United We Grow Series

United We Grow

Ephesians 4:1-6

Rev. Brian Bill

February 24-25, 2024

On Thursday, I spoke at SecondWinders and decided to honor Pastor Ed for his nearly 45 years of faithful ministry at Edgewood. Get this. Pastor Ed has now served longer than Pastor Brown, who served as Senior Pastor here for 44 years!

As part of this tribute, I asked people to share three words to describe him. One person couldn’t stop at three, so he sent in 51! Our office manager Marie compiled this list and removed all duplicates, leaving well over 170 adjectives! That’s why I entitled my devotional, “There is No One Like Pastor Ed!”

It’s very obvious that Pastor Ed walks the talk. His behavior flows out of his beliefs and his deeds find their source in his doctrine. In other words, Ed’s practice is based on knowing his position in Christ.

My only challenge with Ed these past 10 years is trying to keep him awake during the sermon. Shortly after I arrived at Edgewood, I was preaching my heart out one weekend and I noticed he had fallen asleep with his head on his wife Sheila’s shoulder. I leaned forward and mouthed these words, “Sheila, can you wake Pastor Ed up?” Sheila simply smiled and replied, “You put him to sleep. You wake him up!”

Some time ago, someone took this picture of Ed catching some shut-eye during the sermon. I earnestly urged him to stay awake by telling him, “Momma always told me you shouldn’t nap when the preacher is preaching!” It didn’t work.

As we come to our passage in Ephesians today, we’ll see how the emphasis shifts from doctrine to duty as Paul urges us to walk the talk like Pastor Ed does. Notice how Ephesians 4:1 begins: “I therefore…” Paul is saying: “Because of what you now know to be true, this is what you must do.” How we behave in life will always be determined by what we believe.

In the first half of the book, there are only two commands; while in the second half, we’ll discover over sixty commands as he moves from exposition to exhortation, from the indicative to the imperative, from orthodoxy (right belief) to orthopraxy (right behavior), from principle to practice. Paul follows a similar pattern in Romans when he spends eleven chapters describing doctrine and in chapter 12 introduces our duty: “I appeal to you therefore…to present your bodies as a living sacrifice…”

Another helpful way to understand Ephesians is by considering three words: sit, walk, and stand. One author says, “The Christian life consists of sitting with Christ, walking by Him, and standing in Him.” We sit in Christ, we walk worthy in the world, and we take our stand against Satan.

• Sit (1-3). We must first sit or trust in our position in Christ. Ephesians 2:6: “And raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Christianity does not begin with DO, but with DONE.

• Walk (4-5). Only after we have established our position in Christ, can we walk it out in practice. We see this in at least five places in the second half of the book.

- 4:1: “I urge you to walk in a manner worthy…”

- 4:17: “That you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do…”

- 5:1: “Walk in love…”

- 5:8: “Walk as children of light…”

- 5:15: “Look carefully then how you walk…”

• Stand (6). After sitting in our position in Christ and walking in love and light, we’re called to take our stand in Christ’s victory over evil spiritual forces. We don’t fight for victory; we fight from victory.

- 6:11: “That you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.”

- 6:13: “That you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”

- 6:14: “Stand therefore…”

Check out this brief video clip from the Bible Project which will help us get our bearings in the book. I recommend you watch the full video which we posted on “Sermon Extras.”

As Paul moves from beliefs to behavior, the immediate context has to do with the glorious prayer found in the last part of chapter 3. Last weekend we learned how God gives us more strength than we can even ask for when we fully surrender to Christ by living out the posture of prayer, the petitions of prayer, and the power of prayer. We concluded with a challenge to fully surrender to Christ as I read selections from, My Heart Christ’s Home. We have copies of this booklet available for purchase at the Café Resource Center.

Speaking of prayer, over 100 gathered for a Night of Prayer this past Sunday night. It was very moving as our younger adults and more mature saints prayed together. So many people came that we didn’t have enough chairs, so some stood, and others put the sermon into practice by kneeling in prayer. I’m grateful to Pastor Kyle, Pastor Chris, and Pastor Chad for their servant leadership.