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I'll take just a second to make a couple announcements too as people are transitioning, finishing that last little bit. A couple of things, man. Youth just got back from camp. That was an amazing time. Still recouping from that. Don't know how we're going to make it through the rest of our lives. There's too much energy given. Like heat index was like 112 out there. And so, but I came back with this almost Cuban type tan. So like me and Gretel like brother and sister right now. But we had a great time. It was really, really good.
And so thankful that we're a part of a family of churches where this kind of stuff can happen. ATI conference in the summer is always such a strengthening time. And this youth camp is becoming the same. It's taken a couple of years for us to be, you know, kind of get okay, figure it out. But man, if you've got a student and they were not able to come this year, I really would just impress upon you how important, I mean, youth camps or youth trips are going to be a big part of this. Like that changed my life. I'm not putting that pressure on like Matt and Kayla, but like that's where my life got changed on youth trips. And so I got saved on one. You know, Lord found me on a youth trip. So if you're not serving with youth or you don't have a youth age student, man, pray because your prayers are being answered when we go to these camps. And so that was fantastic. And then we had our art for all yesterday, which was fantastic. And just really big shout out to Crystal and Christy and Christy and Christy. And I know they poured a lot into this and it was a great event yesterday.
It went so well. Make eye contact with me for a second, Crystal. Quit acting like you're busy. There you go. Yeah, she's trying to act like we're not talking about her. We're literally talking about her and she just feels her in there. She's not even doing anything. There's nothing over there for her to do. She's just trying to avoid being seen right now. And now I'm making a, for real. I mean, I feel like you carried a significant weight during that, Christy as well. But I thought yesterday went amazing. I just, it was so good. And I'm so grateful to Christy and Christy and, you know, there's a lot of stuff going around here. We're not anti-sports. I'm not trying to make that a thing, but we are pro-arts. And I just think that that is a staple on the ground for us and what God, I think, will do through the arts, through this church and very, very excited. So thank you for leading well in all of that. Christy as well. Christy's so good in that space. And so that's awesome. I did want to make two more announcements and I won't make these announcements at the end. One of them is about prayer next week. Next Sunday, we're having, our Sunday prayer at five o'clock. These are really important times. We're trying to build a culture of prayer around here. We've been trying to do that and I've really watched it work. And so it excites me to see more people that are burdened for prayer. Y'all, we're not gonna really make much of Christ if we're not a praying people. I just don't see a way forward for us. And so if prayer is not a strong suit of yours or you don't like praying, come to the things we do that are centered on prayer. I'm not saying, it'll make you a prayer warrior after one time or there's some magic juju, but it's kind of like if you want to learn to play a sport, you don't get better in a silo. You get better by joining a team. And then people can, coaches can say, hey, your swing's wrong or you're not following through. So there's something to that even about the discipline of prayer and being around people. And I also want to tell you, Trace mentioned this last week, but starting in September at 5.30 a.m. on Wednesdays, we're gonna be having weekly prayer here. Now, some of you, I know you're like, okay, Jonathan, we get it. You like prayer, but 5.30 on a weekday? Okay. And I get that.
And this is what I'm also hoping to plant seeds that are the complete opposite of whatever this spirit of apathy we have been contending with for the last year and just really invite. You know, again, I'm not here to extort spirituality out of you. I can't do that. I can't extort. I can't get it out of myself. It has to be a work of grace. But when God gets me, when He gives us opportunities, I think there's something special about partnering with Him in those. So 5.30, starting in September, we'll make more announcements about that as we go forward. But would really love to see it. I want to tell you that one of my most favorite memories of this year was our 24-hour prayer time. There was something about coming in this building and being here at like two o'clock in the morning and watching people switch out and people come in who were only gonna stay for an hour and end up staying three hours. And I just, I don't know, maybe it was my flesh getting excited. I don't know. I just, I loved it. I could have been like, why don't we go for another 24? You know, I was like, that's kind of how happy I was about it. And so just know that I'm not tired of prayer and I'll just keep bothering you until more of you start being a part. And then maybe once there's a quota, I think it's filled, then maybe I'll stop harping on you about it. That's all a joke, of course.
