Ephesians chapter 4 verses 4-6 There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in 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. Paul is at this point now beginning to write the practical part of his letter. But before he goes into specifics, before he spells things out, it seems there's something he wants to emphasise first. There's one body, one spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. As if to say, There are seven absolutely fundamental truths. It is essential to believe. You see, as there is today, so there was then. Some people who think and who would say, look, doctrine is not important. As long as you do the right things, it doesn't really matter what you believe. Well, that is just about the very opposite of what Paul is saying here. It's the very opposite of what the Holy Spirit is teaching us in these words. It's as if Paul knew that some people would rise up and say, well, just do what a Christian does. Nothing else matters. As long as you do the right things, nothing else matters. Well, that is not what the Bible is teaching at this point. Indeed, it's the very opposite. just before he spends several chapters on the practical things a Christian should do as a response of believing what he believes. Now at this point the Bible, the Holy Spirit and Paul are explaining the basis of all true Christian unity. And it's very very important you see that we are able to distinguish between what is non-negotiable on the one hand and what is a secondary issue on the other hand. As you know there are several different denominations of Christianity and these ought to be and generally are on secondary issues. that you are not a Christian at all, of any kind, of any type, if you do not believe certain essential things that there are to believe and certain essential things that one must practice. You see, here's a warning One may practice everything a true Christian practices and yet not be worshipping the one living and true God with all our mind, with all our heart and with all our strength. We read that, you remember, in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and you remember when the son of God himself Christ was asked what is the great commandment? That's what he quoted. You will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength. It's more or less another way of putting what The Apostle John put in his epistle, his first epistle. You remember why first John was written in the Bible? People were beginning to wonder who were the true Christians? There were so many imitations, so many copies, the devil had begun to make artificial Christians. And the question was, how do you know a real true Christian? And that's exactly what the first epistle of John answers. How may you know these things I've written unto you, that you might know your eternal life? And this whole chapter, this whole letter can be divided into three things. You have to believe the truth, you have to live the life, and you have to love the brotherhood. That's the three divisions. That's the three marks of every true Christian. They believe the truth. They practice the truth. They love the brotherhood, the Christian church. Now, you see, the point was this. Some people believed the right things in the time John wrought. But they lived as they pleased. They said, look, It's the spirit that's important. Your body doesn't matter, it's material. And therefore it led to people believing or claiming to believe the right things, but living any kind of old way they like. And then there was the others. As long as you do what's right, it doesn't really matter what you believe. Well John says it does. The Bible says it does matter. Christ said it's important you love the Lord with all your heart and with all your mind. You must believe the truth and you have to love Him with all your strength, with all your physical energy. That's the three things that the Saviour spells out, that Deuteronomy spells out, that the Epistles spell out, that the Bible in general spells out. Now here Paul, as it were, lists seven things that are non-negotiable, but they can actually, if you look at them very carefully, be reduced to three. First, the one living and true God. He speaks here, there's one God the Father, one God the Son, one God the Holy Spirit. There's one secondary, one church, or one body as it's called here. And then the others can be classified under the Christian life. Let's just look at them. There's one triune God. and he speaks about the three persons of the one triune God. One God and Father of all he says. Now you might very well say, look what is the significance of that today? Well actually it is quite significant. Did you listen to the last video recording of Osama Bin Laden? Did you listen to these threats and statements from Al Qaeda? Do you often notice that they say in it, at the end, God willing? Did you notice that? Just this last week, they said God willing. But here's the question, which God? Which God? Is their God the same as our God? Very important. Their God is not the same God as us, as the Christian God. And all you've got to do is ask one question. Ask them, is their God the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? That's all you need to ask them. And note the response. It tells us in chapter 1 verse 3, that's how he calls God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He again says it in 2 Corinthians 11 verse 31, Peter, that's how he defines God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that is actually significant. It is important. That's who he is. Because we must be sure we are worshipping the one living and true God who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Call another God, call Allah God with a capital G as the Christians do, if you like. But unless he is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is not the same as the Christian God. one God, one Lord, and of course it is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now listen, no intelligent educated person today denies that Jesus Christ existed. Very few will argue with the fact that he taught and was perhaps one of the best teachers the world has ever known. Some might even go so far, and they'll agree he's the one that was crucified, and they'll go so far even as to say, well he did all that the Bible says he did. But that's not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. You believe in Him as your Lord. People can believe He existed, but they don't accept Him as their Lord. That's the important thing. He has to be taken as Lord before you are a true Christian. Jesus has to be precious to you. You see, it is possible to believe about Jesus but not believe in him just the same way