Paul Sapp's sermon, based on Ephesians 4:1-2, calls believers to walk in a manner worthy of their calling. The sermon emphasizes that true Christian living is not about grand gestures but about cultivating specific attitudes: lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, and forbearance in love. These virtues are presented as the practical outworking of God's eternal purpose and the power of the Holy Spirit within believers. The ultimate aim is to bring glory to God through a life that reflects His character and love, urging believers to live out their faith in these foundational ways.
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while I put on this microphone, which will make it hard for me to deny what I've said if I change my mind later, right? It's a wonderful good thing about recordings. It's really a pleasure to be in Atlantic. It's, to the best of my knowledge, my first visit. Atlantic was a sign on the edge of the road traveling from many years in God's country, Colorado, and having to come to the wicked east. Now I live in the semi-wicked east.
The Buke isn't too bad. But I do work, as Johnny said, with the Emmaus Correspondence Ministries, and I will take a little time tomorrow afternoon to give you a commercial announcement. encouraging you to pray for us and the work God is doing I would like to talk in my times here on the worthy walk the worthy walk and I have taken for my text Ephesians four verses one and two Ephesians four verses one and two I therefore the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you, that you walk worthy of the vocation to which ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering forbearing one another in love.
Now I'd like to put these verses, tonight I'd like to put these verses in context. The book of Ephesians is a particularly lovely book. I say that advisedly. I've just finished reading the book of Jeremiah, and it is not a lovely book. It's a frightening book. It's a terrible book when you read about the judgment of God upon his people, and then his judgment upon the people he used to destroy them. Very, very difficult book. Ephesians is written to a group of people that truly seem to be spiritually prosperous.
They have grown well. They've been kept by God from a lot of the things that slipped into places like Colossi and, of course, the horror of Galatianism. And so it's a book filled with tenderness and a positive encouragement to go on. And so the theme of Ephesians is the eternal purpose of God. And especially as it's been worked out in the church. Sometimes it's difficult to realize because we look around and things seem to be chaotic. It's difficult to realize that God's got a plan.
And it's going his way. It's going his way. It's not going anybody else's way. And even though at times it seems that Satan and the forces of evil are almost running out of control, the fact of the matter is that they are not. They are not. And so the Apostle Paul wants to talk to the Ephesians, wants to write to them as he does in most of his books with some strong doctrinal sections, and then as is always true with the Word of God, doctrine leads to duty knowledge demands obedience and action and you know we I will I will talk mostly about one verse but you know you realize that when this letter came to the Ephesian Christians somebody got up and read it for beginning to end and so people got the whole dose I've always always exercised by the Apostle Paul's statement to the Ephesian elders.
He says, now I've told you everything you need to know in Acts twenty. I've told you everything. I think, you know, in association with a Bible college and especially some of the faculty members with whom I have a particularly close relationship going back many years, and one of the things I like about knowing is they're always learning. there's always more and there's just always there's always so much more to know well the Apostle Paul said I told you everything you needed to know he says that in Ephesus and and so now he writes a letter and the entire letter is for our benefit even though we're going I'm going to select a point but Having finished his doctrinal statements, he comes to his prayer, and I would like to consider that very briefly this evening.
Beginning at verse thirteen, verse fourteen, pardon me, of chapter three. For this cause, now what's the cause? I desire that ye faint not at my tribulation. For you which is your glory. Now for this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He reflects immediately upon his attitude. His attitude. His attitude in prayer is not a wild foray upon the divine prerogatives trying to...
coerce a reluctant deity into some path, rather he starts out his prayer with that essential sense of submission to God. Now, it just becomes so hard, you know, because if we If everybody, if we had a prayer time and everybody knelt down, you know, in a little while it would become formalized and wouldn't have the impact of just something everybody does. And soon you'd have little kneelers on the chairs and the Catholic Chapel at Emmaus has nice kneelers and all that.
And, of course, so much of what went on there for so many years was empty of any content that glorified God. but you know it still is a reflection of his attitude I I bow my knees unto the father of our Lord Jesus Christ Paul understands who's in charge who's in charge we forget very easily now I don't mean that we forget to say that God is in charge we forget that God is in charge of us. Happens easily. I'm going to talk a little bit about that.
