Sermon: The Mystery of the Church
The Unity Necessary for Perfection
#1656-PM
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 05-Jun-22; 82 minutes
description: At the first Pentecost, a unified church began expanding through the cooperative efforts of the apostles empowered with the dramatic gift of God's Holy Spirit. A powerful false church sprang up and overshadowed the true church, obscuring it up to the 20th century. About three decades ago, Jesus Christ scattered the church into hundreds of splinters to protect a remnant against antinomian apostasy. This scattering could be a sign of the end, as God tests the spiritual remnants to determine their loyalty to Him. Jacob's spiritual offspring, treasuring their independence, individualism, and free will, find it easy to effortlessly skip from one splinter group to another, taking attitudes with them, causing further division and conflict. Christ, in His noble priestly prayer (John 17:20-21), expressed the desire that His called-out ones be unified. We will not be made perfect until we have achieved this unity. We can achieve this desired unity and harmony if we use the gifts of God's Spirit with the motivation to selflessly serve, edify, and encourage our spiritual siblings. The booklets and teachings of our former affiliation were only starting points, ankle-deep compared to the fathomless depths of understanding God desires for us. Many members remained immature babes, unequipped to deal with the antinomian apostasy that destroyed the WCG. Too many enjoyed the spectator status of pay and pray, ignoring character building, repentance, and diligently responding to the spiritual gifts that God had entrusted to us to serve others.
transcript:
We are living in a unique time in church history. If something like the current church environment has occurred over the last two millennia, I am not aware of it happening.
When Jesus founded the church of God on the Pentecost after His death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, it was a unified church. That unified church spread from Jerusalem into Judea and then into Samaria and then, as Jesus predicted in Acts 1:8, to the ends of the earth. For many years, it was expanded and held together through the cooperation of those apostles despite their far-flung missions to preach the gospel around the world. So, it was a singular church.
True, false gospels and false ministers did their damage, and so, over more than a century, a false church sprang up and eventually overshadowed the true church. History does not record the true church very often after that point, after about mid-first century. There are a few men that pop out in the history of what is called Christianity down through the ages, but we are not even sure if some of them were actually part of the true church. They seem to have some of the doctrines right, but we do not know. But the true church has gone on. It just has not been in the spotlight.
Members of the true church, though, had only, essentially, two choices, especially in that early time after, let's say, about 130, 140, 150 AD. But by faith, God's elect stayed with the one church that Christ founded. It shrank into obscurity after that point, its congregations sundered from each other. And they were hidden from the false church and its zealots for much of the intervening time between then and the 20th century.
But we face something different today. Like I said at the beginning, it is unique. That unique thing is what we call the greater church of God—all the various groups, and there are many, hundreds actually, who have been listed as part of the church of God. All those various groups claim to be part of the true church, and we can point to historical and theological roots that they have in either the Worldwide Church of God or Church of God Seventh Day, or some of the other ones that we know were part of the true church, or with Herbert Armstrong himself. And so we have a lot of churches, a lot of groups that all claim to be part of the true church.
Some of them, and especially a few of the larger ones, wrongly claim to be the exclusive body of Christ, and all the rest of us poor people are deceived, Laodicean, dissidents, or simply fallen away. They have given up on us, yet dozens and scores of churches with perhaps just one minister and a handful of brethren have ties to the true church, and who is to say whether they are not part of the true church? That is not our part in this. Only the Christ, the Head of the church, can say "yea" or "nay" about whether these people are actually part of His church.
Church of the Great God has preached for thirty years that the scattered condition of what we call the greater church of God is God's doing. Now, we have had a big part to play in why God did that, but we have preached that God scattered the church, and so it is a valley, a low point, in the progress of the church down through the ages. We believe that this scattering is a sign of the end, Jesus using it to test His people to see where they stand at crunch time.
Are they with Him and with His teachings, or are they pursuing their own ideas and ways? Are they going to get caught up in the prevailing culture and all the wickedness happening in the world? Are they willing to learn that they have been wrong? Are they willing to overcome and grow? Will they choose to submit themselves to the truth of His Word when it is brought to them, whether or not it agrees with their traditional understanding? If the proof is there in God's Word, will they accept it, or will they just go along to get along?
In my view, the more personal matters are perhaps the most important. Are these people, scattered throughout the church, full of pride or greed or self-exaltation? Do they have a spirit of unity, or do they have one of division? Will His called-out ones walk worthy of their calling? Will they be forgiving and forbearing with their brethren? Or will they instead hold grudges, pick fights, cause offenses, and use and abuse their fellow members to get ahead one way or another?
In other words, will they show the love of Christ for one another? Or will they, as Paul writes in Galatians 5:15, "bite and devour one another and be consumed by one another"?
