Ephesians 4:1-16 • The Same, Only Different
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Would you look in your bibles this morning at Ephesians chapter 4?
Ephesians chapter 4, as we'll be looking at the first 16 verses.
It was a different time in many ways, reflected in our own era as we think of aggressor nations taking over parts of the world that we never would have thought would have happened, even a few years ago.
But the year was 1805, and the aggressor at that point was the emperor Napoleon.
He had taken over much of Europe and had his sights set on England.
And to stop him was a man named Horatio, Admiral Horatio Nelson.
Sent to meet Napoleon's navy off the coast of Spain.
It seemed highly unlikely that any great victory could occur.
After all, France at that point aligned with Spain, and as Admiral Nelson looked at his own small fleet, he recognized he was outmanned two to one.
How could they have any hope of victory?
They recognized in the strategy sessions that they had that the Franco-Spanish ships were large.
They were heavy.
And while their armaments far exceeded that of the English, the Spanish ships could be faster.
And so the battle plan was simply to take advantage of the wind.
For months they trained, equipping the English ships with even more sails, counting on the wind to enald--, enable them to divide the spit--, the French and Spanish armada in such a way that the large ships, now divided, without the advantage of speed, could be overcome.
Great plan.
And as the day came in 1805 and the smaller English ships sailed right toward the French and Spanish armada, it looked like a great plan, until the wind died.
One of the sailors on an English ship later put in his journal, "There was now ample time for meditation."
[Laughter]
Which meant they were going, "Oh no!
The wind has died.
What will happen to us now?"
Well, there was just a little wind that came back.
And what they did not anticipate was that little wind gave the English ships such an advantage, because the large French and Spanish ships could not maneuver at all.
And in the great Battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Nelson became a hero and you and I were determined to speak English instead of French where we are right now.
It was a great victory, but there was a time in which, of course, panic was spreading.
When the wind had died, when men wondered, "Can we have any chance of success?" there was a famous message that went up on the signal ship of Admiral Nelson.
As men had ample time for meditation, he sent them this message: "England expects every man to do his duty."
The apostle Paul is saying something quite similar here.
"I expect," he says, "that through the work of the church, the Spirit of God will so be powerful and active that ultimately the message of Christ will fill all in all.
Christ Himself will at one point be known and cover this earth as much as the waters cover the sea.
Christ will triumph."
But, of course, when the wind is out of our sails, when we just look at the few of us, when we look at nation or nations that seem to oppose the gospel, we wonder how could this possibly be the case?
How could God possibly use us and give us the means to ultimately fill all in all as the body of Christ?
In order to unite us, the apostle Paul has a simple message to begin.
He says, "Listen, if you are going to fulfill the calling that Christ has given you, you must remember something: You're all the same."
In order to play on the same team, in order to work together, you need to remember: You're all the same.
Just think of the opening words of chapter 4.
"I therefore," Paul says, "a prisoner for the Lord," he's in prison elsewhere, but he urges those at Ephesus, "I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called."
First thing to note: The "you" is plural.
For those of us raised in the South, he is saying, "I am saying' to y'all, to all of you, to walk worthy in the manner worthy of your calling."
What is that calling?
Just to back you up to where we were before Christmas, look at chapter 1 verses 22 and 23.
Chapter 1 verses 22-23, the apostle's reminding us who our Savior is.
It says in verse 22, "God put all things under his feet and gave him," that is Jesus, "as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all."
Christ is the head of the church, but He has been given to the church so that ultimately His church, His body, fulfill His purpose of filling all in all.
That ultimate victory, ultimate triumph is in Christ but through the church.
Now the apostle says, "I'm saying to you all, if that is your calling to be part of the great gospel work of Christ in all the world until He fills absolutely everything, then walk in a manner worthy of your calling."
Now, he has to say "you all" to remind everyone that you can't check out of the battle.
After all, when Admiral Nelson sent up that famous message, "England expects every man to do his duty," he wasn't just talking to English sailors.
There were sailors from Scotland and Ireland and Wales as well as England.
But if he'd done that many signal flags.
[Chuckles]
You know, he'd be standing--, sitting in the water waiting for the message to go by.
So everyone is grouped under this, the pattern of England.
We're all in this together.
We're all in this same sail, all under the same banner.
And that banner's expressed here when we are told we all have the same calling.
But if it's to fill all in all, you know everybody just goes, "How could we possibly do that?"
The message is you can't do it by yourself.
So verse 3 says, "Be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
Hey, if you're in this great battle, if there's so much to be done, you need to be eager to work together.
