Before we get started, Terry and I have been talking about this. I don’t need water. Okay, I don’t need water.
I want to ask God’s blessing upon those that I know are here serving Him—doing meals for these kids and driving them back and forth. May God bless you for the work that you did. You were serving Him, and so I want to ask God’s blessing for you and upon you.
I want to read a few Scriptures before I get into continuing teaching about Ephesians. These are all in the Gospels.
The first one I’d like to read is in John 19, starting with verse 23. I know you’re going to hear these and say, “What does this have to do with Ephesians?” But it does have something to do with Ephesians.
John 19:23 says:
The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also the coat.
Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.
They said therefore one to another, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it.
Then in Matthew 17—I think I talked about this last time. I think I suffer from what Lenny suffers from.
Matthew 17:1 says:
And after six days Jesus taketh with Him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart:
And He was transfigured before them: and His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as the light.
Then, with the same incident in mind, in Luke 9, which is also about being on this mountain, verse 37 says:
And it came to pass, on the next day, when they were come down from the mountain, a great multitude met Him.
And then Luke 9:51:
And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.
Let’s just give this back to the Lord.
Lord, we want to thank You again for such a wonderful salvation that we have in Jesus Christ, and to know that this was Your idea. This was Your heart, Your plan, Your everything. We had nothing to do with it except to receive it.
And we want to thank You, Lord, for what it cost You to have us for Yourself. Lord, that means a lot to us. We want to tell You that.
We want to ask today that, as we go to Your Word, Your Word would be Your Word, and it would not be mixed. It would come out, Lord, as the truth that it is meant to be; it would come with the power it is supposed to come with, the conviction it is supposed to come with, and the enablement it is supposed to come with.
Lord, we’re asking this. This is a hard thing to ask. This is a big thing to ask. But, Lord, this is, I believe, what You want. You want Your Word coming forth. You want us empowered by it because You bought us for Yourself for a purpose.
So, Lord, open Your Word to us, we pray. Strengthen our inner man, Lord, we pray, so that we’re able to walk worthily of our calling. For we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, this is the part you’ve all been waiting for, right? The practical. And I think that once you really get into the practical, you’re not really going to like it.
I don’t know if you are familiar with the little book that used to come out of Honor Oak. It was called Toward the Mark. One of the editors was an Englishman named Harry Foster. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Harry Foster, but he used to come to PVF once in a while.
He had a statement for when things were getting too close. The English statement was, “Ooh, that’s a bit near the bone, don’t you think?” And I’m afraid that the practical part is going to be a bit near the bone.
Because the Word of God cuts. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, and it divides so that we know what is spirit and what is not. You know, that’s what we’re going to be getting here.
Now, people will say the first sixteen verses still have a little doctrine, and that’s true. But there is a big part right at the beginning that we’re going to look at. I don’t know how far we’re going to get. I think we’re going to get six verses.
Let me put it this way. If you were to buy a pair of pants, went to some store today, and got home, took them out, and they only had one leg, would you be happy?
Now, some of us that are fashion trendsetters would say, “Yeah, it’s cool. Yeah, I’ve got the leg for it.” But most of us would say, “Well, this is of no use to me. I’m taking it back.”
The reason I say that is that the practical cannot be separated from what, for lack of a better word, is doctrinal. They go together. They cannot be separated. Otherwise, you have one-legged pants.
Some of us just want the practical: “Just give me the practical. Give me something to do.” Others want to live somewhere else—we want to live in our heads—so we want the doctrinal.
But it is like the garment of Jesus at the cross. It was one. It was seamless. It was so valuable that way that the soldiers did not even want to split it up. They said, “No, let’s throw dice for it,” because you do not want to take this apart.
It is the same thing here as we look at the Word. We cannot just say, “Oh, give me the practical,” because the practical goes back to the doctrinal. And you cannot just say, “Well, give me the doctrinal,” because without the practical, it means nothing. It is just all in your head.
Christianity talks about a walk. To walk, you need two legs. You need the doctrinal, and you need the practical, and they step in unison. They do not hop: one, one, one, one.
You get it as you go, one step at a time.