Now he goes on, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. This is in great agreement with all the great prayers of the Bible, the public prayers, the prayers that were prayers as a result of trials, Prayers at the dedication of the temple. David in First Chronicles twenty-nine prays over what God has enabled him to gather. And then Solomon, when they dedicate the temple, has a tremendous prayer. And the thing that's so typical of these prayers is there is a preoccupation in the prayer with the greatness of God, with the greatness and supremacy of God.
Even when the disciples come back, having been beaten and told by the Sanhedrin not to spend any more time preaching in the name of Jesus, even when these men come back to pray, let's go, that's instructive, Acts chapter four, we'll see what kind of praying they do. They've come back. They've been beaten up. You could think of a lot of things they might want to say. But look what they do say. Acts four, verse twenty four. And when they heard that, they had told them everything. They told the people what had happened.
They lifted up their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, thou art God, who has made heaven and earth. and the sea and all that it in them is. There's a tremendous sense of the greatness of God. I think that is what enables them to finally make their request, which is give us boldness so that we can go out and really take these people on and tell them about the Lord Jesus. They've talked about His greatness in the prayer. They quote from the Scriptures reminding themselves that God has spoken and it's been fulfilled.
You know, and the kind of thing that's been fulfilled. Why did the nations raise? They've just been beaten up by the nations. They've just been beaten up by the Sanhedrin representing the Jewish people. The Lord Jesus has been crucified in Jerusalem. And they're saying, boy, it's just the way you said. See, their attitude is fixed upon the greatness of God in their prayer. And you find this in the great prayers of the Bible. Jeremiah and Jeremiah thirty-two. He talks and he's filled with the greatness of God. And so Paul's prayer follows this pattern. And it behooves us.
It is an encouragement to us that when we pray in a formal way. Now, the prayer, you know, Peter's going down. Lord saved me. That's a good prayer. It's a time for that prayer. But I'm talking about times of considered prayer. And he is praying and he says, I bow before my father and he reflects of whom the whole family in heaven and in earth is named. There's a tremendous recognition in this of the supremacy of God. The fact that God is in charge. God is in control. The planets are moving at the hands of God.
There's no reason to think Paul understood celestial mechanics and all those things. He just knew that God was in charge. And he knew that God was in charge of people. But he's in charge. He is the creator of every individual. And he is the one who has named them. And the idea of being named is... You know, the old idea was that if you could give something its name, in fact, if you go to some Indian tribes in this country, they have a secret name and then they have the name they'll tell you. And the secret name, they don't tell anybody.
And you always can get a little nickname because they try and, the Navajo, I had a nickname when I'd gone there. I can't say it in Navajo, but I was called the Snowman. And they were trying to say, well, you know, this is Paul Satt, the snowman. I don't know how I got it, but I got it. It wasn't even snowing the first time I went there. Well, if you could name something, it meant that you were in authority over it. And the apostle recognizes who's in charge. That God is in charge. Now he comes with his requests in sixteen to nineteen.
And as some Bible scholar said, no prayer that has ever been framed has uttered a bolder request. That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God what more could you ask for what more could you ask for now it is not my desire to really comment on this prayer at any length but there's a tremendous sense of what God can do for these people.
And there's a recognition that He's the only one that can do it. That it's God who can do these things and He'll go on to say, and even more, and even more. I think it's very difficult in our prosperous Western civilization to maintain any lasting sense of neediness. Everybody falls on hard times economically. Farmers, some of you may be. If you were connected with farmers, you had some hard years.
But, you know, everything still goes on. And it's difficult to have a sense that if God does not work, I'm doomed. If God does not work, it's all a waste. If God doesn't do these things in our hearts, our lives will be a wreck and we will be poverty stricken in the day in which it will be a horror to be poverty stricken at the judgment seat of Christ. The apostle knows what things they need and he knows where they're going to get them from.
This is the only place to get these things. That's why the believer's prayer life is absolutely one of the key spiritual disciplines. John Calvin once said that the true proof of faith is prayer. The true proof of faith is prayer. Now, he didn't mean that there was no proof of faith in trusting in Christ. He was just commenting on the fact that those who believed God would be typified by constantly going to God. Constantly going to God. And so he asked for some truly tremendous things.
Verse twenty. Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us. unabashed by the greatness of his position asking for revolutionary changes inside the hearts of people being rooted grounded in love Christ dwelling in your heart by faith now these are all these are believers to whom he's writing and to really know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge now he's asked for big things gigantic things but he's not he's not he's not overwhelmed by what he's asking for You know, often in our prayer life, I sometimes get this idea, I'm going to ask for something really big.
