Walk Worthy

If you have your Bible with you this morning, and I hope you do, I want you to find your way to
Ephesians chapter 4. Back in September of last year, 11 months ago,
we began going through the book of Ephesians. And when we started the study,
I told you that we were going to go slowly. through ephesians it was going to take us several
months to get through all six chapters in the book and i said that this is a book that is worth a
slow stroll rather than a quick sprint there's so much in this that i wanted us to dig into and we
did go slowly in fact those three chapters took us 24 messages to get through the first three
chapters because there is so much to see and this morning we find ourselves back in ephesians at
the turning point is a hinge verse in the letter to the Ephesians.
The writer of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul, spent the first three chapters in Ephesians telling his
readers about all that God has done for us in Christ. And when he gets to chapter 4,
he says, now because of all of this, because of what God has done, here's how we ought to respond.
And he goes on for three chapters, giving us specific instruction about how we are to live in light
of what God has done for us. So the first three chapters, what God has done. The last three
chapters, how we should live in response to that. There are 66 verses in the first three chapters.
There are 89 verses in the second three chapters. So how to live gets spelled out with more verses
than what God has done. And if it took us 24 messages. to get through the first half.
It's going to take us more than that to get through the second half. And this morning, I'm going to
cover one verse. So that gives you an idea of what this is going to look like. Some of you, I know,
have been waiting to get to this practical part of the book of Ephesians. You love the practical.
You love the imperatives. You're people who say, God, just tell me what to do, and I'll do it. For
you, the first three chapters, the theological stuff was interesting, but maybe a little too
theological for you. Others of you, I know, love those first three chapters. You love the theology.
You love the rich. Your heart swells with worship and adoration for God as you consider who he is
and what he's done for his people. And the fine points of theology, something you dig into.
And you know which one you are. Some of you are team theology and some of you are team application,
right? You know which team you're on. And here's the danger of being on one team or the other.
So if you're on team theology, here's the risk. you risk filling your head with details and
information and knowledge, and that can lead you to being puffed up. That's what the Bible says in
1 Corinthians 8. Knowledge puffeth up. Now, knowledge is not bad on its own,
but it's bad if that's all you got. If all you're doing is filling your head with Bible knowledge
and that's where it stops, that's a bad place. If you spend all your time in the first three
chapters of Ephesians and you never get to the second half of the letter, how should I live in
response to this? You're going to be a mess.
Head knowledge that does not translate into heart knowledge and life application doesn't do you any
good. That's what Carrie was just talking about when she said, I knew stuff up here, I just didn't
have it down here. The reason God has revealed himself to us and revealed his plan for us that he
sent his son to die in our place and to rise again on the third day to give us new life.
The reason for all of this information is so that it will transform how we live.
It's not just so that we know and understand it. It's to be transformative. So if you're somebody
who loves theology and revels in the glory of God and what he's done for us in Christ, that's
great. You should. We should. But now it's time for you to listen carefully. Because as we turn to
Ephesians 4, Paul says, I told you all of that for a reason. Not just so you know it,
there's a reason for this. Here's what matters. Here's how to respond to the first three chapters.
And let me just say, if you're on team application, you're so excited that we're here and we're
going to get these imperatives. We're going to get these how-tos, what to do. Here's the danger
you need to be aware of. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Ephesians are built on the foundation of chapters
1, 2, and 3. The application without the theological or gospel foundation can easily...
become a weight you bear that will crush you. You read this stuff and go, I can't do this.
I'm not this kind of person. And you just get crushed by it. Or you read this stuff and you go, I
can do this. And you become self-righteous and smug.
Because when you get to these imperatives or these commands that we find in chapters four through
six, you either see you fall short or you become very proud and go,
yeah, I got this down. So team theology, get ready for your heart. to be set on being a doer of
God's Word, not just a hearer and team application. We're going to keep going back again and again
to the truth found in chapters 1, 2, and 3 so that that foundation for how we live is constantly in
our hearts. And this morning we're going to read the first three verses in chapter 4.
