Knowing and Growing - Ephesians 4:1-7

So last week we talked about Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 through 21 and our focus was on love, right? We talked about the multi-dimensional facets of love and how it was Paul's prayer. He was praying for the body in Ephesus and for the body at large for several reasons. So this morning we're going to continue by looking at Ephesians chapter 4 and looking at verses 1 through 7.

And some of you may immediately have in your Bibles got a division between verses 6 and 7. And that might make you think that verses 6 and 7 might not be related. But I'm going to argue that they are related. And we'll take a look at that this morning as well. What Paul is doing as he's transitioning between 3 and 4 is he's building on the establishment of the church being a family. So in verses 1-7 in chapter 4 we're going to see that this family quality is even deeper than just a surface level relationship. So let's go ahead. I've got it on the handout, or maybe you've got your Bibles there. Well, let's read verses 1 through 7 of chapter 4.

Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another, in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. All right, so just hardly any material to cover at all, right?

So, when we take a look at this, Paul is urging a learning and growing church, because that's Ephesus, they're a learning and growing church, and he's encouraging them to understand unity. And so, what I want to emphasize here is that there's a theme in this passage. that God has provided the way, not a way, but the way for us to be united together. When we think about being united in the church, how many of you have had difficulties in church? where you've felt a sense of division, or you've left a church, or... As we think about it, actually, there's a lot of ways that in the flesh and in an earthly environment, we can have division. It happens at work, it happens at home, it happens in our extended families.

Thanksgiving is coming up. There's tons of jokes I've heard from various people over the years. The late night talk show hosts definitely go into that every year where they make a good joke or two about how terrible it's going to be at Thanksgiving. And so maybe there's a joke about, well, you're going to get drunk so that you can you know, survive the Thanksgiving holiday, or maybe there's another joke about how terrible your in-laws are, or something like that, right? That's how we're going into Thanksgiving, and that's how the world is prepared for Thanksgiving, right? Thanksgiving. and you're going to go suffer through it.

Right? Does that sound like a good start to vision? Right? And so, this morning, as we look at Ephesians 4, 1-7, what Paul is going to say is that there is a specific way for us to be united together. That God has provided, and we can rest in that. That's encouraging, it's uplifting, and it's rooted in the foundation we established last week in love. So as we take a look at these things, keep that in mind that God is teaching you something really, really cool here to keep all of us together in the body united. He's got a plan for us to be united. And it's not that you all just agree with me. Which is good, because my wife will tell you that that can be difficult at times. She's smiling in the back. I'll probably hear about it later.

Okay, so, Paul starts out here and he says, Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. So why is Paul the prisoner? He's in Rome. Okay, so Paul is in Rome and he's a prisoner.

Now, one of the things that I absolutely love about Paul being a prisoner is that in Philippians chapter 1 verses 12 through 18, Paul talks to the Philippians about the jerks and the rabbits. Okay? Give me just a second because this thing is going to fall off my head and that's going to drive us all crazy. There we go. So Paul talks about the jerks and the rabbits in Philippians because he's in prison.

In 12-18 he says the gospel is preached, but the Christian jerks are preaching the gospel because they want to show Paul that they're not in prison and they're more righteous than him. And he goes, don't care, the gospel is preached. And the rabbits, You ever noticed rabbits in the wild? As soon as something moves or makes noise, they spook and they go back into the bushes or in their holes, right? Well, the Christian rabbits, the ones who were afraid to preach the gospel, were emboldened because Paul went to prison to preach the gospel. Because they're like, well, if Paul went to prison, I guess if it's okay for him to go to prison, it's okay for me to upset people and possibly go to prison, so it must be okay.

So the jerks were preaching the gospel, and Paul didn't care. He said, awesome, the gospel's being preached. And the rabbits were afraid to preach the gospel before, were not afraid anymore, and then everybody else who was just abiding and had some better sense of what was spiritually relevant in their lives were preaching the gospel. So no matter what, the gospel was being preached.