Now, we’re going to be talking about some things. From the very beginning, I compared Ephesians and Romans. I said they really get to the same spot.
Romans finally gets to Romans 12, where it says, in effect, “All these things have been done for you, and what that leads to is this: now give yourself to God as a living sacrifice.”
Ephesians just starts at a different place. Instead of starting down below and bringing you up to the place of saying that you are forgiven and justified, you start already justified—but you start glorified. Then that has to be brought down to earth.
I mentioned the book Les Misérables. Robin, you know, I’m surprised some people actually got the book and read some of it, and some people got the movie and saw it. It’s a good story. Get the abridged version, though. The descriptions of the furniture are too much.
The idea is that you start with a man, as in Romans, who was a convict—he was a sinner. He was brought to a place where the bishop said to him, “I give you back your life. Now give it to God.”
All of a sudden, you have the whole transformation of this man because his sins were forgiven. He was now free to present himself alive from the dead to God and say, “Here I am. Take me.” That is what he did for the rest of his life, and his life was transformed.
That is the situation of being a bondservant: being so in love with the One who freed you that you say, “I don’t want to go out free like that.” I think it is Havergal’s hymn:
I love, I love my Master;
I will not go out free.
He is my Redeemer;
He gave His life for me.
For Ephesians, I gave another book. Does anybody remember the other book? No, not Mimosa. That’s a good one, though. Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper.
Remember, I talked about the little kid. They traded places—the prince traded places with the kid. The kid went up to this place, and it transformed him because he was a little urchin. Then he got in his position.
But I want to talk about the prince, because that is really what is happening. You have this prince who traded places. When he went down among the street urchins, he wanted to get back. But the whole thing about him being in that place was that he never lost his character.
He always said, “I’m the prince. I’m the king to be.” He always looked at himself that way.
Brothers and sisters, as we have looked at Ephesians and seen the things it says about us—especially in Ephesians 1—we are never to lose sight of that. It is to shape our character.
What has God called us to be? That is what Ephesians 4 begins: since God has so called us, how then shall we live?
Brothers and sisters, you can apply that either to coming up from Romans and saying, “Hey, I’ve been redeemed. My sins are forgiven. Now how shall I live?” Or you can look at it as we are looking through Ephesians, seeing what we are in Christ: how now shall we live?
One other thing—I’m sorry; I looked at my notes. The other Scriptures I read were about the Transfiguration. We’ve been up on a mountain. We’ve seen the glory. That is what Ephesians 1, 2, and 3 are all about: we’ve seen these things.
But when we come down from the mountain—see, brothers and sisters, we’re coming down from the mountain—how then is that to affect our lives? That is what we want to look at this morning.
I am reading from the American Standard Version, the 1901 version, because I think it gives us some things. I usually read the New American Standard, but I told Mary Ruth that it is the wrong translation for some of these things. I’ve got to watch myself.
Ephesians 4:1–6 says:
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called,
with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.
I’m going to stop there because I think I went over last time. You guys bore very well, and I do not want to go over this time.
Paul starts out with a “therefore,” and we’re going to get to that therefore in a minute. He starts out saying, “I urge you.” “Beseech” is another word for saying “urge.” It is not, “I command you.” He is not saying that, because that is not where it is at.
God wants free will. He wants the freewill offering. So he says, “I beseech you,” or, “I exhort you,” or, “I encourage you, that you walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called.”
Now, what is the “therefore” there for? That’s good English, isn’t it? I learned that from someone else.
The therefore is chapters 1 through 3. Because of what you have been hearing, Paul says, because of what I have written to you up to this time, seeing those things, walk worthily.
We want to look at this phrase, “walk worthily.” Walk has to do with a manner of life—how you live. What is your manner of life?
But a walk also has to do with moving. In other words, our Christianity is not something that stands still. It moves. It lives. It goes forward. It does not stay in the same place.
That is something we need to understand. If we are in the same place we were five years ago, something is wrong. We should not be there, because we should be walking.
I’m not talking about treadmill stuff. We know that, because we’re so health-conscious today, we get on those treadmills. All we are doing is exercising, but we are not going anywhere.
