Celebrating 40 Years of Unity: Ephesians 4:1-6

We're back to the sermon series on celebrating 40 years of God's faithfulness at Alexandria Presbyterian Church.

If you didn't know, if this is your first Sunday, you've just come recently.

This church is 40 years old.

40 years ago, this month, this church started downtown Alexandria in Old Town.

And so we're just taking a few weeks to look back.

It's not just to look back, but you know looking back is good when God has been at work.

When you look back, you're reminded of what God has done.

And this is not true just for a church, but it's true for you personally.

Do you look back?

Do you have stones of remembrance of how God has met you, how God has led you, as God has provided for you?

That's a good thing to do in the Christian life.

But this sermon series is not only about looking back, but it's about looking forward to what we're going to, what we're praying God will do.

This is a year of transition in many ways in this church.

And so we come this morning to the subject of unity.

I read the word of God from the Apostle Paul, who wrote this from prison.

I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

There's one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

This is the word of God, the perfect, infallible, and errant, beautiful word of God that He has delivered to us for our sakes this day.

It's asked the Spirit's enabling.

Father, thank you.

Thank you for speaking to your servant Paul in prison.

Thank you for what you gave him for Christians of all ages, including here in Alexandria, this day, this time.

So, Spirit, anoint and bless our hearing, our understanding, and our obeying of your word.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Yes, we are celebrating 40 years of God's faithfulness.

This morning, specifically, we are celebrating 40 years of unity at Alexandria Presbyterian Church.

Every church will be tested, every church will be tempted in the area of unity.

You knew that, though, didn't you?

Some of you are painfully acutely aware of that because of previous church experiences you've had, where there have been schisms, there have been divisions, there have been splits.

It seems as though that is one of the enemy's favorite tactics.

But I don't have to tell you that, do I?

You've seen it.

Most of you, no doubt, have experienced this.

And you know how deep the divide can be, how hard and painful the pain can be when Christians gather together in the name of Jesus Christ, and yet they're divided.

They're divided by all kinds of things.

Oftentimes unnecessarily.

That's what we're looking at.

That's what the Apostle Paul is talking about.

Every church will be tested, every church will be tempted toward division.

Why?

Because the enemy works hard toward dividing what God unites.

He would say that's some of his best work.

Sadly.

We're not today celebrating 40 years of perfect harmony.

No church has that.

We're not saying that God has spared us from hard challenges.

Of course not.

There's only a few of us here this morning who have been here for the ride, most of the ride or all the ride, have seen the things that the enemy has tried to drum up to split us, divide us.

Anybody, anybody that's not aware of how incredibly hard or impossible it is to have a measure of this kind of unity that the Apostle Paul is talking about doesn't know, except you've seen it, the impossible that God has done by his grace.

God's the one who preserves, God's the one who protects his church.

If you think you've done it, you don't have a clue.

It's not only difficult, it's impossible apart from the work of the Holy Spirit.

But having said that, I'm giving testimony.

I'm an eyewitness to the near 40 years of what God's done through all the challenges that we've seen.

And I can say it without blushing.

God has blessed this church with a profound unity over the 40 years.

We celebrate his faithfulness and what he's done and what he's going to do in the future.

Yes, APC has been challenged in many ways through these 40 years.

And yet we're here this morning to tell God thank you, to praise him.

This is a part of our worship this morning, to specifically thank him and praise him for preserving and protecting the unity that this church has been blessed with.

How he has done what we could never do.

And when this happens, you know that only he can do such a beautiful thing.

So let's dive into the text.

Let's take a closer look at the three things that I draw from the text.

First of all, we all have a great calling.

Secondly, we all have a great spiritual enabling.

And thirdly, we all have a great responsibility.

We have a great calling from God.

You see this in the first verse.

I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

We're thinking about calling.

I urge you, I exhort you.

Paul is saying, please don't get this wrong.

This is a great calling in your life.

To live in unity with your brothers and your sisters.