This is more than any single person or single group can do.
You're going to need each other.
So be anxious to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.
How will you do that?
Verse 2, "With all humility and gentleness and patience, bearing with each other in love."
What's the hard part of that verse?
[Chuckles]
I've got to bear with you.
And you've got to bear with me.
Because if we are going to move forward into the great battle for Jesus Christ's purposes, we recognize we are made different.
Even as those at Ephesus were from different backgrounds, some of them had been former ethnic enemies, they're certainly from different races, they are different ethnicities, they are different demographic categories: young, old, rich, poor.
And yous--, you're going to have to learn to get along here.
Because the battle is too great for you to think that you can operate separately and accomplish the purposes of God.
So be eager to bear with one another, keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
What will keep that happening?
Verse 4, "Remembering there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call."
There's one spiritual body.
And that body we are all part of.
And we are all indwelt by the Spirit that has brought us together, so that we have one hope of fulfilling the purposes of God, which is fulfilling that calling.
It's a simple reminder as we start.
There are no independent Christians.
You were baptized into the body of Christ.
We are called together for a purpose that we cannot fulfill individually.
We become part of a church, not because we want to fill up the membership rolls.
Not the purpose.
But rather to say, "Who's on board?
Who is here for the purposes of God?"
Are you, are you in here to say, "I'm part of what God's accomplishing, because, listen, I can't do this by myself.
You can't do it by yourself.
We need each other."
And so every now and then we take assessment and say, "Are you on the team?
Are you part of this?"
And our identifying ourselves as members of the body of Christ is simply saying, "This is too great a task, either to check out or to think that we can do independently."
We are called to affect all in all.
That is not a question about whether or not we are going to be a great church, whether or not we have enough people or enough funds.
The question the apostle is asking us to consider is: Is our city going to be changed?
Is Christ going to be all in all?
Is our state going to be changed?
Is our nation going to be changed?
Is our world going to be changed by the way in which we keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?
Are we functioning together as we have been called to be the body of Christ so that everything is changing, not just so that we get bigger and better?
That's not the purpose.
The purpose is so that the world would be changed by the purposes of Christ as we recognize we have a calling to be such a body.
Ruth Harley Barton in her book "Strengthening the Soul of Leadership" spells it out clearly.
She says this: "Life in Christ is not about the next brilliant career move.
It is not about security.
It is not about personal success or failure.
It is not about anything else that the ego wants.
The life in Christ is about the Spirit of God setting us on our feet and telling us, 'This calling is yours to do.
You have been called together as the Church of Jesus Christ to accomplish the purposes of filling all in all.'"
Now, to do that, to work together, we recognize is difficult and surely the apostle recognizes it is difficult.
And so he reminds people of the basis of their unity.
Verse 5, "There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all and in all."
There is one Lord that you're all responsible for.
Remember?
Jesus, we are told, was the head of the Church.
And so we are to be responding to live by His commands to walk in a manner worthy of our calling.
One Lord calls the shots.
I don't call the shots.
Society doesn't call the shots.
You don't call the shots.
Jesus calls the shots.
There is one Lord.
Then there's one faith: that all of us who recognize what Jesus calls us to do, to live holy lives, to honor Him, is beyond us.
And so there's one faith.
Paul has already described it.
"By grace you are saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast."
My faith is not in what I do.
My faith is in what Christ has accomplished.
I look to Him.
His grace is what makes me right with God.
I walk under His commands.
And even as I do so, I recognize my inability, my shortcoming and the necessity of my faith in another.
And so as I recognize there is one Lord, one faith, I recognize there is one baptism.
Now, just to be clear, you know we covered this a coop--, couple of weeks ago for a very important purpose.
When the apostle says there is one baptism, we would just be naive to think that our baptism issues were not going on in the time of the apostles.
Right?
We already know even in the time of Jesus there were people saying, "Well, should I get Jesus' baptism or John the Baptist's baptism?"
In Paul's time, "Well, I was baptized under Paul.
Well, I was baptized under Apollos.
Which one's better?"
We know from the Old Testament there were various forms of baptism ceremonies.
It's just silly to think that even in Paul's time people were not arguing about baptism.
So Paul says, "Listen, there's one baptism."
That baptism is the one bo--, whereby you acknowledge it's the cleansing of Christ's blood that makes you right with Him.
It's not running water or still water.
It's not magic water.
It's not the amount of water.
It's the recognition that you are made right by the work of Jesus Christ.
His blood cleanses your sin.
