The Imperative of Unity
-
The Imperative of Unity
Greetings, friends, in the matchless, rich, gracious name of Jesus Christ. My name is Kurt. Glad to be with you here under the banner of the authority of God's Word, and for the glory of his great name. Greetings from the Elders of Grove Bible down in Valrico, Florida. Greetings from the Ghepherds...all eight of us, actually, now ten of us. Shea is married with a granddaughter and more on that later, if you care to ask. We are richly, richly blessed. We've been in Tampa Bay for five years and the wind's at our back and the sun is in the sky and King Jesus is being heard and people are responding to the glorious call of the gospel. But there's a crisis in our culture today. There's a serious and severe difficulty that our world is facing, and one that the church is here to solve. This is a house of healing. This is a house of redemption. This is a house of life and of goodness, of wisdom and of honor. And yet for us to partake of all of the blessings that are poured out on this table of God's grace and goodness, requires a level of commitment and engagement that the world is allergic to today. Earlier this year in The Atlantic, which is not known for its Christian themed articles. There was one named Why Americans Stopped Hanging Out. And the article begins with a famous quote from Alex de Tocqueville, who was a French sociologist that traveled to America in the early decades of the founding of our nation, asking about the American experience. What is this experiment and how is it different? And so two and a half centuries ago, Alex de Tocqueville wrote of America with these words. America is known of a thousand different types of associations religious, moral, serious, futile, very general, very limited, immensely large, and very minute associations. They gather endlessly. He continues, America seemed adept at forming social groups, political associations, labor unions, local memberships. It was a continent itself that imbued its residents with a vibrant social metabolism, fascinating phrase. A verb for getting out and hanging out. Nothing, he continues in my view, de Tocqueville wrote, deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America. That was true at the founding days of our nation. But it's different today. And we know it. The author says something has changed in the past decades. After the 1970s, American dynamism declined. They stopped. The people, stopped showing up at their churches and stopped hanging out. He then offers a few statistics to substantiate this crisis. He says that between 2003 and 2022, that there is a vast reduction in the hours spent face to face...30% across our entire nation. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger 35%, and among teenagers, there is a more than 45% decline in face to face interactions. This reduction has led to a social crisis. People are spending less time together than they ever have. And he pokes at this and identifies that the social crisis is manifold in its reasoning. Why it's come about is for many different reasons, but this social crisis is multiplying anxiety and despondency at an alarming rate, especially among the young people. In this early century, Americans have collectively submitted to a national experiment to deprive ourselves of the camaraderie that's available in our lives, choosing instead to grow and grow and grow in the time that we spend by ourselves gazing into these infernal screens. That was my adjective. He just says, gazing into screens where an actors and influencers often engage in the very acts of physical proximity that we deny ourselves. It's a weird experiment, and the results have not been pretty. He concludes with this analysis of its impact on the youth. Academics have identified and repeatedly argued that phones have driven an anxiety crisis among America's youth, in part by reducing the presence of physical world relationships that are necessary for healthy adolescent development, and by swapping that time for self-focused engagement. This, my friends, whether it shows up in terms of our addiction to our screens or our addiction to our own interests, has led to a world...an entire culture of solitude, isolation and aloneness. And Christ has a better way. Let's go to the text.
Open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4. I was exhorted by a dear and wise and wonderful friend to preach on this exact topic this morning, and the moment he spoke of it, delight filled my heart with the joy of this idea of the imperative of unity. Ephesians 4:1-6, gives us this imperative of unity, this gathering together, this selfless engagement one with another, this investment in our lives with each other. And it's to this passage and to this theme that we turn. If the culture is dying on the vine for its isolation, then the church is thriving for the privilege of our commitment to, engagement with, and life investment in one another. Ephesians 4:1-6, I trust your Bibles are open so that you can read these words.
"I, therefore, a prisoner of 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 and the bond of peace. There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, one father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace has given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift."
