I pray everyone got enough sleep, especially the crowd that
was having a lot of fun last night.
Hope you got your caffeine and you've been well fed and well
rested over these few weekends. Some of us may not be feeling
well. Abby is having a stomach
problem. If you could lift up remembering
your prayers and praying for good health for us, especially
as many of us will. Yeah.
I mean, all of us will be jumping right back into work
tomorrow. Sorry for that reminder.
Go ahead and turn your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4.
You can. If you don't have your Bibles,
you can also find the passage I believe provided for you in the
booklets. There's also a space where you
can take notes. And really as elders, we really
want to see in our church a habit of note taking, entering
sermons, and so just not not taking notes like you're in
class, everything that like as if there's going to be a test,
but just important key things that you do not want to forget
as God is speaking to you through his Word.
Now we are as we are at the end of our time together at this
retreat. Yeah, there's no better way to
gather around God's Word to learn again who we are and what
we are called to do in our lives with one another.
So, so far, we've seen a prayer for the church, a charge to the
church, and today's sermon is about the life of the church.
Now, we all enjoy transformation stories, don't we?
You know, even where we it's, it's interesting to see the
photos where it shows you the before and after picture where
it's so starkly different. And you just have to you're just
so curious, how could someone go from this to that?
How can how can this area or this land go from this to that?
How can this company that was failing to be turned around go
from this to that, that before and after?
But you have to remember that the kind of transformation that
the world exalts is the kind where you do it.
You put in the hard work, hashtag the hustle and the grind
and outcome success on the other side.
Your dreams come true. The life you always wanted is
yours, all because you made it happen with your blood, sweat
and tears. That's the kind of
transformation the world worships.
So that's the very message that the world preaches.
You can do it if you just work hard enough at it.
The Christian life is also about transformation.
Indeed. But it's distinct, unique on 2
levels. It is first a deep and profound
change within us that lasts forever.
The tools and the solutions of this world do not get deep
enough, are not powerful enough to have long lasting eternal
effects. Christian transformation is also
distinct and unique because of how good it is, how how long it
goes for, yes, but also how it's not dependent on how we do it.
It's not dependent on us. It only depends on the almighty
all knowing God who changes us and transforms us from the
inside out. And this is really good news for
us in a world that heralds that message that you just need to
try harder, just need to try work harder.
And when we found and we and how we feel hopeless when nothing
changes, when the before and after pictures look exactly the
same even after months and months and months of hard work.
The good news is that we though we cannot work to be transformed
because we are too weak, the good news is we are still indeed
changed by the grace and the power of God.
He caused this transformation in US and then He calls us to live
out that transformation and we have the very same resources to
be faithful in this, the grace and power of God.
We see this in Ephesians chapter 4.
So please follow along with me as I read from verses 17 to 32.
Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer
walk as a Gentiles zoo. In the futility of their minds.
They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from
the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.
Due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and
king, and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to
practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you
learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about Him and
were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus.
To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of
life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be
renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new
self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and
holiness. Therefore, having put away
falsehood, let each of one of you speak the truth with his
neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on
your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.
Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labour doing
honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to
share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out
of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits
the occasion, that it may give grace to those who are here, and
do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for
the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and
anger and clamour and slander be put away from you, along with
all malice. Be kind to one another, tender
hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.
Mr. Word of God, Amen. This is the life of the church
that we are called to, and we have to make sure that we don't
import that perspective of the world, that we must do the hard
work of creating this, of transforming ourselves.
We bring that over into the church where we feel that our
church is lacking in this or lacking in that.
And so somehow we need to put an extra effort to change.
Rather we must lean and depend upon the power of God and the
grace of God that changes us to let him do the work of the
before and after and then to live out in the after by the
grace of God. So if you're taking notes,
either the three points of the sermon, first, the old Life
without God, verses 17 to 19, 2nd we see new life with God
verses 20 to 2124. And lastly, new life with one
another. So let's jump right in to old
life without God verse 17 to 19. We saw yesterday in the first
half of chapter 4 how Paul emphasized growth and maturity
of the church by the word of God equipping members and and by the
word of God equipping members and that truth spoken in love as
members to one another. He continues in today's passage
with the example of speaking truth and love speaking this
truth for the benefit of the church and we can see the
seriousness of the truth that Paul is saying.
