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NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH July 12, 2015 Revealed: Unity Revealed Dick Foth

Hello! It’s good to see you this weekend! Ephesians is this letter of revelation. That’s what you’ve been seeing in the logo in Revealed and this weekend is Unity Revealed.

I love the fact that a fair portion of the New Testament is letters. This is a day when you don’t many of those. Almost all the letters you get are either email letters or junk mail or requests for money. I love snail mail. I love to get a letter and you open it up and there is actual handwriting. And here was a letter written almost 2,000 years ago to a church in Turkey called Ephesus. Ephesus is still there. Somebody probably carried it and it is quite possible according to scholars that the two letters, one to Ephesus and the other to Colosse, these two towns, were written around the same time. Many scholars think that this letter to the Ephesians was like the big one and this letter builds a case for the glory and the power of God at work in us, both individually and together. When I look at this, I am impressed because you’ve already heard the first three chapters of the letter. The letter wasn’t in chapters when it was written. The first half of this letter is Paul writing about the glory of God and all the things He has done. It talks about the power and his majesty and how He did this for these purposes so that we could be one in Him. And he comes to this place and the thrust of the letter changes. This is how it reads. Ephesians 3:20-21

20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

We have just sung that Jesus is the center, from my heart to the heavenlies, and that’s what Paul is saying here. And as Pastor Joel said last week, he stacks up the language. And then he comes to this part and he changes gears. The thing that is interesting about all the good things he has been saying is that Paul is writing from prison. He is writing this in a jail cell.

Ephesians 4:1-16

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says:

“When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.” 9 (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

You say wow that is a lot of reading. Let’s take a few minutes and talk about what it is all about. As Paul starts this part of the letter, he calls us to do something. He says this is what Jesus has done, this is what God is about in the world and in eternity, now what’s your part? Depending on the translation you read, the word at the beginning is please. He doesn’t speak out of his office as an apostle with authority saying do this. He says I beg you, please, I urge you. He comes at it from the point of persuasion. He is sitting in jail. He can’t come to where they are and command them to do something but he comes at it from a persuasive point of view.

Some of you know people who as we used to say could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. They can persuade people. Paul, from out of his sacrifice, is persuading them. Not out of his authority but out of his sacrifice.

So the question is, how do we live our lives, because of all this that God has done, how do we respond to that? The language that is used is that we are called to walk worthy of the calling that you have been called by. There are lots of words for walk. You can amble, you can march, you can shuffle, you can stroll, and you can strut. There are a lot of words for walk but it essentially means, ok that being the case, all of that about Jesus and what He has done, how do we conduct our lives? How do we walk it out? The language we use now is does he or she walk the talk. To walk after the Lord and to live a life worthy of the Lord suggests living a life based on what the Lord has done for us and in us. The Greek work used means axiom or balance. This is all the things that have happened so far over here, what balances that out? This is what God does, what do we do?

This idea of walking worthy is captured in Paul’s urgent request, please.

Some years ago, I walked into my parent’s-in-law’s home in Modesto, California is the central valley of California. They have grapes and peaches and almonds. We were talking together and my father-in-law, who you know had a huge influence on my life. Before I knew that he had a daughter, he came and spoke at a camp when I was 10 years old and he talked to us like we were people! I was a little 10 year old guy and he taught us stories about Jesus and he taught us the books of the Bible to a song. Here I am 60 some years later and I never dreamed I would be singing it here in Washington DC. But his relationship with me encouraged me to listen to him and their relationship with Paul encourages them to listen to him when he says please. Anyway, I walked into my father-in-law’s house and he always called me Foth and he said, ‘Foth, I think I’ve got this life in Jesus thing figured out!’ I said, ‘Really? What’s the deal?’ He said, ‘It is this, please God.’ I said, ‘That’s it? You’ve been a pastor for 37 years and please God is the best you’ve got?’ Well, Scripture in Hebrews uses that language. It says if you want to please God, he who trusts God pleases Him. If you believe that He is and believe that He rewards those who diligently seek Him and follow after Him with whole hearts.

I hear the worship band encouraging you to praise and follow Jesus and Jesus is saying yes that’s what I want. If you believe in Me and follow Me with your whole heart, that pleases Me.

When you are a parent and your child actually listens to you, when you say do this and they actually do it, and not four days later! It brings pleasure to your heart. So here is the apostle Paul saying please please God. He uses please in two different ways.

Colossians 1:10 says

Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

To walk worthy of the Lord, the idea is that when we walk worthy of the Lord, we do so with the attitude that we want to please Him. And when you want to please Him, it is a call to faith. When you step out, when you go with a team to Guatemala and you’ve never done anything like that before, the point is, when you walk in faith and when you walk in trust, it takes attention off of yourself to Jesus who is the center. I can’t trust all of you for everything. Ruth can trust me in this and this and this but she can’t trust to me to always take out the garbage! We are all untrustworthy at certain level and we are all trustworthy at certain levels, but what trust does is it takes the attention off of me and puts it on his Word. This passage about walking worthy means to please Him by trusting his Word, not mine.

