Ephesians 4:6
What We Have in Common (Part 2)
Introduction
Illustration: There are many wonderful things that come with fatherhood. One of my favorite things is to tell my son to jump off of very high objects. Into my arms, of course. I’ve had him stand on things as high as a refrigerator or deck railing and jump. He gets up there, precariously gets his balance, giggling and laughing, telling me he’s gonna jump. Then he pauses, not because he’s scared, not because he’s having second thoughts, not because he’s nervously looking at how high he is – but, he pauses to look at me. And he cracks a huge smile. Then without a care in the world he throws himself overboard and lets himself fall into my open arms.
What do I love about that? Well, its fun for one thing. But if you ask me what I love about that and why it is one of my favorite things as a father, I’ll tell you. My son trusts me. I have never dropped him. I have caught him every single time. (Except that one time but he hit so hard he doesn’t remember it anyway j/k). You cannot put a price-tag on your child’s trust. It means everything to a parent. He does not need to fear the fall because of trust. Fear of the fall only comes when he thinks I might drop him. Trust enables him to instead enjoy the fall.
Fathers are important.
We are going to spend a little time talking about someone very important today. Paul has mentioned this Person several times in Ephesians already. In 1:2 we see that grace and peace come to us from Him. In 1:3 we see that He is to be praised, and, that He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. In 1:14 we are His possession. In 1:17 Paul calls Him glorious and prays that the believers would know this Person better. In 1:22 we see that He has placed everything under Christ’s feet. In 2:6 we are raised up by Him and seated with Christ. In 2:18 we have access to Him. In 2:19 we are members of His household. In 2:22 He lives in us. In 3:14 Paul kneels in prayer before Him. In 5:20 He is to always be thanked. In 6:20, Peace, love, and faith are from Him.
Who is He? Jesus called Him “Righteous Father” (John 17). Paul calls Him the “glorious Father” (Eph. 1:17). In Matthew 6 Jesus said our heavenly Father knows what our physical needs are. Our fellowship is with our heavenly Father, 1 John 1:3 says, “and our fellowship is with the Father and His Son…” Romans 8:15 says we call Him, “Abba, Father”. When Jesus taught the disciples how to pray, He said “Our Father, who is in heaven…” (Mthw. 6).
He may or may not be like your father. Some of you in this room no doubt carry wounds from your earthly father. Your father may have been impersonal, uncaring, distant, demanding, or even hurtful or abusive. Don’t let your earthly father be the broken brush that paints the picture of your heavenly Father. Your heavenly Father is not like Him. Instead, let the words of Scripture paint the picture. They are your heavenly Father’s self-portrait; a letter of self-revelation to you. Let the wanting that your earthly father left in you be met by your heavenly Father.
The point is that as Christians we belong to a new Father. He is perfect in every way; He is perfect in every way your earthly father was imperfect. He is excellent where your father has been deficient. His love is described as abounding, tender, and unfailing. He goes to great lengths to show Himself patient and gentle. He is tenaciously insistent that He will never leave, abandon, or forsake. He did not sacrifice you for other plans He had, but, His plans meant that He sacrificed for you. He is your Father. He is my Father.
We began looking at 7 elements of unity last week. These are what we have in common. We made it through 6, and this week lets finish point 7. Let us learn 4 quick things about God our Father.
#1: Our God and Father, Our Patriarch
Paul says, “One God and Father OF all…” He is our Father. He is the Father of all who believe. He said in 1:5, “In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will”.
When Paul says in this verse that He is over all, through all and in all he is not -as New Agers and liberal theologians like to think - referring to all human beings. This whole context in Ephesians is referring to His relationship with the Church, with believers. The whole context is speaking of the relationship between the Triune God and all true Christians. Paul says it is Christians who are one body, have one Spirit, have one hope, one faith, have one Lord, one baptism. Therefore, it is arbitrary and absurd to say at this one verse that Paul is speaking of universalism after all through the letter he has been speaking of Christians. It is Christians who have one God and Father who is over them all, through them all, and in them all.
It is true that God is the Father of everyone but that is only in the sense that He is the Creator who gave everyone and everything life (Acts 17:29). But, to Christians, He is our Father in a special way. He is Father to us in a way that He is not Father to anyone else. Galatians 3:26 says “You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ.” And in John 1:12 it says, “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” He has Re-created us in Christ. First Peter 1:3 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” We are in His family and part of His household – not as servants, but, first as sons and daughters. This means we belong to Him. This means we live to please Him as a child would want to please a father he loves.
I believe this is the most important way for us to relate to God. Paul starts almost every letter out with reference to God the Father. In Ephesians he begins and ends with God the Father. But I think it just may be the way God most desires to relate to us. He is King of the Universe. He is Lord of all. He is I am. He is many more. But over and over and over again we see in the NT the emphasis that He is our Father. Let us emphasize that.