He starts in verse 17. Now this I say and testify in
the Lord. And So what Paul is saying, he's
not just simply saying he is as if he just wants to share like
interesting facts that we didn't know.
He is testifying in the name of the Lord.
It's like he's in the middle of a courtroom scene.
Underoath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth. For as an apostle of the Lord
Jesus Christ, whose life, his own life was transformed, Paul
was a witness of the Lord, and his testimony came with the
authority and the truth of Jesus.
And by such authority he says in verse 17 that you must no longer
walk as the Gentiles do. The action of walking was used
to describe the way of living your daily life.
Just like you take one step at a time as you walk, we live in one
moment at a time and what we do and say in those moments make up
our walk. The strange thing is that Paul
was writing to a bunch of Gentiles telling them don't walk
as Gentiles. Gentiles were non Jewish people
who were transformed indeed by the same gospel.
And there were some Jewish Christians in the church.
But Paul has been specifically addressing the Gentile
Christians like he did back in Ephesians chapter 3.
He tells them you must not walk like the Gentiles walk.
It's because when these Gentiles became Christian by repenting of
their sins and believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
they went through a radical transformation, a complete
identity change. These Gentile believers in
Ephesus, their lives had a clear before and after because the
rest of the city that they continue to live in, they
worshipped idols. The Greek goddess Artemis, there
was a designated temple, a grand temple and then and a statue of
Artemis sold as well as throughout the city.
These these idols sold throughout the city and, and any
regular Ephesian person worship this fertility goddess.
That's how they walked. That's how they lived.
That's what their world revolved around.
But that's not how Christian Ephesians walked.
And so they turned heads because they looked Ephesian, but they
did not walk Ephesian. There were Christians walking
with Christ, walking like Christ.
This is still true for Christians today.
The old way and the old walk goes away for believers in Jesus
Christ, even though where you walk might remain the same if
you're a Christian. The rest of the world around us
is a picture of who we were before it was the past how we
used to walk. Now our families, our Co
workers, our friendships might not have changed, but we have,
even as we strive to maintain these relationships, but now for
a different purpose. It's for the sake of the gospel,
for the glory of God that they may come to know and believe in
Jesus Christ with us, that they too may, may, may experience
this radical transformation of God.
So to my Christian friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ,
will you honour the new identity you have in Christ as you
continue to live in a world that does not?
Will you honour strive to honour your new identity, the
transformation that God has done in you, while we live in a world
that does not honour Christ? While you're living with your
family who does not honour Christ, While living among your
Co workers and friends who do not know and believe and honour
Christ. I encourage you to reflect on
that question. Question how then will you
honour this identity you have in Christ while you live in a world
that does not? Because we are called by the
authority of Jesus. You must not walk as the
Gentiles do now. If there's ever a time you look
back to your old life and it just seems like those were the
good old days. Looking back to the time before
you believed in Christ and you for a moment you desire the
things of the world that you used to have where there was
wealth, power, or fame. Or you start thinking that your
old life apart from Christ was somehow better than what you
have now. As a Christian.
Then, friend, you might be forgetting where the end of that
walk leads to, because our walk always leads to a destination.
Look at the description Paul gives of the Gentiles who are on
the wrong path. Of the two options, the
descriptions at the end of verse 17 and 18, the futility of their
minds they're described by darkened in their understanding,
the ignorance that is in them. Now notice how these
descriptions emphasize the mind. What we have in our mind indeed
effects what we say and do. It is also true with what we
don't have in our minds. And that's what Paul points out
here when he when he says futility.
Futility is uselessness or meaninglessness, something not
doing what it's supposed to do. Now what were our minds supposed
to do? What were our minds created and
designed for? To think about the one true God.
To wonder and marvel at the depths of God, to understand who
God is and what He does. God created our minds to know
Him. But the unconverted
untransformed mind fails to have such knowledge of God.
In fact, a natural sinful mind rejects such knowledge with
arrogance and rebelliousness against God.
Romans 8 chapter 8 verse 7 says that the mind is set, that is
set on flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God.
So such minds, such few minds that are marked by futility, are
minds that are darkened in their understanding and that makes
sense spiritually. The light is the truth of God,
the truth of sinful man, and the truth of the gospel.
Then darkness is the absence of that truth, and those who walk
in this way suppress the truth, even if it were to be presented
right before them. This is their ignorance.
