Sermon preached on Sunday, January 6, 2013 at Garden Valley Chapel during our worship morning service based on Ephesians 4:1-3.

Take your Bible if you will and open it to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians chapter four.

It is amazing to me that I can look up almost any address on the planet. For example this week, beginning on Monday, I will be at 13248 Roscoe Blvd, Sun Valley, CA, which is the address for Grace Community Church, my church home throughout my time at The Master´s Seminary.

With Google Maps I can view the roof the church 417 miles away. The same is true if I were to look up the address of the church in Spain where my beloved friend David Robles serves as a fellow elder. Using Geobytes, the distance is well over 5 thousand miles!

As many people do, they can look up our small little country church and see not only our roof but the white lines Greg Fisher put for Steve and Sarah´s wedding!

But as powerful and amazing as this technology is, people cannot see the inside of our building. They can only see the roof.

People cannot see you singing, standing in the reading of God´s Word; they simply cannot see you as you worship.

Moreover they cannot look into the hearts and minds of the people who gather here. But there is one who can see perfectly into every human heart.

He alone can perceive the corporate spirit of a church.

Not only that, but perhaps in what we might call "stealth mode" He can walk in the garden in the cool of the day, not the garden of Genesis 3, but the "garden" of Garden Valley Chapel and be among His people without the use of any Google Maps.

He alone examines the corporate spirit of the church and probes the heart and mind of each believer. He examines. He evaluates.

And His evaluation of His church is perfect.

His eyes are "like a flame of fire" (Rev 1:14) that penetrate the deepest crevices of our souls.

As Daniel confesses before Nebuchadnezzar in Dan 2:22 -

22 "It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, And the light dwells with Him.

David declares that God is "intimately acquainted with all my ways" (Ps 139:3).

God Himself testifies in Ezek 11:5 (KJV) -

5 ...I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them.

God may be invisible to us, but my beloved we are not so to Him. No roof can hide us from His penetrating and supernatural vision.

All things are open to His scrutiny.

It is His evaluation of us that ultimately matters. For He is the Head of the Church, He is the Chief Shepherd of His Flock, He is the ultimate Ruler of His Kingdom and subjects.

And so my beloved as we begin a new year I ask today, what is His evaluation of His church?

What does He say of us?

Moreover, what is the corporate spirit of our church?

In the precious time I have with you today, I want to take to you a portion of Scripture that highlights the kind of spirit/attitude we are to possess/have as His flock, as His body, as His church.

It comes from the fourth chapter of Ephesians. As it is our custom, I invite you to stand in the reading of God´s Word.

Listen as I read this portion of Scripture. Read Ephesians 4:1-6.