I'm gonna stay passionate about prayer, hopefully until the day I die. Okay, we're starting a new series. Come on, give it up real quick. We're in Ephesians 4, people. We are trotting through Ephesians. So if you've only been with us for a short while, we've been in the book of Ephesians since January. And we have just crossed the threshold of halfway mark. We've just crossed the threshold of the halfway mark of the year. So I think we're in a good rhythm here to possibly get through all of Ephesians before the year is out. And today I wanna talk through the first six verses of chapter four. So I'm not gonna belabor that. I'm not gonna belabor that any longer. I'm just gonna go ahead and get into it, okay? Ephesians chapter four, we're gonna read verses one through six. Paul writing, he says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit of God. The spirit of the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Paul writing to us in Ephesians, a big shift is happening in this book. The shift that's happening is Paul has just given three chapters of the book to us. He's given three chapters of some of the most dense, impactful, influential theology that the church knows. The epistle or the letter to the church in Ephesus is called by many theologians, you may have heard this said or you may have even heard me say it, the jewel, the center jewel on the crown of the gospel. That's how most theologians view the book of Ephesians. If we were left no other books of the Bible except for the book of Ephesians, for Ephesians, we'd make it out all right. Because in the first three chapters, Paul absolutely makes it clear that God is about saving people through his power, through Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross. And he's saying that that work has been done by God on your behalf. So you don't have to work for it. And then you don't have to work to maintain it. It's a gift. And therefore it's not on you to glorify yourself. You can now be free to glorify God for what he's done for you. And then as we get into chapter four, he's gonna say, now how does that theology affect your living? So for the next two months, we're gonna be doing this series called Walk It Out. I was gonna come up here to that song, Walk It Out, Walk It Out, that song.
The other half might be offended and I don't wanna get on one of those accounts where they blast pastors. So I avoided, I avoided all of that together and thought that we would just deal with the scriptures today. I wanna pray and then I wanna get into what I feel like the Lord has for us today in this text. So Father, man, just make my words what they are. I wanna be mindful of all that it is that's here in the text, what you've been speaking. I wanna be mindful of my own disposition. Lord, help me right now. Holy Spirit, fill me fresh that I might speak your words and would you make the ears of every person in here, including my own, would you make them aware and able to not only hear, but listen to the word of the Lord. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, three things that I wanna look at through this verse is sort of like a sandwich today. These six verses present us like a three-tiered idea. The first thing I wanna talk to you about is remembering our call. The second thing would be characteristics of the call. And the third thing would be, a fresh commitment to walk well. So three things, recalling our call or remembering our call, characteristics of our calling, and then a fresh commitment or a fresh yes to walk well. So let's do that first. Let's recall or remember our calling. I'm gonna do this sort of quickly, hopefully. The first three chapters are that. The first three chapters of Ephesians, in fact, let me just encourage maybe some of you who don't have good rhythms of Bible study, to just chuck whatever else you're doing. If you're like, this isn't working, or I'm there one day and I'm not, just chuck it. Get rid of it, don't do it. If you've been trying to do the daily Bible reading and it's turned into a weekly Bible reading, but by weekly, you mean you only do it once a week, chuck it. Take five minutes tomorrow morning and Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning and just get into Ephesians and just read a couple of verses. Just read a couple of verses and then ask God about it. Pray about it, pray into it, ask the Lord. Ask the Lord. These three chapters tell us so much about our calling. Our calling in some church experiences or expressions is this mystical, magical, it's this, it's blown up to be what is, and we ask the question, I remember in my church experience, once I came to Christ, it was, what is your calling? I need to know what my calling is. That branded, shortly after, after a book that was written by a guy, I'm not here to dig on the book, but it's called by Rick Warren, Purpose Driven Life. It switched from what is my calling to what is my purpose? And then we had a generation of people growing up that did not have the stapled reality of Ephesians one through three. Instead, they had a mystery that was going to take them so much fasting and prayer to unravel that many of them got discouraged and many of them, turned from the church and turned from God because they said, God doesn't want to tell me what my purpose is. God doesn't want to tell me what my calling is. And Paul tells us what our calling is in Ephesians one through three. Your calling isn't something you do. Your calling is unto someone. Years ago, when I would go outside with my siblings, we would go and visit my dad and we would be let loose, right? Like Pharaoh, Pharaoh animals to just venture off, you know? And I think now, was that negligence or am I too clingy to my children? Because negligence sometimes in the sense that I would be almost to the county line, you know? And my parents would not know where I was and I didn't have a phone. I didn't have anything. And we were out there doing God knows what. Too clingy maybe because, you know, we were just out goofing off being kids. But there was a sound that we knew, there was a sound that we knew meant come home. And my dad could do that dad thing. I have not inherited this, where he could take those two fingers and stick it in his mouth. I still don't know how you do it. If somebody can teach me after service, that would be grand.