You have a Lord whose commandments you have not met.
So you have to have faith in His work in your behalf and you acknowledge that.
When before the world, you say, "It's Christ's cleansing that I acknowledge in my baptism," and that one baptism identifies that we have one Father.
Isn't that precious?
That we have one God and Father of all.
When we have been cleansed by the recognition of what Christ has done on our behalf, God says, "You're mine.
Now and forever, you are mine."
Do you recognize what the apostle has done?
Even as you look at verses 5 and 6, he is explaining the gospel in nutshell to these people again.
"There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all."
There's one Lord.
He's given commands.
But you haven't kept them, not perfectly, not as a holy God requires.
And so you have to have faith in another, one faith in His grace, not in your works.
And because you have faith in that, you look to His cleansing in your baptism, claiming for yourself and as a testimony to the world, saying, "He makes me right with Him.
I can't do that."
And as you claim the baptism of Jesus Christ as the signification of your own faith, then God says, "I'm your Father.
You're in the family now.
You're mine.
I love you."
We face holiness with a need for humility, which follows with a need for cleansing and comes finally with the promise of the hope of heaven given by a great Father.
That's the gospel.
And it ultimately unites all of us.
We are one under that banner.
Some of you will go with me and some others to the Holy Land this Spring.
And when we go, one of the places that we are going to visit is the Church of the Nativity, a great castle, virtually, built over the place supposedly that Jesus was born.
You can't prove it, but it's where it's honored.
And as we go to that great church, it's going to surprise some of you, because we're expecting a church to look like this or maybe like a big European cathedral.
But the Church of the Nativity was built during the Crusader Era.
And, therefore, it looks much more like a fortress.
Think of the Alamo, right?
Church and fortress at the same time.
And because it was a fortress, it was built to withstand the armament and the military of that age.
So as you walk up to the Church of the Nativity, you walk to this great kind of stone wall and to get into this majestic place honoring the birth of Jesus, you have to walk through this humble little small door.
You can't stand up and go through it.
Why was that?
Because horses couldn't go through it either.
Because men in armor couldn't go through it either.
Because to go through that door, every single one has to bow and expose his head and neck to the people inside first.
It was defense but a great message.
When you come into the realm of Jesus Christ, every single one of us is the same.
We have to bow to the one Lord, to our faith in Him, to our recognition of His baptism is what cleanses us.
His blood washes us, not our works, and because of that, we have a Father in heaven who holds us.
It's the gospel.
Not what is in us but what He has provided makes us right with Him.
And it's that unity that is our message that makes us one before Christ.
"We are one," says the apostle, one in Christ.
One by His work.
One by His gospel.
We are one.
Are you ready for whiplash?
After saying all this about we are one, we are the same, what's the apostle about to say?
By the way, you're different.
You're the same, only different.
How are you different?
We're actually told the ways in which this happens.
Look at verse 7.
"But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift."
Now, this is not talking about the volume of grace that is given to us.
It's not like some get a little grace and some get a lot of grace but rather the kind of grace that is given by the different gifts that come.
Verse 8, "Therefore it says, 'When he,'" that is Christ, "'ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.'
In saying, 'He ascended,' what does it mean but that he also descended into the lower regions of the earth?
He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens," here comes the calling again, "that he might fill all things."
When Lord Nelson went into that great battle, he needed signal ships; he needed some ships with cannons; he needed some ships to command; he needed different kinds of ships but for one great purpose.
Now we are being told by the apostle Paul there are different kinds of gifts that have been made available through another battle.
When Jesus ascended, says the apostle, that is after His death and resurrection, after He had defeated the demons of earth, He ascended.
And when He ascended, He gave gifts to men.
Think of the picture.
If you were a, an ancient king or general, as you came home from a great battle, you might have captives in your train.
You might have those in ropes or chains behind you.
But at the same time, you would have the spoils of battle.
And so to celebrate the great victory, you would not only show the subjugation of the enemy: You would be distributing the gifts.
Not candy like at Thanksgiving Day parades, right?
But wealth and gold and riches that you would be distributing as the city or the nation cheered.
And now, says the apostle, Satan has been defeated.
The forces of evil have been put down.
God is now going to accomplish His great battle.
It's not that there are no gorilla warriors left back on the field, but God has had the great victory through Jesus Christ.
And now as He ascends to heaven, He is giving gifts to His church.
And they're different kinds of gifts.
He describes how they are different.
Remember?
He says, verse 11, "He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds."
Hey, it's okay to be different.
