One Lord

The following message by Alister Beg is made available by Truth for Life. For more information, visit us online at truthforlife.org. I invite you to turn with me to our text for this morning, which is the fifth verse of Ephesians chapter 4. It reads, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism."

Is I should say our text for the day because we won't complete it this morning. We pray together. Speak, oh Lord, as we come to you to receive the truth of your holy word. Take your truth, plant it deep in us, shape and fashion us in your likeness for Jesus' sake.

Amen. Well, from the beginning of the chapter, Paul, as we have noted, has been urging his readers to maintain the unity of the spirit. He's not asking them to create a unity, but to maintain a unity which is already theirs in Christ. The maintenance of that unity, the enjoyment of it, the experience of harmony, he has also made perfectly clear, is tied in some measure to the expressions and experience of humility.

And so he says there are ingredients that are involved in maintaining this unity of spirit. And along with humility, gentleness, and patience, and the willingness to put up with each other. They're all keys to harmony. And then, as we began to look last time, he provides the foundation upon which this unity is built.

And last Sunday, we paid attention to one body and one spirit and one hope. And I hope that I made clear that the unity to which he is referring is unique. It's unlike anything else in the world. There are all kinds of quests for unity, uh designs to create economic unity, ecumenical unity, political unity, and so on.

Uh this is something radically different from all of that. In fact, as I was thinking about it, I went looking for Lion King this week because I had remembered there that there was some kind of expression and call for unity, and I thought, "I bet a number of our young people have confused the unity of Lion King with the unity in the spirit here."

Uh you know that stuff about you are part of the circle of life. And the lion, very nice little lion, um sings these songs. But here here's the kind of sentiment. It's not unusual. Tears of pain, tears of joy, one thing nothing can destroy is what? Is our pride deep inside.

See, it's a very self-focused thing. We'll be able to handle this. We are one, you and I. We are like the earth and sky, one family under the sun. So, just in case we're in any doubt, Paul is not talking about that, not even close to talking about that.

That is at best sentimentality, and at worst it is a form of pantheism that is an unattainable goal. No, the unity that he is referencing is the unity about which we've just been singing. It is found in Christ alone. And if you turn in your Bible one page back to chapter 2 and in verse 4, uh there he has highlighted the wonder of God's dealings for them when he says, "But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace towards us in Christ Jesus." He can hardly stop himself once he gets started, and he is describing this great and amazing mystery that God has been gracious to us, allowing us to sing, although we do not sing these words, but they're good words.

We're the children of the kingdom of God. We're the chosen ones for whom the savior came. We're his noble new creation by the spirit and the blood. We're the church that he has built to bear his name. And this church has one Lord in whom we trust and one true faith that we believe and declare.

And those who are included in this company are identified by the same sign, namely that of baptism. So, let's begin to look at this by considering what he is saying when he says, "There is one Lord." Jesus is Lord, uh Yesous Kurios, Kurios Yesous, was the earliest uh of the Christian creeds.

Uh the Christians in the Roman Empire were used to people greeting one another in the morning by declaring that Caesar is Lord. A- and much the same way that in the uh world of uh India, uh people greet one another with a greeting namaste, which is, "I worship the God that is in you."

It has to do with Hinduism. It has to do with the fact that where there are multiple multiple multiple gods, and whatever God is in you, then I acknowledge that. I had a bit of a cold this week in Dallas, and uh and there were a number of Indians there, and and one of them man came to me.

His name was Daniel, and he wanted to shake my hand, and I said, "No, I won't shake your hand." I said, "But we can do the Indian thing." And he said, "Oh, no, you must not do that. That is pan- that is pantheism." So, I I stood corrected.

All right? So, when they said to one another, "Caesar is Lord," the Christians were saying, "No, actually he's not." Uh Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the sovereign Lord who sets up authorities and brings them down, and so on. And so that early creed is embedded in the instruction of the New Testament.

