If you have your Bible with you, you might like to turn to Ephesians chapter 4. But there are some words that I want to say by way of preparation for that before we actually come to make some comment on the verses in Ephesians 4. Firstly, as we said last week when we were talking at our Easter services about the matter of the death and resurrection of Christ, The things that we understand about the death and resurrection of Christ are to be understood by faith. In particular we are saying it is not simply by faith we know that he died or by faith we know that he was raised again, but by faith we understand why he died and why he rose again. We understand the actual nature and meaning of that death and resurrection by faith, So he said last week that the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, never to die again, the life that he lives, he lives to God. And the amazing thing is that he has caught us up with himself in that action, that he has identified himself with us in that action in a way that we could never ever fully understand because we don't know how it is possible that even one sin could be taken away, let alone him being the Lamb of God who takes away all of our sin. Yet in that identification he has swept through the entirety of our life, he has identified himself with us on the cross, so that our sin was won with him on that cross, indeed we in some way were won with him on that cross. We were crucified when he was crucified, buried with him and raised with him, so that as we've been seeing through this series in Ephesians, it says we're now seated with him in the heavenly places. And as we were looking at last week in our Easter Sunday service, our life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ who is our life is revealed, then we also will be revealed with Him in glory. But at that point there is a revelation of something which is already given to us. We do not come to a point to receive something new at that point that we do not already have. It's an unveiling of what we already have in Christ. Now that is all understood by faith because we don't have a personal, emotional or physical experience of having been crucified, buried, raised and ascended with him to the right hand of the Father. But by faith we know it is to be so because the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are indeed children of God and we have within our hearts this ministry of the Spirit teaching us to cry, Jesus is Lord. And it should be cried as John read it to us this morning. And we have the ministry of the Spirit in our hearts crying, Abba, Father. And so these cries catch us up with God in the Spirit through the Son which is in fact where we are. But we live in this contested situation. in which the whole of the current fallen nature of ourselves, our world, our society, the suffering and groaning of the creation itself, Everything from one point of view is orientated against us knowing who we really are and what Christ has really accomplished for us. And so day by day we have the battle of faith to understand that we are actually men and women of the spirit, not men and women of the flesh, that we are actually sons of God and we're no longer children of wrath even as the rest and so forth. And this week we're coming to this matter of unity, the unity of the people of God. And in a like manner we know it by faith. You may remember when we started our series on Ephesians at the beginning of the year, I drew attention to a quote from C.S. Lewis. who in his screw tape letters, some of you may have read, where you have the senior devil speaking to a younger devil about the best way to tempt and to misguide a new convert. He says, the greatest ally in this task for us at this time is the church. But then he qualifies that and he says, I'm not talking about the church as we see her, that is spread through all time and eternity, terrible as an army with banners, but I am speaking as the church as they see her, that is, like he uses the illustration, the half-finished Gothic sham erection on the new building estate, where everything seems so weak and deficient and by comparison with what is said of the church seems to be such a moribund state and at such a low ebb and so far away from what the scriptures seem to tell us about the church. And in that little bit of correspondence the senior devil says to the junior devil, of course these humans do not see it so. They do not see the church as it really is and that's our greatest ally. Now that word in a sense has to ring in our ears today because what we're talking about today is, along with the other things that we know, something which is held by faith. But before we come to this passage, let me say a couple of other things firstly. If I was to say to you what is the greatest longing of every human heart, what would the answer be? We probably would get a few different replies perhaps. But I think it would be true to say that the greatest longing, even if hearts did not recognise it, even if human societies did not realise it or express it in these ways, the greatest longing for every human being is to be utterly at one with the creation and with every other human being. The greatest longing in marriage is to be utterly at one with your husband and wife. And the reason that we have so many difficulties sometimes in our marriages is we feel that that oneness is not there. And then we can be deceived into thinking that we can find it elsewhere and then we don't find it there either. We live in a whole world and society today which seems to take for granted that the oneness can be found outside of marriage and so we find these terrible situations where men and women have given up their integrity in the search for oneness at a very young