All right, if y'all would remain standing for the reading of
God's Word, we're going to be looking at Ephesians 4 verses 25
to 32. Therefore, having put away
falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his
neighbor, for we are members of one 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 labor 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 mouth, but only such as is good for building up as fits
the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear 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 clamor 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.
This is the word of the Lord. All right, you may be seated.
Let me quickly pray our gracious Heavenly Father, this is a text
that is adorning the reality of Your grace in our lives.
And so I pray that by your Spirit this morning, You would
cause us to live out the reality of the One who lives within us.
And we pray that You will be pleased to open our eyes to see
the truths in Your Word, and then by Your Spirit grant us
that we may walk in them. And we ask of this in Jesus
name, Amen. All right now, Paul, in chapter
4, we have a turning point. He's told us all that Jesus has
done and the implications of it in our lives in chapters one
through 3. And now he's wanting us to live
out the reality of those truths. So in chapter 4, Paul, he's
wanting all Christians who have been recreated and united to
Christ and to one another to live out and walk in the reality
of the one who lives within them.
In chapter 4, verses 17 to 24, Paul wants us to get our
thinking straight about the radical change that God's grace
has brought about in our lives. At conversion, he says that the
old self has been put off and that the new self has been put
on. So we are no longer defined by
what we once were. We have a new label and we are
now defined by who Christ is and what Christ has done.
So the exhortation of chapter 4 is wear your new clothes and
walk in who you are. And our text is going to show us
what that looks like. So what I want to do this
morning is I want to give you the main point before we look at
the specific commands and applications of it.
And the main point is this, God's grace in Christ frees you
to live for something other than yourself.
In verses 17 to 19, Paul is not just describing what our lives
look like before God found us. He's telling us what sins nature
and goal is. Sins goal is to alienate us from
God in order to destroy us. This alienation from God, it
causes us to spiral downward where we become consumed with
satisfying self, the self focus. It leads to a lifestyle of
losing feelings for God and for others.
A lifestyle of desperately trying to fill ourselves with
things that can never fill us, so we're always left greedy for
more. Our desire to be filled is not
wrong because God made us to find our satisfaction in him.
But what does sin do? It corrupts our desires through
deceit. When we believe the lie that
something other than God can satisfy us.
Something other than God can fill us.
Something other than God can give us life.
But because only God can satisfy, because only God can
fill, because only God can give us life, when we turn to
something other than Him, we are always left unsatisfied, always
unfulfilled, and then we plunge deeper and deeper towards
destruction with a continual lust for more.
In other words, without Christ, we live independently from God.
Our hearts become calloused, they become insensitive because
we're consumed with satisfying self.
See, sin's goal is to destroy you by deceiving you, to think
that you can live life on your own and that you can find
satisfaction in something other than God.
Or I would say it this way, Sin dehumanizes us because it turns
us inward, not outward, where we live for ourselves rather than
living for God's glory and the good of others.
Now why am I stressing this to begin this sermon?
Why am I focusing on sins, goal and nature when our text it's
mainly about obedience answer because our text is showing us
what the nature and goal of obedience is.
In chapter 417 through 19 Paul is showing us what we want were
in order to show the radical change of who we are now.
The new self is the image of God restored in us by God's grace.
So if the old self walks away from God in order to live
independently from God, if the old self is insensitive to
others because it's consumed with satisfying self, then the
new self is recreated in the image of Jesus.
The new self walks with God. The new self lives dependently
upon God. The new self lives for God's
glory and the good of others. And here is what struck me as I
was studying our text. Obedience is never for its own
sake. Paul is not commanding us to
obey simply because it's the right thing to do.
These 8 commands that Paul gives in verses 25 through 32 are all
in reference to imaging forth who Jesus is for the good of
others. Every one of these commands, in
other words, it's meant to put God's grace in your life on
display. These commands put Jesus on
display because all of these commands are given not just for
your good, but for the good of others.
And doesn't this expose the deceit of sin?
See, sin doesn't just harm you, it harms others.
Sin doesn't just affect you, it affects others.
We injure and harm others by turning away from God in an
attempt to satisfy ourselves. But this is also what
distinguishes Christianity from every other ethical system out
there. See, every religion is going to
say, do not lie, do not steal, etcetera.
But if you ask these ethical systems, why should you not lie,
why should you not steal? Their answer is because telling
the truth, it's the right thing to do.
Yes, it's the right thing to do, but the difference with
Christianity is that it's never just concerned with moral
behavior as moral behavior. Christianity says do not lie
because that's not who you are. Christianity says lying hurts
other people. So obedience is never for its
own sake. It's always for the sake of
God's glory, for the good of others.
Obedience is always in reference to our new identity, lived out
for the good of others. Our obedience is a testimony of
God's grace in our life. See, when a Christian obeys
Paul's commands, it puts Jesus on display.
It testifies that the gospel is real, that the gospel is
powerful. It tells the truth about Christ.
Our obedience, in other words, adorns the truths of the gospel.
And I want to look at one last thing before we actually look at
these commands. I want you to think with me for
a moment. Why in Christianity self
righteousness is evil. When people obey God in order to
get things from God, notice they're obeying for their own
benefit. Sin is self seeking.
This is why self righteousness is sin.
It's living for self. It's living to get, not living
to give. But because salvation is by
grace and not by works, God's grace then frees us from
ourselves. It frees us to live for
something other than ourselves. It frees us to live for Him
because we have been freed from self in order to live for the
good of others. Now, I'm not going to be able to
look at all of these commands. I only have time to do a flyby
overview of these commands. But what I want to focus on is
how and why our obedience testifies to the grace of God in
our lives. And I would summarize these 8
commands with three things. We are to live out our new lives
in the way that we speak, in the way that we think, and then the
ways that we act. First, let's look at how we
speak. Look at verse 25.