Christ is watching, as Head of the church, all these things as His return draws near. He is looking at the apple of His eye and wondering, "What are they made of? Do they really look like Me?"
So, we live in a situation in which two major factors are at play. One, because of human nature, we are in a state of constant friction—cultural, doctrinal, governmental, and interpersonal—because the flesh wars against the Spirit. You find that in Galatians 5:17. And the second factor, because of God's scattering of the church, we have numerous choices as to which organization we affiliate with. Or even further than that, we can choose complete independence from any group and any other people in the church of God.
To my mind, these factors are a spiritually dangerous, almost explosive mix. We are in a state of friction, and we have wide choices about who we want to fellowship with. It is a dangerous mix. It can tempt any of us to follow the dictates of our deceitful heart to do what seems right in our own eyes instead of God's way and feel justified in doing it because that is what the deceitful heart does. It makes division into unity—in its own mind.
The situation makes it easy for people who have certain problems, whatever they happen to be, ones that they will not own up to, to skip from one church to another, taking their wrong ideas and their attitudes with them. And wherever they go, when they take these wrong ideas and attitudes, it eventually catches up with them and they end up having to go somewhere else. They keep moving from one place to another, causing division after division after division, and never solving the problem.
That is what makes it dangerous: that we have an environment in the greater churches of God where we can avoid working on ourselves, we can avoid coming to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, because we are coddling some human sin, human evil within ourselves, and we do not want to let it go. So we do not repent of it. We just go somewhere else.
Now, please do not misunderstand. This situation is not what God wants. As He did with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, He scatters or exiles because of sin and rebellion with the intent of spurring spiritual repentance. That is, a return to Him and a return to righteousness. So we can say that, yes, God caused this. But in reality, the church has done it to itself. We have done it to ourselves, and we are still dealing with the repercussions of the apostasy of our former affiliation and all the distrust it created among ministry and members alike.
It has been more than 36 years since Mr. Armstrong died, and the Tkach regime came in. It has been thirty years plus since the Church of the Great God started. And that makes it 26 years since the major leaving of the Worldwide Church of God that formed the United Church of God. In between, there were others like Global and whatnot that came out. So here, a quarter century or more later, we are still dealing with the problems that that apostasy caused and the distrust and the disunity that it caused.
And that is not good. We have been very slow as a church, as the churches of God, to rectify the problem on our end. God is willing and very able to cause unity. Evidently, He does not want it right now because it is not happening. But we are a big problem, a big reason, why it is not happening—because we are not ready for it yet. There are still problems that have to be overcome. And this is something that Jesus Christ, as Head of the church, really wants. He wants to bring us all into one.
Let us see this in John 17:20-23. This is His prayer to the disciples, His last time that He had to engage with them and leave them with something before He died. Obviously, He had some time after He was resurrected to give them instruction, and we have a few of the things He said after that, but this was the last thing that He said to them as a group, when they were all gathered together, and He had a chance to give them His final thoughts, if you will. And what did He have to say? This is specifically about those who would follow them.
John 17:20-23 "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me."
This is what Jesus Christ, the Head of the church, our High Priest, desires. It is throughout this whole prayer. He wants us to be one. He wants His disciples to be unified. He wants them to be marching in step together toward the Kingdom. That is His goal! He wants to be one. We are His Body. He does not want parts of His body scattered all over the place with different ideas, thinking different things, having different goals. He wants unified action. He wants a single, unitary spiritual body of elect servants of God who think and speak and act in harmony and godly love for one another.
Sounds incredible—and I mean it in its real meaning: unbelievable! But if He wants it, it can happen. It is not an impossible dream. That is the end that will be. His Body will be united. His Body will be singular. They will all be one.
The question is, are we going to be part of that oneness? Are we going to be contributing to that oneness? Because you notice I said "spiritual body." Jesus suggests, looking at it in another way in verse 23, that we will not be made perfect until we have achieved that oneness. Notice that: "I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one."
Now, He may be referring here to the ultimate oneness we will have in the resurrection. That is certainly a fine interpretation, but the phrasing at least implies that spiritual completion makes its longest strides when God's people are unified and at peace with one another. As James, His brother, in chapter 3, verse 18 confirms, "The fruits of righteousness are produced in peace by those who make peace." So, if you want to be completed in God, if you want to be perfected in your character, you had better strive for unity and peace with the rest of the Body of Christ and be one.
So, on this Feast of Pentecost we need to be reminded, I think, about the purpose of the church. Perhaps because we tend to follow the spirit of individualism that is emphasized by Western culture, we have let this "group idea" of the church drift from our conscious mind. Maybe over time, we have come to consider the church, the ekklesia, the assembly of God's elect children, as less important, deeming our personal relationship with God as far more vital and let the chips fall where they may otherwise.