We have here in Ephesians chapter 4 this extraordinary movement. It's tremendous if you consider the entire book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 1 has the single greatest gospel sentence in all of human history. Please avail yourself of Ephesians 1:1-14, in extravagant exploration of the glories of redemption. And then we find in chapter 2 he's not done. And so in 2:1-10, he comes back to the gospel, and he presses into our hearts our unworthiness and the reality of our trespasses. But the grace of God has overwhelmed all of it, by his kindness. And the riches of his grace is poured out on souls like yours and mine, so that we can have an inheritance with him in heaven forever. And so we see this gospel that is unfurled in chapters 1 and the first part of chapter 2, and it's stunning where he goes next. Do you know what he says next?... in 2:11? He goes immediately to the doctrinal dimensions of unity in the church, specifically the unity across ethnic barriers. And so for a chapter and a half, the second part of chapter two and into chapter three, he's going on and on and on. How the Christ in the gospel, because the cross, tears down the walls of separation between us. We all come together in the glory of the gospel, in the freedom of unity, because our sins are forgiven and we have the privilege of walking together in his presence. But his discussion in chapters 2 and 3 on the doctrine of unity are very doctrinal. They're very ordered, they're very structured. There are not too many, to my knowledge, any imperatives, any commands while he's talking through the dimensions of unity. He talks about the gospel and it's implications for unity. And then the very first word of chapter 4 is this grand conjunction therefore. Therefore, is this glorious and great hinge that moves us now into Christian obedience. In chapters 4, 5, and 6 are now explaining to us the implications of the gospel. We now have an understanding of how the gospel is to look after we have had our lives changed by the great powerful gospel grace found in Jesus Christ. So Ephesians 4:1-6 incentivizes and equips you for a life of New covenant unity. Ephesians 4:1-6 incentivizes and equips you for a life of New covenant unity. If you're taking notes, you can jot this down. It summarizes the entire sermon. Now, you need to understand that pastors have their tricks. And we have we have our ways and means. One of our ways and means is to use a phrase that would be unexpected to you. I didn't call it Christian Unity. I didn't call it unity. I didn't even use the term fellowship. I used New Covenant unity because I wanted to break the synapse, because I'm convinced that what we think of unity is not what the Bible speaks of it. And we want to see in Ephesians 4, what does the Bible say about unity and its implications on our lives? New covenant unity is a way to break the synapse and to kind of get you to go. What does that mean? It means truly Christian unity. I'm concerned that much of the unity that we experience today is what I call potluck unity. Potluck unity is, oh, by the way, I'm no hater of potlucks, so this is not a criticism of potlucks. I'm fond of potlucks. The more deviled eggs, the better my friends. So it's not a dig on potlucks. It's a dig on what we've made unity to be in our culture today. So often we think of unity, even Christian unity in a potluck fashion, where we get to come and share a little bit of what we have and share a little bit of what someone else brang and we smile at each other just nice. We keep our distance for sure, and we share a meal and we call it unity. What the Bible says of unity is far more deep. We've reduced unity in our culture to transaction and convenience. But the unity of the New Testament is organic. There's dirt under your fingernails in its difficulty. So often today in the church unity today is sharing niceties. It's lost, it's grit. But if you're going to pay attention to Ephesians chapter 4, and I know that you have hearts to hear from God and to respond to His Word, you will see that there is value, even if there is cost and pain to New Testament unity.
