ONE GOD
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 2/18/2018
If you’re just joining us, we are coming to the end of our seven-week series on the ties that bind us together in Christian unity. As I’ve said every week throughout this series, Jesus passionately prayed that his church—everyone who would ever believe in him—would be one! That’s what Jesus wants for the church. That’s what God and the Holy Spirit want for the church. And, hopefully, that’s what each of us want for the church. But desiring harmony and oneness, and actually achieving it are two different things. Often differences among people can lead to disagreements, division and disharmony.
However, the more points of agreement among members of a group, the more they will be unified, the better they will perform, and the less likely they will be to fight among themselves. That’s why Paul gives us a built-in list of “ones” that can bind believers together in harmony and unity. Let’s read this passage one last time: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body (the church) and one Spirit (the Holy Spirit), just as you were called to one hope when you were called (the hope of heaven); one Lord (Jesus Christ), one faith (trusting fully in Jesus), one baptism (You’ll recall, the purpose of baptism is the washing away of sin. But baptism also pictures the death burial and resurrection of Jesus. And the true power of baptism is not in the water, but in the Holy Spirit who cleanses us from sin and gives us new life in Christ.); one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:3-6 NIV).
The final tie that binds believers together is God himself; specifically, God the Father. We’ve already talked about Spirit of God and the Son of God. Now, as his final point of commonality, Paul reminds us that there is One God!
In this brief statement, Paul mentions three defining characteristics or attributes of God that I’d like to highlight this morning. First, Paul says that the God who binds us together is an Abba God.
• AN ABBA GOD
Specifically, Paul calls God the “Father of all.” The Bible has many names and descriptors for God. He’s call the everlasting God, a consuming fire, the Almighty, the Most High, the Ancient of Days. But perhaps the most surprising and spellbinding is Father.
Even though God is shown to be the Creator of the Cosmos and the Lord Most high, he also describes Himself as a Father. In fact, Paul elsewhere takes this concept a step further, when he writes, “And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, ‘Abba, Father’” (Galatians 4:6 NLT).
The name “Abba Father” is one of the most significant names of God in understanding how He relates to people. The word Abba is an Aramaic word that would most closely be translated as “Daddy.” It was a common term that young children would use to address their fathers. It signifies the close, intimate relationship of a father to his child, as well as the childlike trust that a young child puts in his “daddy.” The fact that God identifies himself as our Abba Father conveys two wonderful connotations: (1) that God created us and (2) that he cares for us.
People don’t just pop into existence and babies aren’t actually delivered by a stork. Rather, we know that we were created by our parents. But even more than our biological fathers, our heavenly Father had a hand in creating us. David writes, “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it” (Psalm 139:13-14 NLT).
Despite what the world tells you or how you may feel from time to time, you are not an accident. You’re not a fluke of nature or a bi-product of irresponsible parents. You were handmade by God Himself. God prescribed every single detail of your body. He deliberately chose your facial features, the color of your skin, your hair, and every other detail. He custom-made you the way He wanted you. Your life is a miracle. You were fashioned and formed by the God of all creation. He’s big enough to breathe out stars, yet intricate enough to fashion together the trillions of cells that make up every facet of who you are.
And God’s Fatherhood doesn’t stop at your creation. He’s not a deadbeat dad or absentee father. In his sermon on Mars Hill, Paul says, “This God is the One who gives life, breath, and everything else to people” (Act 17:25 NCV). In other words, God didn’t just set the world in motion and then leave us to fend for ourselves. He cares for us. He continues to be involved in the affairs of human life. He provides for our needs. He lacks nothing and gives everything!
God loves all of us. The very fact that he would call himself our Abba Father conveys his love. John had it right when he said, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1 NIV). Seeing God as our Abba Father, our caring Creator, helps us relate to him. Our relationship with God parallels that of a parent and child in many ways. God creates us and cares for us, but he also sets boundaries for us, gives us instructions, and expects us to love and respect him. By the way, since we’re all children of God, that means we’re all family and we should treat each other that way. So first, God is an Abba God—a Father to us all.
Furthermore, Paul says the One God is an Amazing God.
• AN AMAZING GOD
As Paul continues, he says there is “one God and Father of all, who is over all…” (Ephesians 4:6). Other translations say “above all.” Here, Paul is communicating God’s transcendence. He is greater than, more than, above and beyond all that is or was or ever will be.
A while back, a Sunday School teacher asked her class to look at TV commercials and see if they could use them in some way to communicate ideas about God. Here are some of the results:
GOD is like a FORD ... He’s built tough.
GOD is like COKE ... He’s the real thing, baby.
GOD is like ALLSTATE ... You’re in good hands with Him.
GOD is like TIDE ... He gets the stains out that others leave behind.
