Look What God Has Done
By Pastor Matt Black
12
August 2007
Lord's Day morning
Ephesians 4:3-6
Introduction: Open your Bibles to the book of Ephesians 4. The title of this morning’s message is “Look What God Has Done!” Once you’ve found Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, let’s stand out of awe and reverence for God’s amazing grace that comes from His amazing Word.
Let’s read Ephesians 4:1-6, “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, 2 With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; 3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; 5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”
I. Review.
A. Our Action: Walk worthy—gravity, seriousness. Verse 1, “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called”. There is nothing more serious than your calling to the heavenly city. Nothing is more heavy and full of all gravity than your worship to God—your life!! You need to take God seriously. Paul says I urge you, I beg you!!
We need to take God and His Word seriously. We are going to see this later on as he says as you feel the weight of what God has done, endeavor to keep or maintain the unity of the Spirit!
What does Philippians 2:12-13 say? “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
Illustration: Baseball with Hope Diamond. We can laugh at our selves, but we ought never to use God’s Word lightly. We ought never use God or His person or His Word lightly. 3rd Commandment.
B. Our Attraction or Appetite (Focus): Calling—an eternal calling The hope of our calling—the expectation, the desire. “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,” There is this heavenly attraction. The effectual call. Are you attracted to things of the Lord? Do you thirst for revival? Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness. Do you have an appetite for heaven? Do you hear the Savior’s voice?
In John 10 Jesus is speaking to national Israelites. And He is talking about the fold. And the fold has an external boundary, in this case the ethnicity of the people and the citizenship into the nation. The unity of Israel was visible and external. It was identified by those things that took place outside of a person, by your birth, your parents, your circumcision.
And he talks about the fact that in the fold, there are some sheep that belong to Him, but there are other sheep that do not belong to Him. Inside national Israel, there are some people that are the elect, who are believers and there are others who are unbelievers. National Israel includes saved people and unsaved people. Jesus says, “I know my sheep”, not only that He says, “They know my voice, and they follow me”. What is it that holds the flock together? Answer: the fact that they follow the Shepherd.
Each of us who has trusted Christ as our Saviour, we who have heard His voice and obeyed His voice have followed Him.
That’s what this is all about. Unity is all about following Jesus. “…The sheep follow him: for they know his voice” (John 10:4).
C. Our Attitudes that maintain unity—FIVE
1. Two attitudes that reside in us:
a. Lowliness (MODESTY): This is to have a low view of yourself. Philippians 2:3, “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.” Humility is to see oneself as small and God as big. Humility comes when I shudder at the shear powerlessness of my own humanity.
Every breath comes from God. Any ability, my possessions, everything I have is a gift. God resists the proud. Because pride is a lie. To say we are in any way self sufficient is a lie.
So Modesty (lowliness, humility) is one intrinsic, intangible attitude. The second is Meekness.
b. Meekness (MILDNESS): Wycliffe translated this word mildness. It is the ability to sustain injury without vengeance. Jesus said to resist not evil and to turn the other cheek. That’s what this is.
So these first two attitudes reside in us. They should be what we are always.
2. Now we come to two (the last two are connected) attitudes that are responses.
a. Longsuffering: To suffer looooooooooooooooooong!
b. Forbearance with love (TOLERATION, PUTTING UP WITH): This is not just an apathetic rolling of the eyes tolerance. It is a forbearance in LOVE. This is the kind of tolerance and putting up with one another that you find in a family. We are a family. In a family sometimes you put up with stuff. With a husband and wife relationship, you have “till death do we part”, right? The church of Jesus Christ is one—it was bought by Christ, and it is united right now. It can never be taken apart or ultimately divided. We are never going to part from one another! We need to “put up with one another” as we are all growing in grace. We are all on a journey to sanctification. We can cover so much with love because there is a real love there. There are certain things you tolerate in love because we are brothers and sisters—we are a family!
Illustration: You couldn’t have a better illustration of this than an old dog with a puppy. Have you ever seen a young boisterous puppy go after an old dog? Yip at it, and snip at it’s ears and chew on it’s tail? Pounce on it, and be energetic and annoying? The old dog kind of just rolls its eyes. I mean, with one bite it could just crush this irritating little puppy. Now if the little puppy knew more and were bigger, there would be a huge fight, but because of the size, the old dog just hangs his head, and with a certain amount of patient dignity just puts up with it. You know I’ve seen over and over again mature Christian people do that.
