God Reigns Over All Circumstances

Ephesians 4:06a

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

We’re on a verse today that I think expresses what we’re about, really. It’s Ephesians 4:6 and it
just states it so clearly that even though I know we’ve done it at least once in Raleigh and maybe
once here, I think we should do it again today. It’s Ephesians 4:6, “one God and Father of us all,
who is above all and through all and in all.” One God and Father of us all, who is above all and
through all and in all. I say it speaks to what we do because we knew from the very beginning that
we were committing ourselves to operate outside the normal church. We spend most – in fact, we
probably spend all of our time with people who are not thought of as church people or as Christians.

Probably all of us spend all our days in that kind of atmosphere.

I think we are often dogged by the traditional lie that we were brought up in, “us” and “them”. I
think all of us fight it and none of us like it. We all try not to let it occur in our thinking
when we’re in that store and we’re talking to that person, especially if they happen to blast out a
word that we don’t like, we try to keep down the feeling that we are not “them”.

We joke about it often, “Different God, different mountain top” — you remember that line in
“Chariots of Fire”. We think, “Yes, with a different God, with a different mountain top. We are on
the mountain top and they’re down there.” It’s quite difficult isn’t it, because it just comes to
you again and again, partly because we feel that’s part of the reason of our existence, that we’re
here to get them up on the mountain top. We’re here to transmit Jesus to them and so, it is very
easy to fall into the old traditional Christian, or really it’s not Christian, it’s the old
traditional religious attitude that they are “out there” and we are “here”. We are here to do them
good. I think it comes out in all kinds of little ways that we ourselves don’t realize.

I think very quietly we judge much of what they do. Very quietly in our own hearts we’re thinking,
“Yes, well of course you don’t really understand it. You don’t see it right, so of course, that’s
why you think that way. We are a long way away from each other, but we’re certainly going to do
everything possible while I’m in this store, or while I’m in this motel, to make you feel that I’m
really just like you. We’re the same kind of people.” I don’t think there’s anything evil or bad
in our attitude. I don’t think we’re knowingly proud, or we’re knowingly self-righteous, but we
are. I think that was part of that comment that I heard someone say about that movie, “Paradise
Road”. Do you remember the missionary lady who actually helped formed the choir? A rather liberal
sophisticated lady from Hong Kong was in the choir and she said to the missionary lady, “Oh, we
never talked to missionaries and we didn’t have really much to do with them. I didn’t know what you
were like. I always thought you were strange people.” And the missionary lady said, “Yes, a bit
self-righteous.” And the other lady of course, being a good mannerly British lady I suppose said,
“Oh no, no, no.” The missionary lady said, “Well, I think we are.”

We don’t mean to be self-righteous, but I think that all of us face these things as we deal with the
outside world and indeed we think of it as the outside world. I think what our dear Father has been
patiently saying to us now for some time is what’s in this verse, “one God and Father of us all, who
is above all and through all and in all.”

He is our Father and he is their Father. I know exactly where you’re going to go, where I’ve gone
repeatedly, “Well, you can’t say that. I mean, heaven will be crowded. Well, well, alright it
won’t be crowded but there’s something not right here. I mean, there is a heaven and a hell. I
mean, there are saved and unsaved. Wait a minute, you can’t say he’s their Father. I mean, where
does that leave us? What are we doing here? Why are we trying to convert them?” Do you see that
we get ourselves into a whole concern with eternal destiny that is not what God has put under our
control. It’s not the charge that he has given us. He has not called us to decide whether they are
going to be in heaven or not. He has not called us to determine whether they are Christians or not.
He has not called us to say exactly how he is going to sort the whole thing out. But we get into
that very quickly.

We see a real contradiction between this verse and preaching, and witnessing, and evangelizing,
because we think, “No, if he’s already their Father well, we don’t need to do anything. Yippee!”
It begins to occur to you, does it not, that maybe we’re a bit twisted in our whole attitude to
evangelism and witnessing? Maybe we do think of it primarily as getting someone into something,
getting somebody into the fold, getting somebody saved from hell and going to heaven, rather than
blowing our minds with the wonderful kind and generous Father that gives us the sunshine, and puts
this blood around our arteries, and veins, and puts their blood around their arteries and veins, and
holds their body together every second, and holds our bodies together, and keeps on giving us these
things time, after time, after time, after days lived in forgetfulness of him. This is our Father,
and this is our God. This is the great person that has made us, and this is the dear person that we
are all to deal with. This is the dear one that is their Father, too, and that is giving them those
same things — and, as we’ve seen over these recent weeks and months, is bearing their sins day
after day — bore them all before he even made them. He foresaw everyone, even Ian Huntley who
killed the little girls in Soham. He saw them, saw him, saw him burying the bodies and gave him
life, and protected him and kept him safe. This is our Father and this is the dear Father of every
one that we visit in those stores week after week — and he is bearing that in them.