And you sort of get lost in what you're asking for. Big mistake, big mistake. He's asked for great things. But now he triumphantly invokes a power which can do far more than he asked. or even more than he can imagine. Do you ever read the Christian biographies? You know, some of them have been very helpful to me. Hudson Taylor's a new five-volume biography of Hudson Taylor out on China's open century. You have to face the fact that Hudson Taylor was a modern-day Job.
His children die. His wife dies. Just when things are going well, missionaries that he has encouraged to go to the field get killed in their tens and twenties at a time, the government turns against them at this point. You've got rebellions. And you get a lot of encouragement, though, because while he was doing all this suffering, he was opening up. the interior of China to the gospel and only God knows how many hundreds of thousands people today would say millions have gone into the kingdom because God found a good servant in Hudson Taylor well these people he asked for great things he says as he was a he was a child he had he was a very sickly child in fact for a year as a child He spent it in bed.
And his parents thought he would die. And he says this. He says, as I thank God for the Lord Jesus, my love grew. And so I besought him to give me some small work for him as an outlet for love and gratitude. He was just a young boy when he was praying that. I just want something to do for you because I do love you. Well, he asked for pretty big stuff. Some small work is an outlet for love and gratitude and he ended up with China. Well, look at this.
Now, the Apostle Paul has asked for tremendous things, great transcendent things for the people of God to whom he's writing. And now he says, Now he's able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. The greatest thing that you could ever ask God for, there is a tremendous willingness of God to do more. We need to be typified in our relationship with God with a tremendous sense of greed. Peter will say in the last verse of his second book, he'll say, now grow in grace.
What does that mean? Let God do more for you today than he did yesterday. Grow in grace. Let him do more today. Ask him to do more. You see, now, if you did something to save somebody's life, and they, let's say they were drowning, You pulled them out. Maybe you took them home, gave them some coffee, changed your clothes, and said goodbye. Now, the next day they show up on your doorstep and said, since you've done this much for me, I'm going to let you take care of me the rest of my life. Would you like that?
Well, no, you probably wouldn't like that, and you probably shouldn't like that. But God is different, and our needs are different. God is happier the more you ask him to do. You have to go through the Psalms. The Psalmist will say, what shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits? He says, I'll take the cup of salvation. More. I'll take more. And so this is the attitude in which the Apostle is praying. Now I've asked for big things for you, and there's great desires I have that all these tremendous things happen in you. but he says he's able to do more he's able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us we have had in this century so much error about the Holy Spirit that we have run headlong away And this is something really significant.
Oh, we haven't missed it. We know that the Holy Spirit dwells within us. As soon as we were saved, we got the Holy Spirit. So what has he done for you today? What did you ask him for today? What did he say to you today? How did he remind you today? Did you grieve him today? Did you quench him today? Well, you see, we were always on a pendulum. It's a natural way of human beings, I guess. And so some people go crazy over the other side and we swing back the other way. But there is a power working in us. It was working in Paul.
It was working in the Ephesians. And every believer in this room has the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God living within them. The spirit that in Romans eight, the great chapter on the Holy Spirit's work who is said to be the spirit of life, the spirit of life. A question that I occasionally ask is if you're alive, in what way is your life different from the dead around you? The Bible says that the people without Christ are dead. Now, in what way are you different?
What kind of life do you have? You know, it's popular today in talking about the most horrible things that shouldn't even be mentioned by human beings, the quality of life, let that retarded child die, or these horrible things that are so terrible. They talk about quality of life. Well, you know, we as believers should have some thought about quality of life. What's the quality of the life in me? There's a tremendous power working in us. So what kind of life do we have? If the guy that you work with or your neighbor is dead, how are you different?
How are you different? It's a very, very big question. A question that merits some thought. There's a power working in us. And he says now in verse twenty one, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. Now he recognizes that the end of everything that is to happen is to bring glory to God. Glory to God. We live in a day in which it has become, you would not want to be identified with the message of Jimmy Swagger's, even though the message that he often preaches is very clear and sound.