There is this dullness or a cluelessness about God in their
minds. They have no concept of God, no
definition of right and wrong according to God, to walk
according to His ways. And so when they walk like this,
their end is death. That's the destination of such a
walk, death. We see this in in verse 18.
They are alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance
that is in them. This has been the sad reality
ever since Genesis chapter 2. In the Garden of Eden, humanity
was created to be with God as Adam and Eve walked and talked
with God there. But soon their sinful
disobedience broke that relationship and they were cast
out of paradise because of their rebellion, because of their sin,
alienated from God, separated from him.
Because God is holy and for a sinful man to be in His
presence, we would not live to tell about it.
It is because God is the source of all life.
Being separated from Him means being dead.
Physical death, yes, as it's as it's the curse of sin, but
spiritually dead in our sins, as Ephesians chapter 2 describes so
vividly. We're not spiritually sick, as
if all we need was some spiritual rest and spiritual
vitamins, but spiritually dead, in need of a miraculous,
powerful resurrection. So if sin is the problem that
keeps us from the truth and having true life, then isn't
this what everyone needs to hear about?
Everyone, including our unbelieving friends and family
members. And I know it's not easy.
I struggle with this too. To talk with a non Christian
friend or family member whom we love, but to talk with them
about how they are sinners and how their ultimate problem is
that they cannot solve their own sin, no matter how hard it may
be. Isn't can't.
Don't you see that this is what they absolutely need to know?
That their way of sin and their walk, sinful walk, will lead to
death and eternal separation from God.
So prayerfully and lovingly, we must include these depressing
realities, these harsh realities of sin, and the outcome of
walking in the ways of the world.
Because remember, that is how all of us came to know the
truth. That is how we turn to Jesus
Christ in our conversion. We realize how sinful we were,
as someone explained to us how sinful we were.
So let's not somehow think that our unbelieving friends and
family members will come to believe in Jesus some other way
without talking to them about their sin.
Lord help us in this. Now there is a deeper reason for
the problem of our minds. See the rest of verse 18.
The ignorance that is in them is due to the hardness of heart.
The root of the problem of our minds is our stubbornness and
rebellious, rebellious against God in our hearts and no one is
excused. I'm not sure when my children
picked up this habit, but whenever I explain to them, I'm
trying to explain to them what they did wrong, why it's wrong,
how they should not do it the next time, they automatically
respond saying, oh, I didn't know.
Oh, I didn't know. That might be true the first
time, right? But not the fifth time.
The 10th time. I mean, it's, it's, it's an
excuse trying to get out of the guilt of the wrong that has been
done now before God. We also cannot say I didn't know
as if a way, as if we can just get away from our guilt because
our ignorance is willful. It is a deliberate ignorance due
to the hardness of heart. This is another picture of our
deadness because a hardened heart does not beat with
spiritual life. There is no spiritual pulse and
in such a heart there is no desire, no affection for God,
just excuses. We can only expect one kind of
life from a heart and heart. It's in the next verse, verse
19. They have become callous and
have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice
every kind of impurity. Being callous as being numb to
God, having an insensitivity toward God, meaning the truths
of God doesn't excite you, doesn't give you joy as much as
making money excites you, or the thrill of making friends or or
anything else in this world. Such a person continues to walk.
By giving themselves up to sensuality, they have let
themselves become undisciplined. Unrestrained, losing self, all
self-control, chasing after worldly pleasures and they are
never satisfied. Says they're greedy.
Can you feel such a greed to practice every kind of impurity?
No. And so they left hungering for
more, thirsty for more of impurities in the things, the
evil things of this world, evil things in the face of God.
Even though these descriptions are of worldly, ungodly ways of
living for those who are apart from Christ, there is an
exhortation for us who are Christians that we live
vigilantly, checking our hearts that we are not growing numb to
God. If I place my hands on burning
hot metal and it's sizzling my skin, you can hear it, but then
for some reason I don't feel the heat and I don't let go.
You would conclude that there's seriously something wrong with
my brain, my nervous system. I need to get it checked.
So it is true. When we are numb to the things
of God, we are burning our lives away with sin and we don't even
feel regret or remorse. That is when we really need to
get our hearts checked. So it's a call to press on,
checking our hearts and fighting our sins.
