It is a blessing to be with you again. I've almost kind of just gotten used to coming over regularly, and it's always a joy to see your faces and to be able to worship God with you. And even as Pastor Cook was reminding us, we're coming to the Word of God, this great treasure that he has given to us. But we need to receive it with faith and humility and dependence upon God if it's going to do our hearts any good. And so may we come like that tonight. If you would please take your copies of God's word and turn back with me to the text already read in Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4, and we won't read it all again. But I do want us to back up into chapter 3 and begin reading at verse 14. And then we'll just read a couple of verses in chapter 4. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth. And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Let's again pray together. Our Father, as we have been singing, we do thank you for your word. And as that hymn spoke to us of the varied ways that your word ministers to us, we pray that you would indeed come and help us tonight, that you would speak to us. Our God, lift our eyes to heaven to behold you there, to consider your purposes in our lives. And may it be our desire, our God, to know your grace that we might hear your word and respond to it, and plead with you for the working of your spirit in our lives, that we might not be only hearers, but doers also. To your honor and glory, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. For healthy church life, we need to have a good grasp of biblical idealism and biblical realism. Now, biblical idealism is to consider from the word of God what God intends for his church. So to think of the church as the bride of Christ, that group of people who have been redeemed by the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who know the ongoing work of the Spirit of God in their lives, transforming them to be like the Lord Jesus Christ. That is a glorious view of the church, what God intends as he works in the lives of his people. But then biblical realism is to remember from the scriptures as well that we are a group of sinners. A group of people who continue to struggle to put to death those former sins that dominated our lives. People who grieve the Holy Spirit, and even quench the Holy Spirit at times. People who can become so disorderly and wayward that Christ threatens to cut them off. That's biblical realism. And we must live with both truths. Biblical realism will help us to deal with the disappointments that we often face in church life. The discouragements that are sure to come from a group of people who live together and serve Jesus Christ. Biblical idealism is essential so that we live with hope and press forward for the goal of the glory of God in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The one and others of the New Testament that we have been studying at home show us both truths. When we think of a local church loving one another, ministering to one another, serving one another, encouraging one another, caring for one another, we see some of the ideals that God has intended for the life of the church. But the one another's also remind us of biblical realism. The need to forgive one another because we sin against one another. The need to accept and welcome one another because naturally we would want to cut off people that we disagree with. And tonight, we want to focus on this truth that Paul speaks of here in verse 2, of bearing with one another. The need for forbearance in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. These New Testament commands remind us that we are still living in a world of sin, where we desperately need the grace of God to stay together as a church and to press forward to that goal of bringing glory to God. Well, let's begin tonight by considering, first of all, the call to forbearance, the call to forbearance. At the beginning of Ephesians 4, Paul is making that transition from the predominantly doctrinal section of the letter to show the practical outworking of God's salvation in the life of God's people. He's just concluded chapter 3 with a beautiful prayer. In many ways we could say Paul in that prayer is setting forth God's ideals for the church. A place where the work of the Spirit is known in people's hearts. And Christ is dwelling in our hearts by faith. Our eyes are continually focusing upon our Lord Jesus Christ. And that unmeasurable nature of Christ's love is known, where we're reminded by the gospel over and over again, and we are overwhelmed with the reminder that the Lord Jesus Christ loves us. And then, of course, that longing for the glory of God to be manifested in the church. So as Paul goes into this practical section, I think in his mind perhaps he's asking this question, how is this going to be accomplished in the ordinary life of Christ's church? Week in, week out, as we gather together, as we worship together, as we serve together, how are these ideals going to be lived out among God's people? And so as Pastor Cook highlighted in the reading, Paul emphasizes church unity. This togetherness, this bond that ties God's people together. The unity which has been established by the work of the Spirit of God. Drawing us together in Christ, applying the glue of his grace in our relationships. Paul speaks here of some relational virtues which we must exercise toward one another. As you look at verse two, you see how he spells them out. Humility, gentleness, patience, and then the word we want to focus on tonight, bearing with one another, and then the added phrase, in love, So here is this grace of forbearance. That Paul puts in the middle of these words, as we would live out this glorious life in the Church of Christ, seeking to maintain unity, these things must be exercised. So to promote that unity which exalts truth to the glory of God in a growing and developing church, we must learn to bear with one another. We must exercise forbearance. So here's an important question. What is forbearance? What