And as I said, we won't get to all of those. We'll just get to verse 1 this morning. But I want to
read these verses together. Before we do that, let me again pray for us. Father, we need you now.
Holy Spirit, come and speak to our hearts. We ask that you would, by your Spirit,
soften our hearts that we might hear and understand and obey your word. Your word is truth.
Help us to live according to your word. We pray in your name. Amen. I'm going to ask you to stand
as we read. this passage of Scripture together. This is the Word of God for the people of God.
Ephesians 4, beginning at verse 1, 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.
Amen. May God bless this reading of His Word. The grass withers, the flower fades, the Word of our
God will stand forever. You can be seated. As I said, we're going to go slowly through this first
verse. There are six words that we're going to look closely at that you find in this first verse.
Here are the six words. We're going to look at the word, therefore. We're going to look at the
word, prisoner. We're going to look at the word, urge, the word walk,
the word worthy, and the word calling. Okay? So keep that much right there.
The outline's right there in verse 1. Those are the words we'll look at. Let's start with the word
therefore. Therefore is a big word. Doesn't look that big, but it's a big word.
It points back and it points forward. It's the hinge. It's the thing that says,
because of this, Live like this. Because of the data, because of the argument that I presented,
because of what is true, Paul says, here's the conclusion to which you should come. This should be
your response. And since it's been three months since we were in Ephesians 1,
2, and 3, I want to recap for you this morning what was laid out in those three chapters.
So we have fresh in our mind that foundation that is the basis for the argument he's about to make
for how we are to live. When we started Ephesians, the first thing we saw is that God has granted
to his people, to his children, to all who are believers, he has granted us every spiritual
blessing there is. That's Ephesians 1.3. If you are in Christ,
and that's the word he keeps using, that's the phrase he uses over and over again to describe what
it means to be a Christian. In Christ, grafted in, living, walking,
If you're in Christ, he says, because you are in Christ,
God has given you abundant spiritual blessing. And then he begins to catalog what those blessings
are. He blessed you before you even were born. He predestined you and chose you from before the
foundation of the world. He set you apart for salvation.
before you were even born. He adopted you into his family. He is your father.
You are his child. He will do for you what a father does for a child.
He will care for you. He will provide for you. He will help you grow and mature.
He will love you with an everlasting love. That's what it means to be adopted into his family.
You have redemption and forgiveness in him. Your sins have been wiped clean.
They're gone. They're paid for. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
You have been set free and made new. That's what Carrie was just talking about. You have the power
to resist sin that you did not have before. You have been given revelation.
This is one of the things God has given us. He's granted you limited access to his purposes and his
plan for humanity. Things you didn't understand or didn't see before.
There's a lot we still don't understand about God and about what he's doing. His ways are not our
ways. There are secret things that belong to him. But he has opened our eyes to see his purposes.
We didn't see it before. That's the revelation that comes when you become a child of God. It's a
spiritual awakening and revelation. You've also been given an inheritance.
You have a future inheritance. God has a purpose and a plan for you,
and you are a joint heir with Jesus in the riches of God. He's also given us,
as a gift, His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is His personal presence to be with you,
to cheer and to guide. Strength for today, bright hope for tomorrow,
blessings all mine with 10,000 beside. In fact, I want us just to sing that. That's the last
verse, verse 3 of great is thy faithfulness. And I just want us to sing that verse together.
We'll do it acapella. So the reason I want us to sing it is because this verse in this hymn is a
summary of what we read in Ephesians 1, the blessings that are ours in Christ.
So sing it with me. It's pardon for sin and a peace that endureth.
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide.
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.
Blessings all mine with ten thousand beside.
Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness.
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed thy hand hath provided.
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord,
unto me. We do indeed have every spiritual blessing. God has given us all we need in him.
And Paul ends chapter 1 by saying, I'm praying that you will really understand this deeply.
That God will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation and knowledge of him.
That this will sink in and become so much a part of you that it shapes who you are every day.
