Walk Worthy of the Calling — Ephesians 4

0:00 Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the Lord Jesus. We thank you for the opportunity to speak concerning him and to to be blessed by being occupied in our hearts and souls with the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, pray that you'd be with us today and guide in the message through your holy spirit. In Jesus name, amen.

0:22 So, Devin may be surprised at this but my message this morning is on Ephesians four verses, but I'm a little broader, verses one through 16. So, thank you, Daven, for giving us an introduction and the breaking of bread to this. Okay. So, while you're turning to Ephesians four, I'll just give you a little bird's eye view of of the book of Ephesians. Perhaps, the most significant break in the epistle to the Ephesians is between chapters three and four.

1:03 Chapters one through three give the believer's position in Christ Jesus in the heavenly places. While chapters four to six give us the believer's practice as he represents god in a wicked world. So, let's go to our chapter, Ephesians four. I'm gonna start by reading the first six verses. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

1:48 There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. So this starts out with our Practical Christianity 101. So it starts out with the Apostle beseeching us to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. Walk worthy of the calling.

2:26 And so I suppose probably our first question would be, well, what is the calling by which we're called? So, what I did is I kind of extracted some expressions through the scripture to kind of give it to us. We're called of Jesus Christ to be saints according to his purpose, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling. And Peter summarizes it this way. He says, As he who has called you is holy, so be you holy in all your conduct.

3:07 One Peter one fifteen. So we get this sense that we've been called, we've been called and set apart for God to a pathway of holiness, to walk before God, and he's given us many resources for this. So it starts off in his exhortation that he starts off with some really practical suggestions in verse two. It says, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering bearing with one another in love. So I kind of enjoyed the lowliness and gentleness.

3:50 Reminded me of Matthew 11 verses twenty eight and twenty nine. It goes like this. Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take, this is Jesus talking, Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest to your souls. And so I know that the meek and lowly is basically the same as lowliness and gentleness.

5:02 Precious thought that the Lord Jesus did that for us. Now, continuing with the thought, it says, with long suffering bearing with one another in love. So there's a lot of diversity in the church. There's a lot of diversity and maybe there's some ragged edges, maybe when we rub together, there's a little sandpaper, a little bit of irritation perhaps. So he gives us this exhortation.

5:34 Longsuffering, putting up with one another, right? With longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, energized by love, right? I think it's energized first, well, in our relationships, we do love one another because he loved us first. And I really love the verse from two Corinthians that says, The love of Christ compels us. It's like, it's so energizing.

6:07 We really enter into the Lord's love for us, then we're energized to follow Him and to love one another. Now, remembering that we're talking about walking worthy of the calling, remember that that's how we introduce this subject. Now, in the next three verses, four verses, verses three through six, he introduces three different realms in which we have responsibility to walk worthy of the Lord. Now, what I'm getting ready to do in presenting these three realms is something that I was taught by a lovely young brother when I was a teenager. And so what I oftentimes do when I'm preparing messages, I have some little question mark about something, I'll go and try to give it a reality check.

7:07 I'll get out a commentarian. See, so I was reading in Ironside's book on Ephesians, and he presents these three realms. So let's see what they are. They're realms of responsibility, okay? The first one in verses three and four is the realms of the true believers, those that have been born again in the Lord Jesus Christ.

7:33 They're part of the body of Christ. So it says in the third and fourth verse, Endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling. All true believers are in this category. Perhaps the stress in this category is unity.

8:08 It's called the unity of the spirit. I noticed that Ironside makes a big point that we're not called to maintain the unity of the body. That's there whether we recognize it or not. But he said the unity of the spirit is something we're called to maintain. Well, thought that was an interesting remark.

8:29 And unity is only maintained when there's really love. And so, we could say the stress would be unity and love and perhaps faith because it speaks about the one hope of your calling. So that would be the stress that we get in this realm. Okay, the second realm is in the fifth verse. It's one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

8:58 That is, the Lordship of Christ is acknowledged, one Lord. The belief system is claimed to be based upon the Scriptures. That's called one faith. The Word of God, that's it, one faith. And finally, baptism unto Jesus Christ is recognized as the public commitment to this position.

9:29 That is, there's one baptism. Okay, so what would the stress be in this area? Well, we're talking about the faith, we're talking about the faith. So this body of truth on which the Church rests is foundational. Do we believe that Jesus is the Son of God?

9:54 Do you believe that He came here a man and died for our sins? The basic foundations of Christianity. And so I would say that the stress in this realm is the stress of maintaining the truth, because you have those coming in in this realm who don't know the truth. And so the stress is to maintain the truth and to maintain the lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the third realm is in the sixth verse.

10:30 There's one God and Father of all who is above all, through all, and in you all. This would be the realm of all mankind, all human beings. And in this realm, God is the supreme one. The authority of God is the stress of this realm. God is the supreme one.

