B.E.A.R. with one another.

Ephesians 4:1–3 NIV

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

10-Other’s Failures Can Be a Problem for us.

Things people have done to me in the church....

- Called me a racist

- Lied about me

- Talked about me behind my back.

- Mis-understood me.

- Did not back me up.

- Sued me (well me not specifically)

- Tried to pick a fist fight with me

Maybe you have had someone in the church fail you before.

1. t’s really hard to accept other people’s failures—especially in the church! Christians can hurt us.

It is a hard tension that we can face, showing forgiveness and love to believers who ought to know better! It shatters our expectations of a Christian community.

We judge ourselves based on our intentions, but others based on their actions.

But this is really the implications of this passage.

11-B.E.A.R. with Others in Love When They Fail.

Why? No community will be perfect even the Church. The movie The Village shows the struggle to create a “perfect” community in a fallen world (directed by M. Night Shyamalan [Touchstone Pictures, 2004]). The movie depicts a Puritan-like village set during the eighteenth century. There are clear moral boundaries, respect, no crime, and an Amish-like innocence toward life. We eventually learn, however, that the village is not an eighteenth-century community but an isolated social experiment set in contemporary society. The elders of this community each carry a story of how evil in the world has changed their life. They created this community as a society better than the one that hurt them. They thought sin and evil could be controlled and forgotten by constructing a community not corrupted by the modern world. The younger generation of the village did not know about the outside world, and that helped maintain their “innocence”—or so they thought. Even though the village grew and there was little doubt of its peaceful nature, one of their young men tried to kill another man. Because of this character’s jealousy, an assault was committed in what seemed to be a “perfect” community.

Summary of 1st part Ephesians

• God’s Purpose was to restore all things in Jesus - That he chose the church from before the foundations of the earth to be the body of Jesus who was placed far above all rulers and authorities in Heaven and Earth.

• That God is doing that individually for us by saving us from being dead to sin by making us alive again in Jesus, and he did that by Grace through faith.

• And by doing this Jesus broke down the dividing wall that kept the Gentiles out of the people of God. He united Jews and Gentiles into one Church (so all races and people groups) who is the body of the new temple (Jesus) where heaven and earth meet. We are citizens in the Kingdom of Heaven with all of its rights...

• So the implication is that according to Paul, the gathering of the Church is an unwinding of people from the authority of demons or the gods of the nations. There inheritance was once the gods assigned at the tower of Babel, now their inheritance is the one true God.

• And because of this fantastic news that has cosmic impact. Paul wants us to know how wide and long, and deep and wide is the Universe sized love of God.

• - This passage begins the implications of this Grand Story on how we should live, and the first thing Paul tells us is to live worthy of that calling. by being humble, gentle, and Bearing with one another.

Reverend Obediah Franklin wrote a sermon on "humility" then filed it away. He wanted to save it for a really big occasion when he could impress a lot of people. - An Encyclopedia of Humor.

or

I had a dream in which I died and waited at the pearly gates for admission into heaven. Another man waited with me. Suddenly St. Peter appeared and said, "We've got room for only one more. Which one of you is more humble?"

12-Bear With

1. What does it mean to “bear with” one another? Are we just supposed to put up with people? The word ‘forbear’ is frequently used in classical literature, meaning ‘to take up, to bear up, to endure.’ It is used in the Greek O.T. where it includes the idea of God’s endurance of the Israelites’ vain offerings (Isa 1:13) and Job’s endurance through great trials (Job 6:11, 26). It is used when Jesus asks how long he must put up with the disciples (Matt 17:17; Mark 9:19; Luke 9:41) and when Paul speaks of enduring in persecution (1 Cor 4:12; cf. 2 Thess 1:4). Hence, this word refers to bearing or enduring with respect to things or persons. The word ‘faults’ does not appear in the Greek text, and its use in the NLT is perhaps too restrictive. We are to make allowance not only for faults but also for differences” (Harold W. Hoehner, “Ephesians,” in Ephesians–Philemon, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary 16 [Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishing, 2008], Logos).