For us to walk with God, to be called to walk with him, we're going to need to both understand and
embrace what it means to have been granted these spiritual blessings. That's key.
And how did we happen to get these spiritual blessings? How did they become ours? Well,
that's the first half of chapter 2. When you get to chapter 2 in Ephesians, you become a recipient
of these blessings when God, who is rich in mercy, makes you alive in Christ.
You were, as Rick was talking about, dead in your trespasses and sins, unresponsive to God.
And God brought you to life. to where you could see Him and respond to Him through faith.
He drew you. He gave you the gift of faith so that you could respond and believe in Him.
He rescued you from sin and death and hell. That's what it means when it says He saved us.
And you are now His workmanship created in Christ to do the good works that He prepared before Him
so that you could walk in Him. And we need to ask... ourselves before we move on. Is that true of
you? What's talked about in Ephesians 2? Has that happened to you? Can you say, yes, I was once
dead in my trespasses and sins. I know that I need,
I knew that I needed to be rescued by God to be forgiven from sin.
And I know that he has done that. He's saved me. He's forgiven me. He's rescued me.
He's given me new life all by his grace. If that doesn't sound like your story,
if that's not what you would articulate to your friends that's happened in your life,
can I suggest to you that the reason that that's not the story you can share is because God hasn't
done that work? Could I suggest that maybe the reason you're here this morning is because God wants
you to hear and understand this clearly so that you can look at your own life and say,
I don't know that I'm walking with God.
I need to look at this more carefully. I need to understand this. I need to...
Maybe you're feeling drawn like Carrie was feeling drawn to God.
If you are in Christ, this is your story. If you're not in Christ, it's not your story.
If you're in Christ... You realize what God has done. If you're not in Christ,
you are still spiritually dead. You're separated from God. You're following the course of this
world. You're following the prince of the power of the air. You're living according to the passions
of your flesh, and you're carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind. That's what Ephesians
2 says. The Bible says you're by nature a child of wrath, and you're not alone.
So is all of humanity until God brings us to himself. And it may be that you're here this morning
just so you can hear that explanation because God wants to do a work in your heart. And if that's
what you're hearing and you're going, I need that, then just cry out to God. confess your sins
believe that Jesus came lived a perfect life died a death that you deserved and rose again so that
you can have new life and say I believe that and I want to follow him this is what the Bible says
in Ephesians 2 God has done for us individually he's blessed us and the beginning point of that
blessing was when he brought us from death to life made us alive in him and then The second half of
Ephesians 2, he said, this is what I've done for you individually, but I've done something for you
corporately, something that you didn't see coming. Nobody saw this coming. He has united all who
are in him, this is both Jews and Gentiles alike, into one new entity,
his body, the church, the called out ones. He knit us together, brought peace where there was once
hostility and division, and made us into a household of faith. And this was his plan all along,
to save us and redeem us as individuals and then unite us together as his people.
That was once a mystery. It's now revealed, he says. And because of what he's done,
uniting us together, we have boldness to access with confidence, boldness to access him with
confidence through our faith. All of this because of his great love for us. That's the summary of
chapters 1, 2, and 3, which leads us to, therefore, because of all of that,
let's talk about how you should respond. I told you when we were going through the first three
chapters back in the spring, I told you that in the first three chapters, there is only one
command, one imperative. It's Ephesians 2.11, and it says,
therefore, remember, that's the command. Therefore, remember what God has done.
Therefore, keep remembering it over and over again. Don't lose sight of it. Don't forget it.
When Kerry was talking about resetting your mind on Jesus every morning, it's remembering who you
are and what he's done every day because it's easy to lose sight of that. Now,
when we get to chapter four, from here to the end of the chapter, there are 40 commands. First
three chapters, one, remember. Last three chapters, 40 commands. So now Paul says,
based on this, here's how you should live. And let me just say, the order of that is critical.
