The title of this message is One. One. One. O-N-E, not W-O-N. O-N-E. We'll read this from the Amplified Bible to begin with. Ephesians 4 and verse number 1. So I, the prisoner for the Lord, appeal to you to live a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. That is to live a life that exhibits godly character and moral courage and personal integrity and mature behavior, a life that expresses gratitude to God for your salvation. With all humility, forsaking self-righteousness, gentleness, maintaining self-control with patience, bearing with one another in unselfish love. Make every effort to keep oneness of the spirit in the bond of peace, each individual working together to make the whole successful. The whole title of this is one, all of it, that a body There is one body of believers and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when called to salvation. One body in each assembly. There is one body in each assembly. Assemblies or churches are visible body of believers in a place. And those body of believers should be one. It says here there's one Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God, one Father of all of us, who is sovereign over all and working through all and living in all. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. There are not sprinkling, pouring, and immersion. There's one baptism, and that's immersion only. And there's our girl. Are you there? OK. I'm going to put you here. I'm already started now. OK. OK. We have our teleclasses. And Sharon's on here with us. The phone dropped off a while ago. And so she called back. So she's part of our class. Part of our church, too. Let's go back now and look at it from the Greek. I don't know how far we're going to get with it. But this class is called one. Parakalo? un himas ego ho desmios in curio axios peripatese teis plesios eis ecclesi eccletete. It says, I beseech you, first person singular present indicative of that from paracallio. Para means to walk beside and to call. We have a paraclete also which is the Holy Spirit. But he said, I beseech you therefore, this little particle of conjunction here, un, you all, himos, excuse the plural second person pronoun, and I the desmios. Paul doesn't say I'm an apostle. Paul doesn't say that I'm a preacher or I'm a I'm your bishop. He said, I am a slave. That to me almost comes from Deo, which means to be bound, to be bound. When we're born again in all reality, we become slaves of Jesus Christ. He was our slave for 33 and a half years on this earth. He did exactly what he had to do to procure our salvation. Now he said, I am a bond slave. Now, I was talking to a fellow on the phone today, one of my students in Bakersfield, California, and we were talking about presidency of the United States. And I said, well, we had a president that was a former slave. He said, who's that? I said, that's Andrew Johnson. I said, Andrew Johnson was a former slave. There were a lot of white slaves. Andrew Johnson was a former slave. Benjamin Franklin was a former slave. My great, great, great uncle, Sam Paul, or not Sam Paul, but John Paul Jones, his name was really John Paul, he was a slave. He was sold into slavery and they gave him his freedom after he had gone to Africa. Everybody on the ship on the way back to England had died of malaria and he commandeered that ship. And when he came back they gave him his freedom. He came here to America and became the father of the American Navy. We bombed slaves. Andrew Johnson was a bombed slave. Mother sold him into a – he was a seamstress. And he made suits and clothing and everything. He always had nice looking suits. But he ran away. Benjamin Franklin ran away from slavery. Andrew Johnson could never went to school one day in his life. Not one day. His wife taught him how to read and write and how to mathematics. But he became President of the United States. A former slave. You don't hear that very often, but that's true. A bomb slave. A slave in the Lord. Voluntarily, we become voluntary workers for the Lord. And then it says oxios, and that means worthy. That means befitting, suitable. To walk about, peripatio, peripatese, that is, here it's at 1 Thyrs infinity, diacting from peripatio. Peri means around, and patio means to walk. Spread yourself around according to the calling, the klesios, the calling. This word election comes from that word here. Calling, according to calling, of which you were called out. Well, sometimes we have whatever your vocation, whatever it is. You know, in the Bible, basically it tells us, learn a trade that you like. And when you go to work, you will enjoy yourself doing that trade. I remember I've been a mechanic most of my life. I've been working in the oil fields. I've been an electrician, a carpenter, a plumber, everything you can think of. But in the oil fields, I liked the work I did. It was very hard. But one of the things that I liked, one of my jobs that I loved most of all, besides preaching and studying the work of God and going to school, which was a long time, 12 years of that, that is going to school, that I I loved building things. I went to work in hydraulics