The Prerequisites of Unity

If you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, we're gonna be in Ephesians chapter four again
this morning as we continue our slow journey through the book of Ephesians.
We have restarted our study of Ephesians this fall. And as we have continued working our way
through these opening verses in chapter four, we have seen that... in the body of Christ is a
priority in Scripture, that this is something God cares about. It's something Jesus prayed for,
something he died for. It's something we should care about. It's a central element in God's working
for how we walk in a manner worthy of our calling. For us to live out our lives the way we ought
to, the pursuit of unity, the maintenance of unity should be a priority and something that puts the
glory of God on display. And we have seen that we should be eager to maintain this unity.
It's not a small and optional matter. And we've talked about some of the dangers related to unity,
how we can become either too inclusive, in our unity and not having the right boundaries,
letting wolves in among the sheep, or we can be too narrow and restrictive and not be seeking to
maintain our unity with those who are brothers and sisters in Christ who might think differently
than we do on secondary issues. And all of that brings us to what we're gonna look at this morning,
which is the prerequisites for unity to exist, the foundation on which unity is built.
Unity is built on a foundation. It's having something in common. In fact, you think about unity,
all unity comes down to us being united together because of something we have in common.
Think about speed dating. Now, we weren't doing this back in the 70s when Marianne and I were
dating, so I haven't experienced this, but I understand the concept. You go to a room and there
are... I don't know, 10 or 15 men, 10 or 15 women, and you sit down for three minutes across from
one another, and you tell each other about one another, and in those three minutes, what you're
hoping to do is figure out, do we have anything in common so that we can go forward,
so that we can pursue things? The idea is, should we continue to date,
or do we not have anything in common? Now, When it comes to unity in the body of Christ,
the unity Christ has brought us into and that we should be eager to maintain, that unity is founded
on what we have in common as Christians. And what is it that we have in common?
Well, we are all in Christ. That's the phrase that Paul likes to use in the book of Ephesians where
he describes Us being brought into his family,
into the kingdom, from darkness into light. We are in Christ. It's what unites us.
We're brought from death to life and placed in Christ.
We are members of his body. We are in him. But as we'll see this morning, there is more to the
basis of our unity. There is more that we're founding our unity on than simply the statement,
I'm in Christ. That statement's a big statement and carries some things that we need to consider.
There are truths about who Jesus is and about what Jesus did that in order for us to belong to him
and to be in him, we have to affirm those truths and align our lives around those.
So our unity is built on this foundation of our faith,
our foundation of truth. By the way, truth is a dirty word in our day.
I don't know if you've noticed that, but a lot of people are allergic to truth because they look at
truth and say, well, if you take a stand on something, you're just gonna divide people. And again,
as I said last week, it's important that we don't try to build our unity on the lowest common
denominator of truth, but it's also important that we have some boundaries to what it is we
believe. We are eager to maintain unity, but we don't wanna be so eager that we...
ourselves with those who deny the essentials of the faith. David Wells, who is a professor at
Gordon-Conwell Seminary, wrote a book 30-plus years ago called No Place for Truth.
And in that book, he said, truth is now simply a matter of etiquette. It has no authority,
no sense of rightness, because it's no longer anchored in anything absolute. If it persuades,
it does so only because our experience has given it persuasive power, but tomorrow our experience
might be different. What he's saying is that instead of truth being the foundation of our lives and
the foundation of our unity, today we tend to look at experiences that we have in common and make
that the basis of our unity, or we put our experiences over truth.
We say, what I've experienced is more real or more true than what the Bible might claim.
Well, that's not how the Bible sees it. The Bible says we are to bring our experiences under the
authority of God's word and align our experiences with his word rather than trying to align his
word with our experience. I'm gonna show you a video. I saw this online this week. And it just
illustrates. This whole idea of a foundation of truth. This is a video from a woman named Becca
Craven. She's a pastor in the Disciples of Christ denomination. And she's explaining to her
congregation why it's so hard for her to explain to other people when they come and say,
what does your church believe? Why she has a hard time explaining what their church believes.
