Walk Worthy in Unity

SERMON INTRO:

“This morning I want to ask this question: what percentage of people believe in God? If you think about Americans, what percentage believe in God? If you look at Gallup polls in the last couple of years, it's still over 80%.

“It could even be more depending on how you ask the question. But the problem with any survey like that is this—the concept of God is a very slippery concept. Which God are we talking about? Whose God?

“Is it the God of the Bible maybe? Or is it the God of Deism? The deistic God is a God who kind of wound up the world, created the world, kind of wound it up, and kind of went away, and we're just off to fend for ourselves. Is it another kind of God? Is it a regional God? You know, a God that's not God of all, but just that kind of thing. See, how many people acknowledge the theory of God. but are actually functionally atheists?

“And what I mean by that is, people can believe that something exists, but it has no bearing on their lives. How many people are functionally atheist that a belief in God has nothing to do with how they actually live? Are they truly theistic in that way?

“Let's keep that in mind as we begin to work our way through our passage this morning. This morning we make a major transition and the major transition in the book of Ephesians. The first three chapters were all about the grace of God and bringing about the gospel of salvation in and through Jesus Christ in a majestic way.

“Paul has explicated the depth of the gospel both as vertical reconciliation with God and horizontal reconciliation with people that the Jews and Gentiles together make up the dwelling place of God on earth, and that's what we call the church, the gathering of the people of God, both Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus Christ. And through this, God is working out his ultimate plan to unite all things in Christ. We continue to go back to chapter one, verse ten.

“He kind of sets out his grand purpose. The grand purpose of God is to unite all things in Christ. And as we begin chapter four today, we'll see that we are called to live a Christian life because there is one God and there is one plan. We're going to see that the basis for this call, this call to live in a certain way is very politically and culturally incorrect, is what we're going to see this morning.

“You see, the God of the Bible tends to not concern himself very much with what is politically and culturally correct. The God of the Bible doesn't really care if he's on the right side of history. Because he's always on the right side of history. The challenge for us will be to believe what this actually says, and even more to live it out in the church and live it out in the world. A genuine Christian life is a distinct life. It's not a standard worldly life and we are all called to it if we name the name of Jesus Christ.”

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