and I was building pumps and motors and all kinds of stuff and it was like going, like Christmas every day. I just loved it. Then I taught, after I moved on up into management, I taught others how to do it. And I enjoyed doing it. And it was a thrill to see you build something and it works. Just like building a house and living in it. You're out there driving nails, screwing screws, and sawing boards, and all that, and all of a sudden, one day, you have a house, or a room, or something. Walk about, according to your calling. Remember, Brother, then Marcus Bogart, Dr. Bogart. He said, whatever you do, Whatever you do, do it for the Lord. Whether you're a carpenter, go out there and be the best carpenter there is. If you're a plumber, be a good plumber. Whatever you do, do it great. Do it good. Enjoy it. You want to be happy, find a job you like to do and do it. That's according to your calling. We have two callings. We have a calling in this world and we have a calling with God too. God calls us out wherever we are and that's where we are. I've known preachers that were plumbers and carpenters and electricians and Whatever. Some of them use car sales. Whatever. Whatever they do, do it well. Some of them are real estate people. Whatever you do, do it well. If you're a pastor, basically 80% of your time ought to be studying. Studying. Feeding the people. Feeding, feeding, feeding God's people. It is your job to feed God's people, to learn the Word of God to where it just drips off of your fingertips, as Dr. Hoyt Chastain said when I was going to school, seminary. A calling of which ye were called out. Eglesteta. Second person, twelfth verse, there is a dignity passive voice. A wonderful thing to be called a God, isn't it? Think about it for a while. Maybe, I don't know how old you were when you were saved. I don't know how old you were. I was young. I was raised up in a drunk Indian village. It was not good. I was saved when my grandmother got killed, after she got killed. I just felt lost. She was my only mother I ever had. My mother gave me away when I was one day old and she brought me home and said I was too much trouble. And so she gave me up to my grandmother and she said, she never gave you back. Well, I'm sure she really wanted me, she got me back, but she didn't. But she said, I never spent a dime on raising you or anything else. I never had to do anything. You never cost me anything, no time or anything. Well, you know what? Jesus raises us through his Bible. He raises us. We grow up and you grow up. I mean, you may be 50 years old when you go to kindergarten in the Bible. You might be. You may be 70 or 80. I remember Marilyn always wanted to learn more about the Bible. She wanted to marry a cowboy and an Indian, and she wanted somebody to teach her the Bible. I think you got more than you can chew, swallow, and digest, didn't you? Huh? Anyway, salvation is the basis of motivation. And when we're saved, we ought to Follow the Lord the best we can. Whatever you do, do it the best. Be honest in your endeavors. I remember I worked for an outfit, and they wanted me to lie to the customers and deceive the customers. I said, I won't do it. I said, when they hear me say something or say something to them, they can get bent on it. They know it's true. And they will come back here for that. I'm not going to go tear their equipment down and tell them that I can fix it tomorrow and then I won't get it done for a month. I was going to say, you can't get it done for a month, but I will work on it just as fast as I can. Everybody else is going to tell you they can do it right now, but they're going to have to get the parts just like I do. And so they believed me. I remember when I quit the place, it was kind of under wrong circumstances. They tried to jerk me around and I wouldn't be jerked around. And I told him, I said, go home and I'll manage this place for six months and come back. And I said, well, I'll have your house cleaned. And I said, I've been making you millions of dollars anyway. He couldn't do that. Six months later, he begged me to. He said, I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I said, well, it's too late now. I'm gone. You know, same as that. The very day that I left, they came in, people come in asking for me. They didn't want to talk to anybody else. They said, where's Jim? He's not here anymore. He's not here anymore. I don't believe in you people. See you later. That happened over and over and over again. They couldn't trust him. Be trustable. 