So watch this. Oftentimes in elementary school, the first few grades do not receive actual number
grades on the report cards. But instead, sometimes they might receive things like satisfactory,
needs improvement, unsatisfactory. Those are the ones I remember having as a kid.
But even as a kid, you kind of learn which one doesn't make the mark, even if it's not a precise
number. And that feeling of unsatisfactory is an image I can see on people's faces.
Whenever, sometimes over the course of the time I've been serving in ministry, I get asked a
question and I'm not able to provide a sufficient response in which they were hoping for me to meet
them with.
And they want to know, they ask me, tell me, what does your church or what does the disciples,
this wider church you belong to, what does it believe? And so I find myself kind of just trying to
grapple at how to respond. My first inclination is always to try to describe the ways we gather as
a faith community. And I'll tell them about how every Sunday we have worship together and we come
to this communion table where it is a table where all are welcome. And it is so important that we
have it every single time we gather. And I can see that face of unsatisfactory.
all over their face. And they're like, no, no, no, no. Tell me, what do you believe as a church?
And so then I say, well, it depends. And that look of unsatisfactory just gets even more intense
because I'll tell them, you know, like if you were to take a poll of our congregation and you would
ask someone in our church what they believe about a certain doctrine or theology theological point
they might give you this answer but um over here on this side of the sanctuary there might be
someone else that says something that sounds completely different but for us as disciples what we
believe is that we hope those differences do not keep us apart from one another and that we can
still even with our differences come to this communion meal and share together and still That is
not what they were hoping for me to tell them. They're like, no, I want you to tell me like a
formula. Do you have a list of what your church believes? And I say, well, they're like,
do you profess the creed? Do you say the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed? And I said, well,
we come from this movement, the Stone Campbell movement, this tradition of a couple hundred years
that has gathered itself around this idea that we have no creed but Christ.
And they're like, that is not what they were hoping to hear at all.
And they think, well, so does that just mean anyone can believe anything and nothing really
matters? And I think, oh, I have missed the mark because that's not at all what I wanted them to
take away. And it's not how I feel disciples approach theology. And yet that's how some people can
experience those responses. She's really struggling to try to say,
here's what we believe.
And all she can say is we have no creed but Christ. Now that sounds great until you ask the
question, well tell me about Christ, who's he? Now we have to have more than just something, right?
And the fact that she can't say we're united around the Nicene Creed, when you're getting together
and singing songs, aren't you all saying we believe this together? It's just,
you can see how confusing it is and how there's an attempt to build unity around nothing.
Now, I do want to say, in this room, we've got people who believe different things about different
doctrines. So there are secondary, tertiary doctrines where we can have differences and still be
united in Christ. But what Becca was struggling over was the Apostles' Creed and whether we can
affirm ourselves around that. I'm going to show you a second video clip. I couldn't help myself.
And this one gets a little riskier because it involves a person who's running for Senate in the
state of Texas. A guy named James Talarico. And again, it popped up in my social media feed
Tuesday, and he often speaks publicly, and by the way, I'm not endorsing, you know,
no candidate here, but he often speaks publicly about his Christian faith centered on loving God
and... your neighbor. That's what he says is the basis of his Christian faith. He has a graduate
degree from the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and I want you to see this clip of what
he said this week. I find such wisdom and comfort and inspiration from faith traditions all over
the world, and I find that they're all kind of a... pathways to truth.
You know, that's how I think, you know, I always think of all of the world's faith traditions as
like a circle with, you know, that divine mystery of the universe in the middle. And we all have
different names for that mystery, right? Whether it's God or Yahweh or Allah or Nirvana,
the Great Spirit, whatever you call it, this is all, you know, different pathways to the same kind
of fundamental truth of reality. So, yeah, it's something I... It's how I try to stay grounded and
stay rooted. So, again, that's a pretty common... You'd have neighbors and friends who would say
that same thing. It's a pretty common way of thinking about truth. And yet,
what I'm suggesting to you is that what these people are saying runs entirely contrary to what Paul
is saying in Ephesians chapter 4 when he says our unity has a foundation.