I would love to be able to whistle like that. Stick his fingers in his mouth or he'd do the double pinkies like this. Do we have any dads who can do the double pinky whistle real quick? Oh, Aaron's just flex on me real quick. All right. Well, after service, let's work that out. Show me so I can be a cool dad. All right. He would stick those pinky fingers in his mouth and you would hear a sonic boom whistle. It would shatter glass for miles, you know. And that sound you knew meant wherever you were and whatever you were doing, you needed to turn around and you need to come back home. Whatever was, whatever that, I didn't know why we needed to come home. I just knew that whistle meant you were supposed to come home. Whatever you're doing, wherever you're at, whoever you're with, nothing trumps that whistle. When you hear that whistle, your butt needs to come back home. I think that's sort of the idea. When God called you, you were headed off doing God knows what with God knows who. And you heard the call and you responded. Don't get it twisted. God called you and you responded to God. God was not out minding his own business and you got desperate and you went looking for God. The Psalms are very clear. No one looks for God. No one is good. No, not one. So God found you and you responded by coming to him. So I want to settle that because if you have a calling that is aside from Christ, I would be careful. In fact, I would tell you, abandon any calling aside from Christ and come to him. Many people have been wooed into something with God that doesn't really look like biblical Christianity. They've been wooed into a promise of better and not into a promise of him. So Ephesians 1 through 3 is not about, and even though we did a series, we did a series called Bless.
But if you'll remember, everything we talked about was in Christ, through Christ, by Christ. Everything is tied to Jesus. Your call is to him. I venture to say wherever area of life right now that you're experiencing difficulty, it will become infinitely less complicated if you'll return to Christ and let Christ make sense of that problem versus you trying to step out and just handle it. Come back to Christ. As a general call to this church, come back to Christ. If you've made it complicated, the simple call is to return to Christ. In the book of Hosea and multiple books of the minor prophets, the same thing. In the book of Joel, the reminder is return to me. Come back. Many of you have really dead lives with Jesus and it's not because Jesus is not alive. It's not because Jesus is not powerful. It's because you have side quests. You have side jobs. You have side hobbies. You have a lot of things aside from Christ. And if you'll remember Jesus' word in John 15, apart from me, you can do nothing. You can't have a job aside from Christ. If Christ is in you, then Christ is in that job. The complication is when we try to take things that are connected to Jesus and separate them. There is no separation between sacred and secular anymore. If you remember when Jesus died, the veil was ripped from top to bottom. You know what that lets me know? Is the kingdom of God in a good way is like a virus. It is like leaven in a bread. It will spread. It will and is spreading. That is the only reason Christianity has lasted like it has. And it hasn't just sort of gotten by. It continues to grow year after year after year.
Whoever has atheistically planted this seed in the mind of the church that the church is losing, we're not. The kingdom of God is expanding. So when that veil is ripped, there is no more side thing. There is no more thing auxiliary of God. All of it is His. We'll be reminded of that again when we end here. So we need to recall. We need to remember that our calling is not something we do for God. It is unto God. And many of you... Listen, can I... I'm going to say some things that sound like I'm saying it to you. The only reason I'm saying it that way is because I don't want to stop every time and say, by the way, guys, I get it. Right? I'm not sitting up here on my high horse telling you guys, you guys need to do this. You guys, you're not... You're obviously not getting it. And if you were more like me, you'd get it. No, I'm telling you, I've been through these same things. So when I'm preaching this stuff to you, I don't want you to see me talking at you.
I want you to see me sharing from my own experience. I have had a love life. I've had a love affair with the things I've done for God and missed out on the love of God. I've loved preaching. I've loved taking care of my kids. I've loved being married to my wife. But those things were all set aside from Christ. And when I had this revelation that my calling was to Him and began to see Christ in all of these things, well, it kind of tampered some things down a little bit. I certainly became less of a worrisome person who was stressed out all the time because I realized if God is in all things, then maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'm overcomplicating. Maybe I'm being overly dramatic.
