The importance of maintaining the unity of the Spirit within the church, drawing from Ephesians 4:1-16. It argues that true unity is not created by humans but is a spiritual reality that believers are called to preserve through specific virtues. The message outlines five key characteristics for preserving this unity: lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, forbearance, and love, explaining each with practical examples and biblical principles. Ultimately, the sermon concludes that these virtues, rooted in the foundational truths of the one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God, are essential for a healthy and functional Christian fellowship.
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give me a few minutes to get my harness on here. Next comes the glasses. Some years ago I wouldn't have had either the glasses or the microphone, but Now I need both and maybe a little more. I want to thank the Christian here for inviting me to come to this conference to share a little bit in the Word of God with you.
Appreciate it. I trust that it will be profitable and helpful. I'm also praying that I'll get some blessing and help also through my time spent here. Let's have you open your Bible tonight to the book of Ephesians chapter four. Ephesians chapter four, and we'll be looking mainly at the first sixteen verses of this chapter. And I believe that we'll divide the portions that we'll be reading in the three sections so we'll be able to retain them hopefully somewhat in our memory and we'll be looking at it from these three standpoints the three characterizing marks of a New Testament church that is at its ideal condition and these three marks are its unity its diversity and its maturity.
These three. Some years ago when I came to a conference here around Lyman in Atlantic, I think I was at that time when I spoke a little, the youngest preacher at the conference. Now some forty years later, I find that we'll look over the participants here. this conference but I'm now the old I don't know whether that proves anything except that I'm still alive and God is still very grateful to me but in these forty years that I've been preaching the word here and there I've seen lots of changes some of the changes have been very good some of them have been very needful but I find along with change there's always danger that Christians get taken up with change without any real reason for it, simply sometimes just to be making a change.
Therefore change is safe. And that's why I want to look at the beginning of this conference at these passages in Ephesians chapter four. The very first assembly that was ever planted in the state of Texas was down in a little town called Palestine. And in the process of building their first little building, They employed a black man to cut some rafters. And he wasn't a carpenter by any means, and so they gave him a model rafters to use as he was cutting these rafters out. After he put all the rafters out, the men were assembling the rafters in their respective positions, why they noticed to their embarrassment that as they were nailing the rafters into place, they became increasingly shorter.
The last rafters that were cut were almost a foot and a half shorter than the first one. So they went with a good deal of concern to the so-called carpenter. They said, how come you're coming up with rafters that are so short? We gave you a model rafter. The man says, I don't understand it. He said, I use that rafter. And then he says, I thought I'd use the precious one when I cut that rafter. So I used that. And then he says, I thought, well, I'll use the precious one when I cut The third one, and he said, I've been using the freshest one all along the line. He says, I don't understand. But it's very obvious that what he was doing was using what he had cut as a model for what he had cut in a succeeding succession of rafter cuttings.
And consequently, he ended up with a bunch of rafters that were almost, well, they were useless as rafters instead of being used maybe as studs or something like that. What I'm trying to say is that in the process of change is taking place, oftentimes we are tempted to make our changes and based upon what we see other people doing in a religious world. We pick up the letters of interest and we say, well, they're really getting with us over here, and we better do the same thing. We better get with it. Now, there's a certain amount of motivation to be sure. But when we compare ourselves with one another and make our changes based upon what other people are doing, rather than going back to the original blueprint, I'm afraid that we are leaving ourselves open for a lot of disappointment and perhaps erecting some things that are useless as far as their original purpose is concerned.
Now let's look at our passages tonight. Paul in beginning then says, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord deceive you that you walk worthy the vocation wherewith we are called, with all loathiness and meekness with long suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Here is the first great characterizing feature of a biblical functioning ideal New Testament church. It's unity. Now, notice please, that the unity is not affected by the Christians.
I think it's important to see that, that the Christians are exhorted to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Nowhere in the Word of God are God's people ever advised, thought, or encouraged to affect a unity. Now this has been the result of a lot of things that have been going on in the world. Men are not satisfied with the blueprint that God has and have gone off and devised a plan of their own, and the plan that they have devised does not coincide with the blueprint that God has in his word. Now this may seem rather basic to you, but I want it to be basic. I believe that one of the things we need to do is to get back to the basics of the word of God.
