Would you pray with me before we look at God's Word? Our Father, we thank You for the unique privilege it is to be the body of Christ. Would You, Lord, give us a passion for that which You have created and call us, Lord, once again, to have Your perspective, to be passionate about what You have done, Lord. And would You give us the power and Christ to do that which You have called us to do. We pray this now as we look at Your Word together in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, after a great deal of uncertainty, they did it. This past week, the professional baseball players in our country have set a strike date, August 30th. Unless there's a settlement, they're going to go on strike. This is curious for a number of reasons. One, very importantly, is that it was just last year, September 11th, in light of the terrorist attacks, that baseball became really a rallying point, a place of national patriotism. You remember those initial gains you might have seen on television where the firemen marched onto the fields and great show of patriotism, our national pastime, baseball, and now how ironic that right before September 11th's first anniversary, they would go on strike. There was a statement made by a guy that I really like, no Margarcia Parra, who plays for the Red Sox, but it was really kind of a bonehead statement that he made about three weeks ago. He said, you know, people don't really understand. We're just like any other union, the baseball players. And I thought, wow, it was particularly a misfortune statement because two days later, we learned about the misfortune of some other union workers, the coal miners in Pennsylvania, who were trapped 240 feet down in a mineshaft that was full of water. Different set of circumstances, they also rallied together, unified, to survive. In fact, the water was, it wasn't terribly cold. It was cold enough in the 50s to where, if it had lasted much longer, they would have probably lost some of their own due to hypothermia. But they'd banded together and listened to some of these statements from some of those coal miners. He said, when one would get cold, the other eight would huddle around the person and warm him, and when another person would get cold, the favor was returned. Another miner, Harry, told reporters, any certain time one guy got down, the rest pulled together. And then that guy would get back up and maybe someone else would feel a little weaker. But it was a team effort through and through. What an astonishing picture of unity under horrific situation. I mean, trust that with the baseball situation, where you have, in essence, squabbling disunity between millionaires and billionaires at a time when the nation from the outside looking in at baseball says, this is silly, this is ridiculous, we need a display of unity. Now, there may be good reasons for those on the inside of baseball, where they could justify this. But the parallel that I want you to see is we on the outside, most of us look in and shake our heads. Why can't they be more like the coal miners? Why can't they band together in a time of difficulty? And I think there's a picture there for the church because for many people, and you might be in this group, a lot of people, sort of on the outside of the church, look in, and they see disunity, they see backbiting. They see things that are very unfortunate, maybe you've been burned in a church situation, maybe over and over. And you just shake your head from the outside looking in. You say, why can't there be something more of what a church ought to be? Something more like the vision that Jesus himself had. Jesus, in what we call the high priestly prayer in John chapter 17, right before he was handed over and betrayed and crucified, he said these words. I, in them, that is Jesus in us, the church, and you and me, the Father in Him, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. The remarkable picture, isn't it, that Jesus had on his heart. I mean, if you think about it, the last words that a person speaks are bound to be critically important words. Jesus held up the unity of the Trinity, the unity that he enjoyed with his father, as that unity which also binds his people, the body of Christ together. And I think that's maybe the reason why the Apostle Paul placed this concept of walking together as a first importance in terms of what we as Christians need to be doing and be about in the letter to the Ephesians. We're going through the letter to the Ephesians right now in our church, and the first three chapters, beautiful display of the grace and glory of God in Christ, but he gets to chapter 4, and he begins to state very practically in practical language what the church is to be, who we as Christians are to be, to live a life worthy of the calling that we have received, the very first thing right off the bat is that we must walk together in a particular way. That is, we're not simply individual Christians, disciples of Christ. We are bound and extricably together, and we need to display that for the glory of God, and for the good of those peering through the window at us. So open your Bible if you have them or look in the order of worship at the passage that you find there. We want to think about how is it that we can walk together as God would have us walk? The first thing that we see is that we need to have the right attitude. Attitude is critical in anything that we launch out to do, and the attitude that he says we're to have here is a passion to maintain the purity, the peace of the church of Jesus Christ. Look at verse 3, which I think is maybe the pivotal passage in terms of understanding the passage. He says, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. It's curious, isn't