But Paul was in prison, and even though he's in prison, even though he is stuck in one place, he is able to write letters, What were some of the other benefits of being in prison, if you can call being in prison a benefit, or having benefits? Witnessing to the guards. When Paul writes in some of his other letters, he says, hey, the guard sends their greetings. Because on a rotation, Caesar's guards had to come in and be chained to him. And he's like, sweet, I don't know who you are. This is the gospel, over and over again.

So that's a benefit to Paul, even though for us on the surface, going to prison sounds like it might be kind of stinky, right? So Paul, a prisoner of the Lord, he knows that he's a prisoner of the Lord, not the Roman guards. That would be really infuriating for somebody in a political position. Paul says, I'm only a prisoner of the Lord, not you. Well, I'm the one that has you in prison. Cool, but God's the one that has me in prison, not you. I'm not going to give you any credit for this. I'm going to give God all the credit.

I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. So when we see a manner worthy of your calling, it's easy to jump to the conclusions of earthly righteousness without inspecting what Paul has said about a manner worthy of our calling. So what's our calling as a believer? And I've got several cross-references there, so if you'll follow with me, let's take a look at these. Here's Romans 8, 29-30, probably a familiar passage. Hopefully it is, if it's not, spend some time making it familiar.

He says, For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And these whom he justified, he also glorified. So our calling, according to that, to be conformed, to be glorified, justified.

Romans 11.29, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. That's a really important lose-your-salvation kind of a verse, isn't it? Can you lose your salvation?

Not according to Romans 11.29.

And 1 Corinthians 1.2, saints by calling.

And then, lastly, 2 Timothy 1.9, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His purpose and grace, which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity. So how can we live in a manner that is worthy of this holy calling? Because Paul seems to think we should. How are we going to do it? How are we going to put some tennis shoes on this idea?

Beholding and trusting Christ. OK, beholding and trusting Christ. I think that's good. In our house, the word I like to use is abiding. But we could say walk by the Spirit, beholding the Lord. Any of those three principles are there. And this morning, Mike is going to talk about beholding the Lord a little bit. When you start to learn about beholding the Lord and the idea of beholding the Lord, it's life-changing. And so beholding the Lord or abiding are key principles that we need to understand. And that's how we will live individually, walking in a manner that's worthy of the Lord.

Paul is calling the whole church to be walking that way. And before we got started, Jim and I began talking about the legalism of John MacArthur's teaching. And the thing that I find to be most fascinating is that at Holly Hills, we still would love for you to be walking in a manner that's worthy of your calling. We just don't do it with legalism. We want you to do it by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It was a really, really, really big deal when Jesus died and said that the Father was going to send the Holy Spirit, and then every believer received the Holy Spirit's salvation. The Old Testament saints didn't have the Holy Spirit indwelling them moment by moment. It was a big deal when Saul became the king, right? He was going to be anointed the king, he was chosen from the crowd, and then the Holy Spirit entered him, and he ran with the prophets. That was a sign to Israel that God had selected them as king, because it was unique.

In the New Testament, when God's going to do something unique, we don't get shocked and say, oh, the Holy Spirit came on them. Right? Because the Holy Spirit has indwelled each believer. So for us as believers, the Holy Spirit indwells us, and so we want to walk by His direction.

So as a last question for this section, why is this important? Why is this idea of walking in a manner worthy of our calling? Why is this important in the light of grace and liberty in contrast to the law? So why is walking in a manner that shows grace and shows liberty important in contrast to the law and legalism?

Any thoughts on that? With the law we're earthbound, and with trusting God and walking, it gives us a perspective of we're not from here. And like Paul, whatever happened, he saw it as God's problems. He was in prison. and that was a good thing. So those perspectives come into light that that's our reality, that our heavenly citizenship is our reality. Our heavenly citizenship is our reality. It's not earthly. So that's a really important point.

