Father, we worship the God who was, the God who is, the God who is evermore. Thank you for calling us into your house! As we talk about growing up in knowledge of you and of equipping each other, allow us to become aware of our need for you to fill us up where we have shortcomings and find ourselves lacking. All of us know deep down inside we’re works in progress, not fully mature.

We trust you to equip us and to hold us close to you. Give us grace and wisdom this morning because you created each and every one of us with a purpose. You called us to this place to be with these people so that you can do something amazing in each of us, through each of us.

Inspire each of us to live into a calling greater than our own ambitions. Anoint us with your Spirit and let it flow from every facet of our being, so that we can move toward your loving presence. Touch your family here at Cedarbrook with the spectacular power that changes the fabric of culture. Lord, let your glory be known to us and in us now and forever. In Jesus name. Amen.

¹I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. ⁷ But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸ Therefore it says,

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”

⁹ (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? ¹⁰ He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) ¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, ¹⁴ so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. ¹⁵ Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

(Ephesians 4:1-17 ESV)

We’re in the back half of Ephesians. From now until the end of August, we’re going to examine how we can practically become radical Christ followers in denying self and imitating Jesus in his righteousness. Cedarbrook, recognize this opportunity because if we strive toward imitating our Lord and Savior and move corporately in the truth and grace of the gospel, seeking unity and not division, equipping rather than discouraging, our community would experience God’s power move more mightily than we could have ever prayed for or imagined. God’s Spirit would bring healing and reconciliation to people at enmity with Him and with each other. God’s love would feed the hungry, care for the widows and orphans, and empower foreigners and those outcast.

But all of that starts with us, as individuals.

Big Idea: We must live worthy of our salvation in Jesus

Let’s go to verse 1.

¹I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called…

Just a little refresher for you all. Paul is writing this letter to the Ephesian church while he is imprisoned with a Roman guard awaiting his trial before the Emperor of Rome. Paul tactfully “urges you.” I’m not as tactful, so I’m going to spell it out for you.

If you admitted you were sinner, believed Jesus died for your sins and was resurrected on the third day, confessed him as your lord and savior with your mouth; but don’t live in a way reflecting what you believe and confess, then you’re wasting your time and your life.

Our new life in faith was paid for by the death of God’s one and only son.This truth cannot be taken lightly, nor can we take it for granted. There was blood shed so we could be recipients of God’s promise. We must lead lives worthy of our salvation. If our confession on Sunday doesn’t reflect our lives Monday through Saturday, then repent and turn toward God. Seek to live worthy of our salvation in Jesus.

Some of us have sins we need to repent of, don’t we? Know that when you do so, God’s presence will rush toward you. Feel safe in your vulnerability to repent before our heavenly father.

Here’s who I’m really worried about. There are some here, where sin is just so ingrained in your life that you don’t actually believe that you sin against God. Afterall, you confess Jesus as your savior and you’re not living like the reprobates you see on the news.

• You may do drugs and drink alcohol every day, but you don’t have a drinking or a drug problem, because you show up to work the next day, you don’t abuse your kids or your spouse. You just have so much stress, you just use to take the edge off – just high enough and buzzed enough to ease your nerves. But you’re robbing yourself from resting in God.
• That may not be your issue, maybe you’re into porn. You like what you see, you say it helps you stay committed and makes you a better partner. But you’re robbing yourself from true intimacy with your spouse, you’re denigrating the very people God told you love.  
• Maybe your sins are slander and gossip. You say what you want, and you bash who you want, because we have these platforms called social media where you can do that sort of thing without getting into an actual bar fight. So at a click of a button you cut down others. God said love your enemies, not beat them down in passive aggressive comments with 5 of your other buddies.
• Maybe your sins are not as blatant, maybe you’re actually subconsciously worshipping idols. You may not pray to statues and images or makes fetishes, but we got some amazing idols: happiness, self, politics, kids, kids sports, career, money, pride, whatever is viral on Tiktok. If we’re devoting more time and energy toward a thing or person that’s not God who gives us those things, it’s an idol. It needs to be removed from our high places in life.

