Loving God is the first and great commandment. We would naturally think based on Paul's letter that the Ephesian church would know this truth, perhaps better than any other church in its day. The reality is that, somewhere along the line, the church had forgotten why they existed. They forgot the core of every doctrine and every command: love God with all of your being. God gave us this great command to be the operating principle of our lives. No area of your life is unaffected by this command. Loving God is the main thing. So, we constantly strive to love God with every fiber of our being. In other words, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. So, if you take one truth from this message I want you to take the following: You must love Christ with every fiber of your being.

We cannot live the Christian life apart from the power of Christ. You see, the power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power that works in your life at this very moment. We also learned last week that we are in a spiritual war, a war which is waged on the physical plane yet possessing eternal implications. We cannot fight the spiritual war in our own strength, but Christ has given us His armor to use in the battle. Having armor and weapons is all well and good, but if we don't know how to use them, we are already defeated. We must have a strategy to live in the power of Christ. What is the strategy that we must use to fight this spiritual war in the power of Christ? The strategy is faithfulness. Our text gives us Paul's instructions regarding faithfulness in prayer and in action. If you take one truth from this message I want you to take the following: You must be faithful to Christ.

When we think of power, we think of something that must be renewed, such as this battery powered toy. When a toy or a device has a dead battery, it won't work. We can purchase batteries which can be recharged, but they eventually go dead. Even the power we have in our houses is not always constant. Sometimes the weather or an accident causes a power outage. So, when we read about power in the Bible, we must not think of the kind of power in our toys or devices. The power of Christ and His Word in our lives is an infinite, undiminishing power. It is a power which causes the gates of hell to fail to prevail over the Church. It is a power which caused Christ to rise from the dead. It is a power which does not just give us victory in the moment of need; it is a power which has already won the victory. Paul wants his readers to understand the reality of the power of the Christian life.

As we look at the life of Joseph, we learn several truths about forgiveness. We learn in the most practical manner what Christ’s forgiveness looks like and how we must maintain a spirit of forgiveness toward those who have hurt and betrayed us. Let me encourage you to take one truth with you from this message. You must forgive others as Christ has forgiven you.

Worship is an overflow of our knowledge of Christ. Our worship does not just flow forth in praise. Praise is the vertical expression of our worship. The horizontal expression of our worship is evangelism. We worship in missions when we are so captured by Christ's beautiful holiness that we find satisfaction and fulfillment as we speak to others of Him. We call this evangelism. When we speak of world evangelism, we speak of missions.

A godly home is so inestimably valuable; we could not overstate our case. The home is the foundation of every aspect of our lives. If the home is stable, the blessings are innumerable. Make no mistake. The only stable home is one in which Christ is first and foremost in each relationship. If the home is unstable, the effects are devastating. Our text does not just address the home. Paul also speaks to the work environment relationships. In today's society, the relationships are that of employer-employee, but in Paul's day the relationships were more often than not that of master-slave. We would not even dare to compare the slave to today's employee because the situations and positions in society are so radically different. Yet, Paul continues the thought of mutual submission among believers. If the church is to function properly, if the church is to be radically different than the world, it can only be so by Christ's prescription. What did Christ prescribe? He gives us the standard of His own life, ministry, and death. Christ's standard was submission. If you take one truth from this message, I want you to take the following: You must follow Christ's submissive pattern at home and at work.

According to God's Word, the home is a place in which Christ is made first and supreme. Allow me to use an illustration to make my point. Picture if you will a triangle. At the top of the triangle is Christ, and at the bottom two points of the triangle are the husband and wife. As the husband and wife individually draw closer to Christ, as they related to Him as their most important relationship, they naturally draw closer to each other. Only in this way can a marriage truly be what Christ has designed it to be. So, if you take one truth from this message, I want you to take the following: You must model your marriage after Christ's relationship to the Church.

Has the cross lost its power? No, it has not! Praise the Lord that the cross possesses the same power today as it did when we trusted in its redemptive work! The authority claimed by superficial religion possesses the power of a toothless lion or a paper tiger, and it cannot change the Cross' influence. The allurements of our depraved culture hold no sway over the cross of Christ. We ought to be encouraged that we serve a Christ who was willing to give Himself for us on the cross to break the power of our sins. We ought to be confident that the cross is not impotent to address the problems that we face in life. It was the cross which bridged the gap from the sorrow and bondage of sin to the joy and freedom of Christ. When you crossed the bridge spanning the gap between God and man, you experienced happiness which cannot compare to the shallow religion and joyless sins. It is the power of the cross to which we look in Psalm 2. As you gaze once more upon the cross, allow the power of the cross to strengthen you to live victoriously in this life. You must allow the cross to be your source of rejoicing.