4 and verse 2 now. If you look at my notes here, it's all cluttered up with things. You can hardly read the Greek or the English or anything. It's just filled up over the years. Meta, posses, tape nophronus nes cae praetos meta macrothemios anelcanomen anoi aleloin in agapain. With all, meta, with, that little preposition there, all, little adjective, all humility, humility. All humility. I remember I'm kind of shy, really. I mean, you see me up here on camera talking and doing all kinds of stuff, but I'm pretty shy. Am I not, Marilyn? I used to stand up in front of 7,000, 8,000 people there, and I wouldn't even look up. They introduced me as a Greek and Hebrew scholar and teaching all these classes. And I wouldn't hardly look up. She said, look up. Look up. I know what I am. I know what you are. I have nothing to be proud of except that I want to put my shoulder to the wheel and move and keep moving for the Lord. The Lord has given me a long life now, even though many times I was close to death in my life. With all humility, Humble-mindedness is what it means. It is tapefrosines. That word frame is in that word there. That means your mind. Your frame. Be humble-minded. And, conjunction, chi there, base two hundred and eight. And then the word pra-tetos. Pra-tetos. That means handling everything tenderly. I went to school with a lot of boys. And I heard a lot of preachers coming back, you know, these young boys. They'd go out and skin the churches. They'd go out and skin the sheep. They'd come back bragging on how they had really slapped them around, you know, and got them straightened out. You know what? You're one of those sheep, too. Remember, you're a sheep, too. a shepherd, but you're a sheep also, with all meekness, handling everything tenderly. I've seen some churches, church discipline is a rod and a baseball bat they beat people up with all the time. One of my, well, my father in the faith, Dr. H.T. Hubbard, Harold Travis Hubbard, I saw him handled church discipline with such a kindness, with such kindness. And he managed his church that way with kindness. He showed them how to love people, even when they weren't lovable sometimes. With handling everything tenderly and carefully with macrothemios. With macrothemios. Macro means long, and themios means long-tempered. Long and very patient. You know, raising children takes a lot of patience, you know that? Raising children takes a lot of patience. Raising children in church takes a lot of patience. Even churches need to have a lot of patience with their pastors, too. And the pastors with the churches. Handle everything with loving kindness. Long-mindedness. And then ano, ane, ko-me-noi, on that ko-me-noi, that means holding up, holding up, that's ana there and then echo, holding up, forbearing, enduring patiently and holding up and forbearing one another. Hold one another up. You don't go tear somebody down, you hold them up. It's real easy to say something real bad, and I see this with many people. Many people have many faults, but they blame other people and show all their faults so they'll make themselves look better. I remember Brother D.S. Madden. We won all over the world together, all over the Middle East and everything. And I just love that man, and I guess he loved me too. He told the church that I was passionately in love with him one time, and he said, I'm going to go right along to Brother Phillips. He said, I love the man, because he loves the Lord. He's one of the greatest men I ever knew. All of these, Boyd Chastain, Roy Reed, Martin Canavan, All of these people that were my teachers and fellow students, I loved very greatly. The greatest years of my life, about 12 years, I spent in the seminary. It took me a long time to learn. I had nine years of Greek and six years of Hebrew in class, and I've been in touch with studies for over 50 years. Plus every kind of theological study, if you look on the website, you'll see every theological class in the seminary with great extension. And in meekness, with long-mindedness and forebearing holding up one another, in what? In agape. What is agape? Sacrificial love. There are several words for love in Greek, you know, I mean, family love, friend love, love like a friend, philo. There is sexual love, ebros, an attraction. But it says here, in sacrificial love, this means love where you'll give your life for one another. I've seen church members, this happened to me one time. I was going to Valley Baptist Church and I was driving all the way from Taft, California. And my car quit. And I was driving an old pickup. And it was barely going because the engine was not good in it. It looked good, but the engine wasn't right yet. Anyway, this one of the church members come up to me, and he said, Brother Phillips, he said, would you like to have a car, a pretty new car, you know, newer car than what you're driving? He said, you're having trouble getting here sometimes, aren't you? And I said, yeah. But he said, you're always here three hours early anyway. He said, come over to my house. I'm going to give you this Oldsmobile. It was my wife's car, and she died. And he said, I want you to have it. I'll never forget that. Never forget it. I needed that car. I had learned to receive by that time. A man wanted to buy me a brand new car one time, my friend Frank, and I wouldn't let him. I was too proud. God had got me, he had raised me. It takes time. I was, all my life I stood on my own feet. All my life I raised myself when I was growing up. I went to school when it wasn't easy. working two or three jobs and going to high school. Same thing when I went to the seminary. Couldn't hardly stay awake in class sometimes. I know Brother Madden told the church I was trash. He said, you don't know how faithful that man is. He said, I see him. I see him dead tired there. Just dead tired. And there in that class. And learning. That's the way we're supposed to do. We give our lives to God. When we're looking at one another, We're not looking at the finished product. We're a work in progress. Always a work in progress. I'm not finished. God's not finished with me yet. Is He finished with you yet? I hope you don't say, oh yeah, I'm all right. I'm everything fine. No, it's not. God's not finished with you yet because you're still in the world. If He was finished with you, you'd be going up, up, up and away. Love covers a multitude of sins, doesn't it? Love covers a multitude of sins and shortcomings, because we love one another. 