And we can make no progress spiritually until we go back to see what they did at the beginning. And I don't buy the idea that what they did at the beginning was outmoded doing. I think that what they did in the beginning days is a pattern for how we are to affect the work of God today in our time. Now it will take every single Christian to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. But it will take only one Christian to disrupt me. When I was a member of a high school band in Chicago, we had a hundred and twenty members. We went to the state contest.
And we were playing the old church of Rienzi, I remember. Everything was going great when we came to a certain place where the trombones had a rest. One of the trombone players in his eagerness to impress the judges let go with a horrendous blast on his trombone. I don't have to tell you that we did not win the contest. There were a hundred and nineteen band members that were in perfect unity. It was beautiful harmony, but it took only one member of that band to disrupt what a hundred and nineteen others were doing. And I think one of the important things that we need to see as we take our places in the fellowship of God's people is that we are responsible for maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
I think that ought to be a prime motive of every believer, regardless of whatever he might do or not do. Now there is a word that we call orthodoxy, and that has to do with what we believe. There's another word that is not so familiarly known, and that's the word orthodoxy, and that is how we behave. But let me hasten to assure you that the gospel not only brings life, but it teaches men and women how to live life. It not only tells us that we need to believe the gospel, but it also tells us that we need to behave the gospel. I don't buy the idea of believing in a Lord Jesus Christ to get saved and then go on and do anything you please.
I think that's born to the whole spirit of salvation. So that as we look at this matter, of orthopraxy, how we behave, and what we do, we're moving down into five things that the Apostle brings before the believer's attention in Ephesus that will enable them to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Now God never tells anybody what to do without telling him how to do it. And God never tells you and me how to do something without giving us the power to do it. And in these five things we have, the means whereby every believer can contribute to maintaining or keeping the unity of the Spirit and that lovely, beautiful thing called the bond of peace.
Let's notice the first one, please. He says here, with all loneliness. Now this word loneliness The first of the five simply means that one is not to be puffed up. It does not mean that he is to be slumped over as a wet noodle. One of the gracious teachers of our Lord Jesus Christ was that he knew how to assume a place of lowliness. He said, I am among you is one that serves. And one of the first things that every believer needs to know, and I need to know it increasing in my life, and that is to know how to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace as I display the lowliness at which the Lord Jesus Christ is a prime example.
You know there's something wonderful about the grace of God. among many things, and I think one of them is this, that the grace of God has the ability to humble a man without defacing him. It also has the ability to exalt a man without inflating him. That's what the grace of God does. It can bring a man down to a humble loneliness without making him feel like a worm. It can lift him up without giving him the conceited spirit of inflation. I think that the best way to describe a spirit of loneliness is that a person is approachable.
You can test yourself in this realm, how approachable are you? I have to ask myself that as an elder in the assembly in Wichita, are people able to approach me? In one of the tests of an elder is how many people come to it. That's not how many elders meetings he has, not how many decisions are made, but how many people come to him in their needs. They've got to go somewhere, brethren. And I think one of the first things ought to characterize an elder is that he is approachable so that people can come to him and not be afraid or being cut off or being hurt or put down. The second thing that Paul mentions here is this thing called meekness.
Now meekness does not mean being made a poor man, but it means a submissive spirit, or you might say the ability for that individual to be taught. Some churches are never going to be blessed until God is going to be able to keep them. And they will not be taught until they're willing to be spoken. So they'll be willing to receive what God has to say. Years ago, when they were breaking the horse, they used to use this term. They were going to meet the horse. So that he would take the bridle and the saddle.
This is a difficult thing to do. But one of the things of a prime importance in our role in maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace is that we know how to be taught, that we are willing to accept teaching. I think this is of prime importance. And if the other is being approachable, then the other is the ability of being taught, teachable. The third thing that he mentions here is long suffering. And long suffering means to be able to endure distasteful circumstances. It means slowness in avenging that which seems to be wrong.