Well, let's begin with this first phrase. And he comes in hot. I mean, he just hits. Just what are those, planes that goes lift off straight off the...what are they called? Yeah. Harrier. Is that right? Yeah. Harrier. They just they just lift straight up. And that's Paul here. He's like I'm going to go right at it. So he turns from chapters one two and three the theology of the Christian life. Chapter four, therefore boom big hinge. He's like, hey I urge you, as prisoners. I mean, he comes in hot. He's like, let's go. You are a prisoner of the gospel. Oh, friends, what a joy to be a prisoner of the gospel. Oh, to be bound with the chains of love...forgiveness. Or to be wrapped up in the cords of his faithfulness despite our fits and fledgling ways. Prisoners of the gospel. Prisoners of the Lord. Prisoners of the Lord. Prisoners for the Lord. Isn't it beautiful? We're imprisoned by him and we're imprisoned for him. We're imprisoned because of him and were imprisoned for his cause. For us, if you're taking notes, maybe you're considering now how you have been captivated, captured by the gospel, and that sweetness of spirit should then motivate you to captivate others in the gospel. If we don't have a spirit to promote this beautiful prison cell of grace, forgiveness in Christianity, do we even know it ourselves? We are prisoners of the gospel. In fact, we're so much prisoners, Paul is like, I'm going to urge you, I'm going to lean into you. I'm going to implore you, I am going to challenge you. At this point, I want to pull the car aside and talk about two theological categories you're probably familiar with. You're a very, very well taught church. I know and love your pastors and elders very much. In chapters 1-3, there are these gospel indicatives. This is an important term for you to understand. A gospel indicative is what is the good news of what Jesus Christ has done for us. A very important term for you to capture, for you to understand is...gospel indicatives. Indicative is a fancy word for a verb form in the New Testament that says simply that the gospel and the foundation of it is not anything that you do, but everything that he has done. The gospel is what Christ has accomplished for sinners like you and like me, and all the gospel indicatives and all the stated realities of what he's accomplished overwhelm our hearts because we couldn't accomplish one portion of one of them. And he's done it all. And he has, by his grace and love, he's poured them out on our lives. Oh, what a reality. These are gospel indicatives the good news of what Christ has done for us. Chapters 1-3 teaching after doctrine after theology after truth. And our Christianity again is founded on what Christ has done for us, and we love him and worship him and will honor him forever for what he's accomplished.
But there's another category for us to consider associated with the gospel. Not just gospel indicatives...do you know what the other category is?...Gospel imperatives. Write that down...Gospel imperatives. Gospel imperatives is the good news of what Christians must do through his power for his glory and by his grace. Oh, it's the good news! Gospel imperatives...and imperative...what's another word for imperative? A command...that's exactly right. These are gospel commands. So gospel imperatives are the good news. This is still good news, friends. What he commands us to do is good news. Everything that Jesus has done, everything that Jesus is, and everything that Jesus says is good news. It's good news. All of it's good news. Even the hard parts, especially the hard parts. When he gets all up in your face, he's like, no, no, no, not that this okay, just repent and not that foolishness. Especially when Jesus Christ confronts us with his hard words, we realize that that is good news. So these gospel imperatives...it's the good news of what Christians must do through his power for his glory and by his grace. And so in chapters 4, 5, and 6...he spent three chapters on gospel Indicatives 1, 2, and 3...now in 4, 5, and 6. Paul, I would encourage you to do your own study. I counted 62 categories of imperatives in three chapters, four, five, and six. I think that's three. That is three great. In three chapters I counted 62 categories of imperatives. Not 62 imperatives, 62 categories. Types of ways to obey. Friends, it is a Christian impulse to love obedience as a marker of the spirit within us and God over us. These imperatives are a great marker of our submission to King Jesus and our love for him. Just talking about gospel indicatives and gospel imperatives...one more stat for you. Since I know the math people are just like, this is great! This is great! There are 250 gospel indicatives in the New Testament. 250 unilateral promises for every sinner that will repent and believe...250. Do you know how many gospel imperatives there are? 1050...more than four fold. Love him for what he's accomplished and be motivated by what he calls us to all of it being good news. And because there's more gospel imperatives than there are gospel indicatives, it's not in any way suggesting that that's more important. Doing things for Jesus is more important than what he's done for you. No, no, no. The Holy Spirit knew that if there were even a balance of imperatives, verse and indicatives, we would be more obedient than we already are. Lord help us. So lovingly and patiently and graciously, three chapters of what Christ has done that we could never accomplish for ourselves. And not scores, not hundreds, but 1050 ways for you to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh, for you to be a son, a father, a mother, a worker, a boss for the glory of God. This is what it means to be captivated by the gospel, changed by his work, his glory, his all sufficient merit, his honor altogether. And now to have a life that is compelled, that is propelled by the very commands of Scripture, is our very joy. It's our very honor to be what, again?...a prisoner of the Lord, captivated by the gospel. Friend, I hope and pray there isn't one soul in this building that is, checking a religious box in being in the seat that you're in right now, not one. Not one going through the motion, not one I should because of my family. Not, I am used to going to church on Sunday mornings. Not one box checking, person. And