From Ezekiel chapter 34, which is that famous passage concerning the shepherd that cares
for the people of Israel, and we are the true Israel of God.
And then I want to look at a further passage that is well known to us in Philippians chapter
2.
And I'm going to be looking at the unity that exists among believers, a spiritual unity,
and we are exalted to keep that unity.
And one of those graces is that we are to be united in Christ's grace.
And that's an important thing in lowliness, in long suffering, and in patience.
And it is imperative that we show the grace of God, and this does more to establish the
unity that exists among believers, and we don't have to command it.
It exists there, we just need to keep it in the grace of Christ.
And so you'll find in the Philippians passage that that's exactly the attitude of Christ.
He counted it not equal to be with God, be God, yet he emptied himself.
And you'll find that he did not empty himself of all but love, as the hymn goes, that's
not right.
That he emptied himself of his right and his privileges as God, and all the privileges
that he laid aside as God in heaven with his Father, and he submitted himself even under
the cross for our redemption.
It's necessary for us to draw from this passage, and we looked last Lord's Day at the idea
that Paul being an example of service, who had become a prisoner for the name of Jesus
Christ, and he exalts from his prison the Christians at Ephesus to walk worthily of
their calling.
In other words, there must not be any hypocrisy amongst them.
Their walk and their talk must be in congruity with each other.
And they have all the resources in Christ, it's just a matter of walking in keeping with
those resources.
They know what it means to be forgiven.
They need to forgive like they have been forgiven.
They know what it means to be loved.
They need to love as they have been loved.
They need to give of themselves as they have been given so much.
And so that we are to call upon and reflect the holiness within us, we are called upon
to be holy even as our Father is holy.
We are called upon to be righteous because we have received the righteousness of Christ.
He is not asking us to do things that we are not resourced for, or we've got to somehow
learn.
We have been given everything in Christ Jesus, as he said in this amazing passage in the
first chapter of Ephesians, where he says,
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every
spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ.
There is no paupers in the Kingdom of God.
We have all the resources of heaven.
We have been given according to the grace of Christ, not out of his grace, but we have
been given in the proportion of his grace, which is more than enough to serve him for
his greater glory.
Now leading from that passage we are now going to go further, where it says,
Being worthy according to the calling which you were called.
Now here he goes on, he says,
With all lowliness and gentleness, or meekness if you like, with longsuffering bearing one
another in love, endeavouring to keep, or maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace.
For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope of your calling,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through
all and in you all.
That's the passage I want to look to do today, keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace.
Now I want to just share with you as a matter of starting off from here, there are lessons,
very valuable lessons that I personally have experienced in the terms of maintaining and
keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Coming from a very establishment type family, I always maintained that maintaining the institution
was basically maintaining and equals unity of believers.
But organisational identity is very often an obstacle to unity of the Spirit.
Because the unity of the Spirit is something that is definitely spiritual and gracious.
It is something that is in the heart of every believer.
And the one thing that unifies all of us is that one factor, the factor one.
There is one God and Lord.
We are not living in an institution that has many Lords and many spirits.
And it is important for us to realise that because of the so great a salvation has been
given to us, because we have both all been redeemed under that one blood, because we
have been renewed by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, there is only one Spirit.
Because we have been baptised with that one Spirit of God, there is only one baptism.
There's not many baptisms, there's not a Presbyterian baptism and a Baptist baptism.
There is only one baptism and that's the baptism of Christ.
Now looking at this, we will see that the first thing we see here that is absolutely
imperative that we are those that are called, I beseech you to walk worthily, of your calling
which you were called.
Now there are many people inside the church that have not been called.
They have identified with the church and they want to be involved with the church because
it is a very helpful organisation that is going to help their family upbringing.
They are going to find a certain social support and they after all, they grew up in the church
and it's a good cultural institution for us to be involved in.
But there is no sense of a genuine call from Christ.
The church is one that is an assembly of called ones.