it? That he says, maintain. That is, if you maintain something, if you're asked to maintain something, what you first realize is you're not asked to create it. You're not asked to manufacture it. You're asked simply to maintain it. Someone else is created. In this case, that's God. God has created what we call the church. And Ephesians 1 through 3 gives us that magnificent, spectacular picture of God calling sinners out of this world, people who were alienated from God originally. Jew and Gentile alike calling him out of that into the light of the Son of God for his glory and for his grace purposes. And we are called simply to maintain it. Think of this picture of an orchestra. You get some very gifted people together. Next week, we're going to look more at the gift God has given the church, but you get a lot of gifted people together in orchestra. Let's say that they are asked to play one of Mozart's great overtures. And they sit down for the performance. And a number of these very gifted musicians decide, you know, I think I could do this a little better. And so they begin to play something all on their own. And a number of them are doing it. Now, individually, it might sound wonderful, but it's like a coffinous racket when they begin to play together apart from submitting to the score that is before them and the conductor. As the Church of Jesus Christ, we come with our variety of backgrounds and gifts, but we are not called to create the game plan. We're not called to manufacture the mission of the church. We are called to submit to the conductor, King Jesus, into the score that is before us here in the Bible, and to simply play out our roles. We're called to maintain it, and we're called to be eager about it, to have a passion for it. The word eager here is a pretty powerful word. It means spare no effort. This is to be a top priority in your life, the eager about maintaining the piece of the church and the unity of the church. And that word, therefore, maintained, could also be a translating guard. It's like you might picture an air marshal now on an airplane, an air marshal before September 11th. There were only a few of them evidently, and I'm sure they were on guard, but nothing like the expectation level now. Jesus Christ has called us to guard this precious organism, the church that He has created, and to guard it was zeal and passion. That's the first thing that we need to see. Now we need perspective. If we're to be passionate about it, we need to think properly about the church. We need to have the right perspective of the church and the unity of the church. And that's what you see outlined in verses 4 through 6. This is one of the most theologically compact statements given in all of scripture. Seven times you see the word one mentioned here, three times in reference to the Trinity. And one of the things I think Paul is doing here is he is gathering together in very concise terminology. Things that he's already articulated in detail in chapters 1 through 3. For instance, you see him talking about one body. Well, that's what he talked about in chapter 2, 14 through 17. He talks about one spirit. And he talked about that, of course, in chapter 1 verses 13 and 14 about the spirit indwelling us and sealing us into the day of redemption. Also chapter 2 verses 18 to 22. He speaks of one hope, and this is carved out in chapter 1 verses 11 through 14 and then 18 through 23. And so what this is is an ancient biblical credal statement, really. Like we might affirm the apostles' creed today. This is a statement of the early church gathering together rich truths, their pregnant and meaning. And here's the fundamental point. If we are to find oneness, wholeness in this life, it is only found in the body of Christ, in the church. But in order to find that, we need to have the right perspective. We need to look in the right direction. And so he calls us to look to God alone, to heaven. The problem is, where do we normally look to strike unity? We look at each other, we look at the world and define unity based on lowest common denominator, theologically, perhaps. Or we forget because the Bible is hopelessly and agronistically out of date. So the thinking would be, erroneously. Therefore, we certainly can't hold the moral mandates in the Bible because we're a new generation today. And so we develop our own categories and build unity around those. But that is foolish. The Bible has carved out for us that there is one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father overall. And that idea of God being overall and in all and through all, the point there is not universalism, but that there is one God, no matter where you are in the face of the earth, anywhere in the universe, no matter how sincere and devoted you are to a particular cause or your religion or philosophy. The Bible is saying this is true truth. There is one God and Father. There is one Lord, Jesus Christ, who said, I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one can come to the Father but through me. How? One faith, through faith, through simply trusting that though I have no thing in me, I am unworthy in and of myself by trusting in what Christ has done in his life, death and resurrection. I know that one true life. That's the narrow road. It's tough. That means there's going to be division. Right? But division at the right place because this is talking about life and death. And therefore the Church of Jesus Christ must recognize that true unity is unity that is looking to God. It's looking to heaven. It's looking to the scriptures to define the categories by which we can unite around. If someone does not know Christ, the best thing that we can do is to say they must come to personal