11-Ephesians: “ONE: Walking Worthy of Your Calling” | Ephesians 4:1-6

Chapter 1: Last Week, Do We Pray Like We Believe It

All right. Well, last week we ended on our knees with Paul marveling that our God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or imagine and asking ourselves whether we really pray like we believe it. Hear that again. Whether or not we really pray like we believe it. Do we believe that our God has truly got all the things?

Do we really truly believe that our God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think? Reminding ourselves that that power of God that is able to do those amazing things lives inside of us. And so this

Chapter 2: Therefore, Get Up Off Your Knees And Walk

morning, Paul is going to turn a corner with a single word, a word that we have seen throughout this book. Again, this word therefore, because God is that able, and because Christ now dwells in us with all fullness, the only fitting response is for us to get up off of our knees and now begin to walk. So, let's open our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4. We're going to begin in verse one. And Paul is about to show us what it means to walk worthy of everything God has poured out to us.

And he's going to take us straight to to the one thing that proves that all to the world. And that is our oneness. That is our unity in Christ. And so we begin in Ephesians 4:1 where Paul says, "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called." Paul again once again reminds his audience that he is a prisoner for the sake of Christ. He literally is in prison as he's writing this.

But at the same time, he's also reminding them that he has given his life over completely to Christ because Paul has a way out of jail. He could just renounce Christ. And yet that's not possible for him. And Paul is now looking at his audience and he's saying, "I beseech you." That is Paul is urging his audience. He's pleading with them.

He is earnestly asking them to walk worthy. Now, what I'm about to say is

Chapter 3: The Walk Worthy Equation

incredibly important for us to catch the nuance that is present in what Paul is saying. You might be asking, well, what do you mean? The thing is is these two words, this walk worthy are each one half of an equation. Now, most of us would read this and we would assume that it is our job alone to walk worthy. I don't know about you, but if I had to look at this and think, "Oh, it's my job in my power to walk worthy of God," I've got a lot to be concerned about.

That that would cause me a considerable amount of stress because my guess is most of you in the thought of trying to stand in the presence of God and under your own power, under your own energy, you had to walk worthy of God, you'd be like, "I don't know how I'm going to do that. How is that even possible? And in many cases, we might even want to give up on that. Many cases, many of you may have given up. Why?

Why even try? It's not even possible. So why should I even try? And the thing is is you're not wrong in that it's impossible for us to walk worthy. But you're also wrong in the sense that you're not alone.

If that's what you're thinking, we are not alone.

Chapter 4: Our Job To Walk, God's Job To Make Us Worthy

Let me summarize this first. It is our job to walk. It is job God's job to make us worthy. But hold up for a second because now you're like, "Okay, well, you took away half the problem, but there's still another half the problem. How am I supposed to walk on my own?" And there's a caveat here.

Neither one of these things can be done on our own power, nor are we alone in them. The ability to walk God himself we were going to see helps us power. So let's first take a

Chapter 5: What Walking In The Spirit Means

look at this word walk. Walk here literally is a steady continuous intentional journey. Hear that again. Walking here is a steady continuous intentional journey. This is not sprinting.

It's continuous movement. Here's the part that can be difficult. Like we can get tired, right? Anybody here tired? I know some of you have already admitted to me that you're that you're tired.

We can get tired. Sometimes we want to stop and we want to rest. But there's a problem if we stop and we rest when we're supposed to be walking with God, which Paul call tells the Galatians is walking in the spirit. Okay? So think about this.

If we are quick to stop walking, this is what we face, right? Paul tells us, "Walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh." What does this imply? If you're not walking in the spirit, what happens? We begin to fulfill the lust of the flesh. Fact, this is what Paul says just after this.

He says that if we're not walking in the spirit, suddenly we fall into adultery and fornication and uncleanness and lwdness, idolatry and sorcery and hatred and contentions and jealousies and outbursts of selfish ambitions, dissensions and heresies and envys and murders and drunkenness and realies and the like. This is what happens when we choose to stop walking in the spirit. And some of you know exactly what I'm talking about because you've either yourself struggled or you know someone who claims Christ who has done that very thing. It is so unbelievably easy for us to do it. Now about now it would be easy to get frustrated and think that this is again all on us.