We live in a culture where people say that person has low self-image or low self-esteem, but our real issue is self-worth and self-value. Jesus comes along and says you may be unworthy but you are not worthless. There is a different between being unworthy and worthless. He comes along and says let Me show you your worth. I will come from my heaven to your earth to establish your value, to show you how valuable you are. As you walk out your life, you walk it out on the basis of what I have done for you.

Walking worthy of the Lord is not seeing what we can get out of God but it is what we can do for and through and with Him. This idea of doing something with Jesus, conducting our lives with Him every day, is a powerful idea.

Some years ago when Richard Halverson was Chaplin of the Senate back in the early 90s, I said how do you think about Washington DC? He said I get up every day and I ask Jesus what He wants to do in Washington DC today and can I come and do that with you? Walking worthy of Jesus means that we walk by faith and trust in Him and it allows his work to be seen in the world when I seek to please Him in that way. Somebody says why are you doing that or why do you have that ethic? Well, it is because of who I am trying to please. It is because I have this person in my life who has done so much and has paid the full price and has shown me what He looks like. I’m not trying to live up to that but I want to live out of that. Because of that, this is how I want to respond. Walk worthy of the calling. This is not a calling like a vocation. This is not being called to be a carpenter or a pastor. It is not that kind of calling. It is the original summons to come to the kingdom. It is more like if you got an invitation from the White House or you got a summons from the justice department. It is that kind of calling. Here is the Creator of the universe who says I have done all of this for you on your behalf and I want you to come over and stand in it. You are over in darkness. I summon you to come into the light. Come over here and be with Me here. Jesus is the center. He calls you from alone to together, from strife to peace, from meaninglessness to meaningful. I’m calling you to come live in a different place. Be citizens of a different land.

Recently I was in Amsterdam and Paris for a few days and there is always that moment when you walk up to passport control and you give them your passport and they do whatever they do and you are thinking, don’t let them find anything! There is something profound about giving them your passport and saying I’m just visiting here, I really am a citizen of the United States. There is this phrase that says we are aliens and strangers in the land in Scripture. We are just passing through. There is an old gospel song that says this world is not my home, I’m just passing through. And here is the God who comes along and says let Me show you the big house for which you are designed. And when you understand this, you will bless the place you are in now.

He says come over here and be with me. When I come and be with Him, I get to live vicariously. That means I don’t have much glory of my own, He has it all, but when I hang with Him, people think I’m something! I used to go to the Pentagon some and visit the head of the Navy who was a friend. I knew him before he was head of the Navy and I would go visit him and when I would come out, oftentimes there would be two and three star generals and admirals outside the office and when I walked out, they would stand! Of course they were standing for the Admiral but I was close! They would look at me and they had no idea who I was and I would just nod and they would say, ‘Sir.’ Or once I took him down to the Navy yard where he lived and there was a young Marine guard in dress uniform and he snaps to attention and gives the Admiral a salute and so then I drop him off and circle back around, I come out and that same Marine guard snapped to attention and saluted me! He didn’t know who I was but he saluted me because I was with the Admiral. When you are with Him, there is such power in that!

I have a friend who came here after I had been here a year and he became a Senator and we would go to the Capitol and you know how it is. You walk into the Capitol and you have to go through the scanners and take all the stuff out of your pockets and all that, but when I was with him, we would just skirt around them. He would just say, ‘He’s with me,’ and I would just say, ‘I’m with him!’ A couple years into that, he was going someplace with me, we were flying someplace and I had a status on a particular airline because I had flown quite a bit and we went up to get on board early and he didn’t have that status. He was just a Senator! As we got up there, I just said to her, ‘He’s with me!’ I loved that moment! So the question is, when you are in Him, how do you walk worthy? How do you conduct your life? What does that look like? Paul goes on to describe it.

2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

I like that walk! But then he has to go and put this in, be humble, be patient. Oh for Pete’s sake! Why didn’t he say be dramatic or have a heart for mission? Why humble and gentle? Being humble simple means knowing who you are. Don’t think too little of yourself, don’t think too much of yourself. But that patient part? That hardly ever works in Washington DC! Driving! I was with a friend who was driving 70 miles an hour and all of a sudden he changed lanes, without giving a signal! I said, ‘What are you doing? You should turn your blinker on!’ And he said, ‘What? And give information to the enemy?!’ Why would Paul go with humility and patience and bearing with one another in love? Why would he go there? Because the goal is unity. And if I am always demanding and if you are never good enough for me because I really have it together, you never become one. You just don’t. But He is all about one. He is all about bringing us together. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, let us make man in our own image. This is about being together. And the power of being together is raw. But I have trouble being patient. We have friends, pastors in Fort Collins, and when we left here in 2008 and I became part of a pastoral team out there, I started bringing them here. And one of them said, ‘When you get to DC, your personality changes.’ I said, ‘Really? No, I’m the same fun, laid-back guy.’ He said, ‘No. We got to the airport and got our bags and you turned to me and said Scott, get your bag and keep up!’ ‘And then you scared us to death when you were driving!’ The point is, all of us have sharp edges in places. We have places where we react for whatever reason and the person doesn’t know why I’m reacting like that. So we need people who are patient with us. We need people who will be long-suffering with us who will bear with us. The community of Jesus is filled with people who need to be endured. Some people say, ‘Ugh, here comes Foth again, we gotta just suck it up and get through the hour.’ We people are slow to change. Very few people I know can change on a dime. It takes time. People have to feel cared for and loved and they need to know that we are interested in them. Even when they mess up, even when we mess up, we need to treat them with gentleness.