The fact that the first three chapters lay out the theology before you get to the commands is
critical. You skip chapters one, two, and three, and you jump right to chapter four and say,
just tell me what to do. You will short circuit spiritually. You will lack the proper motivation.
for all that Paul is going to tell you to do in chapters 4, 5, and 6. And you will lack the divine
power to fulfill these imperatives. Christian ethics, listen to me,
Christian ethics that are not rooted in a right understanding of the gospel will not succeed.
There are a lot of people today, a lot of friends and neighbors, who like the ethics of the Bible.
They say, I like the things Jesus taught. I like the ethical standards that he taught.
I'm going to try to live according to those ethical standards. That's a fool's errand unless you
first have been transformed by the gospel and you're built on a gospel foundation.
Try to live an ethical Christian life apart from the transforming work of God in your life and
you'll shipwreck.
You've got to start with the root to grow the fruit. That's a tweet, right? You can send that out.
You got to start with the root to grow the fruit. You have to. It doesn't work any other way.
And like I said, this word therefore is a big word. It's a word that points back and points
forward. And Paul says, I therefore, and then he goes on and says, he identifies himself as a
prisoner for the Lord. So let's talk for a minute about why he calls himself a prisoner.
for the Lord. He's just been talking about all we have in Christ, all he's done for us as
believers. He's given us a new status. We are adopted into his family. We have an inheritance.
He's united us into his people, citizens in his kingdom. And now Paul says,
I'm a prisoner for the Lord. And I think there are two realities that he has in view here.
First of all, Paul is actually in jail as he's writing this. He's in a Roman prison. He's under
house arrest.
And he is unable to come and go as he pleases. He's a prisoner.
And he's a prisoner. The reason he's a prisoner is because he's a Christian. Because he calls Jesus
Lord instead of calling Caesar Lord. And that's what he's been arrested for. He has been charged
with insurrection. He's trying to overthrow Rome by allegiance to a different king.
And so he's a prisoner on account of his allegiance to the Lord. So when he says, I'm a prisoner
for the Lord, that's one way of understanding what he's saying there. But I think he's also
identifying his own status as a child of God. He says, because of all God has done for him,
I am now captive to him. I am his prisoner.
I can't come and go as I please anymore. I'm under his watch and care.
2 Corinthians 5.14 says, the love of Christ constrains us,
controls us. That's a Greek word that means to compel or to control.
It's used to describe somebody who's held in captivity. Paul says, I'm a prisoner for the Lord.
I am constrained and compelled and controlled by Jesus.
Elsewhere, he says, it's not I who live anymore, it's Christ who lives in me.
This, by the way, is the right posture for a child of God. We are to be constrained, controlled,
and held captive to God and his purposes for our lives. We're to walk according to those purposes.
This is what Martin Luther said when he was put on trial in the town of Worms,
Germany, where he was told he must renounce what he had been teaching about the gospel.
And he said, I can't. He said, my conscience is held captive to the word of God.
He said, I'm a prisoner to the word of God. I'm in bondage to God's word.
I can't just do what I think is best. I have to be controlled by God's word.
Is that how you see yourself? Do you see yourself as free to do whatever seems right to you?
We just saw how that worked out for Israel when we went through the book of Judges, didn't we? When
every man's doing what's right in his own eyes and not constrained by God's word, things go
terrible. We see it in our world today. But when we align ourselves with God's word and come under
the authority of God's word and are captive to prisoners of the Lord,
that's the right posture and that changes everything. So are you a prisoner for Christ? Are you a
voluntary captive who has submitted yourself and is bound to Jesus as your Lord?
In Romans, Paul uses a different phrase to describe what he's describing here when he calls himself
a prisoner for the Lord. In Romans, he says what we need to be is a living sacrifice.
Living sacrifice, alive and responsive to God and sacrificed to our own flesh,
our own passions, our own desire. That's what a living sacrifice is. Alive to God,
dead to me. As a prisoner for Christ, a living sacrifice, Paul says,
that's what I am, what all of us should be in light of what God's done for us. You've seen the TV
shows where somebody who's been on the run is finally turning himself into the authorities,
where he's handcuffed and put in jail. He's got no more rights other than what his jailers grant to
him. He's under their care. their watchful eye, their guardianship? Have you turned to God and
said, yes, I am guilty. I deserve punishment. I deserve death. Surrendered and become his prisoner.
