Grand Parkway Baptist Church
Grand Parkway Baptist Church
Between Two Worlds | Elijah Lamb
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Why is the church called "love rehab"? Discover how living in deep, authentic Christian unity transforms your spiritual walk and demonstrates the Gospel to a divided world.
In this sermon, guest speaker Elijah Lamb walks through the book of Ephesians to address a fundamental question: How should the resurrection of Jesus change our everyday lives right now? Explore what it means to be a "new creation community" caught between the present age and the full coming of God's Kingdom, and learn why your personal growth in Christ is inseparable from your commitment to the local church.
In this episode, we cover:
- The "Already / Not Yet" Tension: Understanding inaugurated eschatology and living between two prophetic mountain peaks.
- The Cosmic Scope of the Gospel: How Christ is reuniting heaven and earth, spiritual and material realities, in and through the church.
- The Church as "Love Rehab": Why the local church is God's designated playground for healing wounds, overcoming individualistic culture, and learning how to love.
- Unity as the Primary Witness: How unlikely people coming together in Christ serves as a prophetic "embassy" of heaven behind enemy lines.
- Growing Into the Head: Why you cannot grow into spiritual maturity in isolation apart from the active, working body of Christ.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro: The Church as Love Rehab
00:46 – Welcome & Reflections on the Resurrection
03:40 – The Telescopic View of the Prophets (Isaiah 61 & Zechariah 9)
06:10 – Inaugurated Eschatology: Living Between the Two Mountain Peaks
08:50 – Speedrunning Ephesians: New Creation People in an Old Creation World
13:10 – Reuniting Heaven & Earth in Christ (Ephesians 1 & 2)
17:00 – The Church as a Microcosm of God’s Cosmic Plan
21:15 – An Embassy Behind Enemy Lines (Ephesians 3)
24:30 – Walk Worthy: Making Every Effort for Unity (Ephesians 4)
28:00 – Overcoming Individualism & Growing Up Into Christ Together
34:10 – Practical Application: Forgiveness, Reconciliation, & Closing Prayer
Be sure to follow us:
– Intro: The Church as Love Rehab
SPEAKER_01Listen, the church is love rehab. Like this is where you come to get your heart rehabilitated. This is where you come to learn what it means to love and what it means to live God's way and what it means to be healthy and what it means to be whole and what it means to actually be a person who can live in relationship well. This is the stomping ground, the playground where we get to come and relearn. That's why God has given you the church. That's why God has planted your life here. So that you can you can be restabilized and you can know how to live a healthy life. So that you can gain wisdom and live holy.
SPEAKER_00This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God. For more information about Grand Parkway, visit our website at grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_01Good
– Welcome & Reflections on the Resurrection
SPEAKER_01morning. How are you? It's good to be with you all. My name is Elijah Lamb. Some people ask me sometimes if that's a stage name. That'd be weird. It's not. That's just my real name. I can show you my government documents if you want proof. I was just born to be a preacher. Couldn't help it. I have been with your students this weekend at Why Weekend, and it was a blast, right? All right. I guess I did like a four out of ten, I guess. That was weak sauce, guys. You're supposed to like, you know, make it seem like that was a good use of everyone's time and energy and effort, but that's alright, you know. You guys heard about the Gen Z stare? No? It's like, you know, when you go into like a coffee shop and you get this. So, you know, try preaching to just that. That'll sanctify you quick. If you live for approval, the Lord is gonna do a work in you. If you have to look at the faces I look at. Um, I'm Elijah. I am from Florida, but I live in Los Angeles. I've lived there for the past four years. The Lord called me out and drew me into Babylon so I could tear those walls down. Uh no, my wife and I have lived there the past four years. Her name is Blythe. She would be with me, but she refuses to get on planes anymore because she is seven months pregnant with our daughter. Uh so pray for us, please. Um, you know, all the things. It's like the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life. So I'm just overjoyed. I feel separation anxiety from my wife's stomach right now. I just like it need to be like. Fun fact: my daughter in the womb really loves Creed. Like Scott Stabb Creed. I found that out on accident, but anytime I throw on like my sacrifice or higher, that baby is just like doing backflips in there. Can you drink? You know, she just goes nuts. So that is my daughter. Um, all right, I'm gonna stop messing around. Let's get into the word. We're gonna preach the Bible this morning. Sound good? Great. So a few weeks ago, just a few weeks out of Easter now, uh, I was reflecting upon Easter, upon the message of the resurrection. I was trying to get down to the bottom of some pretty critical questions, namely, how does the gospel, the message of the death and resurrection of God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ, how should we expect that to change life here and now as we know it? And this is really one of the most basic questions of theology, and it's also a wrestle that every Christian at one point or another is going to have to face, even if you can't articulate it in all kinds of sophisticated theological jargon. Every single one of us is going to have to reckon with the fact that the gospel tells us really good, amazing truths, and that here, living in our lives where things can be pretty tough, it can be very difficult to believe that those truths are really true, and that the events that we proclaim and the things that we expect are really coming forward. You know, we believe that Jesus Christ really