“Is it not just common sense, apart from being loving, to let them know that instead of giving them
the feeling that they’re not really in your class and they’re not really the way they should be, and
if they change this in their lives, or if they begin to read the Bible, or they begin to do this,
they might begin to be accepted by this dear Father that is holding them up at that very moment?”
Well, it’s bearing false witness apart from anything else.

It’s bearing false witness. It’s implying that he is a judge of some kind that will help them when,
at last, they get up to the right level. When we know he isn’t. He is the Father of all. The
Bible says, “Over all and through all and in all.” Of course, it repeats it: “if Christ died for
all then all died”. It’s no use trying to hold Ephesians 2:10 to just the Christians. “For you are
God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God has prepared beforehand that you
should walk in them.” It’s no use trying to keep that just to Christians in the light of John 1:3,
“By him all things were made and without him was not anything made that was made.” He is the Father
of all. He is the dear Father of all. You see what we do? We allow Satan to get us into a place
where we’re misrepresenting God, where we’re witnessing not to the kind and the generous Father who,
at this very moment, is bearing their sins, and at this very moment is forbearing with them, and at
this very moment is giving them far more gifts than anyone else gives them. We’re misrepresenting
that God because we’re thinking, “Well, yes I know that’s right, but in some way, haven’t we to get
over to them that they’re not right?”

Well, Jesus made it very plain. He said, “And when he [the Holy Sprit] comes, he will convince the

world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” (John 16:8) And he himself said, “I have not
come to condemn. I have come to save.” (John 3:17)

These are saving days. It just is not my job. It’s just not our job. It’s not our job. Our dear
Father has foreseen it all. He has seen every life that would ever be lived. He has put it all
into his blessed Son Jesus and he has crucified the world there and crucified all of us. He has
made the whole thing right and now, he has given us a world here to show us what would have been if
he had not acted. So, we’re living in a world that is going its own way, but he himself has already
created a new one, a new heaven and a new earth. He has prepared this earth already and that IS the
real world that exists. What we are seeing is a blip, a blip in the whole stream of eternity in
these few seconds.

He has allowed us to be here during that blip with full confidence that he has fixed it and he’s
saying to us, “This is a fixed world. This is a world that I have already redeemed. It’s a world I
have already crucified and I’ve already resurrected. This person that you’re visiting here in their
store, I have already destroyed them and made them alive in my Son. Oh, if they could only know
that they would be changed here on earth. Let them see what I’ve done in you.”

Too often we’re so burdened with this great responsibility that we feel we have to make the thing
absolutely clear to them that we stifle the joy and delight that is natural to a group of men and
woman who have such a loving kind Father as we have. If you say to me, “Well, do you think that
they’d see anything?” You betcha. If they saw a carefree, joyful, happy, relaxed human being like
them facing the same things as them, they’ll begin to look up a little and think, “There’s something
different here”, because he is OUR Father and THEIR Father. They are our dear brothers and sisters.
I don’t know — Mick Jagger? I could probably do without Mick as my brother — but the fact is,
he’s my brother and my Father has the same love for him as he has for me. He’s done the same things
for him as he has for me. So, we are the different people. We are the people who love freely
without judging, because we are the children of the Father who has loved without judging. So, it’s
a great job we have.

Let us pray. Dear Lord, we do thank you that you have not given us a clever job of sophistry. You
have given us a delightful job of enjoying you and your love for us, enjoying your readiness to put
up with us and to make everything right, and then to watch us, year after year, as we continue to do
other things wrong. You, again and again, until 70 times seven, have shown your mercy and your
gracious love. We thank you, Lord. We thank you Father, that you’ve not even given us the heavy
job and the impossible job of making this world right.

We thank you that you have not even given us the job of making other people right, because you have
told us that you have already redeemed the world. You have already crucified it and raised it up
new. You have already fixed all the things that are wrong and made the crooked path straight. You
gave us the job of walking in the freedom and the assurance of that — so that even as we walk,
sometimes on paths that seem a bit crooked, sometimes on places that seem a bit rough — somehow we
find ourselves walking two feet above them in smooth waters. Somehow the waters of the lake don’t
seem to be torn by storm. We are able to walk on them and we thank you Father, that that is your
miracle, that we walk by faith in what you have already done and are not overwhelmed and worried by
what seems to be.

Lord, we thank you. We pray now for our customers, Father. We are sorry, Lord, if we have been
uppity with them or we’ve been critical of them. We’re sorry if we’ve been self-righteous. We see

Lord, that you are THEIR Father as you are OUR Father, and you are that in no distant way. You are
over them, and you’re through them, and you’re in them and so you’re closer to them than we are.
Lord, we thank you, and we would love them in you and love you in them as we go back to see them
this coming year. We thank you that you have given us one task and that is to express the joy and
delight of being children of such a kind and generous and loving Father. We thank you Lord, that by
that means you will lift them up and make them stand in the heaven’s tableland.