Another thing worth considering is that In legalism, you need to live inside the constraints of the law. In liberty and grace, you live with an abundant life, the abundant life of Christ. And when we see other believers walking in liberty, sometimes that causes us a little excitement, right? You ever seen somebody walk in liberty and you go, ooh, I don't know that I would do that.

When I was in seminary, I had a young guy come in, I was young too, but I had a young guy come into the hallway, we were waiting for the class to start, and he said, so why do you dress like that? Why do you look like that? Because I was 22-ish and I looked very much like I do right now, where I was wearing moderate clothes and I had a parted haircut and I had a goatee. Imagine this, but with less white hair and age and around the eyes, right?

And he asked why I did that. And on the surface you hear that and you go, that's not very strange, except for that he was totally dressed like a skater and had a skater haircut. Some of you know what I mean, some of you may not, but let's just say he looked like a hooligan in comparison to my clean cut And he goes, there's a bunch of people out there that need to be reached and they see you and they're already going to be shut down because of how you look. Now, my answer to him at the time was, this is where I feel comfortable and this is what my wife likes. That was a big win for me. What my wife likes wins over your skater look every time. But the thing is, in Liberty, I was like, I don't want to dress like a skater. I don't want to look like a skater.

But he was my brother in Christ. We didn't doubt that. He was walking in Liberty, and the Lord had, by His Spirit, said, you need to stay right where you're at, in what you look like, so you can preach the gospel to the people who will respond to you, because you don't look like Randy, who's down the middle. Vanilla Randy. Okay? I have a ministry opportunity that he does. In the Venn diagram, there's an overlap there.

There's lots of people that we can minister to, but there's lots of people that he could minister to a lot easier than I could because they'd look at me and go, hey. But if he walked into our church, I don't know that he still looks the same. He's probably about 40 years old, too, so maybe he's changed his appearance in that time. But if he walked into our church, I think there'd be some folks who'd be like, wow, I'm not sure what to do with that.

Right? But that's liberty. You can't judge someone's salvation based on whether or not they've shaved part of the side of their head or something, right? That's not how you know somebody's saved. At least it's not revealed in Scripture, that's how you know somebody's saved. So let's keep going.

So Paul writes in this next section here, he says, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love. And if there is a word I have hated in the last 20 years because of how it's been used by the folks who are not carrying a biblical definition of it, it's the word tolerance. As long as I don't tell them that they're wrong, I'm being tolerant. But if they tell me I'm wrong for saying that I have a different opinion that's based on the scriptures, then that's okay because they're telling me that I'm not tolerant.

It's the teeter-totter principle. I don't know if you're familiar with that. You push one side down to lift the other side up. That's how that works. And when we say things like you should shut up and be tolerant, That definitely pitches the teeter-totter over, right?

So when we talk about tolerance here, Paul eases his way into tolerance with building blocks, with vocabulary that we should look into and study together here. He says, with all humility. And these words are linked together so that we can kind of take that all to apply to all of these words as we go through this. So with all humility. The Greek word for humility is in reference to the mind, a humility of your thinking. Humble hearted might be another way we might describe this. So with all humility. Now consider the Greeks.

The Gentiles, they're constantly clambering for more and more social status, right? How many of you, either currently when you're in the workforce or when you were in the workforce, you remember the struggle, and maybe even you still see it today when you watch commercials, the struggle to try to get people to want the next thing? and have the next thing so that they can know that they're keeping up with the Joneses. Right? And or they want a better degree. I'm smarter than you.

Or, or, and the list goes on really of all the things where we don't have humility. It turns out that my personality type is one of those terrible personality types where I tend to speak confidently. And that comes across as arrogance. So I have to be very careful when I meet new people. I have to tone that down a lot, try to ask lots of questions to let them introduce themselves. Because Randy's a strong taste, we'll say that. I'm an acquired taste. And so the first time one of my best friends met me, he told me, the first time I met you, I thought, man, what a pompous jerk. And then he's one of my best friends now.