If you had a perfect Father how would that change you? You have One.
#2: Our God and Father is Pre-Eminent
Paul says, “One God and Father of all, who is OVER all…” Now when we are talking about our Father being over all we are talking about His absolute supremacy. He is supreme over all things. There is nothing that is not under the supreme rulership of God our Father. All things are under His dominion. He is over all.
Now, we just said that this verse is talking about the Church, and, not everyone else. Wouldn’t this statement that God the Father is OVER all be restricted to the Church? No, I don’t think so. This is important: I think while Paul is declaring the fact that God the Father is supreme over all things Paul is doing so because it appreciates our fellowship with Him. In other words, the One who is our heavenly Father is also the One who has Supremacy over all things in the universe. It accentuates the privilege we have as the unique children of the Supreme Ruler over all creation.
Just as an illustration let us think of our President. He has pre-eminence. He is in a sense, the supreme citizen and leader of our country. There is not a higher rank than that of the leader of the free world. He is over all. And, yet, there are 2 young girls, named Malia and Sasha, who have a much more personal relationship with the man called President. To them, He is daddy. And while the citizen’s under his leadership may be dear to him, there will never be 2 more dear citizens than those who are his children.
What I’m trying to say is that the One who is God and Father over all things created has a special Fatherly relationship and rule over us as the Church. He is for all creatures God the Father and yet for us as believers He is God our Father. How special is that relationship when it is with the One who is Pre-Eminent over all the Universe?
#3: The Purpose of Our God and Father
Paul says, “One God and Father of all, who is over all and THROUGH all and IN all” Now we are talking about God’s activity through us. We as the Church right now are the agency by which God is working out His purposes in this world. This means we have a purpose.
God was active through Jesus. He spoke through Jesus, Hebrews 1:1, 2a, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son…” Peter said in Acts 2:22, “Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him…” It reminds us of Jesus in John 14:10-11 when He said, “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in Me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing His work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me…”
Now, with Christ at the right hand of God, God is working through the Church. Our Father’s purposes are being accomplished through us. We start to pick up on this in Ephesians already. In when Paul said in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” That is the sense in which I understand “through all” here. That God is working through us in the lives of others. We are the instrument in His hand. How is God working through you in the lives of others?
Notice then next that God our Father is “in all”. He is in all of us as believers by the Spirit. God is dwelling in us through His Holy Spirit. Eph. 2:22 says, “And in Christ you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirt.” He is in us, and He is working in us. Philippians 1:6 says, “I am confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Whereas through us implies how God works for others through us, “in us” implies how God works towards us personally. He dwells in us, works in us, changes us, etc.
Application: God lives in us. Therefore, how you treat other Christians is can really be seen as how you treat God. Whatever you did for the least of one of these you did for me. (Math. 24) If they reject you they are rejecting Me. And if they reject me the reject the one who sent me. (Luke 11:17). How do you treat other believers?
Conclusion
We started today talking about trust. Do you trust your heavenly Father? Allan Mulally is a name some of you might know. He is known today as the man who saved Ford Motor Company. Last month I read the bestselling book titled American Icon which chronicles Mulally’s brilliant management of Ford through it’s worst time in all the company’s history. In 2008 the company was months away from running out of cash, and even the Ford family was looking at the end of the family legacy. But Mulally turned things around; And when GM and Chrysler were taking government bailout money Ford refused, went it alone, and ended up becoming the most profitable automaker in the world.
Well there is a scene in the book when Mulally is first hired, and, he meets the senior executive team for the first time. The corporate culture is cut-throat, but the auto industry takes it to a new level. So Mulally walks into this first meeting and no one is impressed with him. They resent him because he is an outsider to the automobile industry. That means that Bill Ford didn’t have confidence in any of them to fix the problems.
Finally, in an effort to intimidate Mulally and try to exploit his lack of expertise in automobiles, Richard Parry-Jones, who is the Chief Technical Officer said, “We appreciate you coming here from a company like Boeing, but you’ve got to realize that this is a very, very capital-intensive business with long product development lead times. The average car is made up of thousands of different parts, and they all have to work together flawlessly.”
Mulally said to the CTO, “That’s really interesting. The typical passenger jet has 4 million parts, and if just one of them fails, the whole thing can fall out of the sky. So I feel pretty comfortable with this.”
Do you trust your heavenly Father? We play with legos He runs the universe. Do you trust your Heavenly Father? Do you trust that He is able to do more than anything you could ask or imagine? Do you trust that He is good? Do you trust that He works for your good? Do you trust His love for you?