There's a lot of hangers on us with inside the church and often they are the ones who
call the shots at times and they are the ones that often cause tremendous disharmony
with inside the church and the reason being is that they do not know what it means to
be genuinely converted.
They do not know what it means to be genuinely born again in the spirit.
They do not know what it means to be cleansed by the blood of the lamb.
Instead they go through the rituals of the church and identify with the church because
it seems good to them.
In other words they choose to come to church.
A believer is somebody that is called and we have no choices in the way in which we
behave with inside the church.
And I would say this is our unity of position.
We are those that which were called.
Something in the past, something that's happened and something that is complete is something
we cannot deny.
We have been those that have been called irresistibly by the shepherd through his word.
We have been those that have been plucked out of the miry pit and placed upon the rock
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are those that have been renewed by the Spirit of God whereby the work of eternal
life is inwardly part of us.
And we begin now to live by faith and follow the Lord Jesus Christ, the good shepherd.
And we do this instinctively because we have a new heart.
We have new loves.
We have new loyalties.
We desire to serve.
Now before you become a Christian you see it as a duty to serve the church and to serve
other people.
But a Christian has a new heart, he doesn't see it as a duty, he sees it as his delight
and pleasure.
And so because of this new position we have in Christ that has happened in the past, it
may not be able to put a day and a time to it, but you can say, once I was blind, but
now I see, I see the things of God in his word, I have a love for his word, I desire
to see these things fulfilled in my lives and I hunger and thirst for the righteousness
of God and the mercies of God are my portion.
And therefore we can say that that has actually happened.
Once I was crippled and I could not walk in the things of God, but now I've been raised
and now I walk in the will of God and it does not give me more pleasure than to do the
will of my Father in heaven.
This is something that arises from our heart, it's not something we're simply educated about,
it's something that is instinctive and desirous of our heart.
That's what the Spirit of God does within us.
There is a power and an unction within our hearts, there's a restlessness of our heart
until it finds its rest in God.
Now the means of this was by the word of God.
And we will see in our background as we are converted, there's been times where the word
of God has been particularly powerful upon us, it has turned our thinking around, it's
turned our heart around, it has been something that has been like seed that has fallen into
our soul, and it's grown and it's germinated and it's developed in our lives where now
our loves and our desires are the things for Christward.
As God has called into the creation by the power of His word, He said, and it was so,
let there be light and there was light, let the earth bring forth its fruit, and it was
so.
This is the very word that falls into our hearts, the old creation was created by the
power of the word of God and it's brought all things that were once nothing into existence.
And now in the new creation that He has put a new song and a new heart, a new set of values
in our heart that comes from being one that has regenerate.
And it was only the word of God that could do it.
In 1 Peter he says, in chapter 1, he says this, verse 23, he says,
Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible seed.
That's what the word of God is, it's incorruptible.
It doesn't go to death, it's eternal, there's no impurity in it.
Through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because all flesh is as grass and
all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.
Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
Now this word is not by social actions, not by education, although these things might
be helpful, in the end it's by the preaching of the word of God.
Now we might say this is foolishness to those in the world, but it is the very seed that
brings about eternal life, because it's incorruptible.
It is the pure word of God which lives and abides forever.
Now this is the reason why we are came to know the Lord and the first thing that happened
to us in the effectual calling of God was that we began to realise that we were those
that had fallen short of the glory of God.
As the law of God was preached to us, we realised that we were those that were sinners.
Sometimes we didn't have the law of God preached to us, it was just the standard of God's righteousness
that was made known to us and we realised that we needed saving.
And then in that same time the word of God worked toward us and then we saw the uniqueness
of Christ.
We saw that he was the Son of God.
We saw that he was the man that came amongst us.
We saw that the work that he did on the cross was the most central and most important work
that any man did on the face of the earth, because he was God, he was the Lamb of God
that was sacrificed at our place and we are now able to see that he was the one that was
our substitute.
He stood in place for all our condemnation and he took that condemnation upon himself.
Now this is not something that comes by our own estimation.
