The Call of Believers
New Hope Community Pastor Bob Briggs Ephesians 4:1-6
As Believers in Jesus Christ we have a call upon our life, a call to walk in unity. Lets read these six verses as we look at the main point of this message…
I. The Call to walk worthy.
The Apostle Paul writes, "As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit— just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
There are 5 ways Paul points to which will cause a believer to walk worthy of the Calling of God. The first is through…
1. Humility. How do we learn to walk in humility? It is reported that the following edition of the Book of Genesis was discovered in the Dead Seal Scrolls.
And Adam said, "Lord, when I was in the garden, you walked with me everyday. Now I do not see you anymore. I am lonesome here and it is difficult for me to remember how much you love me."
And God said, "No problem! I will create a companion for you that will be with you forever and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so that you will know I love you, even when you cannot see me.
Regardless of how selfish and childish and unlovable you may be this new companion will accept you as you are and will love you as I do, in spite of yourself."
And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam. And it was a good animal. And God was pleased.
And the new animal was pleased to be with Adam and he wagged his tail. And Adam said, "But Lord, I have already named all the animals in the Kingdom and all the good names are taken and I cannot think of a name for this new animal."
And God said, "No problem! Because I have created this new animal to be a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own name, and you will call him DOG."
And Dog lived with Adam and was a companion to him and loved him. And Adam was comforted. And God was pleased. And Dog was content and wagged his tail.
After a while, it came to pass that Adam’s guardian angel came to the Lord and said, "Lord, Adam has become filled with pride. He struts and preens like a peacock and he believes he is worthy of adoration. Dog has indeed taught him that he is loved, but no one has taught him humility."
And the Lord said, "No problem! I will create for him a companion who will be with him forever and who will see him as he is. The companion will remind him of his limitations, so he will know that he is not worthy of adoration."
And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam. And Cat would not obey Adam.
And when Adam gazed into Cat’s eyes, he was reminded that he was not the Supreme Being. And Adam learned humility.
And God was pleased. And Adam was greatly improved.
And Cat did not care one-way or the other.
Okay, now that I have all the dog lovers with me and the cat lovers composing their emails, let talk for a moment about humility. In the Greek there is not a word for humility until Christians coined it. In fact, humility in the ancient world was something to be despised. Bernard, one of the early church leaders, not the dog, said of humility, “It is the virtue by which a man becomes conscious of his own unworthiness, in consequence of the truest knowledge of himself.”
When we compare ourselves to the light and life of Christ, we see how far short we fall from the God standard and in that light we become humbled. When we compare ourselves with others, we can be trapped in self-elevation that is why we need to live by the God standard. Humility puts Christ first, others second and we last.
Romans 12:3 teaches us that “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”
To walk worthy of the call we are to walk in humility, and second, to walk in…
2. Meekness. Say this with me, meekness is not weakness: (meekness is not weakness). We have a tendency to equate meekness as weakness, which is not true. Matthew 11:29 calls Jesus a meek and lowly man, but I would not consider him weak. In the Greek meekness is used to describe a colt, which has been broken, a soft wind or a soothing medicine. Meekness could be described as power under control. Greek Philosopher Aristotle described meekness as the mean between being too angry and never being angry at all. The man who is meek is the man who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time. To put that in another way, the man who is meek is the man who is kindled by indignation at the wrongs and the sufferings of others, but is never moved to anger by the wrongs and the insults he himself has to bear. So, then, the man who is meek is the man who is always angry at the right time but never angry at the wrong time. Thirdly, believers are to walk with…
3. Longsuffering. This can be broken down into two other words…
· Persistency
· Patience
We are to be persistent, to have a spirit that never gives in, enduring until the end to receive the reward of God, and to be patient knowing we have the power to take revenge for the ill caused in this world but we have the patience to act prudently.
One commentary illustrates it this way; longsuffering is like a puppy, it is often possible to see a puppy and a very large dog together. The puppy yaps at the big dog, worries him, bites him, and all the time the big dog, which could annihilate the puppy with one snap of his teeth, bears the puppy’s impertinence with a forbearing dignity. Long-suffering is the spirit, which bears insult and injury without bitterness and without complaint. It is the spirit, which can suffer unpleasant people with graciousness and fools without irritation.
