They Only Have One - Audio
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If you've been with us for any length of time, you know that we're in the book of Ephesians. The last time we spoke about Ephesians, we read at the hinge point. The first three books of Ephesians talk about who we are in Christ, the new creation made new, and what's happened that God has done to bring us together as one people and to give us a future inheritance, to give us forgiveness of sins. And the second half of the book, the second three chapters into which we are now embarking, are about how the church is going to live given this new reality. And we spoke a couple weeks ago about what we might call this ethic. You see, the people in Ephesus, the Ephesian church, was a church that was under fire. It was a part of a hostile culture. It was attacked. We even had some stories and acts about Paul's founding of the church and spending several years with them, and then actually being kicked out of the city. He had to run away because he was scared, he was going to get killed. He actually wanted to stay and face the lines as it were, but his friends, the elders and the church, he founded, kicked him right out and said, "Paul, you can't. You can't be here. You've caused too much problem, too many problems." And so Paul left. We even hear in Acts about, he comes back one final time, but he doesn't even enter the city. He comes to a city south of Ephesus to meet with the elders and pray with them because he knows he's going to Rome to die and he's never going to see them again. He understands the Ephesus, it's a hostile environment. And so we talked about the kind of ethic he's going to develop for the church. It's going to be what we call a trench ethic. It's going to be the ethic of people who are in the middle of a battle, who are in the middle of the war. It's not the same kind of ethics that you have when everything's happy and peaceful and joyful. It's the ethic for living in a hostile culture, a culture that is doing everything it can to resist the coming of the next age. We have hope, and the Ephesians had hope, that this new age was coming. And so they fought. And now this week we begin to learn how. In the text today, Paul is going to explain our number one priority. The number one thing, that every church in the midst of a hostile culture, and I submit that here in South Orange County, we are in the midst of a hostile culture. What every church has to hold fast, the number one priority, the one thing you can't let go, this is it. If you do this, you've got a fighting chance, and if you don't, you're done. I'm looking for a new phone. This happens every couple of years, you know, as a member of Verizon Wireless, they tempt me. They say, oh, you've got a free upgrade. So I went on the internet because I'm curious to see what's out there. And hey, have you seen the Sony Ericsson K750? I mean, look at that thing. Woo, real nice, right? It's a classy phone.
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The church's number one priority is to protect the unity God created by His Spirit, the connections made by a flourishing, robust, peaceful community. Guard it, save it, defend it.