Have you made an excuse for your sin?
Sin that offends God that you know is wrong?
Have you justified it in any way?
Are you blaming other things for your sins?
Is traffic always the reason for your sins?
Work difficult people. No, we sin not because of our
situations. We sin because of our hearts.
And so we ought to ask ourselves, what do I really
desire in the depths of my heart?
What is it that that I really get excited and passionate
about? Dig away at your desires.
Discuss it with other, with another brother, with another
sister, as you confess your sins to one another.
The heart, as the book of Proverbs says, it's a wellspring
of life. And by God's grace we can
understand, we, we can guard it with the truth, we can
understand it more how wicked our heart is so that we can
continue to honour Christ. So Paul testified in the Lord
this gloomy, hopeless picture of sinners, but praise God, the
story does not end there. Because by faith we can say that
was our old life, that's who we were.
So let's now consider the new life with God.
Look at verse 20. But that is not the way you
learn Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were
taught in Him. As the truth is in Jesus.
To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of
life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be
renewed in the spirit of your mind and to put on the new self
created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and
holiness. I hope you noticed the sharp
contrast here between the new life and the old.
The before and after are complete opposites.
How does this happen? Verse 20, by learning Christ, we
go through life learning a lot of things.
You know, students here, you're learning a lot of subjects in
your different classes. And I know you can have up to
like a dozen different exams, final exams at the end.
Sorry if that was another bad reminder, but but importantly,
we also go through life learning people, don't we?
Especially if you have a particular interest in that
special someone, you take the time, the energy to observe, to
investigate, to learn him, to learn her in personal and
intimate relationships. And so so it is with our
relationship with Christ. Our relationship with Christ
must also be personal and intimate.
And that's Paul explains that here by saying how we have
learned Christ, not just a subject, not just a topic, but a
person. It will happen as you become
students of Christ. As believers, we are students,
disciples of Jesus Christ enrolled into a school of truth.
The next verse, verse 21, explains how we have come to
learn Christ. Verse 21, assuming that you have
heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.
It's possible here to keep the translation heard about him as
the original language puts it, as simply heard him without the
word about. It's literally written that way.
And so how do you hear him hear Jesus?
Well, it's by the reading of Scripture.
It's by hearing the preaching of God's Word.
Through God's Word we hear, yes, about Jesus, but we also hear
Him. And how do you know if you hear
him? Well, Jesus said in John chapter
10, My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.
We know if you have heard his voice, we have heard Christ
because we are overtaken by the gospel and there's a willingness
to forsake and abandoned everything else in life to
follow him. These are the people, the people
who have heard Christ or those who have been mastered, taken
over, for Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.
That's how we know if we have heard him.
Now if this does not describe you as someone who has heard
Christ, who have been overtaken and then so moved deeply by the
love and grace of Jesus Christ, then I exhort you to desperately
pray and ask God the very prayers that we've been seeing
in the book of Ephesians that the God that God may give you
the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
him. And we saw in chapter 3, verse
17 to asking to be strengthened with the power of the Holy
Spirit to comprehend Christ and his love for the teens here.
I just want to make this one note.
If you don't listen to anything else, this is important for you
to hear, especially if you grew up in a Christian home where
your parents have been teaching you what it means to be
Christian. Because it is easy to miss the
target of all these lessons. The point of Bible teaching is
not so that you learn about Jesus as if he is a textbook you
know yesterday if you didn't know all the obscure Bible
details, even if you knew it, it's still possible to miss the
main point. If you didn't know all the
lyrics to all the songs of praise, even if you did, you
could still miss the main point because the main point of all of
God's Word is Jesus Christ beginning from Moses to the
prophets. All the scriptures are about
Jesus. Jesus is the teacher you want to
learn from, His school is a school you want to learn in.
And there is no entrance exam. There is no requirement because
all of us would fail anyway miserably.
It is simply to hear Christ and I pray that you and all of us
are doing that. Now through the sermon in the
next verses, we see three lessons that we learn in the
school of Jesus Christ. First lesson, chapter, verse 22,
to put off your old self, to put off your old self is like
putting off dirty clothes, putting it away.
You know, after our outdoor activity yesterday, I had mud on
my clothes, so I just did the right thing to put them away.
But imagine the clothes that you had on became so we're so
filthy, so disgusting that you didn't even want to wash them.