But I think we would do well to pay more attention to God's providence in the church. He did not make the church for no good reason. God's election of each one of us is about much more than personal salvation. Have you ever considered that personal salvation can be an essentially selfish pursuit if pursued with the wrong attitude? It is just all for me, and there is no helping other people or doing anything else, but for the self. But God's election is about integrating into the body of Christ through character growth in preparation for a greater, future work and a lot more besides.
So, yeah, Christ has done His part, and we come into the church accepting that, right? We make a covenant with Him. He promises to save us, does He not? He promises to justify us. He promises to sanctify us, He promises to give us glory. He says, just stick with the team, we will do all this, and from the beginning, that is kind of a given, is it not? If we sign on through our baptism, and we do all the things like repentance and going on to perfection and that sort of thing, that is guaranteed. He says, "I haven't let anybody snatch anyone out of My hand. You're going to make it if you stay on the team." Right? If you stay in the church, if you do the small part you have to play. Well, if that is all there is, that does not leave us much to do.
But then He went and made the church. I am not criticizing, not in the least, but by making the church, He gave us something to do. He gave us siblings—spiritual siblings—and a fair amount of them. I had six sisters—that was enough! We have our differences, we have our squabbles, but seven kids all trying to get along in one house, that could get a little rough sometimes. I will not mention my sisters fighting in the back of the car (I won't mention that at all!) trying not to get dad's attention. But there was stuff like that going on, even in a moderately large family. I am sure Ted [Bowling] and Jackie [Eggers] have some good stories to tell. I will not call them up here to tell them, but they had a big family too. We all came out of a family, and we saw how hard it was to all be on the same page, even with just a few people.
Well, God has giant-sized all of that and put us in a family with hundreds and thousands of people, and He says, "Get along, be at peace, forgive your brother or sister. Don't hold grudges against your brother and sister. Serve them, submit to them, help them, guide them, get along with them, pitch in on the projects, and do all those things that loving brothers and sisters are supposed to do." It will make us all into one big, happy family. And that is a problem. That is a problem for us. It is a big problem for us because if there is anybody—and this means everybody—who is a little bit different than us or has a slightly different idea, we get all defensive, and we say things that we should not say. We hold grudges, and we offend one another, and on and on it goes, because we are fighting an inner war between our human nature that is full of sin and the wrong attitudes and the way we know God wants us to go.
And you know what? We probably give in about (I will give you the benefit of the doubt) 98% of the time. "We are still very carnal" is what I am trying to say. We do not follow the proddings of the Holy Spirit very well. I hope we are getting better. I was being facetious about the 98% point, but I was trying to get my point across. We do not tend to treat each other as well as we should.
So, this is what I am talking about today. Are we going to change? Are we going to repent from following our human nature and follow the dictates of God's Spirit so that we do grow together as one, so that we can make that change and produce the fruit of the Spirit that will benefit everyone in terms of growing and righteousness?
Now, I, like Mark [Schindler], did some preparation for this sermon in Herbert Armstrong's writing. I reread Herbert Armstrong's chapter in Mystery of the Ages about the church. It is called "The Mystery of the Church." It is by far the longest chapter in that book. I think it is close to 100 pages long, and in his inimitable way, Herbert Armstrong takes the reader back to the very beginning and rehearses the most fundamental principles to provide a prospective member, or perhaps a new member, that basic knowledge that he or she might need to understand the subject of the church.
His goal in this chapter is to clear away many people's misconceptions. Those misconceptions are what causes it to be a mystery and thus to explain why God uses a church. What is its purpose? What is God trying to do? Now, thirty pages into the chapter he writes, finally, getting to one of his concluding points, on page 228,
The church is a necessary instrumentality preparatory to and in order to bring salvation to humanity. Therefore, once again, let it be emphasized that the purpose of the church is not merely to give salvation to those called into the Church, but to teach and train those predestined and called into the Church as instruments God shall use in bringing the world to salvation.
I think we longtime church members have no difficulty with this explanation. We are called for the purposes of salvation, yes, but we are also called to prepare for the greater salvation of all humanity as Christ's Body, as priests under Him. About twenty pages later, he writes on pages 255 and 256,
The church then, is that body of called-out ones who, at the resurrection, shall form the firstfruits of God's harvest. That harvest is the reaping of physical flesh and blood, matter-composed humans converted into divine immortal beings, those in whom God actually has reproduced Himself.
His mention of firstfruits there is a good tie-in to this Feast of Pentecost, also called the Feast of Firstfruits, which we have heard quite a bit about over the last day or so. We understand that this day pictures the culmination of a special harvest of God's elect in this age. They are the ones that He will use most intimately in the work He has to do once He returns to this earth.