Here's the irony. When you become a prisoner of the Lord, you are set free because you didn't
realize the bondage you were in before. You thought you were free, but you were in bondage to your
own passions and desires. You were serving them. They had control over you.
Now, in Christ, you have the freedom to say no to sinful desire that you didn't have before.
He breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free.
There's another hymn we could sing, right? Let's move on.
The prisoner is urged to respond rightly to God. And that's the third word I want us to look at.
Paul says, I urge you. And we'll just be brief here. The word for urge is not a command.
that it's a strong, urgent pastoral appeal. He says, I'm a prisoner for the Lord, and I want to
urge you, I want to exhort you as forcefully as I can. This is my strong appeal to you.
He could have skipped this, by the way. He could have said, therefore, walk in a manner worthy.
He could have just made it the command, but he wanted them to choose to do this.
He says, I'm urging you to want to do this. I'm urging you to make this your aim.
Because he wants us to respond to what God has done out of delight, not out of duty.
He wants us to see what God has done for us and respond in delight, not duty.
He's saying, I urge you. He wants us to walk worthy, not because we have to,
but because we want to.
God leaves it up to decide. How are you going to respond to his grace? And Paul says, my urgent
appeal to you, my exhortation as a pastor is that you would choose to live your life in a worthy
manner. That's his exhortation. That's mine as well.
I urge you to choose to live each day of your life publicly and privately in a way that is honoring
to God. That's what Paul is urging them to do. Walk worthy. And we'll talk about that.
What does it mean to walk worthy? I'm going to combine those two words here. First of all, let me
talk about what it means to walk. Peripateo is the word in the Greek. And it can mean walk in a
literal sense. It means I walk from here to here. But here it means walk as a metaphor for living
your life. Your walk is your shorthand for all you do. You know, we use that. We say,
do you walk the talk? Do you live out the things you say you believe? He's saying live and act in a
manner worthy of God. What does that mean? How do you live your life? How do you walk in a manner
worthy of God? Well, there are six other uses of this word walk in the book of Ephesians.
And it tells us a little bit about how we are to walk and how we're not to walk. So in Ephesians 2,
we already saw it says, don't walk the way you've been walking. You walked according to the course
of this world. Don't do that anymore. In Ephesians 2.10, it says, you're God's workmanship.
You were created for good works. Walk in the works that God created you for.
In Ephesians 4.17, it's going to say, don't walk the way the Gentiles walk. Walk no longer as the
Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds with a darkened understanding. In Ephesians 5.2,
it will say, walk in love as Christ loved us, which means sacrificially,
laying your life down for others. That's how you walk. Ephesians 5.8 will say,
walk as children of the light. And it goes on to say, you do what is good and right and true,
now that you have the light to know what that is. And finally, in Ephesians 5.15,
it says, walk carefully, not as the unwise, but as wise, making the best use of your time.
So you could sum all of this up. What does it mean to walk worthy? Don't walk the way the Gentiles
are walking. the way the pagans are walking. Don't live and walk as you once walked,
just following your own passions. Don't do that. Walk this way. Walk in love. Walk in the light.
Walk in wisdom. And walk in the direction of the good works that God prepared for you. Pretty good
summation of what the worthy walk ought to look like. And actually what follows this verse 4,
Verse 1 of chapter 4, what follows everything that comes after that is Paul saying, here's what the
worthy walk looks like. We're going to be spending months exploring what it looks like to walk in a
manner worthy of our calling. The idea is that how you live, how you walk,
how you interact with others, the choices you make, the actions you take, all of your life should
be a statement that you are making to everybody around you about how great God is. That's what it
means to walk worthy. You are putting the worth of God on display in your life. In writing to the
Philippians, Paul said it this way, Philippians 1.27, let your manner of life be worthy of the
gospel of Christ. In Colossians, he says, walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,
fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God.