Long suffering is one of the greatest qualities that God displayed when he was dealing with the antediluvians, when once the long suffering of God waited. I'll tell you, friends, God had a perfect right to come down on judgment on those people, and he withheld his judgment to the judgment chain. But one of the features that will promote unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace is for a Christian to learn how to exercise a long-suffering attitude and a demeanor so that he does not come down in judgment overly quick. Nor does he move to the other extreme and never looked at a thing that needs to be observed.
Abraham Lincoln said that one of the best ways to destroy your enemy was to make friends with us. And I think this is a good thing that we could use in our assemblies today, where I seem to detect on almost every kind of fellowship, those that seem to be at odds ends with another, and there is this kind of friction and feeling of ill at ease and sometimes things lie to the surface that are ugly and oughtn't to be there. And if the person would be thinking more in terms of how can I win my brother, my sister, it would be far better than saying how can I get rid of him? How can I handle?
How can I take care of that man? This would be an attitude that needs to be promoted. This is the third thing on the list aside. I want you to notice the next one. He says forbearance. one another. I believe that forbearance is the practical outworking of long-suffering. It doesn't mean that a person is blind to the sins of another, but rather is patient when he sees things in the fellowship that are disturbing to him. You see what I mean? Forbearance does not mean that a person is oblivious or insensitive On the contrary, it means that this person is very much aware of what is wrong or seems to be wrong, but he is withholding himself from taking any drastic judgment of matter or any action in the matter until he's absolutely sure that what he's going to do is what God wants you to do.
I really believe, brethren, that many times the bond of peace has been rudely disturbed because we have acted prematurely. We have said things too quickly. We have done things too rapidly and sometimes we wish that we had not done or said what we did but it's too late to redo it or to undo it I might say I heard of a Christian lady whose son was involved in a terrible traffic accident and they had taken him to the hospital her husband the father of the son was notified and he rushed to the hospital as quickly as he could and as he was standing at the bedside of the son alongside of his wife He suffered a coronary attack, and they had to quickly put him in intensive care.
And the dear woman was there with a son not knowing whether he was going to live, and her husband, as a result of the accident, suffering a heart attack and not knowing whether he was going to live. But one of the Christians in the fellowship decided he would go and see this dear woman. And when he went into the room, he said, Sister, I don't know what to tell you. And she raised her hand. She says, don't tell me anything. She says, I am not going to say anything until I have seen what God is going to do with what he has started. For she saw that God did not and does not do anything without he has some plan in mind.
And to withhold a quick assessment of the situation, whether in pity or whatever it might be, she said, I'm going to withhold it. And they'll see how God brings it to a conclusion. I really believe, brethren, that one of the greatest things that every Christian ought to be exercised about in his fellowship is this business of seeking to maintain the unity of the Spirit. That unity which the Spirit of God affected on the day of May because God says, you don't make it, but I'm expecting you to maintain it and to keep it in the bond of peace. Now the final of the five is this. Because for bearing one another in love, that's the fifth one.
Now we talk about orthodoxy, but before I speak about orthodoxy what we believe, I like to say that some Christians' orthodoxy is pickled in vinegar. And they're just as straight as a proverbial rifle barrel and they're just as cold. You know, no matter what a person believes, unless he is filled with the love of Jesus Christ, unless he is saturated as I see it more and more in my days as I move along, unless the love of God is absolutely baptizing his role or her role in the fellowship to the extent that it is characterized by an overwhelming kind of love, then I believe that He's missed the mark by a thousand months.
He's missed it. I believe that the love of God expressed in a believer's life has one more people at Christ than all the homiletic classes, all the Bible studies, and all the neighborhoods Bible studies that you could ever attend, that has won more people to the Lord Jesus than anything we can ever do. And we seem to be going in circles today to get involved with classes here and classes there, learning this and doing that and finding the woman's role so that she can feel fulfilled whatever that means.