You know, such accidents can happen.
OK, So what do you do? You don't try to wash them.
You just throw them away. That's what the radical change
of the Christian experience is like.
Christians are freed from the hardness of heart, freed from
the darkness of mind, freed from the deadness of their souls as
they heard Christ. And by his grace, they put away
their old self, their old way of life once and for all.
They put away what was corrupted by evil, deceitful desires.
So Paul reminds him that by saying these don't ever want to
go back. It's as ridiculous as putting
wanting to put on dirty soiled clothing again.
This leads to the next lesson. Jump down to verse 24 to put on
the new self again. This is a another one time once
for all action to put on the new self.
Don't put on your filthy clothes again, but remain in your new
fresh clean clothes. Remember Paul is not suddenly
saying that you need to change yourself here as he's been
preaching grace. No, remember that this is what
Christians learn when they learn Christ to put on the new self.
It also says here in in verse 24 that in verse 24 that Christians
have become a new creation. God did the work of creating
them to be like God in His righteousness and holiness.
We considered these truths of God at the start of our surface
service. Being righteous means that we
are right with God, that we satisfy His standard of
perfection, of perfect love, perfect obedience to a perfect
and worthy God. Being holy is being set apart to
love God and to serve Him only. There is a unique, singular
purpose for God. We have no other master, no
other king, but God and Him alone.
The only way we can be like God, righteous as He is, holy as He
is, is by faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
We learn to trust Christ when we learn Christ, and we learn to
put on the new self, put off the old self, and put on the new
self. It's only possible because Jesus
came to live the perfect life of obedience that sinners should
have lived as fully God and fully man.
Jesus was righteous like God is, yet He chose to die on the cross
for our sins in our place and by grace alone, through faith alone
and Christ alone, we receive. Simply receive the perfect
righteousness of Christ and we put that on like a fresh, clean
robe. This is the only way to be made
right with God. This is the only way that we can
walk in this new life with God, no longer separated from Him,
but not walking with Him. When we believe we are born
again, as the gospel writer John puts it, and we put off our old
self and put on the new. Now the last lesson is found in
the middle of these two defining actions.
Unlike actions that we have learned to take, to put on, to
put off, this one is clearly done to us.
It's written passive, but it's passive voice.
But it's also something that happens not just once, but
progressively again and again over time.
Verse 23 and says to be renewed in the spirit of your minds.
Again, God is the one doing the work, renewing our minds, and it
has provided the context of where that happens.
God has provided, just like a flower that blooms, needs soil
to grow in, so Christians are planted into God's word to grow
and mature in our sanctification, in the renewing,
constant renewing of our minds. We're also planted into God's
family, into a church where believers help one another, not
to be deceived, not to be swayed by the things of this world, not
to make excuses for our sins, but to repent.
We're planted in his family, God's family, to hear regular
preaching of the gospel and through faithful preaching here
Christ through his words. This is what God is doing now in
the life of Christians who have put off the old self and put on
the new. And Paul is reminding us, and so
we must remind one another as we seek to be renewed in the school
of Christ, to remember the gospel, to remember what he has
done that motivates us to live in his likeness as new
creations. Which brings us to the Third
Point. What does that life look like?
Specifically? If you were to detail it out,
what would that look like? We see the new life that we have
with one another, not just with God, but with one another in
verses 25 to 32. Now, if you notice here as I
read it earlier, you probably noticed the the change of pace
in the writing because there's a lot of these quick fire commands
that come one after another. And you can rightfully come to
the conclusion, yeah, our new life together seems to be filled
with a lot of commands, 12 commands packed in here, grouped
in about 5 or 6 categories depending on how you group them.
But before we think Christianity is just another list of do's and
don'ts in order to be right with God, let's consider one word
that starts the whole list of commands in verse 25.
Therefore, it means that all the commandments of God are rooted
in God's grace. The melodic line of Ephesians,
if Ephesians was a song, the melody that is repeated is
throughout is is all things for the praise of the glory of God
and the glory of His grace. And so we read the whole book
with this melody in mind that we cannot work to be like God, as
if God is like the last level of a game that we can beat.
No, by our own merits and our own efforts, we will also fail
and fall short again and again fall short of God.
We have to understand that it is that God does not call us
knowing this about ourselves. God does not call us to say you
just need to try to be a better version of yourself.