4 and verse number 3 now, Spude Zontes, Terrain, Tein, Ennoteta, Tu, Numatos, Ento, Sine Desmo, Tes, Erenes, En, Soma, Kai, and Numa. Becoming eager, quick to act. Be quick to act, be speedily quick to act, hurrying to keep and to guard. That word terrain there means to guard with your life. Matthew 28, 18-20 says, I know it says, King James, go ye therefore, but that's what it says in Greek. In Greek it says, after you've been kicked out, after you've been gone, after you've gone, make disciples. Then you baptize those disciples in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then he says, teaching them to guard, that word right there, to guard with their lives all things that I've taught unto you. Lo, I'll be with you until the end of the world, end of the age. to keep the oneness. Aristotle and Plutarch use this word, it's a late rare word. The oneness of the spirit. There are five different spirits leading a church. There's one spirit leading a church. I've seen many Baptist churches sometimes, there's a lot of fighting going on in there sometimes. And you'd think there was 40 different spirits leading the church. But there's one spirit leading the church, one spirit, pneumatos, in the syn desmo, in the together binding. When you're saved, the Lord, through His Word, leads you to a church. He leads you to baptism and church membership so you can learn, so you can work. You need to get in harness. Together binding bond of peace. Churches ought to operate in peace, not in tyranny, not in disorder and discord. You know the Bible, Baptists, brethren. The preacher is basically the dictator. He's the boss of the church. He thinks that when God calls him to this church, he's supposed to make all decisions, the church follows him. And that's Bible Baptist. And I've seen Bible Baptist preachers go into missionary Baptist churches, and boy, how the fire starts up. I mean, the church sometimes just scatters. Not gonna have it. The pastor, if you're a pastor, you are the servant. You're the leader, but you're the servant. You lead by serving. That's what you do. In peace. Together binding of peace. And then it says, hen one body, one soma, and one spirit, kai hein numa. It's the same spirit that came upon the church there at the day of Pentecost. By the way, the church was called out at the seashore of Galilee, way over yonder here. When he organized the church, he called it out. There were apostles in that church already. There was a treasurer in that church. There was a clerk in that church. You know, a lot of church members. And the church was baptizing people before Pentecost. 4 and verse 3, Spute Tontos. being eager to keep or guard the oneness of the spirit and the together binding of peace, one body and one spirit. True fellowship and love is the glue that binds a church together. Love is the glue that binds a church together. Because I'm going to tell you something, it takes love to put up with church members. It takes love to put up with pastors. It takes love to put up with teachers. I remember when I was at Valley Baptist Church, a lot of heretics came at that church a long time ago. And every time they got one they couldn't do anything with, they said, Brother Jim, see if you can do nothing with that person. And sometimes they didn't believe at all what we believed. And I said, why in the world are you here? If you don't believe the pastors, if you don't believe me, why are you here? Go someplace that you believe like that. Or else convert. get converted to what we believe. I studied church history and I studied the Bible and I became a Baptist. I'm a Baptist by conviction, not by just going to that church. A church is an institution and that institution teaches Bible doctrine. Doctrine is what holds a church together. The love in a New Testament church, people try to figure out every way and every excuse they can do to be together. You can't go to church enough. There isn't enough time. A lot of times your job is to keep you away from church and things, but you want to be there. You want to be there. You go to classes, you go to dinners, you go to working and playing together. Working together, loving one another. One another. One, one, one. Verse number four. Kathos kai eklathete in mia elpida, teis plesios himon. I remember a preacher one time told me, he said, I'd really love if somebody would preach from the Greek. I said, go listen