But it's gotten smudged. But what kind of message do people get from us? How much glory is there to God and how much smudge is there from my life? Now the aim, the great plan of God is to bring glory to himself. That's what God is doing. Glory is that cause for praise, cause for renown, magnificence. When you hear that man take the name of God in vain.
Take the name of Christ in vain. Do you look for the day when there's glory for the name of Christ? Is that what you want? In lamentation, the prophet will say, now these people have really harassed your people and we deserved it. Now he says, bring glory to yourself by destroying them all. Oh, I tell you, kill them all. And Babylon, which was given the great distinction to be the tool of God, to punish Israel, to punish Moab, and to punish the Philistines, and to punish Egypt.
When God is done, he says, now, there's not, you're not going to have a stone. If you go to the site of Babylon today if you see a couple people hurting goats you'll be lucky because even though they were the tool of God God was angry with them destroyed them one of the seven wonders of the ancient world the hanging gardens of Babylon there's not even a rock to find God is going through history History is moving in a direction. All these things are happening, and the end of it is going to be to bring glory to God.
Everyone will say, God had a wonderful plan. God is magnificent. It's a man in the world. It's going to bow at the name of Christ and say, God gets the glory. He's the only one. He created us. They're going to acknowledge all kinds of things that they don't want to acknowledge now. Well, the same is true of us. And as he prays, he says now, unto him be glory in the church. Glory in the church. Now, I think it's a very subjective thing. I will tell you some things that I think will bring glory to God in the church.
But the fact is that every believer has as their desire the glory of God. Even if it's really smudged pretty well, in our sober moments we want the glory of God. We want credit to come to God. We want honor for God. Now, we do some really bad things. And I think often, I say this more for myself than I don't know anything about hardly any of you here. I know quite a bit about Jim Star, and I've forgiven him for most of it.
But I don't know most of you here. But the thing is, what will give glory to God? what will bring glory to God in in in your life and in your in your meeting what's going to happen now this is his prayer that I we want you to be bringing glory to God your desire should be to have glory for God and God says you know what he says I will not share my glory with another and I can say for myself I forget the past quite a bit as I've gotten older, conveniently.
Not conveniently older, but conveniently forgetful. But the thing is, so often, if something was happening, there was just such a tendency for some of the glory to stick to me. You know, you want to say something about something God is doing. And it's really one of the hard things about the correspondence work. Because some things of which I have had absolutely nothing whatsoever in a million years to do, if I tell you about them, it might be true that I'd like you to think that, you know, man's involved in a good work.
We see it's so tricky. So tricky. And the glory sticks to our fingers. I had a terrible revelation one time. We had a man in the meeting, and when I refer to the meeting, I always think of the years I was in Colorado Springs at Northeast Bible Chapel, and that's the big meeting as far as I'm concerned. My wife was part of the Millennial Assembly in Staten Island, New York, and in the years when she was growing up and was saved there, it was really pretty close to as good a place as you could ever find. on the face of the earth so she has her favorite assembly too but I think about we're gathered around there's a man who has had a terrible industrial accident been saved several years and is was in a coma for weeks has had some brain damage and he asked the elders to come and anoint him with oil and pray for him now we have all we all have our opinion about that what we were doing and what we meant to do but anyway we go and we're we're around the brother we're all he's sitting in a chair and all
of the elders about eight of us we have our hands on him and each of us go around and we pray that God would do something for him and I realized in a terrible flash of insight that at least as far as I was concerned, God couldn't do anything for this man because we would be absolutely uncontrollable if God had done anything special. I knew it for myself. I don't know, I'm not saying that about the other. I knew in my heart that if somehow God had healed him or had done some great thing, I knew that I was not fit for that to happen.
It couldn't happen because I could see myself going from coast to coast talking about this great thing as though I had done something I really sick I thought oh we can't help this man I can't help this man I you know I I had no insight that God wanted to do some great thing but I did have an insight that God was not going to and that I was a good cause why God could not move in power to do something because the glory so much of it would stick to my fingers. You ever feel that way? A lot of failure among believers.
Massive, massive failure. Sin, powerlessness, death, sometimes physical, sometimes spiritual, terrible trials. Believers in so many places are believers with all kinds of conflicting ideas and pulled this way and that way. I think that one of the things that keeps us back from having more from God is that we don't really have His glory single-mindedly in view. And that's not saying, well, God did a wonderful work for us. I think we should say that. But it's a deep inner sense.
that it started with God, it continued with God, and it ended with God, and he did everything. He did it all. And I tell him, you did it all. You did it all. So his prayer is that there'll be glory for God. Now, we come to the appeal, the appeal. And this is what I'm not going to talk on and on tonight, but... Does that squeaking frighten anybody? Nobody in the front rows, I'll tell you. I have great faith.
