Well, good morning, everyone. As we get started here this morning, would you bow your heads with me in prayer? Lord, your testimonies are wonderful. Lord, the unfolding of your words gives light. It imparts understanding to the simple. And so Lord, this morning as we unpack and unfold and open up your word, I pray that you would open our hearts and minds to hear you speak to us today, that we might grow in faith and wisdom and knowledge and understanding of who you are and how you're at work in the world and in our lives and in our church. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, Most of the time, nobody stays to watch the end credits, the closing credits for a movie, right? I mean, I guess with some Marvel movies, they have end credit scenes or whatever, but most of the time, once the lights come on and those credits start rolling, I mean, the good stuff is done. The movie's over, the lights are on, I'm ready to go home. I don't really need to know who the gaffer is or the key grip or the dolly grip or the assistant grip. I mean, there's only so many things that need to be gripped on a movie set, right? I don't need to know that stuff. So bless them for the work that they do, but I am ready to leave. And when it comes to Paul's letters, I think sometimes we approach them in a similar kind of way. When we get towards the end of that last chapter, we start thinking, okay, the good stuff is done, the deep theological truths have all been shared, the challenging teachers are over, and the rest is just filler, right? You know, send my greetings, say hello to this person, send my coat, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, all right, we're done here, move on, it's time to go. Now, I will admit it, the letter closings are not as exciting as the body of the letter. And after 33 sermons in the book of Ephesians, you may be wondering, do we really need one more sermon? Yes, yes we do. We're gonna have one last sermon here on the book of Ephesians this morning. Because if we rush too quickly through these closing words, If we close the book before we let Paul finish everything that he wants to say, then we risk missing some of the significant insights that he gives us into the vibrant spiritual life of the early church. And more importantly, we run the risk of missing out on some key challenges Paul wants to press in on us. So today we have one last sermon before we formally close the book on Ephesians. And the main theme today is actually the title of our entire sermon series. We are one church in Christ. That's our theme for today. It's the theme for our whole series. It's the title for our sermon today. It's the main point of our message today. We are one church in Christ. One body united by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. One people called by God, rescued by Christ, and held together by the power of the Holy Spirit. And I'm really excited for these last verses here in Ephesians 6. Because we're gonna see three key concepts related to this theme of unity that Paul wants to emphasize one last time before he signs off. Three key concepts that are not only tied together some of the major themes in the book, but three key concepts that continue to have tons of relevance. an application for us in our lives today, especially as we begin to take our first baby steps down this road, this journey of being a new church, right? Two congregations brought together now as one. So, all that said, let's dive into our passage today. And the first concept Paul identifies here at the end of his letter is this, we need to be people who pray. We need to be people who pray. Now prayer seems to fuel just about every part of Paul's ministry. Judging by his letters, he was a man of constant prayer, a consistent prayer. And yet, have you ever noticed how Paul never stops to wrestle with all the same kinds of theological and philosophical questions that we tend to have when it comes to the question of prayer? Right, there are many other aspects of the Christian life that he argues for and defends and engages with. But prayer he just takes as like a given. It gets a sense that for Paul it would have been like trying to make an argument for breathing. It's just something that you do as a follower of Christ. You pray. It's that foundational. Look at the text here in Ephesians 6. Having clarified for the Ephesians the reality of spiritual warfare, Paul then changes gears for a little bit and he now emphasizes the vital importance of prayer. Prayer is the way that we clothe ourselves for spiritual battle. Remember all the shields and the sword and the helmet that Pastor Michael had up on stage for us last week. And as Pastor Michael said, prayer is a way that we clothe ourselves for spiritual battle. But prayer is also the way in which we stand firm against the spiritual forces of evil and darkness. Prayer is what helps us walk, as Paul says, in a manner worthy of our calling. Right? Prayer is ultimately the glue that helps us to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. But Paul then gives four clear encouragements which can help shape our prayer life. So first, Paul says we should be praying at all times in the Spirit. At all times, he said, we should be praying in the spirit. Now, of course, nobody literally prays all the time, not even Paul. Even monks and nuns cloistered off in their beautiful buildings, they're not praying literally all the time. What Paul means is that we should adopt a lifestyle of prayer, right? Prayer should be more than just one more activity we check off on our to-do list every day, like brushing our teeth. Prayer should be more like an attitude, a posture, a whole life activity, something that we do at all times. Not that we walk around our homes or offices sort of quietly muttering under our breath, like, I mean, but more of like an ongoing inclination towards prayer. Prayer is a means by which we maintain a constant and vital connection and conversation with God through the help of the Holy Spirit. It's kind of like texting, right? I'm