Back to Mr. Armstrong. Finally, on page 265, he writes,
The church is God's spiritual organism. Well organized for feeding on spiritual food, training and developing in spiritual righteous character the future God beings, sons of God the Father. For that training, that spiritual development of God's character, God has given His Church a dual responsibility. One, "go ye into all the world" and proclaim the good news announcement of the coming Kingdom of God; two, "feed My sheep."
Now, having been in the church for any length of time, we know these purposes. We could have probably written something very similar if we had needed to write them down. They are true and right principles, right points, right purposes. They give us a very good overview of what the church is all about. We could say, they provide a good starting point. But in my estimation, they are just that: They are starting points for understanding. In the books and booklets that Mr. Armstrong did, he very rarely got into a lot of meat about anything. Maybe in Mystery of the Ages he did a little bit more than others.
But the booklets produced in the Worldwide Church of God were for people who are coming out of the world. They were for what we would call "spiritual babes in Christ." And they only skimmed the surface of a very, very deep lake underneath those theological truths that he was expounding in those booklets. There was a lot more! Remember Ezekiel 47? The prophet walks out into the water, and it covers his ankles. He walks a little bit deeper, and it covers his knees. Next, he goes further, and he is up his waist in water. He takes another step, and he is completely inundated.
That is how God's truth is. You can learn at any one of those steps, but there is still more, still deeper understanding that we could plunge into if we have the mind to do it. Mr. Armstrong's booklets were pretty much ankle deep, for the most part. They gave the truth. I am not criticizing them for that. They gave people a good start if they followed up on what was given there. They were fine; they worked. But there is a more complete understanding of these truths. There is more that we can understand about the church and what it is all about.
I was baptized in 1984, and we left [WCG] in 1992, so that was only eight years of baptized experience in the Worldwide Church of God. But I was born in 1966, and mom and dad were already in the church, so I had a good 26 years or so of experience with the Worldwide Church of God. I also had the experience of going to Ambassador College and working in church administration, so I got a pretty good view of what was going on in the church, even though the time was fairly short. And I believe, looking at it through what I experienced, that there was little concerted effort in the Worldwide Church of God to flesh out [what was written in the booklets] and certainly no overall program to implement a more complete understanding of the church's purpose.
Now, Mr. Armstrong did tell the ministry—actually, it was in one of the refresher programs toward the end of his life where he addressed them—and he told them, as my dad has said before in other sermons, "I'm disappointed with you fellas." He says, "I told you to take what I had given and expand on it to the congregations, and you haven't done it." At the end of his life, he could see that the church was needing to be prepared for the return of Jesus Christ. That is what he told Joe Tkach to do: prepare the church of God for Christ's return. And he failed miserably. He went the other way and injected false doctrine into the church rather than expounding on the truth. And a lot of other ministers followed right on his coattails and did the same thing, [they] weakly followed what was coming out of Pasadena rather than standing for the truth. And of course, that in turn made a lot of people in the church weakly follow the minister they were under and just went along with it all without really thinking it through.
That is what Mr. Armstrong was concerned about, and it came to pass. The ministers were not supporting Mr. Armstrong in preaching the deep things of God and helping people to learn and to grow in their understanding and in their unity with one another as God's people. So, the way I look at it, most of the people in the church of God at the time were left lapping only the milk and were never truly exposed to the meat. They were left still carnal. A lot like the Corinthians, as Paul described them in I Corinthians 3:2, they knew the truth. They would agree to the truth, but they had not progressed. They were still carnal. There were still babes and had remained babes.
I think that is what happened to the church. It was at a very bad time in the history of the people of the church that this apostasy came through, and people were not prepared to reject it. And like I said, we are still dealing with the repercussions of that, because instead of thousands of people standing up and saying, "No, this isn't right. Joe Tkach, you get out of here! This is not the way of God." Or standing up and saying, "Okay, we've had it with Worldwide Church of God. Let's start our own [organization]." Instead, we went out in fits and spurts and made all these little churches. And as we all came out, we did not join with the ones that had come out before us. We said, "No, we can do it better" and made our own.
And it has happened time and time and time again, showing that we were not united at all. Even though we were under one banner in the Worldwide Church of God, we were badly fragmented. And what we are seeing now with all the churches of God is that fragmentation made plain, made manifest. I am afraid that many in the church of God years ago, and maybe even today, have just taken the church for granted—that it is almost like it is just a way of organizing ourselves, and it is really not that important.