10:55 And the responsibility of believers is to be a witness to the world. And so you have these three realms. Now, reminding ourselves that our subject is walking worthy of the Lord. So hopefully we'd see that there's gonna be different stresses in whichever realm that we're actually operating. Okay, sorry, I hope that's not too theoretical or anything, but it seems to me real enough that there is one body, that's real enough.

11:29 It's real enough that there is a kind of a realm of profession, those that say there is, but are they really? And that's actually presented in some detail in two Timothy two, where it speaks about the great house, and there are those that are unworthy vessels in that house, and then there's worthy vessels in that house. And it says this, and I've always enjoyed this verse, it says, Nevertheless, it talks about those that kind of fall away. It says, Nevertheless, the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knows those that are His. And so the Lord knows the truth about our hearts.

13:05 Verse seven, But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, he says, when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. Now this, He ascended, what does it mean that also He first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the one that ascended far above all the heavens that He might fill all in all. And he himself, these are the gifts now, he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, that's building up, the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.

14:23 But speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to the effect of working by which every part does its share and causes the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. So, starting off with the Lord Jesus Christ, and so we were told that to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. And I thought about this idea of grace, that grace is God's gift to us, but it seems like in context here, it's the grace to be able to walk worthy of this calling. It's almost like saying, you know what, in our flesh we're incapable of accomplishing this, of this walking worthy of the Lord. We're incapable of doing that in the flesh.

15:39 But God gives grace. He gives us that help that will allow us to be able to do this. And it's associated with certain gifts that God has given to the church. Now, every one of us that's a believer has a spiritual gift. Now, that doesn't mean that it's so outstanding that there aren't that many Billy Grahams around, but still there's plenty of preachers of the gospel.

16:10 Each one of us has a gift, some kind of gift that God has given us if we know the Lord. And so the next thing he does here, and this is what Devin read, he gives us a Messianic scripture here, which I thought was interesting. I spent quite a bit of time going over messianic scriptures some time back, this was one of them I came across. This is spoken by David. It's Psalm 68, and it was spoken about one thousand years before the Lord Jesus came.

17:25 You can find it in Acts chapter one, and we find the Lord Jesus just going up. And still visualize the disciples standing around and mouths hanging up, up there, and the Lord Jesus just goes up in the sky and disappears in a cloud. And then the angels were there and they said, He's gonna come again. He is going to come again. He ascended up on high.

17:52 He led captivity captive. Now, we had some nice thoughts. Captivity captive, I think maybe I have, forgive me, Devin, if I misquote you, my memory of what you said was that it includes like our sins, he's taken away our sins, and not only our sins, but shall we say, the slavery, sin. He's taken that away. I like that.

18:21 I also think that have included in that his victory over death itself, which would be one Corinthians 15, victory over death itself through the Lord Jesus. And finally, it ends up, the Messianic prophecy ends up saying it gave gifts to men. And so way back there, a thousand years before the Lord Jesus came, David prophesying said that this Messiah would give gifts to men. And I can't think that David understood what he was talking about. I doubt it.

19:02 I doubt if David understood. He gave gifts to men. And he might be us just reading this without any context. But here in our epistle, it gives us the context. It says that David was speaking of the gifts through the Holy Spirit that you and I are given.

19:25 Now, after that, he adds a parenthesis here, and I've enjoyed looking at this parenthesis. So it says, Now this, he ascended, what does it mean? This, He ascended. Kind of treasured that. I thought, isn't that neat because the Apostle is reasoning with us, these things.

19:47 Now, if He ascended, what kind of conclusions ought we to draw? What does it mean? What kind of conclusions should we draw? Well, it says, what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He couldn't go up unless He came down.

20:06 Now, we know from the scriptures that Christ was in heaven and he came down here and was born a virgin, but he was up there beforehand. We're even told in several places that he was the one that actually did creation. So he had to descend before he could ascend. And that descending involved his becoming a man and then living a perfect life so that he could be the sacrificial lamb and then giving himself on the cross as the sacrifice for sins, being buried, and it doesn't stop short of being resurrected from the grave. He that ascended, he who's up there in glory now, went through all of that for us.

21:03 He who descended is also the one who ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things. I had wondered why the Lord stuck this parentheses in here. And one thing that kind of struck me was kind of the idea that if we're gonna talk about the ascended Christ, the one that's glorified now above everything, it's almost like He won't let us talk about His glorification without talking about His humility, what He did. And it reminds me of the verse in Philippians two that says this. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

22:04 Therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him a name that's above every name, that the name of Jesus every knee should bow. But notice that it brings his humility first. We have to always remember, we never get away from the fact. And isn't it true that Jesus, the greatest of all, was the one that humbled himself the most? I praise him for that.