maybe when I say that, you're like, oh, is that me? God wants to do business with your soul. And I'm not sure which of these is where you need to grow. Maybe it's in the gospel indicatives because friend, while you may be church going and life group attending, you may not be born again. Or maybe you are born again and you are established in Christ. How about...show obedience? It is grace and kindness and goodness for him to lay out these hundreds and hundreds of commands, because these are the paths of life. Friends, trust me, for generations. And you don't want anything else, than glory to Christ for your lives, your spouses, your children, and the generation yet to come. This is a prisoner being a prisoner of the Lord. Oh, it's beautiful when you think about it...the gospel Indicatives. Do you recognize that the gospel always calls us up and out? The gospel is always moving us. Yes, indeed, just as I am, Christ will receive you in your mess. But praise be to God, he doesn't leave anybody there. Can a brother get a witness? I mean, he does not leave us in that place. He doesn't leave us in this pathetic, broken state. But he calls us...what?...up and out. He calls us to move forward. He calls us to move in his direction. It's called discipleship. Being a follower of Jesus Christ. So we have here in this phrase, our opening point, and we recognize Ephesians 4:1-6 incentivizes and equips us for a life of New Covenant unity. What about this prisonership of your stand before the Lord that equips you or incentivizes you for a life of Christian unity? And the next phrase is staggering. So I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to do what? What does it say in verse one? What is this urging? What is this imploring? You are a prisoner, so you're to do what exactly as a prisoner for the Lord? We are urged to, what does it say? Walk in a manner worthy. I remember the moment that those words struck my soul. You know what some of our best moments are? Maybe our very best of them all. Is being honest about who we are with ourselves. Because when you're honest as a believer with who you are in yourself. And then you glance for a moment at what God has given you. That delta is so broad, is so expansive, it's so impossibly large between who you are and what you deserve and what he has given you, that that delta is called worship, that that difference between what you are and what you deserve and what he has done is thanksgiving and gratitude. And when I read for the first time, this is probably 30 years ago, that there was some capacity, o capture this adoring heart. There was somehow some capacity. What's the word again to be worthy? I was blown away. I was like, I must be misreading something. I don't know any Greek yet, so I don't know how to do any of that...worthy. Worthy? in fact, Colossians 1:10 says this, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. The worthy here in 4:1 is worthy of the calling. But in Colossians 1:10, it's not just worthy of the calling, it's worthy of Christ himself. Are you kidding me? Worthy of him. It says it. Colossians gives us a list of how we can do that. The next phrase is fully pleasing him in every way. Mhm. By the way, we're never worthy of Christ. We're never worthy of his sacrifice. We're never worthy, never worthy of his grace. But gospel commands tell us that we can approach that. And in Ephesians 4 it says, worthy of the calling. Again, being called out and called up a life that is called by God. So again in the notes in front of you. And because you come for God to do business with your soul, I trust that you go to churches like this with a Bible and something to write on and write with, because this is not about any preacher, it's not about any sermon. It's about you and your God who is helping you to understand His Word. And as he does that work and when you have a meeting with your God as you come to church not checking boxes, but come to a divine appointment with him. You don't want to miss any note. Any word from him. So as you're possibly taking notes, maybe in your mind, but maybe in the paper in front of you, what are these callings? What is the calling? What is his calling? There's a generic calling to live for Christ, to walk with purity and honor, to manifest Christ in the fullness of grace and truth, to put on the humility of Jesus Christ, and and to make no provision for the flesh. But there's also a specific calling, and oh, I hope, and I very much pray that you have in your heart a sense of God's calling on your life. Why did he put you on this planet? For what service? For what ministry? For what engagement and investment in the church? Well, this is our great privilege to be called by him. So to apply this specifically, what does one devotion that you know is pleasing to the Lord that you want to spiritually commit to in the month of July? I wrote down one for myself as I was working up these notes. So as you think about being worthy of his calling and worthy of the Lord fully pleasing him, what is one devotion that you know that you should be more careful with or disciplined about, and in a spirit of humility and love for God to say, okay, so in the month of July, I want to be more pleasing to you. I want to be more. I want to approach this worthiness concept as wild as it is. I want to approach that with a deliberate engagement and attentiveness to this devotion, an act of obedience, pleasing him. Only Christ pleases God. But those of us who are in Christ and pleasing Christ and honoring Christ in His Word have the privilege of pleasing him too, by his merit, by his grace, for his glory. And every true believing heart leaps at the privilege of pleasing their maker. So again, maybe for you, you jot down something. It could be something related to someone that you love, could be a certain series of conversations you need to have. It could be a personal devotion before the Lord for the month of July, which starts when, by the way? Oh it does tomorrow...Oh that's fantastic. It starts tomorrow. For the month of July. 30 days has 31 days. Uh, 31 days of deliberate, spirit wrought devotion to God so that you can walk. What? In what kind of way? In a more worthy fashion. And don't we want that? Yes we do. So yes, captives to the gospel, indicatives and imperatives, the worthy life.