No, because we will fail. The commands are not for us to
do that. The commands of God are to
remind us of what God is like, to remind us of what life, what
life with God looks like. And that we were created new,
that we have put on the new self with new desires, new attitudes,
new practices. So now that they have been made
right with God. Therefore, Paul says, having put
away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his
neighbor, for we are all members one of another, our God, He does
not lie. He has no darkness of deception
or any fraud in him. He only speaks the truth.
And we have been made to be like God, so we are to do the same.
Yet the main reason Paul emphasizes here is relational
relationship with God. Yeah, is assumed, but what's
made clear is our relationship with one another as the reason
why we should speak. Not lies, but truth.
The reason is that our right living is of doing good, is not
done in a vacuum, isolated from other people, other believers.
Our right living is in the reality of living with other
believers in the church, for we are members one of another, Paul
says. This is the foundational reason.
We do not lie to each other. We do not, we do not choose to
pass on any deception or deceit the truth, because the truth
that we speak benefits the whole body, including ourselves, the
man. We were spending time realizing
that looking into that in God's Word yesterday during our
fellowship time, how if one part of the body suffers, all
suffers. So what happens when members lie
to each other? Imagine a body is eating food
with a fork. The hand does the work of moving
the food and placing the food into the mouth.
The mouth does the work of opening and chewing, and so on
and so forth. But imagine if the eye begins to
lie to the hand and the hand is confused where the mouth is.
The hand might just poke himself, poke itself in the eye,
poke it's and and and cause hurt to the own eye.
And and that's I think what Paul is getting at here.
Because if we lie to one another, that keeping truth back
from each other, yeah, we hurt the body, we hurt others, but we
hurt ourselves. And so have you kept back the
truth in your relationship with with other members?
Have you lied and deceived when they ask you just honest
questions out of love for you? By doing so, you do hurt your
neighbor, this whole body. We all suffer, but you hurt
yourself. Repent and and and believe and
may each one of us speak the truth to one another.
It's meant for the benefit of each other.
Paul continues to address our relationship with one another.
He addresses anger next in verses 26 and 27.
Be angry and do not sin, and do not let the sun go down on your
anger and give no opportunity to the devil.
We all know there's such a thing as righteous anger, but I don't
think we that's the one we struggle with, do we?
Because even when our anger may be righteous, if we let it go on
too long, it becomes unrighteous.
That's the warning here. That's what he's Paul's teaching
us. If we do so, verse 27, we are
giving an opportunity to the devil.
It allows the door. That gap allows the door for
satanic activity if we let our anger go on too long, as we
allow anger to boil over into bitterness and division even,
what opportunity do we give the devil when we stay angry and
keep grudges other than, I mean, that's the big one, division in
the body, but it's an also giving an opportunity to the
devil to make a mockery of God. Remember, we were created new in
God's likeness. But when we stay angry and keep
grudges, we become bad witnesses of God to the world.
Instead, we are called to do the spiritual work, the spiritual
battle of being reconciled, and reconciled quickly with your
fellow church members, all by the grace of God.
We do not want to be on Team Satan in this, of course, and we
serve God's purposes when we do not sin in our anger and we do
not let our anger go on too long.
More on how we're going to be reconciled at the end of this
verse, but for now, let's see what he addresses.
Third, he addresses stealing in verse 28.
Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing
honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to
share with anyone in need. Now, it's probably obvious that
in the life of the church, they should not be stealing from one
another. We actually, we don't know
exactly what kind of problem that they had regarding this,
but obviously it would seriously attack the unity of the church
if members were scamming one another, stealing money,
property from each other, taking advantage of each other for
their own financial gain and benefit.
But what's interesting here is that, and just quickly note that
Paul is addressing the problem of stealing with positive
instruction instead of stealing. The life of the church should be
marked by this, that each one works hard, does honest work, so
that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
That's the life of the church. That's what it looks like, that
we do work, do honest work, hard work, and then we give it away
to each other as others are in need.
So just imagine with me, a group of people living like this in
any city in any part of the world where they're willing to
work hard. Where when everyone else is
working hard for themselves, to make a name for themselves, to
secure a life for themselves, to see a group of people working
hard, doing honest work so that they could share and benefit one
another. How compelling, how attractive
would we be to those in need, to the lost in need of the gospel,
where it shows that we're not just here to to bring religious
teaching and make you change your religious identity.