23:12 Yet we have to ask, well, what do we have of the apostles today? Well, that's a good one. That's a good question to ask. What we have of the apostles today is the holy scriptures, the New Testament. In other words, the teaching, the foundational teaching that the apostles and prophets gave to us is recorded for us in the New Testament scriptures.

23:34 And so, in that sense, we still have them, only in that sense. There's one sense in which a prophet still exists, not in the sense of making extra scriptural pronunciations, but it's given to us in one Corinthians fourteen:three. It says, He who prophesies speaks to edification, exhortation, and comfort. And certainly there are those among us that speak to build us up and to exhort us and to comfort us. And so in that sense, we would have a prophet, only in that sense.

24:18 Some he gave to be evangelists, the one that goes out with the Gospel, he goes from this inner circle or inner realm and he reaches out to the outer realm, the evangelist. He's the one who spreads the gospel. Then some are pastors. Pastors, the thought about pastor is, I would say the descriptive word for pastor is shepherd. And the story I like best about that, to illustrate that, is the story of Peter in the last chapter of the book of John.

25:00 So Peter had denied the Lord and the Lord Jesus publicly restored him in the last chapter of the Gospel of John. And when he did it, the Lord Jesus stood in front of Peter and he said, Peter, do you love me? Peter was a little bit irritated at the Lord because the Lord asked him that question three times. Peter, do you love me? It was as though the Lord Jesus was saying to Peter, he didn't say these exact words, but as though the Lord was saying, you Peter, if you really love me, what's important to me is going to be important to you.

25:36 And so he said to Peter, Feed my lambs. And he said again, Feed my sheep. And they said, Shepherd my sheep. And that's what a pastor does. He's a shepherd.

25:54 He shepherds the sheep. He makes sure they're fed. He makes sure that they're taken care of. He helps meet their needs and comfort them, and he feeds them. That's the pastor.

26:08 Okay, the teacher. Now, teacher is the person that's gifted to be able to explain the Scriptures clearly so that others can understand it and bring the truth of God to them. So, pastors and teachers are sort of combined, if you look the way that the word and is used in tying them all together, pastors and teachers seem to be kind of bound together. I think they're separate gifts, yes, they have a very similar ministry building up the church. Now, gifts, they have a double purpose.

26:45 So the first purpose of the gift is in verse 12, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry. So this person with this gift is to reach out to others within the church and to help them to become gifted also in the work of the ministry. So it's also said to be for the edifying of the body of Christ, Edifying simply the building up of the body of Christ. So this evangelist will say, could be a teacher or pastor also, but this evangelist, he's got this heart for the lost. He goes out and he tries to give the gospel everywhere he goes.

27:34 But his responsibility is greater than just that. His responsibility is also that he would train others to be evangelists also. So that's equipping the saints. I suppose he would get, I think I've seen Christian Eichele do this. He'd get two or three young people to go with him and he takes them out there and he does evangelism with them and pretty soon they're doing the evangelism.

28:04 There's one neat thing about this is there's a multiplying effect in this because this one evangelist or this one gifted teacher, he ends up training others to where there's, it's multiplied. So three years from now, there's four, there's four teachers or four evangelists, and maybe another three years after that, there's a dozen of them, and it's the way the Church is built up. Kind of a neat thought. Okay, now the purpose. The purpose is till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

30:02 The Lord Jesus Himself said, Father, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. So they come to the knowledge, they come in the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God. Well, if we all have the same focus, we're gonna have a unity, aren't we? So, it's the unity, it's the knowledge of the Son of God. And I think that perhaps the big point to get out here is that their focus was on the Lord Jesus Christ.

30:41 That was the object before them and their focus was the Lord Jesus Christ. And the more they focused on the Lord Jesus Christ, the more they were like him. So it says, To a perfect man, to the measure of the stature and fullness of Christ. The best example I can think of that is found in two Corinthians chapter three, and I think it's worth our going over to two Corinthians chapter three. And so, two Corinthians three says, I'll start with the twelfth verse.

31:25 Therefore, since we have hope, we use great boldness of speech. Unlike Moses, so what we do isn't really like Moses, unlike Moses who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly at the end of what was passing. What is this talking about? Well, it's really a cool story from the book of Exodus. And so we know that Moses would go up onto Mount Sinai and the glory of the Lord was up on Mount Sinai.

31:56 So Moses would go up on Mount Sinai, twice he went up for forty days. One day we know it, one time we know he went up for three days, but apparently he went up and down, maybe even daily up into Sinai. And we're told that when Moses would come off after he'd been up with the Lord, his face would literally shine. And it was so bright. We have to understand, we've never seen anything like this.