It comes through the ministry of the work of God's Holy Spirit sovereignly bringing
conviction about these things upon us.
But even then we are not saved when we see these things.
He enables us then to embrace Christ personally and that we set our hearts and our faith in
Christ and we cannot be anything else but those who are followers of Jesus.
We have no rights for ourselves.
We have surrendered all so we might be set free from all our old masters and to have
only one master now, the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is our position and anyone who has been really through that conversion experience
that has really come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, there must
be a mere unity for all others that have come to understand it.
It doesn't matter whether they are black or white, whether they are high or low social
entities, whether they are friends or enemies, they are those that will find this kind of
positional unity.
We must be saved.
The difficulty with the church is there are so many people who are unsaved within the
church and being gathered in the church and we are causing all sorts of strife within
inside the church and we wonder, am I being unloving here?
But somehow when you talk to these people they haven't got the same experience that
we have experienced with Christ.
Now I'm not saying I'm not talking about the depth of experience, I'm just talking about
the same character of experience.
They haven't been saved, oh yes we have, they've only got words, they don't live to it and
therefore they are not walking worthily of their calling and they have found out for
what they really are, goats and not sheep.
And very often the churches are caused to feed the goats and leave the sheep without
any food at all.
And they are made to feel uncomfortable within their own, the institution that God has given
them to be able to work within.
Now here is a very important thing, that in verse 2 we also see that there is something
we must do, even though we have this instinctive sense of unity with those who are believers.
But he says there is something we must maintain and keep in this.
With all lowliness, gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love.
And I say we must be united in Christ's grace as well.
Not only do we know the unity that is something in the past that has happened to us that exists
on the basis of that past experience, that we also are those that are to exercise the
grace of Christ.
Now the unity that is practiced, the unity that exists among us, the kind of unity that
is practiced is based on something that is very Christ-like.
And in Philippians chapter 2 we find the kind of Christ-like attitude that Christ had.
It was not one of lordship, it was not one of trying to politically bring people together
and manipulate people so that they are made to feel as though they ought to be together,
is by the spiritual graces of Christ that this is maintained.
And he says here, Therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, if there is any comfort
of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if there is any affection and mercy,
fulfil my joy in being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord and of
one mind.
Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind.
And let each esteem others better than himself, and let each of you look out not only for
his own interests, but also of the interests of others.
In other words, there is a wellbeing and love that has been to be expressed.
Now that this mind be in you which was also in Christ, who being in the form of God did
not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking
the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of man, and being found in the appearance
of man, he humbled himself, became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
Therefore God highly exalted him.
Now he wasn't highly exalted by men, he was highly exalted by God the Father.
And this is a lesson I believe we need to understand.
Very often we realise that having the acclaim of men will inevitably forfeit your acclaim
with God.
If we are liked by men, it's usually because we are not liked by God.
It is important for us, and I know it's difficult particularly as younger ones, it's not easy.
Because we are trying to get along, we are trying to find the blessing of our peers,
we are trying to be integrating with our community, and therefore we want to be like them.
And the force upon us to be conformers to the evil of our company is so easy for us
to succumb to.
But the likeness of Christ, as a consequence of this new work that has been done in our
hearts, we will not be at rest until we find our rest with God and throw our lot wholly
in with him.
In our heart of hearts we know what pleases God is to walk in a lowly manner, in a humble
and meek and gentle manner.
In a manner that is going to bring and heal our relationships, rather than a manner that
is going to force our false loyalty to ourselves.
And therefore it is important if the work of God has been done in our hearts, we must
see that work exhibited through our lives as well.
That is what's going to create the unity within the church and amongst true believers.
The people who are not true believers in our midst will find us to be nerds, maybe.
Will find us to be pokey, they are not the sort of people that they want to be with us,
because they will tolerate us rather than really love us.
And therefore we must be those that forget that, we must be able to present the witness
of Christ to all mankind, our enemies as well as those of our brethren.