In fact, many dumbed it down severely—to themselves mostly; they did not say this to one another, maybe they did in jest—but their idea of the church's purpose was primarily to support the preaching of Herbert W. Armstrong. You know what that is in layman's terms? It is that evil "pay and pray" idea: that all you have to do is come into the church, and if you pray for the work to get done and you pay your tithes, that is all that is necessary. I think a lot of them are now keeping Christmas and Easter because doctrine did not mean anything, growth in character did not mean anything. All they were there for was to go to church and support the church. It was a social club with a little bit of a fee to get in.
But the mystery of the church and the church's purpose are far deeper than "pay and pray." It is more spiritually personal than that. In fact, I would have to say that most of us have probably misused or underused the institution of the church more than we know. It is a sad fact. I think we are very seriously fighting the idea of individualism that we have grown up with. It is a horrible philosophy for a church member. It is not me, me, me. It is us. It is what God wants. It is exterior to us. That is the goal. That is the reason for being. But no, our human nature says it is all about us.
Well, we have been there many times before. Let's go to Acts 2. But I want you to notice a few things here. The men who have spoken before me have touched on it and made some comments, but I want to add my own here. Let's read the first verse, and then we will drop down to verse 41.
Acts 2:1 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
Acts 2:41-42 [This is after Peter's sermon.] Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. [So they went from 120 and suddenly now they were 3,120. That is a big jump!] And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.
Acts 2:46-47 So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.
As we begin here, notice how this foundational, pivotal chapter on God's church is framed. A frame is what goes around the outside, so in a chapter, it is what starts it and what ends it. It begins with those 120 disciples who were mentioned in chapter 1. They were all worshipping together on Pentecost "with one accord." That phrase begins this chapter. This idea of unity among the disciples is what starts the church out, if you will. And that day God calls 3,000 other people to be baptized after Peter's sermon. And even with the added numbers, they are still living and worshipping "with one accord" by the time we get to the end of the chapter.
God does not construct His Word without purpose. The repeated phrase and the internal examples He provides shout out His desire for us to understand that accord and harmony and unity among the people is what He desires—nay, expects! He is showing us how it was. This is true! This is not a fable, not a fairy tale. This actually happened. So, He is showing us how it was and could be if we submitted ourselves fully, as these people did in Acts 2. Now granted, it did not last long because human nature reared its ugly head. But oneness with God and with each other is possible and greatly desired by God, by the Head of our church.
Now, it is sad, if you think about it, that the church reached its high water mark at the very beginning, and it is a state that it has not returned to since. From this high time in Acts 2, it has just become more carnal, not less. We have become weaker in faith rather than stronger. And it gets to the point where Peter tells us in I Peter 4:18 that "the righteous will scarcely be saved." That is just the way people are. We have got that human nature to fight and we struggle. We struggle terribly.
Let's stay here in Acts 2. We will start in verse 4 and read down through verse 12.
Acts 2:4-12 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused [the multitude is confused], because everyone heard them speaking in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, "Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God." So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "Whatever could this mean?"
Now, God does not leave us without answers. He tells us right away what it was that caused this great oneness. What made the difference between confused people all wondering what is going on and 3,120 souls being in one accord? It was a lavish effusion of His Holy Spirit. God poured it out in huge quantities, if you will, and gave it to these people, and when God's Spirit fills His people and they submit to His will, it can overcome the confusion and tumults that are the products of the wide diversities among people. It overcame different ethnicities. It overcame social statuses. It overcame cultures and locations and languages, not to mention all those individual people's idiosyncrasies that make us go, "Eww, I would never be friends with that guy!" It molded those very different people into a unified whole. Peter goes on to say that this spectacle of oneness was a fulfillment of Joel's prophecy, and it was a sign of the last days, a sign of the Day of the Lord and the salvation of many.
It is another indication of how important a unified church is to the completion of the elect, as well as the progress of God's plan. It works macro and micro. God is willing to pour all this out again if His church is prepared to receive it. Are we?
Let's go to Ephesians 2. I am sure God would be thrilled to be able to see this once again in His people. I am coming off the idea here of the diversity among people and how God unifies despite it.
Ephesians 2:4-7 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:14-22 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity [or the hostility], that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to get death the enmity.
And He came and preached peace to you who are afar off and to those who are near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
Did you notice as we were going through there how many times Paul repeated the word "together"? In these two passages, 4-7 and 14-22, he used the word "together" five times, and he used the word "one" four times. He is very much talking about togetherness and unity, oneness with each other, and how what Christ has done has broken all the divisions between us into rubble.
In context, here in the book of Ephesians, he is emphasizing the passing of the differences between Jews and Gentiles. That is his main illustration. The calling of God erases that. It does not matter anymore whether you come from Israelite stock or Gentile stock. When God calls you, you are now of God's stock. (Not card stock or anything like that.) You are of God. You are of the very Family of God.