Maybe God's in this and I need to respond to His whistle, if we could say it that way. So we need to remember our calling. I'll say this before we go into the second part. The second part is the characteristics of the calling. We need to remember this. And this is so good for me. I was reminded of this yesterday. And I had to take a second and walk around my house. Jennifer knows if I grab my forehead, which I don't know if she saw me do this yesterday, I had to walk up and down. I had to walk down her hallway for just a second, kind of grabbing my forehead. And if y'all have known me for a while, this thing's pretty big. So sometimes it needs to be making sure that it's not growing any more than what it has. I sometimes look like the missing link between like the chimp and like the walking human, like my Cro-Magnon forehead. But I was grabbing my forehead yesterday thinking, oh my goodness. You know, thank you, Lord, just for continually not letting me get away. You know, I have felt away from God. And I feel like God sometimes will tell me, buddy, you couldn't get away from me if you tried. You know, sometimes like if you got a kid or you've seen a little kid, they're like, I'm gonna beat my dad up. And you're like, okay, bro, he will squash you. You know, that's not gonna happen. I feel like that way with God sometimes, it's kind of like God, we get so overwhelmed. We feel so far away from God. We still feel so inadequate. We feel so filled with sin and all these things. And God's like, you're not, listen, whatever you're going through, you're not gonna get away from me. I'm not gonna let you go. You're mine. Inside our giving liturgy, we even talk about that. We were paid for, no refunds, no returns.
You weren't put on layaway with the possibility of not paying full payment and then getting back to the store. You were paid for in full. So when you remember that, it has a large emphasis on then what we'll talk about in the characteristics of our calling. But if our great gospel, which that's our theme for this year, is not your treasure, listen to this. What we're about to talk about, this will not be fruit of what grace has done in you, but rather a list that will exhaust you. This is probably, I would say, I'm gonna do that percentage thing. Some people don't like percentages, but we say percentages all the time. There's no way to really say, let's say 99.9% of the time. We'll do like Clorox does, right? Kills 99.9% of all bacteria.
I would say 99.9% of the time, the reason we get tired in our Christian faith, the reason we get bored is because the treasure moved. Our treasure has become something other than what God has done for us. And that's why things get tiresome with God. We don't enjoy him anymore. He's someone that we have, we're obligated to do things for. Maybe you got a family member like that. You got a family member where you're like, oh, we gotta go to so-and-so's house. We gotta do X, Y, and Z. That's kind of what it can become with God, right? It's a list of things you have to do for God. That hopefully if you've done them all right, then one day you'll get to heaven, whatever that looks like. We've been talking about that around our family lately. What does that look like? What is all that gonna be? And so we're confused. We think our treasure should be heaven, but Jesus actually says, put your treasure in heaven. He doesn't say your treasure should be heaven. And only way I think that you can really treasure somebody is if you fully appreciate what that thing is. And I think the reason the church doesn't treasure Christ is because oftentimes we don't fully recall or remember our calling. We're trying to get so far beyond the gospel itself or the cross.
And I'm not saying that we should sit and talk about the cross every five seconds, but I'm also saying maybe that is what we should do regularly, is constantly remind ourselves that we were purchased and that we were bought. If it's not our treasure, if the gospel's not our treasure, if Christ is not our treasure, then everything I'm about to tell you will become a list that will exhaust you. You will literally say, I need to do that more. I need to do this more. I need to be more this way. And some of you are like that. Some of you spend more time talking about what you need to be doing than actuating anything that God may actually be putting on your heart. You put your list together. How many of you are list people? I love a good list. Why do we like lists? Because you can do it and then check it off. Sometimes I've actually gone into my Google Keeps list and I put something I did in there and hit the check button just so I could feel it. Y'all know what I'm talking about? Some of y'all aren't as crazy as I am, but I like that feeling. But let me tell you something about this, what I'm about to tell you. These are not boxes to check off. This is the fruit of your calling. It is the nature, listen to this, it is the nature of Christ in you. Some of you still think you have to do things for God.
What I'm telling you is you respond to what God's doing in you, okay? If you'll remember what Paul said at the very beginning here, he said, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling. And so many people in the church think that means I have to live a worthy life for what I was called to. No No No. That's not what that means. It means your calling deserves a life that looks like it's been affected by it. In other words, you're not trying to earn what you were called to. Otherwise, it's not a gift anymore. You're not trying to earn what you were called to. What are you doing? There's this thing that you've been called to, namely Christ, and being around him starts to affect how and who you are. You're just responsible for responding. Some of y'all are trying to do more than what God wants to do. You ever heard that from a preacher before?
