Worthy of Calling

Hi everybody, my name is Jonathan. I’ve been friends with your pastor for a really long time now. Funny story and I promise you this has everything to do with what I’m going to be preaching about tonight, is that he introduced me to one of my best friends right before I went to college. Yeah, so I went to college at Notre Dame and a few weeks before I was a freshman in college, about 12 years ago, Pastor Danny called me thinking I’d be good at counter strike to play at the PC room and he had called one of his other buddies, Teddy, who also was going to Notre Dame that year, to a friendly/nonfriendly Counter Strike tournament– it was like he wanted to test his mettle with two future Notre Dame football fanatics. To say the least, I didn’t really turn out to be a challenge– I wasn’t that good at counter strike and um probably to Danny’s dismay, I probably wasted his precious cell phone minutes when he called me. But I am certainly glad, he called me to preach this week, here with you guys. I am so excited for your church. I hear about the amazing things you all are about to unleash in New York City and I pray for your pastor and everything that he tells me you all are accomplishing on a week to week basis. Let’s get to the scripture, because that’s why I’m here. Ephesians 4:1-3, let’s go. 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. – Ephesians 4:1-3 I want to ask you all right now, and if you have your notes, I want you to answer this question: Where are you right now? Here’s what I mean by that, I want you to ask yourself, where do you find yourself in terms of your circumstances– is it where you wanted to be at your age? What about your career? Or your family life? Or finances? Where are you right now? The reason I want you to ask yourself that and this is going to be a consistent theme throughout the retreat, is that unless you know where you are exactly, you can’t know where anybody else is. That is to say, you’re going to find it difficult to live into the vision God has for your life and the salvation Jesus called you into from your former life. I know that’s funny and all, but in reality, a lot of us, most of us, myself included, are sometimes just too dumb to recognize where we are in our faith. For the Apostle Paul, who is writing this to the Church in Ephesus, where we are in faith is of supreme importance and it is clear that we shouldn’t just be okay with coasting along with our faith, like we do with some of our other life style choices. Paul writes to the Ephesians because knowing where you are now, and knowing where you should be in Christ, should lead you always to the grace of God, to a full knowledge of Christ or the path towards it. Verse 1 says, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord…” Paul was in jail. He knew why he was in jail, he knew exactly why he was in Rome, rotting away. His disposition, even though was unworthy by worldly standards, was for a cause– that cause being the spread of the Good News of Jesus the Christ. There was nothing to gain for Paul in promoting the gospel. There is no dignity in being a prisoner of Rome– he is a Roman citizen! Let me compare this to you in a real tangible way: Paul was something like a political prisoner in his own native country. It’s like what’s going on with the people of China when they speak out against communism and Mao. I mean, Mao was a great political leader, don’t get me wrong, but just because they have differing views on what is what and write about it on their blog or record it on their vlog, doesn’t mean you should be imprisoned for it. Better yet, Paul’s disposition was the same as Rosa Parks who was imprisoned because she was just too tired to move to the back of the bus even though the bus was empty. For Paul, being a prisoner, even unfairly was exactly where he knew he would be– that is, in the grace of God, doing the will of God, fulfilling the vision and plan God had for him. So, even though it is not a proud statement, by our standards, and he probably didn’t want to be there for any reason at all, he understood where he HAD to be. If any of us answered my question before, “where are you now?” and in your answering that question, answered in a way knowing that you chose to be where you are, as opposed to allowing the happenstance of life happen and therefore bringing you to where you are, then you are exactly where Paul is– a prisoner for the Lord. I’m always asked by non-Christians how I became a pastor because they meet me and they’re like “wow, you’re actually religious, but you’re not hypocritical?” And every time I answer, you can see in their eyes, he’s well adjusted, I can’t believe he’s one of those Republican evangelicals! I mean, I always add, “I’m a registered republican.” But when we choose our disposition, we can say proudly that we are prisoners for the LORD. When we are prisoners for God, that is, when we choose to accept God’s provision for our lives and live into the salvation brought upon us by the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus, we, just like Paul who knows he is a prisoner, calls– the ESV says urges, but when you “urge somebody to do something, you are begging/summoning/encouraging” people to walk in a “manner worthy of calling.” Hold your Bibles in Ephesians, and we’re going to go to Genesis 1. 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. – Genesis 1:26-27 Now, to chapter 2. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” – Genesis 2:16-17. You see, what’s going on here? God makes human beings and says to them, “know where you are in the circle of life– you are supposed to have dominion over everything that is here on Earth– live the good life God says. So, we come back and there is something that people were supposed to have dominion over and they get conned! What does the Bible say– the LORD God “commanded.” There was 1 rule, not 10, just 1! You can count that on your left index finger. On to chapter 3. 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” – Genesis 3:6-10. How many commandments were there? Let’s all say it out loud. That’s right, there was 1. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that if you were in that garden you would have stepped on that serpent’s head and crushed it and followed that one rule to maintain your residence in the Garden of Eden. But you and I both know that your or I don’t have the self control to keep ourselves from eating an old twinkie that’s been sitting in your car for God only knows, after running half a mile on the treadmill at the gym. Yeah– don’t judge me. There was 1 commandment, we couldn’t do it. We still can’t do it. We fail. You look at your life and you realize that your most vivid memories are from your failures, shortcomings and disappointments. There is baggage there that you just can’t seem to let go of. This was our prison, our predicament, where we were before we had an opportunity to meet Christ. We couldn’t even save ourselves from eating the twinkie after a hard work out at the gym– you think we could have saved ourselves from sin? Not a chance. So God makes a way. He sends His only son Jesus, who is perfect, who doesn’t walk in the same patterns we do and he is sacrificed. He is sacrificed for us. He died to pay for the things we carry in our baggage. He died paying for the things that we are doing right now with our perverted thoughts. He died paying for the things we haven’t even thought of doing but eventually will do. He was made sin, so that we could be called children of God. So that we can walk around before God, in our nakedness and not be ashamed of what Our God, Our Father might see. Adam and Eve hid their nakedness. You and I, we were called to be saved out of that shame. We need to look at Ephesians 2:4-10: 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. This is our calling. If we were called out of shame for a gift of grace, and what Paul calls “immeasurable riches,” I ask you one more time, are you where you should be? That is, are you living out a life worthy of the calling God has put on your life through the blood of Jesus Christ? Let’s go back to Ephesians 4. I’m going to wrap up here, as I explain what it means to walk worthy. 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. You walk worthy when you understand where you are and how it is that you come to be where you are. If you understand me correctly, I am just simply saying, when you realize that you were saved by grace even though you didn’t deserve it, even though, I didn’t deserve it, you come to a place where you understand yourself– as a sinner, saved by grace, with nothing to keep us from free falling except a love of God that extends beyond our imaginations to love imperfection and brokenness so that it could be healed and mended. When you understand that, you look differently at your life. You look at yourself and life stops becoming about you, but it becomes something beyond yourself. It becomes the same love that graced you and me at our salvation. It becomes a love that overcomes the sins of your brothers and sisters. It becomes the love that forgives, not because it somehow becomes easier, but because it has perspective on how and why love played a role in where you are in your life. Your life becomes aptly able to love, not romantically but through Jesus, offering Jesus. You love because it binds sin and is not ashamed of the consequences. Let’s pray.