Some of us can walk leisurely. But when you are a man with a mission—have you ever seen somebody walk down the hall at work when they have something they have to do? They’re moving. They’re booking. They cannot be taken off the path. “Can I talk to you?” “No, I’ve got to go.”
We should be going somewhere. We should have a destination that we are going to. It is not like, “Oh yeah, these things are ours; I’ll just sit back and wait for them to come.” They are not going to drop out of the sky.
You’ve got to walk. You’ve got to walk in faith. You’ve got to take what is yours. What did God say to Abraham? “Wherever your foot steps, that’s yours.” Well, it is the same principle. Wherever the foot goes down, that is ours.
Now, “walk worthily.” We can look at worthy in a couple of ways. It means a walk becoming of your calling.
I’m going to use clothing as an illustration. I have dressed becomingly—not because I am wearing a tie, but because I match. Even the socks.
There was a time when I might have worn something like this with my coat. Incidentally, I did not buy this one; it was a gift. Not from my wife. Or this—this is a good one. I like this one. Now, my wife got me this one. Garage sale, okay?
But they just do not go with what I am wearing. Our walk is supposed to go with our calling.
I do not go to school wearing a nice tie and everything, and then short pants. It is unbecoming. It is not what I should be doing.
I remember when I first started teaching. Oh, God. I taught at a private school, a nice Christian school, and my attire was a pocket T-shirt, corduroys, and high-tops. The next year, we had a dress code.
First of all, I was young and I did not know. I was young and I did not know. But some people said, “We’ve got to help this guy,” and they did. Look, they turned me into this now.
Now I wear a tie almost every day to school. I remember one time in California, when we did not have to, the kids asked me, “Why do you have to wear a tie?” I started going, “I like it.”
But that is the whole thing. You begin to be comfortable with what you are supposed to have. It is fitting. And not only that, it makes you feel like—here is something. They talk about clothes making the man. That is true.
At times, my wife and my younger daughter, Jamie, help me match, but I have gotten better through the years.
In talking about walking worthily, one way we want to look at it is that we are not clashing with our calling. We are going with what is appropriate for what we are supposed to be.
What should motivate us to do this? I am going to get back to this word worthy again and take another look at it. But what should motivate us? It says, “Worthy of the calling with which you were called.” What should motivate your walk is your calling.
What have we been called to be? We have been called to be sons. Sons are responsible, grown-up people that God can say, “I can hand this to you and expect you to do it.” That is what a son is.
A son exercises the Father’s authority in his own life and in whatever the Lord has him to do. He brings that authority with him. That is what we have been called for.
We can look at Ephesians 1:4–5:
Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love:
having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
To be holy, to be blameless, and to be sons—that is our calling. Now, what are we to do? How are we to react to that? How shall we then live? We have been called to be this. How should we go about living the rest of our lives?
What Paul says is that we should live it worthily. We should live it in the manner in which it deserves to be lived.
We can also look at 1 Peter 1:13–16. If we are considering our calling, Peter writes:
Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in the time of your ignorance:
but like as He who called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living;
because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy.
Consider your calling. What have you been called to? If you have been called to this, how are you to live?
You can take it down to your vocation. Before we bring it up to that, take it to your vocation. Have you been called to be a carpenter? Then you should be walking worthy of your calling. You should have your tools. You should know how to use them. You should be able to do things within your craft that you are asked to do.
You should be prepared for that time. As a carpenter, you can start out as an apprentice. You work your way into it until you are able to do things on your own. You become responsible and skilled, and then you go off and do your work for the people who hire you.
You can do the same with a teacher, an accountant, or a doctor. The same thing: you must be worthy. Even, Lord knows, government people should walk worthy of their calling.
But we have a high calling, and we are to walk worthy of it. What that does is make us start thinking, “Oh, I’m just a schmo. How can I ever get up to that calling? That calling is too holy for me. It is just too high for me.”
Well, I have some verses for you here. Linda, a couple of times before, read this verse, and I told her later she stole my thunder. But in 1 Corinthians 1, starting with verse 26, this is my favorite set of verses:
For behold your calling, brethren, that not many are wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
but God chose the foolish things of the world, that He might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that He might put to shame the things that are strong;
and the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that He might bring to nought the things that are:
that no flesh should glory before God.