age and have found they find no oneness there. And then they come to get married later on and they find no oneness there. But it should not surprise us that that oneness is something for which we should look and long because it is actually what we are created for. We could go right the way back to the beginning of the scriptures and talk about us being made in the image of God and we could talk about us being in his likeness and we could talk about the male and female being naked and not ashamed in the sense that there was no guilt, there was no division, there was no disharmony, no strife, because everything was in accordance with the image in which we were created and so the oneness was complete and we know the occasion of the entrance of sin and all of the deep mystery of that in the plan and purpose of God. and the scattering of the oneness and the mutual blaming. It's not me, it's the woman you gave me. Don't know how recently you've said that, perhaps even this morning. And she says, well it's not my fault, it's the serpent, meaning her husband. No, not really. Meaning, but notice what he says, it's the serpent, she says, it's the serpent whom you created. It's all your fault God. And all the oneness is scattered and shattered and we have disintegrated lives and disintegrated relationships but we still have to have this oneness. So we try and find the oneness in our worship and we worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. And as we engage in all of that illicit worship, we are actually looking for the unity, the oneness, the cohesion, the integration, the sense of belonging, the mutual fellowship, And all of those things that Paul mentions about the worship in Romans chapter 1, they leave us disintegrated. Relational breakdown occurs on every level. The more we run away and hide from God, the greater the darkness in our hearts, the more the relational breakdown occurs. And so if you were to look across our society today, we could say from one point of view, it's a society that seems to be disintegrating. morally, socially, spiritually, economically, before long, ecologically. It is very interesting in these days where people are talking about climate change and drought and all these sort of things that I've not heard any of our leaders and perhaps they could say well it's not our job because we live in a secular society, but I've not heard any of our leaders refer to passages like Hosea chapter 4 where it says things like We thieve and we covet, we commit adultery, we rob and we steal, therefore the land languishes, therefore the fish disappear, therefore the rivers no longer flow. There is a connection between the moral life of a nation and the ecological life of a nation, if we could put it in those terms. And so when we look at the situation around us, we could say, well, it looks as though the whole nation is disintegrating. It looks as though the climate's giving up on us. Perhaps Gaia will save us, some ecologists may say. But behind and through all of that, what you still find men and women looking for is oneness, utter oneness. And it's one of the reasons, I think, why great crowd events are so appealing. that there in the midst of 50,000 cheering the football team or whatever, you can think that you're one with this great massive humanity for a certain time. But it's a oneness that's born out of an emotional experience and the problem is, you see, that the more you try and play on the emotions to get the oneness to happen, the greater you have to raise the stakes to get it to happen next time. And so if you're trying to find your oneness illicitly, So you find that what satisfies you when you begin in that relationship doesn't satisfy you the little way into the relationship and you have to go more and more out. Do you understand what I mean in all of that? And so when we talk today about the oneness of the church, one body, one spirit, one calling, one Lord, one faith, one hope, one baptism, one God and Father, we're not talking about something which is Perhaps a nice thought if it could possibly be that way for the church but it doesn't apply to anything else. We're actually talking about what we are creationally structured to know. And the great revelation of the gospel is that in Jesus Christ, He has done all that we could not do in all of our diverse seeking for oneness. He has actually brought that oneness to bear in which He has taken away the division between Jew and Gentile, slave or free, rich or poor, enemy and friend and He has forged one new humanity in Christ and that is in fact where we are. And so everything that we are saying today about this passage in Ephesians, I want us to have fixed in our minds, is not walking or working towards something that we will one day achieve, but it is actually living from something which is already given. In Christ there is no longer that division between Jew and Gentile, slave or free, rich or poor. In Christ there is no longer the division between the enemy and the friend, the victim and the perpetrator, because in Christ everything that has separated those warring factions has been crucified. You say, but I don't see it that way. Look at the churches. Look, they're just chaotic. There's division, there's splits, there's all sorts of things happening. And I'm saying, yeah, but do not be deceived. We are talking about a reality which is known by faith and lived in by faith. But that does not make it less real. Now, let's move into another statement which will then eventually lead us into Ephesians. It's taking a long time to get there. But in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 11, Paul says, We are those on whom the ends of the ages have come. We are those on whom the ends of the ages have come. Now, some