– The Telescopic View of the Prophets (Isaiah 61 & Zechariah 9)
SPEAKER_01has in a magnificent, powerful way done away with sin. He has eliminated our guilt and washed us clean by his blood. We believe that he has tied up the strong man, bound the devil, crushed his head, put him in his place. We believe that he really has conquered death and the grave so that men might live forever with him. We believe that these things are true, but in serious and significant ways we are still decaying. Like we're still fading, getting older, and then there's not a single person in this room that is a stranger to suffering. None of us have lived a suffering-free life. We've all faced things that are unfair. And and the the hard part in the midst of that to admit is that we haven't just been witnesses of brokenness, but that we have been participants in brokenness. You at one point or another have contributed to making the world a worse place. All of us in our words and our actions, we have defaced the good creator's good creation. We have added to the whirlwind of difficulty that it is to live on planet Earth. And so it's really easy to look at that and feel like, hey, God, the world doesn't feel very fixed. It doesn't feel like resurrection life is just emanating through every area of my existence. It's not really how it feels. And it reminds me of something the Apostle Paul says, where he writes to his disciple Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 1, and he writes about Christ Jesus, who has come and has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And it's like, yeah. Heck yeah, Paul, Jesus killed death. Let's go. But the thing is, if you read the context of 2 Timothy, you find out that, like, the this is a very, very ironic statement from Paul, because he is writing this from a Roman prison where he's about to die. This is a deathbed encouragement to Timothy. Hey Timothy, you know how this Roman state, this imperializing force that is literally being actively possessed by demonic powers, yeah, they're gonna cut my head off. Anyway, Jesus killed death and brought life and immortality to life. It just feels like, Paul, how are we putting those two things side by side? You know, it's like, hey, Paul, death doesn't feel super abolished to me, bro. Feels like death is doing just fine. What we're experiencing here and now often doesn't seem to match, for example, like how the prophets said things would go down. Let me give you a couple examples. In Isaiah chapter 61, Isaiah writes about the Messiah that he was going to come and he was going to bring and announce the year of the Lord's favor. He was going to have this powerful ministry, and in this ministry, he was
– Inaugurated Eschatology: Living Between the Two Mountain Peaks
SPEAKER_01going to bring God's ultimate vengeance against evil. He was going to wipe out injustice and suffering and brokenness and darkness and pain. And like, yes, Jesus did deal with evil and brokenness in really seriously meaningful ways. He really did conquer the evil one, which is the animating force behind brokenness in our world. But also, there's still a bunch of evil happening. There's still a bunch of injustice and suffering happening. Or like in Zechariah chapter 9, where Zachariah about writes about a king who would come to us riding humble on a donkey, and when he gets off that donkey, you know what the first thing Zechariah says he's gonna do? He's gonna bring world peace. He's gonna make it make the nation stop fighting each other. I don't know if you know, I believe 2,000 years ago Jesus really did ride into Jerusalem humble and on a donkey, but I also believe the nations are still fighting each other. So where's that messianic world peace that Zechariah told us about? It turns out that there are large gaps between these two verses, between Isaiah 61, 1 and 2 and Zachariah 9, 9 to 10, and many other verses. There's thousands of years of history between these two promises, and the prophets didn't quite anticipate that. Biblical scholars describe this by saying that the prophets have a telescopic view of the future. Okay, so imagine you are looking at a mountain range from the summit of a mountain, like you are at the mountain peak, and you were looking at all the other mountain peaks ahead of you, and it looks almost two-dimensional, right? It's like these peaks are collapsed onto one another. They just look like one after the other after the other. You have you cannot tell from where you are standing how far apart they are. That is the angle that the prophets had on God's redemptive plan on human history. And now we have, we can see the mountain range like from the side. We can see how far apart the peaks actually are. We've been given insight that the prophets didn't have. And so the prophets will talk about one thing God was going to do and then another thing God is going to do as if they are simultaneous events, whereas in reality they are very far apart. And what we don't expect when you read Isaiah 61 or Zechariah 9 or many other places in the prophets is that you and I are going to have to be the people who are caught in the awkward space between those two mountain peaks. Like we're in that weird valley that the prophets didn't know how wide and how deep really were. And the way the theologians articulate this is basically by saying that some aspects of the kingdom are already here and some are yet to come. This is called inaugurated eschatology. That's a big fancy, nerdy way of saying that the end times began with the birth of Jesus Christ. He is the beginning of eschatology. The last days have begun at his first arrival, they're just not done yet. So eschatological end times things have been happening since Jesus came the first time, and they will continue to happen until he ultimately wraps them up.