But again this is a false assumption.

Chapter 6: The Power Of God Already In You

What have we been learning throughout the book of Ephesians? that we have unbelievable power at our disposal as believers in Christ. We've seen that we have this dynamis that is this potential energy that is all of the power of God that we learned last week. All of the fullness of God is available to us and that that power is. It's this overcoming power, this overwhelming power that is able to overcome any and all obstacles. That power is available to the believer.

So the very power of God. Now let me ask you a question. Does our God tire? He does not. Is he more than able to accomplish what concerns you today?

Absolutely. So if you're going through something, if I'm going through something, whatever it happens to be, it doesn't matter what it is. And and I want to put I want to put this in perspective. Yesterday we had this wonderful service for Dennis and Phyllis Meera here. And when I was talking to the audience, I reminded them of this idea that we cannot pay for our salvation.

In fact, when you think about the fact that our God who spoke all of the the universe into existence, okay, you think about that all of the universe. You know, most of us we just think about this little planet, but then we realize that our planet is but a millionth the size of our sun and that our sun is only one of a 100 million that are present within our mil our within our Milky Way galaxy and that there are an estimated two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. And we think, well, what if I gave God all the money in the world? Could that buy my salvation? How much is all the money in the world compared to what God spoke into existence?

It is absolutely nothing. And so now think about that God and the power that he possesses to speak that universe into existence. Now think that through the filter of whatever problem you're dealing with right now. And suddenly it comes into perspective. Look, if we had to deal with these problems on our own, absolutely.

So many of them were going to be overwhelming and us being unable to carry on to walk. We feel like we're completely beaten down. And yet our God's the fullness of his power lives and exists in us. And not only that, that it is energized. This energia, this active power that is available to us.

Chapter 7: If You Disagree With God, You're Wrong

The question is not whether or not God can overcome these things in our lives. The question is, do we allow him to work in and through us to overcome those things? Are we the ones who are getting in the way? So ask yourself that question right now. If you're dealing with this and you're even doubting what I'm saying and God this and God that.

I'm just going to tell you right now. That's on you because it is available to you and to me right now. I'm going to tell you something that I I haven't said here for for quite some time. If you find yourself disagreeing with God, you're wrong. There will never be a time that you will ever be right and God be wrong.

The sooner we get this through our minds, the sooner we get back on the road to walking in the direction our God would have us to go. Our job is to partner with God in our lives, allowing that power to be activated and used regularly and continually. Now, this

Chapter 8: You Were Worth His Life

should be tipping us off to something that we are not left to figure out this Christian life thing on our own. This then brings us to us being worthy. Now I may be able to walk by the power of God working through me but my worth that is solely determined by someone else. Now how can be we how can we be worthy like this? How can we possibly measure up?

Well, first because Christ gave his life for us. That's the thing. You can think you're worthless. There's many of us in this room who have been told that we are worthless. There's many of us in this room.

I know some of you have told me. I'm freely open to tell you people have told me that I am worthless. People who said they should have loved me have told me that I am worthless and treated me like I am worthless. Many of you have been treated in the same way. And yet Jesus who is worth everything and more gave his life for you.

So what does that mean about your worth? That means that you were worth his life. And that says something. That determines something. and has nothing to do with what you do or what you have done or what you will do. That's the thing that's incredible about our God's grace is he extends that worth by Jesus's life to you regardless of your sin, regardless of your trespasses, past, present, and future.

Chapter 9: Worthy Means Of Equal Weight

and the king. The thing we need to understand is our king, he is investing in us, which is evidenced by the reality that we have the dwelling of the Holy Spirit with inside of us. We saw this a few weeks ago that we are being built into this temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells because we have given Christ control over the helm of our lives. If we are his, if we have believed in him, if we have confessed him, we are made worthy. Now, this is the thing that's interesting.

This word worthy in its original means of equal weight. I want you to think about that for a second. How powerful is that? Have you ever thought about that? Christ is extending to us worthiness.