saving faith in Christ in order to be part of the body of Christ. They're looking through the window to see what the true Church looks like. A Church vitally connected, centered upon God himself. I recognize that some of you have maybe been burned by churches in the past or by people in the past. When you think about potentially coming back into the Church, what you need to think about is that it is centered on God. He provides sort of a protective net so that regardless of human frailty, the Church moves forward because Jesus is building it. And he is the net that keeps us from utterly as human beings shipwrecking it. Let me give you a picture of what I'm talking about. The Golden Gate Bridge is a fascinating story when it was under construction. And evidently, there were early on a couple of workers who fell perilously to their death. And so it slowed down construction greatly. And engineers and contractors were ringing their hands trying to figure out what to do. So they came up with various scenarios and no one seemed to be happy about anyone of them. And then someone said, why don't we, silly idea, but why don't we construct a massive net and place it underneath the Golden Gate Bridge so that anyone falls, they'll be caught. And they first pass that office as a nonsense. But then they came around to the idea and so they constructed this net and lo and behold, few people fell. They were caught, weren't really injured. And what it did is it bolstered confidence in all of the workers, everyone involved in the project. They caught up on time and ended up completing what we have today. God himself and the truth about the Church contained in the Bible provide us with that safety net. We don't need to worry about being out of bounds, out of touch, if we are trusting in what God has created. We don't need to manufacture, try to recreate it. He's called us simply to eagerly maintain it as we look to him. Now, there is a personal side of this. God has created it. He is the one that provides the safety net, but he's called us to be diligent to personal characteristics that are critical in terms of maintaining the unity and peace of the body of Christ. What personal characteristics, well, he talks about them in verse two, he said that we're to walk together in this way with all humility and gentleness with patience bearing with one another in love. Number of ways we could go out these terms, my favorite is to look at them all as different aspects of love. He says we were to do all these things in love. There are four different facets of love, like you might hold out a brilliant diamond then to appreciate it fully. You need to look at it from different angles. Love, the love of Christ for us that Paul has just talked about in chapter 3, verse 17, is seen from different angles as we hold it up. So he holds it up. First of all, the angle of humility with all humility or the NIV says, be completely humble, but more in the imperative. The humility is essentially counting others as better than yourself. It's the opposite of pride, thinking low of yourself as is appropriate. It was a much despised characteristic in the Greek speaking world in which Paul is writing, so it's curious that he holds this out as the prime virtue here. Because the Greeks said the last thing you want to be is humble. But Jesus changed all that. He came on the scene and held up as the virtue of humility so that Augustine, four centuries later, would say the three most important things about a Christian is first humility, second humility, third humility. It's absolutely central. Now, a picture of how difficult this is to hit home in our day is found I think there's a tragedy of epic proportions is taking place in our society. And I'm talking about the subtle but devastating plot overthrow the fortune cookie industry. You heard me correctly, the fortune cookie industry. Did you notice this as you go to Chinese restaurants lately that they're not really fortunes anymore? Let me give you some examples that we picked up recently. I really think of them more as self-esteem cookies now. The first one is, if given a penny for every kind act, you would be a millionaire. To see, no, there's nothing fortune telling about it. It's just, you know, you're a really great guy. Feel good about yourself. This one, you have an ambitious nature and you'll make a name for yourself. There's a little bit of fortune in there but it's mostly just saying, you know, you can just put your mind to it, you can do anything you want. You are open and honest in your philosophy of love. Your smile brings happiness to others. And this is my personal favorite. Beauty is in your heart. Let it out. Let it beat. Give yourself a treat. You're reading these things and you're thinking, I really like this restaurant. I think I'm coming back here next week. You never hear, you know, you are a scoundrel and idiot and people don't like you. You never see that anymore. It's indicative of our culture and when you hold that mindset up against chapters one and two in Ephesians, you recognize, well, it's a significant contrast. I am not in God's birds eye view, the center of the universe. He is. I don't even exist for my own purposes. I exist for his glorious grace. And I live. I walk this journey, this quest to carry out the good things that he is already ordained for me and accomplished in Christ. It puts us in a wonderful position. His chosen children, but not in a position of boasting humility is put in its appropriate place. It comes from the uniqueness it might be in your translation. It comes from the idea of an animal being trained. Some of you know that we have a fairly new dog named Lucy and Lucy has not been real quick to the house train and to learn