does it mean to bear with one another? Or as the new American standard has it, showing tolerance for one another. What does the apostle mean here? Well, this word that he uses means simply to exercise restraint, to show tolerance, to put up with something or someone, to bear with someone. It implies that someone has done something to you, something that irritates you, something that would prompt you to respond very strongly. But forbearance would teach you, not to react. You're going to bear with them. You're going to put up with them. I think that's a good way to translate the word that Paul has used here. We're going to put up with our brethren. Now that sounds strange. In the context of a church where, as I've already said, we're supposed to love one another and care for one another and encourage one another and serve for one another. And then we put up with one another? We endure one another? Well, that's this very word that Paul is using here. That's what it means. In terms of understanding the word, imagine something like this. After the church service, you're standing around, you're talking, you're entering into conversations, and you begin to talk with a brother or with a sister, and within moments of the conversation, you know that they're having a case of really bad breath. So bad that what you want to say is, brother, your breath stinks. but you figure that's not very kind, so then in your mind, it's just, how do I escape? How do I get out of here without offending him or saying something wrong to him? And you can't really enter into the relationship at all. Forbearance teaches you to stay there, to control your feelings, and to seek to interact with your brother or sister to the glory of God, because that's what we're here for in the church. Now hopefully, we are all committed to good dental hygiene and the use of breath mints. So the reality of church life is that you're going to be confronted Maybe not with a lot of bad breath, but a lot of spiritual bad breath. So there will be brethren whose personalities perhaps have not been sanctified as you would want them to be, and so they rub you the wrong way. And there are Christians who talk too much and they control every conversation. And so you're with them a little bit and you're thinking, I just want to get out of this. Or people who know it all. They have the answer to every problem, especially your problems. Brethren who've grown up with no table manners and so you gather the church fellowship and all they can think of is themselves and you don't want to be around that. Fellow believers who haven't learned to be sensitive to one another. I remember as a boy going to a church fellowship And the table was laden with all kinds of goods. And one of the ladies had prepared a trifle. You know, one of those desserts my wife makes them sometimes and things are all messed up, cake and pudding and whipped cream and stuff like that and maybe some fruit. And this man was going down the table and he eyed this trifle and he looked at it and he said, that looks like a dog's breakfast. Can you imagine how that lady felt? The list could go on and on. We're going to experience things like that in church life. These are the realities, the biblical realism. And that is why we need to learn forbearance. This is what Paul is telling us that we need to learn to put up with one another. So that's the call to forbearance. Secondly, consider the words grouped around this call to forbearance. So as you look at verse two, you can see it's not simply a call to put up with one another, but the apostle places our word in the midst of a group of words that impacts our understanding of what we're called to as fellow Christians in the body of Christ. He lists here humility and gentleness, patience, and then finally, in love. And while each of these virtues can stand on their own, Paul groups them together here because they all have a bearing on how we understand putting up with each other. So humility, the need for a lowly mind in church life, in our relationships with one another, having a lowly view of ourselves, Now the reference here is not so much to humility before God, we need to do that certainly, but of having humility before one another as members of the Church of Christ. Not exalting myself above my brethren, but ready to put myself lower than my brethren. When we come to think about putting up with one another, Do we begin to think of all the people in the church who irritate us and the various reasons we might have to put up with them? That's not what humility teaches us. Humility teaches us to consider ourselves. Maybe I'm the man with bad breath. Maybe I'm the person with obnoxious behavior. Maybe I'm the one who irritates others. I know that there are times when my wife has had to come alongside and said, you have a mint in your pocket? Now's the time to use it. Well, humility teaches us to look at ourselves, to listen to ourselves, to examine ourselves in our relationships with one another. and not immediately saying, OK, Paul is teaching us here to put up with one another. And I can think of brother so-and-so and sister so-and-so. And yeah, I have a really hard. No. Humility says, look at yourself and all of the problems that can arise in the church and the irritations and offenses. Am I the cause of those things? Humility will radically change our view of fellow Christians, the fellow Christians who irritate us by making us first look at ourselves. But then gentleness. There may be a temptation in our relationships with people who irritate us to deal roughly with them. We may want to confront them with the obnoxiousness of their behavior. Perhaps in some of our dealings, we may want to throttle them. Now that seems over the top, but I bet lots of you have had those kind of thoughts. I know I have. You just want to take someone and shake them and say, don't you get it? Don't you get the gospel? Don't you read the Bible? But this is not the way of grace. God would have us respond with gentleness. It's the soft answer that turns away