– Speedrunning Ephesians: New Creation People in an Old Creation World
SPEAKER_01So we are already experiencing, and every Christian forever has been experiencing the end times, and there is an end times of the end times that we are looking forward to when Christ really really will return with the sword in his mouth, riding on the white horse. This is why Jesus will say things like in Luke 17, the kingdom of God is in your midst. Or in John 5 24, whoever believes in him who has sent me has eternal life. Jesus will take thoughts and concepts in the scripture that we think of as being primarily future-oriented, like the ultimate coming of God's kingdom or God's eternal life being in us. We'll think of those are more future-oriented things, but Jesus will flip them on their head and telling us, tell us that they're actually things that are present here and now that we're already tasting and seeing and experiencing them. Like you and I really are experiencing the kingdom of God and eternal life, but there is more to come. Right? There still are rival kingdoms propping themselves up against the kingdom of God. There still is death in our world that makes it makes us feel uncertain that we really have God's eternal life in us. We are caught in the awkward tension between two prophetic mountain peaks. And so this ultimately sort of circles back to the question I started with, which is like, okay, I I've heard the message of resurrection. And if it really has happened, how is it meant to change my life now? Or another way to put it, if if we're really disciples of Jesus, and because of that we are citizens of another world, and we are caught in the weird place, the awkward colliding of two worlds, heaven and earth, God's reality and man's reality are crashing into one another. If we really are citizens of a world that's far off and is coming, but we are presently living in this one, what are we supposed to do? How do we follow the Bible and live out our citizenship to another world, to heaven, while still in this one? And this tension, what I'm describing, this line of question, questioning, is what the whole book of Ephesians is about. I love the book of Ephesians. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna speed run through Ephesians because I want, I want, I want you to see this. Paul takes the scale of the gospel, the good news, and takes it to like the maximum place where people often don't think about it. Here, here's how one commentator describes what Ephesians is about. He says that Ephesians presents, and this is nerdy, but I just I just need you to lock in and just love this with me. Ephesians presents a comprehensive vision of the eschatological, end times, new humanity, the new creation community realized under the conditions of this present fallen age, and it is therefore a manifesto for a radically new society. So here's his description. We all, God has made us new creations. So we're new creational people, we're a new creational community, and because of that, we're expected to live out a new creational ethic. We live as heaven type of people, not earth people, but we're living in the midst and circumstances that look like old creation. So we're new creation people planted in old creation situations, and it would be really easy to think, okay, I don't have to live like my forever kind of living that I'm going to live with God because I'm still an old creation now. But Paul's like, no, we live like new creation people as a new creation community, right here and now, in the midst of fallen old creation, with old creation nonsense all around us all the time. We're a new creation people. You with me? Yes, so sick. And so Ephesians is all about the already not yet tension and how we're meant to live in light of that. Okay, let me show you what I mean. We're gonna turn to Ephesians chapter one. We're gonna be all over the book of Ephesians. It's gonna be so exciting. Here we go. Ephesians 1, 20 to 22. Paul says that God exercised his power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority, power, and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And then, quoting the book of Psalms, he says, and he subjected everything under his under Christ's feet. The Father subjected everything under Christ's feet and appointed him as as head over everything for the church. And then he says in chapter 2, verses 6 to 7, that he also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. So so here's the message of the book of Ephesians. God, through his son Jesus Christ, has conquered everything at odds with him. God has re-established his reign and rule that we and the enemy have resisted. And so Christ, having conquered, is peacefully ruling, seated, uncontended over everything. And
– Reuniting Heaven & Earth in Christ (Ephesians 1 & 2)
SPEAKER_01we are seated with him, which is awesome, but also confusing and kind of interesting because I can see you right now, and you're sitting here. And there aren't many things I know about Houston, Texas, but one of them I know is that this is not the throne room of God. Okay? Amen. Correct. This armpit cannot no, I'm just kidding. I'm gonna stop there. I have bitterness on my heart against Texas because my wife is a Texan, and I don't know why that would make me bitter against Texas. I guess maybe that should make me love Texas. But something about Texan pride just bothers me, you know. You know, because the Bible teaches like humility, modesty, etc. You guys have a hard time without it's a generational curse on your all right, I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop. Paul says we're seated with him. And he doesn't say we will be seated with him, he says we are seated with him right here and right now. And the point is that Paul's making is that these things, both of these things, that Christ has everything subjected under his feet, and that we are seated and reigning with him, they are both true in a sense. They're both true to an extent, but there is a greater reality to come. And that's why the writer of Hebrews, who quotes the exact same psalm, God subjected everything underneath his feet, says in Hebrews 2, 8, as it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to him. So again, we're in that awkward middle space. He's subjected everything and we're seated with him, but also kind of not all the way yet. Oh, that's super neat and cool, Paul. You know, that's awesome. You know, and sort of here is what the Bible means to communicate that in the