Number 3 the pain of unity. Verse 2. Now Paul takes a decidedly sour turn in verse 2, and he starts to stack up a bunch of requirements for unity. If you're going to experience unity, you have to leave a down payment, and the down payment is pretty steep. I'll be honest with you. I hope your Bibles are open because when I say that you're like, really? I don't remember it being that unpleasant. It is more unpleasant than we would have imagined. And if you see here in Ephesians 4:2, he's now going to stack for us 4 painful attitudes that require unity. Now the reality is that unity can get a little bit messy. I have a friend of mine, one of the elders, down in Tampa Bay at Grove Bible. He at length quotes Psalm 133. I think this is verses one and two. Uh, maybe you know the verse about unity. Psalm 133:1-2 says, behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in....what's the next word?...unity. Do you know the next image? He says, it's like precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes. Hey y'all, I hate sticky hands. This is a horrible metaphor. Ah, no, no, not none of that. It's. Oh, man, what am I going to do? It's going to be mess for days. I'm going to have oil all in my beard. And so he quotes it and I just go, no, not that. I mean, uh, but there's what is the oil metaphor all about? What does oil for?...anointing. It's for healing. It's for blessing. And it's the emblem of the presence of the Holy Spirit. You may hate sticky hands like me and messy stuff like me, but this image is still beautiful and it speaks to how unity can even get a little messy as it kind of spills out. It's beautiful and pleasant when brothers dwell in unity and this anointing, this healing, this grace and this presence, this blessing poured out is what our hearts truly yearn for. But we become distracted. The main distraction is this infernal box. By the way, young people look up. I trust that you are smart enough to know that all the technocrats in this world want is for you to spend 20 hours on this phone every day so that they can sell you what they want to sell you, and they rip you off and you are impoverished, you are dead-end from the inside out, and they fill their coffers with your cash. That's all that they want. You need to understand it, and you need to fight it because they're not there to bless. And not all social media is evil. We have a social media kind of platform at our church, and I know that you do here under the competent hands of Sam Reese. But my point is, it can be used for glory. But we need to be mindful. We need to be moderate, and we need to be aware of what it is. So there is this cost to unity. If we're going to do more of this, we're going to have to do more of click and put it away. Hopefully in your family, there are mechanisms for that to happen, whether it's screen off time, whether it's foot time away from the phone in terms of where they're plugged in at night. I don't know how you would do it, but Lord, help us to draw near to unity more of this for his glory.
So these four painful attitudes, do you see them there in verse four? He just lists them off. What are the attitudes? What are the ingredients necessary to bake up a beautiful, gracious, uh...gift of unity. What are they? Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Bearing with one another in love. These four attitudes are painful attitudes. They're very, very costly. And let's just look at them one at a time.
The first is lowliness. The word for humility is lowliness. Lowliness is used of Christ Jesus in Matthew 11:29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am lowly and gentle in heart. Lowly...Jesus Christ is lowly. Jesus Christ himself lowered himself. The word here lowliness, means not rising far above the ground. Not rising far above the ground, we lower ourselves. The first posture of unity is this...where we lower ourselves. And when we do that, how is everybody else? They are what? Elevated. They're raised. When you lower yourself, they're now all above you. They have a higher priority. They have a higher pay scale in your mind. They have a higher significance. You know people like this, they fill this church...thoughtful, kind, generous, humble, eager to serve. Lowliness is others higher than self. Lowering ourselves actively. Romans 12:16 says, live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Mark my words, friends. When you fail to associate with the lowly, you have forgotten where you come from. We all come from nothing, and lowering ourselves in the presence of others is just a right posture that Christ Jesus has shown us. And that we should take up with joy. But this is costly because what do you have to give up to take on this lowly posture? Well, what do you have to give up? Tell me what you have to give up. Things like what? Pride, self, time, status, your own agenda. But you know what's true?...that every moment that you act in obedience to Christ's example is a moment reserved for his glory forever, and will resonate in heaven forever. It's costly, but it's beautiful.