We are walking worthy. We are walking in equal weight with Christ because he has extended that to us. That is unbelievably powerful. And we see this confirmed and affirmed by Paul in Romans 9 or 8. For whom he forneew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

The Holy Spirit is actively molding us and shaping us into the image of Jesus. This word conformed literally means that on an organic deep level we are being transformed in our inner character and the eventual resurrected state is being patterned exactly after Jesus. That is what is happening to us. That is what is occurring right now as we're being this big big word sanctification. We are literally being built into the pattern of Christ. and you're like, I don't really see that.

That's a high bar. But this side of glory, it's not going to be complete, but it's in progress. And this is why we walk worthy. We are walking with the spirit and allowing him to do the work in us that is necessary to develop us into this pattern after Christ. Now, Paul wants to say what this continues to look like.

We continue in verse two.

Chapter 10: Walk Worthy, Humility And Gentleness And Patience

with all loneliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love. Now, this word loneliness for Paul's audience when they would have seen this, they would have thought of something a little bit different than just being humble, right? In Greco Roman usage, it was contemptable. It it was the quality of a slave or a coward. This is what they thought of this word loneliness.

This is when they heard this, they thought of someone who was a coward. It was not a virtue. Humility in their culture was not a virtue. It was an insult. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm told that Jesus is humble.

I'm told that we were supposed to be lowly in heart. And when I think about this, when I think about this characteristic, when I look at it in the New Testament, in the context, and especially in the case of Jesus, I don't think of Jesus as being a coward. So what is Paul doing here? Well, Paul flips this term on its head. This is the believer thinking of themselves in a proper context with God.

It I could look at any number of people and think that I'm superior. Some of you have thought that. Well, at least I'm better than that guy. And there's any number of people in the world that we could look and go like, well, these people are better than most. But take any one of us and stand us up against the standard of God.

And suddenly, what happens? We're nothing. We we we can't even really been seen on the scale. And so, this is Paul saying that in face of our God, we are humble and we are low. And he continues and says this word gentleness.

Now it'd be easy to hear this word and think of passiveness or even think of weakness. But this is not what this is. This is not weakness. This word here was used by this culture to think of a horse that has been broken for use. This term is power under control.

Does that suddenly begin to change things? power that has become useful. And you think about that in the case of our God. How many of us are just those bucking broncos who keep trying to kick God off of our life as opposed to allowing him to lead us and guide us and to work through us in powerful ways. And then Paul continues and says this idea of longsuffering. Now this can also be translated as longempered.

Uh we could make a modern equivalent of having a long fuse. Anybody ever say like this person's got a short fuse or I've got a short fuse today. Anybody ever say that as a warning to people? So this is important because many of us who are patient, we can be patient with various things. Now for a lot of us, we can be patient in a situation.

We can be patient in a circumstance. We can even be patient with certain people because we've afforded them a a lot more grace. But there are certain people Jesus is about that long. Am I right? You know what I'm talking about.

It's like you could be totally fine. You got your day is going great and suddenly that person comes by and just says that one thing and suddenly you find yourself flipping out about that thing. Paul is saying that for those of us who are walking worthy, we have a long fuse. And so this is the thing. This is not meant to condemn anyone.

This is meant to say if you find that you have areas in your life with a short fuse, that's something to bring to God. That is something to say like, "Lord, give me your fuse." Which I got to say, he's got to be really long, especially for me. You think about that for any of us. Give me your heart. Give me your ability to be long-suffering.

And then we have this bear with one another. This literally means to hold up, to bear up, to put up with. It literally means to put up with. It carries this graphic imagery of holding up a heavy collapsing weight or putting up with a highly stressful situation without giving up. This is what our God desires for us.

So in the secular Greek world, it was used to describe an enduring relationship. It it was used of tolerating enemies or holding back the use of a weapon instead of striking.

Chapter 11: Bearing With One Another And Guarding Unity

Oo, that that hits hard. Every one of us, we all have difficult people in our lives. For some of us, if we're being honest, we're that difficult person. And for some of us, we need to come to the point where we recognize that fact. But we also need to recognize those difficult people in our lives.

Our God desires us to walk worthy even with them and again come and fall to our knees and say like help me with this Lord. Help me to walk in and through this situation. Now notice that this is specifically saying that this is to be with one another. Now this is one of those things that can be so hard in the American church these days. I talk to a lot of people who will say, "I love God, but I don't love people.