The first line of Martin Luther's 95 Theses reads, “When our Lord Jesus said 'Repent' he meant that the whole of the Christian life should be repentance.” We could restate it in another way. Our redemption is not an event; it is a process. We learned last week that we cannot love Christ just a little bit. A healthy Christian is one who is growing. Paul illustrates this process in the Book of Ephesians with the putting off and putting on of clothing. As we put off the things that our flesh desires, we put on new, Christ-like desires. Now, Christ-likeness is not something that we can do for ourselves. It is a process that occurs as we submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit's authority in our lives. As you know, submitting is not an easy thing to do; it is a process of sometimes painful growth that occurs as we devote ourselves completely to Christ. If you take one truth from this message I want you to take the following: You must submit yourself to the Holy Spirit.

We are what we desire, and we must ask ourselves a thought-provoking question. What do I want most? You see, we prioritize our lives based upon what we want most. For example, an Olympic athlete wants most to win his event. So, he moves to an Olympic training center where he spends the vast majority of his free time training for his particular event. He is so focused on winning that he leaves home to train and to follow a rigid diet and exercise routine. Everything he does is to the single purpose of that Olympic event.

God created birds to train their young through a process known as imprinting. Biologists learned that, generally speaking, a newly hatched bird will pattern itself after the first thing it sees. In this way, a baby bird will learn how to act like a bird. We are called to follow God as our pattern, and this will only happen as we keep our focus on Him. Although Paul illustrated the change in our lifestyle with the putting on and off of clothing, Christianity is not something we can put aside while we go on summer vacation or when we get home from work. Christianity is not something which we can set aside when it is expedient to do so. Nor is Christianity something which we practice only on Sunday morning when we go to church. We have been included in every spiritual blessing in heavenly places according to chapter one, verse three. As such, we should walk worthy of our calling, according to chapter four, verse one. They way in which we walk worthy of our calling is a life that is patterned after God's character. So, if you take only one thing from our text, I want you to take the following: Pattern your life after Christ.

If we are to live with each other in the Christian community, we must be committed to each other with more than mere tolerance. Our church family must be bound together with a supernatural bond, a bond of kindness and forgiveness forged in the furnace of God's fiery wrath upon our sins in Christ on the Cross. This is the Gospel, and it effects change, not just in behavior but also in our relationships. Behavior and relationships go hand in hand. How we behave toward others reveals what we think of them.

Paul moves from explanation to application. The verbs he uses are in the imperative mood; he tells the people that they must act. The things he writes are not suggestions from God; his writing is more than good advice. God expects us to live a certain way because of the truths Paul explained. In what way does God expect us to live? God expects the believer, the church, to live in a way that is distinct because He is distinct. The illustration Paul uses is that of changing clothing. When I was in high school, I used to work on a chicken farm. By far, the worst job on the farm was scraping the boards. For the sake of politeness, we cleaned the manure from the chicken cages. It was a messy, disgusting, vile job. The stench was overpowering, and your clothing reeked. You couldn't wait to take off the dirty clothing and put on clean clothing. God wants us to put off the lifestyle and mindset which aligns itself with the unbelievers and to put on the likeness of Christ. You can only do this as you commit yourself to Christ-life. If you take one thing from this message, I want you to take the following: You must live the Christ-life.

Several years ago, I heard a humorous story which is a parable about our perspective of life. I cannot recall the source, so I certainly do not hope to plagiarize this story. I will try to relate the story as best as I can.

There was a king who had a best friend from childhood. The king and his friend spent much time together in the business of the kingdom as well as the pursuit of distractions from the stresses of leadership. The king’s friend had a very unique perspective of life. No matter what happened, whether it was good or bad, the friend would say...

Christ gave the blessings of His infinite grace to every believer, including you and to me, so every believer is a minister. We often think of the ministry as what the pastor does. So, we relegate ministry to the pastor. Unfortunately, some congregations do by proxy through the pastor what they do not want to do themselves. Now, Christ has given the gift of pastoral leadership to His Church, of which you and I are the body, but ministry is not to be monopolized by the pastor. Ministry is so much broader than preaching and visiting. Christ said in Mark 9.41, “For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward.” The simplest act done to reflect Christ's loving name is ministry. Christ's gift of pastoral leadership was to feed the flock through the preaching and teaching of His Word so that the flock would do the work of the ministry. So, if you take one truth from this message, I want you to take the following. You must be a minister of Christ.