You need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. Sometimes you don't because you're not responding out of the grace of God, you're responding out of legalism. You're scared of what so-and-so will think of you if they saw that, and you ain't even worried about your treasure, Christ, and what he sees. You got a foul mouth? Clean it up. Yeah, sure. You know, you're doing stuff in secret you shouldn't be doing? Yeah, stop. For sure. But be mindful that you may possibly be doing that for your own image and not for the treasure that's Christ. And that's why overcoming sin is so difficult for the Christian, because if your treasure is not Christ and it's what you look like and trying to be the best you can be and put your best foot forward, there's no strength in that. It will only stay that way as long as you can maintain it. And I'm not that strong. Every time God's delivered me from sin and it's been by His grace, it was effortless. I just heard the whistle and I turned around and went home. But when it was by my grace or by my strength, two weeks later, I was thinking the same way, doing the same thing. And you know what follows that? Condemnation. It gives a false sense of being separated from God. And you're like, God doesn't love me. God doesn't. And God's like, buddy, I have whistled. You're thinking the wrong way. I could go on and on about that. I'm not going to.
Let's talk about the characteristics of the calling. The characteristics, again, not a list, but the fruit. Paul would say in a sister letter in Galatians, he would say, and the fruit of the Spirit is, and then he would name all the things. It's a goofy example, but the reason I like to say that is because fruit is a byproduct. I love the idea of like fruit of the loom. They make more than underwear, people, but okay, here's the deal. The company fruit of the loom is literally saying the clothing item you're buying is the byproduct of a loom, a machine or a mechanism used to create clothing, whatever. Okay, so the idea is the fruit of the loom is the thing that you have. So the fruit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit in your life is not something you do. It's the byproduct of the Holy Spirit living in you. Let me help so many of us. Don't pray for peace. I mean, you can. You can. But did you know peace is actually a byproduct of the Holy Spirit living in you? And this is what's so crazy. This would be like you going to pay your Alabama power bill and freaking out, because you're saying, I don't have money. I need money. I need money. And your bank account has $8,000 in it. And you're going, well, no, I need money to pay this bill. And it's like there's money in your account. You don't need peace. You need to realize peace is already in you, but you haven't responded to God so that the byproduct of the Spirit in your life is peace. So we're sitting here asking God for things that are already in our spiritual bank account. And that does sound silly, doesn't it? The American Christian a lot of times asks God for things he's already given and gets mad when he doesn't deliver what he's already deposited. What if we were just like, Father, teach me how to surrender and respond so that peace comes out of me instead of treating it like some extraterrestrial thing beyond me that God may give me if I say the right words.
So let's get into a few of these. I'm going to do these fairly quickly. I said that earlier and I didn't do that. So maybe I'll be a liar here too. Let's do fast, okay? Let's do quick. I like quick. Humility. Let's read that scripture one more time. With all humility and gentleness. He says, Walk in a manner worthy of the calling. And the way that you walk in that manner, the way that you do that, the way that that would happen is in these particular characteristics.
Humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Humility, thinking rightly about yourself and preferring others. Thinking rightly about yourself. I wish I could get everybody to not think of themselves so poorly. I've done this for years. I also did it as a mechanism to keep you from saying something to me that would hurt my feelings. So if I can make fun of myself before you did it, then I would rather be self-wounded than get a wound from you.
You know what I mean? That's not humility. Humility is not putting yourself down. It's just choosing to think of yourself rightly. A lot of times, humility means honoring other people. And man, I'm going to tell you something right now that I just can't stand. I don't talk about it a lot, but I cannot stand the lack of honor in the culture we live in. No one wants to honor anybody because everybody's trying to upkeep their own honor. The greatest thing that could ever happen to you is someone honor you. Don't spend time trying to find ways to get it. Let it come because you're living a humble and meek life. You'd rather someone else say it about you than you say it yourself.
It's like the story of Jesus when he said, think about it this way, when they go to a party, he said, there's a seat of honor and a man goes and sits in the seat of honor and he has to be removed from that seat in front of everybody and embarrassingly walked. He said, don't do that. Instead, take the lower seat and then if the guest wants to exalt you, he'll come and get you and in front of everybody, put you in the seat of honor. But we're so ready to get in the seat of honor sometimes, that we get embarrassed when we realize that seat wasn't for us. Gentleness.