I don't want to be around people because people are difficult." I'm just going to tell you right now that as a pastor of 17 years, I understand what you're talking about. And every pastor that I talk with has so many stories to tell, not only of themselves, but of other people. We are a stiff- necked people. This doesn't just relate to Israel from back in the day. We as human beings are stiff- necked people.

We are selfish people. We are arrogant people. We can be flatout jerks to one another on the regular. Yes, even people who claim the name of Christ. All you got to do is read and look at the disciples.

And what are they? They are stiff neck people who are jerks to one another. And yet, here's the thing. Our God calls us to do these things with one another. But you say, "But what if a person is really annoying?" We're told to bear with one another.

What What if someone said something hurtful to me or offended me? We have to bear with one another. But but what if I really don't want to? This is not a suggestion. This is a command.

And this is the thing that we need to understand. This is something that is just an absolute truth. If our God gives us a command, he gives us the ability to live out that command. And that's a powerful thing that we need to hear. So here's the thing you also need to hear.

We live in in a society that loves to give blame to somebody else. It's already somebody else's fault. Whether it's mom, dad, sister, brother, cousin, boss, the dog, the cat, the, you know, the neighbor squirrel that keeps, you know, eating whatever. And and of course, God, it's always somebody else's fault. But here's the thing.

If you're not doing any one of these things, whose fault is it? It's your own fault. And that's a point where again, we have to come and confess and recognize and humble ourselves before our God and ask, ask him to help us to live through these things. Now, Paul here is not done. He's going to ratchet things up even more.

He continues and says, "Endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." Now, this word endeavoring is important for me because I use this a lot with my wife. She will ask me something and I will say, "I will endeavor to do that, dear." Which usually means, "I'm going to try, but it might not happen." That's not what's being said here. This is make every effort to do this thing. Make every effort. There is no excuse for not giving the effort to do this thing.

Maybe you will fail, but you're not failing because you haven't given the effort. Is that making sense? The keeping of the unity. This is a strenuous diligent work. This is not passive maintenance.

This another thing that our society has lulled us into is that life has to be easy family. That is not the reality of life. Life is hard. Life can be strenuous. But again, we are not alone.

What does Jesus say? Take my yoke upon you. He says that his burden is easy. His burden is light. And some of you are like, "Well, it doesn't feel easy and it doesn't feel light." There's a couple things that been going on.

Number one, recognize, "Well, if this is only the small portion of it, thank you, Jesus, that I'm not bearing whatever it is that you're bearing." Or you have to ask yourself, have I really yolked myself with Jesus? Or am I trying to carry this burden on my own? I I love this picture. I we now some of you get offended when I do this, but that's okay. ometimes we as adults are just big toddlers. And you're like, "What do you mean?" All of us know this.

No, me do. No, me do. It's this idea. It's like, "God, you told me what to do and now it's my job to do it on my own." He's like, "No, no, no. That's not how I built this.

We do this together. We do this together. I'll have you do some things on your own. But a lot of these things we try and do on our own like for example unity not happening on our own. We we have a natural tendency to repel one another.

Paul continues on. He's like we need to be keeping guard. This idea of this unity is to guard to watch to to to watch over to preserve to protect from harm. This comes from this assumption that unity will be under threat. The unity of the church is under constant and continuous threat.

Unity as a whole is under constant threat. Maybe you you'll understand this when I say some of these. Here's some examples. The husband wife relationship. Anybody see that under threat?

Especially since one of the last things I heard was that the church had a higher divorce rate than the world. How wrong does that sound? Unity issues between kids and parents, civilian relationships, let alone co-workers, neighbors, cultures, nations. Unity is under co constant threat. Now, there are some real reasons for members in churches to have disunityity, right?

Pushing unbiblical actions or teaching. That's a reason to break fellowship with one another. But let's be honest, most of the reasons why we see in the church as a whole for disunityity or for and people don't like it when I say this either for stupid reasons. Let's be honest, the church does dumb things when it comes to unity. And I found some a couple absurd examples of this.