We have been joined together. We have one body, one Spirt, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father. Our Father is over all, through all and in all. We need these. We need these so that we work together flawlessly as the body of Christ. We have these in common, let us then make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
What We Have in Common (Part 2)
Introduction
Illustration: There are many wonderful things that come with fatherhood. One of my favorite things is to tell my son to jump off of very high objects. Into my arms, of course. I’ve had him stand on things as high as a refrigerator or deck railing and jump. He gets up there, precariously gets his balance, giggling and laughing, telling me he’s gonna jump. Then he pauses, not because he’s scared, not because he’s having second thoughts, not because he’s nervously looking at how high he is – but, he pauses to look at me. And he cracks a huge smile. Then without a care in the world he throws himself overboard and lets himself fall into my open arms.
What do I love about that? Well, its fun for one thing. But if you ask me what I love about that and why it is one of my favorite things as a father, I’ll tell you. My son trusts me. I have never dropped him. I have caught him every single time. (Except that one time but he hit so hard he doesn’t remember it anyway j/k). You cannot put a price-tag on your child’s trust. It means everything to a parent. He does not need to fear the fall because of trust. Fear of the fall only comes when he thinks I might drop him. Trust enables him to instead enjoy the fall.
Fathers are important.
We are going to spend a little time talking about someone very important today. Paul has mentioned this Person several times in Ephesians already. In 1:2 we see that grace and peace come to us from Him. In 1:3 we see that He is to be praised, and, that He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. In 1:14 we are His possession. In 1:17 Paul calls Him glorious and prays that the believers would know this Person better. In 1:22 we see that He has placed everything under Christ’s feet. In 2:6 we are raised up by Him and seated with Christ. In 2:18 we have access to Him. In 2:19 we are members of His household. In 2:22 He lives in us. In 3:14 Paul kneels in prayer before Him. In 5:20 He is to always be thanked. In 6:20, Peace, love, and faith are from Him.
Who is He? Jesus called Him “Righteous Father” (John 17). Paul calls Him the “glorious Father” (Eph. 1:17). In Matthew 6 Jesus said our heavenly Father knows what our physical needs are. Our fellowship is with our heavenly Father, 1 John 1:3 says, “and our fellowship is with the Father and His Son…” Romans 8:15 says we call Him, “Abba, Father”. When Jesus taught the disciples how to pray, He said “Our Father, who is in heaven…” (Mthw. 6).
He may or may not be like your father. Some of you in this room no doubt carry wounds from your earthly father. Your father may have been impersonal, uncaring, distant, demanding, or even hurtful or abusive. Don’t let your earthly father be the broken brush that paints the picture of your heavenly Father. Your heavenly Father is not like Him. Instead, let the words of Scripture paint the picture. They are your heavenly Father’s self-portrait; a letter of self-revelation to you. Let the wanting that your earthly father left in you be met by your heavenly Father.
The point is that as Christians we belong to a new Father. He is perfect in every way; He is perfect in every way your earthly father was imperfect. He is excellent where your father has been deficient. His love is described as abounding, tender, and unfailing. He goes to great lengths to show Himself patient and gentle. He is tenaciously insistent that He will never leave, abandon, or forsake. He did not sacrifice you for other plans He had, but, His plans meant that He sacrificed for you. He is your Father. He is my Father.
We began looking at 7 elements of unity last week. These are what we have in common. We made it through 6, and this week lets finish point 7. Let us learn 4 quick things about God our Father.
#1: Our God and Father, Our Patriarch
Paul says, “One God and Father OF all…” He is our Father. He is the Father of all who believe. He said in 1:5, “In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will”.
When Paul says in this verse that He is over all, through all and in all he is not -as New Agers and liberal theologians like to think - referring to all human beings. This whole context in Ephesians is referring to His relationship with the Church, with believers. The whole context is speaking of the relationship between the Triune God and all true Christians. Paul says it is Christians who are one body, have one Spirit, have one hope, one faith, have one Lord, one baptism. Therefore, it is arbitrary and absurd to say at this one verse that Paul is speaking of universalism after all through the letter he has been speaking of Christians. It is Christians who have one God and Father who is over them all, through them all, and in them all.
It is true that God is the Father of everyone but that is only in the sense that He is the Creator who gave everyone and everything life (Acts 17:29). But, to Christians, He is our Father in a special way. He is Father to us in a way that He is not Father to anyone else. Galatians 3:26 says “You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ.” And in John 1:12 it says, “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” He has Re-created us in Christ. First Peter 1:3 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” We are in His family and part of His household – not as servants, but, first as sons and daughters. This means we belong to Him. This means we live to please Him as a child would want to please a father he loves.
I believe this is the most important way for us to relate to God. Paul starts almost every letter out with reference to God the Father. In Ephesians he begins and ends with God the Father. But I think it just may be the way God most desires to relate to us. He is King of the Universe. He is Lord of all. He is I am. He is many more. But over and over and over again we see in the NT the emphasis that He is our Father. Let us emphasize that.