Well, there's three more painful attributes. Uh, first is lowliness. The second is he didn't want to get out of the humility genre, so he just went with gentleness. So lowliness is others higher than self? Gentleness is hearing others well. If loneliness is this others above you, gentleness is this listening to others. And again, this is painful and costly because for you to listen to others, you got to do what? Shut your mouth. Know what I'm saying? You cannot...your brain is not powerful enough to speak and hear at the same time. And so we have to, in gentleness. The word is sweetly reasonable or approachable. Jesus Christ, I just quoted Matthew 11:29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am lowly and gentle. Jesus Christ is sweetly reasonable. The great King of glory, the great God of gods, is sweetly reasonable, approachable, willing to do what again?...to listen. And this is painful because we got something to say. We want to say it. We got to get it out there. We want to advocate for ourselves or for our agenda, but it is good and right to learn and to listen. Gentleness. Thomas Guthrie says. Grand edifices, the tallest towers, the loftiest spires rest on deep foundations. The very safety of eminent gifts and preeminent graces lies in their association with deep humility. Those graces are dangerous without humility. Great men need to be good men. And good men are like their Lord Jesus Christ. May we all strive towards lowliness and gentleness and listening and caring for others and esteeming others higher than ourselves, all others higher than ourselves. Listening to others, not assuming that we know. Not waiting for them to talk so that we can fill the void with our ignorance and arrogance. But a gentle listening. Again, costly. Lowliness, others higher than self, gentleness, hearing others while patience endurance through the hard stuff. The word here is Macrozamia. The word here is long suffering...ahh, long suffering. The fruit of the spirit includes gentleness, includes long suffering. When you're filled with the fullness of the Spirit, you're filled with these capacities. Since there are families here with with kids, siblings. Just watch the snipe. Just watch the tearing down. Just watch the back and forth that is not of the Lord, whether that comes from young people or not so young people. It is a marker of the presence of the Spirit and of our desire to gain unity by being long suffering. Just think about it. Relax on your timetable. Who do we think we are? Really?...that we have the capacity and the wherewithal to identify the when and the how and the what. We would love to write that plan. You don't have that pay scale. You don't have the capacity to do that. And God hasn't asked for your help to determine when he's going to do what he's going to do. So it's ours to be long suffering and to wait for him. Wait patiently for the Lord. Endure in the Lord. Trust in the Lord. And if you have to eat another helping of crow, smile through it. Because he brought it to you. If you haven't eaten enough crow, you don't know how delicious it can be and how much it sometimes tastes like chicken. This forbearance, this endurance through the hard stuff is a marker of the presence of the Lord, and is one of the costs that we have to pay to find the unity that he would love us to have.
So now we have this forbearance, this last word again in verse two, this forbearance bearing with one another in love. This forbearance is an interesting word. It means to uphold. Let me try to picture this for you. If I had one of the students come up here, Samuel would come up, for example. Don't come up, I appreciate it. He would be here in, like two seconds. He'd be like, let's go. And, uh, we had a week together at Clarity Camp, and we had a blast. All the young people. Such a gift. Thank you for blessing and encouraging. Thank you so much for Pastor Nate and Justin and the leadership. Um, what a joy. But if Samuel came up here and said, Samuel, let me depict this, he would be standing here to my left, and I would basically just abandon my strength and fall in his direction. It may be hard for him to hold me up, but he's a strong young man, so he would probably pull it off. But here's the thing that's the picture of forbearing or upholding. You see, people are going to lean on you without even realizing that they're troubling you. They're going to get into your lane without even realizing that they're out of place. They're going to fall because of their weakness or their difficulty, and you're going to need to stand there and you're going to need to uphold them. The problem is, the people that lean on you sometimes get ornery with you for holding them up, and you're like, hmm, let's do the math here. If I sidestepped your weight, you would fall flat on the ground and you would get hurt. I'm holding you up and you're jawing at me. It happens. Did it not happen to King Jesus? Oh, it did. He bore, he bore, he bore. He loved, he loved, he loved. And how did they respond? And are we any better than the Lord Jesus? Of course we're not. So Paul says, forbear, uphold. Yes, people are going to wear you out. Yes, people are going to tire you out. Yes, people are going to depend demand you of your strength. But oh friends. We find this in the Spirit and we trust in him.
