Each of you, who are Christians, have been called to a great task. The task of Glorifying God, and proclaiming that to the nations. Whether you accepted Christ 20 years ago or yesterday, you have been called to do a great work here on earth.
Please turn to Ephesians 4:1, and listen to Paul’s teaching.
Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.
Let us pray.
Paul begs for us to lead a life worthy of our calling. He begs us. King James version says “beseeches” us. The Greek word Parakaleo, means to call near, by importation.
And the idea here is that Paul means what he is saying from the bottom of his heart. He wants to make the point clear, that we are to lead a life worthy of our calling.
And that hasn’t changed. 2000 years later, we are to live worthy of our calling.
I want you to think about this for second.
Barna research did a study on the unchurched, that is, those who do not go to church. The studies found that 1/3 of all adults are unchurched.
And 1 out of 5 of those, who are unchurched, are born again. Barna makes this distinction, of being born again, to mean those that when they are asked about if they are going to heaven and why, they respond by saying they have received Christ as their savior.
What does that tell us?
It tells us that 2/3 of the population go to church on some regular basis, and possibly a larger number of them that are saved.
Do you wonder why our country is in the mess that it is in?
It is not, those heathen sinners—they do not know any better.
It is the Christians. The Christians are not leading a life worthy of our calling.
What would happen if 2/3 of the American population began living a moral life.
Christians must be different.
We should look different.
We should act different.
We should do different things.
But too many times we would just like the world. A world, that is in rebellion against God. We need to live our lives worthy of our calling.
When Paul thinks of us leading the life worthy of our calling, the first thing he thinks of, is humility and gentleness.
Verse two:
2Be humble and gentle.
What does humble mean? Humble means modest in spirit, not proud.
Paul gives us an example of humility in Philippians 2:5-11,
5Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. 6Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. 7He made himself nothing;? he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form.?
8And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross. 9Because of this, God raised him up to the heights of heaven and gave him a name that is above every other name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
If we are going to lead a life worthy of our calling, we are to be humble, as Christ was humble.
Are we humble?
Let’s look at some trends in America.
First of all, have you ever heard “look out for number one”?
We say that concept has made America great. That we look out for ourselves first.
But look at Philippians 2:4:
4Don’t think only about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and what they are doing.
Are we humble?
We are to look out for number one—yes. But, that number one is Christ.
And when we begin to look out for number one, me, or number one, you—we have made ourselves God. We have put ourselves in God’s place. He is to be number one.
And don’t forget, that was the temptation of Eve in the garden, when the serpent said “You will become just like God, knowing everything, both good and evil.” In Genesis 3:5.
Second, Americans have adopted a victim mentality. One of our favorite phrases is “it is not my fault”.
Another phrase that we hear is, “he acts that way because…”
He drinks or does drugs because he has a hard life.
He robs banks because he had a hard childhood.
He walks into a school and kills thirteen people because the other kids at school picked on him.
No, they do these things because they are sinners. They make a choice to be disobedient to God. Just like you and I do, when we sin.
I do believe that culture has some influence. That is why we need to repent of our sinful culture and turn back to Christ.
But the bottom line is that we are all sinners.
And when we come to the realization that we are sinners before a holy God, and realize that we are unable to be saved without his help—then we will be humble.
Because each of us are sinners, whether we have killed 500 people or simply told a lie.
The Bible says in James 2:10:
10And the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as the person who has broken all of God’s laws.
And that payment for that guilt is death.
So how do we lead a life worthy of a call?
We first must humble ourselves.
When we humble ourselves we recognize that we have no reason to be proud. We don’t deserve it any special favors. Not from God anyway. Because the very fact that we’re able to stand before God is because of what his son did on the cross to sacrifice for you and for me.
2 Chronicles 7:4 says,
4Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.
And, to lead a life worthy of the calling, we are to be humble.
The second thing Paul thinks of when he begs the Ephesians to lead a life worthy of the calling is to be patient.
How those Paul describe patience?
Verse two continues:
Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.
Making allowance for each other’s faults, is realizing that no one is perfect either.
Once you have humbled yourself and realized that you’re not perfect, you must realize that others are not either. So, be patient.
Does this mean that we ignore sin?