So I have a question for you.

How long has it been since you've considered your calling, this calling in particular from God?

How long has it been since you've really thought about and meditated and prayed about this particular calling?

Many of us, when we think of calling, even from the Bible, we think of what?

What do you think about when you hear calling?

Vocation.

See, that's where we Americans go.

I think we Westerners go there more than other people, other nations in some ways.

We hear calling and we think immediately, vocation.

This is what God has called me to do.

Why do we think that way?

Well, most of us in this room have had many opportunities, many resources, haven't we?

That much of the world never has.

Opportunities, resources, education.

We think, well, what am I going to do with my life?

Career-wise.

And the Bible does speak to that some, but hear me.

The Bible has much more to say, not about what you do, but who you are when it comes to calling.

What the Apostle Paul is saying right here, when he talks about calling, and he repeats that word, the calling, the calling to which you have been called, he's talking about not what you will do, but who you will be.

Did you get that?

I don't know.

I think a lot of Christians miss this.

He's calling, what kind of person are you going to be in the body of Christ?

That's his point, exactly.

The Word of God, as I said, has so much more to say about how we will live than what we will do in our careers.

Paul says, I urge you to walk.

That word, that metaphor, to walk is a way of life.

You take steps.

You're going in one direction.

Okay?

He's talking about the direction of my life, the direction of your life.

What's characteristic of us?

Worthy of the calling to which you were called.

Isn't that an interesting phrase?

Worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

This Greek word means the root meaning of this, according to Dr.

Martin Lloyd-Jones, is the balancing of scales.

And let me take a lot of study and try to condense it in one sentence, maybe two.

He seems to be using it in context from chapters one, two, and three of Ephesians, which is all about who you are in Christ.

It's all about doctrine.

Chapter 1 of Ephesians 2 and 3 are all about doctrine, truth.

But then he gets to chapter 4, 5, and 6, and it's a lot about duty, commands.

How are you actually putting this into practice?

So what's the punchline?

The punchline is this.

As you consider everything Paul says, as you consider everything I've taught you in chapters 1, 2, and 3 of Ephesians, what you know now how you live.

Does how you live match, balance out on the scales with what you believe?

Are we clear on that?

That's what he's saying.

What you know, your theology, your teaching, your doctrine, what you profess to believe, how does that balance with how you are actually living out your life?

I hope that's helpful.

What is on the one side of the scale should be equal in weight to what is on the other side of the scale.

We must give equal weight to our doctrine and our practice so that we're not out of balance.

Now you can be out of balance either way.

You can be out of balance because you don't know teaching.

You're not studying the Bible.

You don't really know the Bible.

Come on, get in there.

You have to study.

You have to know the Word of God so that you know how He wants you to live.

You can be out of balance by not really knowing the Word of God, or you can be out of balance by knowing the Word of God in your mind, but not really living it out in a credible way.

So he's got a question for us.

Does the way we live in unity reflect the precious teachings that he has taught us in chapters 1 through 3?

You can't do unity without believing these glorious truths.

Unity is not something human-wise, man-made.

That's a false unity.

That's a superficial.

You know, we're going to go along to get along.

That's not what he's talking about.

First point, every Christian in this room, right now, every one of us has a great calling from God.

How are we doing in this particular calling from God in living out and expressing the unity in the body of Christ?

Second point that Paul makes, we have not only a great calling, but we have a great spirit enabling specifically the Holy Spirit.

He says, make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Now, we're going to unpack the first part of that and the third point.

Make every effort.

But right now I want you to focus on eager to maintain the unity of the Holy Spirit.

That's what he's teaching us right here.

In other words, church unity is the product and the gifting by the Holy Spirit.

Its origin is not in man.

And Paul makes this clear by the repetition of the word one in this little paragraph that we printed in your bulletin.

Seven times in this little paragraph, the apostle Paul uses the word one.

One spirit.