These are true examples of what I'm talking about. Now, this is the thing though. We cannot get bold because if you're like, "Well, I've never seen that or heard that. So, those people are stupid." And yes, I would say this. I won't call them stupid.

I'd say this is stupid reason for disunityity. And you're like, "I can't be that bad." No. Okay. Church needs a new vacuum cleaner. Staff member decides to go buy a new vacuum cleaner.

You're like, "Okay, doesn't sound wrong." Well, then a faction of members became enraged by the unapproved replacement. Instead arguing, instead of arguing, a church member actually stole the new vacuum cleaner and hid it somewhere in the building. They refused to reveal its location until the leadership agreed to bring back the old vacuum. Review viewing the new symbol as a symbol of reckless change. They chose tension and separation in the church over a vacuum cleaner.

And then probably my my favorite of these two is the grandfather clock. happens that years ago family donates a grandfather clock that's put in the foyer of the church. Okay, sounds benign. It's in there in the foyer until they have a building program and they did not see the grandfather clock as something that would continue in what was the new foyer. And so they placed it in a hallway at which point this family and their extended family all came and threatened to pull their financial support from the church unless they put the grandfather clock back in the foyer. Are you seeing what I'm talking about?

How easy it is for us to separate over things that really ultimately have no eternal value? Was there anything there that threatened salvation? Was there anything there that threatened the communication of the gospel? Absolutely not. And these are the things that we have to watch out for because it's so easy for the enemy to come in and start whispering things in our ear that can just begin to cause this disunityity.

We've had these things here at Sunrise. Those that have been here for decades know what I'm talking about. It's so easy. And some of you, you come in from other churches, you know what I'm talking about. It's so easy for this to happen.

But our God desires that we would have unity of the spirit. But we're unified because our God is unified. We we can be unified because our God gives us the ability to be unified again by his power and by us living out this this loneliness and this gentleness that we're talking about. Here's the thing. Do not underestimate the desire of our God for us to be unified.

Chapter 12: One Body, One Lord, Why Unity Proves The Gospel

I I think so many of us honestly show that we have such a lack of concern for what God desires just because I watch how so many believers find themselves in disunityity over stupid things. But listen to what our God literally prayed before he was crucified for his people, for his church. He said, "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word." This is Jesus praying and he's he's already prayed for the disciples and now he's praying for everybody that comes as a result of their their ministry which includes every one of us who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ that they may be as one as you father are in me and I in you and that you that they also may be one in us that the world may believe that you sent me and the glory which you gave me I give them that they may be one just as we are one in them in I in them and you in me that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Now did you see what Jesus just said? Did you see it?

Why does there need to be unity? Because God is unified first. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And he wants us to be unified in like manner. But there's also another reason, a reason that is practical.

Jesus says that they may know you. That you they may know that you loved them as you have loved me. That they may know that we are one. That we are real. Jesus wants the world to see the truth of the gospel because of the unity within the church.

That's what needs to be seen. And in this case, I if if things weren't clear, Paul presses in emphasizing the unity of the church of believers that we should be displaying in the world. He continues in verse four that the one body that there's one body, one spirit just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. The first thing we see is that Paul is saying there's one body. This is the body of Christ.

This is the church. He says that there is this one hope that's the hope of the gospel the truth of God's salvation of life eternal that is through one Lord the Lord Jesus Christ in whom we are believers who share in the one faith our faith our hope and our trust in a future our salvation our eternity our faith and our hope and our trust in one Lord and in this one baptism that is through the Lord Jesus Christ as well that therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death that just as Christ was raised from the dead by of the glory of the father. Even so, we also should what? Walk in newness of life. There that is.

Yet again, we believe in this one father that is God the father that Paul reminds us is above all. That includes all principalities and powers. That's that's the spiritual realm. That's all of humanity. He is above any and all.

He's through all. God literally works through every believer and as well resides within us all who are believers in Christ. And this is Paul powerfully communicating this countercultural teaching to a highly segregated society. Again, we think of ourselves as a segregated society, right? We we have uh groups galore that separate themselves for every different reason.