In Romans 10 and 9, "If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." It's very straightforward, isn't it? And when Paul writes his sings his writes his great hymn in Philippians 2 of the Lord Jesus Christ descending from heaven and finally ascending to heaven, he says in that discourse there, round 11 of Philippians 2, "One day, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

Now, what he's what he's saying there is not that that will be an expression, first of all, of personal devotion, but it will be an expression of the true identity of Jesus. You remember when we sing in another of Townend's songs about the return of Christ and the and the phrases um what is it?

A shout of joy, a cry of anguish, as Christ returns and every knee bows low. Shout of joy, a cry of anguish. So, whether from the perspective of joy or anguish, Paul says, "Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess who Jesus is, namely God himself." When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, uh giving us the Septuagint, the challenge for the uh translators was, "What word will we use for the most common word of God, Yahweh or Jehovah?"

And over 6,000 times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, they used this word Kurios. Kurios. And the importance of this is found in the fact that the early disciples knew that Kurios was a divine title. A divine title. And cons- cons- consequently, it is used over 700 times in the New Testament concerning Jesus.

It is not his first name, as it were, Lord Jesus. It is a defining um explanation of who and what Jesus is. So that what is said in the Old Testament is then um exemplified in the new. We could spend a long time on that, but I just want to give you one cross-reference, and hopefully this will make the point.

In Isaiah uh 45, uh the um the prophet Isaiah is encouraging his listeners to distinguish very clearly uh between those who have no knowledge of God, the makers of idols who go around in confusion, and uh the God who is the God of Israel, namely the savior. You need to read the whole chapter to get context.

Well, let me just give you a couple of verses. Verse 21, "Declare and present your case." He says, "Let them take counsel together. Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord, Yahweh, translated into Greek, kurios, and there is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a savior.

There is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return. What is that word? It's the word that Paul quotes in the passage in Philippians 2, to me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear allegiance.

So, when Paul declares this in his song there in Philippians 2, he is actually picking up the word of the prophecy of Isaiah and he is he is adding it to what he's saying. Now, with that by way of background, the members of the one body who are indwelt by the one spirit, who are confident in the one hope, are described as those who submit to the one master or to the one Lord.

He is Lord, he is master, he is king. In the time that we have, I want to consider four aspects of what this means for somebody who is in this description here, a member of the body, indwelt by the spirit, called to the one hope, and living under one Lord.

This first almost goes without saying, but these individuals are those who have believed in him. They have believed in him. That what we've quoted in Romans 10 and 9 is a description of their shared faith. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, yes, we have, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, yes, we did, then you will be saved.

Yes, we share that. That is where our unity is to be found. Or in John's prologue, he came to his own, his own did not receive him, but to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God. Now, that believing into Jesus is as a result of a supernatural activity.

It has to be. You see, we cannot access God on our own terms and in our own time. There is an invisible boundary that separates us from God and his holiness and ourselves as men and women by nature in our sin. So, when we begin to consider these things, when we begin to get an inkling of this as being truth, when somewhere in the dim and distant background we seem to be being called out of our sleep, out of our deadness, it is an indication of the activity of God.

Now, we have worked our way through these first three chapters and therefore we shouldn't be in any doubt about this because Paul has already reminded these people that they were dead in their trespasses and in their sins. How dead is dead? Dead is dead. I have never found a dead man whistling.

Some people say, "Well, I'm not as dead as you are." What do you mean by that? Well, I'm not a Hell's Angel, you know, I'm not a I haven't been doing coke. Yeah, well, so what? I've been drinking coke. And outside of Christ, we're both dead and we're both equally dead.

There are no degrees of dead. So, in order to be included in his body, we have to be made alive. Who makes us alive? You remember the conversation with Nicodemus in John chapter 3? And Nicodemus, when Jesus says to him, "You need to be born again or you'll never enter the kingdom of God."