midst of that, the proof that we are seated with him, the proof that God really has subjected everything, is that you and I or the first fruits, we are subjected under him. We are the the beginnings of the outworking of the kingdom of God. That's what the church is. We're the proof that God is really reigning over creation and reclaiming the world and everything in it as his own, because you and I are surrendered under him, and therefore, because of that, he has, as we've humbled ourselves underneath him, he lifts us up so that we rule and reign with him. We're the down payment, we're the proof that God's kingdom is going to break all the way back into the world, because the kingdom is happening right here and now through us. Let me show you what I mean. Ephesians chapter 1, verses 9 to 10. Paul says that God made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ as a plan for the right time. And this was that plan. God's plan in Christ was to bring together everything in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth. And this is where Ephesians and the book of Colossians really stand out as Paul emphasizes the cosmic scale and scope of the gospel. We often think of like it's Easter, so I get to the end of the message. Lord Jesus Christ, come into my heart. And that is the extent of what we think the gospel is. It's like me and God are like chill, and I get to not go to hell when I die. And those things that those are important realities to the Christian teaching. But Paul is pulling us up to like, hey, come up here, you gotta look at there's something much bigger going on, actually. The work of Jesus Christ is to reunite heaven and earth. Creation which has been torn asunder by human sin and demonic influence that we have tried to take back from God and and obscure and make our own God and his love and mercy is invading and putting these two realities back together. It's about the clashing of two worlds that are now divorced, being reunited back together in love. Like this is as big as it gets. This is as massive as it gets. Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ ought to be the king of your heart, but he is also the king of the cosmos and all things that exist, and he holds all things together. And though we have done our very best to divide the material and the spiritual, though we have done our very best to divide creation from the creator and man from God, God in his love is breaking back in and stitching everything back together. Things in heaven, things on earth
– The Church as a Microcosm of God’s Cosmic Plan
SPEAKER_01reunited in Christ. The ultimate cosmic, like next level metaphysical divisions that have torn creation apart. God is healing whoa. So it's not just my personal bond between me and Jesus, it's the the breakdown in everything that God is putting back together. But obviously, that hasn't quite happened yet, right? Like we're not we're not ultimately seeing that yet. We have not seen the perfect and total reunification of heaven and earth, of God's reality and of ours. But the point that Paul is making to the Ephesian church is that the work has started. The work has started in you. And this is why Paul says in Ephesians 2, 19 to 22, so then you Gentile Christians, this is who he's addressing, are no longer foreigners and strangers, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. And in him, the whole building, the church being put together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you are also being built together for God's dwelling in the Spirit. You and I, men and women of God, are being constructed together as a new temple for God to dwell within. This is the narrative logic of Ephesians. This is what Paul means, and then it has a broader application for you and I today. He's stepping into pastorally and theologically addressing relational conflict between Jews and Gentiles because they were having a hard time assimilating because Jews have all of these wild pagan, excuse me, Gentiles have these wild pagan practices, and the Jews are so used to a religious system in which you literally have to conform to an ethnic identity to belong that they're just at odds with one another. And Paul is saying that in Christ, something has been done about this division. In Christ, the Jew and Gentile were united to make one new man. He's saying to the Ephesian church, remember, the message of Jesus is bigger than just you and your heart. The message of Jesus is about heaven and earth being brought back together. And how do we know that God is going to do that? Because against all odds, which no one expected, God has taken the what the two that were once separate, the Gentile and the Jew, and made them one again. There was this temple, religious, ceremonial reality that the Gentiles were barred from entering and only the Jews could participate in. God has overtaken that in the church. He has brought about a greater reality, and now you Jews and Gentiles, you don't go to a building together. You are being built together as the building. You are living stones, you are a place constructed together for the dwelling of God's spirit. We're built together as a people to become a home for God. The tabernacle, the temple in the Old Testaments, they were early signs that heaven was invading earth, that God's presence, even though God is present holding all things together, God's relational presence, he was giving back to humanity. And so the tabernacle of the temple was seen as like the touch point between heaven and earth. And the Israelites had to take to steward that so that the world could come and connect with God. Now it's the church. The means by which God is giving his presence to the world is the church, is you and I. And the message of Ephesians is not just that we are all a bunch of private carriers of the presence of God, or that when we come together to hang out, God happens to be there. The point that Paul is making is that God is present through something, He's present through our unity. And if we will not be unified, then God will not be present. That is the very shocking message of Ephesians. Hey, Jews and Gentiles, you want to go start two separate churches, God won't be there. Like that's what's being communicated. If and only if the church is bound together, constructed into one temple for the Lord, then God's Spirit will make his dwelling. But if we are disunified, that is the biggest, no God, you're not welcome here, sign that we could possibly hold up. We, the church, are the proof that heaven and earth are finally colliding. As we witness the walls between men and women shattered, we reminded that one day the veil between heaven and earth will also be torn. As we're built together into one body, we become the doorway, the means by which heaven is breaking through. In unity, one way to say it is that we become a microcosm of God's cosmic work. Biblical scholar G.K. Beale, who's in Dallas, really, really brilliant guy, he makes this point in his study of the tabernacle and the temple that the uh the interiors of these buildings were constructed so as to remind the