to me preach from Greek or Hebrew. Either one, it don't matter. Go listen to me. I said, you'll hear it. I had a preacher one time that resigned and was coming into my classes. I think I was teaching 1st and 2nd Peter from Greek. And he came in the classes and he was just jumping up and down in the seat because I was preaching from Greek. He said, I never saw anybody preach from Greek. I said, well, that's the Bible. You just do it. I had another Sunday school teacher He had me come and teach his class for a while for him. And he said, man, you taught me how to preach. You can preach from the Bible. I said, let the Bible do it. Let the Bible preach. Just know it. And like Brother Shastain said, let the word of God drip off your fingertips just like honey out of a day hive. Torn for a cot of sky. Just as also, a little cumulative particle there Kai, yes page 208, ye were called, second person plural, first person indicative, passive voice, the action was done upon us, ye were called, we were called. Now this is a circular letter, this isn't the church, this isn't the Ephesian letter, it didn't go to the church of Ephesus, it was sent out from the church of Ephesus. It is a circular letter to all churches and to you wherever you are, it's a circular letter to your church wherever you are. Ye were called out in mea elpida, in one hope. Now the book of Hebrews says that before a man can believe in God, he has to believe that God is. I'm going to do a message on God here in the future. What deists believe about God and what the Bible teaches about God. They know that it doesn't agree. But there's so many religions out there today that are deists. They don't believe in a personal real God, they believe in a creator that created and walked off and left this world. Our creator became one of us, lived in flesh and put up with us for 33 and a half years or so, and then died on the cross of Calvary, being insulted and slapped and beat and killed by them. One hope, one Elpida. This hope gives you peace. Ireni. Shalom. Ireni. On page 575 in Bullinger's lexicon up here someplace, it says in there that peace is absence of all turmoil, absence of all doubt. Hope, the peace of the calling, klesios, of you all. God has saved us and has placed us in each of our own special places of service. The Jews and the Gentiles, the blacks, the whites, the Indians, I'm Indian, we're all saved by one One salvation, one way, we're saved one way. And we have one calling. We're all the same. There's only one God and one human race. And God created it and God became part of it. And we're related to it. Here's our Goel from the Hebrew. He is our kinsman redeemer. The book of Ruth has written that one person, one way to show us that God is our kinsman redeemer. That He loved us so much. And he became flesh. In John 1 and 1 it says, In beginning, singular, Ein hologos was the word. But the word there is a Hebraism. And it means in beginning, singular beginning. That's the oldest time in the Bible. in the beginning kept on being the Jehovah. And the Jehovah kept on being an inseparable part of the Godhead. Because Jehovah kept on being God. Jesus never ceased being God on this earth. But He was God in man. He was related to us. The blood of God flowed in His veins. You know, the blood of God flowed in Adam's veins. He breathed in him the breathings of life. And the breathings of life is blood. blood. Haima, Dom in Hebrew. Haima in Greek, Dom in Hebrew. Adam. The name Adam means blood. It's red. Adamah, ha-adamah is the earth. And we are related to the earth. We are created from the same elements as the earth. Not really from the earth, but the same elements as the earth. Men, from the same elements as the earth. God became related to His creation through the flesh of the woman. The blood of man is contaminated. When Adam fell, it put a disease, a contamination in that blood that gave us all death. But the blood of Jesus Christ gives us life. The tree of life in the Garden of Eden would have given them life. They failed. They could not partake of the tree of life, but Jesus' cross is the tree of life again. The word cross, limb, tree, that's all the same word. The tree of life is a cross of Christ for you today. The tree of life. The waters of life, he said, come unto me and drink. I'll give you water. He said, I'm the bread that come down out of heaven. He is a helosmos. He is a mercy seat. That was in the ark of, in the temple and in the tabernacle. He is the mercy seat. He is the ark of the covenant. He is the table of that, the top of it. That's where they offered the blood. And that's where they met with God. God saves us all for a purpose. He doesn't save you and turn you loose in the world. 