Do you see the common thread here? For those where sin is so ingrained in life, it’s because our we have become our own idols. It’s about our own happiness, our own desires, our own preferences. Our being becomes more important to us than God and that is our greatest sin, that we forget we need God and that we’re loved by him.

When Jesus died on the cross for us, he set us free from ourselves, from our sins and the death that comes with our sins. We are set free and so we must live worthy of our salvation in Jesus!

How do we do that? The first is this: It’s to live in Christlike unity….

Point 1. Our confession calls us to Christlike unity (vv1-6)

…walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called  ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Living in Christ-like unity, embodies these four qualities: humility, gentleness, patience, love.

• Humility: When we act in humility, we consider others at our own detriment, attacking our self pride.
  • If you ever judged somebody for being less smart, less righteous, more crazy than you then you need to be humble.
  • Be humble like Jesus was humble when he took on the form of man, walking as we walked, being tempted, but not sinning. Perfect humility.
• Gentleness: in the King James, this word is translated as meekness. I think that’s a more accurate translation here. Meekness is not demanding what we know is due to us.
  • You could have been wronged, and you could have taken matters into your own hands, but in meekness, you stand down.
  • It’s intentionally modeling Jesus as he was falsely accused, and choosing instead to forgo his kingship and his kingdom and bear the cross for those who accused him.
• Patience: is bearing troubles and long-suffering with people.
  • If your temper runs hot and all you want to do is curse somebody out and ditch people who bring any level of discomfort or inconvenience, then we must be patient.
  • Being patient means we watch failures, endure difficult people and situations without giving into anger or giving up hope.
  • Jesus, watching his crucifiers cast lots for his clothing, prayed to God, asking God to forgive them for their behavior.
• Love: Love is covering for a person’s shortcomings, inabilities, weirdness, and annoying behaviors. It’s caring for them despite their shortcomings.
  • Love isn’t tolerance. Love isn’t putting up with somebody. I know some of you tolerate your co-workers and put up with your neighbors, but that’s not love.
  • Love is caring for people with the grace of God to usher them into the truth of Jesus.
  • Modeling Jesus’ love requires us to shed our own blood. It requires sacrifice, just as Jesus sacrificed himself out of love for us.

If you want to experience supernatural unity that comes from God, then you need to embody humility, gentleness, patience, and love. Imagine how much better your last family reunion would have gone. But don’t just embody these things for a fleeting few hours, do this every day because our lives must be worthy of the salvation gifted to us by the sacrifice of Jesus. Verse 4.

⁴ There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

To explain this, I’m going to read an excerpt from a sermon preached by Dr Martin Luther King Jr based on verses 4-6 we just read. He preached this in 1956.  

Americans I must remind you, as I have said to so many others, that the church is the Body of Christ. So when the church is true to its nature it knows neither division nor disunity. But I am disturbed about what you are doing to the Body of Christ. They tell me that in America you have within Protestantism more than two hundred and fifty-six denominations. The tragedy is not so much that you have such a multiplicity of denominations, but that most of them are warring against each other with a claim to absolute truth. This narrow sectarianism is destroying the unity of the Body of Christ…. God is bigger than all our denominations…

There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church. You have a white church and you have a negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11 o’clock on Sunday morning to sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” and “Dear Lord and Father of All Mankind” you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America… 

Martin Luther King Jr “Paul’s Letter to American Christians” (Montgomery, AL 11/4/1956).

The lesson Paul has for the Ephesians is no different than what Martin Luther King Jr was echoing in the fifties, and no different than it is now, in the 21^st century –the biggest hinderance to living a life worthy of salvation is our inability to see that our unrepented sinfulness rules over our ideology and daily practice because they masquerade around speaking for God in our heads, hearts, and hands, instead of God ruling over our heads, hearts, and hands. If God were to actually rule over our lives, and we were clinging to Jesus Christ as our crucified lord and savior by living with humility, gentleness, patience, and love, then the one Holy Spirit of God would unite the people of God as one body, the church, and God would be our father with us, in us, and working through us.