the right things that she's supposed to do. So we sent Lucy off to summer camp this summer. That's what we've been affectionately calling this kindle where there was a Nazi-like caretaker that was to whip Lucy into shape and she's come back. She doesn't jump all over people anymore and we actually take her in the lock now rather than the other way around. She messes every once in a while but she's pretty obedient and the neat thing is she's actually happy with her obedience. She seems very content like she was out of control before. This is the idea that freedom, true freedom comes and we are subdued to the master. And that produces that meek and contrite and broken spirit that is beautiful and very useful in God's sight. Patience means to be long burned. It's a trait that most redheads naturally don't have, have to cultivate. It's the idea that you're not only humble in patience but you're humble in patience, not only humble in gentle but you're humble in gentle for a long time. And that last one forbearance but that's a tough one because that has the idea that we're not only humble and gentle for a long time but we are that way with people that irritate us and get under our skin. Maybe people that you for whatever reason naturally would not choose to spend a great deal of time with. That's the church and it is glorious because as the world looks in they see those people are not acting like people. They're acting divine, they're acting very different. That indeed this is not only difficult these things, it's beyond human ability. And that's where it's so critical to see the final thing that is really the context in which this passage comes. That they're we desperately need the power for this kind of unity, to be passionate about it, to see God's perspective and to pursue these personal characteristics with the kind of zeal and determination that God determines for us to do. We need that power. And that's why we see that Paul says in verse 3 that we need to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. That's one of those gospel words that is so beautiful. This he Paul has used this concept of peace already a couple of times to help us think about the gospel, the good news of what God has done for us in Christ. He tells us, for instance, in verse 14 of chapter 2 that he himself is our peace. In fact, we can't manufacture unity, we can't manufacture peace because Christ is our peace. And in verse 16 of chapter 2 he says that he is our peace for this purpose, that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross. I read a story recently about these Scottish soldiers back during World War II that were imprisoned in a Japanese concentration type camp. They were brutal, barbaric conditions that they were under. And one day they were called to line up and as they were they've been working with various tools they have to lay out their tools in front of them to make sure none of them were trying to swipe a tool. And one of the shovels was missing. The Japanese commander went ballistic. He got out his gun and said that tool better appear immediately in the one who took it where I'm going to kill every one of you. He put a gun to their head and they realized he was serious. Eventually one man stepped forward. The commander threw down his gun, picked up a shovel and beat the man to death. Well the other Scottish soldiers picked up their friend and carried him with him throughout the day. Dead and bloodied. After a time there was another moment where they had to lay out all their tools, another tool check. And surprisingly this time all the shovels appeared. In fact it was just a miscount the first time. They were all there both times. And yet this one man had taken the step forward to an essence sacrifice himself that his brothers might live. Well it had a remarkably transforming effect on the whole group. In fact when the Allies finally liberated the concentration camp and all of the Scottish soldiers stood there in front of the Japanese soldiers that had held them at bay, instead of wanting to curse them or kill them, they said this represented by one of the soldiers. He said no more hatred, no more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness. You see sacrificial love transforms and that's the idea. Christ is our peace. As Paul would tell the Philippian church that Jesus who was exalted and had a right to simply stay in glory humbled himself and became obedient even to death on a cross. It's the power of the cross brothers and sisters that melts the heart of the prideful man. That takes the recklessly brash individual and makes them gentle. For we recognize with the Apostle Paul and Romans that we tend to presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience not knowing that God's kindness in Christ is what actually leads us to repentance. The passage that I read from John 17 at the outset or Jesus right before he goes to his death says father this is what I want for my people, the church, that the world could look in and see that and understand the power of the gospel. That little verse by notation only is inside of my ring my wedding band because Ellen and I recognize 15 years ago that what we desperately needed was the power of the gospel to bind us together. So that we the church in miniature together with those who we would bind ourselves to would seek that same piece in the prince of peace, the Lord Christ that God might be glorified. The world might look in and see us walking together in love and yearn for that same kind of communion. Let's pray. Jesus, as we meet with you now by faith, would you strengthen us and cause us to walk with you in humility and gentleness side by side, bound together by the prince of peace and glory, Jesus.