And I'm not taking a shot at the sisters. And if I am, you better put these five things in the crisis in a hurry, or I may be going home on a stretcher sometime. Well, what I'm trying to say is this, that love is that part of a believer's ministry in the body that makes everything else work good. It doesn't make any difference if you give out tracks or whatever you're doing. It ought to be done in the spirit of the spirit of love. Now, let's go over to the next little session here, which begins in verse four. And this is the area of our orthodoxy, the things that we believe. And I see here seven pillars that support this.
Loads what he says to begin with, he says there is one body. One of the great structures that is a result of the unity of the Spirit is that he came up with the most unusual wonderful thing, and that is one body. You know, it's amazing to me that so many people admit that. The world is full of denominations, products of man's invention and ingenuity and reverse gears. And so we've got all these things named, and all of these things become fractious, and the period of sectarianism is curtailing everything. And I believe that the church has gone and has lost her power because of this very fact.
Now, brethren, I can't do much about the denominational setup, but there's one thing I can do. I don't have to add to the confusion. I just want to tell you, brethren, something here, that I'm very thankful for the truth that God has revealed to me, but I believe this, that the one body incorporates every believer. I don't care where you find it. Whether he's in the thirty-third church of the so-and-so or whatever it is, if he is a believer in the Lord Jesus, then I recognize him as being part of the body. He is part of that which I am intimately connected with by the Spirit of God, and in turn connected with the Lord Jesus Christ who is ahead.
Now, unfortunately, not all of those who are Christians in various gatherings see this particular truth. And they'll have to answer for the light that God has given them. But let's see to it that we don't become sectarian in what truth that we have received. You know, denominationalism or sectarianism, let me say, did not originate in the denomination. If I read in the Bible right, it started in the assembly, and I'm thinking particularly of the assembly at Corinth. And they were very notorious for saying, well, I'm of Jesus, and I'm of Paul, and I'm of this, and I'm of that, and they were all linked up with certain men. And so we have some denominations that are linked up with a man with a particular name.
We today sometimes would link up with a certain individual and say, well, he's my cup. And I remember M.J. Kennedy says, you know that Christians in the assembly all have their little cup to drink out of. And I was so dumb in those days. I didn't know what he meant when he explained it to me. He said, well, he said, you'll understand someday. He said, they all have their favorite little creature that they cater to and they listen to. The next thing is, the one spirit and one spirit. Now the one spirit of course is the Holy Spirit and he's the source of our life, the secret of our strength. He is the one that affected the one body. He brought about an organic oneness and I want to say this is more than organizational oneness.
We are tending more to the organizational kind of oneness in order to supplement the organic oneness that was affected by the Spirit of God. And, you know, he knew what he was doing when he made the one body. It's a very precious thing. And then the third thing is one whole. And that, I believe, has his looking to the return of the Lord Jesus. And I believe, rather than that his coming has been said so many times, it's near at hand. It's much nearer now than it was when I first came here. definitely much near. And I don't know whether you're a free trib or a mid-trib or a post-trib or a post-millennialist or whatever you are.
I happen to be a free. We have a dear Christian friend in the assembly in Wichita. He's a mid-tribulation. He believes that the church is going to go through the first part of the tribulation and then Christ is going to come and the rapture will occur. I says, Wang, I don't see it that way. We don't see things alike. prophetically. But when Jesus Christ comes, we're both going to go up at the same time, whether it's before or mid or after. But once the Lord Jesus does come and we're going up and when the sable rain, I told you so. Just to say, I don't want you to think I'm selling out. I don't think that the bride is going to be left to be pummeled through the tribulation.
The tribulation of the seed is a judgment of God. upon the nations, upon Israel, and I don't think that the church has any part or parcel in it. And then he says, there's one Lord, and I want you to notice another thing. It doesn't say one Jesus. The scripture is very, very selective in its use of language, and it does not say one Jesus. It says one Lord, and I think there's a reason for that, because, you see, in the early days of the church, there were many gods recognized by Rome. They had a little niche in the pantheon where they had a little place for Venus, for Jupiter, for Neptune, for Juno, for Artemis, and for Venus, and the rest of these.