The fulfillment of this unity within each of us in the church changes the lives of the people inside the church and those influenced outside of the church who are in relationship with each of us. We need Christ-like unity with one another not only so we can live worthy of our salvation, but because in living worthy of our salvation we find ourselves positioned as:

Point 2. We are uniquely gifted to build up one another (vv7-12)

Verses 7.

⁷ But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸ Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”

Faith, God’s gift of grace in eternal salvation is given to us through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Don’t ever say God never gave you anything. You see that besides the gift of faith by which we have our salvation in Jesus, there are other spiritual gifts he gives to people who are his. I love how Paul explains the previous two sentences.

⁹ (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? ¹⁰ He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.).

The purpose of spiritual gifts is to enable each member of his body to join him in the universal victory he already won. I want to spend a little time here; for those of you who love personality tests and you nerdy types that love to geek out on Greek language. Verse 11.

¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…

In the Greek, the nouns: apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers, they are in the accusative case, meaning the people themselves are the gifts. The implication being that our God-given nature and personalities are the gifts themselves. Paul is not talking about offices or organizational hierarchies. The gifts here are an equal but different expression of Jesus’ perfect humanity. Being an apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd or teacher are expressions of God’s gift to each of us. We need each other to live in a manner worthy of our calling, seeking unity with one another so that individual gifts can complement one another’s shortcomings by building each other up. Our faith is not meant to be lived alone. It was always meant to be lived out in community.

Now, how do you know which gift you have? Let me describe each of their characteristics and traits of each and you can determine which one is you:

• Apostles love to start new ventures. They forge new paths and are a catalyst for changes. They awaken people to their God designed potential.
• Prophets are effective in revealing God’s heart for His people. They are direction pointers. They accurately discern God’s heart for a situation. They help people experience God’s voice for the first time and help them develop hearing God’s voice in their life.
• Evangelists enjoy getting others to “buy in” to something they love. They are not timid in sharing their faith regularly and drawing others to Jesus.
• Shepherds enjoy one-on-one chats and showing hospitality.  Shepherds easily empathize with others and exhibit lots of patience with those in need. They spend most of their time out of a drive to nurture, protect, and love God’s people.
• Teachers enjoy reading and studying the Bible and helping others to understand it so people can apply Biblical truth in their lives.

You figure out which one you are? Now let me ask, are the remaining giftings of personalities represented in your life? They need to be. If they are not, you’re not living a life worthy of your salvation because you’re not contributing to building somebody up with your gift, and vice versa you’re not being built up yourself. We need each of these personality types in our lives.

For example, I’m an apostle personality. I love starting new things I love changing things. But do you know what happens when I’m left to my own devices? I start things and I change things and there is usually a wake of people who are left in chaos not only because there is uncertainty, but there are also emotions attached to the way things are. Now, Michelle, she’s a shepherd. She balances my wanting to start new things and change things by caring for, nurturing, and protecting the people who are not as excited about changing and starting new things as quickly. The same goes for our leadership team and board of directors. We have people who fit one of these personality gifts and we are united together in the one spirit of God for the sake of “equipping the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”

We are united for the purpose of equipping one another for ministry. Ministry isn’t just for people paid and employed by the church. Ministry is for every single one of us who are part of the body of Jesus. Each one of us has a part to play. It’s why there are people other than me ministering in Promiseland and the Wave in the mornings on Sundays. It’s why there are people greeting people at the door. It’s why we have people serving Alpha and people serving in ESOL.

If you’re not committed to using your giftings, your natural personalities to build up others, especially within the church body, you’re not living worthy of your salvation. I know commitment scares some of you. It scares you because now you are accountable to have people in your life that are going to show you humility, gentleness, patience, and love and that means they’re not abandoning you because of your flaws. It means you’re going to have to do the same. You don’t know how to operate with that type of stability in your life. It’s so counter-cultural, but it makes your life worthy of the salvation Jesus paid for with his own.