that is a firm foundation. We're gonna read the first six verses of Ephesians chapter four with a
focus on verses four through six where we'll spend time this morning. So let me pray for our time
in God's word. Lord, we need your help this morning. We need your spirit to draw near and to be our
teacher. We want to understand clearly what your word says and we want to align our lives with the
truth of your word. So speak to our hearts. We pray this morning, make us not just hearers of your
word, but doers of your word as well. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Stand with me as we
read God's word. This is the word of God for the people of God. Ephesians 4, verse one,
the apostle Paul writes, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy
of the calling to which you have been called. With all humility,
and gentleness with patience, bearing with one another in love,
eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit,
just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord,
one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,
who is over all and through all, and in all. Amen. May God bless this reading of his word.
The grass withers, the flower fades. The word of our God will stand forever. You may be seated.
As we read through verses four through six, did you notice there was a word that kept being
repeated there? It was the word one. It's there seven times.
One body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.
And then there's a second word that is repeated as well at the end of the section.
It's the word all. God and father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
So we have one and all being repeated. Verse three established the priority of the unity of the
spirit, eager to maintain that and in. verses four through six,
the Bible is talking about the foundational elements of that unity, our oneness or our allness,
if you will. And it's, I think it's significant that Paul uses the word one seven times because the
Bible, the number seven means total completeness. And then he uses the word four times.
And again, The number four in the Bible has a context. It refers to the totality of creation,
the four corners of the world, the four winds, the four living creatures who represent people from
all over creation. So we are seeing here the completeness of our unity and the universality of our
unity among all nations. And we're gonna focus this morning on these seven foundational elements.
of unity. We're gonna look at one body, one spirit, one hope,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all. We're gonna look briefly at God's
allness, the totality of his being and the authority of his reign. Actually,
we're probably not gonna get to that, just being honest with you as we get into this. Let me just
start by noting that these verses were revolutionary when the Apostle Paul wrote them.
when the Ephesians first heard them. This was a culture that was dominated by polytheism,
which means that there were lots of gods and people worshiped lots. of gods. And you picked out the
gods you wanted to worship. If you had a particular need, you went to this god or that god. That's
how it worked. And the Ephesians were a lot like James Tallarico, the guy in the clip I showed you.
Many paths to God, but rather than seeing one god in the middle of it all, there's a pantheon of
gods. And Paul says, no, that's not the way it is. There is one god, not many,
just one. He's making a bold argument. for exclusivity, the exclusivity of the Christian faith.
He's telling people who believe in many paths to God or in many gods that there is one path and
there's one God.
He's saying if you're pursuing your own pathway to enlightenment, that's not how you find God.
You find God on the path that God has set out for you to come to him. Now,
is this a relevant message for our day? Of course it is. If you hold to, as we do,
the idea that there is one God and one pathway to God, you are going to be labeled in the culture
as a bigot. You're going to be labeled as intolerant or hateful or disrespectful.
Marianne and I last year spent a day in Casablanca in the country of Morocco.
And yes, while we were there, we did go to Rick's Cafe American, which is featured in the movie
Casablanca, the Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman movie. And it's not where they actually had the
scene in the movie, but they've recreated it. We wouldn't have lunch there. That was lovely. But we
spent the day touring Casablanca with a taxi driver who took us around and showed us all of the
sites. Now, Morocco is 99%. Is it Sufi?
I think it's Sunni Muslim is what they are. 99%, 1% Christian.
There's a small group of Jews there, but not many. And that's in a large country.
And so our taxi driver was a Sunni Muslim. And in Morocco,
it is against the law to try to convert someone who is a Muslim to any other faith.
So we were engaged in illegal activity as we rode around with our taxi driver all day. We were
having conversations with him about our Christianity and about his Muslim faith. And he was telling
us in this taxi ride that he believes that all of us are pursuing the same God.