as it's possible to believe about Tony Blair as Prime Minister of this country and yet not believe in Tony Blair as Prime Minister of this country. There's a huge difference. There's not one person here who doubts Tony Blair's Prime Minister of this country. You believe all about him, but I don't think all of us would believe in him as Prime Minister of this country. That's the way we're to believe in Jesus. We're to really trust what he's doing. And we're to trust what he's doing when things go haywire in our lives. Is he our Lord? Is He the one Lord of our lives? That's really what's important. You see, we can have, some people would say, or some people think, I'll become a Christian first and then I'll get on with my life. See, you're giving the story away. I'll become a Christian as a kind of insurance policy. The point is this, if you really become a Christian, if Christ is your Lord, if you've made this commitment to Him, then you don't have an agenda of your own, or at least you shouldn't have an agenda of your own. He's Lord of all. He's the one to follow. That's the importance of all this. The question of the one Lord, is He your Lord? A word that used to be used a lot, and we don't use it very much today, but I was actually pleased to note that it's still in our dictionaries, is appropriate. To be a Christian you appropriate Christ. Now what does it mean? Well, even in today's dictionary it means to make the private property of. You see, you can believe in Jesus Christ, but you haven't taken Him personally as your private, personal saviour. That's what it is to be Christian. To have Christ, not simply as someone you believe in history, but to have Him personally as your Lord. appropriate and take Him as your Lord. One God the Father, one God the Son who is Lord of your life. The one you worship. It really means to make the Lord Jesus Christ your God. That one Lord that we should serve and worship. the Lord Jesus Christ. One God the Father, One God the Son, One God the Holy Spirit. One Body, One Spirit. And the significance here is, you see, Paul had just been saying to the Ephesians, the Holy Spirit indwells every single believer. That's why they believe. If you believe, it's because the Holy Spirit first entered your life, first entered your soul. You cannot truly believe in Jesus unless the Holy Spirit enabled you to believe. But you see, because Paul had said to them, the Holy Spirit indwells every single one of you, they thought there were many Holy Spirits. But he says no, there's just the significance, there's just one. One Holy Spirit. And that one Holy Spirit indwells every single Christian. There are not many Holy Spirits, there is only one Holy Spirit. And so, one of the points that Paul is emphasising here is, you see, at this point we say, these three we would make one. Because there is one triune God, one living and true God. Paul, you see, it's all written here. The Greek way of putting things is in twos and threes. We would set them out in the Western world in 21st century chronological order, but that's not the way the Greeks thought. The Greeks, the origin was put down here in twos and threes. But, the whole point is this, there's one Triune God. Now you might say, look I find that very difficult to understand. One God and three persons. Well, always remember this. What the Bible teaches and what we are able to comprehend is two different things. We are asked to believe everything the Bible says, but because we are finite creatures We can't grasp what it says. But if you're a Christian, you believe in the one living and true God who is three persons. You say, I can't grasp that. Well, that's not the really important thing. You can't grasp it because you're a human being. God's an eternal, infinite being. We're called upon to believe what the Bible teaches, whether we can grasp it or not. If it's what the Bible says, we believe it. And there really is no question about what the Bible says about the three persons. But it is difficult to comprehend. But let's distinguish between being able to comprehend and actually accepting what the Bible teaches. So there is one living and true God who is three persons. But then he says, one body, which is one church. You see, the Ephesians thought there should be two churches. And that was the significance of what we read in chapter 2. Christ has broken down the middle wall of division, the middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles. There is no middle wall. The Ephesians thought there should be a church for Jewish converts and then they thought there should be a church for Gentile converts. Because they all had different backgrounds. And you can understand it. The Jews had the oracles of God. The Jews had all the teaching of God. The Gentiles were pagan ignoramuses. And I said, you can't have them all one. Oh yes you can. Paul said, there's one body of believers. One church, that's the significance of it. One body of Christians. The church, and it's called in the Bible a body. And what Christians have to be sure about is that we don't chop up the body. You don't dissecrate the arm from the legs. or one body. Christ is the head, but Christians are the body. Some belong to the arm, some belong to the leg, some belong to the internal organs. It's a body, that's the description the Bible gives of it. And we mustn't disrupt. We must not, under any circumstances, dislocate or separate the body, or you're cutting up the one body. One trinity, one church, and there's also one Christian life that believers are to live. He speaks about one baptism. Now that's not as far as I can understand the ceremony, whatever kind it is. He is referring to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That is how it begins as we mentioned already. It is really all the work of God. You ask people who give their testimony from time to time and they say rightly, truthfully, I began to get interested in it. I began to get worried about my lifestyle. had a problem in my life and I couldn't overcome it and I began to think of God and I began to read the Bible and I began to go to church. Excellent! Why? What's the real beginning? God the Holy Spirit beginning to move. God the Holy Spirit beginning to alert God the Holy Spirit beginning to disturb your comfort and get you to think about real truth and reality and where you're going and as we heard in the children's story, what's your end? Are you going to have a happy end at the last? It all begins really with a baptism of the Holy Spirit and that can take place without you realising it. All you realise is, hey, hey, I've got to get this I've got to get this solved. I've got to get my answer. And you begin searching. And you begin