A checklist, but maybe some of you need to be humble as much as you need to realize in places of humility. I love this. I actually wrote about it, went through this not too long ago. Scripture, Isaiah 42, 3 says, a bull will not break, a dim will not extinguish. 5 says, he will not harm the suffering. We dog pie or we amplify their weakness. Gentleness does not mean that you gentle just means you don't. Some people need to be seen so they can. Some that if they come and take a weak part of their life turned against them. Many people have experienced that. Love that Jesus is the one. These are attributes of Christ.
They're not list down and go do. Aren't you glad that Jesus is gentle with you? When we start talking about gentleness and the prophet, Isaiah the prophet says, a bruised reed, something that is on the brink of collapse. Jesus will not break that. Some of you parents, I wish you'd get a hold of this because you're very aggressive with your children. You're too harsh on your children. And I want to challenge some of you. It's not because their behavior is bad. It's because of the way it's making you look. Don't, later on we're going to hear from Paul. He didn't, we don't know that Paul had children, but he certainly speaks to fathers and he tells them not to provoke them. Be gentle with them. Hey, that was not me saying be wimpy. Don't be a man. We got all this anti-man energy and then we've got all the men responding to the anti-man energy by like roid raging out on the anti-man energy.
Can we just be like Christ? Look, I don't care if you can build stuff or you shoot things with guns. I want to be like Christ. Christ was gentle. Men, learn how to channel frustration to prayer.
Become a man of prayer, not one who has to buck up. And by the way, your kids are small. Like what are you doing? The Lord had to get me a long time ago.
You know, you're talking to somebody that's three times smaller than you. Who are you talking to? You know, one of the things that really got me about gentleness, the Lord told me sometimes I was more gentle with a person who would come to me with some of the most egregious sins in their life as a pastor. And I would yell at my kids for spilling Cheerios. So you'll treat people in the church like, like, oh my gosh.
And you'll be gentle. A bruised reed you will not break. And then your kids, you'll come to them and you would say or do these things or treat them with such contempt. Treat them like you are a bother to me. The Lord really had to hem this up in me with this scripture here. Think about how gentle you'd have to be with a wick that is about to go out. Patience, slowness to anger and willingness to endure faithfully in difficult things. I love some of these because it's just, some of these are just not good at. Some of you are like glaringly not good at it. Like I'm not typically a patient person. When I get to the end, my end, you know it. I don't do good at hiding those types of things. Patience, slowness to anger, a willingness to endure faithfully in difficult things. I've never seen short temper solve things. I've never seen erratic behavior to try to make things better, make things better.
I've only seen the faithfulness in God in slowness, in endurance. Again, hey, are you an impatient person? Don't wear this as a list. Maybe ask God even now. God, you're, Jesus is the most patient person who's ever lived. If you read the gospels, you'll know because these knuckleheads called his disciples did stuff on a regular basis that you're like, oh my God, you know, you're not getting it. Parents, y'all know what I'm talking about when you talk to your kids through your teeth. And Jesus endures. And hey, listen, Jesus is alive. And now Jesus still endures, intercedes for us on our behalf. Bearing one another's burdens. One another's burdens. We're helpful to others in how they live for Jesus. You're not in competition with anybody. Therefore, you can lend a hand. Our workspace environments over the last 20 to 30 years have been all about you getting to the top. So when we come into the Christian faith, we come into the church, we still think that way sometimes. How do I get to the top?
The way that you get to the top in the kingdom is to come to the bottom and serve. Jesus says if you wanna become great in the kingdom of God, you have to serve. So are you willing to serve your brothers and sisters? Are you willing to bear the weight of others on you? Again, the sister letter that I would call Galatians talks about bearing the burdens of others. And I would say this, this is probably a little too stern, but I'll say it like this.