That's a good summary. 1 Thessalonians 2, he says, like a father with his children, we exhorted
each one of you and encourage you and charge you to walk in a manner worthy of God who calls you
into his kingdom and glory. Isaac Watts, the hymn writer, said, when I survey the wondrous cross on
which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gains I count as loss. And then he said, were the whole
realm of nature mine? If I owned everything, that is an offering far too small.
If I had everything and could give it to God, I'm still not giving him enough. Love,
so amazing, so divine, demands my soul,
my life, my all. God is worth all we are and all we have.
We could give him all we are and all we have, and it wouldn't be enough. He is the pearl of great
price. We don't have the resources in us to be able to afford it. But we do live our lives in such
a way that our actions, our words, our lives are making a continual statement to ourselves and to
those around us of who God is and how great He is. When my youngest son graduated from college,
on the day that he graduated, after graduation was over, he and I got in the car, and we drove
three hours from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he graduated, to southern Oklahoma, almost the Texas
border, and we went there. so that we could sit in the eighth row to hear a concert from Paul
Simon. Now, some of you are going, I've never heard Paul Simon, okay? Simon and Garfunkel,
maybe that ring? Bridge over troubled water. Does that sound familiar? If you've still got a blank,
look, I can't help you, okay? I did the best I could. We drove all the way down to hear Paul Simon
sing. It was a long drive. The tickets that I bought for that... the most expensive concert tickets
I've ever bought in my life. I bought them aftermarket, you know, where I had to pay the premium to
get the good seats, but it was his graduation we were going to celebrate. All of that to say, going
to see Paul Simon was worth our time, our money, our effort, driving all the way there,
driving all the way back so that we could hear him sing The Boxer and Homeward Bound. It was
glorious. I'd do it again tomorrow. The Bible says if we understand the gospel correctly...
If we understand Ephesians 1 through 3 correctly, the right response is to do everything today.
Like I was looking forward to that Paul Simon concert. I was making sacrifices,
cost, money, didn't matter to me because Paul Simon was worth it. God is worth so much more than
that. He's worth everything. And our lives should reflect that every day.
That we're to walk in a manner worthy, which means that we continue in the same direction.
And the truth is you're going to stumble as you walk. None of us walks perfectly in the direction
we should be going. I remember hearing Carlos and Tanya Santiago this week talking about their
granddaughter who's just now starting to walk, right? pulling herself up, and she wants to walk.
And you know how little kids are when they're walking. You know, it's Frankenstein, and they get
about three steps, and they fall over. And you cheer. They get back up. That's what the Christian
life looks like for so many of us. A few steps in the right direction, then we stumble. What do we
do? We get back up. We keep walking in the same direction. We keep working it out. And as we grow,
we walk a little more strongly, a little more smoothly.
And when you stumble, let me just say this. The right response to stumbling is not to pull yourself
back up and say, I'm going to try harder. The right response to stumbling is to go back to
Ephesians 1 through 3 and to say, what has God done for me? What was the work of Christ?
And just say, Jesus, help me. And then you take your next step. Don't rely on your own strength.
That's why I'm hesitant to call the first three chapters of Ephesians the theological part, like
there's nothing practical in there. Remembering and re-believing everything in Ephesians chapter
1, 2, and 3 is so practical, so helpful, so necessary. It's what you need regularly to realign your
life to walk worthy. In 2 Timothy 2, this is the last letter we have from Paul that he wrote to his
protege Timothy. Timothy was a pastor at the time. And I'm struck by 2 Timothy 2.8 where Paul says
to Timothy, Timothy, remember Jesus Christ. risen from the dead, the offspring of David as preached
in my gospel. It's like, Paul, he's a pastor. Like he's going to forget Jesus and the gospel?
Yes, because we all forget it. And you have to keep remembering.