But Paul is writing to a group that was separated because of race. He's speaking to a group that is separated because of socioeconomic status. This is Paul writing to a group that is separated because of gender. Does that sound like a culture that you know? It's almost like what Paul is talking about is relevant past, present, and will be into the future as well.

Family, our God truly is the one who unites his people together. Now, does this mean that we will not have differences? Well, no. Of course, we're going to have differences. In fact, Paul's going to launch into the next section that we're going to get to next week, and he's going to talk about all the various roles that are within the church.

And in other books, 1 Corinthians being one of them, Paul had to address the differences that were in the church. And he's like, "Look, your differences are actually a strength, even though you're using it as a as a means to separate yourselves." And you've probably seen that in in the church as well. You get separation between the people who clean the toilets and the artsy fartsy people up here who play their guitar, right? We have again every manner of reason why we can separate each other. But what God is saying, what Paul is saying here is that we are unified in spite of those things that we understand the role that we play in the kingdom and that is okay and it is beautiful.

So here is where Paul has brought us today. He told us to walk worthy and then he took some of this pressure off of off of us. He said, "Your job is to walk." It's God's job to make you worthy, which he did through Christ on the cross. But neither one of these, we were told, happens without him. That he is literally the very one that gives us the power to walk.

It's not about just our own willpower to be able to do a thing. Those of you that have tried willpower have seen it be successful for short bursts, but what ultimately happens? We lose out. And yet we understand that our God gives us this power that can allow us to continue to walk. We've seen that the the need for us to to be humble, to be gentle, this strength under control.

We've seen our need to be patient with people and and have shoulders that are willing to bear with one another. And then Paul raised the stakes. He called us to make every effort to guard our unity, to guard our oneness because there is one body, one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who is over us all. And he told us why that mattered. Because a united church is proof to this world that the father sent the son.

It's proof that the gospel is real. It's proof that the gospel is true. And so this week, may we stop striving in our own strength. May we partner with our God whose power is already in you if you are his. And and pick one of these these things that we talked about that whether it be humility or gentleness or patience or bearing one another.

Pick one of those things that maybe is the hardest for you and practice it this week. So if there's that person in your life that you're just like, I can't deal with this person, God. I mean, when I thought about this, and I could be totally wrong. Some of you might say like, "No, really, humility is my thing, pastor. That's the thing I struggle with." But when I think about humanity as a whole, bearing with one another, that is the one that seems to be the biggest struggle.

But you pick the one that is for you and practice it this week. And may we guard the unity of this church like it is worth fighting for. Because we have been given such a bigger task than nitpicking at each other. We have been given a bigger task than being at each other's throat for, and I'm going to say it again, for stupid things, for silly things, for nonsensical things. So, if you find yourself right now, honestly, it at odds with anybody within the church, and you can apply this with anyone outside the church, and ask yourself, is this something that would be well pleasing of my God?

Is this something that is in align with walking worthy of my God? And if it's not again, fall to your knees confession because in the end it's irrelevant what happens with that other person because this is another thing we need to talk about. Oh, I'll do it once that person does it. Does that sound like our God? Here's the thing.

I'm going to give you some wisdom I give to a lot of people who come into counseling for me with me. You can't control anybody else. You can only control yourself. And so it's our job to walk worthy irrespective of whether or not somebody else is walking worthy. If we are walking worthy, then we are blameless before our God.

And we allow him to work through that other person. Sound good? Let's pray. Father God, we are thankful again for just the truth of this word. And it can be, I'm be honest, challenging.

Absolutely challenging. uh trying trying to think of how we can do this on our own. Lord, it brings me to my knees recognizing that I truly do need you. Lord, we need you. We need you to walk us through this, to guide us through it. And and Lord, for some of us, we have walked in a manner that's been in opposition to this for a very long time.

Our practice has been walking out of alignment with you for a very long time. And it's going to maybe take a little bit of time for us to learn how to walk a new. But Lord, I pray today that any and all of us would make a purposeful effort to walk with you in an unbelievably powerful way, in a new way. that again we as this church sunrise in this place would be able to show this world what a united a a a church that is one in one purpose for you through the gospel can do and accomplish and we thank you Lord God for your amazing grace that continues to be patient with us in and through it all and we thank you in Jesus name amen and