– An Embassy Behind Enemy Lines (Ephesians 3)
SPEAKER_01people inside of them of the Garden of Eden and the heavens, like the stars and the planets in the sky. And the point was that when the high priests carried out their duties inside the tabernacle, they were surrounded by all these symbols and signs of the whole cosmos and of God's plan for creation so that they would understand that the Old Testament rituals and ceremonial life were promissory. They were predictive, they looked forward to something more ultimate. And so when the high priest goes in and cleanses the temple, he knows that his expectation is that eventually God is going to carry out a work that cleanses the universe, that cleanses all of creation, all of mankind. That's what we're looking forward to in the temple. That's the microcosm of God's cosmic work in the same sense as we are unified. We are a microcosm of God's macro. Plan of reuniting things which have been divided, the heavens and the earth. Do you understand? Are you with me? Are we following? You're the proof of God's big recreation project. And so we've been given a new creation, a new existence in Christ, and that comes with great responsibility, right? With great power comes great responsibility. I mean, it's not a Bible verse, but like it should be one. You know? I'm down with the Catholics on just, we should just add that to our canon. Just really, no, okay. Uncle Benelations, that's what I've been calling it. It's all right, first service like that one more. It's okay. I'm I feel very confident in myself. Ephesians 3. Paul starts talking about this calling he has to preach the message of the gospel to the Gentiles, and this is what he says to them. He said, Listen, I've been called to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of Christ and to shed light for all about the administration of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. His point, the gospel of Jesus, this plan, this reunification, recreation project God has, he kept it a secret. He was low-key about it. And now, through the church, it's becoming obvious. He says that so this is so that God's God kept it a secret so that his multifaceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens. Like you are a walking apocalypse. When we think apocalypse, we think like the end of the world. The word apocalypse in Greek, which is what the it means revelation, it means to reveal. Like you are all the time revealing realities that cannot be seen with the eyes. You are prophetically living out a promise that God is going to put everything right, to put things back together. If and when you live unified with your brothers and sisters. You with me? So God is making known the wisdom of his redemptive plan to the church. Our existence as a people, as one unified people, testifies to a cosmic message that God really is going to heal the brokenness that we have created. So here's sort of the situation. Here's how the Bible would have us think about ourselves. We are like an outpost of God's kingdom in this world. We're like an embassy for another nation. We're political representatives of God's kingdom, God's city, here living in this one. And when we act, we represent our true citizenship. We represent the kingdom of heaven on earth. We act on heaven's behalf as representatives of God. You sort of like think of it this way: the earth and everything in it belongs to God. And mankind through sin, we have tried to drive him out. We've reclaimed this territory for ourselves, and he is breaking back in through the efforts of those who remain inside these borders who are still loyal to him.
– Walk Worthy: Making Every Effort for Unity (Ephesians 4)
SPEAKER_01You following my parable here? It's like heaven is raising up a rebellion behind enemy lines. We are discreetly working together to prepare the way for our king to come back and reclaim what rightfully belongs to him. It's like the return of the king, you know, Jesus is Aragorn or something like that. I don't have time to talk about Lord of the Rings. I'd really like to, though. Just can't. Okay, that's the church, though. You are heaven's secret rebellion, who are stirring up an uprising behind enemy lines to prepare the way for God to come back and take his territory. You feel cooler now? Suddenly it's like Paul's like, be a good soldier for Christ, take up the armor of God, and you're like, yes, I'm into it, let's do it. And the way that we do this, the way we get that done is through our lifestyle and our message. As we live the way of Jesus and speak the way of Jesus, we are revealing the truth and preparing the way for our coming king. How do we accomplish that? I mean, this is what the Ephesians are pressed to ask. How am I supposed to live an eschatological life? Christians in history have come up with all kinds of strategy. What are we supposed to do to bring Jesus here? And Paul, he's got a lot of answers. Ephesians is so funny because the first three chapters are like super theological and ethereal, and all heavens and earth and mysteries and wisdom hidden for the ages, and prints and powers and authorities. And then all of a sudden he's like, and so here's how to be a good spouse. You're like, wait, what, Paul? He's like, yeah, he's doing all this crazy, wonky, poetic theology, and he's like, Yeah, so um, husbands, this is what you should do when you're married. Paul, how are those, how could those two things possibly be connected? And he's like, What do you mean? They have they have everything to do with one another. He starts pouring out this very practical wisdom. This is what it means to live out what I've been trying to describe to you theologically, and this is his summary. This is so important. Ephesians 4, 1 to 6, he says, Therefore, I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received to reveal God's hidden wisdom to the world with all humility