And Nicodemus immediately switches to the physical and he says, "How can you be born again in your mother's womb when you're the size that I am?" And Jesus says, "No, no, no, no. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Don't be marveling at the fact that I've said to you you must be born again." Not as a result of a human decision, not as a result of a husband's will, but as a result of the supernatural activity of God. You see, we are by nature as dead spiritually as Lazarus was, the friend of Jesus, recorded in John chapter 11.

If you want a homework assignment, then read John chapter 11. When you read the chapter, you will find there that the sisters of Lazarus had come to Jesus and they were concerned that since their brother was ill, they needed Jesus to come. Unfortunately, Jesus delayed from their perspective, therefore their brother died.

Lazarus was in the grave and in fact in the King James version, it was said of him that he stinketh. Therefore, the decomposition of his body had already begun to take place. As dead. And Martha chided Jesus, you remember, she says to him, "Jesus, you know, if you'd only been a little quicker, then my brother would not have dead died."

And Jesus says to her, "Well, your brother will live." She says, "I know that he will live in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus says to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me, even though he die, yet shall he live. And whosoever lives and believes in me will never die."

And then he said, "Do you believe this?" Do you believe this? A little while later he would call Lazarus out from the tomb. Called him by name. The commentators all say the same thing. The reason he addressed him by name was to prevent everybody else from coming out at the same time because he speaks and listening to his voice, new life the dead received.

He was only calling Lazarus out. When he calls your name, you'll know when it moves beyond some dull thought in the back of your head to an insistent knocking in your heart, when you find that you're no longer able simply just to push it to the perimeter, when suddenly you begin to get interested, suddenly the hymns start to cajole with your thinking and so on.

What's happening? You see, it is the supernatural activity of God. Can I ask you the question that Jesus asked Martha, "Do you believe this?" Do you believe this? And I'm asking, do you make an intellectual ascent to the existence of Jesus or to the things that he even said about him concerning his death and resurrection, but do you believe in terms of personal trust?

I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of you do not believe and the reason you don't believe is because it just sounds far too simple for you. And you are very learned. And you say to yourself, "It cannot be that way. It has to be far more complicated.

There must be something that I have to do." Partly because we like to do things so that it makes us feel good that we've actually accomplished something. And apparently in this program, there is nothing we contribute at all. Have you believed like this? A story told by an old evangelist who years ago encountered two boys who were in a London hospital.

They were side by side in the beds. One of the boy had a danger One of the boys had a dangerous fever, the other had been struck by a truck and his body was mangled badly. The second boy said to the first, "Hey, Willie, I was down to the mission Sunday school and they told me about Jesus.

I believe that if you ask Jesus, he will help you. They said that if we believe in him and pray to God, then when we die, he'll come and take us with him to heaven." Willie replied, "But what if I'm asleep when he comes and I can't ask him?"

His friend said, "Just hold up your hand. That's what we did in Sunday school. I guess Jesus sees it." Since Willie was too weak to hold up his arm, the other boy propped it up for him with a pillow. During the night, Willie died. But when the nurse found him in the morning, his arm was still propped up.

We can be sure that the Lord saw his arm because the Lord sees faith. The Lord accepts faith. Nay, the Lord gives faith. He gave the very faith to the boy in order that with the enabling help of his friend, he may simply place up his hand. By faith, he found the way to heaven.

By faith, he saw what some of us, in our intellectual arrogance, will never discover on our own. For unless, said Jesus, you become as a little child, you will in no wise enter in to the kingdom of heaven. God's greatest truths are discovered by simple faith. Let me ask you.

Have you ever put up your hand? One Lord, they believed in him. One Lord, secondly, they belonged to him. They belonged to him. The believing is about belonging. On one occasion, Jesus said to his disciples, "You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am."

That's John 13. John 14, in his discourse with his followers, he says, "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me." So, in other words, uh the the our profession of believing in Jesus will then become apparent as we belong to Jesus, and our belonging to Jesus will be revealed in our behavior.

So, you know, sometimes your your mom or your dad might say to you, "And I remember that your name is Alister Begg. And you belong to us. And you represent us." In a far greater way, the Lord Jesus looks on us and says, "Now, remember, you belong to me.