He said, Christians, Jews, Muslims, we all worship the same God. We all worship Allah. We just
worship him differently. And we were telling him that Jesus didn't see it that way,
that Jesus understood it completely different. And if you see Jesus as a prophet,
as Muslims do, then you have to look at the prophecy that Jesus gave, which is I am the way,
the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. There's no other name under heaven
whereby we must be saved except the name of Jesus. So we were telling him that. And he was polite
and courteous in his response to us, which was kind of disregarding. He knew he hadn't been tipped
yet, so he was being polite and courteous. And of course, if you have a conversation like that with
somebody over here, it's not against the law. You're not gonna get arrested for believing or
preaching to them that there's only one way to heaven, at least not currently. We don't know what's
ahead. But you may become socially ostracized. You may be... set aside if you hold to this view of
exclusivity. So while we hold to the idea of exclusivity and we can't waver from that,
and we want to be bold in our presentation of that as we engage with others,
we need to do it in a way that is kind and respectful of their background,
their heritage, or their beliefs. Remember the verse we looked at last week from Colossians 4 where
it says, we are to walk in wisdom toward outsiders? making the best use of the time and let your
speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer each person.
You can be bold and gracious simultaneously, and that needs to be the gold. You can be kind and
loving while you stand firm on the exclusivity of Christ, and that's the kind of people we need to
be. But here's what you need to know. Respecting another person's religious views, which we do.
We live in a pluralistic culture, and we want to show respect to others. When you respect someone's
views, that doesn't mean that you are... validating what they believe. You can be respectful of a
person without necessarily validating what they believe. We can't be people who say,
well, you know, whatever works for you is fine, but we can be respectful of them as human beings.
And it's not okay to say your way is fine. That's what this passage we just read is looking at,
this sevenfold list of prerequisites for unity. This is comprehensive.
It's not exhaustive, but it's comprehensive. And the words on this list all carry meaning and
importance. And I want you to see that. So let's look at the list. The first thing the Bible says
is there is one body. The idea that... followers of Christ,
we are one body, the body of Christ. That's familiar language for us. We've used that language with
one another for a long time. But again, in the early church, to hear somebody call you the body of
Christ, you had to stop and think about that for a minute. What are they trying to say? What's that
metaphor mean? Well, when Jesus came, the Bible says,
God put on flesh.
He became embodied. Jesus, the incarnate God, dwelt among us in a body.
He was embodied, and this was the first time in all eternity that that had happened.
And after he ascended to heaven, his disciples then became what he had been,
the visible representation of God on earth. Now, Jesus is God,
so he was the perfect. We are not God, so we are the imperfect representation of God on earth.
But when people want to know who is God and what does he look like, we are the body that tells
them. We are the body of Christ. Back in chapter one of Ephesians,
at the end of chapter one, this metaphor gets set up for us. In fact, turn back to Ephesians one
and just look at verses 22 and 23, where it says, And he,
that is God the Father, put all things under his feet,
that is Jesus' feet. That means he gives Jesus dominion and authority over all things.
And God the Father gave him, Jesus, as head over all things to the church.
God gave Jesus... to be the head of the church, so that means he leads, he directs,
he controls, he guides his church. And the church,
verse 23 says, is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
So the idea that we are the body of Christ is the idea that Jesus is our head, we are his body,
we as his body respond to how he leads us, and we are working together under his authority.
All that Jesus is, his fullness is present in his body. There is no part of who Jesus is that is
excluded from the body. We have access to all that Jesus is. Bible uses a lot of metaphors to talk
about our relationship with God. The book of Ephesians uses a lot of metaphors. It talks about us
being in the family of God. It talks about us being the kingdom of God. It talks about us being the
temple of God. When we get to Ephesians 5, it'll talk about us being the bride of Christ.
And all of those are good and pregnant metaphors. But here in chapter 4,
Paul uses this body metaphor to show that we function and operate organically. as members of a body
under the headship of Christ. James Montgomery Boyce said this. He said, the church is not a diesel
engine or a watch or an airplane. It's a body. It grows by the multiplication of cells.