1. For many of us, this seems easier said than done! And should we be naive about sins and truth in the church just so we can get along with people? Paul understands the tough reality of relationship. As Darrell Bock clarifies, “Being humble, gentle and patient, and giving each other the benefit of the doubt by bearing with each other, represent the key character elements of this walk of unity. … Bearing with one another in love allows one to negotiate the conflicts that inevitably emerge in relationships. It is enduring a behaviour and then working through it. Unity requires tolerance at a relational level without being indifferent to truth” (Darrell L. Bock, Ephesians: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 10 [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 2019], Logos).

13-Easy on Others

A preacher in Tennessee said his father was not a Christian and never went to church. He said everyone else in the family would get ready and go to church and his dad would stay home. The preacher would come by and visit and his dad would always give him the same pat answer; I know why you’re here and I know what you want, you want another name and another pledge, you don’t care about me. He said if I heard my dad say it once I heard him say it 20 times. He said towards the end of his life his dad got throat cancer. He had surgery and couldn’t talk. He said as his dad was wasting away in the hospital room it was filled with flowers and cards almost all of them from someone in the church. Food came to his house from his mom’s Sunday school class at the church. He said people came and prayed with my dad from the church. He said one day even though my dad couldn’t talk he took a scrape of paper and scribbled words from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “In this harsh world draw your breath in pain to tell my story.” He said, dad what is your story? His dad with trembling hand wrote on the scrape of paper, “I was wrong, I was wrong about the church.” He said I got to talk with my dad about salvation in Christ before he died. Simply because of the love and the fellowship of a church....

And that is just it, we don’t know everyone’s story. We don’t know the hurts and pains that someone experienced in the past that is driving their actions. We don’t know about everything that shaped them and we don’t know fully where God is going to take them.

This may not be an excuse for other’s failures, but may be explain them.

Family Feud - Man from Ghana when asked if he was married he said, “No Please.” A sign of respect towards an older person. Steve Harvey explains - In America that means, “None of your Busieness.”

Q: What kind of motor vehicles are in the Bible? A: Honda...because the apostles were all in one Accord.

14-Accord-One of Them

Referring to the Unity in the Bond of Peace.

• Belhar Confession.

that unity is, therefore, both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ; that through the working of God's Spirit it is a binding force, yet simultaneously a reality which must be earnestly pursued and sought: one which the people of God must continually be built up to attain (Eph. 4:1-16);

Robert Meldenius "Unity in essentials, liberty in incidentals, and in all things charity (love.)" - Klyne Snodgrass NIVAC

What unites us is Christ and His Gospel and His Mission.

* And Unity is important if the Church is going to be the place where the world recognizes is the place (the people) where heaven and earth meet.

Bond of peace either means Bond that is peace, or the bond that peace creates. The Word Bond is the word for prisoners being bound.

Finally -

15-Remember Your Redemption

Humility

A freedom from arrogance that grows out of recognition that all we have and are comes from God. The Greek philosophers despised humiliy because to them it implied inadequacy, lack of dignity, and worth-lessness. This is not the meaning of Biblical humility. Jesus is the supreme example of humility and He is completely adequate and of infinite dignity and worth. Biblical humility is not a belittling of oneself, but an exalting or praising of others, especially God and Christ. Humble people focus more on God and others than on themsevles. - Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary

Humility is not about drive, energy, or ability, but about valuing. It is an awareness that all we are and have is from God. The humble person refuses to value self above others or to assign more privilege or importance to self than to others. - Klyne Snodgrass NIVAC

Humility requires renouncing self-centeredness, Gentleness requires renouncing harshness and violence, Patience requires renouncing the tyranny of our own agendas. Love, requires rencouncing our rights. - Speak the truth in love, unity must be fought for to be maintained in Christ, but not unity for unity sake. - Klyne Snodgrass NIVAC

* Paul urges us to take up these Character Traits even if they are not natural to us in order to work for the unity God has already bought us. They enable us to bear with one another, and make the effort to preserve unity.

Conclusion: We are all growing! We are all failing forward together! As we grow in our personal walk with Jesus, we must give grace to each other. We must give each other accountability and safety, never thinking we are beyond the sin in our own hearts.