and gentleness, with patience, and this is where it gets important, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. And this is where Paul just starts to go off because there was one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope at your calling, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who was above all and through all and in all. The message of Paul here is that we testify to God's future by embodying it here and now in our relationships with one another, by being one. In a divided world, the way to live the gospel is to be one with one another. Maybe that feels kind of like a letdown, maybe that feels kind of overwhelming to you, kind of meh, you know. But like, dude, let's just use three and a half seconds of our attentive effort, look at the world around you and see how hopelessly divided it is. And then suddenly you realize the significance of something like the church, where you have a group of unlikely people who are somehow being made one by God's Spirit. That only in the church do you have an institution, a bond of love, which supersedes and overrides every other loyalty and every other connection. People of every race and every tribe and every tongue, every people can come together and be one, of every social and economic class. There's a really cool story from the early church. Right around the beginning of the second century, there was a guy named Clement that gets Paul mentioned in one of Paul's letters, and he's thought of in church history as being the fourth or fifth uh pastor of the church in Rome, which was because of the fall of Jerusalem, the most important church in planet Earth at that time. It was a very, very big deal. And that guy was
– Overcoming Individualism & Growing Up Into Christ Together
SPEAKER_01a Roman slave. In ancient Rome, there was no cross-class communication or relationship. If you were a wealthy Roman aristocrat, not only did you not have a relationship with like plebeians, like middle class, lower class people, you also never, ever engaged in any kind of loving, friendship, or connection with someone who was a slave. And yet we have in the sec early second century church, for some reason, somehow, there was a place where wealthy Roman aristocrats who literally never had to work a day in their lives because that's how Roman society was functioning, who thought of lower classes as literally being necessary things that the gods created so that they could prosper, who are living in these churches, who are being drawn to generosity, which is not a Roman virtuous principle, and are submitting to a slave as their pastor. You don't, you're not gonna find that anywhere else on the planet. There's literally no other explanation for how the church can be what she is, except for the Spirit of God who is making us one. That is our message to the world. Look at us. How could people like us be one family, but we are? You can't find that anywhere else. And here's the fact about unity unity is hard. It's difficult. That's why Paul says, make every effort because people suck. Because people are difficult, because relationships are challenging, because pursuing unity is always going to be costly because we're going to offend each other, we're going to step on one another's toes. You've had siblings before, right? You understand? Like you've had someone to constantly pest you all your life. Welcome to the family of God. It never goes away. Like we're gonna take each other off. That's just how this is gonna work. But Paul says he's reminding us, guys, the thing that makes us us is that we have a message that binds us together, that no matter what, no matter what, we will find ways to be one. This is who we are. This is what the church exists for. This is our message to the world. So we do whatever it takes to stay unified. Hey, Ephesian church, are you kidding me? You're dividing over ethnic lines, you're dividing over circumcision, you can't worship together because one's a Jew and one's a Gentile? What's your message to the church to the people of Ephesus then? What is there any stock to your message at all? Has the work of Jesus actually done anything? Is Christ being torn apart to bring you together? Is that actually happening? What are you saying to the world if you won't forgive each other, if you won't love each other, if you won't serve those who annoy you, if you won't give your time, effort, and energy to people that don't seem valuable to you? What are we saying? If you come to the church as a consumer and not as a giver and a lover, what do you communicate to the world outside these walls? Except that nothing supernatural is happening here. This is what Paul is saying. Hey, there's no other institution in the world that can bring people together like this. So you don't let relational breaks happen. You reunify, you connect, you work your stuff out, you figure it out, you do family, you stay together no matter what. Some of us, this is challenging because we come from complicated relational backgrounds. I'll be the first person to announce that information to the world. Yes, I come from long generations of addiction and family brokenness. I come from that kind of household of anger and violence and abuse and alcohol and all the things I like. I come from all of that stuff. And so for me, doing relationship in the church was so hard. Everything in me was resistant to the idea. And some of you have church hurt in the past. Me too, man. I yes, I understand I understand all the relational walls that come up that would keep you from really giving yourself to the church and pursuing healthy relationships. But dude, this is the thing that we're missing. Like this is the peace that we're not getting. When we stop thinking about the church through the categories that God has given us, that this is the family of God. Listen, the church is love rehab. Like this is where you come to get your heart rehabilitated. This is where you come to learn what it means to love and what it means to live God's way, and what it means to be healthy, and what it means to be whole, and what it means to actually be a person who can live in relationship well. This is the stomping ground, the playground where we get to come and relearn. That's why God has given you the church. That's why God has planted your life here, so that you can you can be restabilized and you can know how to live a healthy life. So that you can gain wisdom and live holy. You know, I cannot, looking at my story, there is no