translations just translate that as a singular. We are those, that is the people of God, upon whom the end of the age has come But if you look at a variety of translations, nearly all of them retain the plural which should be kept there because it is actually a plural statement in the Greek and it seems very unusual in our ears because it's plural. We are those upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Seems a strange statement, doesn't it? And I think the best way to understand that is to realise that throughout the scriptures, and particularly in the New Testament, and particularly the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, you find that we live in a time between times, or a time of overlapping times would be a better way of speaking about it. So there is a current evil age that Paul says is passing away. And yet we are also people who have eternal life now, we have passed out of death into life. And we have tasted of the powers of the age to come. and we have the deposit of the spirit within us and the pledge of the spirit of our inheritance and we are people who belong to the hope that is set before us and we have an aching and a groaning within our hearts for that hope to be fulfilled and that which is hoped for is not seen otherwise it would no longer hope for it because it would be present but there is an age to come in which we already participate, in which we share because Christ has come to us, he has united us with himself and he has taken us into the reality of what it is to be united with the Father in his kingdom and so we share in an age that is yet to come. But also we share in an age that is passing away. And we live in the ends of the ages, like an overlapping age. We're in the intersection of those two ages. And that's where we understand, that's where we need to understand ourselves to be. If we do not understand ourselves to be in that state, or that location, or that place, or that time, we find ourselves in strife. I mean this is something that Jesus himself taught us, didn't he? You might remember the words in his high priestly prayer in John chapter 17 verse 9, I'm praying for them, he says, I'm praying for the, I'm not praying for the world but for those whom you've given me for they are yours. So there's a difference between his people and the world, whatever he means by that in that context. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them. So there's a situation in which the world hates those who have been given that which Christ has given us because they are not of the world, that we do not belong to this age, just as I am not of the world. Do you ever read the things of this age? I don't mean the newspaper called the age, but the things of this age and you think, I just don't make any sense of this. I don't belong to it. It's foreign to me." And you find a disquieted spirit in your heart because it doesn't belong to you and you don't belong to it. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world. And then he says, but I do not pray that you would take them out of the world but that you would keep them from the evil one. So what's he saying? Here we are in the middle of this contested situation. They actually don't belong to the world. I've done something which has changed that situation forever for them. They receive in themselves the same sort of hatred from the world that I have received from the world, but I'm not going to take them out of that situation just now rather that they'd be kept from the evil one in the midst of it. So we live in the overlap of the ages and we need to understand that's the conflict in which we exist every day. and the conflict in which the unity which has been given to us in Christ has to be lived out every day. We get ourselves into strife if we don't realise that because if we don't realise that this age is passing away, we will invest ourselves in this age and we will try to make this age a secure home for ourselves And in making this age as a secure home for ourselves, we have to wear and work in the armour of this age and we find that we have to engage in all of the techniques of this age in order to secure ourselves in this age. And then we suddenly find the church is caught up wrongly, if I could put it this way, in politics. I don't mean politics with a capital P, but politics with a small p. All the things that come from the flesh. in order to be self-extending, self-preserving, self-advancing, self-developing. On the other hand, if we don't realise that the age to come is just that, it is the age to come, then we'll fall into the error of trying to make the things of that age present now in this age. So in that age, the age to come, there will be the fullness of the inheritance given to us in our sight, experience, in every level from tip to toe, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, however you want to speak to it. Our minds will be filled with the fullness of that age without contest and without debate. But that's in that age to come, it's not now. So if for example I demand now in this age that I'm not going to be ill, I'm not going to suffer, I'm not going to have any heartache, then I will be surely disappointed and disillusioned because we do not live in that age. As a friend of ours said, if we've been disillusioned then we've had an illusion to begin with. It's a very good statement. If we're disillusioned then we have an illusion to begin with and the illusion is that I can make this age into that age which is to come or I can bring that age into this age and clear up the whole mess. But if you could clear up the whole mess, you would have to clear away yourself from the face of the earth, wouldn't you? Because the problem is as much our sin as the other person's