Unity
Ephesians: God’s Riches In Christ, Part 7
Ephesians 4:1-16
We’re in a series on the book of Ephesians.
Today we’re going to be looking at Ephesians Chapter 4.
In August of 1987, there was suppose to have been a world changing event.
According to the New Age movement it was the time for a tremendous harmonic convergence.
There was some unusual coordination of the planets and their elliptical orbits around the sun and according to the new age leaders.
this arrangement of the planets would continue until 1992 to prepare us for visitors from another world in the next century.
So New Agers gathered on Mount Shasta in California, at a canyon in New Mexico, Enchanted Rock in Texas, Serpent Mound in Ohio, the great pyramids of Gaza in Egypt, and at Glastonbury, the home of King Arthur in England.
According to the New Agers leadership, at least 144,000 people had to grab hands and hum at the same time.
If we had done that, they believed it would tune us in to the new vibrations of this dynamic convergence. Obviously, their predictions never came true.
And this whole story would be funny except that it really tells us something about people in our society today
who don’t know God.
There is a tragic, empty longing that people have
to belong to a group of people that are joined together in the pursuit of something better,
joined together in seeking a better life.
Whether its 144,000 new agers joining hands and humming,
or whether it’s the Falun Gong cult in China
that’s causing the Chinese government so much trouble,
or whether its Moslems in the middle east,
who have joined together in a holy war against western society.
People just long to be a part of something bigger than themselves,
that adds meaning to their lives.
You see,
our world is divided in every way.
We’re divided racially, economically, politically, socially, religiously
and every other way you can think of.
So these New Agers dreamed of being unified, caught up and swept away in the force caused by this convergence of the planets.
Jesus also spoke about being unified,
caught up and swept away by a new force for harmony.
But it was not a dynamic convergence of the planets, Jesus talked about being
caught up and swept away, by the powerful flow of love that sweeps back and forth between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Jesus described this force,
in a prayer he prayed.
On the last night before Jesus went to the cross, He began to do what He now does continually for us.
A few hours before His arrest, Jesus began to pray for all of us.
We read about it in John 17:20-26, Jesus is praying, just before he was arrested and taken to be crucified.
Now what so you think Christ prayed for in the final moments before His arrest?
If I was Jesus,
I’m sure I’d be praying for strength, to face the crucifixion,
and I’d be praying that
the disciples would support me, that not run away at the first chance,
that they’d remember what I taught them,
and that they’d be bold in telling others about God.
Do you know what is the last thing Jesus prayed for?
He prayed for believers unity,
He prayed for Christians to be in unity, so that their unity would make such an impact on the world,
that the world would believe that God had sent Jesus, his Son.
John 17:22-23 ---- Message
Jesus is praying for believers here, and says ---- The same glory you gave me, I gave them, so they’ll be as unified and together as we are — I in them and you in me. Then they’ll be mature in this oneness, and give the godless world evidence that you’ve sent me and loved them in the same way you’ve loved me.
Jesus knew that Christians could never make a lasting impact on the world unless spiritually the world saw in that church a oneness, a unity.
This was a big deal,
both to Jesus and Paul.
In Ephesians chapter 4,
Paul talks about what brings unity to the church.
The whole chapter is really about creating unity.
vs. 3 sums it up, Paul tells them,
Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit, and bind yourselves together with peace.
So Paul takes up where Jesus left off,
and says,
we need to always live in unity
and peace toward each other ---
and now here’s some practical ways to do it.
Paul says, first
UNITY COMES WHEN:
We lead a life worthy of our calling.
vs. 1-3
Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit, and bind yourselves together with peace.
We are to live with humility.
with gentleness.
with patience.
making allowances for each others faults.
Does that describe your life?
I’ll be honest,
there’s a lot of times when I’m not very gentle
or patient with people,
but I’m learning, I’m growing,
And when I do it right,
God always makes things turn out so much better.
About 7 years ago,
our church was just starting out, 90-100 people,
There was a group that wasn’t really happy with our direction,
I don’t even remember what the issue was,
but I knew that they were going to bring it up at a leaders meeting we had scheduled.