way that I could possibly overemphasize how powerfully God has done this in my life through his church. It's through the relationship that God, the relationships that God gave me in my church community that the Lord used to bind up my wounds and take away the anxiety and fear and dread that I had about whether or not I could be a husband or a father. It's like all of the I feel perfectly confident because the Lord has healed my heart. How did he do it? Not through a mystical experience by myself in my closet, through the people of God loving me back to health. That's how we do it. You want to be sanctified? Look around. Every opportunity for your sanctification to your right and to your left. You're rubbing shoulders with God's tool for you to become holy all the time. We can't privatize these things. So check it out. This is this is like the most shocking and important verse in the book of Ephesians. This I think is very offensive to like the modern Western American individualistic spirit. So you're just gonna have to let Paul speak for himself here, dude. Listen to this. He says in Ephesians 4:15, hey, but you speaking the truth in love, here's what we should do. We should grow in every way into him who is the head Christ. And we're like glorious, beautiful. I'm gonna grow up, I'm gonna be connected and united to Jesus. I'm gonna walk in close friendship and relationship with him. I'm gonna become like him. Yes, thank you, Paul. You're so right. I love living in relationship with Jesus. Yes, absolutely. That's amazing. How does he follow it up? Well, he gives us the goal and then he gives us the strategy. Here's how you accomplish that. Check it out. From him, the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part. The body working together makes us grow. You cannot grow up into him if you're not deeply rooted in the people of God. If we're unified, then we'll grow and we'll grow up into Christ. So this is Paul's really important and shocking point in Ephesians 4. Apart from a life deeply embedded in the body, you cannot experience the deep unity with Christ that you were made for. If you want, you want a living, thriving relationship with Jesus, God says, This is my
– Practical Application: Forgiveness, Reconciliation, & Closing Prayer
SPEAKER_01way. The church builds herself up together. We build each other up together and you grow into Christ as one. You cannot grow up into him by yourself. You will be down forever, little teeny tiny, down at foot level, jumping up, trying to get a hold of the head, and it never, it's never gonna work because the body builds itself up together into Christ. We are hyper-individualistic in America. We think it's all about me, myself, and Jesus. And the Bible is just not afraid of speaking in collective categories, of thinking about the group, about the people of God. And the truth is that God didn't come to save individuals, He came to raise up a family, to build a household, to save a people. That's what God He's thinking in collective categories. It's just the way the Bible speaks, for example, in the in the nation of Israel. You have like the you have the whole temple, tabernacle, ritual, ceremonial life that needs the whole nation needs to be participating in if it's going to be upkept. Right? So, like Israel for 40 years is in the wilderness and they're they're doing church on wheels, bro. They got a teardown team. They got a tear-down team and a rebuild team. They got they got a guy in ancient Israel whose job it was when the when the when the priests are done making the sacrifice, they're supposed to take the feces-filled entrails from those animals, carry them outside the camp, burn them, and then they have to go take a special bath and quarantine before they can hang out with everybody else again. Who wants that guy's job? Nobody. But somebody's got to do it so that the life of God and the people can keep on moving, so the people can stay united to God. That's it, it just has to be done. If everybody's not bought in and participating, then we won't grow up into Him. That's how Paul's communicating here. Or, I mean, on like a sort of like a larger level for the nation of Israel, if they were going to keep, if they were going to stay united to God, they had to keep clean. And that was a collective identity. Cleanliness is a thing that we seek together, right? That's why, even when when Leviticus says to love your neighbor as yourself, the very next sentence is and and rebuke your neighbor. That's how you love your neighbor, by like, oh yeah, your business is my business, bro. I'm involved, we're doing this together. Because if one of us is unclean and we don't do anything about it, the the message of of the of the Old Testament is that God's presence was going to leave Israel, and that's what happens. Now, I'm not saying it's exactly the same situation for us today, but it's something like that. Each of us must recognize that a presence-filled life must necessarily be a life planted in God's church, and the whole world is constantly preaching a message to you through everything quietly, subtly, silently, all the time, that life is about you, that you are the main character of your story, and that you realizing your potential is going to be something that you pursue alone as a lone wolf. And the Bible is not afraid to look us down in the eyes and say, wrong, wrong. If you want to be spiritual, if you want to be saintly, you do it together. You with me? Here's the overall point of the New Testament and that Paul's making here. Christ administrates his love to us and to the world through his body. Hey, if you say that you love God, but you don't love your fellow man, according to Jesus, you don't love God. That's what John, I mean, John does not, in 1 John, go read 1 John. It is convict. You think you love God, but you don't love others, you don't love God. Because Jesus says that the here's here's how Jesus receives love. When we love those in need, when we love our brothers and sisters, he receives it as love for him. So a person who loves God and wants God to have all their love knows, God, I know that when I love them, you'll receive it as love for you. So I'm gonna give my life to them and love. He receives it as love directed straight to his face. And as we live in the body, this is the beautiful part, we will also experience the gift of his love. Oh God, I just I feel so far from you. I feel so far from your presence. Oh, I don't know if you love me. Look around. Look