Obviously we worked that out, but I tend to speak with confidence, right? But Paul says you need to have humility. So it doesn't mean I don't have confidence, but it means I come in with a real understanding of myself as probably not knowing everything and maybe also not being...run the mouth, run the mouth, run the mouth, because I'm good at that. I can talk for a long time.

So Paul says all humility And the Greeks wanted to build themselves up, and the Jews wanted to be more pious. We talked about legalism. The Jews wanted to be more pious. The Jews wanted to be more righteous than you. If you're more righteous than somebody else, do you want to associate with them?

No. Who of us, and this is not a trick question, this is a theology question, who of us is the most righteous? The answer is either none or all. And we're going to see in a few moments, we have Christ's righteousness. We don't have our own, we have Christ's.

So that should bring humility right away. Humility is important. Humility leads to an attitude of tolerance and love. All humility gives us no excuse to be having an attitude. So then the next thing he says, with all gentleness. So gentleness is a word that we normally associate with those who are caring for the young or infirm. How many of you think about many adults in your life being gentle? Lots of gentle people you know. Is that ways you describe some of your closest family and friends? Ah, they're gentle.

When you meet somebody who's just naturally gentle, it's alarming because it's so rare. And hopefully it's less rare in the body. But our culture tends to be a bit coarse. I like to blame the German heritage that many Americans have. I, of which, am a prime example. Even when you say, I love you in German, it's rough. Like, ich liebe dich. You know, you're just like, ha. The gentleness here is something that we find at odds with the culture around us, but it's what the body needs.

Gentleness leads to an attitude of tolerance and love, just like all humility, all gentleness. If you've been walking in the flesh, you've had a humdinger of a week, You've been walking in the flesh and somebody comes up to you in gentleness and says, how can I pray for you? How's your week been?

What's your reaction going to be? You're a believer. I think everybody in this room is a believer. I don't have any doubts. What's your reaction going to be? If you've been walking in the flesh and you've had a rough week and someone comes and approaches you that way. If you had a division container, let's say a cup of division, you'd set it down. Your reaction would be, whoa, that was gentleness.

That was gracious loving. I don't know if that was the height, the width, or the breadth of the love like we looked at last week, but I was love and I saw it. I knew it right away. So when we have this idea of humility, humility means that I can know that I'm valued. And gentleness means that I know that I'm cared for. But sometimes humility and gentleness are not enough. And that's why Paul is building towards something to deal with the not enough part. The next section he says, with all patience. And I love the word patience.

This last week I saw the old trope that I despise. The trope of don't pray for patience because then God's going to put you in a situation where you need it. Right? Have you heard that before? It makes me want to stick some golf tees in my ears. I was like, that's terrible. I don't want to think about that lie.

Patience is a fruit of what? The Spirit. Praying for the fruit of the Spirit sounds like that would be a good thing, right? So Paul says the fruit of the Spirit is going to be humility. He says the fruit of the Spirit is going to be gentleness. And he says the fruit of the Spirit is going to be patience. And patience means enduring through the stuff you don't like. Right? When do you run out of patience? By the Holy Spirit. When do you run out of patience? Oh, if you're looking to that source, never.

Right. If I look at every one of you and I say, you know what, you're growing and you're growing and you're growing and you're growing and you're growing and you're growing and you're growing, all of you are growing, and you're growing, I know He's not done with you. But you know what? I have a mirror at home. He's not done with me either. And so patience is a reflection of understanding that God is not done with you. And He's not done with me. And He's not done with us.

And we're going to grow together. And there's going to be some rough spots. There's going to be some squeaky spots that need the grease. There's going to be times when we're going to go to the Holy Spirit and say, man, that person really rubbed me the wrong way, Lord.