And of course, 1 Corinthians 12 is the place where this gets unpacked. Rick Tartar preached about
this at the beginning of the year, the idea that we are members of one body, we have different
responsibilities, different functions, but we function together, we work in unison under the
authority of our head. But the point here in Ephesians 4 is that this body of Christ is one body.
We are all in one body. And this relates... to the people that Paul is writing to,
because they had a tendency to think of the body in two groups. So there was the OG Jewish body.
These were the people who had grown up in Judaism, who had understood, looking for the Messiah,
and they had come to believe that Jesus is their Messiah, and they've come to Christ. And then
there are the Gentiles who grew up in paganism and in sin and in immorality. And they've now come
to Christ and they're kind of looking and going, do we really fit in with them? I mean, their
background is so different than ours. Their experience is so different. And these people are
looking at the Jews and all of the pork that they've been eating all these years and all of the
ways that they've, and the fact that they're uncircumcised and all of that and going, we're not
sure that we can fit with them. And Paul is saying, look guys, there's one body. Yes,
you have different backgrounds. Yes, you have different experiences. But there is one body.
So if that's true, that there's one body, and you look around, you probably passed,
I don't know, half a dozen other churches on your way to come here this morning. And you're
thinking, one body? So why are there so many different churches,
different denominations? By one count, there are more than 33,000.
Protestant denominations. Now, I looked at that number and thought, really,
33,000? And then I realized the researcher was saying, well, every independent Baptist church is
its own denomination. So that's what made that number grow so big. But whatever, there are dozens,
maybe a couple hundred different denominations that are in the body of Christ.
If we are one body, why are there so many different churches? Well,
to understand that, we have to understand what theologians have talked about is the difference
between the visible church and the invisible church. So the visible church is all of the people on
earth who would raise their hand and say, I'm a Christian. They would identify as a Christian. They
are identifying themselves as a part of the visible church. You see me, I'm a Christian. But we
know that In the big set of the visible church, there are some people who aren't really Christians.
How do we know that? Well, because Jesus said that not everyone who says to me, Lord,
Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. So there are people who identify.
The Bible tells us there will be wolves among the sheep. Not all who identify as a Christian are
Christians.
And so what we have to start, when we're talking about there being one body, we have to recognize
the church is not talking, or the text here is not talking about that body just being those who
would self-identify as Christians. It's talking about those who have actually experienced the new
birth and been converted and been brought into the family of God, what's called the invisible
church. So inside the visible church, there's a subset of people who make up the invisible church.
And the question is, How big is that subset? How many visible Christians are also invisible
Christians? How many people who are professing faith are actual Christians? Well, there's been some
research done on that. Interestingly enough, in our country today, about 62% of Americans would
identify as Christians. That number, by the way, is down from 87% 30 years ago.
There's been a fall off. 62% of your friends and neighbors would say, yes, I'm a Christian.
23% of Americans would say, I'm an evangelical or born-again Christian.
So 62 would say, I'm a Christian. And a small group, 23%,
not 23 of the 63, but 23 of the total, would say, I'm an evangelical or a born-again Christian.
These are people who would identify as... believing the gospel,
having had an experience of being transformed by it.
And according to research, among those who are evangelical or born again who would profess that,
there's a significant number, maybe more than half of those people, who have a seriously deficient
understanding of Bible doctrine or what it means to follow Jesus. You see the point I'm making?
Big group of people who say, I identify as a Christian. Smaller group who say, I've been born
again. And inside that born again group, there's an even smaller group that understands the gospel.
When you get right down to it,
the visible church is big. The invisible church is much smaller. Now,
I can't know what's in a man's heart. When I meet somebody, he says, I'm a Christian. I'm a born
again Christian. Only God knows what's in that man's heart. But we can all examine our own hearts
this morning. We can all ask ourselves these questions to try to determine,
am I part of that invisible church? Have I really come to know Christ? First of all, do you love
Jesus? And not just in a sentimental way, but in a way where it shows up in the choices you make
and how you live. Do you love Jesus? Secondly, do you hate sin? And none of us hate sin perfectly,
but we all should have a heart that is predisposed toward hating sin.