So, your past does not matter. All those sins in the past have been washed away. Those are the ones that He forgave when you became justified and submitted to baptism. We say that in our baptism ceremony, that we do this for the remission of "past sins" or "sins that are past." (However, the person chooses to word it.) And as we then go on through our lives after our baptism, we take it straight to God and ask for forgiveness of those sins that we keep finding in ourselves. So that has been taken care of.
And so we are all put into the same group, the same church—a family in which we are all brethren—and the past does not matter. Those things that used to divide us are no longer a concern or should not be. They do because we are human. We tend to remember those things rather than do what God wants us to do and not worry about them. But those things have been set aside through the calling of Christ. We should not need to worry about them.
Christ's work has broken down the walls that separate us, which includes differences of things like race and gender and position and status and family or whatever. And He has united us in Him. That is the thing that really matters. The descriptor that matters is: Are you like Christ? Because you are a part of His body. Are you holy? Are you righteous? The other things do not matter much at all. Because now we are parts of His singular body. He is the Head, and we are the functioning parts that He uses to do His work.
In Him, as it says here, we are one new man. We are reconciled to Him and to each other because the enmity that has estranged us from one another, that is, our guilt and our sin, has been defeated. It has been washed away in the waters of baptism. That is past. That is behind us. And so He has then, from that point, put us in the environment of peace that we need—the church. And it is a shame that we have not kept the church as an environment of peace, in many instances. We come into the church thinking things are going to be great in it, and what we see instead is a lot of human nature rearing its ugly head. We have to face that and understand it and do something about it.
That is what this sermon is about. How can we do something about it if the church is not at peace?
He has given us access to the Father through His Holy Spirit. He has given us the power,d the gifts, and the talents for unity, for oneness. He has provided everything we need to grow into that dwelling place of God, the Temple He is constructing. We lack nothing! We have gifts. We have talents. We have strength. We have brilliant minds. But are we using them? Are we using any of those things?
You know what is lacking? Unfortunately, what is lacking is our submissive, zealous response to all these gifts. We are the problem. That is normal, by the way. I am not singling any of you out. It has been the problem since this time in Acts. If I can put a guilt trip on you, you are letting God down. You are letting the team down. And me too. I do it every day. I know that we say that we want unity within the body of Christ, but our attitudes, our speech with one another, and our behavior often belie it.
Maybe I am overdoing this, but at best we want unity with the brethren on our terms. We think it is splendid in principle, but in practice, we want to be the ones in control. We want to be at the top of the heap. We want to be the one in the most advantageous position who reaps all the benefits of it without suffering any of the supposed downsides that we might imagine.
How do I know this? Well, I know because I do it. I know that we often shy away from the requirements of unity. Do you know what those requirements of unity are? It is those things we do not want to do: selflessness, submission, and service. Those are things we do not want to do. Our human nature wants us to be selfish. Our human nature wants us to be one giving all the commands. Our human nature wants us to be the one who is served. It is a shame that we do this, and I am ashamed that I do the same. It is my human nature not wanting to do what I know is right to do.
I could go to Romans 7 and just tell you what Paul said: All the good things he wanted to do, he did not do. He did the bad things. And he really wanted to do the good things, but he never did. He always did the bad things. And so he concludes, "I'm fighting a war here! With my mind, I want to do all these good things, but my carnal nature really doesn't want to do them. And I usually give in." Thank God, Jesus Christ is there who forgives us and helps us through all this, but we still fail. It is sad that it happens so frequently.
Now, I do want to say that the reunification of the church on a grand scale, that is, bringing all the greater churches of God together under one tent, that is a subject far above my pay grade. I do not know how in the world that is going to happen. As a matter of fact, it is not going to happen in the world, it is going to happen in heaven. That is where it is going to start. The Head of the church will direct that in His own time, when He deems it appropriate. It is too big for any one of us, no matter what title you have, no matter how long you have been in the church, no matter how many good ideas you have. It is not enough. It is something God has to effect through His Spirit. We have no control or very little influence with others not among us even to begin to think about creating unity within the greater church of God.
I do not know how it is going to happen. Some of the divisions are very deep. That is something for God to work out. But that does not mean we cannot act. We must act upon this knowledge as individuals in all of our relationships, even if most of the church does not act. Even if 90% of the people are trying to divide the church, we must promote unity in our interactions with each other as the famous quotation, falsely attributed to Mahatmas Gandhi says, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." (He did not say that by the way. He said something like it, but it was not actually that.)