Let your Holy Spirit manifest patience in me with this person or these people. The fruit of the Spirit is patience, and that enables us to have an attitude of tolerance and love. Paul doesn't just say, have a tolerance and love. which he could have done, right? He could have said have tolerance and love, but instead he couches it in these three words that challenge us to remember humility and gentleness and patience. None of which are the fruits of the flesh, but all of which are a fruit of the Spirit, and they change the way we look at one another so that we can have that tolerance and love. read this verse as an adult and had heard tolerance over and over in the media, over and over from those pushing a political agenda that I didn't agree with, with a social agenda I didn't agree with, it challenged me to look at the word tolerance. Because this is tolerance as a fruit of the Spirit, not tolerance as a fruit of an agenda. It's God's agenda, I guess we could say, right? So this is tolerance in love. And what did we learn about love last week? This is God's love. How finite is it? It's not at all, that's right. It's God's infinite love applied to one another.

And trust me, if Randy's an acquired taste, there's probably other people you're gonna run into in the body throughout your life who are an acquired taste. And you're gonna need humility, and you're gonna need gentleness, and you're gonna need patience, and you're gonna need tolerance and love.

But you know what's really cool? Is you're gonna watch those people that have bothered you grow. And you're gonna watch them change. And you're going to see the Holy Spirit move in their lives, and you may be the one that comes alongside and the Lord uses you as some body-life WD-40, okay? He's going to use you to get the squeak and the stinky stuff out. He might use you for that.

But if you understand, as the mature believer, humility and gentleness and patience like this, you don't see people that bother you, what do you see? You see co-heirs in Christ. You see people that God is conforming. And because you were patient, you get to see them long enough that you can actually tell the difference.

Right? And so the tolerance in love is not to the worldly idea of a social shift, an acceptance of ideas that are not the norm. Tolerance is saying there's liberty and that person is growing. And that's okay. When I define tolerance in its original intent, that Paul meant here, that's exciting. That means when I come to church and that person is kind of irritating, I'm like, I can't wait to see what God did this week.

And then I get to practice humility and come and maybe ask some questions instead of being diarrhea of the mouth Randy. And I get to be gentle. and say, how can I pray for you? Now, by the way, I ask everybody, how can I pray for you? So if I ask you, how can I pray for you? That's not like code that I'm going, I'm going to be gentle because this person is clearly walking in the flesh. That's not what that means. That was an example earlier, just for the sake of illustration. All right.

So we have tolerance and love, and he says, for one another. And the Greek word for one another, and you have to emphasize this as a teacher, when you know anything about Greek, this for one another is the Greek word all alone. And I love that it's all alone, because all alone in English means the exact opposite of what it means in the Greek, okay? So your tolerance and love, all alone, for one another. Okay, so he's not saying all alone. The Greek word is all alone. In English, it's together. Okay, your tolerance for one another. We embrace relatives or closer friends and endure any number of irritations.

But Paul wants the whole body involved so that division, something that the world, the flesh, and the devil create, doesn't take place and doesn't tarnish the reputation of God's church. Ideally, if we are living this out, it won't tarnish the reputation of the church. Now, Paul isn't saying that so that we can be pretentious Christians. He's not worried about the reputation of the church in a pretentious Christian sort of a way. But he has a concern that evangelism may be impacted. How many of you have heard the church called the Frozen Chosen before? The Frozen Chosen.

Everybody is all by themselves, and they're kind of cold towards one another, because that way you don't get in close enough to find out that I need desperately for you to be gentle, humble, and patient. And so we stay isolated. And it's convenient, because that means that we can all say, I went to church, but then we don't ever have to know about the problems in each other's lives, right?

But Paul wants this all-alone principle to be applied to one another, because we're spending time together. And I have to tell you, last week we'd made plans so that I couldn't go to the potluck, and everybody that was there that was supposed to be, or that was in the Sunday School class said they felt tremendous guilt for not being at the potluck, because they felt like, after a lesson about love and being together, we should be together, and now we're off.

Right? And so there's a little bit of guilt, but we'll just say that it was a learned thing that impacted people, right? But this for one another means that we are actually involved with one another's lives in a way that actually, you could do this. You would need to do this. Okay?