It is difficult to bear other people's burdens when you are not carrying your cross daily and other people become a bother to you. Why can't you get your act together? Have you ever said that in your mind? I have. Good grief. How much longer is this gonna take you? How many more things are you gonna have to go through? Blah Blah Blah. The Bible doesn't say be a spiritual counselor, be a one who wants to... Don't be a spiritual counselor. Be a spiritual psychiatrist. Quit trying to figure out the motive. Bear the burden. Love. Go read 1 Corinthians 14. I wrote it down. I was probably thinking I would read it, but I don't have time to do that. Just a lot of stuff that we don't do. Love believes all things, hopes all things. Love is kind. Love is willing to bear with people's faults, like what we just talked about. And then lastly, unity and peace. Agreement and harmony. I don't know because of what we have with technology and social media and being able to know things instantly. I just don't know there's ever been a time in human history where more people could be that upset about quite literally everything. If you can find people who agree, it is a blessing. But guess what the church should be? A place of agreement and harmony. So we can't do that. Some of the guys in here, they voted for a Democrat last year. They voted for this person. They voted for a Republican. They did this. They did that. This person eats McDonald's once a week. And we get so upset. But when Paul writes this, he's not talking about agreement and harmony about what's going on in the world. He's talking about agreement and harmony in the gospel. And you know that this time in our church history, and I mean the church worldwide, we're having so many disagreements even about what is fundamental. What is fundamental in the gospel? Huge splits denominationally over things that are foundationally gospel. So the characteristics of our calling, pretty simple but pretty profound.
And my thought would be, again, go back to your calling. You've been called to Christ and therefore to be conformed to the image of Christ. The image of Christ is not a picture, it's characteristics. So if you want to know what it means to be made in the Imago Dei to reclaim the image of God, it's right there. God has been patient with you. God has been gentle with you. God has been willing to love you and care for you. So you remember the woman that was weeping at Jesus' feet and he asked his disciples, who do you think loves more? The one who's been forgiven a little or the one who's been forgiven much? And he says, I suppose the one who's been forgiven much. Great answer. It's that most of us don't believe we've been forgiven of that much. That's why it's hard to love Jesus that much. If Jesus just gave you a drop of his grace and you got to go on about your merry way, then I can understand why he wouldn't be the treasure of your life. But if you were dead and an enemy of God, a child of wrath, of disobedience, separated from him and his promises and he came looking for you and he blew the whistle for you, I think that's what helps change my heart. I did not desire him and he desired me so much that he gave his only son. The calling was not so that I could be good, it was the calling was unto his goodness. And now that I see that, it makes things like this not necessarily easier but less complicated. I'll close with this.
Verses four through six are kind of the bottom of this sandwich. And we get this emphasis on these seven ones, one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father over all, through all and all and in all. And this bottom half is here to say, I like how Paul ends this with that we should be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, meaning there should be an eagerness about us to come back to the one. The one. You remember the story in Luke where Mary and Martha are sisters and they invite Jesus. Mary and Martha are the sisters of a God named Lazarus who Jesus, you'll remember, raised from the dead. They're at their house, Jesus and his disciples and many other people listening to Jesus teach. And Jesus comes in and Mary and Martha are there, but Martha is running around. She's taking care of everything. And she comes to Jesus and she's upset with Jesus because her sister is not doing the list. She's not getting involved in all the things, you know, the image. Like it's gotta be clean. We gotta make sure everybody's fed because in that culture is a very, you gotta remember, Jewish culture is a very shameful culture. It's a shame driven culture. If you didn't do certain things, then shame was on you. Shame was on your family. And so they did a lot of things motivated out of simply not wanting to be ashamed. So you can't really blame Martha, but Martha's running around and she comes to Jesus. She's like, tell my sister to help. You know, she's not being very hospitable right now. And that's something we should be. And she's not being very considerate now. She's being lazy. I dare say, Jesus, she's being slothful. You get in there and bust her up. This is my, that's a Jonathan Fox translation. Okay. Get in there and just like wear her out. Tell her. You know, I always think of the Brady Bunch when I think about Martha, you know, that's what I think. Anyway, okay. And Jesus's response is so awful and good at the same time. It's awful because many of us want more than the one. This sandwich closes back in on, you know, this really isn't about you. All of the ones that are represented here are outside of you. One body, one spirit, one hope, one baptism, one Lord. It goes on to say one faith, one God and Father. It's none of it. It may include you, but it's out of you. It's away from you.