constantly on my phone throughout the day, texting my wife, my kids, my friends, all throughout the day, from first light to lights out. I don't really think about it, I'm just doing it because I want to connect with my family and with my friends, and they want to connect with me. And prayer is very similar. It's meant to be this constant, ongoing way for us to sustain that relationship with our Heavenly Father, something that is so much a part of who we are and what we do that we don't even really think about it. We're not people who happen to pray when we remember. We're prayerful people who can't help but pray at all times. Now second, Paul says that we should be praying with all prayer and supplication. Meaning our prayers are not merely conversations with God. Of course, that's part of it sometimes, but they're also requests, petitions, praises. As broken people living in a broken world, our prayer lives are driven by our very real needs, fears, cares, wants, concerns, our fears, our anxieties, right? They exhibit a healthy neediness. In every other corner of life, neediness is kind of a bad thing. We try and avoid being needy or expressing neediness, except when it comes to God. because the reality is that we are very needy. We are weak people. We're helpless. We struggle to change even ourselves, let alone the people or the situations around us. And so prayer becomes the primary way in which we plead, we beg, we implore God to intervene dramatically in our lives, in the lives of the people that we care for, for anything, for everything, lost contact lenses to needed parking spaces to lost and wayward children for their salvation and everything in between. Now third, Paul says that we should be praying with all perseverance. More specifically, he says, we should keep alert with all perseverance. Now for a society that runs on Dunkin, I mean, I should get free coffee for that. But for a society that runs on coffee, 400 million cups of coffee, apparently, according to the experts, consumed every single day in America. You would think that staying awake and alert wouldn't be a problem for us, but it's not physical exhaustion that's the problem, although maybe that would have helped the disciples as Jesus is pleading with them to stay awake with him in the garden as he prays. But it's spiritual alertness Paul is concerned about. Spiritual warfare against the very real powers and principalities and dominions of darkness has been a prevailing theme in the book of Ephesians. Paul says these forces are real and they are dangerous and you need to stay alert and awake. Pay attention. You need to be alert to the temptations and the lies that Satan comes at you every single day. But positively speaking, we also need to be alert, then Paul says, to the promptings and the leadings and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to God speaking to us, to being able to hear his voice as he calls and leads and directs, as he challenges, as he rebukes, as he encourages. because life is too short for us to doze off spiritually. You can't set your spiritual life on cruise control and help to sort of quietly coast across the line into glory. And as Paul adds here, we need to be persistent, obstinate, unyielding in our prayers. Like Jacob, as we heard this morning, wrestling with God all through the night. Not half-hearted, not ambivalent, not bored, not wishy-washy, but confident in God's ability to act and eager to see him do so. Like, I want you to see you act, God, and I'm not gonna stop praying until I see you do. Praying, not just for a few minutes in the morning, once a week, but repeatedly for months, for even years, to stubbornly refuse to let go until we hear a response. And so even as we recognize and we praise God for his often dramatic and almost immediate answers to prayer, I'm so thankful for those, but we also need to be a people who learn to play the long game. holding on, unyielding, persevering in prayer. You know, a friend of mine is really into cryptocurrencies. I don't really still understand how it all works, but he wears this hat everywhere he goes. And then on it, it says H-O-D-L, which stands for hold on for dear life. It's like a trading strategy for people who buy and sell Bitcoin. Hold on for dear life, because it's that volatile. But every time I see it, I think that's exactly what Paul is talking about here when he talks about prayer. Hold on for dear life and don't let go. Keep alert and pray with all perseverance. But then fourth, and finally, Paul says, we should be praying for all the saints, meaning all believers. We pray for ourselves, of course, that goes without saying. I don't need Paul to say, hey, by the way, don't forget to pray for your own needs. Like, I do plenty of that. But there's a particular focus in this letter to the Ephesians on prayer for others, other believers as well. For this is a letter centered around the unity of the church in Christ, right? Not just praying for other Christians, but praying with other Christians, just as we do here every Sunday morning as part of our worship service, right? Gathering here to pray with and for each other. Gathering together as the body in order to pray for the body. Because our battle against the powers and the principalities of the world is not me against the world, that's part of it, right? But it's we, all of us, against these satanic forces pressing in around us. That spiritual armor that Pastor Michael preached about the last two weeks, right? It's helpful for me personally in my battle against the enemy, but we're ultimately called to enter into that battle collectively. An army united in prayer, united by prayer. And so we do that, as I said, every Sunday morning. We do that after the service. I see small groups of people huddled up after the service is done, praying with and for each other. I see people doing that during the week formally in our men's ministries and women's ministries and our men's prayer groups and our women's prayer groups meeting during the week. and informally in family worship times