The fourth way we are to walk is in…
4. Love. I just read a kid’s letter to his mom from camp, which he sent with love…it read, Letter From Camp
Dear Mom,
Our scoutmaster told us to all write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and worried. We are OK. Only 1 of our tents and 2 sleeping bags got washed away. Luckily, none of us got drowned because we were all up on the mountain looking for Chad when it happened. Oh yes, please call Chad’s mother and tell her he is OK. He can’t write because of the cast. I got to ride in one of the search & rescue jeeps. It was neat. We never would have found him in the dark if it hadn’t been for the lightning.
Scoutmaster Webb got mad at Chad for going on a hike alone without telling anyone. Chad said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he probably didn’t hear him. Did you know that if you put gas on a fire, the gas can will blow up? The wet wood still didn’t burn, but one of our tents did. Also some of our clothes. John is going to look weird until his hair grows back.
We will be home on Saturday if Scoutmaster Webb gets the car fixed. It wasn’t his fault about the wreck. The brakes worked OK when we left. Scoutmaster Webb said that with a car that old you have to expect something to break down; that’s probably why he can’t get insurance on it. We think it’s a neat car. He doesn’t care if we get it dirty, and if it’s hot,
Sometimes he lets us ride on the tailgate. It gets pretty hot with 10 people in a car. He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the highway patrolman stopped and talked to us.
Scoutmaster Webb is a neat guy. Don’t worry he is a good driver. In fact, he is teaching Terry how to drive. But he only lets him drive on the mountain roads where there isn’t any traffic. All we ever see up there are logging trucks.
This morning all of the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out in the lake. Scoutmaster Webb wouldn’t let me because I can’t swim and Chad was afraid he would sink because of his cast, so he let us take the canoe across the lake. It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood. Scoutmaster Webb isn’t crabby like some scoutmasters. He didn’t even get mad about the life jackets. He has to spend a lot of time working on the car so we are trying not to cause him any trouble.
Guess what? We have all passed our first aid merit badges. When Dave dove in the lake and cut his arm, we got to see how a tourniquet works. Also Wade and I threw up. Scoutmaster Webb said it probably was just food poisoning from the leftover chicken, he said they got sick that way with the food they ate in prison. I’m so glad he got out and became our scoutmaster. He said he sure figured out how to get things done better while he was
Doing his time. I have to go now. We are going into town to mail our letters and buy bullets.
Don’t worry about anything. We are fine.
Love, Cole
P.S. How long has it been since I had a tetanus shot?
For many, love is just like the closing line in this letter, love Cole, we attach love at the end of our life but do we really get to the heart of love? Paul is telling us to walk out our life in agape love, unconditional love, a love that says no matter what offense someone else does, I will still love that person, and after reading that letter from camp, maybe Cole wants his mom to have that kind of love toward Scoutmaster Webb. As a believer we are never to seek revenge, not to have bitterness toward another but to always seek the best in that person. Probably of the 5 calls of a worthy walk the hardest for most.
The last means to walk worthy of the call is in…
5. Peace. Look at what James had to say concerning peace in James 3:13-4:10, “13 who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. 16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18 Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
Submit Yourselves to God
4 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
Hopefully you get the understanding of peace. When we have humility, meekness, Long-suffering, love and peace, then we will have the basis for Unity this section of Ephesians 4 points to…because of time I am going to run through these quickly and you can take a more in-depth look during your community group time this week…
Basis for Unity…
· One Body. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you make up the Body. The Body meets in different locations, and each Christian is expected to be part of the local assembly.
· One Spirit. There is one Holy Spirit of God which dwells in each believer.
· One Hope of Our Calling. This refers to the believers expectation and faith that Christ will return for His church.
· One Lord. His name is Jesus Christ. The Bible says one day every knee will bow and tongue confess He is Lord, for believers, our life is a reflection of our confession.
· One Faith. As Christians, we might have difference of opinions concerning doctrine, but we have unity and agreement in one Faith, and that Faith is in Jesus Christ.
· One Baptism. John said to repent and be baptized for the Kingdom of God is at hand. We are baptized into the Spirit of God when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.
· One God. He is the Father of all, who is above all, through all and in all.
These 7 things are the major reasons Christians can be united in unity. There are issues where believers can agree to disagree but these 7 allow no room for disagreement if we are to have unity.
Looking at this day, we need to do a self-examination and see how we size up in our walk and in our unity, remembering the One, Christ, can work through our faults and bring about the perfection we find in Him. Let us pray.