So then Paul starts, or continues, I should say, this run-on sentence idea of unity. And Paul says, diligently preserve the unity of the Spirit. So Paul gives the body an active direction. Be diligent. Now when you hear be diligent, how many of you, your legalism radars go off? You're like, oh no, something to do, it works. Legalism. That's not what Paul is saying.

But what he is saying is that as we're abiding and we're working in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is going to direct us to these acts of righteousness, in Ephesians 2.10, sort of the way they're planned for us to do, and our will is in alignment with His will, and we do those things. So it's not legalism, it's not works.

If you don't do it, will you lose your salvation? No, that's not what Paul is saying. But he's urging the church in Ephesus, and therefore, as students of that same passage, I think we can say, also the church today, we don't get to escape out of it, right? Oh, he was writing to Ephesus, and I'm in Denver. Paul's commendation here is that they be diligent, that there's action. It's not passive. This isn't half-hearted. This is to make haste. That would be another way to translate this from the Greek, is make haste to preserve the unity.

Because what happens when you get a little bit of division, and you don't deal with it right away? It gets bigger. It starts to crack, and the fissures grow, and then you have church splits. Then you have an acceptance of carnality, an acceptance of worldliness. A pause like that shouldn't have any place. Be diligent. If you see it, squash it. Fix it. If you need to put some caulk in there, some good silicone caulk so it's a little flexible, that's fine. But you fill that up and you deal with that. And so Paul wants them to be diligent. It's not a call to legalism. It is not a call to fleshly power. It is a call to be abiding. And in so doing, reflect our aligning with God's will that will reflect His life within the body.

The Holy Spirit is the one who brings the unity, okay? It's the unity, singular, definite article. The Holy Spirit brings the unity. And he says, in a bond of peace, right? There we go. The Spirit in the bond of peace, that's to be tied together, to be bound together like tendons or ropes tying each one of us together. So when you hear bond of peace, and this idea of being bound together, what binds us together? Our life in Christ, the Holy Spirit. The peace comes from Him. It's His uniting us and tying us together. And then Paul continues, he says, There is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling. So one body.

There's churches all over Denver, right? As it turns out, and this is hard for my brain to wrap around practically, but technically, okay, so we're going to make a technical statement with this, there is one body. We may not agree on all of our theology together, but every single person who believes that Jesus Christ died on a cross, was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the scriptures, the gospel message, when they believe it, they're part of one body. And after that, who knows, right? After that, you might find that there's a lot of division. But that's why, again, there needs to be humility and gentleness and patience, is because when you come into contact with somebody who might go to a different church, and they may have, let's face it, some pretty stinky teachers at some of these churches, people who are ill-equipped, people who have taken on the mantle of teaching without the preparation or the understanding, but they're still one body. Even that person that might be ill-equipped, if they're saved, they're part of one body.

And so when you look around this room or you look around Denver and you see believers, that's your family. There's that word family. We brought it up last week. We'll see it again this week. There's an intimacy there. And Paul is calling for them to recognize that.

When we looked at Acts chapter 2, remember when my dad was going through the beginning of Acts, in Acts chapter 2, 3,000 people got saved in one day. 3,000 people. Their theology, because the church was so brand new, was all the same. They only knew one thing. At that point in time, they knew Jesus Christ had died, and was buried, and was resurrected on the third day, and had ascended into the heavenlies. And that's it. They had some rough ideas of what God was doing beyond that, due to Old Testament prophecies, but there wasn't a lot of revelation yet.

But then, in Acts 2.42, Luke writes that they dedicated themselves to the Apostles' teachings. The Holy Spirit was revealing to the Apostles, right away, new truth about the Church, and the 3,000 people that were saved on that first day, and who knows how many came after that, because it says the Lord added to their number, right? They dedicated themselves to the Apostles' teaching, which came from the Holy Spirit.

So the division was very, very minimal at the beginning. Even with 3,000 people. Our church, we don't have 3,000 people. I also hope that we don't have very much division. Right? One hope. But there was one body with 3,000 people, and today, even across the world, there is one body. Continuing on. Paul writes, there's one body and one spirit, and the Holy Spirit is in all believers. And if the Holy Spirit is in all believers, do you think he's going to be leading us and guiding us to lots of division?

