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IT’S ALWAYS EASIER DURING SPRING TRAINING

Have you noticed how some people are “seminar-and-workshop” junkies? “Ten Steps to a Better Marriage.” “How to Communicate With Your Spouse.” There comes a time when you have to leave the hotel ballroom, go back home TO that spouse, and actually do what the speaker said.

In his insightful — and often hilarious — baseball book, The Umpire Strikes Back, the late Ron Luciano tells how, after a failed career in football, he decided to be an ump. So he signed up for the Al Somers Umpiring School down in Florida, and really got into it. He learned the many intricacies of the MLB — major league baseball — rule book. He learned how to make the various calls: safe, out, timeout, balk, home run, infield fly rule. He learned how to not argue with players — to simply make a decisive call and then just walk away. He got behind home plate and slowly defined, in his mind’s eye, where the strike zone ought to be and how to indicate a called strike with clear, reasoned authority.

“Everything went fine,” he reports, “during the training phase. And then they did one terrible thing which undid all of it: they allowed players on the field!” Until there were players, as long as all these eyelash safe-out decisions and the hairline, borderline pitches, those 92-miles-per-hour sliders that just nicked the black area of home plate for a controversial third strike were theoretical, practice plays . . . all was well. But when you suddenly had 18 major-league, tobacco-chewing, prima donna, multimillionaire players on the field, ready to argue calls and throw gloves and call you a overgrown, fat, blind idiot, that was different. Umpiring was a whole new ballgame, no pun intended, when it was for real.

Here in the book of Ephesians, it’s maybe been like that too. We’ve spent a pretty long time — more than we intended — in just the first three chapters of Paul’s epistle. And up till now, it’s been some very compelling talk about Jews and Gentiles united. About this glorious universal plan of God’s to bring all of creation into unity and glad submission under the rule of His resurrected Son. But all of a sudden, here in chapter four, they let players onto the field. Chapters one, two, and three have — and this is overstating it — been quite a bit of “talk.” All at once, beginning in Ephesians four, it seems that it is now time to “walk.” You know what they say about “talking the talk and walking the walk” . . . well, here we are.

Notice verse one:

“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord,” Paul writes, “beseech you that ye WALK worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.”

If you really want to start lacing up the Nikes and Adidas track shoes, join fellow walker Eugene Peterson as he spells out Ephesians 4:1 in his paraphrase New Testament, The Message. Listen to this, Christian joggers of the world:

“I want you to get out there and walk — better yet, run! — on the road God called you to travel,” Paul writes. “I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere.”

There are several interesting points to be noticed here, especially in this Message paraphrase. Obviously walking is the worst thing in the world to do if you travel down the wrong road, going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. So we need to not sit on our hands . . . and then we need to prayerfully get on the right road and walk on IT. Of course, if we’ve studied carefully chapters one through three, we already know what the right road is. It’s the road of unity, of joining together with the Body of Christ. It’s the road of obedience. It’s the road of glorifying Christ. It’s the road of tapping into God’s power expressed at Calvary and unleashed on Resurrection Sunday.

We skipped over the New International Version a moment ago, but let me share their text note for verse one. It’s very good.

“So far Paul has taught that God brought Jew and Gentile into a new relationship to each other in the church,” they write, “and that He called the church to display His wisdom. Paul now shows how God made provision for those in the church to LIVE and WORK together in unity and to grow together into maturity.”

In other words, Paul writes, this isn’t just theory, folks. God expects you to really do this thing: to reconcile with your Gentile neighbors. To bring them in as full fellow citizens. And then to yearly and monthly and weekly and daily make mature, unified Christian growth your top priority.