One spirit who creates this one body, one Lord, Jesus, who creates us, brings us into his family by his atoning work, one God, one Father who creates this family.

Three times he refers to the Godhead.

And what he's saying is the basis for our unity together horizontally, the basis for our horizontal unity is the vertical unity between God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

How are we doing?

Okay?

That's the way it works.

And as there could never be a split among the Godhead, that is the confidence that we have that we will not divide horizontally with our brothers and sisters over things that we ought not to divide over.

Now let me say this.

I come from a theological ecclesiastical tradition where there were a lot of splits decades ago, where churches in my church tradition, they left churches that did that denied the fundamental truths of the gospel.

There are times to divide.

There are times to leave when truth is not being propagated, when truth is not believed.

There are times, but the Apostle Paul's not thinking about that so much here.

What he's thinking about is when Christians divide over things that they ought not to divide over.

God cannot be divided, nor should his church.

That's what he's saying.

This kind of unity among Christians cannot be created by us, but only by the Holy Spirit.

This kind of unity is given to us, not created by us.

The more you understand this, the more you believe this.

Well, first we're going to see in point three that the healthier you're going to be as a Christian.

And the better united the body of Christ will be.

We said we all have a great calling.

We all have a great spirit enabling, but it must come from the Holy Spirit.

But we also must make every effort, we must be eager to maintain the unity that the Holy Spirit grants.

We have to understand this for the church to be what Christ has called it to be.

Why is humility and gentleness required, you might ask?

Why is patience required?

Why is bearing with one another and love commanded?

And what does that even mean?

Are you wondering that right now?

How do I bear in love with a brother or sister that I'm having friction with?

Why does Paul command these things?

Why does he raise these questions in this context on this topic?

For a very good reason.

He knows how easily bruised the body of Christ can be.

He knows how easily divided the body of Christ can be.

He says, that's not for you.

That's not for your church.

And if you're not humble, you're going to fall prey to it.

If you're not humble, if you're not patient, if you're not forbearing with others, if you're quick to disagree, if you're quick to take offense, you're going to miss it.

You're going to miss it.

And it's going to be painful.

So we must ask ourselves, am I eager to make every effort to protect the unity of the body of Christ?

Now let's just let that question linger in the air for a minute, okay?

Can we do that?

Let's not just assume these things.

Am I eager?

Are you eager?

Are you making, am I making every effort to do everything I can, depending on the work of the Holy Spirit, to protect the unity of this church?

Word of God wants to know.

And I can't answer for you.

I can only answer for me.

But we all have to answer for ourselves.

Are we eager to make every effort to maintain our unity in the body of Christ before we speak?

Before we act, before we say something.

You know, I have an advantage over you because I've been sitting in this text in this sermon prep for weeks.

I've got a little advantage over you on that.

You know what I've concluded?

I need more humility.

I need more patience.

I need more of the enabling of the Holy Spirit in my life.

And I think that's a good thing.

Some of us could say, beware of me when I'm right.

Or beware of me when I think I'm right.

Let me give an example that is helpful to me from the book of Ephesians.

And it would really be a it would be a great helpful exercise this week to go back and read the book of Ephesians.

I commend that to you this week.

Go back and read the book in the whole context.

Here's an illustration I want to give.

When Paul talks about marriage in Ephesians chapter 5, which he does, many of us know that text.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

That's the famous or infamous, depending on how people see it, text on marriage.

Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church, and wives submit to your husbands as unto the Lord.

And he goes on to say, you know what comes right before that in Ephesians chapter 5.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

Verse 18.

Be filled with the Holy Spirit.

In other words, anytime anybody is going to a marriage seminar or a marriage conference on marriage, and they start at verse 22, they've missed it.

You can't pull that apart from the context.

In other words, you can't have you can't have a good, healthy Christian marriage without filling of the Holy Spirit.

Do you see that?

You can have all the right principles.

You could go to seminars and you could talk about date night and you can talk about how to be charitable and how to listen better.

And those all things can be helpful.