Look at your sin and say, that's not who I want to be. And then third, are you willing to follow
Jesus and do what he calls you to do?
Three pretty good diagnostic questions. You love God, you hate sin, are you willing to follow
Jesus? Jesus said, if any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross,
follow me.
If you can say, yes, I love Jesus, yes, I hate sin, yes, I'm willing to do what Jesus said,
then you are part of... The invisible church, the one body that's being talked about here.
If you can't say yes to those questions, you may be part of the visible church,
but you're not part of the one body as God sees it.
You may be one of those who would stand before him on the last day and he would say, I never knew
you, depart from me. Point of this passage is there's one body of Christ made up of those who no
matter what church they attend, love Jesus, hate sin, will deny themselves, take up their cross and
follow him. That's the one body that is a prerequisite for unity.
And that one body is empowered by or made alive by the one spirit.
So there is one body, he says, and one spirit. And this one spirit,
of course, is the Holy Spirit. He is the spirit who animates the body, who gives the body life.
If you have a body without the spirit, You have a dead body.
And there are plenty of dead bodies around who profess to be Christ. Sometimes we sing an old hymn
that says, all is vain unless the spirit of the Holy One comes down.
And that's true. Apart from the work of the spirit in our midst, we are a dead body.
There is one body with one spirit filling his people. And here's how Alistair Begg puts it.
He says, it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that then constitutes the church. The church is not
an organization. It is a body. And its life is the Holy Spirit. Jesus,
the head, directs the body. The Holy Spirit gives life and animates the body. Without the Holy
Spirit, we are dead. We're powerless.
So one body and one spirit. Now listen, there are other spirits in the world.
than the Holy Spirit. In fact, the Bible tells us to test spirits.
The Bible says that we should be alert to the fact that there are other spiritual forces at work in
our world. So there are many spirits. There's only one Holy Spirit. And how can you know if you or
someone else is being animated by and empowered by the Holy Spirit?
Somebody says, I'm a Christian and I have the Holy Spirit. How can we know if you or anybody has
the Holy Spirit, the one Spirit in your life? Well, here's one way you can know.
Do you or do others testify openly about who Jesus is?
That's a work of the Spirit. The Bible says no one can say Jesus is Lord but by the Spirit of God.
We testify openly. about who Jesus is if we have the Spirit of God living in us?
Secondly, do you exhibit the fruit of the Spirit? You have the one Spirit,
the true Spirit living in you if what is coming out of you is love and joy and peace and patience,
humility, kindness. I'm going through multiple lists because there's the list in Galatians 9, or
excuse me, Galatians 3, what, 5, Galatians 5, thank you. There's that list,
but then... in Ephesians 4, there's another list of humility and gentleness and patience and
forbearance. There are lots of lists of the fruit of the Spirit in the Bible. Are you exhibiting
the fruit of the Spirit? And then finally, we all experience conviction of sin if we have the one
Spirit because it is the work of the Spirit to bring about conviction of sin. So we can know that
the body... Or that you as an individual have the Holy Spirit if we're seeing people testifying to
who Jesus is. If we're seeing the fruit of the Spirit being exhibited. If we're seeing conviction
of sin taking place. Those who have the one Spirit will have those experiences in common.
So there's one body, there's one Spirit to which you've been called. one spirit,
just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One hope.
Part of our Christian unity is that we have a shared common hope. What's that hope?
We sang about it this morning. What is our hope in life and death?
It's Christ. Of course, that famously comes from the Heidelberg Catechism,
the first question in that catechism. We went through this a number of years ago. The Heidelberg
Catechism starts with this question, what is your only comfort in life and death?
And you could take the word comfort and replace it with the word hope because it is the hope that
brings comfort. What is your only comfort, your only hope in life and death?
Here it is, that I'm not my own, but belong, body and soul, in life and death to my faithful
Savior, Jesus Christ. Christ has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has set me
free from the power of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall
from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. Let me just stop there. Is there hope in
that? That God is caring for you in whatever you're dealing with?
So much so that if you lose a hair, God goes, oh, I saw that.
In fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him,
Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life, makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him. What is our hope?
Where is our comfort? It's here in Christ, in what he's done and what he continues to do for us.
We belong to Jesus. He loves us. He guides us. He protects us. He is saving us.
We are with him now. We will be with him forever in eternity. That's our great hope.
And this hope, as the hymn writer says, is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and
righteousness. It's not built on your righteousness. It has nothing to do with your goodness or
your righteousness. Your hope can't be anchored in that. It's about his goodness and his
righteousness. So we have this hope, the writer of Hebrews says, as an anchor for our soul.
It keeps us secure and firm. The hope we have of what God has promised us keeps us secure.
Let me just say, hope, the English word hope really doesn't get what the Bible's talking about here
because hope for us means wishful thinking. I hope the hogs win next week.
You know, that's wishful thinking. Sorry to say. It is,
right? That's just wishful thinking. I remember having a conversation with my dad as he was dying
from melanoma. And I asked him about his hope. I asked him the famous evangelism explosion
question. I said, Dad, if you were to die tonight and you were to stand before...
God and he was to say to you, why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say? I remember
my dad saying, well, I'd say I tried to do my best.
I hope I've done enough. But that's not the hope we're talking about here.
I went on to talk to my dad about our hope being grounded not in trying to do our best,
but in something else.
It's not the I hope I make it into heaven, I hope I did enough kind of hope. Tim Keller defines
hope this way. He says the English word hope poorly translates the biblical concept since our
language associates hope with uncertainty. Instead, biblical hope represents a life-shaping
certainty of something that hasn't happened yet, but you know will.
a conviction that fundamentally shapes how you live in the present. Hope is a life-shaping
certainty about something that hasn't happened, but you know it's gonna happen. and it changes how
you live in the present. Our unity is in Christ and it's grounded in part by the fact that we share
this life-shaping certainty and it shapes how we live in the present.
We may come from different backgrounds. We may have different life experiences. We do. We may have
very different testimonies. We may have different temptations and struggles. We have this in common
though that unites us, that anchors us, that encourages us. We have one spirit.
We're in one body. We have one hope, a common hope to which we've been called.
And we have one Lord. Again, this idea was particularly relevant to the believers in Ephesus
because in the Roman Empire, if you lived under the authority of the emperor, you were expected to
make this declaration. You were expected to say, Caesar Kyrios.
which means Caesar is Lord. It was common for people in the Roman Empire to greet one another that
way in the morning. You would see somebody on the road and you would say, Kaiser Curios, kind of
like Heil Hitler. It was just a common greeting of saying, I believe that Caesar is Lord.
In much the same way, people in India will say to one another, Namaste.
when they see each other, which means I worship the God in you. Did you know that's what namaste
means? Don't say namaste when you see somebody. You may go to yoga. Don't say namaste,
okay? All right. All the emperors in Rome saw themselves as divine.
People in the empire would burn incense and would bow before statues of Caesar on designated feast
days. And because Christians refused to perform this ritual and go along with this,
because they refused to declare Caesar Curios and instead declared Jesus Curios,
Jesus is Lord, that prompted the severe response against those who resisted.
That's what people were charged with being infidels.
They were charged with being... Treasonous. This is why Jesus was ultimately put to death,
because he said, I'm not gonna bow to this king. I have a different kingdom. I'm a king. And they
said, that's rebellion and insurrection. This is why Christians were fed to the lions,
because they would not say kaiser kurios. So when Paul says, we have one Lord,
he's saying to the Ephesians, if you are one of these two Lord people, talking out of both sides of
your mouth, saying, Kaiser Kurios in the morning and Jesus is Lord in the evening,
you're not in Christ. No man can serve two masters.
Do you have one Lord to whom you give your allegiance? I know we all battle with this every day,
I do, with submitting myself to the Lordship of Christ in my life, surrendering and submitting to
that, but that ought to be the posture of your heart. That should be the inclination of your heart,
resubmitting yourself to Jesus every day. When we say Jesus is Lord,
we're saying I am under his authority. What he says goes,
not what I feel goes, what he says goes. This is another component,
a prerequisite. for unity in the body of Christ. We can't have unity if we're not commonly
affirming the lordship of Christ in our lives. We work in unity because we respond to the authority
of our head.