So to apply these four painful attitudes, choose one of these virtuous attitudes and convert it to a discipline. Choose one of these four: lowliness, gentleness, listening to others patience or forbearance. Find a way in your life where you're thinking, I need to be by the grace of God, through the power of the Spirit and through the instruction of Scripture...better at that. Please, friends, be a student of the scriptures and mark it down. It's a very inconvenient reality. To know New Testament power, you have to make New Testament choices. Right?...to know the blessing of unity. I would encourage you, in fact, to go later to Acts 2;42 through 47. So remarkable, like paragraph of what God did in the aftermath of the first sermon that Peter preached. Remarkable paragraph. And there are, I think, 10 or 11 markers of unity in one paragraph. And it says the very last phrase is God was adding to the church daily. You see, to know New Testament power, what do you have to do? You have to make New Testament choices. But we don't. We pull levers and check boxes, hoping that New Testament power will come out of that. Lord help us and I'm preaching to myself. Lord help us. So we are to...number 4. Verse 3. Make every effort. Make every effort. Verses 3-6 make every effort. The key challenge here in this opening paragraph in explaining the obligation of the gospel. Ephesians 4:3, Eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Make every effort is the NASB, isn't it? Yes. Thank you. Vicky. Does anybody have an NASB? Great. Is it make every effort... Wonderful. Make...how many efforts? Every. Every effort. Eager ESV, not so good, not as much. The word here for making every effort is a word of the word is spoude, its hair back gate quickened every effort. It's making haste. It's a holy zeal that demands full dedication. That's this word. Eager. That's this word. Make every effort. It is a holy zeal that demands full dedication. This is our posture towards unity. Make every effort to maintain, to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. This love, this peace that God would have us to enjoy is in your hands to preserve. And how many efforts are you supposed to make? Every, all of them, whatever they are. He's given you a short list here, but it's so much more than that. It would be fitting for you to identify a point of disagreement, disaffection. Again, we're moving past the potluck unity where you can avoid the thing that you don't like. I don't care for that dish, and frankly, I don't like who made it either. But I got to love him. What nonsense is this? Christ Jesus loves and likes all of his children, and if he can get past the threshold of our knuckle headedness capital N, we can do it too. We can find by his grace the capacity to not manufacture unity, not build unity, not make unity, but to do what again? Maintain it. John 17:21-24, the last night of his life...the High Priestly Prayer. Jesus tells us that he has and is about to purchase, procure unity with the death...the spilling of his own blood, his own death the next day, Jesus Christ makes unity. It's ours to do what again? To maintain it, to preserve it. And how does that happen? By what level of effort? What level of care? What level of zeal? What level of interest? If you want to look at how this actually shows up. I mentioned Acts 2:42-47, but Romans 12:14-21 is a massive paragraph about our sharing and living together. Making every effort towards the bond of peace, the spirit of love, his great glorious achievement. And verses four, five and six give us really the substance of what we're maintaining and what we're protecting. Four, five and six give us the seven ones, the seven points of unity that we should experience in Christ. There's one body...the church, one spirit...the Holy Spirit, one hope...the gospel, one Lord...Jesus Christ, one faith...Christianity, one baptism...believer's baptism. Praise God for C.C. and Elizabeth and all baptized servants and Christ followers, and one God and Father of all souls. Seven points of unity. By the way, friends, I would exhort you strongly. what is your relationship with the local church? Are you a consumer? Are you maybe so, maybe yes. Are you a little bit here, a little bit there, or do you have a committed dedicated members of the body relationship with the local church. Where you are making disciples. You are being challenged and accountable. Where you are serving weekly. Wow, that was super intense. Like serving even every week. Imagine that. Serving weekly, giving in a way that pleases the Lord so that you are bearing this unity on an organizational level. Then on a personal level. Know the value of this unity. Just over three weeks ago sitting on the beaches of Normandy, France, June 6th 2024. 80 years from the landings. We stood on Omaha Beach. We stood there where the greatest of all military engagements, the invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord, was engaged to the point of enormous success and also beyond unspeakable cost, 10,000 casualties on that day alone, in the first waves of the men coming in on these Higgins boats. 