But that's not the starting place.

If you're talking about a Christian marriage, you have to start with the filling of the Holy Spirit.

Because most of us know, you can know, quote, all the right things and miss it pretty badly.

It's what Jesus wants to do in me that I need most to love my wife.

Same way with what he's talking about here.

You're not going to have unity, real biblical unity in a church just because you studied, you formed study committees.

And because you talk about it and you have discussions about it.

We see that all the time in Washington, D.C., right?

No.

No, it starts on the rock hard foundation of the Bible.

And what does the Bible say about what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Let me put it this way: unless you're filled with the Holy Spirit, unless you understand what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit and you're living out of that fullness, you're not going to be able to maintain the unity of the body of Christ.

That's exactly what it means.

You're not going to be able to do it just out of your head.

How about you?

Do you need more humility and gentleness?

And bearing in love with people that you find frustrating at times?

People you want to just tell off.

People that you're quick to correct or rebuke.

Oh Jesus.

Let us start with me.

Let us start.

Show me.

Put that mirror of the Word of God in front of me.

Am I living out of the filling of the Spirit?

Is this the person that I am before I get about trying to fix things and do up, help other people, other churches?

We must major in majors as a church.

We must resist promoting our own personal preferences and convictions on secondary things that we make as ultimate things.

That's a challenge in every church.

I've seen it as a pastor ever since I've been here.

There are times where people want to make secondary things.

I'm not saying that they're not important.

If they're in the Word of God, they're important.

But not all things are of equal importance in terms of the core values.

The gospel of Jesus Christ.

What did the apostle Paul say in Galatians chapter 6?

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

He said, May I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we're going to have lots of opinions about lots of things in the Christian life.

How we educate our children.

How we do missions.

We're going to have so many opinions about how we think things should be done, but don't promote those things to primary status.

Otherwise, you're going to be a, you're going to you're going to be you're going to be a lot of friction in your life.

And you're going to cause friction.

You're going to be a divider.

Let me read you a fable.

Okay, this is not a true story.

That's a good fable.

To illustrate how quickly the church can divide on stuff.

Source unknown.

I was walking in San Francisco along the Golden State Bridge when I saw a man about to jump off.

I tried to dissuade him and told him simply that God loved him.

A tear came to his eye.

I then asked him, are you a Christian?

A Jew?

A Hindu?

Or what?

He said, I'm a Christian.

I said, me too.

Small world.

Protestant or Catholic?

Protestant.

I said, me too.

What denomination?

Baptist.

I said, me too.

Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?

He said Northern Baptist.

I said, me too.

Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?

He said, Northern Conservative Baptist, of course.

I said, well, that's amazing.

Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reform Baptist?

He said Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist.

I said remarkable.

Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region.

Or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Eastern Region.

He said Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region.

I said this is a miracle.

Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879?

Or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?

He said Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.

I said, Die, heretic.

You know, we can laugh.

But you know there's something to that.

Here's my question to you this morning.

Where's your dividing line in your life?

What does it take to separate you from your Christian brothers and sisters?

What does it take?

Every church, every church leadership team has that calling to determine what are we going to hold up as core gospel values?

And what are we going to say, you're free to have other convictions?

The goal's not uniformity, friends.

It's unity.

And when you get to that point of uniformity where you insist that everybody else sees everything else, just like you do, you've lost the battle.

And you're not going to be joyful.

Joy will not exist there.

Where's our dividing line?

When in doubt, do we give our brothers and sisters the benefit of the doubt?

Are we charitable to people who disagree with us on many issues that are not of ultimate importance?

We said this requires Holy Spirit filling, Holy Spirit empowering if we are going to make every effort.

Can we disagree in agreeable ways?

Unity and maturity in the body of Christ.

It's not unity without maturity, it's not maturity without unity.

It's both.

And only the Holy Spirit can do this.

No, we will not probably agree with our church leadership on every point.

That's not the point.

Why do people stay in gospel churches where there are differences?