I believe that this is holding up. But I'll tell you, if it drops, I'm going to leave. And if you're in the second row, not being in the first row, it's not going to save you. A warning. Okay, so now we've had this tremendous prayer and he's asked for great things. And so we would suppose that now he is going to tell us to go out and conquer the world. But he's not. But he's not. And in fact, after verse two of chapter four, everything that follows in the rest of the letter may be considered as nothing more than an expansion of his appeal in verses one and two.
All the practical ways in which you are to relate husbands to wives, children, employers, slaves to owners, all these things, they all, the right attitude stems out of verse two. And so we're going to get a tremendous call to do something that no one can do and yet God considers so important and so valuable that he's put it right out here as number one priority here's what I want here's my appeal the Apostle will say I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation to which ye are called with all lowliness and meekness with long suffering forbearing one another in love.
All of this prayer, all of this power that works in us, all this request to the one who's going to be able to do it, seating abundantly above all that we ask or think, all of this is designed to do what for me, to motivate me to have this kind of heart, this kind of heart. We're not called to great acts of evangelism. So the Lord knows we need it. We need it. You know, there are more missionaries working among the Indians of Alaska than there are working among the nine hundred and fourteen million followers of Islam.
So there's plenty of work to be done. But that's not what we're called upon to do. We're not called upon in the light of this tremendous statement to go and reach the world for Christ. I don't think for a minute that I don't think that's important because the Lord Jesus five times talked about the Great Commission in one way or another. What does God want? You know, and you have some contact with students at a Bible college, and most of these people have come with a desire to learn and to know God.
There's some wonderful, wonderful young people. But by and large, they're young. And so there is a real, there's a lot of agonizing about the will of God, the will of God, the will of God. And I understand that. and in practical ways and in personal things there's a lot of agonizing for me I don't you know what should the correspondence court department do we have limited money maybe we should produce a new prison course or should we produce a course on this what should we do should we have a video I mean you know it's not that easy sometimes but you know the things that God really wants are right out in front and crystal clear it doesn't take any special insight It doesn't take any puzzling out and unwrapping some convoluted conundrum to find out what God wants you to do.
What God likes. You don't have to do a thing. Here it is. It's stated in clarity. This is the appeal. Now, he sharpens the appeal. with a statement about himself. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord. I won't embarrass somebody that came late that works in the prison ministry by saying anything about them, but I would have thought that Bennett's could have made it earlier. They're friends, so I can insult them.
What does the fact that Paul is the prisoner... And you know it really is the prisoner in the Lord. The prisoner in the Lord. Now there were chains that were limiting his physical freedom. Limiting his physical freedom. But that wasn't what he was talking about. Alone. That's part of it. But what he's talking about is there's somebody that controls his life. He is a prisoner of the Lord in the Lord. And he attests to the fact. And this is part of his plea. I'm a prisoner of the Lord.
I'm a prisoner in the Lord. The Lord owns me. The Lord is my Lord. The Lord is not absolute control of me. Does that mean he was sinless? No, no, you know, he wasn't. He had his moments. You don't know. God doesn't pronounce who was right or wrong when he had that terrible conflict with his dear brother over John Mark. But you know from the Bible that they had no right to have that conflict that way. It got so fierce that they had to part company. Here's a man that believed in the unity of the body of Christ. So he wasn't a perfect man.
but he was the prisoner of the Lord. And he was being controlled by the Lord. And so this is an attestation to his life, but it also adds power to what he's going to ask them to do. To what kind of value structure he is going to build on the basis of this tremendous prayer. We'll talk about it some more tomorrow. You might be outrageous and read over. Memorize. This is children, I'd say. If you memorize Ephesians four, two, I wouldn't give you quarters.
A pound of chocolate. No. Well, it would be very helpful if you could memorize Ephesians four, one and two tonight. It ain't difficult. Not big words. You get it into the mind. So go home and be real adventuresome and memorize it. I'm going to talk some more about these attitudes that God likes. Let's pray. Our God and Father, we...