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption:
that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
You think, “Oh, I can’t do it.” Brothers and sisters, it is not you. It is the authority of the calling. What is behind the call? Who is behind the call? It is Almighty God, Who is able.
What did we read last time at the end of the prayer in Ephesians 3? “Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, I guess that cuts out our saying, “Pass me, Lord.” No, we have been called—all of us, weak or strong, noble or base. We have all been called to this calling of being holy and blameless before Him and being sons. Nobody is left out, because it is the power of God that completes it.
That is one way of looking at this: this call has authority with it.
Another way of looking at worthy: I was reading a book by G. Campbell Morgan, and in his synopsis of Ephesians, he said that worthy has to do with appropriating what is yours in Christ. I thought, “Wow, that is really interesting.”
One way we think of being worthy is that we think of trying to do something. “I’m going to be worthy. I’m going to live right.” Then two things happen: we either go in the tank because we mess up, or we get these huge swelled heads because we think we are God’s gift to the world. Then we have to be deflated.
God does not even leave that to us. I like this idea: appropriate Christ for yourself.
What that kind of means is that Paul has brought us into the throne room and shown us our room. Then he has opened our closet—a nice, big walk-in—and it has all these clothes in it. We see the clothes. We see them. Then we put on the things that we need to put on. That is appropriating.
As human beings, we want a “how-to.” “Well, how do I appropriate this? What do I do?” I cannot give you that, because Paul never does.
That is why I like Romans 7. I used to hate Romans 7. Romans 7 asks, “Who will help me? Who is going to take me away from the body of this death?” Then the next line is, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.” He never tells you how.
He just points to the Lord. Here is the Lord. Give yourself to the Lord. He is the One Who delivers. How is He going to do it? Well, you have got to develop that relationship with the Lord, because I am not telling you. There is no formula.
Otherwise, just think—we already have all these how-to books. You go to a Christian bookstore: all these how-to books, self-improvement even. Well, it is not self-improvement. It is taking what the Lord has given you.
How do we do that? How do you walk worthily? It is by faith.
Let me explain that a little bit. Let’s go to the chapter of faith, Hebrews 11.
Hebrews 11:1 says:
Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.
My footnote says, “Now faith is giving substance to things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.”
We can say, “I don’t see it in me, but do I see what the Lord has called me to?” First of all, we have to see what the Lord has called us to. If we do not see that, how can we have faith? How can we believe that? We have to believe that.
Part of that comes from being strengthened in the inner man. You have to have diet and exercise before you can see.
I think it is interesting: how much can a child focus and actually see when they are children? How long does it take until things are in focus? It takes a little while, doesn’t it?
I remember watching puppies being born. Puppies do not open their eyes for a few days. It is the same with us as Christians.
It is like that man the Lord was healing. He says, “What do you see?” The man says, “I see men as trees, walking.” Look at trees—must be the Bogdan family, at least the boys.
But it comes with exercise that our vision starts to get sharpened. Then we start to say, “Is this mine?”
It says here that faith is the assurance, or the giving substance. I hate to show how worldly I am, but some of you older people—and maybe some younger people—have watched the Indiana Jones movies.
What is the last one about? Oh, I see some of you guys have seen it. Okay, all right, gotcha. They are looking for the Holy Grail.
Looking for the Holy Grail, they came to this big chasm. The guy had a Scripture to get across. You know what the Scripture was? “The just shall walk by faith,” right?
He is over this chasm, and he does not know there is a bridge there. The only way he can do it is to take the step anyway. The only way he is going to find out that it is there is by taking a step.
So he goes out and does it, and he finds out it is there. That is faith. You are stepping out on something that you know is there. He did not know it was there.
When we do it, we are stepping out on what God has told us is there, even though we do not see it, so to speak. We will see it when we step on it and put our weight on it. We will not see it until then, because otherwise it is not faith.
Faith: you do not see the things at first. You have got to trust in what God says. “This is what I’m going to do.” “I don’t see how You can do it.” “Trust Me. Do it.”
