ought to have more in common with a believing Yankee than you do with an unbelieving southerner. Why? because the unity two believers have transcends and far out weighs the solidarity of regional affiliation.

B. An effort toward this is the call. Which would state that,

Unity is not passive. It takes work. You have to work at unity because we are broken and we slant toward division. We love dividing ourselves out further and further. This would mean you need to be aggressively against wedges that attempt to divide the church.

bearing with

making every effort to keep

Division is not pious - along the way some have gone to seed on things that are not in the Bible, they believe very strongly about a way to read Revelation, or translate some words in to English, or how to dress, or what songs to sing they do so much to the point that they even call the legitimacy of salvation on the part of those who see things differently. They do this thinking they are doing God’s work, they certainly are not.

The whole of it means that a life worthy of this calling is one that looks like the Spirit or Jesus. It is inconsistent to say you claim the name of Jesus and then behave nothing like him. This is a rightful place to expect people to act in this manner.

(T) those would be don’t in the effort to keep unity. Don’t be passive, don’t be divisive. But how about some dos.

Be humble and gentle. Pride has no place in the church. So be humble. Consider others as more important than yourself. Be gentle with those who do not yet understand the way you do. Jesus was humble and often gentle. Deflect praise, give credit to others, be kind, explain again, listen more, when you are in a position of mercy - extend it. Say thank you and your welcome or at least show it. Be humble and kind. Always be humble and kind. Tim McGraw has a good point there. So does Paul.

The commonalities in each of these characteristics are a self less existence. It is very counter cultural that we would live in a way that considers others as more important.

Be patient and put up with each other. This is a lot like gentleness. Be patient with people. It took you a long time to get as amazing as you are, give them a little more time. So you may have to wait for an answer, you may have to wait on others to realize what you have known from the start - do that patiently. And there will always be an element where you will just have to put up with some folks you don’t like. Some folks in the church or in your family that for a season are just grading on your nerves. Be patient and put up with others.

One Confession vs 4-6

one body

one spirit

one hope

one Lord

one faith

one baptism

one God and Father

What you find in verse 4-6 was probably an early creed of the church. A set of statements they would make to remind each other what they believed. One body (that’s the church, one Spirit, One Hope, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One God our Father. All of them are counter cultural to the times they lived in. They are statements of belief. They did not and we do not believe in many God, or many Lords. We do not believe in many ways to be right with God. We do not believe that all faiths are just as valid and that all churches are the same. This is their common confession. The Confession is all encompassing, we are connected and driven in the same direction. While one goal of our unity is to maintain a common confession, we all believe these things and we believe they matter. Notice that all of the words are words of family and relationship. One very strong motivation for our unity is to be able to care for one another. To look out for and love each other. In this life and in the next. The exclusivity of Christ and he being the One and Only way to redemption and acceptance is true and extremely important. It is also important that we work toward unity so we can care for each other.

You will have a hard time caring for people and encouraging them, praying for them, wanting what’s best for them if you have spend your days thinking they are the enemy and not worth your time or energy. In this way Unity is so very important. It is important for their good, and the other side of that same coin is - it is important for your good as well.

They will know that you are mine by the way you love each other.

{S/PT> I need a one sentence point of this text

What keeps us from this and what does it look like to be unified

Barriers to unity

personal goals that do not align with the goals of the church?

personal goals that do not align with the goals of the church.

A misunderstanding of what we are trying to do - us or them

losing sight of the vision that is in front of us

not valuing unity

How unity looks

power of mission

odd to the world *elen and w

Application

First of all, you receive that call. You answer that call from Darkness to Light. If you are not a believer, you are not part of the unifying reality of God’s family. While you are excluded you are invited. So accept that invitation, be part of the family.

Live worthy - the application is given to us very directly. We go back to the very first verse. In light of your salvation Paul says to live worthy. He uses a word that is more often translated walk, walk in a way that values the worth of your salvation. Make a list of those divisions you allow to make you think less of other people. Destroy those. Eat with people who are different than you. Spend time listening to those in the family that are from a different place than you are from. This unity takes work but it is worth it.

Make an Effort -

*we surprised the boys this last weekend. We had a wedding to go to down in Dallas. So the surprise was staying at the Great Wolf lodge. If you haven’t been, it’s a huge hotel, massive with a big in door water park connected. Like a resort, fun. Very themy. We loved it. Finally got cool, feels like fall and we went to a water park. One of the things we all enjoy to various levels is the slides. Very tall slides. From not that scary to terrifying there is the orange, yellow, green, blue and then red. The red is called the Tornado and I ain’t doing that. The others were pretty fun. For someone like myself the worst part of any water park, is the stairs up to the actual slide. I am not afraid of the ride but the stairs, you are so high in the air and you can see down. Terrible. Since you have to be staying at the hotel to go to the park the lines aren’t too bad. Sometimes they got crowded. I found myself in the line, waiting on those terrifying stairs, and this kid starts talking to me. I am not much for carrying on conversations with children I don’t know at water parks but you know, I was stuck. She says - have you done this before, yes. Did you like, I did. I have not yet done it, cool. Do you have more kids, yes. How many, two more. I didn’t have school this week, nice. Is this slide scary - which one you doing, yellow she says. I said - it’s terrifying, the scariest thing I have ever done. Since we were on stairs she was looking me in the eye and then she didn’t ask any more question. Twice on those stairs you have a choice - right or left. One way will go to this slide, the other to those. you get it. Gotta know which way you are going or you could end up on the Tornado. Once Haddon went toward the green, I was still working my way up to that, so I went orange. Bit more my speed. He and I went down a few together but at some point we separated. With those slides, either is fine but you just got to know which way your going and who you are going with. That’s the same thing with church,most of the time it is fine you just ride the ride. Sometimes it is pretty scary and it helps to have someone with you. It’s in those times you are actually thankful someone else is riding with you. Same thing for church - you got to know where you are going and who direction you are going in - walking together matters.