and family devotions and at night when we're praying for each other, for believers, for brothers and sisters in Christ. And the point of all of this then is this, if we are to function as one church, united in Christ, then we need to be praying for all things, for all the saints, at all times and with all perseverance, refusing to let go, refusing to stop. Now the second concept that Paul identifies here in these closing verses as a key to living as one church, united in Christ, is recognizing how much we truly need each other. No man is an island. And even though Paul towers above pretty much everyone else in the early church. The truth is that he didn't do all this work alone, right? Almost everywhere he went, he ministered to and he traveled with a whole host of other brothers in Christ, missionaries, ministers, servants of the Lord. Men whose support, prayers, and encouragement he saw as absolutely vital to his ministry. More importantly, Paul was willing to be open about his struggles, his brokenness, and his neediness. Look here at verses 19 and 20. He says, and pray also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak. And if you think about it for a moment, this seems a little odd to be Paul, Paul to be praying like, hey, can you help me to be bold in knowing what to say? Like, does Paul really need help being bold and speaking and proclaiming the gospel and speaking truth? But this prayer reveals a lot about Paul. First, right, already having exhorted the Ephesians to be utterly devoted to prayer. He then asks them to pray for him. This isn't dry theology, right? He's saying, look, what I've just said, you need to go ahead and put it into practice, like right now. Right, and then he himself is putting it into practice by saying, like, I need help. We need to be praying. Like, pray for all the saints, pray for me right now. Secondly, Paul reminds them again that he is in chains. His situation, it's less than ideal, right? He's chained up in Rome. And despite all the bravado we like to assume that Paul had, here we catch a glimpse of the reality that he needed prayer just like everybody else. Just like you, just like me. Because he was in real desperate need. And third, despite everything, Paul doesn't ask them to pray for his freedom. Pray that I would be set free from these chains. But he asks them to pray for boldness in preaching the gospel. Because he recognizes the ongoing success of his ministry It's not based in his natural gifts and abilities, in his powerful personality, right? It's rooted in the prayers and the support of other people. In other words, he needs their help. He cannot do it alone. Pray for me that I would declare the gospel boldly. I need your help to do this, he says. A point then that he emphasizes in the verses that follow. Look at the text, Paul says in the very next verse. So that you also may know how I am and what I'm doing, Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will tell you everything. I've sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. Now Tychicus is one of those Those random people mentioned at the end of Paul's letters that you don't really think about all that often. But clearly he was very important to Paul, right? A beloved brother, faithful minister, servant of Christ. So who was he and why would Paul say all these things about him? Well, Tychicus actually most likely came from the town of Ephesus. He was certainly from Asia. He first appears in Acts 20. as a traveling companion of Paul in Greece, possibly staying with him in Corinth. Tychicus then accompanies Paul on his return up through Macedonia, through Troas, and back down to Jerusalem. He was most likely in Troas when Paul raised Eutychus from the dead. It's incredible, he's seen all kinds of ministry, and eventually he ends up back with Paul in Rome, where Paul's in prison, ministering to him, caring for him, a source of great encouragement and strength. It's from Rome that Paul then sends tickets back to the region of Ephesus with three letters, one for the Ephesians, one for the Colossians, perhaps also he was the one who brought the letter to Philemon as well. And Tychicus was entrusted to carry these letters personally and to represent Paul, to help explain the content of these letters to the believers in Ephesus and Colossae. But why does Paul send Tychicus not just to ensure that the letter safely gets from A to B, like he's a glorified mailman? Tychicus is to share openly and freely with the Ephesians just how Paul is really doing. Remember, Paul, like I said, he's in prison, in Rome, in chains, awaiting an uncertain future. In the world's eyes, this was a position of weakness and vulnerability, a sign of great shame, of failure. It would have been a black mark against both his reputation and his authority as a leader and teacher in the church. Things haven't changed a whole lot. Our culture doesn't have much time or appreciation for perceived weakness or failure. Sickness, illness, uncertainty, doubt. These are all the things that we want to hide and keep others from being able to see, right? Aching joints, growing debt, wayward children, poor job reviews, troubled marriages, bad decisions. There's too much shame associated with it all. A sense that if people really knew what was actually going on in my life, We would be too embarrassed to ever see them again. But look at the text. Look at what Paul says. Three times, in just two verses, Paul emphasizes that he's sending tickets precisely because he wants them to know exactly how he is doing. The reality of his situation. Right, Paul, the great church planter, the missionary to the Gentiles, he is still in the end just a guy like everyone else. And he doesn't leverage his position as an apostle to create a cult of personality. Right, quite the opposite. He wants everyone to know who he really is. Look, you wanna know who I am? Take a guess, I'll let you know. He's gonna give you the real story, the picture, the man behind the curtain, the real Paul. He'll share with you everything. He doesn't try to control