Okay, I think we're gonna have to leave it here this morning and believe it or not, come back and
finish it next week, maybe, all right? I will close with this this morning. Back in 1989, I was
working as the station manager at a radio station in San Antonio, Texas. And 1989 was a hard year
for religious broadcasters because in the previous year, there had been two high-profile scandals
that involved religious broadcasters, two people who had made the news big time and had brought
great disrepute on Christianity. Because of greed and immorality,
they had been exposed. And it kind of left the taste in the mouth of most people that Christian
broadcasters were just phonies who were in it for the money or for something else.
So if you were a Christian broadcaster like I was, you didn't really want to broadcast that too
much. You didn't want to say to friends, yes, I work in Christian media. And in 1989,
we got together in Nashville, a group of us. Christian broadcasters. And the people who had put our
convention together that year decided we need to address what's going on. We need to have somebody
come in, a pastor come in and speak to us about these scandals and how we align our lives and how
we think rightly about what's going on. And the pastor they invited to come speak to us was a
pastor. from the Los Angeles area, a man named Jack Hayford. Jack Hayford was the founding pastor
of a church called the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California. He was probably the best known
pastor in a denomination known as the Four Square Denomination.
Now, you may have never heard of the Four Square Denomination. I wouldn't know about it if there
hadn't been Jack Hayford talking about it, but this was a denomination that was started in Los
Angeles in the 20s. the 1920s, by a woman named Amy Semple McPherson.
Sister Amy, as she was known, was a Pentecostal evangelist and faith healer. This is a picture of
her. She was flamboyant, she was theatrical, and she drew big crowds. So having Pastor Jack come
speak to us when this is his tradition and his background, I'm thinking this guy has a very
different... approach to Christianity than I have. He and I disagree about a lot theologically.
We have a very different background. He's Pentecostal, I'm not. He's more Arminian,
I'm not. There are lots of ways where we would have disagreed. But as he came and spoke,
here's what was clear to me. Jack Hayford loved Jesus.
We were part of the same body, even with those disagreements. We had the same spirit.
His was a little more busy than mine was.
We had the same hope.
We had the same Lord.
There was a lot we disagreed on, but Jack, as he spoke, it was clear he was God-centered in his
thinking. He was God-fearing in his heart. He wanted to bring glory to God with his life.
That was the passion of his heart. I remember walking out after his message. I was moved by what he
had shared, and I was convicted. of my own judgmentalism, my own sense of theological superiority.
And it's not that the issues where Jack and I would have disagreed are insignificant, that they
don't matter at all, but as I heard him speak, it was clear to me the areas where we agreed were
much bigger than the areas where we disagreed, that this was my brother in Christ, in spite of the
fact that we didn't see these things the same way. This experience of unity in the body of Christ.
As we said this morning, it's got to be grounded in truth, a common hope,
a common Lord, a common spirit. And as we'll see... week a common faith, common baptism,
God and Father of all. But let's make sure that while our unity is anchored in truth,
that we start with a heart that wants to pursue unity with our brothers and sisters rather than to
figure out how they're different than us and why we should keep a wall up. That's not what God's
calling us to. Let me pray. Father, thank you for your word and how it speaks to us.
Thank you for bringing us into one body. Thank you for giving us a hope.
Thank you for giving us your spirit. We confess that you are Lord. Help us to live in a way that
gives light to that confession. Help us to demonstrate to others the reality of your Lordship so
that we are not just hearers of your word, but that we are doers of your word.
Lord, I pray this morning for any who are here who are wondering whether they belong as members of
your body.
Those who are wondering if they do love you and hate sin and are willing to follow you.
And as they look at their life, they're wondering if that's true. Lord, would you give assurance to
those who are yours? And would you plague the conscience of those who are not yours so that they
might come to know you? so that they might move from darkness to light.
We ask these things in your name. Amen.