And Paul says, we need to be eager to maintain the unity, this agreement, harmony, this bond of peace, because it's really just one thing. He lists a lot of things there, but they all come back to one. And in that story where Jesus is talking to Mary and Martha, he says, Martha, you are worried and busied by many things, but only one thing is necessary. And this one thing your sister has, and it's not going to be taken from her. As we close today, I want to tell you this, because I think it's such a good invitation. I think it's a good warning. Everything in your life can be taken from you. Your freedom, your voice, your health, your money, your family, your relationships. Everything in your life can be taken from you, but Christ, but Christ. My fear for this church and this spirit of apathy that we've been dealing with is that if Christ were touched, then Christ might not be your default. As long as Christ continues to give you the things that you enjoy and you love that can be taken from you, it's almost like you've sectioned off. You've taken off your treasure and said, well, yes, it is Christ alone, but I still need this. And you've even maybe said in your heart, why would God ever take that away? I'm not here to threaten on behalf of God. I'm not here to necessarily scare anybody. I'm just here to emphasize there are many things that you have to be responsible for and take care of. There are many things that God's put in your lap that he has certainly asked you to steward well and to manage. But all of those things can be taken away. My concern would be is if those things were taken away, would you then realize that Christ was not your one thing, that one of those things was your one thing?
My challenge would be today is that we make a fresh commitment to walk well, but in order to walk well, you have to remember your calling. I just find it more clear my greatest challenge in life is not what me and Jennifer are going to do once all our kids are grown. My greatest challenge isn't what we're going to do when we go into retirement age and the money that we've put aside. My greatest challenge is not how we're going to get into a new building as a church. It's not whether things go this way or that way. I mean, it's really not. The greatest challenge of my life is that Jesus would be my treasure, that he would be my one thing. The old hymn writers used to say, forsaking all others, right? It would eventually come into our marriage vows. Many people would say forsaking all others. We mean that in our commitment towards our spouse. Forsake all others. I don't need anybody else. But even I love this woman. She could be taken from me. I don't know. I could be taken from her. I don't know. I don't know what the future holds. My greatest challenge would be is do I treasure Christ that no matter what gets taken from me, there will never be a point where someone would look and say, well, man, Christ was not his treasure because when that thing got taken from him, that was the end of his life. Instead of reserving that Christ is my life. And listen, if Christ is your life, then everything I mentioned on those characteristics will come out of your life. But if you treat that like a list, you'll soon find out you don't like being with God. You don't like prayer. You don't like Scripture. You don't like coming to church services. Why? Because you're trying to maintain a life that only comes from treasuring him. I pray that this church, that being with Jesus, is actually a delight and not an obligation. I want to tell all of you that it takes a lot of time, I think, to get there. But I sure hope we'll join in with what God's doing here. I think God's doing a work in this church to not be a bunch of people that are legalistic but also not spastic, that purely and genuinely love Jesus and that the characteristics of our calling are coming out. And I'll be honest with you, I look forward to it. Because if the characteristics of Christ are coming out of you, I benefit. Can I be selfish? And if the characteristics of Christ are coming out of me, you benefit. Amen? I want to pray for us. The challenge is to walk well. Remember your calling. And let's see Christ pull these things out of our life as we treasure him. Jesus, continue to work in our hearts. We want to even say out of our lips that we love you. But Lord, I would love for our heart to echo that. One of the things you held against your people is you said they would worship me with their lips. They would declare praises with their lips. But their hearts would be far from me. Father, I pray that what comes out of our mouth and what's in our heart would match like David said in the Psalms. Let the meditation of my heart and the words of my mouth be acceptable in your sight. Lord, would you link them? Would you make it so that when the characteristics of Jesus come out of our life, we wouldn't be surprised. We would say, no, that is the result of treasure. I'm treasuring the only one, the lover of my soul, the one who's cared for me, the one who's called me, the one who's given all for me, the one who's given me grace as a gift. Lord, let that swarm our heart so that we might walk it out, that we might walk out the calling of God in and on our lives. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, if you will, stand to your feet if you're able. We're going to say the sending liturgy and then head on out of here. So thankful, again, for us being together. We're about to switch gears and go into a different season, many of you, especially as school starts back. And I think that's why the sending liturgy matters more than ever. Leaving out of here on purpose makes a world of difference. So as we leave, let's do that. Let's say this together. We are not leaving this place. We are being sent. We are obeying the command of our Lord to go. So send us, Lord, to find you in secret in prayer and devotion. To love and care for our families. To strengthen and encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ. To faithfully work as under the Lord in the marketplace and home. To wisely steward all you have given us. To recognize our place and ability in our community. To witness of your goodness and grace to neighbors and nations. Send us now in your presence and power. Amen. Amen. Y'all have a great Sunday.