That's why it's practical to spend time in Ephesians 1, 2, and 3 to relay the foundation.
Last thing we'll look at this morning quickly, walking in a manner worthy of our calling. Do you
know what your calling is? Do you know what God's called you to? Back in Ephesians 2.10,
he said, you are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for the good works he called you to, or to
walk in those good works. You are not here simply to become more godly as you live your life,
or more holy.
Although we expect that that will happen, we should want to grow in godliness and holiness, but
that's not your calling. Your calling, according to Jesus, is to be his witness,
to be witnesses for him. to tell other people what we've seen and heard and experienced.
That's our calling. Acts 1, before Jesus left and ascended into heaven, he said to the disciples,
you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. That's your calling. By the way, he says,
he doesn't say you should be, he says you will be. You're either going to be a good witness or a
bad witness, but you're all he's got. You're the witness. So are you witnessing? Are you
testifying? Matthew 28, the last thing in the Gospel of Matthew. Go therefore and make disciples of
all the nations. This is your calling. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. I'm with you to the end of the age.
That's the calling. Witness, teach, disciple.
And this is a privilege. You've been called to a high and holy calling. In fact, the Bible says
it's a royal commission. 2 Corinthians 5, it says, therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.
You've been given an ambassadorship. You represent the kingdom of heaven in another country.
You are to be an ambassador. When people say, well, what does God think about this? You're the
person who should be able to say, well, you know, the Bible says this.
You can't walk in a manner worthy of your calling if you're not being an ambassador for Christ, if
you're not witnessing, if you're not making disciples. That's the high calling. Walk worthy of that
calling.
As we go forward to the second half of Ephesians, we're going to see that how we walk will involve
both what we do as individuals and how we live together as a community. Both of those are found in
Ephesians chapter 2. So the worthy walk is not simply an individual matter.
It's a... corporate matter. It's what we do together. I want to close with this. When I was a kid,
or when our kids were little, on Christmas or on their birthday,
along with their presents, there would always be there a notepad and a pencil or a pen.
Usually it was Marianne who had the notepad and the pen. And as every present was opened, Marianne
made a note. What was the present and who gave the present? We had it all spelled out there.
For what purpose? So that the kids could write the thank you notes that they should write for the
presents that they got. I don't know if you taught your kids to do thank you notes. My mom did not
teach me to write thank you notes, but I watched my mom as she got older, and when she would give
something, if she never heard anything back from the person who she gave it to, that registered
with her. Did they get it? Did they like it? Did it encourage them?
I mean, an expression of thanks ought to accompany a gift. We ought to be saying thank you and
writing thank you notes. Here's the point. Your life is the thank you note you are writing to God
for what he's done for you.
Your life is the way that you say to God, thank you for all that you've done. It's your expression
of gratitude. To not live your life the way God's called you to live.
is ingratitude. It's to be ungrateful for what he's done.
Ephesians 1 through 3 is a long description of this great gift God has given us in Christ.
It's the greatest gift you could possibly receive, forgiveness of sins, a new life adopted into his
family, welcomed and loved by him. And our lives, both individually and corporately,
are the thank you note we write to him every day. So what kind of thank you note are you writing
with your life? Are you a prisoner for Christ? Are you no longer walking as the unbelievers do?
No longer following your own passions and appetites? Are you walking in love, in wisdom,
in light, following Him? Are you an ambassador for Christ? Bearing witness to His glory and power?
Are you making disciples? That's what it looks like to walk in a manner worthy of your calling.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your word, for how it speaks to us clearly. Help us to understand this,
not just understand it in our heads, but help us to live it out. Help us to continue to take
stumbling steps in your direction.
Strengthen us so that we can walk in a manner that is worthy of our calling. And Lord,
for any here who don't know you, I pray that this morning, that stirring that's going on in their
heart, that they would respond to that. that they would not leave here and just shake it off,
but you would continue to do what you did with Carrie, to stir them and call them and draw them,
and that they would come to know you and walk with you. I pray these things in your name.
Amen.