Absolutely not, but every Christian is on a similar path. And it takes patience and persistence, to mold believers in to maturity.
What does Paul say about patience? What does patience look like? It doesn’t look like American Christianity.
I Corinthians 4:11-13 says,
11To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, without enough clothes to keep us warm. We have endured many beatings, and we have no homes of our own. 12We have worked wearily with our own hands to earn our living. We bless those who curse us. We are patient with those who abuse us. 13We respond gently when evil things are said about us. Yet we are treated like the world’s garbage, like everybody’s trash—right up to the present moment.
We want to have everything so nice.
We complain if we are too hot or too cold.
We get upset if things don’t go as fast as we would like.
We want instant everything.
We want the nicest things.
We are quick to cry foul, when we are persecuted.
We are to be patient. A Biblical patience.
To lead a life worthy of the calling, we must be humble, we must be patient, and we must be unified.
Verse three:
3Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit, and bind yourselves together with peace.
We are to be united in the Holy Spirit.
We talk a lot about unity in church. We talk a lot about being family and getting along—but how do we become unified?
First we have the Same Mission: Glorify God
The easiest way we can become distracted from unity is for us to seek a different purpose.
Our purpose is not Evangelism.
Our purpose is not the Sunday Morning Service
Our purpose is not Missions.
Our purpose is not Sunday School.
Our purpose is not even to know and teach the Bible.
Our purpose as a church is to be the BRIDE OF CHRIST!!
Which means we are to be unified in glorifying God.
John Piper said, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
As we become Satisfied in Him we will learn to do these things, but we are not to get the cart before the horse.
We are to rally around God.
As we surrender our lives to Christ.
As we let go of ourselves.
We will begin:
To tell people about Christ.
To take part in the morning worship.
To take part in missions—which is praying, giving, and going.
To be active in Sunday School.
To take the time necessary to know the Bible and what it says so that you can give that much more to Christ.
Do you want to see UNITY in this church?
You must surrender to Christ every bit of yourself to him.
Every bit of Your opinions.
Every bit of Your possessions.
Every bit of Your family.
Every bit of Your friends.
Every bit of Your culture.
Every bit of EVERYTHING.
And then as we all seek the face of God we will be unified.
We become unified, secondly, by having the Same Playbook: The Bible.
As we Glorify God we must follow Paul’s instructions to Timothy.
II Timothy 3:16
16All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right. 17It is God’s way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do.
So we need to apply it to our lives.
We cannot be unified is we are getting theology from a man.
Or, by saying I know the Bible says that, BUT…
We must follow the Bible. The Bible is the final authority. Not me, not a radio preacher, not your opinion, nothing but the Bible.
We are to unify around the Bible. It gives us the instructions for Glorifying God.
The third way we can have unity in this church is by having the same Spirit, Peace.
Look at the last part of verse 3.
and bind yourselves together in peace
The Bible says “Blessed are the Peacemakers”
As we seek to become more and more unified we must each seek to become peacemakers.
All of us can get so distracted by petty issues that we forget to be peacemakers.
Again, I am not talking about taking a stand for morality. Because, I believe the Bible teaches us to be Salt and Light to a lost and dying world.
But we are to pursue peace among ourselves.
Peace is not gossiping
Peace is not grumbling if you don’t get your way
Peace is not getting angry and sinning against your brother in someway
We are to clothe ourselves in Love.
Act in Love.
Speak in Love.
Listen in Love.
Be patient in Love.
We are to bind ourselves together with peace.
We are to lead a life worthy of the calling, for you have been called by God.
Christian, I believe that it is time that each of us turn our lives over in humility, patience, and unity and follow Christ.
Every morning we have a time of decision. This is a time for Christians to spend time making the decisions that we need to make concerning our spiritual walk.
You may need to pray for someone.
You may just want to pray.
You may want to say from this point on I will give everything to Christ.
But there are those here that are still remain in sin.
And you know that if you would die today, that you would spend eternity in hell, because of your sin.
Well, I have good news for you, Jesus paid that payment for you, and all that you have to do is accept it.
Just simply ask him into your life right now.
And you can come and share that with me this morning.
What ever your decision, you come.
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This sermon was preached at Padgett’s Creek Baptist Church in 2001-2003.
All Scripture in this post are from: Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.