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you
speak truth with his neighbor. Notice both the negative and the
positive aspects here. It's not enough to simply
displace something. Why?
Because what is displaced has been replaced by something.
We are displaced to what is false because the old self has
already been replaced by what is true.
So let's evaluate this for a moment.
Why is speaking falsehood and telling lies wrong?
Because it's associated with the old self.
See, why do people lie? And I just want to touch on a
couple of things here. For some, they lie because they
want to look better than other people.
So This is why we exaggerate our story so we appear as if we're
greater or better than others. Or we may lie so that others
don't think we're as bad as we really are.
We may lie to avoid the consequences of what we've done,
or we may lie because we don't want to be inconvenienced.
I'll I'll do that when you really haven't.
What's the common denominator though of lying?
It's always directed to self, either to avoid consequences or
to advance personal gain. So why should the renewed person
not lie or speak with falsehood? Paul says for the sake of the
body, for we are members of one another.
See, lying harms our unity. Lying causes trust to be broken.
When trust is broken, the body can't function properly because
dishonesty drives a wedge between us.
Dishonesty separates people. Dishonesty isolates people.
Now look at verse 29. Let no corrupting talk come out
of your mouth, but only what is good for building each other up
as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.
So not only are we to tell the truth with each other, but we
are to use our words to build each other up rather than tear
each other down. See, our words are not only
important, they're powerful. Proverbs 1821 says death and
life are in the power of the tongue.
Our words and the way we communicate has the power to
tear down and destroy or the power to build up and heal.
See the word for corrupting unwholesome speech here.
It means rotten or putrid. And Paul was literally saying do
not let any rotten words journey out of your mouth.
See, when destructive words come out of our mouths, it begins a
journey of decay that affects the lives of others.
Now again, why would we speak words that tear others down?
Is it not as an attempt to build ourselves up?
See, we have to knock others down with our words so that we
can raise ourselves above them. Unwholesome, corrupt, rotten
words are used to promote self and demote others.
But Paul says the new self is concerned with using words that
promote and build up others. Secondly, let's think about how
we think. And this is fascinating because
Paul says be angry and do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no
opportunity to the devil. Paul, he's commanding us to be
angry, but do not sin. And this is very informative
because anger is not wrong. It is right to be angry over
some things. We should be angry over some
things. So Paul does not forbid anger,
he forbids the sinful expression of it.
See, anger is not a wrong emotion.
It becomes sinful when we let it simmer for a while, when we let
it stir in our minds for a long period of time.
This is why he says, do not let the sun go down on your anger.
It does not mean deal with it before you go to bed.
He says don't let it simmer for a long period of time because
when it does, you give the devil opportunity.
Look at verse 31. When we let anger simmer and
stir for a while, it builds up and it boils over to bitterness
and wrath where we act out in an attempt to harm others.
How? By shouting, by slander, by
malice. And a third, let's look at how
we act. Look at verse 27.
Let the thief no longer steal, but let him do honest work with
his own hands so that he may have something to share with
anyone in need. This is fascinating because,
according to Paul, we steal in two ways.
We not only steal from others by wrongfully taking what they
possess, but we also steal from God when we wrongfully keep what
we possess. To wrongfully take what someone
else possesses is to have no regard for what they possess.
Stealing, in other words, is selfish.
It's taking from others with a concern only for yourself.
And Paul says let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him
do honest work with his hands. But then, Paul says, the thief
doesn't stop stealing just because he works.
He stops stealing when he generously gives to those in
need. See, we wrongfully steal from
God when we keep and do not share what we possess.
To not share is to selfishly hoard what you think is yours.
God wants us to see our money as His.
We're stewards of it and we steal from God if we do not
generously give to others who have need.
Now from this brief fly by overview of Paul's commands.
Do you see a common theme here? If sin is self focused, then
obedience. Is focused on God's glory for
the good of others. See God's grace in Christ.
It frees us to live for something other than ourselves.
Because Christ's clothes have been put on us, we reflect Him
to others when we speak the truth to others.
We reflect Him to others when we use our words to build others
up. We reflect Him to others when we
don't let anger simmer and stir up bitterness, wrath, slander,
and malice. We reflect Him to others when we
no longer steal from God, but generously give to others in
need. We reflect Him to others when
we're kind to one another, when we're tender hearted to one
another, when we are gracious to one another the way God in
Christ was gracious to us. Obedience is never just for
obedience's sake. It is always to display Jesus
for the good of others. When we obey these commands,
what are we doing? We are adorning the gospel
because we live our lives in such a way that God's grace is
displayed in the way we are gracious to one another.
Look at verse 30. We grieve the Holy Spirit when
we live for ourselves. We grieve the Holy Spirit when
we harm others and tear others down with our words.
We grieve the Holy Spirit when we steal from others and steal
from God. We grieve the Holy Spirit when
we're bitter and resent one another.
We grieve the Holy Spirit when we lash out to verbally and
physically abuse one another. We grieve the Holy Spirit when
we aren't displaying Jesus to one another.
And I need Then why did Jesus obey his Father?
Jesus didn't obey his Father to the point of death for
obedience's sake. He obeyed for his Father's glory
and for your benefit. Jesus obeyed to graciously give
you what you need, a righteousness that you don't
have, a new life and a new identity that you so desperately
need. Jesus obeyed, in other words, so
that you and I could be forgiven for our selfishness, for our
self centeredness, for our sin. See, if Jesus didn't obey for
God's glory and your benefit, you could not be free from
yourself consumed lifestyle. But because He obeyed, He
graciously gives you His identity.
He put His clothes on you to wear around so that others can
see Jesus in you.