Worthy of the Calling

Worthy of the Calling - Ephesians 4:1-3 Intro: We will be in Eph 4 today, but as you are turning there I have a question for you to consider… What is the best news you’ve ever gotten? A loved one home safe from military service? Good news from a doctor about a lengthy illness? Maybe your spouse said yes when you proposed? Getting the call that you got the new job? Ok, you received the good news…. now what was your response? Joy! Excitement! Taking actions that lined up with the great news you had received.. M.P. - Because Christ is the One Who called us, we can walk in a manner worthy of the calling….In other words, since Christ is the one who saved us and empowers us, (best news ever!!) we can live our lives in a way that lines up with that truth (an appropriate response to the news!)…I don’t know about you, but there are just times where I’m asking. How do I do this? I know the truth. I believe the truth, but it seems like I’m going in circles or maybe even going backwards in my walk as a Christian. We will find answers in today’s passage. We need to have settled in our minds that Jesus not only has the power to save us, but it is Jesus who right now empowers us to live a life that matches that call. Read Ephesians 4:1-7 - Concentrating on 4:1-3 Passage flow: • Context & Connection (2nd half of book and Therefore being the hinge) • V. 1 Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called ◦ How & why do walk in a worthy manner? • V. 2 & 3 What does the Christian walk look like? ◦ Unity, which specifically looks like: ◦ Humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with each other in love. Context & Connection: We’ve made it halfway through the book of Ephesians! My prayer is that you have been encouraged and strengthened in your faith through the first half of this letter! As we reach chapter 4, it makes sense to look at the big picture of where we’ve been and where we are going. Chap 4:1 is the hinge on which this entire book swings. That hinge is the word therefore in vs. 1 (Refer to visual on bible project slide. Great tool for studying the bible in small groups with your family, etc Paul uses the word therefore to connect what the bible project calls the gospel story with your story. That means truth is always connected to action in scripture. Doctrine to practice. Faith to fruit...Indicatives to Imperatives….In our passage, the call to the calling. • 66 verses of Ephesians filled with incredible doctrine, eternal promises and declared truths of a love for us that is immeasurable! (Show a slide with every indicative then a slide with every imperative. Remind everyone to just take it in visually) • Then we come to the word therefore in 4:1...And what we will see going forward in the second half of Ephesians will consist mostly of commands or imperatives. 89 verses. (Show slides.) So we see the indicatives of the first half connected to the imperatives of the second half by therefore. We see the indicative leads to and empowers the imperative...but the question is how? Visually overwhelming. So much truth and so much responsibility! How do we do it? How does truth lead to action? So look at the rest of vs. 1 and we’ll begin to answer how we walk out our Christian life… 4:1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called…. Paul is a prisoner for the Lord..so not only does he have apostolic authority and divine revelation, he also has ultimate credibility. He’s walked the walk all the way to prison, so he commands our attention. What’s he saying? He’s urging us, he’s imploring us to live a life worthy of our call. How then do we do that? How? We must know what the call is The first way is by knowing what the call actually is. James Boice asks a fantastic question here..”How can a person be urged to live a life worthy of his calling if he has not begun to understand what his call is?” At the end of chap. 3 Paul is praying for the Father to glorify Himself through the church. Church literally means called out ones! If you are a believer, this is your identity now and forever. Do you know who you are this morning? Dear church, you are the called out ones! Do you know what that means? (Build) You have been called before time in love, chosen, adopted, forgiven, redeemed, united to Christ, and sealed by the Holy Spirit. You have had your heart and eyes opened to see the hope to which he has called you 1:18. You have been called from death to life, from wrath to mercy by grace. You were once far off and without hope, but you have been called near by the blood of Christ! You’ve been called from hostility to peace. You’ve been given a new name and a new Father! You have been called to comprehend the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge in order that you may be filled with all the fullness of God! The call tells you who you are and what’s been done for you......And the order here is critical...what Christ has done (indicative) and then what we are to do (imperative). That progression is so important because the world and our hearts tells us the opposite. Even when we look at this passage (read it) and we see the word worthy...it just sends you down the rabbit hole. How can I live in a way that is worthy? Who even is worthy. If I’m honest, yes the indicatives fire me up. The first half of Ephesians has been like the best pre-game speech of all time. I’m ready to run out on the field and crack some heads, but so often I’m like the third string guy who trips through the paper sign the cheerleaders are holding up...so yeah worthy... It’s like the weight at the end of Saving Private Ryan where Ryan has to wonder his entire life whether or not he’s earned, if he was worthy of Capt. Miller’s sacrifice. Or like at the end of Voyage of the Dawntreader...where the movie butchers the book…. Reepicheep asks Aslan if he is worthy of entering his land and Aslan tells him that his land was made for noble hearts like his. Come on. Hollywood almost always gets grace wrong because it is so counterintuitive. We are wired to earn! This is where we must ground the truths of what God has done for us before our responses of obedience. The truth is there is no one worthy, no one noble, but the One who called you... He is worthy and He declares you to be worthy. He is noble and makes our wicked