I’m reminded of that old story where a preacher got up in church one Sabbath, and wrung his hands in exhortation. “Brothers and sisters,” he cried out, “we’re just a little, humble church. Struggling. Spiritual infancy. But God calls on us to do our best . . . at least we can crawl for His kingdom!” And all the people called out, “Amen! Make it crawl, Rev, make it crawl!” Well, he was just getting started. “But, brethren,” he added, “God doesn’t want us to stay as children, as infants, forever. Crawling? No! God wants us to stand up tall for Him . . . and walk in triumph!” And all the people clapped and cheered. “Yes! Praise God! Make the church walk, Rev, make it walk!” And now the preacher began to really perspire in the Lord. “And then,” he shouted, “by God’s grace, and with Holy Spirit power and unction, we can run like the wind! We can run in the Lord’s name and the world will stand back and wonder! Yes, the church can run!” And by now everyone was on their feet, whistling and banging on drums. “Amen! Hallelujah! Rev, make it run! Make it run!”

Now at last, the good pastor had them right where he wanted them. “Amen!” he cried, ringing the rafters. “And brothers and sisters, in order for this church to run, we’re all going to have to dig deep into our pockets and empty out our purses and wallets and DOUBLE the amount we’ve been putting into the plate. Right now! Double what you have been giving!”

And there was a long, long, long silence. A great, interminable stillness hung in the air. And finally, from the back of the church, one little old man choked out: “Let it crawl, Rev, let it crawl.”

So friend, as we continue to study — and the radio road to Ephesians seems to be a lengthy one — this is our question. Are we willing to not only STUDY chapters one, two, and three, but also LIVE BY four, five, and six? In his wonderful Tyndale New Testament Commentary, Dr. Francis Foulkes writes:

“The doxology at the end of chapter 3 marks the close of the part of the Epistle that is predominantly doctrinal. Chapters 4-6 are to show IN PRACTICAL DETAIL how glory is to be rendered to God now in the Church.” Then he adds this: “Now in these remaining chapters [Paul] is going to write about the quality and kind of life that is demanded of them individually and in the fellowship of Christ’s Church. It is no mere teaching of the Christian ethic that the apostle seeks to give. He whose greatest concern in life has become to ‘present every man perfect in Christ Jesus’ makes earnest entreaty. The word parakalo can mean ‘exhort,’ but obviously in this context has its stronger meaning beseech.”

And what is Paul beseeching us to do? Very simply: to DO that which we have learned. This same Francis Foulkes wisely observes that “Christian CONDUCT follows from Christian DOCTRINE.” If we’re grateful for what we’ve received from Jesus, if we appreciate Calvary at all, then our duty “derives,” he says, from that.

Speaking of getting off our hands and not just walking, but walking down — or up is more like it — the right road, let me share one more excellent paragraph from this Tyndale study commentary. Here it is:

“Step by step they are to walk in a direction that corresponds to their call. That call to know the grace of God in Christ, to be the children of God, and to serve Him as His ‘dedicated ones’ and messengers of His gospel, should transform EVERY PART of life. For it involves the obligation to live in a manner that is in accordance with the name of Him whose they are and whom they serve” – Philippians 1:29 says that – “pleasing Him in all things” — and that’s Colossians 1:10. Then Dr. Foulkes concludes by quoting the great theologian F. F. Bruce: “‘Those who have been chosen by God to sit with Christ in the heavenly places must remember that the honor of Christ is involved in their daily lives.’”

Is that exciting? And challenging? Listen, friend — and I’m preaching right back into my own face right here — it doesn’t really do that much for God’s kingdom when someone mentally agrees with heaven’s doctrines. In their hearts, even the devils of hell all do that. They know they’re wrong and that God is right, really. But how many followers of God in the mental, theological battlefield are also His followers when it gets right onto the track of daily living?

I’m not going to give you some platitude right here as we close. In some way — small, medium, large, or whatever — can you find a way to LIVE by the kingdom rules? Today? This very Monday? Get out there, today, before bedtime, and take some discernible steps for Jesus and in obedience to Him? You know what your steps should be, and I know mine. Tomorrow, right here, we’ll stretch and study and encourage and then walk some more.