if you would open your Bibles to Ephesians 4. And this is actually a series that I'm doing with the church here on Wednesday nights. And we're spending five weeks, and I have close to an hour each week. So this is going to be the extremely condensed version. So don't worry, I'm not going to take up the whole hour. But what we're doing a study on in Ephesians 4 is what a growing church looks like. And I just was burdened today to share that with us as we are all in various churches all over the world. And it's such an encouraging time to come together and pray. together, but where your main ministry would be is most likely in your local church, if you have a good local gospel preaching church, and how we can minister in a church and walk in our mission. So if you know the book of Ephesians, the book of Ephesians is broken into two parts, similar to the book of Romans. In Romans you have chapters 1 through 11, and it's all theology, and then the second part of Romans, chapters 12 through 16, you have the implications of that theology, the outworking of that theology. And Ephesians is that same way of chapters 1 through 3, which is all theology and doctrine. And then you come to this verse that we'll consider today, therefore, I therefore, chapter 4, verse 1. So building off of all this theology that Paul just explained, he now starts giving the implications of theology. And really, if we could sum up the first half of Ephesians, it could be the very famous verse, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no man may boast. And then he actually gives us a glimpse, right? Many of us can quote verses 8 and 9. Can we quote verse 10? That's the question. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which he prepared before him, that we might walk in them. And so that gives us a glimpse of where he's headed, really, in this book and to chapter four. So what I want to consider very briefly with you all this morning is simply our mission. And we're going to walk through, and it's alliterated, if I know some of you like to take notes. And hopefully you bear with me. I'm not very good at alliterating, but I did my best on this to help with memory. So I'll read the text very briefly. It says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. We're going to stop there. So very briefly, we'll consider our mission. Our mission is very simple, and if we weren't on Zoom and we could have easier interaction, I'd ask you all to point out what the mission is, but it's not that easy on Zoom. So he says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called. So quite simply, our mission is to, two words we could say, walk worthy, to be walking worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the doctrine that was explained in the first three chapters. And so that is our mission. Now we're going to consider different points considering our mission. I want to point out number one, the root of our mission, the root of our mission. The root of our mission is quite simply the gospel. And I already said it, we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but quite simply, Ephesians chapter one, God the Father, or orchestrates and is sovereignly ruling over salvation. Jesus Christ, through his blood and sacrifice, provides redemption and forgiveness of our sins. The Holy Spirit provides a sealing and a guarantee of our salvation. God is then at work inside of us. He's made us alive together with Christ Jesus, seated us in heavenly places. We're saved by grace. not by works, but through faith. We were once far off and had these barrier walls placed up, yet God has broken those down and brought us near. That's the end of Ephesians chapter 2, when Paul defends his ministry and his ministry of proclaiming the mystery that the Gentiles are brought into the gospel and to God's people. And then this glorious statement at the end of chapter three, right, where it says God is able to do far above beyond all that we could ask or think and that all the glory goes to him. This remembrance going back to chapter one of that all of these things take place to the praise of his glorious Grace. This is the root of our mission. Why do we walk worthy and what are we walking worthy of? We're walking worthy of the salvation which God has incredibly worked on our behalf and gifted to us through faith. That is the root of our mission. But this mission is also reasonable. And we all have had times in our lives where we've been asked to do things that are unreasonable. Or if you have children, I'm sure you're guilty like I am of asking our kids to do something unreasonable. So asking a child to help you carry in the groceries, and you say, can you grab that bag there? And they don't do it. And then you recognize the bag weighs more than that. It happens to be the gallon of milk. or something like that. You're asking them to do something simply unreasonable. I have a three-year-old, the same one that got hurt on Monday. She likes adventure, so whenever we get on the highway, she goes, Daddy, go as fast as you can, right? That's unreasonable. I can't go as fast as I can, right? But that's not the case with God. God calls us to walk worthy of the calling with which we've been called. It is a reasonable call. He never asks us to do something that is unreasonable. In a couple illustrations, really, He never asks us to do anything that He hasn't done for us. Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow after Him. Well, Jesus lived a righteous and perfect life on our behalf. He even calls us to be willing to die for Him. Jesus Christ died for us. So everything that God calls us to do in our walk with him, he has really done for us and it's quite a reasonable call. And now we look at the rails of our mission. So we have the root of our mission, the reasonableness of our mission, and the rails. And we all understand this if you've ever been bowling. Right? And maybe you're not the greatest bowler like I am, and it might help to put up those bumpers to keep the ball from going into the gutter. Or another illustration that many of us would be used to is driving down the highway and they started installing those rumble strips. So if you start to go off of the highway, all of a sudden there's that loud noise, that vibration on your tires to make you go back into your lane. And that's somewhat what Paul does for us here in our mission. How are we to stay in our lane? How are we to walk worthy among our church family and our brothers and sisters in Christ? And that's verse two. He says, with all humility, gentleness, with patience, and bearing with one another in love. We could say there's four railings in a sense. You have humility. Quite simply, Philippians 2 tells us about humility. pictured for us in Christ, that you put other people's needs before your own needs. You think of others and not yourself. We have gentleness, caring for people, not being rough or harsh. This word could also be said as meekness, right? You think of it as strength under control. It's like a father wrestling with his children on the living room floor. He has the power to overpower them and pin them, but he doesn't. He's gentle with them. He's meek. You have patience, right? Patience is not being happy and fine when things are going your way, right? It's actually living with joy and enduring through hardships and through difficulties and through annoyances, and then bearing with one another in love, loving each other. And Jesus said himself that people would know that we are his disciples by our what? by our love for one another. So as you are walking worthy of the calling with which you've been called, it stems out of the gospel. It has to be rooted in the gospel. If you're not saved in the first place, obviously you can't walk worthy of being saved. Number two, it's a reasonable call. God has called us reasonably to do what we are called to do. And you have to be protected by humility, gentleness, patience, and love in your interaction with each other. I'm going to read a quote very quickly by a commentator named Marida. He mentions that we must renounce self-centeredness in order to walk in humility. We must renounce harshness in order to walk with gentleness. We must renounce the tyranny of our own agendas in order to walk with patience. We must renounce idealistic expectations in order to walk in forbearing love. We must renounce indifference and passivity in order to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. The church is unified and God is glorified when we live with such Christ-like conduct. And really what he does is he reminds us of where Ephesians 4 heads, putting off and putting on, putting off and putting on. No longer steal, but rather work so that you can be generous. Put away lying and speak truth. That's the rest of Ephesians 4. The goal of this mission, the number 3, or number 4, is the result. And that's mentioned in verse 3. It says, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. As we walk worthy of our calling, and we walk in humility and gentleness and patience and love with one another, this will bring about the maintenance of the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Notice he doesn't say you have to make unity. If you believe in Christ as Lord and Savior, you already have unity, but we are called to maintain that unity, and we do it by this. And then lastly, in closing, we see the richness of this calling. And this is where I really stretch the alliteration, and I apologize, but I had to find that last R word. All right. I think it fits. There is a great wealth of riches in our unity as the church, right? And it is found in God. in our Trinity, our triune God, and in fact what Paul does is in each verse he mentions each of the persons of God in the Trinity. In verse 4 we have one spirit, in verse 5 we have one Lord, and verse 6 is one God Father of all. So we have one body, one spirit, just as you were called, and one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. And quite simply, we are united. We can be united and maintain that unity because we have one saving faith, right? Dependence upon Jesus Christ, crucified, buried, and risen again, dependent upon the work of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. So we are called to walk worthy of the calling with which we've been called. I'll close in prayer. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the great riches of your word and the truths of it. I pray that we would cherish the gospel as it's described in the first three chapters of Ephesians. But Lord, that that cherishing of that truth would make an impact in our lives, that we would walk worthy of the calling with which we've been called, each one of us, in our local context, and also in the context of this prayer meeting together, meeting with brothers and sisters from all around the world, that we would be displaying humility and gentleness and patience and love for one another, just as Christ has done. In Jesus' name, amen.