The Promise of Calling!

Ephesians 4:1-7 (NAS95)

In this sermon series, we are learning how to live like a champion by learning how to live according to the victory of the promises of God. Our guiding image for this series is being a member of an NFL team who wins the Superbowl. We live like champions so that others will come to know the One who gave us His Victory—Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and coming again!

The play of the week is the “Promise of Calling!” The memory verse for this promise is Ephesians 4:1, “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.”

The foundational truth for this promise of God is that we are each called by God. This sounds simple, but it addresses a huge misunderstanding in the traditional church that must be addressed—the calling of God is not limited to being a pastor or missionary. The calling of God is for every single believer in Jesus, because the calling of God is about the health and functionality of the entire Body of Christ.

In fact, spiritual leaders in the church are commanded to equip you to fulfill your calling. Listen to this truth taught in Ephesians 4:11-16, from the same chapter as today’s promise:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

The truth of God’s Word is that the body of Christ will not mature until every single member of the body is walking in maturity—“in a manner worthy of the calling.” My call as a pastor and fellow elder in this church is not to have power over you, but to empower you in your calling—to live a mature life as a member of the Body of Christ! For you to be living the life of faith, hope, and love.

[So please call on me to help you; this is a relational process that I walk with you in the way, not a program to be managed or service to be lead! I desire to meet with you and help you find out where you are in your walk with Jesus and then help you, with the Holy Spirit as our guide, in taking next steps in this maturation process. This is the way! My call is to help you mature in your walk in the Way of Jesus.]

You have been chosen by God and called to be a member of the Body of Christ so that we, as one mature body, walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which each of us have been called!

Paul said in Ephesians 4:4-6, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”

Every believer is chosen and called to be a part of God’s victorious team—God’s family! This is a team sport that requires each of us to train ourselves according to the promise and then be a healthy, cooperative, functional member of God’s family. Why? So that the world may know that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior!

There are so many illustrations that come to mind from sports, family, politics, in fact, every arena of life experience. We all know how one person can change the functionality of an entire workplace or family or sports team—for good or bad. Just like if your toenail gets infected—it may be “just a toe” in your mind, but in functionality the whole body suffers and limps and loses its well-being. What if you have “just” one nerve misfiring? Is it just one nerve, really? No, it either hurts badly or a part of your body keep misfiring!

You are called to be a part of something bigger than you—the Body of Christ, but it is dependent on you being a healthy, functional member. The key is that every member of the Body has to submit to the headship of Jesus Christ! What does a team look like when every member is doing their own thing? What would it look like if you were walking down the street with each limb of your body doing its own thing?

Listen to Paul’s thoughts from Ephesians 4:1-3, so that we can learn about our calling as fellow members of Christ’s body: “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

The calling of God is first and foremost about your spiritual formation! Paul teaches us in Romans 8:28-30,

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. [What’s His purpose that we are called according to?] For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

God’s will for each of our lives is that we reflect Him—that we walk in a manner worthy of that calling—to be “conformed to the Image of His Son.” This is your first calling and every other call is secondary to this first calling! Your first calling is God’s preeminent purpose for your life: to walk with Him in a manner worthy of His calling—to walk in the way of Jesus Christ! Everything else flows from this center!

As John explains this in 1 John 2:5b-6, “By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”

Let’s look at three practical applications of our walk with Jesus from Ephesians 4:1-3:

Surprise, surprise, Jesus described Himself this way first, as being “gentle and humble in heart” in Matthew 11:29 and that, in fact, is the yoke we are to take on ourselves—Christian discipleship is the spiritual formation of our lives and character, so that we walk in a manner worthy of our calling.

Paul explains in Philippians 2:5-8, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Jesus is our example: we are to have the same attitude, but not necessarily take all the same actions: You do not need to die on a cross in order to be gentle and humble, but you do need to put aside our own selfish pride and vain ambition in order to serve others. Some examples of that are the following:

I combined these two because the tolerance that is being spoken of here is the ability to endure or bear something—patience under the weight of stress and anxiety. The application to this is simply stated, but difficult to live: show love by being patient with people, including yourself. Some things only happen through prayer and fasting! Get in the easy yoke of Jesus, learn to be gentle and humble in heart, and patiently love people so that you yourself will not be tempted to sin or fall away. Pray and fast through it!

As Paul said in Galatians 6:1-2, “Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.” And we learn from Jesus that the law of Christ is to love one another as Christ first loved us (John 13:34).

We have heard the call to diligence from the beginning of this sermon series (2 Peter 1). Every member of a Superbowl-winning NFL team is called to not only work hard as individuals, but also as a team—it’s both-and, individual training and team cooperation in order to live the Victory. This requires long-term diligence!

We have to know the playbook (the Bible), train ourselves with all diligence (a wholehearted commitment to our Christian discipleship), listen to our Coach (Jesus is Head so pray and fast!), and work as one team (a healthy member of Jesus’ body submits to His headship and mutually submits to one another!).

You are called to be a part of something bigger than you! Are you all in? Are you committed and submitted?