Do you remember the song, "Let There be Peace on Earth"? You know what it says next? "and let it begin with me." It may sound hokey. "Oh, he's getting that from a Hindu, or he's getting that from some New Age song" or whatever. But it is a true principle. We must encourage oneness in the church ourselves, as individuals, even if no one else does. We are here in Ephesians. Let's go to chapter 4. How do we begin to do this?
Ephesians 4:1-6 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
So how do we begin? Paul lays out the basic template right here. The bottom line is that each of us as individuals must live up to our calling. "You are a son or a daughter of God in the image of Jesus Christ. Live it!" is what Paul is saying. Do not shirk your duties. As was said here just this morning, God has called us to be something! It is what He is doing with us. It is not what we were. He has called us to a fabulous calling of being a son or a daughter of God. And we have to start being a daughter or son of God! That is our calling. Our calling is to be the bride of Christ, to live and rule with Christ for 1,000 years and into infinity in the future.
That is a huge calling. It is not understandable. He has called these lumps of clay, misshapen as they are, cracked, and He is making them into something beautiful—His own children. That is what it means to walk worthy of your calling. Living up to your potential.
Now, we cannot do this alone, obviously, but that is the goal. We have to strive every day to reach our potential. We have to, as he says when he starts giving some details, we must develop a humble and loving attitude. We have to act and react with gentleness or with meekness. That is the word here. We have to forbear with others' weaknesses because they are as weak as we are, and we need to remember that and know that some are far behind us in their spiritual maturity, and they need time. They need the pressures that Clyde spoke about to mold them into something greater. So we forbear with them and maybe help them. We need to strive for unity and peace, not make more disunity and friction, conflict.
As I mentioned before, these instructions require selflessness, submission, and service. They require us putting others before ourselves. It requires us to treat them as more important than we are, far, vastly more important than we are—putting them on a pedestal and helping them, seeing to them before we see to ourselves.
God's Spirit, if you are sensitive at all to what God is trying to do to us through His Spirit day by day, is prodding us to do these things. If it is in us, it is working; it is fighting human nature, trying to tell us, "You need to go this way rather than the other way which your body and your mind are trying to do." But our human nature usually ends up forestalling it because we are so human, we are so fleshly, we are so selfish. It usually only gives in when it sees an advantage for itself. "Hey, if I serve this person, they are going to tell X and Y." "Hey, I might be a deacon before the end of the month." I mean, that is an exaggeration, but it is kind of what the process is.
Human nature tries to find some crack that it can use to do the right thing but get something back on the side. Christ's character does not do that. It just does it. It does not care what comes back as a good thing. It just does what is right. When we follow what the Spirit urges us to do, and if we do it regularly, you know what happens? Oneness. With every right, godly, selfless act, we promote unity in the church, unity with each other. I mean, if you give somebody 100 bucks for groceries, do you not think that makes them feel kind of close to you? You become special to them. They say about you, "Oh, he's okay. He's not the money grubber I thought he was." Or you help somebody with a tire that has blown or whatever: "Hey, he's kind of a nice guy. Wow, I wouldn't have expected him to get his hands dirty."
But those things just begin to promote new understanding among people about each other, and that promotes oneness. We get to know each other. We get to see each other in action, doing godly things. That usually becomes a model for other people to do godly, unifying actions, and it begins to snowball. If everybody is trying to do everybody else good, what a wonderful thing that would be! What a model it would be of Christ-like character! Is that not what we want? I think it is.
Let us go down to verse 11 here in Ephesians 4. The ministry has a part to play in this too.
Ephesians 4:11-14 And He Himself [meaning Christ] gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers [notice why], for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry [that is, equipping you to serve others], for the edifying [that is the building up] of the body of Christ [we are supposed to be point men for this action of unity within the church], till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ [huge, huge, huge goal]; that we should no longer be children [but mature], tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.
This is why I said earlier that the church was not ready for those false doctrines that came in in the late '80s and early '90s. We had not reached this point. We were thrown here and there by the winds of doctrine, and only a few of us came out of it.
Ephesians 4:15-16 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up [that is what we need to do: We need to grow up] in all things into Him [We do not want to grow up into anything that is not Him. But we need to grow up in all the things that will help us to grow up to be more like Him] who is the head—Christ—from whom [Okay, this tells you where the unity actually comes from] the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
So the ministry of the church, its part, its main function, let us say, lies in producing the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. That is, what we believe, that is, passing on and elucidating the knowledge of the Son of God. Christ's knowledge, not just [knowing] about Him, but the knowledge that He passed on to His apostles. You could know the history from before He was born till the time He went to heaven. That is not the knowledge that we are talking about. We are talking about all the doctrine and the teaching that He gave. That is the church's job, the minister's job, to impart that to you so you have the tools to make the right decisions. And those things cause unity.