sin. The problem is as much our response to a person's wickedness as the other person's wickedness. sense to us and so if we are to try and bring that clean brush and sweep through everything and make it all settled and perfect here, there'll be no one left standing on the field at the end apart from ourselves and then you'd have to pull it through your own brain. We need grace in this age, don't we? We need to forgive as we have been forgiven. We need to have mercy as God has shown mercy to us because we are still in the overlap of those two ages. Now, all of that brings us to 1 Corinthians, to Ephesians chapter 4. And what we have here is the nature and basis of the unity despite all of the contest and all of the conflict and the overlap of the ages, this is the way it really is for us in Christ, beloved. One body, one spirit, one calling or one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father. You will notice as you run through that from 4 verses 4 to 6 that each member of the person of the Trinity is mentioned. And each is mentioned in relationship to the special gifts and operations which they bring to us. The spirit is the one who unites us to the body of Jesus Christ. So there is one body in one spirit. The spirit is the one who is the down payment or the deposit of the inheritance which is the hope of our calling. So we have the spirit within us crying Abba Father. We have the spirit within us groaning and longing for the revelation of the sons of God. We have the Spirit within us interceding, waiting and bringing us to the hope that is yet to come. And so the Spirit is the one here who brings to us the hope of our calling in Christ. The Spirit is the one who baptises us and unites us to the body of Christ, but it is the Lord Himself, verse 5, and I think the word Lord there must be understood to be the Lord Jesus, the Lord Himself in whom we are united. And so in the book of the Acts, wherever there was a baptism, most commonly we read they baptised them in the name of the Lord Jesus. So there's one Lord Jesus and one baptism. Every believer spiritually is baptised into Jesus Christ. You cannot be a believer and be baptised into anyone else. Whether you are baptised at a certain age or whether you are baptised at an older age, Spiritually, every person who comes to Christ by the Spirit is actually baptised into Christ of which that physical baptism speaks and the blessings of that spiritual baptism are ministered to our hearts in the physical baptism. But you're actually baptised into Christ. You're not baptised into the church except in a secondary sense. You're baptised into Christ. The church is His body. So there's one Lord, Jesus Christ, and our faith is in Him. So you do not have faith, I trust, in any other human being. You've probably tried that, and you've found it hasn't worked, because the other human being in whom you've had faith has let you down, and sometimes you become very wounded, and then you've realised that you can't even trust yourself. It is a strange statement in our society that we hear almost every day. Oh, you've just got to believe in yourself. I think, well, if I know what's in a human heart, oh, that's the last thing I want to believe in. Because out of the human heart comes all of the darkest muck of the universe. So, in Jesus Christ there is one Lord in whom we are baptised by one spirit We have one faith in Jesus Christ. So you can't put your faith in another human being because every other human being is going to disappoint you terribly. And guess what? You're going to disappoint every other human being terribly. So we have one faith in one Lord in whom we are baptised with one baptism And then we have one God and Father who is over all and in all and through all. Now that is a statement which we could never begin to plumb the depths of really. But it should be to us an enormous comfort and assurance to realise that God the Father is over all. God the Father is in all and God the Father is through all. Paul says in Romans chapter 8 that he, God, has purposed that we would be conformed to the image of his son and he presses into service absolutely everything to bring us to that place. So that he turns even that which is evil for our good and for his glory. He is over, in and through all things. Can you see the story of Joseph in your mind? Now I think sometimes we can get this a little bit wrong. There has been a line of teaching that was around perhaps some years ago which makes a bit of a resurgence from time to time that says no matter what the circumstance you have to thank God for it. I don't think we should ever thank God for that which is actually evil. But I think we should thank God that He turns evil for good and that He has pressed everything into service so that we would be conformed to the image of the Son. The evil that happens does not finally dictate the outcome. The Lord dictates the outcome. God the Father is over all. Now I just want us then to take a step back and look over your whole life And in a mind's eye, in an instant you could go back to your earliest childhood to where you are now and just say to yourself, by faith God the Father is over all that. All the muck ups, all the mistakes, all the wickedness, all the sin, all of the failures of my parents. And somehow or other he's used it all and he's brought you to faith, hasn't he? and somehow or other having emptied it all of its anguish and its pain and its guilt and its shame and all of the terrible alienation that you felt and taken the sting of the failure out of it, you can look back in all of that and you can say, well actually I've got to this age and I've learnt something. He's in all and he's through all. But it's not just the events and the circumstances that Paul's