And in the days before the meeting,
I thought about how to handle the discussion.
And I was positive that I was right,
so I just wanted to go there and convince everyone that they were wrong and I was right.
Then one day when I was praying – I felt like God told me to
say nothing at the meeting, just listen.
(really out of character for me).
The meeting started, and I just listened –
And pretty soon they noticed,
Ken is not acting normal,
he’s listening to us.
Maybe he’s sick or something.
So they finally asked Ken, why aren’t you saying anything?
I told them.
I just felt like God told me to listen to you,
and not say anything.
First of all they were shocked
I’m not sure if it was because I’d heard from God,
or that I was able to keep my mouth shut.
It completely defused the whole situation,
and the argument basically disappeared.
I never had to argue with anybody about it,
God just solved it.
So I’ve learned some lessons about dealing with people,
with humility, gentleness, and patience.
That brings unity.
It brings peace to our relationships.
Unity comes when: we live with humility and gentleness.
with patience.
making allowances for each others faults.
2nd, Unity comes when
We focus on our common beliefs.
vs. 4-6
We are all one body, we have the same Spirit, and we have all been called to the same glorious future. [5] There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, [6] and there is only one God and Father, who is over us all and in us all and living through us all.
One body
One Spirit
One glorious future
One Lord
One faith
One baptism
One God and Father
Paul is saying here,
as believers,
we’ve got some things in common that are really important.
And he lists them here.
He says,
we’ve got things that we all believe,
and those are the things that hold us together, in unity.
But you know what?
there are thousands of doctrinal issues
that Paul doesn’t mention.
Paul doesn’t say you have to agree on everything,
he’s actually got a pretty short list.
In fact,
if you think you have to agree on everything,
that destroys unity.
If you and I or other Christians,
disagree on some minor issues of our faith,
that’s OK.
It shouldn’t destroy our unity.
Psychology Today ran a story about…
Prince Martinette of Grenada, who was an heir to the Spanish crown about 200 years ago, but was convicted of treason.
He was sentenced to life in solitary confinement in Madrid’s ancient prison called "The Place of the Skull."
The prince was given only one book to read the entire time: the Bible.
With nothing else to read, he read the Bible hundreds and hundreds of times. He knew it backwards and forwards.
After 33 years of imprisonment, he died. When they came to clean out his cell, they found some notes he had written using nails to mark the soft stone of the prison walls.
The notes were things like: Psalm 118:8 is the middle verse of the Bible; Ezra 7:21 contains all the letters of the alphabet except the letter J;
the ninth verse of the eighth chapter of Esther is the longest verse in the Bible; no word or name more than six syllables can be found in the Bible.
There were many others of these odd trivia facts,
written all over the walls.
This guy spent 33 years of his life studying the greatest book of all time. Yet all he learned was trivia.
From all we know, he never made any spiritual commitment to Christ. He simply became an expert at Bible trivia.
A lot of church people are experts at bible trivia.
They know all the doctrines.
They can argue with you all day long.
They just don’t do any of it.
They don’t put their knowledge into practice.
They don’t actually go out and love people,
and serve people,
and do the things Jesus did.
They just study about it,
and argue about it.
A few years ago we spent a couple months as a church
on Saturday nights,
teaching through the book of Revelations,
Of course there are many different interpretations on what Revelations actually means,
when the millennium is,
how the rapture works, what all the symbols mean, etc.
One evening I’m teaching on one of these areas,
and a guy who wasn’t from our church was there,
and he stood up and interrupted me,
and said,
I don’t agree with you.
I think your wrong about that.
I think he wanted to get in an argument right there.
But I just said,
that’s great,
you’re welcome to disagree with me about that,
because this is one of those areas where lots of Christians disagree,
I wouldn’t argue with him, I think he was disappointed.
But this wasn’t an area that was worth causing division over.
Unity comes when we focus on our common beliefs,
the crucial beliefs that bring us together,
not the silly little issues that separate us.