hearts noble because of our union with Him! The endless chasm of your lack of worthiness is due to your sin. But Christ filled that chasm to overflowing with the righteous fullness of the God Who called you. Because the question of your worthiness has been answered in Christ, you are free to stop trying to measure your own value and ability to live up to something (this is where the order is important) that has already been given to you by Christ...But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. v.7 When we know who we are in Christ and what He has done for us in the call, we can begin to see HOW we are to walk in a manner worthy of the calling. How? By giving equal weight to the call and the calling By the Spirit, we can walk in a manner that matches our calling. The beauty is that is what the word worthy actually means in this passage. Worthy means, of equal weight. It means fitting or appropriate. So as we are figuring out how our walk should look in light of the call, what we can’t do is just kind of hedge our bets!! I used to do this thing called a low wave if I saw someone across the room and I wasn't if I knew them or I wasn’t sure if they saw me. Where my hand was low enough that if you didn't return my wave that's cool, I could just kind of play it off. I wasn’t really waving anyway...That kind of tepid dip your toe in response does not reflect the calling to which we've been called! You can be sure..there is no response too extreme or too over the top to match this call! The higher your view of the call, the higher your desire to walk in a manner worthy of it! Os Guiness describes our calling with a matching response like this: “Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamically lived out as a response to His calling and serving us!” So a tepid response is off the table. According to the word worthy, we want our response to be of equal weight to the call. That means our doctrine should match our practice. So ask yourself the question, do you give equal weight to the indicative/the call and the imperative/the calling? Are you as serious about the commands as much as you love soaking in the truth? Thank God for His Word! Since God knows our hearts, He gives us the truths and the right response in His Word. He knows how quickly we can get out of balance by emphasizing one or the other... And there is danger in our Christian walk when we get out of balance in our emphasis between doctrine and practice.. (Don’t forget the flow. We are absolutely right to emphasize that the indicative leads to the imperative, but both have equal weight!) Two dangers 1. Crushed by the command 2. Using truth as an excuse for laziness Crushed by the command: So let’s say you’re more in the, I know the truth, just give me the commands, the imperatives. Tell me what to do, the steps to take to live the Christian life. I’ve got the faith, tell me how to get fruit...But where you are strong, others might be weak. (pause) Let’s say you have a friend who struggles with belief. She’s having doubts about her faith. Every time she sins, she spirals and comes to you for encouragement. You’re getting tired of her just not getting ‘it’. So you bust out with the, listen, you need to work out your salvation with fear and trembling! You know what you just did from your position of strength? You crushed this sister with the imperative. You just Philippians 2:12’d her. Do you know what she actually needs?! The rest of the passage! She needs Phil 2:13 too! For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. This sister needed the indicative, to be reminded of the truth, not loaded up with more of the imperatives while she’s feeling weak! Truth as an excuse: Or the getting out of balance in the other direction...this is the danger in a church like ours that loves doctrine. We love the truth and rightly so. We don’t shy away from hard and glorious truths. But we can’t stay there. Paul didn’t write the first three chapters of Ephesians and say hole up somewhere and learn all you can about these truths...No, to live a life worthy of the calling means that we don’t just settle for knowing more about humility, gentleness, patience, and love, but that we actively seek to do those things by the Spirit! Walking implies action not passivity! Ask the Spirit to search your heart here. When you fail and sin should you turn to doctrine to remind you of what is true? Absolutely. But what cannot happen is to use doctrine and truth as an excuse for disobedience and passivity. Galatians 5. You were called to freedom brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. Saved to something. Created in Christ for good works prepared for you! Thinking back to our football player pregame speech. Yeah, you may fall down but we weren’t given these truths from the first half of Ephesians to run out of the locker room and just sit on the bench!! Listen, I know some of you may be thinking, indicative/imperative, tomato/tomAto, it all sounds kind of technical. Isn’t this something theologians and preachers quibble about? You know the chili cook off is tonight, right? I mean there’s a reason Heather shut me down on naming our chili either double impuchilli or indicative/imperachili. She was right to go in a different direction since that’s only funny to the preacher guy.... I don’t care if you can’t recall the terms indicative and imperative, but the concept...it is absolutely critical that you see that the truth of your call empowers you walking out your calling. And that as you are walking out your calling, you do so not being crushed by the commands or using the truth as an excuse for disobedience….This is the how and the why of the Christian walk... (pause) Now we turn to the specifics of how our walk is described in vs. 2 & 3. What does a worthy walk look like? Read vs. 2 & 3 The first specifics Paul gives us of walking in a worthy manner looks like unity in vs. 1-16 and purity in vs. 17-32. The church, the called out ones, are to make every effort (eager) to maintain unity! Vs. 4 - There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. Unity is described in detail in Vs. 2 - Humility, gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. How do we do it? Well we start with what is true! Look at vs. 3. Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit. If we are eager to maintain unity, that must mean we already have it! We aren’t creating unity, we’ve been given the unity of the Holy Spirit. And we know from just a few verses ago, it is the power of the Holy Spirit who strengthens us to believe that we are united to Christ in our hearts, rooted and grounded in His love. We know from the truth from Eph 2:13 that the blood of Christ has brought us near and v. 14 He is our peace! Both with God and with each other. So then out of the high call (our union with Christ), we walk in the calling!(Union with each other!) We did not and could not have created this unity, but we are called to be eager and to make every effort, to maintain what we’ve been given...Paul starts with humility as he often does. How could there be unity without humility? Our calling is to be humble: Christ humbled himself in the incarnation. Macarthur calls it the greatest humiliation. He humbled himself to serve, not to be served. He humbled himself to the point of death on a cross! You could summarize truth leading to obedience this way: He died for our selfish pride so that we might live to righteous humility. (my version of 1 peter 2:24) So ask yourself what are you proud of, maybe not openly, but secretly? Your intelligence? Your health? Your strength? Your doctrine? Your job? Your children? (But here’s the deal...What do you have that you did not receive?!? 1 Cor 4:7 It’s not wrong to be excited by or celebrate strengths, but those blessings should prompt you to gratitude to the One who gave them to you!) We say this alot, I hope it sticks, but humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less...as you seek to think more of others. Count others more significant than yourself Phil 2:3. Bryan Chapel tells the story describing a tribe where whoever is Chief is decided by whoever is strongest in the tribe. And the chief has this amazing gorgeous headdress so you always know who he is. The tribe’s only access to water is this deep well that you had climb way down into and carry buckets back out. Well one of the men in the tribe was climbing out and fell and broke his legs. Those up top immediately sought out the Chief because he’s the strongest. He takes off his head dress and sets it aside as he climbs down in the mud and muck to put this man on his back and carry him out. That is a glorious picture of humility. Setting aside what ‘according the world’ might make you ‘better’ than somebody else and instead using your strengths, the gifts God has given you to get down in the muck with them in order to come under them and carry them out! (slow)The highest calling of unity will be carried out in some of the lowest and muckiest places as we seek to come under one another in love. Gentleness. The old translations call it meekness. Strength under control...The truth is no one was more gentle than Jesus. We know Jesus cleared the temple. We know He pulled no punches with the Pharisees, but the wrath of Christ was always precise and never out of control. Think about the Holy God who created you and everything else that exists even setting one foot on this sinful rebellious planet. Every breath He took while on earth was one of grace-filled restraint. He came here with a greater purpose than rightfully destroying us for our sin. He came here for redemption! He came here to redeem you from your harsh criticism, your seething anger, and your bitter complaining...He died for that sin so that you might live to be righteously gentle. Patience - Remember where Paul describes himself as the leaster? The lowest of the least of the saints? In 1 Timothy 1:15 Paul states that Jesus came into the world to save sinners and that he is the chief of them. The very next verse surprises me. He received mercy from Jesus even as the chief of sinners so that Christ might show, not His grace, not his love, but His patience! Do you see how this fits with unity? What do we want most when sin? We want forgiveness, but we need the Lord’s patience with us. Thankfully, we get both! But what if He was as dismissive with us as we are with others when they don’t live up to our expectations? Patience means long tempered or long souled. What brings this fruit, this virtue out in us better than other people!?! A walk worthy of the call is meant to be done in community, with our brothers and sisters in Christ! I’m so thankful Paul describes our calling as a walk and our spiritual growth as fruit! You know why?? They both happen slowly!!! Yes we are active AND at the same time our walk is slow and methodical. It is also together...We’re doing it wrong if we’re spending our time looking for these huge personal breakthroughs in holiness or dramatic change in obedience alone….We miss the incremental but inevitable growth that is meant to be happening in community. The gentle response to a brother who was harsh. The humble serving of a child who can do nothing in return. The patient heart with the man just figuring out the gospel. We think these acts are small and may not matter... No. This is the actual plan and purpose of God to bring glory to Himself through His people, when we are eager to maintain unity as we bear with one another in love!!!! I want to close with this thought! (I know the risk there. We start packing up and checking out. Stay with me because this is critical.) I think sometimes we look at our obedience after the indicative as the quid pro quo. The, “alright this was done for me so I have to do this for you.” That’s not it. If you’ve been drinking your whole life from sewage and all the sudden you get a taste of clear fresh water, is it then a burden to get to drink the fresh water? Of course not! The actual drinking of the fresh water is a joy to you, it's a blessing! Brothers and sisters, this is how we are blessed in our obedience. As you obey, as you live a life worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called...you are actually becoming the truest version of yourself. You are becoming exactly who you are designed to be! When you obey the LORD, you aren’t giving up your freedom, you’re actually walking away from slavery!! And some of the best news we might hear is this...We can be sure...He Who began this good work in you will bring it (and you) to completion at the day of Jesus Christ! - Lets pray.