Now when are these two virtues displayed? When are you longsuffering and tolerant? When you are being annoyed or provoked. That is always the context. But you say, “so and so knows how to get my goat!” That’s exactly when longsuffering and tolerance is needed.
You need to have this in your home, and we need to have this in our church.
Wives: you need to have this attitude toward your husband. We talk much about the TV, but if you are impatient and intolerant of your husband, you will do great damage to your children.
This morning we are going to talk about how to zealously guard our unity. Verse 3 says, “Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The spiritual belt that binds us together are reflected in these attitudes.
Having these attitudes, we need to recognize the two ingredients for guarding the unity.
II. Recognize the care that guards our unity. There’s one thing that has to consume your life!! One thing that defines you! Speaks not of earthly membership but spiritual relationship
A. An important definition of how to keep the unity. Verse 4,“Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Endeavor means to spare no effort. It's a very, very strong exhortation. It means to make haste and with passion, with the full effort of your whole being to keep this unity. Yet all of the things that are about to be mentioned are done by God. Notice the word one appears seven times in these three verses. One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father.
B. An important demonstration of what our unity revolves around: The reflection of unity is seen in the Trinity. Our unity reflects the perfect unity of God! To be unified you must have a very God-centered life. All you do must be focused on the God who made us. You and I as Christians must be addicted to God. We must spare no effort to reflect God in our life—To know Him!! To make Him known. Look here at how the trinity is displayed in our lives.
v Spirit: Verse 4: one body, one Spirit, one hope of your calling
v Son: Verse 5: one Lord, one faith, one baptism
v Father: Verse 6: one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all
What's Paul's point? Paul's point is you cannot divide God. They're all one. He is indivisible. Now He has expressed Himself in three personalities as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but He's indivisible. He is one. You can no more split the church, therefore, than you can split the Godhead. We're to be one because God is one.
III. Recognize the Commonality—the continuity, cohesion, connectedness that guards our unity! There is something true of all believers of all time. Here it is.
A. One Body: First of all, he begins in verse 4 with that phrase, "one body." And when he says we're one body, I want you to note that this is not an exhortation. He's not saying, "Be one body." No. It's not an exhortation at all. It's a declaration. He's saying, "You are one body."
This is not something we do, it's something He did. That is the key truth. If our church is made up of people that we bring in, that we recruit, then we’ve got trouble. But if our church is carefully and wisely and biblically preaching the gospel and lovingly but carefully examining potential members to make sure they are people that God is bringing in, then we’ve got something. So he's not exhorting, "Get unified." He's declaring, "You are unified." So he's saying it's not something we do, it's something He did.
A body is organic. It’s not like a machine where you can take it apart and put it back together again. You cannot take a human being apart!
1. There’s interdependence. 1 Corinthians 12:20-26, “But now are they many members, yet but one body. 21 And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. 22 Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: 23 And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable [HEART, LUNGS, BRAIN ARE NOT PRETTY LIKE THE FACE, BUT WE BESTOW MORE ABUNDANT HONOR—RECOGNIZE AS MOST IMPORTANT], upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. 24 For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered [COMPOSED IT] the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: 25 That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. 26 And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.”
We all are designed by God to rely on each other. There are no lone ranger Christians. You may have the gift of mercy or the gift of service. You may be a teacher or a leader. You may have the gift of exhortation. We all are all interdependent. God designed you the way you are for the body. There's an interdependency, just like the kidneys must have the heart and the heart must have the lungs. God designed it that way.
2. There’s an interconnectedness. We read in verse 4 that we are united in “one body”—a body is interconnected. These doctors could tell us better than I can, but if you open up the human body, you'll notice veins and nerves and ligaments and tendons just all attached and interconnected within the human body. It's a magnificent creation of God the way it's all interconnected.
Now you know what would happen if you took an organ of your body and you separated it? For example, if I could reach in my body and pull out my kidney this morning and lay that kidney up here, you know what? It wouldn't be a very attractive thing to look at.