But it's strange when we do become Christians, and as we do live in this manner, this character
of life, that we'll be, as it says here, lowly.
In other words we are not wanting to put ourselves forward all the time, promote ourselves as
a salesman might promote himself, but we are those that are ready to just see ourselves
as people that by the grace of God and by the mercies of God we are the children of
God with you.
And gentle, it is the meek that inherit the earth.
Now that doesn't mean to say we are to be a walk over, and sometimes we've got to be
angry as well as patient and kind.
But what we must be those, are those that are known to gently, carefully and tenderly
deal with our brothers and sisters, who will often be struggling over very important issues
to them, but things we might have learnt years ago.
And not only that, but we are to be those that bear with one another, with long suffering,
patience.
These are the spiritual graces of Christ.
It's not being a preacher that's going to be the thing that's going to world a congregation
together.
It's going to be the graces of Christ that world a congregation together.
And it's not going to be somebody who is a great leader, but you and I, as we submit
to this kind of spirit that is a Christ-like spirit that's willing even to go to the cross
and die for us, not just as an example, but is a wonderful example for us.
Because the same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead is also the same spirit that rises
us into Christians.
And the very same power that rose Jesus from the dead is at work within you.
So bearing with one another in love.
Now we can choose to love somebody.
It's very hard to be affectionate to people, because that arises out of our emotions at
times.
But you can choose to love somebody by simply acting in their best part.
When you know full well that you've been hurt by that person, we can still return and say
I'm determined to go and do the best for that person, as though he is myself.
And I'm going to really go out of my way to make sure that that person's welfare is cared
for.
Now is that going to do a tremendous work in maintaining and keeping the unity of the
believers?
I think it's going to do a power of good.
Now not only this, but in verse 3 we are given further instructions about this.
Endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit, which is the focus of my attention today,
in the bond of peace.
Now the unity of the spirit in the body of Christ is not something to be worked out.
Because we have that already.
But we must work at it at times.
We are not encouraged here to come together.
We are simply encouraged here not to break the unity.
And this is an important distinction, because those who are claiming in the worldly church
of ecumenical relations, we are called upon to establish a unity, or a union.
And we are not being loving Christians if we do not include the Roman Catholics and
the Unitings and all the other people that really have no interest in the Word of God
whatsoever.
That doesn't mean to say that there are people inside those churches that we would
wish to die for, and die with.
And there are many people like that.
Because there is a unity that exists.
And all we've got to do is to express the grace of Christ to them.
And it's amazing how our hearts will just intermingle with these people.
Because they are Christ's people.
And therefore it is important for us to not emphasise the organisation, but emphasise
our relationship with Christ.
Because if we have a relationship with Christ, we'll have a common love for the Word of God.
We'll have a common love for the doctrines of God's Word.
We'll have a common love in the work of the Kingdom of God.
And we will not be wasting our time with periphery type of machinery things that institutions
require.
And therefore it is important for us to realise this unity, this spiritual unity, is something
that must be kept.
We mustn't do things that are going to grieve the Spirit.
And grieve that bond that exists among believers.
We mustn't be those that, and if we do, we come back in the Spirit of Christ and seek
forgiveness and take the low seat again and seek the best solution.
And so therefore we find that this kind of organisations that claim to be an expression
of the unity of Christ, that really are just a well-oiled organisation that have very little
to do with our unity with Christ.
And sometimes to maintain our true unity we need to get out of some of those organisations
so that we're set free to exercise more openly and honestly our relationship with one another
as believers.
And that's a lesson I had to learn a few short years ago.
There is so much discord, even within the local congregation, because of external influences.
Nothing to do with the faith, nothing to do with our Lord.
It had everything to do with keeping an organisation operational.
One of the godly men of the United Presbyterian Church in America, around about the war years
when it was going through a time of discord, and it was a massive church of literally hundreds
of thousands of people that were in membership, and Gresham Machen, the great theologian of
America in those days, got up and said, if the Holy Spirit was to leave this church,
the church would continue as nothing had happened.