wrath. You remember how Paul exhorts Timothy in terms of dealing with men who oppose his message. He says in 2 Timothy 2, and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth. Now, if that is how God wants us to treat the opponents of the gospel, how much more should we exercise gentleness towards those who belong to our blood-bought family? We need to be gentle with one another when the irritants come and the offenses come and the sins come, not ready to jump down their throats, but to exercise gentleness. and then patience. This is the long fuse of the Christian's passion. There will be many things in our church relations that may stoke the fires of our anger. There may be temptations to lash out with words or attitudes, but a Christian seeking grace from the indwelling Holy Spirit is going to hold those things in check. He's going to refuse a quick response. We must be willing to wait upon God to see his work making progress in the lives of our brethren. I think that's often the reason for our impatience. We want this brother or we want this sister to change, and God doesn't seem to be doing it fast enough, so I'm gonna get involved. We need patience with one another in the Christian life. It doesn't mean there's never a time for response. It doesn't mean that there's never an appropriate need for rebuke or correction, but let there be patience first. And in our patience, let's pray for our brethren. How often, when someone bothers you, is the first thing that you do pray for them? Bring them to the Lord. Ask the Lord to intervene and ask the Lord to help you in your relationship with them that you might be patient and gentle and humble in your interactions. Let us pray for our brethren. Let us be willing to suffer indignities and insults and irritations. How we need to pray that God would grant us patience. And then that following little phrase, bearing with one another in love. Paul is reminding us here that as we put up with our brother or sister, our putting up needs to be governed by love. So we're not trying to escape the relationship. We're not trying to figure out a way of dealing with this person and getting away from them. How can we love them? How can we bear with them in love? How can I do them good? How can I show them that I am glad that God has put them here with me and that we can worship together and serve Christ together? How can I shower this person with love? So perhaps you've got the aroma of bad spiritual breath coming over you from them. You want to respond by overwhelming them with love. We all know the reality of people leaving the church. Sometimes, despite the sadness, there is almost a sense of relief. But our confession at that point needs to be honestly, I'm glad I don't have to figure out how to love that person anymore. That often, I think, is the reality. I don't have to put up with them anymore. And the focus shifts from what my response needs to be to piling on them and why they were wrong for this place. And so perhaps it's good that they're not here anymore. rather than praying, Lord, help me to learn to bear with people like this and to show them love. Putting up with people isn't easy, and it's surely not natural. It's not the thing that we just jump to. Oh, here's someone's irritating me. OK, how can I bear? We want to run away. We want to escape. We need the grace of God to be able to accomplish this. And it requires humility, and gentleness, and patience, and love. And when it is accompanied by all those virtues, putting up with one another becomes a beautiful thing. Often when we think of putting up with something, it's sort of like putting up with a toothache or putting up with a headache. We want to get rid of that. But here, putting up with someone, bearing with someone, is a beautiful thing as we bring all these other virtues into the realm of our relationships. And so may God grant us the determination that this is the way that we are going to live together. Now thirdly, and finally this evening, the greatest motivation to forbearance. The greatest motivation to forbearance. As we stop to consider how we're going to work out this grace, this call to forbearance, The most important thing for us is to recognize how God has borne with us. How God has borne with us. That's really the story of God's dealings with his people. We see him in history moving mightily to rescue his people by his grace to save them. And then the ongoing story from that point is how he bears them in all of their sins and failures and the great disappointments of their wanderings. Just think of the story of Israel between Egypt and Canaan. God comes to them and brings about an incredible redemption. He brings them out of slavery to liberty. He exercises his almighty power and judgment upon Egypt. And Egypt, or excuse me, Israel is on the way to the promised land. What incredible blessings they have known from God. And though God had lavished them with his kindness in return as they traveled through the wilderness, they grumbled, and they complained, and they despised the manna, and they rebelled against his appointed authorities, and they allowed unbelief and rebellion to rule their thinking and actions. And he forgave them so many times He listened to intercessions on their behalf. He grieved over their apostasies. And though that original generation finally perished in the wilderness, the next generation didn't prove to be much better. But God bore with them. The story of Jesus and his disciples follows a similar course. Those men were greatly blessed, blessed above all other men. For Jesus called them to a discipleship which had at its very heart this truth." They got to be with Jesus. And so for almost three and a half years, Apart from the times he sent them out on preaching ministries, they got to be with Jesus morning, noon, and night. They had the front row seats at the miracles. So they could watch, they could observe the power of God manifested through the Lord Jesus Christ. They got to see the heart of Christ more than anyone else as he ministered to the