He brings them to the Red Sea. “Oh, what are we going to do?” What are You going to do? He opens the Red Sea. Things like that.
It is like Naaman. I love the story of Naaman, dipping in the water seven times. “Oh, that’s stupid.” But he dipped seven times. Yeah, you do. That is faith. Believe.
Believe in what God has told you. That is the thing: it is what God has told you. God has said, “I’ve called you to this.” He has not called you just to say, “I knew you could make it. I just wanted to show you.” It is not like that.
He has called us to something high because He wants to bring us there. That is what He is after.
There is another verse I want to look at here. Hebrews 11:13 says:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own.
And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return.
But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city.
I want to stop here and tweak this. This is talking about Old Testament saints, but let us apply it to New Testament people. We do not know if the Lord is going to come back in our time. We hope that He is coming back in our time, but we do not know.
But, brothers and sisters, even if He does not come back in our time, does that mean that we just give up hope? No. Does that mean that we stop having faith? No. Does that mean that our calling does not count? No.
It means we go on living as if He is coming, as Christians have been doing for two thousand years. They live in the hope of that, and they do not change from that.
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them—or embraced them—from afar. They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
What is our response to things that are far off? Is our response simply to say, “Oh, wait till I’m older”? As young people, that is what we did. “Yeah, that’s just too far ahead for me. When I’m older, when I don’t think that was much fun, I’ll concentrate on these things better.”
Brothers and sisters, if you think that way, you will never do it, because you will be the same person when you are fifty as you were when you were twenty. It will always be the next day. “Yeah, I’ll put it off until tomorrow.” I know from experience.
You have got to do it now. You have got to embrace them. “Greeted them” does not mean, “Oh, hi, how are you doing?” It means embraced them—took them and said, “I want this. This is what I am living for.”
That is what it means. “My prize—I am living for this. I am not living for the other.” I am embracing them.
That is your confession. That is the confession that you are a stranger and a pilgrim on this earth: when you say, “I see what God has called me to. I see how great His calling is, and it outshines everything else. I am grabbing onto that instead of the glitter I see around me.”
That is when people say, “You’re weird. Why don’t you like this?” Because you see the eternal and not the temporal, and you see that the eternal is much more than the temporal.
You need to read that little book by C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, where it really puts the eternal and the temporal in perspective. It really switches things. It is a little book, about a hundred pages, a really good little book. Fiction, okay? Not doctrine. So that will help you out.
But it says that this is the way they manifest themselves: by embracing their calling.
It says, “If they had been mindful of that country.” In Colossians 3:1–2, it says:
If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.
Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth.
Brothers and sisters, if your minds are set upon the things that are on the earth, you know what is going to happen? You are going to be a person who makes a lot of U-turns. The Lord is going to let you go back.
Again, this is a freewill thing. What do you love? What do you love? Is your heart captured?
That is part of exercising: “Lord, capture my heart, so I am not turning and doing those U-turns all the time. Help me. Help me to see my calling.”
Then it is up to me to embrace it. “Oh, God, make me embrace it.” It has to be shown to me so that I see it and say, “I’ll take that. That is the one that I want.”
When we do that, that is our guard against going back. When we do that, no matter how bad we think we are, or how much of a failure we are, if we are striving toward that goal, or that calling, and making our mistakes as we will, God is not ashamed to call us His people and to be our God.
He is not ashamed, because He knows He has done something in us, and He is going to see it through. But we have to be willing to say, “I want it.”
I know a lot of times you say, “Oh, make me willing.” Brothers and sisters, when you pray, “Lord, show me. Just open my eyes to see what is real, because I want to want it, and I just don’t see it right. Please help me”—when you pray like that, God is going to answer you.
Because He bought you, and He loves His Son, and He will not see that go to waste. No.
Walk worthy of your calling.
I think I will probably just be able to get through this next thing. I will not be able to get through a lot of verses.
With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
I think it is really interesting that after he talks about walking worthily, he does not go out and say, as he does later, “You who steal, steal no more.” He does not say, “If you are doing witchcraft and stuff, you’ve got to cut that out. If you are caught up in sex and things like that, you’ve got to stop that.”