If you had a perfect Father how would that change you? You have One.
#2: Our God and Father is Pre-Eminent
Paul says, “One God and Father of all, who is OVER all…” Now when we are talking about our Father being over all we are talking about His absolute supremacy. He is supreme over all things. There is nothing that is not under the supreme rulership of God our Father. All things are under His dominion. He is over all.
Now, we just said that this verse is talking about the Church, and, not everyone else. Wouldn’t this statement that God the Father is OVER all be restricted to the Church? No, I don’t think so. This is important: I think while Paul is declaring the fact that God the Father is supreme over all things Paul is doing so because it appreciates our fellowship with Him. In other words, the One who is our heavenly Father is also the One who has Supremacy over all things in the universe. It accentuates the privilege we have as the unique children of the Supreme Ruler over all creation.
Just as an illustration let us think of our President. He has pre-eminence. He is in a sense, the supreme citizen and leader of our country. There is not a higher rank than that of the leader of the free world. He is over all. And, yet, there are 2 young girls, named Malia and Sasha, who have a much more personal relationship with the man called President. To them, He is daddy. And while the citizen’s under his leadership may be dear to him, there will never be 2 more dear citizens than those who are his children.
What I’m trying to say is that the One who is God and Father over all things created has a special Fatherly relationship and rule over us as the Church. He is for all creatures God the Father and yet for us as believers He is God our Father. How special is that relationship when it is with the One who is Pre-Eminent over all the Universe?
#3: The Purpose of Our God and Father
Paul says, “One God and Father of all, who is over all and THROUGH all and IN all” Now we are talking about God’s activity through us. We as the Church right now are the agency by which God is working out His purposes in this world. This means we have a purpose.
God was active through Jesus. He spoke through Jesus, Hebrews 1:1, 2a, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son…” Peter said in Acts 2:22, “Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him…” It reminds us of Jesus in John 14:10-11 when He said, “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in Me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing His work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me…”
Now, with Christ at the right hand of God, God is working through the Church. Our Father’s purposes are being accomplished through us. We start to pick up on this in Ephesians already. In when Paul said in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” That is the sense in which I understand “through all” here. That God is working through us in the lives of others. We are the instrument in His hand. How is God working through you in the lives of others?
Notice then next that God our Father is “in all”. He is in all of us as believers by the Spirit. God is dwelling in us through His Holy Spirit. Eph. 2:22 says, “And in Christ you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirt.” He is in us, and He is working in us. Philippians 1:6 says, “I am confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Whereas through us implies how God works for others through us, “in us” implies how God works towards us personally. He dwells in us, works in us, changes us, etc.
Application: God lives in us. Therefore, how you treat other Christians is can really be seen as how you treat God. Whatever you did for the least of one of these you did for me. (Math. 24) If they reject you they are rejecting Me. And if they reject me the reject the one who sent me. (Luke 11:17). How do you treat other believers?
Conclusion
We started today talking about trust. Do you trust your heavenly Father? Allan Mulally is a name some of you might know. He is known today as the man who saved Ford Motor Company. Last month I read the bestselling book titled American Icon which chronicles Mulally’s brilliant management of Ford through it’s worst time in all the company’s history. In 2008 the company was months away from running out of cash, and even the Ford family was looking at the end of the family legacy. But Mulally turned things around; And when GM and Chrysler were taking government bailout money Ford refused, went it alone, and ended up becoming the most profitable automaker in the world.
Well there is a scene in the book when Mulally is first hired, and, he meets the senior executive team for the first time. The corporate culture is cut-throat, but the auto industry takes it to a new level. So Mulally walks into this first meeting and no one is impressed with him. They resent him because he is an outsider to the automobile industry. That means that Bill Ford didn’t have confidence in any of them to fix the problems.
Finally, in an effort to intimidate Mulally and try to exploit his lack of expertise in automobiles, Richard Parry-Jones, who is the Chief Technical Officer said, “We appreciate you coming here from a company like Boeing, but you’ve got to realize that this is a very, very capital-intensive business with long product development lead times. The average car is made up of thousands of different parts, and they all have to work together flawlessly.”
Mulally said to the CTO, “That’s really interesting. The typical passenger jet has 4 million parts, and if just one of them fails, the whole thing can fall out of the sky. So I feel pretty comfortable with this.”
Do you trust your heavenly Father? We play with legos He runs the universe. Do you trust your Heavenly Father? Do you trust that He is able to do more than anything you could ask or imagine? Do you trust that He is good? Do you trust that He works for your good? Do you trust His love for you?
We have been joined together. We have one body, one Spirt, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father. Our Father is over all, through all and in all. We need these. We need these so that we work together flawlessly as the body of Christ. We have these in common, let us then make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
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