It loses its beauty and it loses its function and it loses its purpose if you separate it from the body. But you know what? You put that kidney back in, maybe put that kidney back in a little boy or a little girl. And, and think about what the kidney's doing by purifying the poisons out of the body and it helps the body to go and function strong. You see that little boy running and jumping and playing and being happy and it's a beautiful thing when it all works together. But that's the way God's designed the body.
So what is Paul's point? Paul's point is this: You're one body, and the body is one whole unit. It cannot function or survive separated from one another, neither can you do what God wants you to do in this life without your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Application: The importance of church membership and mutual accountability.
B. Next Paul says we are unified by One Spirit. Verse 4, “There is one body, and one Spirit.”
1. Not human spirit.
Now when Paul says this, he's not talking about what we often hear the human spirit. Now I will say there's something awesome and wonderful about the human spirit because we're made in the image of God.
I have seen the human spirit endure and be resilient under the worst of circumstances. You can read of two young men who fell while mountain climbing in the winter. The one brother who was less experienced trecked back over 24 hours straight to rescue his injured brother. He overcame exhaustion, hunger, frost bite, and fatigue because the human spirit within him. That’s amazing, but that’s not what Paul is talking about!
2. He's not talking about team spirit.
And I would venture to say that if you really looked at most churches where they were excited and unified and going forward, it's not really the Holy Spirit. It's team spirit, not much unlike a winning ball team might have when they're all one and they're all together, and they're all working toward a goal. That's not what Paul's talking about. That's a beautiful thing. That's an exciting thing, but that's not the unity of the Spirit in the church. It's not team spirit like this unanimity of feeling or there's unity around certain goals or projects. It's not being one in enthusiasm or having one heart like a team might have. It's much, much greater than this.
3. He’s talking about being united to the Holy Spirit.
What he means when he says we're one Spirit, he means we are all one because of the work of one Spirit has changed every one of us. Did you hear that? We're all one because the work of One, that is the Holy Spirit, has changed every single one of us.
That's what Second Corinthians 5:17 is all about. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” God has taken out the heart of stone and put in an heart of flesh—a tender heart—and Ezekiel goes on to say that he puts His Spirit within us!
The Holy Spirit comes and does an unseen work in the heart of the person He is drawing. We don't understand all of it, but we know when we've been the recipients of it. So Paul says, You're one body, and also you're all of one Spirit. The same Holy Spirit did the work in every single one of you. So that one Spirit creates this new creation, this new transformed person. In months to come, as we get on into our text into this practical area of Ephesians, Paul's going to talk a lot about the new man and putting on the new self. Well, that's the new one the Spirit created. It is all the Spirit’s great work. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” You're not your work. You're not of your doing. You're of the Spirit's work. That's what makes us one.
So as new creations and new people all wrought by one all powerful Spirit we are all now one. Just as the human body is animated by the human soul, so this spiritual body is made alive and one by the same common Spirit. He lives in all of us. Romans 8:9 for example says, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.” Now look. Look at this. "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." If the Holy Spirit has not done His drawing, convicting, regenerating work, you do not belong to Christ. You do not belong to God, and you're not a part of God's family.
You might want to become a Christian. You want the one, two, three steps. You want the ABC. You want to know how I can make sure you are a Christian. You know what Jesus said to Nicodemus? "Nicodemus, you must be born again." Nicodemus said, "Now wait a minute. I've got to get my hands on this Jesus. I've got to, I got to have this in one, two, three steps so I can dot the I's and cross the t's and jump through the hoops and make sure I'm in." Jesus said, "Nicodemus, it's sort of a mystery. You've got to be born again." Nicodemus said, I think he was being a little sarcastic, "How can I go back into my mother's womb and get this Spirit work in me so I know I'm in the family of God?" Jesus said, "I'm not talking about born of your mother. I'm talking about born of the Spirit. And, Nicodemus, by the way, it's kind of like the wind. The wind blows where it wants, goes where it wants. You do not know where the wind's going, where it came from, where it's going next. So if all who are born of the Spirit."
There is always a mystery in a person repenting of their sins. I can preach the gospel and plead and beg and tell you to repent and come to Christ, but the Holy Spirit births those into God's family. That's what he means when he says, you're “one Spirit."
We've got that same thing inside of us that only God could do, and we're one because of that, even though I think you're weird about some things. The main thing is that we're one on the most important level - our relationship with God.