I don't think so. I don't think that that is in his nature. He might bring division in the sense that if somebody goes off the deep end theologically, he may call them out, or kick them out, or he may call us, depending on who it is. If an elder at Holly Hills starts teaching radically different theology than has ever been taught at Holly Hills, and we can't exposit it, we can't be like the Bereans and double-check them, it may be that people leave the church for good reason. That's a biblical reason for division. That's heresy. Like, if there's heresy, that's a legitimate reason for division. But the Holy Spirit doesn't derive us and direct us to division in the body.

Then he says, one hope in your calling. What's our one hope? There was a new hope in Star Wars. That's not it. What's our one hope? Christ. We get to spend eternity with God. My hope is there. My hope is my faith applied to the future. That's the way I personally walk around. My daughter's middle name is Hope Evelyn. Hi. She loves it that you're all looking at her. Evelyn Hope.

And the thing that's amazing is that prior to Evelyn being named Evelyn Hope, that was before she was born, we figured out the name early, I had never really looked at what the word hope meant. Because around us, the world around us would say things like, geez, I hope the Rockies do better next season. Geez, I hope that the Broncos do better next season. Or like we had said a few years ago, geez, I hope the Broncos get a chance to go to the Super Bowl again. You know, I hope they win. You know, those kinds of things, hope, where it's kind of like a woulda, shoulda, coulda, or maybe kinda, sorta mindset, whereas in this is a sure hope, and it is a certain hope, and it is a singular hope in Christ Jesus.

If we as believers are called holy, and we each see one another as unholy, and that divides us, do we have God's perspective? If I see you as unholy, am I seeing you with God's perspective? I might see an area of sin in your life. That's possible. But if I come to you and I think that I see an area of sin in your life, and I don't have humility, and I don't have gentleness, and I don't have patience, and I'm not walking by the Spirit, how much correction is likely to happen? Not a lot. How much division will get cleared up? Not a lot.

But instead, what's happening here is if I come alongside and I say, hey, you've been looking over here. Your hope is over here. Let's redirect over here. That's going to take that division away. That's going to take those areas of frustration, and you're going to set your mind on things above. Colossians 3, 1-3. And Mike's going to talk about that this morning. I know I've already mentioned it, but I can't wait, because I think it's such an awesome passage. So, one hope in your calling, and he says one Lord.

We didn't believe in multiple gods. If you run into people who are Hindu, they believe in multiple gods. Lots of gods. You've got to believe in one main one, and then after that, there's actually been Hindu magazine articles on how to create your own god. Which I think is really spectacular. Imagine that you can make your own God up and it's part of the official magazine representation of your religion. That's pretty sweet.

Because I have a shrine to guitars in my office. Yeah, the God of guitars, right? That's what you all you were hoping that I had at home, right? Oh, you know, if there's anything I hope that people know that I love Jesus, and I love Jessica. And I love my family, my daughters and my extended family. And I really enjoy software development and music and all kinds of hobby things, but those don't rank.

Okay? The Lord should be the number one thing. It's not Jesus plus anything else. There's one Lord, and we believe that. That's how you can identify some of the cults, right? Is there one Lord, is there one God in Mormonism? No, there isn't. There are many gods, which I think is a bit crazy. Jesus happened to be the God of the earth, and Satan was his brother. Man, that's a rough go. So, you know, one Lord, theologically that's really important.

Then he says, one faith. We've already said what the Gospel is, but I've got it written there as a question. If you don't have the Gospel memorized, turn to 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 and 4, and write it down here. Take some time to memorize it, so that if anybody asks you, you're prepared. But if we all believe the same thing in the same Savior, and we all have one faith, where's the division in that?