GOD is like HALLMARK CARDS ... He cares enough to send His very best.
The truth is, though—no matter how many metaphors we might find, there is nothing in history, or humanity, or the ages, or nature that offers us anything to compare to him or understand him. God is simply uncontainable. Untamable. Unchangeable. Incomparable. Indescribable. God is utterly amazing!
A few years ago, I read interview with Christ Tomlin. In it, he talked about the song How Great is Our God. When Chris sat down to write that song, he began with those words—the chorus—how great is our God. And, at first, that’s all he was able to come up with. He said he didn’t really know where to go from there. He prayed to God, “…this is all I have Lord, there’s no other words I can summon in the English language to describe how great you are.” For a long time, he just sat there with those words, like a question hanging over his head that he couldn’t find an answer for.
Who could blame him, really? How do you describe the greatness of God!?
Eventually, Chris did finish the song—borrowing a whole panoply of majestic and mysterious imagery from the pages of Scripture to try to capture God’s visage. Be even that song, as wonderful as it is, doesn’t do God justice.
Take Isaiah 55 for example: “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NLT).
This passage speaks directly to God’s transcendence. His nature and plan are infinitely beyond human understanding. God is infinitely different from us in His thoughts and ways. Job understood this. Speaking of all the wonders God has wrought on earth and throughout the heavens, Job says, “And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?” (Job 26:14 NIV). Even today with our ever-expanding knowledge of the universe and the atom, we’re still just seeing the outer fringe of God’s works. His mind, might and majesty are beyond comprehension.
Thanks to His own gracious revelation of Himself, we can understand God in part, but we can never fully comprehend Him, or even a single one of His qualities. There will always be more of His wisdom to understand, more of His power, more of His holiness, more of His love. We will never fathom Him, and we will never tire of Him. Through all eternity, we will look upon Him and marvel at the endlessly creative, wonderfully gracious, uniquely righteous, timelessly beautiful, unsearchably glorious, infinitely loving, amazing God who is over and above all!
Finally, Paul also tells us that the One God is an accessible God.
• AN ACCESSIBLE GOD
In the last part of the passage, Paul uses two phrases to describe God’s accessibility. He says God “is through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6 NIV). This means God is actively present and pervasive in all of his creation. This speaks to God’s availability and accessibility to every person, in every place, at every point. David understood this when he wrote: “Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” (Psalm 139:7-8 NIV).
That reminds me of a little boy named Doug. One night, Doug was sitting on the porch with his mom, looking at a full moon. Little Doug asked his mom if God was on the moon. She said, “God is everywhere.” Little Doug thought for a moment, then asked, “Is God in my tummy?” Not knowing where these questions were leading, his mother said, “Well, yes, sort of…” Then Doug declared, “I think God wants some milk and cookies.”
God really is everywhere. We call it omnipresence. As our Father, God wants to have a relationship with us, and so makes himself available to all of us wherever we are. Again, in his sermon on Mars Hill, Paul speaks of God creating humanity and deciding when and where they would live, then he says, “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being” (Act 17:27-28 NIV).
Paul wanted his audience to understand that God was and is not only knowable, but near. We live and move and exist in him. Wherever you are, wherever you go, God is there. But he wants us to seek him, reach for him, and find him.
If you are sincerely seeking God, then God will make his presence known to you. He promises that over and over in Scripture. He promised the Israelites, “There you will look for the Lord your God, and if you search for him with all your heart, you will find him” (Deuteronomy 4:29 GNT). Jesus’ younger brother, James, said simply, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8 ESV).
There’s a common thread through these verses. In each one of them, God expects us to search for him—to seek him with all our heart, to reach out for him, to draw near to him—and when we do that he will draw near to us, we will find him, and we’ll realize that he was right there all along.
Conclusion:
Christians differ and disagree about many things. We come from different backgrounds and different walks of life. We have different perspectives and different preferences. The fact that disagreements arise shouldn’t surprise us. After all, it’s been happening since the early days of the church. Just read the book of Acts. But for all our differences and disagreements, they don’t have to result in division or disharmony. Paul gives us these seven strong strands to bind believers together—seven ones that unite all of us: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all and in all.
The same God who created you, also created me. Each one of us live and move and exist in him. He’s your Father and my Father; your God and my God. He’s the ultimate super-glue that joins us together in a spirit of oneness.
As children of God, let’s work together to maintain the unity of the Spirit and together we can answer the prayer of Jesus that all those who believe in him may someday be one.
Invitation:
As we bring this series to a close, if you don’t already know God as your Abba Father, I want to encourage you to seek him today. Reach out to him and you’ll find that he isn’t far from you. If you need some help drawing near to him, I’d love to help. You can pull me aside after church, call me at home, or better yet, come forward while we stand and sing.