seeking. And you begin looking. And you begin wondering. You've got questions to ask. And you're searching and seeking. But it's all because the Holy Spirit has begun to work within you. It's all God's baptism. God's work. God's starting off. One faith. One teaching to follow. The teaching of Christ. The teaching of God. The teaching of the Holy Spirit. The teaching of the Bible. One life of faith to live. One leader. One person you are following. One person you trust. One faith. Your faith is in this. one person, this Messiah, the Saint of God, the Anointed One, the Saviour of the world, God in human form, God enfleshed. He's the one your faith is in. He's the one you follow. One hope of your calling And that just simply means one goal in life. One aim in life. And what is that one aim? Now that you're a Christian, to glorify God with your life. To live to Him who called you. Who'd given you the certainty of eternal life. The certainty of a happy ending. That one goal, you aim for it. That's the hope of your calling. That's the one thing you're living for. That's the one thing you're longing for. When things go wrong in this world, when your life is disrupted, you can still say, ah, it won't be long till I'll be in glory. And you live for that. That's your one aim, to be faithful to the one who called you. That's your goal, to please Him, to live the life that ends with a happy ending. Now, I want to close with several overall lessons that we can learn from all this. Number one, there are some things every Christian must believe, or they are not true Christians. However they behave, however they live, there are some things that are indispensable that every true Christian does believe if he is a true Christian. I often think of what Jesus said, if you believe not that I am here, you will die in your sins. And what a statement that is! You can do everything a Christian does. You can live your life just exactly as it should be lived. But if you don't believe Jesus is the Messiah, the Saint of God, you'll die in your sense. If you believe not that I am He, you'll die in your sense. Isn't that something? It is important what we believe. But secondly, every true Christian at the same time, to some degree, more or less, must live a certain way. As we said already, some believe the right things, but they live as they please. That's not on either. It's believing in the truth about God and Christ and living accordingly. Living appropriately. Not just as you please, as we said earlier. It's not a case of becoming a Christian. Now I can get on with my life. Now that I'm a Christian, I must live to God. I must live to Christ. I must live for Him. I must do what He pleases. I must be satisfied with Him. So that whatever situation I'm in, I'm happy. I love Him. I have Him. He makes me happy. He's my joy. You remember David said, I go to God, my chiefest joy. And when did he write it? When things went wrong in his life. Oh, he says, what will I do? I'll go to God, my chiefest joy. And there was Paul and Silas. Do you remember how excited Paul was when he got that vision? Come over to Macedonia and help us. Oh, it was great to have that vision, wasn't it? That's where we're going. And off he went. And what met him? The prison in Philippi. So does he go down in the dumps? No, he and Silas are singing to God's praise in the stocks. God's. their joy, their living to please God. Third lesson, all Christians are one body joined together. Whatever they were previously, whether they were Jew or Gentile, whether they were Hindu or Buddhist, whether they were Muslim or Sikh, The moment they truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to the saving of their soul, they are united with every other person, whatever their background. And that was the problem in the church at Ephesus. They were saying, these pagan Gentiles, they haven't had the same background as us. They should have a church of their own. There's one body of believers. There's one church. One God, joined all together. And that is important. You know, there's only two groups of people in the world. The world is divided into two. But they're not male and female. They're not black and white. The division isn't between old and young. The division is not between rich and poor. The division is between Christian and non-Christian. The division is between those who worship God in the Spirit, on the one hand, and those who don't, on the other hand. That's the division. That's the great divide of the Day of Judgment, when the sheep will be separated from the by the one Lord Jesus Christ. On that day when He separates the sheep from the goats, that's the division. Those who are committed to the Lord Jesus Christ on the one hand, and those who will not have Him as their Lord on the other hand, that's the division. Fourth, we need to say, unity which is the subject here, is not the same thing as uniformity. We've often said the individual Christian, the Christian church composed of individuals is not like a hundred postage stamps, all the same size, same shape, same colour. The hundred Christian believers are more like the hundred pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Different shapes, different sizes, different colours. It's when they all come together you see the unity. But individually they're different. There is the one God. There's the one church, but they are not all the same. They have the same beliefs, they have the same standards, they have the same goals, they have the same saviour, they have the same God, but they have different expressions of that same commitment to the one living and true God. And then the final lesson, the final point we have to make is this, if you hear today, do not know that one God. If you hear today, do not belong to that one church. If you hear today, do not live that one life. Understand this. God is calling you to it. You can't get away from it. You cannot now walk out of that door and say I am neutral. You walk out that door either for Christ or rejecting Christ. Either worshipping the one living and true God or refusing to worship the one living and true God. There is no middle ground. You either belong to the one body or you don't. And it's not even as simple as that. You're in the position of rejecting the invitation and command of God to belong to it. To you, O men, I call and my voice is to the sons of man. It's a call of God to all men everywhere. ever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. The question is, will you call on his name? Will you appropriate him as your Lord and Saviour? Or will you say no? Understand, God's calling you, God's inviting you, and God really wants you in His hear His call and obey His voice. Let's pray.