32:30 But this is what the scripture tells us that actually happened. His face was so bright that it sort of blinded their eyes, they couldn't see. And they requested that he put a veil over his face, and so that's what this veil is talking about. So his face, shall we say, reflected the glory of the Lord, and it was so bright that they couldn't stand it, and so they put a veil over it. And so when it's taking this and it's applying to you and me, he's saying, but we're unlike them because we're not supposed to put the veil over our face.

33:39 So it's like he's saying, you know what, you believers are a mirror. And you get in the presence of the Lord and you get into the joy and pleasure of the Lord and when somebody's out there, they're gonna see that reflection of the Lord in your face. We know we're not talking about literally white light shining from us, we're talking about a spiritual light. You can't be in the presence of the Lord and others around you don't know that you've been in the presence of the It's gonna show that you spent time with the Lord. I think all of us have seen godly men, that we got in their presence and our hearts were just warm, they just seemed to beam with the love of the Lord.

34:32 I've experienced that, to see men that affected me in that way. I think that's what we're talking about. We become a reflection of the Lord, and the more time that we spend in his presence, the more of him we reflect. And that's what I would take it from the context here that that's what he's saying is part of the very purpose of the church itself, that we're back in Ephesians four, that you and I might come to a perfect man, Jesus Christ, to the measure of the stature, the fullness of Christ. May our lives be conformed to him in such a way that we represent him properly in this world.

35:26 I like that. Jesus as our object in life. Okay, now, fourteen and fifteen deal with the effort to maintain our unity in the spite of those that come in to cause disunity. That we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men, by the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. False teachers coming in, trying to cause dissension.

36:18 Okay, what's the solution to it? But speaking the truth in love may grow up in him and all things, who is the head, Christ. He doesn't want us to be children that can't discern the right from the wrong. Rather than that, he wants us to be grounded in the truth of God, established in the truth of God, so that we're not tossed around like a leaf in the wind out there tossed by every wind of doctrine. Now, how is that to happen?

37:03 Well, those that have the gift, and to some extent, we all have it, those that have the gift should be speaking the truth in love. They speak it in a way that shows that they really care. They speak it in a way that others are drawn to the Lord Jesus and delivered. Speaking the truth in love, they may grow up in him, who is the head Christ. And now, to close out our message, I'm going to read the sixteenth verse, only I'm gonna grab the last three words of the fifteenth verse because it takes that to really make sense, okay?

38:19 Really, you can understand how the picture of the body is actually really a fantastic metaphor of what the church ought to be, where there's a head and the head is directing everything. The head's directing everything that's going on. And we're gonna talk about relationship between the parts and so forth, but as I was even going through my own logic when I was getting ready for the message, as I was going through my own logic, said, wait a minute, it isn't this part that affects this part? And I said, yes it is, no it isn't. So I'm arguing with myself.

39:01 And then I thought, you know, isn't it neat that though the effectiveness of my finger is somehow related to that hand, it can't work right without it being attached to that hand, without it being attached to that arm. It can't happen, but that hand still isn't telling that finger what to do. It's the head that's telling what to do. So isn't it a neat metaphor that it's using? So all our directions are to come from the head.

39:32 He's the one that gives the directions. But it's interesting that it says the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies. Now, I first reading through, I thought, well, it's the joint, the various people. Then I thought, you know, I don't think it really is because it's the joints that come between the parts, right? It's the parts of the people and the joints are the relationships between those people.

40:06 And so to me that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so they're knit together in relationship to each other. And if that relationship isn't right, the body can't work. For instance, okay, so I'm getting a little bit old here. Little arthritis coming in there.

40:33 So I don't know if you can tell or not, but I cannot straighten that finger out. I can work at it and it'll get a little straighter, but I can't straighten that finger out. Furthermore, I've got, what are they called, trigger finger, where you pull your finger in there and you try to undo it and you have to push it back out and you can feel it clicking when it goes out and you say, that's not right. Something's wrong in those joints of the ligaments that are attached to those joints of the face, and it won't work quite right. Like the relationship isn't right, and there's something that's messing it up.

41:08 Well, that happens in the body, doesn't it? That happens where the relationships get marred. And that's what it's all about when it said earlier, long suffering, bearing with one another in love. And so it's those relationships that are so important. And so if the relationships are right, then the body can work right.

41:36 And so it's the effective working by which every part does its share. So I have some tendons and stuff going down that finger, but sometimes it just grabs and I can't use that, that hand won't work. And so he's saying, you know, you have to have those relationships right. And if they're right, if they're right, then every part can do its share. Let's choose to do our share.

42:08 Every part does its share causing the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Bodybuilding. So when we're doing it the way the Lord intended for us to do it, we're going to find that the whole body's built up and blessed by it. Okay, in conclusion, let's walk worthy of the calling by which we've been called, it's a holy calling. Father God, we thank you for the word of God, the message that you've given to us, the letter for us, Lord, the roadmap, the directions.