3rd, Unity comes when:
We all use our gifts.
vs. 7-12
However, he has given each one of us a special gift according to the generosity of Christ…. He is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ,
The bible tells us,
each of us has been given at least one spiritual gift.
This list here is just one of the lists of spiritual gifts in the bible,
there’s several different lists, with about 15 or 20 specific gifts mentioned.
This list is sometimes called the 5-fold ministries,
because it lists 5 gifts
that all have to do with leading a church body.
And you won’t necessarily have one of these 5 gifts,
but the point is,
God has given you at least one gift.
And I want you to notice the purpose of these gifts.
vs. 12
Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ,
All of us need to be equipped to do God’s work.
and we are to use our gifts to build up the body,
to build up the church.
Anybody here ever seen the giant redwood trees in California?
They’re amazing. They are the largest living things on earth and the tallest trees in the world.
Some of them are 300 feet high and more than 2,500 years old,
which means they were around before Jesus came.
You would think that trees that large would have a tremendous root system, reaching down hundreds of feet into the earth.
But they don’t. Redwoods actually have a very shallow root system.
You ask,
well how do they survive so long,
through storms and tornado’s and floods.
Its because the roots of those redwood trees are all intertwined together. They’re tied in with each other; they’re interlocked.
In order for a storm to blow down a redwood tree,
it would have to blow down the whole forest,
because they’re locked together.
That’s why,
when the storms come and the winds blow the redwoods still stand,
for thousands of years.
Because they support and sustain each other. They need one another to survive.
And so do we!
When we become a part of God’s family, we are bound together in a community of faith.
Belonging to Christ means
we belong to each other.
And when we all start to use the gifts that God has given each of us,
and we each do our part in the church,
in God’s family,
then its like we’re locking our roots together,
just like those giant redwoods,
we’re intertwining our roots,
and when we do that,
nothing can possibly knock us down.
In order to knock one of us down,
they have to knock down the whole church.
So unity comes from using our gifts.
4th, unity comes when
We decide to no longer be children.
vs. 13-16
…until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ. Then we will no longer be like children, forever changing our minds about what we believe because someone has told us something different or because someone has cleverly lied to us and made the lie sound like the truth. Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. Under his direction, the whole body is fitted together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
Notice
Then we will no longer be like children…
Now there’s a lot of great things about children,
but here Paul is talking about immaturity,
where people change their minds continually
every time they hear some new teaching.
Paul says,
you need to grow up.
And he lists 4 ways you do that --- Holding to the truth in love.
Becoming more like Christ.
Doing our own special work.
Helping the other parts grow.
Those are the things that create a strong, united church.
I’m sure you all heard on the news a few weeks ago about the nine miners who were trapped for three days 240 feet underground in a water-filled mine shaft.
CNN interviewed them afterward.
The miners said that “they decided early on they were either going to live or die as a group."
The 55 degree water threatened to kill them slowly by hypothermia, so according to the CNN report "When one would get cold, the other eight would huddle around the person and warm that person, and when another person got cold, the favor was returned." "Everybody had strong moments," miner Harry B. Mayhugh told reporters after being released from Somerset Hospital. "But any certain time maybe one guy got down, and then the rest pulled together. And then that guy would get back up, and maybe someone else would feel a little weaker, but it was a team effort. That’s the only way it could have been." That is a great picture of the body of Christ.
All of us have times of strength,
when we can help others,
but all of us also go through trials and problems,
when we need the help of others.
And when we’re all pulling together,
and supporting each other,
we can overcome anything.
Now that sounds great, doesn’t it,
but how many of you know that,
that is not the way that churches have historically operated
a lot of the time.
J. Gordon Melton is a Methodist minister with an unusual hobby. His hobby is denomination hunting. He literally scours the country trying to count the number of major denominations in the United States.
As of a few years ago he had counted 1,187 denominations in the U.S.
Some of them are pretty interesting.