the messaging. Paul doesn't try to control the messaging. He trusts Tychicus to share everything. My life is an open book. Whatever you wanna know, Tychicus is gonna tell you. Now, I don't know about you, but I find that uncomfortable and convicting. Because like everyone else, I want to keep my cards close to my chest. I'm a private person. I don't want to share. I've been burned before. I don't want to get burned again. It's uncomfortable. It's just, we talk about transparency as Christians, but doing that is difficult. It goes against everything that I'm programmed to do and be. And yet, I'm confronted with the fact that Paul seems so comfortable doing exactly that, because he knows this is what it really means to live part of one body, united in Christ, right? This is what Paul's describing here. This is like the lived reality of of what Mark read this morning, right? One body, one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. We love all that language. What does that look like? It means being like Paul. My life is an open book, right? Not working to manage an image, not glossing over the difficulties, the struggles, the failures, the sin, but learning to be open, vulnerable, real. And if we are to continue to grow as a church, not just numerically, but relationally, then we have to keep working to resist the temptation to hide, to pretend. Right, and instead we need to recognize just how much we truly need each other. We need to be both Paul, sharing freely and openly, and also Tychicus, encouraging and supporting those in need, right, all with that vision of building up the church as one body in Christ. Now the third and the final concept that Paul raises in the last lines of this letter is kind of like the special sauce that ties all these things together. He says we need the peace, the love, and the grace of God. That's the glue that binds us all together, the peace, the love, and the grace of God. Think of any big, beautiful stone church, or maybe if you've ever been to a cathedral, you focus on the bricks, the stones, the beautiful carvings, the stained glass windows, the wooden pews, whatever it is, the doors, maybe even the organ. But what's the one thing you've probably never looked at before? the mortar, right? That thin line of cement between all those bricks and stones that holds the whole thing together. And I know I'm stretching the metaphor here a little bit, but if we, to use Paul's language in Ephesians 2.19, if we're being made into a building, For God to dwell, then the mortar, the glue, the cement that holds us together is this perfect mixture of the love and the grace and the peace of God that Paul has emphasized over and over and over and over again throughout his letter to the Ephesians. Look at what Paul says at these very last two verses of the book. He says, peace be to the brothers and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love uncorruptible. Peace has been a significant theme for Paul throughout this letter. Not just as a blessing that he wishes for the Ephesians, but as a core principle that is central to their faith. Jesus Christ, he himself is our peace. Ephesians 2.14, meaning not only did he establish peace between Jews and Gentiles and therefore by extension between all people, whatever racial, ethnic, gender divisions that may separate us. but he established peace between all of us and God as well. We were all once dead in our sins, but God has now made us alive together with Christ. There is no more hostility now between rebellious sinners and a holy God in Christ. And significantly, in Christ, there is now no more reason for there to be hostility between brothers and sisters in Christ either. And we should therefore be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, as Paul says in Ephesians 4.3. So when Paul prays for God's peace to be with the Ephesians, it's not just a bland wish, like, hey, I hope things will go well with you. Or here, it's at the end of the letter, it's like when people leave, they're like, hey, peace out, I'm leaving. Just a throwaway statement. Paul's prayer is so much deeper. He's praying for this young church filled with men and women from all kinds of different backgrounds and experiences and different religious backgrounds. He's praying for them to be bound together by the restorative power of God himself. Where the God who will one day bring his peace, his shalom to the entire world is even now in part bringing like a little foretaste of that peace through and to the church, even in our church right here, right with all our different backgrounds and personalities and messes and imperfections, even here God wants to bring his peace so that we might be one. But it's not just peace that Paul prays for the Ephesians, he also prays that they would be experienced love with faith. We haven't emphasized this, I think, nearly enough through our series, but love has also been a dominant theme in Ephesians, starting all the way back in Ephesians chapter one, verses four and five, right? We learned that it was in love that God predestined us for adoption. Your election is not some abstract, dispassionate, business decision that God made. You were adopted into God's family in love. In fact, it was because of the great love with which he loved us, Paul says, that God then made us alive together with Christ. Not like this dull duty like, oh man, I've got to make them alive together with Christ. He loves us because of his great love. He made us a love together with Christ. A love that Paul then prays extensively for us to know and feel and experience at the very deepest levels A love that was so deeply root and ground us, as Paul says, that we could never be shaken. So that whatever lies Satan hurls at us, whatever attacks other people level at us, whatever doubts we feel about us, our confidence in God's love for us would stand firm, immovable, and unshakable. And this love of God for us then bleeds over into a love for others in the church as well. Right, which is speak the truth in love, Paul says. Walk in