Where does it live? It doesn't live there. And then he says that we have one baptism. Now, what is baptism? Does baptism save us? Are you sure? There's churches that teach it. No, baptism doesn't save us. It is an outward sign of an inward change and inward belief. I got to baptize my daughters here. I think I also participated in the baptism of my sister-in-law, Kelsey, which was kind of cool. And they were right there. They didn't get more saved.

But we all, if we were baptized, publicly testified to one another, I believe in the one God. I believe in the one Son. And I believe this Holy Spirit is in me. And we have that in common. This is like a Scout's Honor thing or something, right? But the idea being that we have that in common, there's no division there. We have one baptism. And the baptism didn't save us, but we all testified to one another through that baptism.

And then, he says we have one Father. Now, we talked about having one Father last week, right, in Ephesians 3. He says we have one Father whom every family on heaven and earth derives their name. We have one Father. But that's not enough. God the Father, Paul says, is over all, and through all, and in all. God the Father is over us, all of us. And He is in each one of us. So we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, we have the mind of Christ indwelling us, and it says God is in us. The Father is in us. So the three parts of the Trinity really care about you, and they really care about us. And then He says, and He's through us. He's through you. Do you feel like it? Is this a feeling thing or is this a reality of faith thing? There's days when, trust me, I'm not abiding and He's not working through me. But when I'm abiding, He's working through me and you.

Which means that we can sit in awe as we watch the body on the earth reflect His work and His love and His life in us. not with legalistic judgment, but with excitement to see what he's doing in the body. In verse seven, the last one, and we're running out of time here. In fact, I suspect Brian is going to mash that button and the bell's going to ring any second now.

In verse seven, he says, but to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. So that's right. Grace is limited. by the measure of Christ's gift. So how big was Christ's gift? It's infinite. Jesus gave all of himself on the cross. So, grace is limited to the measure of the size of the gift.

The gift was infinite, so grace is infinite. So when we say Holly Hills Grace is the unmerited, unlimited blessing of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross, because that's our working definition, it's unlimited because that's the measure of the gift of Christ. That's where we get that definition of grace. That part of it comes from this idea that Christ came and gave an infinite gift.

It's unlimited because He offered Himself. So I'm relieved to know that the size is infinite, because I keep sinning for some reason. But the other side of grace, and this is the important thing, we were talking about this before class started, the other side of grace is that it's God's blessing. It's not just merely a covering for sin. It would be wonderful and generous of God to just cover our sin, but He did not stop there. Grace is unlimited and unmerited, and it's His blessing.

Which is why when we, and I said this before class too, which is why when we read 2 Peter 3.18, he says, grow in grace. If it was just a covering for sin, the only way you could grow in grace is to keep sinning. That would be a terrible encouragement, right? Peter would be crazy if grace was merely a covering for sin. But instead, grace is God's blessing.

And then he says, well, grow in that. Well, I think that's a good idea. Alright? So in conclusion, when we get to heaven, how many denominations will there be? Will there be like the Lutherans and the Baptists and the Seventh-day Adventists and the Bible Church group? No, we're a little independent. There will be one body. And guess how much animosity there will be between all of us? Zero. None.

And so there may be very legitimate reasons for there to be divisions in the church, where we need to separate error. Paul calls for there to be some division to the Corinthians. He says, separate the error. He calls for the Galatians to have division, to separate the error. But the division was not a small slow-growing crack, it was a separation of error. Okay? Inside the body, for those believers who are abiding and looking to have God's Word taught carefully, there should be no division. And there is a way to do it. There is the way to do it. And we get to be part of it, in love, exploring that love together. We are His family, and you're my family. Because he's my dad, and he's your dad too. And there's unity in this family, if we look at him.

Any other thoughts or questions? Because the bell rang, and I know I'm supposed to pray and stop. All right, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you. We're so extremely grateful that we call you Father. We thank you that and be part of one body. We pray for your Holy Spirit to take away the striving that sometimes causes division and instead move in each one of us to have humility and gentleness and patience. We pray for opportunities to love the body in tolerance and to watch each other grow and rejoice in your work until the day you return. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.