One of them is "The Church of the Kennedy Worshippers." It is a church which actually believes that it can pray to the late President John F. Kennedy, and can be cured both of congenital defects as well as of terminal diseases. Then there’s "The Church of the Ministry of Universal Wisdom." They look for flying saucers to come. And then there’s "The Church of What’s Happening Now." It’s obviously a more contemporary church. Another denomination is called Two by two’s, not to be confused with the 4 square denomination.
I was raised in a Baptist church ----
72 different denominations calling themselves Baptist. Two Seed in the Spirit Predestinarian Baptist, Seventh-Day Baptist, General Baptist, Regular Baptist, Missionary Baptist, and the list goes on and on.
Another of my favorite denominations is ----
Fire baptized holiness church of god
How did most of these denominations come about?
Through church splits.
And every time a church would split off,
they’d add something to their name,
to identify them as the one true church.
So you end up with denominations like,
Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church of America.
(actual name…)
And of course,
church splits aren’t just limited to Christian churches.
Church of Jesus Christ of the latter day saints (Mormon)
True and Living Church …
Reorganized,
You get the idea.
We need unity.
And we need it not just within our church,
but we need it between different churches.
So I want to quickly cover 3 ways,
that we can help bring unity
to the churches all around us.
3 ways, there’s a a Focus, a Practice, and a Prayer
First the focus
WE BRING UNITY TO THE “CHURCH” IN A CITY WHEN WE:
Focus on the absolutes of scripture.
Absolutes are the unchanging foundations of our faith.
For example,
That Jesus is the son of God,
that God is a trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit,
yet he’s one God.
That the Bible is God’s word,
that our eternal life is based on Jesus death on the cross and resurrection.
Those are absolutes.
And the truth is,
almost every church holds to those beliefs,
both protestant and catholic churches would agree on those.
The next circle is Interpretations.
An interpretation is an explanation and application of the scripture.
When we read a scripture, and say,
now this is what it means,
that’s an interpretation.
Next are deductions.
Deductions come from looking at several passages of scripture,
and drawing conclusions.
Finally there are preferences,
which are things like,
what style of music do we have,
or how long is our service.
Now, inside our church, I teach absolutes,
and interpretations,
and deductions,
and we follow our preferences.
Outside our church,
we focus on the absolutes,
and if others differ on the rest,
that’s OK.
A few weeks ago I was talking with a pastor in town,
who told me he doesn’t believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven.
Well, that’s an absolute – Jesus clearly said, I’m the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except through me.
There’s no interpretation needed for that.
So I couldn’t agree with this pastor on that, and I tried to tactfully tell him why I thought Jesus was the only way. That’s an absolute.
A couple weeks ago I also met with some other pastors,
and invited them to our conference with Mark Dupont,
but when I mentioned the word prophet to them,
a couple of them looked at me like I had 2 heads.
Because in their denomination,
they don’t believe that God still gives people the gift of prophecy nowadays.
Well that’s something I’m not going to put a lot of weight on, because its not an absolute.
When St Peter meets you at the pearly gates,
and you want to go inside, he’s not going to be asking you, did you ever prophesy?
So First, we focus on the absolutes ---
2nd is something to practice,
WE BRING UNITY TO THE “CHURCH” IN A CITY WHEN WE:
Practice supportive speech and actions toward others.
I doubt that any of you have ever heard me talk negatively about any church in our community.
For one thing, most of the pastors are friends of mine.
I’ve gone out of my way to get to know other pastors,
plus I’m the president of the ministers association in Hamilton
so pastors gather here for lunch every other month.
But even if they weren’t my friends,
my goal is to build up and support other churches.
Because God blesses me, and blesses our church, when I do that.
You see, there’s really only one church in Butler County,
it’s the church of Jesus Christ.
That church just happens to meet in a lot of different buildings.
In about my 2nd year as pastor,
when I knew almost no other pastors in town,
I got a call from another pastor named Sonny Hurd.
He was trying to coordinate a prayer rally downtown.
And as I talked to Sonny,
I found out that he had just started his church,
they were meeting in a rented building,
had about 50 people,
and very little money.