I ask you again: What does a team look like when every member is doing their own thing? What would it look like if you were walking down the street with every limb of your body doing its own thing?

With those images in mind, listen again to Ephesians 4:1-7 so that your memory verse will have the persevering power to help you live the promise of God’s calling:

Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

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“The Promise of Faith!”

Romans 12:3 (NAS95)

In this sermon series, we are learning how to live like a champion by learning how to live according to the victory of the promises of God. Our guiding image for this series is being a member of an NFL team who wins the Superbowl. Never forget, the victory is ours in Christ Jesus and we are invited to play like a championship team, today. We live like champions so that others will come to know the One who gave us His Victory—Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and coming again!

The play of the week is the “Promise of Faith!” Let’s walk through the 4 steps of living like a champion by learning how to live according to the Victory of the promises of God.

STEP #1: Know God’s playbook! The memory verse for this promise is Romans 12:3, “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.”

Step #1  Faith is a gift!

Hebrews 11:1-3 defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” Hebrews 11 illustrates faith in people’s lives through stories of real people in real history with real faith. Mark it now and read it later.

Historically, the church has defined faith as, “an aptitude (not a one-off, but a gift by which to live)… In faith is God, ‘communicating Himself to the soul’” (Iain Matthews, The Impact of God, 103-4).

Faith is not only God’s gift of communicating Himself to humanity, but it is also His gift of our aptitude to grasp and interact with Him and His invitations to us, thus allowing for a relationship, now and eternally. Remember, relationships require the ability to communicate with one another—faith makes this possible.

The good seed of faith has been sown into the field of your soul! What are you supposed to do with your allotment of seed? Cultivate it into your “heart, soul, and mind” so that you love God with all of who you are and are becoming; hence, obeying Jesus’ Greatest Commandment (Matthew 22:37-38).

STEP #2: Faith is a gift that must be grown.

A friend commented to me about this process of cultivating the soil,

Cultivating the soil “looks like” having sound judgment. We cannot take for granted the gift of faith, assuming it will grow simply because we made a profession of faith. That would be “thinking more highly” than we ought of ourselves. In using sound judgment, we create an environment full of people, habits, and disciplines that becomes our “trellis.” We weed out (pun intended) that which does not strengthen the trellis.

We develop faith habits by building a trellis for our allotment of seeds to grow on! Because we don’t want our faith to be hidden in the field, but to mature and bear fruit, we build a trellis which is a framework by which a fruit tree or vine is supported so that it bears much fruit.

From John 15:5, Jesus promised us about our Christian life, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

Faith is a gift of God intended to be grown through relationship with Jesus so that we can bear much fruit!

The trellis is the image of the ancient church practice of having a “rule of life”—not “rules for life”, but a “rule” or as the ancients would have heard that word: a trellis of life. The trellis support a loving relationship that already exists; it flows from love. Just like the rhythms of love in friendship or marriage or parenting.

Here are two practical applications of the trellis that I am building in my life. Each of these is what is called a keystone habit, which means it is a habit that shapes/holds together all other habits:

The truth of step #2 is that faith is a gift that must be grown. The reason for doing this is step #3.

STEP #3: Faith is a gift that must be grown for the purpose of loving your neighbor.

Remember, that earlier in the sermon I referenced the Greatest Commandment, but listen to all of Jesus’ words from Matthew 22:37-39 because it’s really the Greatest Commandments: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Jim Elliot, modern martyr of the faith, said it this way, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Just as in Jim Elliot’s life where his very blood became the necessary seed in the ground by which an entire lost people group would come to know the gospel of Jesus Christ, so our gifts of faith are to love people with the love of God and provide for them the means of receiving faith themselves!

To learn more about the Jim Elliot story, you can watch the 2005 movie End of the Spear or you can watch the 2013 Voice of the Martyrs Torchlighters video on RightNow Media called “The Jim Elliot Story”. FBC provides this vast library of Christian resources to you for free. Talk to Pastor Ken if you need help.

Jesus taught us this about faith in His parable from Matthew 13:31-32, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”

How can your faith bring refreshment to others, just as the mustard seed became a tree so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches?

Here are three practical applications in real and relevant situations that you may face in your daily life:

Take a step of faith and return to the sound wisdom of Romans 12:3, “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment [sober, sincere, lens of humility], as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.”

You cannot think soberly about yourself when you are intoxicated by everything that is clamoring for your attention (time and money) and, ultimately, your identity. To return to a right view of God, yourself, and others you need to remember that faith is a gift that must be cultivated, so that love of God may grow and bear the fruit of love of neighbor.

STEP #4: Faith is witnessed through our fellowship!

Paul teaches from Romans 12:4-5, “For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”

As the seed grows, it sends out roots! Our roots are intertwined so that we are better together! You are not a single tree, facing the world and all of its problems alone. You are part of something much bigger, from which God is growing us to bear the fruit of the tree of life, so that many may come and find rest in Jesus.

How will the watching world know we are growing in our faith? Jesus taught us this important truth of why we gather as the people of God in John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” This is the good fruit of our faith—this is the promise of God!