speaking about here. He's saying in the church, every one of us, God the Father is over us all here today. So is there a bit of a blemish in someone next to you? Have they got a bit of a wart that's sticking out? Well you don't have to get a scissors and lop it off. It's God the Father who's over all. And God the Father's in all and God the Father's through all. Because it's God the Father who has appointed Jesus Christ to be the one in whom all things are reconciled. And it's God the Father who sent the Spirit so that we might understand that reconciliation in Him. And it's God the Father who has flooded His love into our hearts. And it's God the Father who has forgiven all of our sin. And it's God the Father who's taken away all of our guilt. And it's God the Father who has given us the Spirit by which we cry, Abba, Father. So if He's over all and in all and through all, Does that not bring us great encouragement to say that we don't have to be the ones driving the boat? So does he just leave us then to sort of drift on, saying I'm over all and through all and in all, trust me, on one level that's all we ever have to do, but on another level he says, well no, he does other things too. And this is what he's going to tell us in the rest of the chapter. He has caused his son to be raised to the right hand of the Father, and from there he's given gifts to men, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers and evangelists, and they keep preaching the gospel to the church. And as the church keeps hearing the gospel, so the unity which they already have in Jesus Christ is opened up for them. That's why your heart sings when you hear the word of grace, and why it all crumples in when it hears the word of law. because it's the ministry of the Spirit which is bringing through to you the liberty of the glory of the sons of God from the ministry of the Father who's over all and in all and through all those gifts. And so the unity of the Spirit is not something that we have to create, but it is something which is already there in which we have to live. And you say, well how do you do that? Well, that's what we're coming to in these chapters. One of the things is, hear the Gospel. Hear what the apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers are telling you because the whole point of that ministry is that they will equip the saints for the work of ministry so that the whole body will build itself up in love. So hear the word of the gospel. What else do we do in that unity? Well, put off the things that don't belong to it. Put off the immorality, put off the sexual immorality, put off the greed or the bitterness. Have you ever found in your heart when you are greedy that you don't have any generosity in your heart for everyone else? You can't be greedy and give to another person at the same time. What else do you do? Well he says put off the anger. Is it possible that there is a person here who some other person may have offended at any point? Is that ever possible like a husband or a wife? And what happens if you hold on to the anger and you let it smolder away? Why don't you just put it off? Don't give the devil an opportunity. And why not instead put on love? And why not forgive as you've been forgiven? And so forth. So that's how it is that that unity is actually lived out of, but it's not living in order to get something that has not come. So in this opening up of Ephesians in the next chapter or two, we are going to actually hear how practically related this matter of oneness really is. Now that time is away and I am just going to say a couple of things as we close in the last minute or two. The first is this, there are two things that will kill our joy and experience of the unity very quickly. One is, if we try and think that that age to come should be this age now, because if we try and make that age to come this age now, we will become perfectionist. And we will demand of ourselves and one another, like if you can bring all of that with perfection, you don't need grace, do you, around the place? There is nothing more deadly to the unity of the church and to the people's experience of joy than perfectionism. You know the greatest perfectionist in the whole universe would have to be Satan, wouldn't he? People have got control issues, Satan has got the control issue. He is working full time to try and get everything under control and he can't. And he is as mad as a cut snake, literally, because he can't. But the other thing is this and it comes to the other side of what I said before. If we think that we are going to, if this age is not passing away, then we have to make this age our home and all that this age offers is all we have then it's every man for himself. And if it's every man for himself, then you're not going to prefer one another in love and you're not going to honour one another as you have been honoured. So we need to recognise the age in which we live, we need to recognise the contest. And the final closing thing is this, as I've been speaking today, I want us to be deeply, deeply, deeply assured that the whole basis of the unity in which we stand in Christ is what has happened on the cross. As I went through earlier at the beginning of this talk and I was talking about the things in which we seek to find that false unity, I could sense among us as we were talking, I failed. And some of those failures might go all the way back to our very early days as young men and women. where we've sought wrong unity. You say, well is there no unity for me? And I say, in Christ all of our failure has been washed away. That is the basis of the unity. It's the reality of the unity. So we stand in Christ as new creations and we live out of that for one another. That's good news, isn't it?