The ministry's job is to encourage and ensure the maturity of God's people. We need to keep pushing you and pushing you and saying, you can understand this. Let us take you one step further so you can understand better what this means and how it it will help you become more like Jesus Christ and enter the Kingdom of God.
We must lead you from milk to meat in doctrine and understanding because if we do not, you do not mature. You can do a lot of that yourself, but the ministry is here to help you learn new things, get you excited about certain subjects, make you pursue them in your own personal studies and encourage you to do them, practically, in your own lives, among your own families. And if all these things are done right, it leads to the body of Christ being joined and knit together for growth toward perfection and completeness. Again, unity, oneness, in the church promotes perfection, promotes completion, and that is what Jesus said in John 17—to a perfect man.
We are going to read a sizable section here from verse 17 on to chapter 5, verse 2. These are practical pieces of advice from the apostle Paul about how we can individually promote unity.
Ephesians 4:17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind . . .
They are running the rat race out there in the world. You, though, do not have to do this anymore. You have been called to something greater.
Ephesians 4:18 . . . having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God . . .
They have no idea what you have, what you have been called to. You have been called to the life of God, of a God-being. Are you living it?
Ephesians 4:18-24 . . . because of the ignorance that is in them [we would still have that ignorance ourselves unless God plucked us out of the world and gave us His Spirit and put us on this path], because of the blindness of their heart [so be it, God, will work with them later]; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness [or license], to work all uncleanness and greediness. [And is not that what we are seeing out in the world?] But you have not so learned Christ [you are in the very opposite part of the spectrum of things], if indeed you have heard Him and been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness.
So the standard is God Himself. The standard is Jesus Christ. That is the "new man" we have to put on. We are far from that point, but that is the goal: to put on the new man, which is Christ.
Ephesians 4:25 Therefore [he is going to give us some practical points here], putting away lying, "Let each one speak truth with his neighbor" [Why?], for we are members of one another.
You do not want to keep things from your brethren. I am not saying you spout all your sins to one another. But do not lie, do not deceive your brother. What does deceit do? It causes disunity.
Ephesians 4:26 "Be angry, and do not sin": do not let the sun go down on your wrath . . .
Watch your temper, watch your attitude when you are among your people and when you are not among your people. Learn to control it when you are by yourself, and you will be able to control it when you are with others.
Ephesians 4:26-29 . . . nor give place to the devil. [How often do we do what he says rather than what God says?] Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good [Why? So he can serve his brethren], that he may have something to give him who has need. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth . . .
Huh! There he goes, hitting the tongue again. It was not enough just to say put away lying. He has to say again, in this one paragraph, put away corrupt communication out of your mouth because the mouth is a world of evil. Go check James; that is what he calls it. It is a burning fire. It is what gets us into trouble most often, our stupid mouth. Our mothers who told us, "Watch your mouth!" were right. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but fill it with something better.
Ephesians 4:29-30 . . . but what is good for necessary edification [or building up, encouragement], that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Do you know how you stop grieving the Holy Spirit? Simple: Do what it says. Follow those proddings of the Spirit. When you know to do something that is right, do it. And the reaction will be joy, not grief in heaven.
Ephesians 4:31-32 Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking [There he goes again! He is talking about our mouths!] be put away from you with all malice. [I think he is telling us something about what we need to work on.] And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.
The golden rule. If you want kindness, if you want tender hearts turned towards you, if you want to be forgiven, well, give those things to others, and it will be reciprocated to you.
So how does he sum all this up?
Ephesians 5:1-2 Therefore be followers of God as dear children. [Follow the Father; follow Him in everything] And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
So, what do we do to promote unity? We need to take Paul's advice. Do not behave like the world. We have been called out of that. Instead, resolve to live by the example of Christ provided in His life and by the instructions of His Word. I am going to sum it up: be righteous and holy in everything.
As I said, verses 25-32 give specific examples of what God requires of us. And, as I said, sins of the mouth top the list. If you want to make some strides in character, work on your tongue. Quit saying bad words. That is the very least. Be very mindful of how you speak to one another. Watch your tone. Note how many times you try to shade the truth for your benefit. And fill your mouth instead with good words, helpful words, words that will encourage and make people want to strive themselves for goodness.
He also tells us to work diligently and give to others. Strive to be kind to each other and forgiving because God knows we need kindness and forgiveness ourselves.
In sum, as God's children, we need to begin being like God. Not pretending, being. The only way the body of Christ will come into unity is when its individual components have and use the mind of Christ. That is the goal.
My question today is, "Are we up to achieving that?" Take it as a spiritual challenge—not just from me, but from the apostle Paul and from Jesus Christ and many others who have appeared in this book—to bring unity to the church of God.
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