He does not say that. That strikes me as really strange, because you would think he would come down on all those places.
But I think it is really interesting that he says the first thing about walking worthy is that your walk worthy is to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
That is really strange to me. But, brothers and sisters, you have to look at the whole picture. The whole picture is not that we just lose our vices. It is not that we just lose the old nature.
The whole picture is that it is a community that is together in this calling. We have been called as a community of people to be sons. We have been called as a community of people to be holy and blameless, without spot or wrinkle.
Those things are important to God. It is not just the cleanliness of life. It is the whole picture that you have to see.
So he says you need to keep, preserve, or guard the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Now, I am going to deal with this part first: the unity of the Spirit. There is already a unity. He does not say, “You guys have to get together and be one now.” No, it is, “You are already one. You are in Christ. You are one.”
If we go back to Ephesians 2, we see that Paul talks about the Gentiles and the Jews being one now—one new man.
If you go back to Acts 10, when the Lord first talks to Peter, He says, “I want you to go to Cornelius’s house.” Peter does it, Cornelius gets converted, and then people say, “We heard you went to Cornelius’s house. What were you doing over there?” He gives the story, and they say, “Oh, okay, that’s okay.”
Then Paul goes to Antioch with Barnabas. They are in the church there, and the Lord sets them apart and sends them out to preach the Gospel in Turkey. He goes out there, and all these Gentiles are getting saved.
Then people say, “Well, you can’t just have all these Gentiles in here. This is bad here. You’ve got to do this and that and that.” So it comes back to Jerusalem: “What are we going to do about this?”
Peter says something really wonderful in Acts 15. You do not have to turn there; I will just give you the reference. Acts 15, starting in verse 7:
And when there had been much questioning, Peter rose up and said unto them, Brethren, ye know that a good while ago God made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.
And God, who knoweth the heart, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit, even as He did unto us;
and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.
He made no distinction. Brothers and sisters, there is unity. God makes no distinction. We are all in Christ.
I am starting to get upset with this idea of “Jewish Christians.” They are not Jewish Christians; they are Christians. Polish Christians are Christians. There are not Muslim Christians; they are Christians. There is nothing else but Christ.
It is really starting to upset me when I think of people saying, “No, this and that.” No, it is Christ. He is not divided. We need to understand that.
But it goes beyond that. We can upset the unity of the Spirit with little things: your political preference.
“How can you be a Democrat and be a Christian? How can you be a liberal?” My dad was a union man. I like unions. There are a lot of good things that come from unions. There is corruption that comes with it, but does that make me less of a Christian? Does that put me somewhere else? No.
It is the same thing. My kids go to public school. “The faith I have.” Or, “Well, my kids are homeschooled.” Well, that is fine. If you are led by the Lord, either one of those is fine, but that should not drive a wedge between believers.
If it does, that is of the flesh, and the flesh has no part in this body. You need to understand that there is a unity, and we have to protect the unity. That is what he says here. If you are going to walk worthy of your calling, you protect this unity.
You do not protect it by thinking alike. Praise God, we do not have to think alike. Praise God, we do not have to have the same view of the rapture.
I do not care if you are pre-millennial, you know, rapture-the-whole-church. If I have a vote, that is the one I vote for. I like that one.
But does it mean I am bad if I think the rapture is not coming until the end? That is not a place of unity. We can think those things.
The unity is the life, and we have got to make sure that life is protected.
So he says you have got to do it. Now, how do you do this? He gives you three ways. In verse 2, he says, “With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.”
What does this mean? Well, I am going to tell you what it means in a nutshell right here, and this is what I am going to close with.
When Jesus came down from that Mount of Transfiguration, He came down, and then it says He set His face like flint toward Jerusalem. I think one version says, “He set His face like flint,” but my version says He steadfastly set His face toward Jerusalem.
You know what was waiting for Him at Jerusalem? The cross.
Brothers and sisters, the first part of a walk of faith that leads us to a walk worthy of our calling is the cross.