Now, go out there and live in such a way that it becomes apparent." What does it mean? Well, in intensely practical terms, since Jesus is Lord, the believer is not at liberty to disagree with his teaching. I meet people all the time who think they're so smart. They say, "Well, there are certain parts of the Bible that I don't like.

I don't like this section and that section and the next section." I've got news for you. You're not allowed to choose the sections you like. If you believe in Jesus, you belong to Jesus, and you have no liberty to disagree with anything that he has taught, and you have no freedom to teach anything than what he teaches.

It's straightforward. It makes sense. We have no freedom to disagree with his teaching. We have no freedom to disobey his commands. For the test of our believing is in our behaving. Paul explains to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6, he says, "Listen, you're not your own. You were bought at a price.

So, glorify God in your body. In your body." The way we used to deal with this in Scotland was the the song you probably sang as well, "Be careful little eyes what you see. Be careful little feet where you go. Be careful little hands what you touch." And here I am at 60 almost 65 years of age having to sing this song to myself all the time.

Why? Because I belong to him. Therefore, what I do with my body matters. We can't live with this gnostic dichotomy between, "Well, the spiritual part of me is really tuned in, but the physical part of me doesn't really matter because it will all eventually disintegrate." No, no, no, no, no.

That is gnosticism. That is not Christianity. "I beseech you therefore, brethren," says Paul, "by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God." Now, we could apply this in 50 different ways, but let me use just one because it is so obvious and so necessary.

Nowhere is this matter more clearly seen in contemporary America than in the realm of human sexuality. Than in the realm of human sexuality. And nowhere that I encounter do I discover more monkeying around with the clear instruction of the Bible than in this realm. Seeking to accommodate ourselves to a culture, seeking to appear to be far more magnanimous than the Bible allows us to be, and so on, we dodge, we weave, we bob, and we shift.

Not if we understand what it means to belong to Jesus. Marriage is not a human institution. It is a creation ordinance established by God. The God who has made us as male and female has declared that a monogamous heterosexual lifelong union is the only context for sexual relationships.

A monogamous heterosexual lifelong union is the only context. Thereby ruling out sexual activity before marriage, sexual activity instead of marriage, sexual activity with members of the same sex. Indeed, laying it down as clearly as any person in sixth grade can understand. And why has God done this? To deprive us?

To save us. To keep us. To enable us to discover that he has made us in order that we might glorify him and enjoy him. And when we fiddle with this and when we get it wrong, and we do get it wrong, then we realize how easy it is to drift from there into all kinds of excuses, all kinds of explanations, and we find ourselves very quickly saying, "Well, you see, this is just one of the parts of the Bible that I haven't found uh is really fitting in with my program."

Well, did you believe? Then you belong. And if you belong, then thirdly, God's purpose for you is that you might become like the one to whom you belong. I just met a couple on the stairs. It's their 21st wedding anniversary today. And uh I was glad to greet them.

It's quite amazing the the the longer you live with your spouse, um they they get a lot better, don't they? As the more they become like you. No, no, it is strange. It's a strange phenomenon. I'm being facetious there. But we do become like the people with whom we spend time.

And the purpose of God from all of eternity, this is Romans 8, is uh you know, at the end of Romans 8, um and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. That's 28. 29, for those whom he called, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

So, we are one body, and we have one spirit who indwells us, one hope uh to which we uh make progress, and we are under the one Lord who is in the process of making us like Jesus. Now, Paul explains in in Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 3, he says, "And we all, with unveiled face, behold in the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the image."

So, in other words, God's eternal purpose from all of eternity is to make his children like his son, like their elder brother. Now, says Paul, the existential reality of that is that we are being transformed. It's an ongoing process. It's called sanctification, from one degree of glory to another.