There are different kinds of tasks, so there are different kinds of people.
And as the apostle begins to say, "Listen, here's just the example first," He gave gifts to men, different kinds of people do different kinds of things: That is the recognition that we have the same calling of filling all in all but we are called to do it in different ways.
That means everyone in Christ's church has a different purpose for your personality, for your giftedness, for your talents, for your situation, but all to be given to the purposes of Christ.
I want you to see just a list of things that people in this church are involved in and think of why it is important that we have different gifts in the same way that God has called us.
Here's just a list of urban ministries that people in this church are already participating in.
If you go on beyond these particular urban ministries, you'll see even more.
Different people serving in different ways as God has called us to many different types of professions.
If you see not only the urban ministries, there are those working with children, not just inside the church but outside the church.
Those who have special gifts of teaching the Bible to little ones, not only are those ministries that this church has itself: We are participating with churches and mission services and need and mercy services far beyond us.
Listen, sometimes I know that we think the job of the ministers, the holy people, is to do the work of the church.
And, yet, what you begin to see here is God saying through His people: There is much for us to do.
That last slide, which is now past, was just reminding you: If you're thinking, "How do I find out, how do I find out what God is calling me to do?" you might just identify with us through the reception at gracepres.org.
Find out: What is God calling me to do?
Because what God has said again is no one is independent.
All of us are part of the great purpose.
God is using us for His glory.
And as I've listed these different ministries, let me tell you one of the temptations is for those of you who are involved in various ministries to now be mad at me because I couldn't remember yours.
[Laughter]
So bear with me.
Maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, and think what God may be calling you to do.
On these slides as we were just trying to think, brainstorm, what are the various mercy ministries?
What are the evangelism ministries that are going on right now through various ones of you in this church?
Listen, I did not even mention the Sunday School teachers, the Bible study leaders, the nursery workers, the community group leaders, the Monday morning crew, the security and media and reception people, the sanctity of life volunteers, the divorce recovery volunteers, the women who are quilting.
Have I mentioned your ministry yet?
[Laughter]
We are all part of the great calling.
And none of us can do this alone.
All of us are meant to be part of what God is calling us to do, because we're all the same.
What a great calling.
But we're different with different gifts in different purposes.
As we recognize that, that we are the same in the sense that we have the calling, you ready for the one last whiplash?
I said you're the same and then I said you're different.
Where do you think I'm going now?
You're the same again.
[Laughter]
You're the same in that with your differences, you are each vital to God's purposes.
It's really the point that the apostle is making as he's kind of saying, "Yes, there are different kinds of people."
Look at verse 12.
"Yes, God gave the apostles, the prophets, the shepherds, the teachers."
Why?
Verse 12, "To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ."
The temptation when we see God has given apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers and so forth is to say, "Oh, God has given a job to the holy people," and not recognize that the saints are the ones that are all around you.
"To each of us," says the apostle, "has God given these gifts."
It is His purpose.
Verse 7, look at it.
"Grace was given to each one of us, according to the measure of Christ's gift."
We think that ministry is happening as I talk to you, as Pastor Kerry talks to you, as Pastor Greg talks to you.
And you don't recognize that the way Paul is actually defining at this point is the ministry happens as you go out into the world and live for Christ.
That is ministry of the church.
If we were to depend upon the few ordained pastors in this church to carry out the ministry of the church, we would be instantly handcuffed and limited.
There's no way we could do everything that's to be done.
And so the understanding of the apostle is: Ministry is happening as every single one of us in our homes, in our businesses, in our workplace, in our education backgrounds, if all of us are doing what God calls us to do wherever we are called.
If that's ministry, do you know what it means?
There are no secondary callings.
You know, the holy people and the not holy people.
I mean, the beauty of recognizing that God is saying each one who has gotten a gift is a saint here is we get away from that understanding that saints are just dead people who were holy a long time ago.
We are the saints.
We are those who are called to the purposes of God in this day and age.
And that means wherever we walk, as we are doing the work of God with a mind that is saying, "I am now living out the mind of Christ and being the face of Jesus to others," that wherever I am, I am walking on holy ground.
It would be rather remarkable to think about what that might mean.
Some of you may be aware, now I've told you this was going to be a steep hill and strong medicine, and it's about to come.
You ready?
What would it mean to believe that every single person in the body of Christ has been given gifts for the purposes of filling all in all?
Some of you will know the book by Rosaria Butterfield called "The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert."
Rosaria Butterfield was in a same-sex relationship, a star professor in one of our nations leading university.