There is this interesting phrase. The Great Commandment says love the Lord your God with your whole being, that’s a Foth paraphrase, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these. All the laws are assumed under that idea. There is one other place, in Matthew 7:12, there is another phrase that says this, we call it the Golden Rule.

Do unto others as you want them to do unto you. The law is summed up in that.

So we treat each other, we encourage unity when we treat others the way we want to be treated. So here we are. We find that Jesus is the center and He challenges us through Paul. There is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, on God and Father. The power of one. One heart, one mind, one mission. You feel the one when we sing. There is something that happens physically when you sing in your brain, your brain creates or emits a hormone called oxytocin which is the trust hormone that mothers have when they are nursing a baby. But when you sing, that happens. So when I’m standing here being part of the worship and singing Jesus is the center and you sense the swell of the music, you sense the oneness in that. You say well how does that work in the whole church. If I were to ask you how many churches there are in Washington DC, you could go to what used to be called the Yellow Pages and there are something like over 1,400 churches just in DC. But if I ask Jesus that question, Jesus, how many churches are there in DC? He would say one. There are different congregations. When you have 131 churches serving out here doing something together, the people don’t know it is First Baptist and the Roman Catholic and the Pentecostals. All they know is that all these people who have one heart to help show up. And Jesus cheers! He only has one body, one spirit, one mission and when you are together, it is attractive. It is magnetic. And the Scriptures says He gives people to help us. He puts apostles, you have evangelists, you have prophets and pastor-teachers, and their purpose is to equip us and to help us grow together so we can grow up.

We do small groups and we are together at this place and that place so we can grow together. And the unity is a spirit so we can be mature. When you are together, you are strengthened by all those who are around you. When you are together, the Spirit shows up.

II Chronicles 5:11-16 tells about the dedication of the new temple.

11 The priests then withdrew from the Holy Place. All the priests who were there had consecrated themselves, regardless of their divisions. 12 All the Levites who were musicians—Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun and their sons and relatives—stood on the east side of the altar, dressed in fine linen and playing cymbals, harps and lyres. They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets. 13 The trumpeters and musicians joined in unison to give praise and thanks to theLord. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, the singers raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang:

“He is good; his love endures forever.”

Then the temple of the Lord was filled with the cloud, 14 and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.

It sounds like the Day of Pentecost. People there in one place in one accord and one heart and the Spirit shows up. You might say does the Spirit show up because they are in one accord or does it show up so they can be in one accord. And the answer to that is yes! I don’t know if it is the chicken or the egg! I don’t know how all that works. But if my heart is toward being with, his Spirit draws us this way. There is an old saying that two pianos tuned by the same tuning fork are automatically tuned to each other. So when we are looking at Jesus as the center, it automatically moves us toward each other. We are all in different places but it moves us that way and if I am encouraged to not just be all about me, if I am encouraged to be humble and patient, it allows the Spirit to work.

When you look at this, it is an echo. Paul is echoing what Jesus said in the last days of his earthly life. In John 17, it reads like this 20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,

That’s us, 2,000 years down the pike, somebody talked to us about who this Jesus is and we started following Him or we got interested. So He prayed for us 2,000 years ago.

21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Because of their unity, because they are together, because they have one heart and one song and one mission if you will, the world will know that something is going on. Paul says it one more time. Please, please God by being one. Be humble, patient, gentle, long-suffering. Please, please God by being one. When we are in Jesus Christ, the goal is to be one.

On the day when the whistle blows or the end of times comes or however that works, when God the Father looks at us, what He sees is not all the junk, not all the falling down, not all the hassles or the things we could have done better. When He looks at us, He sees Jesus because when we are in Him, when we have responded to his summons to step into Him, that is what He sees. We are in Christ. We are forgiven. We are redeemed, immersed in his grace, called to his mission, filled with his hope, citizens of an eternal kingdom. We are worthy walkers. We are one people.

Across the river at the Pentagon, when people do high intensity things, we call them water walkers. Here is the King of the Universe who says come stand in Me. I want you to be worthy walkers and I want you to be one.

Father, thank You for your grace. Thank You for the calling, the summoning to You and to your kingdom. Thanks for helping us be citizens of a new place. Thanks for helping us by your Spirit work out the places of patience and gentleness so that the walls come down and your Spirit shows up and the world is blessed. We thank You for what You have done. We stand on tip-toe to see what you want to do next. In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by: Ministry Transcription [email protected]