If the Holy Spirit was to leave this church, it would continue as though nothing had happened.
In other words, the machinery of the denomination would be so efficient that it would disguise
the fact that the Holy Spirit had left the church.
My friends, there is always a link between spiritual unity and the bond of peace.
It's interesting, one of the reasons why I had to leave my previous congregation in Canberra
was there was so much discord within the church, and young disciples that were being converted
would become so concerned at the internal discord that were among the elders that it
was impossible for them to continue with inside the church.
And it was said to me once, and one thing I remembered as a young jackaroo, the sheep
are unable to drink from running waters.
They had to have still waters to drink from.
They needed to have a bond of peace within the church, even though there might be raging
battles going on outside the church, inside the congregation they had to have a bond of
peace and accord.
An unspoken rule of peace was inside the church, and that is one thing that we have enjoyed
since we've been here in Brisbane, that kind of accord of peace.
And hasn't it been wonderful, hasn't it been wonderful?
Now we might ask, there are factions and contentions, but we must avoid being troublemakers within
the church.
Why?
For it says here quite clearly, there is one body, one spirit, just as you were called
to one hope of your calling.
I call this the one factor.
We do not serve many lords, we only serve one lord.
We don't serve bishops, we don't serve elders, we don't serve ministers, we serve the lord.
And this is a point that we must understand, there is only one body, and this is something
we need to understand as a small congregation as we are.
It's very easy for us, in our position, to become sectarian.
Very easy for us to think that we are better than any other part of God's church.
We are doing it a little bit better than others, okay, we're not big but at least we are faithful,
we will say to ourselves, danger, my dear brethren, a danger when we think like that.
We are just somebody that has been called to be what we are in this place but we must
never forget that we belong to one body and that one body of believers is found in every
structure that is known to mankind.
Every part of God's church has representatives of God's people amongst them and we must never
forget that.
And it's important for us to realise that never to feel as though we are the only ones
that are doing it right.
I think we're doing almost everything wrong in many ways, just to give me a good counteraction
to that kind of thought coming to me.
I stumble, I am too preoccupied with the world, I find myself about lesser things and I know
many of my Christian brothers do a thousand times better than me who are in institutions
that I would choose not to be part of but that doesn't mean to say they are any less
than me or I am any greater than they.
We are one in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The other thing we must understand, there is one Spirit and He will lead us in a manner
that will serve the Spirit's purpose and glorify Christ.
And there are many people that have been set aside for quite different work and quite different
purposes and we need to understand that.
And in the end He says there is one hope of our calling.
Now I'd say that this is what I would regard as a subjective sense of unity.
There is a sense in which we must follow the Lord individually and personally.
And we must have that perspective as we are following the Lord individually and perspective
to never think that we are the only ones doing it, as Elijah did.
He says I am only, I am the only one left, but Elijah was put corrected.
There are others in here who have not bowed the knee to Baal and they are my dear servants
as well.
Okay you are involved in a more noble work than maybe some others are but that doesn't
make you any better than they, it's just that you've got a different calling and a different
direction and a different purpose but in the end it's going to serve the work of the Kingdom
of God that will in its day find its own consummation as we all pull together in all various ways.
And here we are in Forest Lake seeking to be a witness here.
There are others in Forest Lake seeking to be a witness here as well.
There are others in other parts of the world that are seeking to be a witness and the Lord
is dealing with them individually and personally as they live by faith in Christ.
And also we find this oneness of this objective truth of my unity.
He says there is one Lord, one, um, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God.
Careful.
I might come back to this next week as well for I think there's another sermon here and
I think that we need to come and understand some of these points as we press on.
Keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
We don't have to go looking for it.
We simply have to keep what is already there by the Spirit of Christ's grace.
And in our spiritual union, because we are already those that are Christ's and we have
been called by the Lord, it's not as though we have to gain this, it's something that
is already there.
Let us be those that understand that it is the oneness of our faith that produces this.
Let us pray.
Let us sing to God's praise.