Her speciality, this is not disrespectful, this is not meant to be funny, this is the technical speciality at Syracuse University of which she was in charge: She was in charge of Queer Theory, doing research on the rise of the religious rite while at the same time giving keynote addresses at Harvard on gay and lesbian studies.
As her study of the religious rite, trying to find out why people who claim to be religious could be so hateful, her research actually took her into contact with a pastor of a small church in her area.
And as she began to ask questions about what Christians believe and why they act as they do, he began to invite her to meals in his house and with his family.
For two years, he answered her questions and sometimes her attacks without pressing her to make some change until ultimately she wrote, "I ultimately believed that this pastor actually believed that the Bible was true."
And then she believed it too.
What was the consequence?
She now had to turn her back on so many of the things that she had educated others in as well as herself become a professional in.
But she writes now she was a member of the body of Christ and she recognizes as a member of the body of Christ she had a calling.
She writes, "I came to the understanding that I could not possibly be a godly woman that God calls me to be if I don't even know how to be a woman.
After praying fervently for God to show me how to live as a godly woman, I went through the church directory and free--, and picked out three women whose godliness and integrity really stood out to me.
And I picked women who were very different from me but would answer me honestly."
What did she do?
She didn't go to the pastor.
She went to those who were different from her but were gifted by God for the purpose of ministering to her.
Just teaching her something as basic: What does it mean to be a woman in the church of Jesus Christ?
Wasn't the pastor's job anymore.
It was the job of the saints, regular people that God had put in her life to minister to her.
She wrote, "They were different, but they were vital."
Like us: different but the same.
Different but vital.
She did not know how much she was learning about the giftedness of Christ for all people.
Sometime later after she had met with those three women, an L.G.B.T. graduate student of Rosaria tried to kill herself by setting herself on fire.
The student was a lesbian who herself had been deeply depressed by what she felt was the betrayal of Rosaria for rejecting her lifestyle.
And, yet, in the midst of her depression and then her crisis, it was Rosaria that she signed on the hospital form could come to visit her and make life decisions for her.
Rosaria described her reactions as she entered the I.C.U. and began to deal with this student who had hated her because of the sense of betrayal and at the same time now was calling to her to make some decisions about her life.
Rosaria wrote, "I wondered why I was standing there.
In that instant, I realized: This is God's work for me right now, right now.
I am to demonstrate the love of Christ to my lesbian student.
I was there because God picked me up and put me on my feet and said to me, 'Wipe the sleep out of your eyes and do something for this student.'"
It was her calling in the moment.
And Rosaria said, "I put my hand on hers, plastic-covered hand against plastic sheet, and I asked her if I could pray for her.
And she told me I could.
And I prayed for God's mercy and peace and saving faith.
And she fell asleep while I prayed."
Some of you may know that book and know that's just the beginning of a journey as Rosaria now had to be as patient and faithful with this one as others had been with her.
Each gifted differently for the calling of Christ until all fills all and the body of Christ will be built up in love for the purposes to which He has called it.
If you think that's just something that doesn't apply to us, you have to recognize what the apostle is doing in this passage.
In verse 13, he's reminding us that this is being given to all of us that the whole church rises up in maturity.
In verses 14 and 15, so this maturity results in people holding each other accountable in doctrine and walk of life, so that ultimately what is happening is each party is doing its work so that the love of Christ is expansive.
That's very 16 at the end.
Look at that.
"When each part is working properly, it makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love."
I know you may think this is just something from deep past or, how do I say this, extreme cases like Rosaria's.
But what I want you to believe, because it's actually happening, is God is using this church, your lives, your testimony, your calling, to reach other people.
It's not happening somewhere else.
It's what God is doing as He always does when faithful people do their part.
Then the body does far more than any could do independently.
Be--, before Christmas, I was telling you about a young man in Australia who had listened to the podcast of this church and recommitted his heart and life to the purposes of Christ.
Do you remember that?
He actually won the World Architecture Competition for the home that he designed to put on a rejected lot in an urban environment as a testimony of his faith.
He wanted to show that God redeems the rejected, even in the architecture of that particular home in which he now lives.
You may remember that that same young man, having won the World Architecture Award, was approaches with lots of opportunities, including a billion dollar contract.
Do you remember this?
A billion dollar contract to renovate a particular portion of a major city in Australia, and he turned down the contract.
Do you remember why?
Because the architecture was being designed to funnel everybody into a casino.
The whole city was being constructed to benefit a certain number of people who owned the casinos.