We want this church filled with people who have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. We don’t want good Baptists, we want born again Christians! You get a church half or three-quarters full of unregenerate lost people who are good Baptists, you will never, ever have spiritual unity because you can't. You cannot have the flesh uniting with the Spirit.
Let me give you some practical application.
a. First, we must guard the front door of the church.
Sometimes our membership interviews are two to three hours long. Why? Because the enemy wants to infiltrate the church. That’s how the Puritan churches died. Be aware of the wicked one. Satan's greatest ploy is to infiltrate the church. Remember what God’s purpose is (Ephesians 3:21)? “Unto Him be glory in the church.” This church is not about me and it’s not about you. It’s about the Lord! Now what is one thing Satan hates? The glory of God. Now we can never let unregenerate people to be members in our church. How do we measure wheat and tares? A tare filled church is all about self, entertainment, self-help, and the prosperity gospel. We cannot replace the Holy Spirit with team spirit.
Success has killed many a ministry. When you start assaulting the gates of hell, Satan will start moving you up and giving you the praise of men. Beware saints—we cannot manufacture converts. 1-2-3 pray after me will not save you. We need to let the Holy Spirit break the hearts of people! We need to see contrition and brokenness as a way of living. “Blessed are the poor in Spirit… Blessed are they that mourn.”
b. Secondly, we must open the back door of the church. That is we must be willing to remove if necessary those whose pattern and heart is to be factious, divisive and scoffing in God's family. It's just old regular church discipline that we've purposed to try to practice.
We as a church need to exercise corrective church discipline. And we need to be willing to confront those who do not evidence signs of having the Holy Spirit. At times we will need to cast them out of the assembly. Proverbs 22:10 says, “Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease.” We need to be a church that uses loving accountability and gentle confrontation.
c. Thirdly, Guard unity by looking for the work of the Spirit in the heart. Now in the church this is the job of pastors and leaders, but we all need to learn to look for this because we've got children and we've got grandchildren. And while we are urging them to trust Christ and call on Christ, pray to receive Christ, which is all good, we must also be prayerfully discerning has there been a work of God in their life. Salvation is not just what you do. It's what God does in you. And if God does something in you, you will do something for Him!
How does the work of the Spirit come about?
v First there is conviction. We need to look for conviction of the Spirit in people, but conviction and drawing is not conversion. I think we can get this confused and unknowingly let unbelievers into the church. People who are “almost persuaded”. A person coming to Christ will have this unbelievable conviction that he deserves Hell. He feels the wrath of God. He’s feeling hell in living color. It is an awakening of the spirit.
v Then there is conversion—that is regeneration and faith. Regeneration is the divine side and faith is the human side. In this there is repentance. There is this hatred for sin. There is repentance without regret. The sinner says, "Yes, I ought to go to hell, and yes, I'm unworthy, and yes, I ought to be doomed and damned. But, yes, I trust Christ. Yes, my faith is in Him. And I don't deserve it, but I know He saved me." This is regeneration by the Spirit of God! It’s a work of the Spirit.
v Then there is sanctification of the Spirit. We call it progressive sanctification, holiness, ongoing personal revival, perseverance of the saints. All those that God saves, God keeps. Once you're saved, you may fall off the track every now and then. You may stumble every now and then, but you persevere forward, increasingly loving God, wanting to please God, and honor God. You can fall down, but you can't stay down long. You get up and persevere. A person who is a Christian has a prayer closet and is seeking God for daily revival and awakening. Growing and changing and being transformed every day to be like Christ.
One preacher said one time, "I wish I could sin and get by with it." Yes, we rebel. Yes, we sin. Yes, we dishonor God, but we can't get by with it. We do not look at sin the same way.
The saved man or woman is a holy person by definition. We strive to be perfect and holy. We are basically holy. I did not say perfectly holy, but we want to be as holy as God is holy. We can’t sin the same way we used to. We can’t get away with it anymore. We fall into it, but we look at it as vile.
Conclusion: Sin is the transgression of the law. He that knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him it is sin. Any commission or omission is sin. If you want to maintain this unity in this church, you need to be living a Holy Spirit filled life. You need to be living life out of your prayer closet in total and utter dependence on God. You will not do it any other way.
Closing Hymn: 310 In My Life Lord