I don't know them all, but they had a little mix for every one of them. And when Christianity came along with their Jesus, why Rome was perfectly willing to build a little mix in the pantheon, say, well, we'll make a little mix for your Jesus. And they said, no, you won't make a mix for Jesus, for he is Lord. They said, well, Jesus is Lord. They said, no, Jesus is Lord. They would have been very happy for the Christians to have taken a little incense and burned it in the fire and say, Jesus. But you know the Christians wouldn't do that. They said, he is Lord. You may say, that's a very moot matter to discuss.
Let me tell you something, that those Christians feel that faith and that belief that they're like. Their blood stained the sands of the arena. They would not give up that truth. They said, Jesus is Lord. There is one Lord, not just one Jesus. And then it says here, one faith. Now, I believe that's one revealed body of truth. I don't see the faith as being something which began at a certain time and is constantly being added to. I've never paid really much attention to all the translations that he's been flooded with in the last two years. I've never really paid much attention to it. My son, Dan, he's a past master on these things.
He studies it all the time. I think, Dan, I couldn't care less. I just give me a Bible and says, I'm satisfied. I don't care what translation it is. And he's just shaking his head and walk off and figure that, Dad, is just one of these guys that isn't going to change until he comes and glorifies and glorifies and changes him like he should be. But you know, in these last days, I'm a little bit disturbed to see so many translations coming out, because it seems to me that if these translations are the Word of God, then what was God doing for some several hundred years? Why didn't he come out with these things some time ago? Why is it that this late days that we're being flooded with the real things?
I'm just saying that a little extra thing. There's one faith. And you take with a grain of salt, anybody that comes along and introduces something additional that has never been known before. They were talking to some of the Moonies and said, as I had this man in court, they said, well, you claim that you fought with Jesus Christ. He says, and he then says, I have. He says, I have revelations from Jesus Christ. He says, I have seen Jesus Christ. And he says, I fought with him. He said, how did you recognize him? He says, very easily. He says, I recognize him from the pictures I saw. That ought to be enough to tell you something.
There are too many people a day, they're always looking for something new. Let me tell you something. Everything that God has for you in the journey from earth to heaven, and the servant on the list of God is bound up in the one thing. It's all there. And this isn't the kind that can talk a Bible that the man on the street can read and understand it apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, I tell you, is a trick of the devil. for the things of God are revealed by the Spirit of God. And whenever you get a Bible that you don't need to send prayer over and time over in the presence of God and say, oh, God, reveal to me what you're trying to say, you've got the wrong Bible and you've got the wrong approach to it.
And then I want you to notice the other thing here in this chapter that says one baptism. Well, I'm not going to fight with anybody on this. I believe the one baptism refers to spirit baptism. I've got a lot of friends that believe it's water baptism. Now, don't you come running down the aisle and say, Lent said, I want you to know that's water baptism. Because if I say it's water baptism, it'll be another country. You can say that it's spirit baptism. And I'm going to be scouting them whatever what I say. But I just take a stand. I'll believe it's spirit baptism. And one of the reasons I say that, because if you look at these seven pillars of the faith that are the bulwark of the unity of the Spirit, which is to be kept in the bond of peace, you will notice that every single one of them are divine in origin.
The body, the spirit, and the hope, and the one Lord, and the one faith are all divine products. Not one of them is a product of man. And water baptism, I see that something which is only done as man is able to do it. And to me, it doesn't make A great deal of a point of controversy because I see in water that there isn't an outward or an external symbol of the inward work of the Spirit of God. And I look at much more than a look at the Lord's Supper. There is one Calvary and there is one piece of picture.
But on every large day weep the sound with the elements there, the bread and the wine. And since the bread and the wine are separated, it speaks of the death of Jesus Christ. And that by no means means that there are more than one Calvary or more than one crucifixion or more than one Savior. And then there's one God and one Father. And he is not the universal Father of all men. We're told here, he says, of all, and he means of all believers. Now the second thing is the diversity of the body. And all I want to say about that is that this body has unity, but it also has diversity.
Now, sameness is not the same as diversity, you understand. The body is uniquely compacted and put together in such a manner that God has put every single believer in this body as it has pleased in. This is what we learn in verse seven. But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. In the body... Every believer is somebody in this body. Everybody is somebody in the body.