And he said, "I can't do that, even for a billion dollars."
Now, some of you know just a couple of weeks ago, I was back in Australia.
And I was ministering to pastors there.
And when Casey heard that I was coming, he wrote me again.
And I'm going to read this to you a little bit.
It's long.
But I ask you just to listen to think about what God may be calling you to think about.
He says, "Bryan, Beck and I are feeling God is stirring us with a great desire to live His grace in all of life, particularly in our own profession.
When we won the World Architecture Award, we prayed that God would use it for His glory.
And in September," that's just this past September, "our house was published in the Architectural Australian Journal which is sent to every registered Australian architect.
And in there, we were excited to see a section of the article identifying our faith in Jesus Christ as the reason that we built this house to show the redemption of the rejected.
Shortly after that article was published, a Chinese architectural publication also contacted us.
We saw this as an opportunity to respond with our views on architecture and the gospel.
To our surprise, the final draft allowed us to praise because, it had included references to our faith in Christ and His redeeming work as the basis for our architectural design.
The same week as the final draft came from the Chinese publication, we were contracted," excuse me, "we were contacted by Qatar," that's a Middle Eastern nation.
"We were contacted by Qatar TV to film our house and to interview us, a program that is shown throughout the Muslim nations of the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Syria.
We were able to speak of the gospel message, of what is broken being lovingly restored through Jesus Christ."
And then he says, "I almost fell off my seat when my interviewer asked me directly to explain our faith further.
And we were able to reflect on Christ's work, which is alive in us and which we are demonstrating by the way in which we have built this house to show the nature of the gospel.
God redeems the rejected."
Now these words: "Thank you, Bryan and Kathy and all Grace Presbyterian Church, for your encouragement in Christ Jesus."
I want you to applaud for yourselves.
[Chuckles]
[Laughter]
Not out of pride.
Do--, how does it happen that here in the peace of Peoria the Lord somehow takes a podcast of something that's been said here and takes it to the most war-torn and gospel-resistant portions of the world through people most of you have never met?
Because a search committee called me, because Chris Summers puts the podcast on the internet, because you support with your funds, because you have as Sunday School teachers been so faithful to teach a generation that when I proclaim the gospel, it is received here and you want it, because you by your giving, by your help, by your promotion, by your prayers are as a people of God uniting for the purposes that even though you have different lives in your places of work, in the wares that you--, in the ways that you serve, you are uniting in all your differences as one great body of Christ with each person vital to witness what Christ is doing.
I praise God for you.
I pray, God, that He would continue to work in us that we would believe that whether you're a student or business person, that whether you're an educator or an artist, that God is saying, "Fill all in all.
I can do so much more than you ever imagine."
I think of those of you who may think just the business itself is something that God can't use.
I commend to you the work of Michael Lindsay, "Faith in the Halls of Power," as he simply says, "No major idea is accepted in this culture until the business world accepts it."
I mean, think how different our nation would be if Apple had not approved same-sex benefits.
Think how different our world would be if Hobby Lobby had not opposed abortion restrictions or requirements.
God is using those of us in every walk of life, nurses, doctors: You show people what the gospel is epically and by virtue.
Moms and dads and grandparents: You show another generation what it means to live with integrity and virtue and nobility before the Lord.
Those of you in marriages that are strained and struggling: You show young people who are wondering, "Can I ever know a marriage that's whole as the Bible describes?" that it's possible and that God redeems the broken and He restores the rejected.
And every piece of our life is part of communicating the glory and the wonder of what God is doing.
What you and I really have to do is ask ourselves a question: Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that the resurrected Lord is alive and by His Spirit is here and He indwells you and He indwells me?
And for that reason, every single one of us is a part of the purpose of Jesus Christ until all fills all.
That is His purpose.
It is my calling.
It is your calling.
There are no secondary callings.
Every single one of us called to live in a manner worthy of our calling, so that by faithfulness in the place I am called and you are called, the ministry of the church goes forward until the knowledge of Christ covers the earth as waters cover the sea.
You have a great calling.
May God give you a great understanding of your purpose in it, to be faithful where He calls you, so that all will fill all: His knowledge in all places because His people have each one done His part for the glory of Jesus.
>>> Father, would You so work in us that we who would live for You would be reminded how good You have been to us, not just providing a gospel for us but beyond that gospel given each of us a mission of calling that is vital?
Though made different, made for a same purpose: to let the world know about the Savior who heals broken people, who takes the rejected and redeems them.
As we become the messengers of that gospel, may the glory of Jesus shine through us we pray.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.