I just felt led to ask him,
is there anything that your church needs?
- sound board and speakers.
I told him, maybe there’s something we can do.
I’ll give you a call back.
…….gave him a sound board ($500) and loaned him for a couple years, some speakers and an electric piano.
And that was the start of a close relationship between our churches that has paid off ever since.
Now they help us in our homeless ministry,
we got them started with a food pantry that’s the biggest on the west side of Hamilton,
and they really helped us when they rented and then bought our old church building,
allowing us to move to this larger building.
But it all started through a simple supportive action,
that I took with a new church in town.
Anybody seen the movie Lord of the Rings?
If you’ve seen it, you know that its about a group of individuals
called "the fellowship of the ring,"
Their quest is to destroy the power of the Dark Lord by destroying his ring.
The members of this fellowship of the ring
are different in nearly every way—
There’s an elf,
a dwarf,
a wizard,
3 hobbits,
and 2 men.
So they’re different
racially, physically, temperamentally—
In fact the only place they have unity, is in their opposition of the Dark Lord.
Well there’s a section in the book that they didn’t include in the movie, where a heated conflict breaks out among the fellowship.
Axes are drawn. Bows are bent. Harsh words are spoken. Disaster nearly strikes the small band.
When peace at last prevails, one of the wisest among them observes, "Indeed, in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him."
There’s a lot of truth in that
that churches today need to hear.
Because even today, the Dark Lord—Satan—
shows his power when there is conflict and division among believers.
That’s why one of our top priorities has to be unity.
WE BRING UNITY TO THE “CHURCH” IN A CITY WHEN WE:
Focus on the absolutes of scripture.
Practice supportive speech and actions toward others.
(Focus/practice – here’s how you pray)
3rd WE BRING UNITY TO THE “CHURCH” IN A CITY WHEN WE:
Pray to “raise the water level of the Holy Spirit”.
Let me explain.
Say you go up to Lake Erie,
and go to one of the marina’s there,
that has hundreds of boats moored in the water.
And say you watched all afternoon while the tide came in.
As the water level rises,
do some of the boats go up
and others go down?
No, they all rise with the water level.
Different cities have different water levels of the Holy Spirit.
In some cities,
there are large numbers of committed Christians
attending church every week.
In some cities the percentage reaches 40 percent.
In other cities,
and you see this especially in the Northeast US,
and also parts of the northwest,
that percentage goes as low as 5 percent.
Based on my knowledge of the greater Hamilton area,
we’re somewhere in the middle,
with about 20% of people in church on a Sunday morning.
There’s about 100,000 people in the greater Hamilton area,
and about 130 churches.
If the average attendance is 150,
that means about 20,000 people in church,
or about 20%.
That 20% is what people who study this kind of thing
call the water level of the Holy Spirit.
Now what do you think would happen,
if the water level in Butler County went from 20% to 40%,
and you have over 20,000 additional
committed Christians serving God,
helping the poor and homeless,
giving away cokes on hot days,
Loving their neighbors,
showing compassion to everyone around them.
Do you think that would change this county?
You better believe it.
Think about it,
if the water level of the Holy Spirit
in the greater Hamilton area,
went up by just 5%, from 20 to 25%,
that would mean an additional 5,000 people attending church every Sunday morning.
Where would they all go?
No one church could handle near that many.
What would happen is,
every church would grow,
every church would be blessed.
What’s the point?
When you pray for our community,
pray the God would raise the water level of the Holy Spirit,
and bring many many people into his family,
so that every church is blessed,
and every church grows.
Because
WE BRING UNITY TO THE “CHURCH” IN OUR CITY WHEN WE:
Focus on the absolutes of scripture.
Practice supportive speech and actions toward others.
and Pray to “raise the water level of the Holy Spirit”.
As we close, let me ask you,
Are you a unifier?
Because of your influence are people brought back together, or driven apart?
Think about your family,
your friendships,
at this church,
or at your work.
Would the people around you say,
he or she brings conflicts and arguments?
or would they say that you bring unity.
Lets stand for prayer –