Reaffirm your own commitment to use your gifts to build up the body of Christ, the members of the church for the ministry God gives.

Lastly, we live worthy of our salvation as our:

Point 3. Love for one another grows us toward spiritual maturity (vv13-16)

Verse 13.

¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, ¹⁴ so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

To become a mature follower of Jesus, we need a group of people to wrestle with, challenge, and encourage to grow in faith, to be more like the image of Jesus. We need to love each other enough to commit to our mutual development in faith in Jesus Christ. That’s exactly why each of us have different gifts of personality. Otherwise, what’s going to happen in our spiritual journey is that we will stray away from the faith we have been saved by.

The example Paul gives is that when we start as new believers we’re easily gullible and easily deceived, like children! In fact, just think about our own lives where we are most vulnerable to being gullible and easily deceived:

• our secret sins
• our abusive or broken relationships
• our financial circumstances

So we need the giftings of others and their love for us to become more mature and likewise they need our gifts and our love to mature spiritually. Paul tells us how to love one another toward spiritual maturity in verses 15 and 16.

¹⁵ Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Maturing others in faith requires us to “speak truth in love.”

• Some of us are good at speaking truth, aren’t we.
  • But we smash other people’s feelings and circumstances in the process, which isn’t loving.
• Some of us are good at loving, to the point that we never speak truth, which then becomes unloving.
• We have to hold truth high and remember the centrality of love in the gospel of Jesus.

Equipping the saints for ministry and maturity means each of us have to be a truth-telling, truth-maintaining, truth doing love people of God. 

• That’s how each of us embodies Christ-like unity,
• that’s how each of us build up one another,
• that’s how grow each other in spiritual maturity,
• that’s how we all live worthy of our salvation in Jesus.

That’s why we all need to publicly commit to being part of the Christ’s body, the church. We publicly commit to being a part of the church through membership. Membership is about taking specific responsibility for others in the church for the purposes of equipping others to embody and living a life worthy of the salvation they received through Jesus’ death on the cross.

If you’ve been at Cedarbrook and have not gone to Discovery 2 and are not a covenant member of our church, then this October, sign up for our membership class, make it public and make it official. I’m going to help you plan your fall already. Oct 15, 22, 29, it’s three classes. Beginning this fall, Ken tells me we’re calling our membership class Next Steps. To help you with your next steps of faith, so you can live a life worthy of your salvation in Jesus. We’re offering the class on Sunday mornings at the first service, and we’re going to offer the class quarterly, so that you can learn what it means to be a part of the church and commit to using your gifts to equip others in the church for spiritual maturity and ministry in the gospel.

Commit to Christ’s body through church membership, powerfully testify to a low-commitment, low-accountability, low love, low truth culture world what it means to belong to the family of God. Christ is our head and we are his body, let’s live worthy of our calling in him.

Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for uniting us with your son, in one body. We didn’t deserve the gift of life, but you gave it to us. Help us live a life worthy of your son’s death. You sent Jesus to save me from my sin so that you can call me to do a work that is beyond my natural abilities or desires. You call me to equip my brothers and sisters, just as they equip me. If there are sins that need to be confessed and repented of, give us the courage and strength to repent of them. If there are hard truths that need to be heard about in our lives, let us embrace them, so we can grow in you. If there are truths that need to be told to others, let us embody them in the grace of your love.

God help us commit ourselves to having a united hope in you that is rooted in humility, gentleness, patience, and love that surpasses our own abilities, and knowledge. You tell us to maintain unity, to actively minister, and to lovingly speak truth so that we can see our church body built up to do work of gospel ministry. Empower us to this cause. Thank you for calling us your own and giving us new life. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

Benediction:

We don’t know what the 7 days will hold, but until we meet again, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling, equipping one another in one body and one Spirit, growing up in maturity in every way into Christ so that the church would be built up in love. Amen.