sick and dying and the grieving. They saw the tenderness of Jesus. They heard the teaching of our Savior as he proclaimed the kingdom of God and invited people to come for forgiveness and salvation to him. And then they got to go into private with him and say, we didn't understand that, can you give us explanation? And he would patiently teach them. What incredible blessings they had with the Lord Jesus. And yet how their lives were often marked by great unbelief. Quarreling at times over who was going to be the greatest in the kingdom. refusing to minister to one another when they went into the upper room. And so Jesus had to become the servant and wash all of their feet. They weren't going to do that for each other. And then in the greatest trial of his life, they forsook the Lord Jesus. They ran off to protect their own necks. How our Savior put up with those men, how he bore them. He was faithful to them. He loved them consistently right to the very end. And he was even willing to go to the cross and carry their sins and pay their debt and their penalty, their judgment, that they might be forgiven. What incredible forbearance on the part of the Lord Jesus. Brethren, it's good for us to look back in the scriptures and see how God dealt with Israel, see how Jesus dealt with his disciples. But we need to look at ourselves. We need to think about our own life. So just review quickly your life. Start with your birth and come up to the day of your conversion. Now for some of you, you might have been very young. For others, perhaps you were well into adulthood, so many years. But think briefly over those years. How many sins did you commit? Can you even count them? How many times did you rebel against God? How many times, perhaps even if you were raised in a Christian home and went to church, your heart was filled with unbelief and you were determined to turn away from God. How many times could God have rightly said, I'm done with you. Send you to hell. And yet he bore with you. to put up with you. But then, go from conversion up until the present day. A great change in our lives, Christ coming to us, faith in the Lord Jesus, forgiveness, adoption into the family of God, all of the blessings of God's salvation that we're to know in this life, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Many years for me, decades I'm sure for many of you as well. How many times have you sinned over that period? How many failures? How many expressions of unbelief? How many rebellions? How many days have you lived and ignored God? How many times of spiritual barrenness and darkness when you put aside your Bible and put aside prayer and perhaps even going to church? Did God reject you? Did he rip out the page and say, enough with him, I'm done with him? No, He's born with us. He's put up with us. Oh, brethren, how we need to remember how God has dealt so graciously with us. There's a hymn that we love to sing at home. We probably sing it here as well. We often sing it at the Lord's Supper when we're thinking of how the Lord Jesus suffered on our behalf. It's a hymn by John Newton, and I want to quote one of the verses to you. Could we bear from one another what he daily bears from us? Yet this glorious friend and brother loves us though we treat him thus. Thus, though for good we render ill, he accounts us brethren still." What a confession. Christ is lavishing us with good things day after day, and we do ill to him. How can that be? That's the reality of continuing to be sinners, isn't it? And yet, He bears with us, He puts up with us, He doesn't reject us. He continues to work in our lives and to change us and to draw us to Himself. He continues to grant to us the ministry of the Holy Spirit so that our lives are being transformed and made for heaven. And brethren, if we will remember that truth, of how God has borne with us, of how our Lord Jesus puts up with us day after day, in love, graciously, with incredible mercy. How can we turn around and to our fellow church member and say, you are an irritant to me, I don't want a relationship with you. How can we do that? Would we not be absolute hypocrites? So motivation to learn forbearance. Remember how God bears with his people. And as you think of Israel and as you think of the disciples, think about yourself and how God has borne with you. And then when you get a whiff of spiritual bad breath, Say, oh Lord, you've borne with me. I can bear with this. Give me grace. Help me in this relationship. Maybe you're here tonight and you're listening to this and you're saying, you know, what is this all about? Because you need to know God yourself. You need to know the Lord Jesus Christ. You need to understand how long God has borne with you, even bringing you to the point of hearing the gospel and inviting you to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so tonight, I would do that. I would invite you to come to this Lord Jesus, who is so gracious, who is willing to, in love, put up with us, bear with us, and draw us along into his heavenly kingdom. And you can come to him tonight simply by praying right where you are and asking the Lord Jesus to forgive you of your sins and to bring you into the family of God. Oh brethren, may we all know and practice the grace of God. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we shudder to think of where we would be tonight if you had not born with us. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for your mercy that has showered us with such incredible kindness in the Lord Jesus Christ, though we are so undeserving. Heavenly Father, please teach us to bear with one another in love. Help us to be humble and gentle and patient in our dealings with one another. Help us to grow in our relationships. And Father, we pray the result would be honor and glory to your name. The recognition that the Church of Christ is indeed a beautiful place because of your grace at work. And may this also be used to attract people to this place where your work is known. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.