4 and verse 5, eis kurios mea pestis. Echadna bautisma. One Lord, one Kyrios. That's Adonai, Jehovah, okay? One Master. One Lord. One Faith. There is not, I mean we look out there in church history and up this chart here, when I teach church history, and I've done over 150 classes on church history, we see the evolution of theology. and Christian don't. There is no evolution of theology in God's churches. What does it say here? Does it say there's going to be evolution of theology here? Things are going to change all the way down through here? Is it going to say baptismal regeneration, baptizing infants, then sprinkling infants? Does it say that baptism is a vehicle of grace? No. Does it say the Lord's Supper is a vehicle of grace? No, it is not. We take the Lord's Supper in remembrance of Him. It's for us to honor Him, not to get something. We don't get something in baptism in all reality, we honor Him. We become members of God's churches when we're baptized. We have a responsibility. One Lord. One Master. Only one. One faith. There's only one system of teaching. About 50 years ago I wrote a little book called The Doctrines of the Bible. And those are very important. I've taught them many, many times. And when I was at Valley Baptist Church I started teaching those. And I go through this class. I did about 30 or 40 or 50 or something like that. The first class I did. Well, I thought I did pretty good. I said, what would you like me to teach again? And they said the same thing. I said, what? We want to hear this again. Okay, here it comes, I did it again. And then I said, what else can I teach? Do it again. People want to know the true doctrines of God. They want to know what's right and wrong. One baptism, one dipping. We are all accepted in God's churches, one local assembly in one way, we're fellowshiped in that church, and upon baptism we have full rights and privileges of that church. And then we can take the Lord's supper with that church, not getting something for ourselves, but remembering our Lord and Savior. There's such a thing as unscriptural baptism. Acts 19, 1 to 7, and there's a whole lot of unscriptural baptism today, I'll tell you. There are many Elohims in the world, but only one Jehovah. The word Elohim, that means a Creator God. Barashith barah Elohim et ha'shamayim v'et ha'aretz. In Hebrew, Genesis 1-1. In beginnings, that's what it says. Not beginning. In beginnings. One of the beginnings. God created the heavens and the earth. In beginnings. Barashith barah. He had created. His finished product. Perfect tense. Third person singular, masculine, perfect tense. He had created Elohim, the Creator God. And then it says, Et Hashemayim. Et, sign of direct obligation, page 81. The Hashemayim, the heavens. That means everything above the earth. The uplifted waters. Everything above the earth. The earth wasn't created yet. But He created the whole universe, and then it says, Weeth Ha'aretz. And He took the earth and put it in exactly the same place. The right place for it to do and produce life. And He created. Barah. He created. And in Genesis 1-2 it says, Weeth Ha'aretz. Ha-yah. Together with one another. Wehoshu'vel p'nei hamayim. It said, And the earth, she had become formless and void. And darkness was over the faces of the deep. And then it says, Spirit God, Mary Pecheth. Ruah El Hima. Mary Pecheth. Spirit God suffered over, mourned over the faces of the deep. Because something had happened. It had become formless and void. It wasn't created that way. You know, when you come into this world, you come into the world corrupted. We're born in sin. We're born sinners in the world. But when we call upon the Lord and He saves us, we become a product of God. We become a work in progress. God bless you. I hope that as we study God's Word tonight together that it bless your heart. I hope you learn from it. Study from the Word of God. Let God deal with your life, not God lead you. Let God, and follow Him as He leads you. Follow Him as He leads you. I remember a long time ago, I'm an old man now, so it's a long time ago. I remember we had this Brahma cow and a calf, and my dad roped this cow, and we were out in a pasture, about 20, 30 acre pasture, And the water was about two foot deep in these checks. It was flood irrigated. And I was out there, and he threw the rope to me, and he said, take this cow and put her in that pen over there. Woo. She had horns. She was mean. And she had a calf. Well, a calf follows her wherever she goes. She went out there, and she'd charge me, and I'd dodge, and she'd hit the end of that rope and just burn my hand with rope burns. I mean, my hands were burned up. Every 50 feet or 100 feet, she'd charge me again, and I'd That broke me. I knew better than to turn and lose that rope. I'd get a whippin' bad, worse than that burn raw rope. Rope burns in my hand. I got her in that pen. And then I went up there and I slapped her right on the nose. Slapped her right on the nose. And now you come. I got me a toe sack and got out there and my hands were burning and hurting. But I fought that cow. I was going to be a Romeo clown. I'm glad I didn't do that. But every inch of the way she fought. That reminds somebody just like us. Sometimes every inch of the way we fight, don't we? We have to go around that mountain over and over and over again. Follow the Lord. Don't hit the end of that rope all the time. It hurts. Our Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for this message tonight from Your Word. Please forgive me where I failed You. In Jesus' name I pray.