love, Paul says. Build one another up in love. You've heard people say, oh, love makes the world go round. It's a sappy, sentimental phrase that's devoid of pretty much any power or meaning. But God's love truly does bind us together as one church in Christ. And this is not based on our emotional feelings of God's love for us, right? Or even my feeling of being in love with God or feeling love for other people. God's love is a fact. that Paul lays out for us in this letter, a fact proven by the salvation that we have in Christ. I may not always feel it in my dark moments, in my moments of doubt and fear and guilt and shame, but the cross is a concrete unchanging reminder of his consistent and persistent love for us, a love that then enables and equips us through this Holy Spirit to turn and love others as well. The church then is bound together by God's electing, redeeming, soul-saving, life-changing love as poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. And then finally, How could we possibly leave our study of Ephesians without talking about grace one last time? Look at verse 24. Paul says, in the very final line of this letter, grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, with love incorruptible. There's that word love again. But Paul began his letter with a prayer for God's grace to be with the Ephesians. And he closes it now with the same prayer for God's grace to be manifested in their lives and in the church. Grace was at the heart of Paul's mission. As he says in Ephesians three, verses seven and eight, his message concerning the unifying power of God to bring Jews and Gentiles together into one church was specifically a gift. of God's grace given to Paul for their benefit, their blessing. And grace is of course at the very heart of the gospel. As we read in Ephesians 2, by grace we have been saved, not by works, lest anyone should boast. A fact that Paul repeats twice. For emphasis, to make sure no one commits it, you've been saved by grace, you've been saved by grace, not your good deeds, not your good behavior, not your own moral excellence, not your family's reputation, not by anything you can think or do or say or work towards by yourself, but simply by the unmerited, unwarranted, unearned, undeserved grace of God, pure and simple, a gift given to us Yes, for your salvation specifically and my salvation specifically, but there's so much more at stake than just my personal spiritual well-being and life with Christ. Jesus died on the cross to secure for himself a new people, collectively, right? To create a new community, to grow a new body, to build a new church. Absolutely there are untold blessings in Christ for you and me personally, but the peace and the love and the grace of God are also intended to have a far wider, greater, deeper than just that, right? There to be the glue that then binds us together as the body of Christ, the cement that kind of locks us together as the church of Christ, a gathering of the people of God directed towards the glory of God. And so as I close this sermon and end our series finally here in Ephesians, the great encouragement The great encouragement for us is there isn't a specific final closing command to follow. There isn't some closing thing that you have to now go and do more of. Yes, pray, like I said at the beginning. Yes, be more open and genuine and vulnerable, absolutely. But we do all those things, and the dozen other things, commands, that Paul gives in chapters four through six, we do all those things in response to God's grace. We do all those things in and through the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. The peace, the love, and the grace of God, these are all the gifts that he freely gives to us. They come from our Heavenly Father. They're intended for our blessing. They are meant to help us love and serve and care for each other. They're meant to lead us deeper into worship. They're meant to be the fuel that keeps us moving forward. So the do here, what do you need to go and do? The do here is to recognize that we can't do this in ourselves. Right, the great cathedrals and those beautiful churches of the world with all those enormous stones. Those stones didn't like bring themselves together and so smash themselves together and perfectly line themselves all up like that. That was the work of a master craftsman. And in a similar way, in the end, we don't really self-assemble ourselves into a church. Right, we don't make ourselves to be united in Christ. It's a work that God has done. As Paul has said in this letter, he's already done this. It's a work that he is doing currently. And it's a work that he's gonna continue doing in and through us as he grows and builds his church in and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Which is why Paul says we are to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. We don't make that unity, God does that because he has given us his peace. He has shown us his great love and he has extended to us his grace. So let me close with this reminder from Ephesians chapter two. Because of everything that Paul has just said, You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. You and I, together, in God's wisdom, a one church, united by Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, made for his glory, called to proclaim the same life-proclaiming gospel to the very ends of the earth until Jesus returns and he takes us into his presence. And may we live in light of that glorious truth as we try to see the church grow and expand here on earth for his glory. Would you pray with me? Lord, we're so thankful for the grace, the peace, the love that you have bestowed on us, the work that you have done to bring us together as one body, united in your son, Jesus Christ. For the new life that we have in Christ, for the hope that we have in Christ, for the power that we now have in Christ, And I pray that you would help us, Lord, this week to live as sons and daughters, as brothers and sisters, as one body, truly united by your blood. In Jesus' name, amen.