But no, we're here to serve and meet your real needs so that we
may serve the ultimate need for you to be forgiven of your sins.
By doing so, as a church, we will also show the world that
money, greed for money, is not our master, that we don't serve
money. No, instead we show the world
that no, my money is meant to serve you if you are in need.
So for some of us who are as members in the church who are in
financial need, whether now or maybe later on, because that's
just how life is, money is fleeting.
No matter how much you want to be secure in finances, it's
always fleeting, isn't it? Especially in a world that's
ridden with war and economic crises.
Whenever you are in financial need, you don't have to feel bad
to to ask and receive help and support because as a church
that's what we are working for. Paul says Next, let's consider
our words speaking speaking in in in general verse 29.
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as
is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give
grace to those who hear. Let's just do a thought
experiment and imagine you had an audio recorder that never ran
out of batteries that's waterproof.
You can bring it everywhere and it's recording every single word
that you have said, recording any, any and all words and, and
speech. Yes, there might be good words
there, but there might be some bad words, corrupting talk,
degrading, insulting, condescending, perhaps even
complaining. Later in Chapter 5, it includes
foolish talk, even crude joking. Now I know that illustration
falls apart because some of us might say, well, I never curse
out loud. I just keep it inside.
Well, imagine that audio recorder records even those
words. But to be to be honest, Jesus
keeps record of every word that has come that comes out of our
mouths. In Matthew 12, chapter 12, verse
36, He's 37, He says this. I tell you, on the day of
judgement, people would give account for every careless word
they speak. For by your words you will be
justified and by your words you will be condemned.
And so we are to be a people that speak in such a way that
gives grace to those who hear. We must strive to speak words.
Not only are we responsible to yeah, to not let those bad words
out, but to speak the words of grace, to build up and to
encourage as it fits the occasion.
For those who are discouraged, to encourage them, those those
who are anxious and unsettled, to speak peace to them.
For those who feel isolated and alone, words of care and
comfort, there will be a people who speak to give grace to one
another until the day Jesus Christ comes.
What's interesting is that such wrong behaviour in our speech,
it really offends God. We see that connection there the
word and in the next verse, verse 30 and do not grieve the
Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of
redemption. That connection there it's it's
again we note the connection there to speech.
The Holy Spirit is especially grieved.
That word is means to cause severe distress.
So, if you can imagine, the Holy Spirit is severely distressed
when we do not speak to one another in the way that we
should, when the followers of Christ are speaking unkindly to
each other, engaging in such sinful behaviour, that would
destroy the unity and bring one another down.
Because that is not what the work, that is not what the Holy
Spirit worked for to cause in US.
But even as we fail, we can we have this hope that believers
are sealed for the day of redemption.
And so by by looking again to the work of the Holy Spirit and
the assurance that we have that He is at work in us, in the
guarantee that we have of our, of our future inheritance at the
day of redemption. Verse 31, we should live in
lives contrast to verse 31, to let all bitterness and wrath and
anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all
malice. These things should not be any
words that describe the people of God.
So we must not speak this way primarily along with not acting
in ways in these ways either. Lastly, in verse 32, be kind to
one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as Christ
as God in Christ forgave you. If we consider what can be the
the ultimate way to to care for one another, to love one another
to serve one another to speak the the ultimate kindness that
we can speak ultimate tender heartedness that we can have to
one another. It's this to forgive one another
another. Forgiving when we have been
wronged and when we have been sinned against is the greatest
kindness that we can do to one another.
I realized and I learned as I got married and I started my own
family, something that I forgot when I was growing up with my
parents and my family, that the people who are the closest to
you, who love you the most, hurt you also the most.
You know, I grew up in a pretty tough environment.
All sorts of things spoken against me to insult me and
offended me, whether it was who I was and what I did.
But it was the words of my parents that always struck me
most deeply. I said, anyone can say whatever
to me, but you're nothing to me. But the people who I love and I
care for so deeply, their words, their actions meant the most.
I realized that even as I'm married now, the the woman I
have given my life to, my heart to, that that has loved me and
understood me so deeply, why is it that she has the power to
hurt me the most? Often times it's unintentional,
but still, that is the reality. And so it is true with our
spiritual family as well. It comes from this expectation
that if we are the family of God, yeah, we should love one
another, we should care for each other.