around. There are beacons and mirrors of God's love all around you all the time. God is trying to lavish his love upon you through the vehicles of your brothers and sisters in the Lord. That is through his love is coming through to you tangibly. It's not just about a warm, fuzzy feeling happening somewhere vaguely in this area, it's about God's love breaking through in practical, material ways through the people that he has given you to be siblings with. And then this is where it gets outward. As we move unified, the world will hear of and see and taste and experience the very love of Christ through us. The point is not for you to be like just nice enough, so somebody someday might be like, Why are you so nice? So you get to preach the gospel. The point is that you look at every opportunity as God is trying to love this person, and I am the means by which he is going to do it. If I embody the character of Jesus, they will be experiencing God's presence and love through me. That's what it means to be a priest, and that's what we are, according to Peter and Paul. You know, so Paul, like the point is we have to we have to love each other. And Paul gives a billion examples of what that means in our speech, in our work, in our specific relationships. It's very, very practical. It will mean, according to the New Testament, being people who forgive one another, who are bold, who are intentional, who are generous with each other. It will mean being assume the best of others all the time kinds of people. It will mean being trusting, understanding, patient, and celebratory of others' wins, even when we happen to be losing. It will mean hanging out and being involved and doing fun stuff together and caring about each other's stuff a lot. Do you know how many how many things I've gone through that I was not interested in? You know, you ever been to a children's Christmas recital? Is it not a good time? There's no part of me that's like, yes, I love Christmas songs sung badly. It's cute for the first three seconds, and then you're like, who set up this sound system and why are they so bad at their job? But you know what? Yeah, I love you. I love you. And actually, yeah, I'm gonna be your kid's honorary uncle so that because it takes a village, and I love you, and we're the church, and we're gonna do this together. So please, yes, send me the link. I will buy an overpriced ticket for your kid's thing. Because I love you. All right, like that's it, just means practically showing up for each other and caring about each other in material ways. Here's how Paul summarizes it, and then I'll shut up. Ephesians 5, 1 to 2, he says, Therefore be imitators of God, as dearly love children and walk in love as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. The challenge of Paul, hey, love each other like Christ has loved you. The message that binds us all together, that God really gave himself for us, compels us to live it out together, to take up our crosses for one another. That's the that's the challenge. So if I could just give you something practical, Jesus teaches in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark, two parallel teachings. One, if you are approaching the altar and you know that your brother has something against you, or one, if you're approaching the altar and you have something against somebody else, you need to forgive or go make it right. Don't come to the altar until you've done that. That's the teaching of Jesus. So check this out. You will find, and I believe this is the teaching we can debate about it after, but you will find that you are experiencing resistance from God so long as you try to remain connected to Him and disconnected from His people. He's not interested. I'm not saying God's gonna turn you away, that God's gonna stop loving you, that God's going to abandon you. Of course not. He's very patient, very merciful. But I am saying you are going to hinder yourself in your relationship with God so long as you harbor bitterness, unforgiveness, isolation, so long as you try to do this thing solo, you will not become the person in Christ that God has designed for you to be, and you will not know him as you could. You will not have the blessing in him that he means to give to you. And so if you are in this room and you have bitterness, you've got beef going on with somebody else, you make that right. Because God says, This is Jesus. Don't bring that offering to me. Don't don't bring your dutiful religious sacrificial obligation to me until you've said sorry. To me, I'm like Jesus, it feels like your priorities are out of whack, but no, that's not taking up with Jesus, man. Are you with me? As we love one another, we prophetically declare the promises of God to the world. You want to be a prophet? You love your neighbor, you bleed out for your neighbor, you give your life to the people of God. It'll change your life. It'll change your life, it'll heal your heart, it'll close your wounds, it'll make you an entirely different person, and you will know the goodness of God. You don't know the joy and happiness and delight of God until you see it on somebody else's face, and then you understand. And then it's like, ah, right, right, that's what anyway, I'm done. I'm gonna pray for you now. Thank you, Jesus, so much for your scripture. Thank you for your church, for the body that you're building. Thank you for the kindness of your love. Thank you, God, that you have invited us, us orphans, to come together and be one. I pray that you would empower this church to love ridiculously, unapologetically, to be united in their work, in their efforts, but also in their relationships, staying connected in friendship and brotherhood. Lord, please just um I pray the bond of peace be cultivated here. The Spirit would unite them, and that they together could change the communities, the workplaces, the people around them as they demonstrate the very love and message of Jesus Christ through their actions. Bless them, Lord, fill them with your Holy Spirit, and use us to build your kingdom, to spread your message. We love you, Lord. Please let that love of yours come through us in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for listening to this message. Be sure to give us a five star rating in review and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you'd like to go deeper with our sermon content, you can hear more on our Circling Back with Neil McClendon podcast at Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.