90 plus percent of those first waves were obliterated under the precise defenses and fire of the Germans. John McManus describes the scene this way. When the men reached the beach, the scene that greeted their eyes was even more grim than they had ever imagined. Wrecked Higgins boats floated aimlessly on the crashing surf. The water was a murky pink from the concentration of blood, the sands dotted and splotched with lines and circles of crimson. Body parts everything from arms and legs to heads and fingers littered the sands and the stones everywhere. Angry looking obstacles still honeycombed the beach, seemingly oblivious to the prodigious and costly efforts of the gap assault teams to clear them. Blood soaked bandages, discarded equipment, sand choked rifles lay in random clusters everywhere dead and wounded men some face down, some face up, with arched backs stiffened by the cold littered the waterline and the sands. Other figures lay huddled at the shingle. Some looked dead, others held, cried out for medics. Several tanks were burning and immobilized. Mortar and artillery shells, exploded oily puffs of smoke and dust or sand floated in the wake of explosions, bullets snipped against the sand and the stones of the beach. Welcome to bloody Omaha. And to stand there at the very moment of sunrise, where the men would have been coming onto the shore 80 years to the minute...was staggering. Everything was set against the aggressors. Everything was set against the Allied forces. Everything has and was going wrong. But they found a way forward because they chose to go forward. They chose to go forward together. It's an extraordinary beach with hundreds of yards of sand, extraordinarily shallow beach, and they walked as much as half a mile from the water, from the Higgins boats, all the way up to the seawall. The seawall was this pile of rock, about 4 or 5ft high. And approaching the seawall, they were under fire from not only artillery, but then rifle and machine gun, but at the seawall there was the smallest amount of cover, because there was nothing beyond those hedgehogs that you saw in the picture a few moments ago. They were completely exposed, but they came to the seawall and they stopped. So hundreds of men started to pile up on the seawall. But the Germans are really good at math, so every single inch of that was sighted for artillery, and they were being mercilessly bombed because the Germans realized that they were holding up at the seawall. On top of the seawall was barbed wire and then a minefield, and then an 80 foot cliff. The road ahead was horribly difficult and perilous. And so they sat there frozen, literally physically, because it was exceedingly cold. But in their minds and hearts, having found just this surfeit layer of security. But the reality was the only way forward and the only way through was going ahead. And so what they found was these collection of men, just privates. There were no commanding officers. There was nobody of any rank that was there to lead people forward. All of the groups were completely just messed up in terms of where they were and where they were supposed to be. Private Howell says this what I said was, forget it. I'm not going to die here. The next bunch of guys that goes over that wall, I'm going with them. If I'm going to be infantry, I'm going to be infantry. So I don't care who else goes the next group. We decided together that it was time to start the war. In little pockets of people gathered together, they didn't know each other very well. They didn't train together. None of that mattered. They realized that the only way forward was through the gauntlet...through the difficulty. The only path of victory was gathering up their courage and strength, gathering up their humility, their gentleness, their forbearance and their patience, gathering up the strength that they needed in their character to go over that wall and to find the way to victory. If we're going to be infantry, we're going to be infantry. And the only way that we can do that effectively is by doing it together in this marker of unity, these incentives and equipping, training moments of unity here at this powerful passage, strengthen our resolve to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and to find in our hearts and lives through relationship and in a church a commitment to what he calls us to as we distance ourselves from the isolation that the world promotes. Because the enemy wants to kill, steal, and destroy, and draws us into the unity that he offers us in the grace of the gospel and the presence of His Holy Spirit.
Let's pray together. Father, we love you. We love what you have designed for us, and all of us for certain realize that we haven't yet attained it. We haven't yet reached that mark. We are on a journey, and the journey is to be marked by beautiful love, peace, grace and unity where you are put on display, where you are shown forth as the great creator of unity. Now it's ours to make every effort to protect it. Give us these attitudes and make us prisoners of the gospel, zealous to honor you in all ways. We ask in Jesus name, Amen.