But why is it then there are moments that when we are hurt,
that we are hurt and offended by each other.
But I think it's the same like in our biological families,
because those whom are the closest to us, yeah, we, we, we
expect more from them. But not only that, it's because
we spend the most time with them.
We interact a lot with them, and they see the depths of who we
are. We see the depths of who they
are. There are much, many more
opportunities then to be disappointed, to be discouraged
and disheartened from one another.
You know that brother's supposed to love me, but why did he say
that to me? You know that sister is supposed
to be my friend, but why did she forget about me or leave me out
of this? And there might be a whole bunch
of combinations of ways that we hurt one another.
And so here at the end of all the things of what we are, what
we ought to do, these commands that should describe who we are
come. This comes this command that we
forgive one another. That is the greatest kindness.
It it requires much tender heartedness.
We cannot forgive somebody with a hard heart as we remember how
much our God in Christ forgave us.
When you are hurt by a fellow member in the church.
I didn't say if when. When you are hurt by a fellow
brother or sister in Christ in this church, would you then
direct all your energy and efforts not to make a list, Make
a full list of how wrong they were and what they did to you,
but would you direct your energy and efforts to remember how God
in Christ forgave you? Go there first.
Don't think about if they deserve your forgiveness or not.
Go to Christ first. Who did?
Our God, our Father, who did not spare even his own Son, but gave
him up, gave him up for us all. Our God in Christ who welcomed
undeserving sinners, rebellious sinners into His family, and who
then pours out upon us new mercies for every day, for each
day, grace upon grace upon grace.
How could we not treat our brothers and sisters in these
ways? Then God commands us to by His
Word, so that by His Word we know that our God is a God of
forgiveness. But also by His Word He has
given us the ability to forgive. He has shown us not only by
example as He demonstrated His love, that while Christ as we
were still sinners, Christ died for us, but He also radically
transformed us so that we can forgive one another.
In light of this passage in the reality of the old life without
God and the new life with God, and now all these commands that
are that that define the life of the church, we see that it
matters to God how you treat others in the body of Christ.
It's we cannot go out thinking, Oh, it's enough that I just, I'm
just in a good relationship with God that I'm buddy buddy with
Jesus and that's, that's all that I need to know.
It matters to God how we treat and relate with other believers
in the body of Christ because he has given us new life with him
and with the church. But let's remember again God's
grace as we close. If we fail class, yeah, we fail
out of school, we don't get that degree.
If we don't hit our yearly targets, yeah, we don't make it
through performance review. But not so with God.
Not so in the school of Christ. Not so in his family, in the
church, because we have been brought together, brought in by
the grace of God, and we'll be sustained by the grace of God,
empowered by the grace of God, motivated by the grace of God to
live out the new life, the new walk, the new creation, that we
are created in the likeness of God, in his righteousness and
holiness. So may we lean all the more on
the grace of God to be the church that He calls us to be.
All to the praise, to the glory of God, and to the glory of His
grace. Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace.
And by your grace, Lord, would you make us into a people that
rightfully reflects who you are ultimately that you are a
forgiving God. Give us a grace in our give us
this grace in our weakness to then forgive one another and
help us to the be the people who lives out the life of Christ.
Where where we can say when we look to Scripture and we glance
up at our church and look back to scripture and look back at
our church, we can say our church is becoming is growing
and maturing more and more into the church that you call us to
be. Lord, help us in this for your
glory in Jesus name, Amen. Let's take a moment to
personally reflect on the word of God that was preached.
Consider for yourself, is your life this, if you, is your life
described by the faithfulness to these commands, not only to be
faithful to God, but to be faithful to one another in all
the ways that we fall short. Let's depend upon God.
Let's come to him, remember him in all the ways that we have
done successfully. Perhaps at this retreat.
Let's turn to God still and thank him for it.
Was his power at work in US. In that way, let's look to God.
What do we learn about God? Who is he?
What is important to Him? And if we truly believed in what
we heard today, how would our life look different?
As we leave this place, as we go back into our individual lives,
our lives with one another, what would our lives look like?
How would it be different? What would be that before and
after? Picture that after picture?
What would that look like? Consider these things before we
close out together in song and in prayer.
The. Music.