This is something that I've observed my entire life.

My dad taught me this.

My dad was a pastor in Pittsburgh for 38 years, same church.

I thank God for my dad's faithful teaching of the Word of God.

Why do people stay when they don't agree with everything that leadership teaches or believes?

Because of the sweetness of the gospel.

Because of the sweetness of the gospel.

Because in their church, they're reminded week after week how precious is the love of Jesus.

They're reminded of how much we've been forgiven in Christ.

And I have not been forgiven more than you, and you have not been forgiven more than me.

We are all sinners at the foot of the cross.

My dad taught me that.

Thank you, Dad.

That keeps people coming.

When we see Jesus, and Jesus becomes more precious to us, and the love of God becomes more convicting to us and convincing of us, we can look around and we can say, yeah, I'm not sure what I think about that.

I'm still working on that, but but there's a oneness.

There's a oneness.

Because you know what matters most.

And you're joyed to be part of it.

Every church will be attacked in this area of unity.

I made a list of the most significant ways I've seen this church attacked.

And not going to tell you my list.

I felt like this was a this was a probably a sermon.

I don't need to do that.

Pastor Josh, I really appreciated how you brought that application last week.

And most of them we will, but I've got a long list.

And I'm telling you.

None of us will take a bow for that.

I think of a situation that happened in 2017.

A former elder came back.

He moved away years ago.

He came back on a Sunday morning before church, and I hadn't seen him in years, and he walked right up to me.

The first thing he said to me was, Tom, I will never ever forget the miracle, is what he called it.

And this guy was not given to hyperbole.

I will never forget the miracle that God did in protecting our church from being split over.

And I said, I said, Dan, you're right.

That was a miracle.

I'm not going to give you the list.

But I know.

I know that it was only the work of God that has kept us together.

That has pulled us together.

Let me close with this.

Two things.

Elder Chris Weld wrote read it from John 17.

There's two things that will keep us in the game.

Two things that will keep you in the game.

The great cost for our unity.

Don't spend it frivolously.

The great cost that Jesus paid for this unity.

He gave his blood.

He gave his life.

Don't mess it up.

Don't trample it over things that are not of ultimate matter.

Jesus, the night before he died.

What did he say?

Chris read.

He said, Father, I thank you for the people that you're going to give me, Christians 20 centuries later, like us.

That they may be one, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and that you love them even as you love me.

Two reasons, two reasons to fight hard for the unity of the body of Christ based on the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Number one, the great cost that Jesus went to to give this unity.

And secondly, the apologetic.

Francis Schaefer, the great apologist in the 1940s to 2000s, whatever, late 90s.

Francis Schaefer said the greatest apologetic in the church is the way Christians love one another.

Before you get into all your presuppositional apologetics, before you get into all the evidences why you should believe, there's no greater apologetic defense of the Christian faith than the way Christians treat one another.

Isn't that what Jesus said?

May they be one, so that the world may know the world is watching how we get along or don't get along, so that they may see the way that we love one another, the way we protect and preserve the unity on the work of the Holy Spirit, and they will say there must be a God.

Because I live in a world that's divided in every other way.

If your church is not divided, if your church is united, the world, your neighbors, your co-workers will see something about that.

That's what Jesus said.

I believe them.

I believe them.

And I'm so grateful as your pastor, one of your pastors, to give thanks this morning publicly for the way God has protected and preserved the unity of this church body.

Not easily won.

It's such a beautiful thing to be part of.

And I know that's why some of you are here.

May God be praised.

We give you all praise.

This victory was hard won, Jesus.

You know that better than we do.

We can experience this only because you gave your blood so that you could give us unity.

May we never forget that.

And secondly, secondly, Lord Jesus, as you prayed for us the night before your death, you pray now, you pray now that we would make every effort to protect the unity given to us by the Holy Spirit so that the world may know that we are one.

Because you are one.

Let this church continue to live out this unity for many more years to come.

I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.