For this comes from the Lord, who is the spirit. And this process is not an instantaneous process. It takes place over time. And we all have occasion to say to one another, "Please be patient with me. God has not finished with with me yet." But we may be confident that God's eschatological plan will be fulfilled. 1 John 3, and one day when we see him, we will be like him.

So, one Lord, they believed in him. They belonged to him. They are becoming like him. And finally, they are telling others of him. They are telling others of him. The whole body is committed to taking the whole gospel to the whole world. The whole body committed to taking the whole gospel to the whole world.

That's why Jesus gave the mandate to his disciples to tell the good news, to make disciples, to baptize them. And so, it's important that when we pay attention to that, we realize that telling the world the good news is not to be the hobby of a few eccentrics or fanatics.

You know, the the the the the the people from our church that have been crazy enough to go to Japan or have buried themselves in the center of Asia or up against the wall in Eastern Europe or wherever we might think of that. No, it's not the provisor of a few folks who have regarded it in that way.

Nor is it a dispensable option so that we can say, "Well, you know, that's really not my thing." And frankly, the whole idea of it makes me uncomfortable. Oh, really? Do you realize that the people that live in your street and work in your office outside of Christ are dead in their sins?

That one day they will be part of a company that bows and declares the lordship of Jesus. You and I may be the key to them participating on that day in a shout of joy rather than in a cry of anguish. It is not taking the good news to the world.

It is not an impertinent interference in other people's private lives. Well, who am I to interfere? After all, everyone has their own way. There are multiple gods. There are all kinds of ideas. That sense of pluralism, that notion of pantheism is pervasive in our culture, and the only way that we will be able to fight against that is by submitting ourselves to the truth of the Bible.

Why would you say such things about marriage? Why would you say such things about sexuality? On what basis would you say there is only one God and savior, and that savior is Jesus? It is here. And think about this. We would not be here. There would be no gospel in America were it not for the fact that others took seriously what it meant to believe, belong, behave, and to declare this good news to the ends of the earth.

In actual fact mission to quote John Stott is a logical deduction from the universal lordship of Jesus. Mission is a logical deduction. You have it, for example, in C.T. Studd. Played cricket for England. Huge, wealthy family. I mean, he would have been a billionaire today. He writes in his journal one day, "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me then logically no sacrifice that I could ever make for him could ever be too great."

And if you know the story of C.T. Studd he went and buried himself. You see, this morning we bear the torch that flaming fell from the hands of those who gave their lives proclaiming. I was telling the students in Dallas this week of Marie Durand. I'm sure you know her well.

She was a Huguenot and with a number of other Huguenots in 1729 was imprisoned in the Tower of Constance in southern France. It's It's near Montpellier. I've gone there and I've visited it. The reason that she and the others were imprisoned was because they refused to renounce Protestant worship.

She was imprisoned when she was 15 years old. Three years later, her brother was hanged in front 
[clears throat]
 of her in the same prison. In 1745, do the math, 29 to 45, in 1745 she was offered freedom if she would agree to renounce the faith of the Reformation. She refused all such offers and remained captive for 38 years resisting the temptations to despair, to suicide, and to betrayal.

If you have the chance to visit, you will discover that in the tower room where they were held, there is a stone coping that surrounds an opening in the floor, and carved into the stone is one word resistez. Resist. Resist. And the fact that they resisted carried the gospel forward.

If they had capitulated we would not be the beneficiaries. We go to all the world with kingdom hope unfurled. Why? Because no other name has power to save. Save. Jesus Christ the Lord. Do you believe this? Father help us to believe. Thank you for enabling us to believe, to belong.

Thank you for being so patient with us that in making us like Jesus through all our faults and stumbling's and mess-ups the good work that you began you will bring to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Help us not to keep this story to ourselves. Help us by lip and by life to commend the gospel to those who are in our circle of influence whether in the immediacy of our daily routine or should you take us to other places.

Lord help us, we pray for Jesus' sake. Amen. This message was brought to you from Truth For Life, where the learning is for living. To learn more about Truth For Life with Alistair Begg, visit us online at truthforlife.org.