I want you to understand this. The cross, for those of you who are younger, means you are doing Another’s will, not your own. That is simply speaking. I think before I talked about letting someone else drive.
But what is happening here is that the cross is first applied to the mind. I want you to think about that. It is applied to the way we think.
When we look at this lowliness, the translators really look at it as lowliness of mind.
It is really interesting. If you go to the next chapter after the Transfiguration and go through this thing about Jesus setting His face toward Jerusalem, the next time you find the disciples, you know what they are doing? “Who is the greatest?”
That is not the only time they did that. Even up to the night of the Passover—the very night the Lord was going to be crucified—what are they doing? “Who do You think is greatest?”
And what does the Lord do? He picks up the towel and the basin, and He washes their feet. He says, “I am giving you an example.”
Brothers and sisters, in keeping the unity, the first cross has to be applied to the mind. Romans 12:16 says, “Do not think more highly of yourself than you ought to think.” Do not think so highly of your opinions.
What does Philippians 2 say?
Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men;
and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
Wherefore also God highly exalted Him.
Lowliness, then meekness. Some of you have gentleness in your translation, but do you know what meekness is? Meekness is letting someone else direct you.
Have you ever looked at an oxen? They have those beautiful cow eyes. They are meek animals. They let someone else direct them.
You could even say they are animals that will take on the yoke. They will let themselves be yoked to Christ, and yoked to brothers and sisters in whom they see Christ. It is the church. That is what we are supposed to be doing: meekness.
Longsuffering—you know what longsuffering means to me? It means not coming off the cross.
Sometimes we can say, “I can bear it for a while, but I can’t bear it this long, I’ll tell you what.” You know what I mean?
If we were the Lord on the cross, we would be saying, “Don’t You know Who I am? Well, let Me tell You. I’m calling down twelve legions of angels right now.”
No. Longsuffering is staying on the cross, taking whatever is the challenge, and staying there until the work of the cross is done in your life.
It is not until you think you have had enough. It is until the work of the cross is done in your life. I told you, it is a bit near the bone.
Forbearing one another—it says, “in love.” Forbearing is not tolerating someone. I read one version that said “tolerate.” I think the New American Standard says “tolerate.” It is not.
When I forbear with my children, I hope that I am trying to carry them further instead of just putting up with them until it is over.
I am trying to carry them on to a place further than where they have been, because they are younger than me. Usually, brothers and sisters, we forbear with those who are younger than us. It does not have to be chronological age; it is spiritual age.
You have to forbear with them, but we forbear in love.
So, brothers and sisters, you want the practical? Well, the practical starts here. The practical starts here in the assembly, with how we are keeping the unity.
We are not meant to live on the mountain. We are not meant for that. We are meant to live in the city.
What I mean by the city is the city that He has prepared for us. We are to take our place there.
Isn’t it interesting? Conferences always end. Why? Because that is an unrealistic life.
We have to go back to our own assemblies, the ones that we know so well, and we have to walk worthy, because that is our calling.
Let’s give it to the Lord.
Lord, I thank You that You want more than anything to have a people without blemish, without spot or wrinkle, that are going to be sons. Lord, that is Your plan for us.
Lord, I thank You that You have what it takes to see it through, that You have what You want.
Lord, I know we can look at this and say, “Lord, this is just too hard for me.” And, Lord, I can say right offhand right now, it is too hard for me.
But I am asking You, Lord, to show me, show us, Lord, our calling. Show it in such a way that it just captures our heart. Make us want the very thing that You want.
So, like our Lord Jesus, we can despise these other things and look ahead, look to the finished work, and say, “Oh, it was worth it. It was well worth it.”
Lord, we can be scared away and just say, “Oh, this is—you are asking too much.” Lord, that is our first reaction. Lord, please bear with us.
Please take us to the place and show us the things we need to see, so we can say, “Oh, Lord, I want what You want. I want the whole thing. I do not just want to see the picture; I want to be in the picture.”
I want to have what You want me to have. I want to be with my brothers and sisters. I do not want to be complete by myself. I want to be with my brothers and sisters. I want to be in union with them. I want to be with them together, glorified with You. We ask in Jesus’ name.