All right. Well, I am excited for chapter four of Ephesians, and I hope you are too. But I do have to temper your expectations a little bit, because last week we got through all of chapter three. Wasn't that awesome? That was the first time in the whole series we made it through the whole chapter, but there were only 21 verses in chapter three. For some reason, Paul decided to put 32 verses in chapter four. I just got to brace you right now. We ain't getting through all of that.
So, temper your expectations, but also, let's be honest, we've loved this series so far because it's been three chapters all about how awesome God is. I mean, Paul has just walked us through in great detail all that God does for us, his love and his grace and his blessings that are poured out on us, even when we don't deserve it. I mean, it's just been awesome to hear about how great God is.
But chapter four is where the shift takes place, and he shifts the focus from what God does for us and moves it to what we now do, not to earn the things that God does, but in response to the things that God does. Because God pours out this grace and this love, now we want to respond to that by living a certain way.
And so today, I hope you wore your steel-toed shoes, because I've been told I might be stepping on some toes today, but just remember, it's not me. Paul wrote it, okay? So if you got beef, you got beef with Paul, not me. Okay?
So now remember, if you want to hear God, what do you need to do? Read your Bible. If you want to hear God out loud or audibly, what do you need to do? Read it out loud. So that's what we're going to do. But I just got to tell you also that Paul sets up for us these 40, we call them imperatives, these 40 commands, and really it's how we go from the beliefs from chapters 1, 2, and 3 into the actions of 4, 5, and 6.
And so as we read, see if you can catch the imperatives here. I'll tell you too, in chapters 1, 2, and 3, he's given us one of the 40 imperatives. He says, "do not lose heart," which means the other 39 are found in just chapters four, five, and six. And there are 15, which yes, that means today is a 15-point message. So I hope you didn't have lunch plans.
But here we go. Let's hear God together.
I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. In saying he has ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped. When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do 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 the hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
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 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 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 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 mouths, 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, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Amen. Thank you, Jesus, for Ephesians chapter four. Part of me feels like we can just go home now because that was rich. That was beautiful. But we've read it. What do we have to do now? We've got to study it.
So we're going to go back to verse one, and we're going to dig a little bit deeper into what Paul is talking about here. So Paul begins, "I therefore a prisoner for the Lord." And remember this, I told you in week one, the therefore is going to be the pivot moment, right? It's the separation between chapters one, two, and three, where he lays out this belief system that really acts as the foundation for chapters four, five, and six.
And this is really important for understanding, because before we can get to the what, we have to understand the why. Before we get to the actions that we're supposed to do, we have to understand why we're doing those things. Because what he's going to call you to is really, really hard. Like, just brace yourselves, because he's setting a very high standard. It is difficult to walk the walk that we're supposed to walk.
And we will fail, and we will give up, and we will quit if we don't understand the why. Because it's the why that actually sets us up. It gives us the desire, but it also gives us the ability to do all the impossible things that we're being called to do. So you've got to get the foundation first before you can start doing the stuff. And if you try and do the stuff without knowing why, you're in for a world of pain.
Okay? So, I therefore, prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. And this is our first imperative of the 15. Walk in a manner worthy of the calling. And that right there really is the marking of a disciple. Being a disciple is not about a prayer that you prayed. It is a path that you walk.
And we are called to walk in a manner worthy of the calling, of the name disciple. You've got to walk in a way that is worthy of that calling, which means it's not enough to just say, "I'm following Christ." You have to actually walk the walk of Christ. Right? Because it comes down to this everyday decision-making, everyday thoughts, everyday speech patterns. Everything you do in the day is part of that walk as a disciple.
Okay? And so we're going to walk in a manner worthy of the calling. Because when temptation comes to get us to walk in a way that's unworthy, in a manner that's not righteous, when that temptation comes, we all need to be able to say, "No, no, no, no. I'm not falling for that temptation because I am a disciple of Jesus Christ." And as a disciple, I am going to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we've been called. Sound good?
So now, the rest of these imperatives, he starts to define what that manner looks like, what that walk actually looks like. In fact, of all 40 of his imperatives, I think all of them are either telling us how to walk in a way that's worthy and how not to walk in a way that's worthy.
Okay? So we're going to dig into this. How do we walk this walk? And he begins with, how do we walk in a way that's going to walk? And he begins with, from an opening point in a way to have the calling. And then he says, I don't know how to walk in a way of with all humility. Because we need to have humility. Because pride says, "Look at me." But humility says, "Look at Jesus."
And as a disciple, our lives should be pointing people to Jesus, not at ourselves. So we're going to walk with humility. But we're also going to walk with gentleness, not pushiness. We're not trying to push and get our own way. We're going to walk with gentleness and with patience. You know why you need to walk with patience? Because it's a long walk.
Like this is a marathon. It's an ultra marathon. It ain't a sprint, right? And so we're in this for the long haul. And you need to be patient with yourself and patient with the person next to you as we are all trying to become more like Christ on this long journey that we're in for the rest of our lives. It's a long walk.
But also we got to understand something. You are imperfect. Is that news to anybody? No, you knew that coming in, right? Well, that also means that the person sitting next to you is imperfect. And so you're going to need patience in dealing with them. And they're going to need patience in dealing with you, right?
And then when we add up this humility and this gentleness and this patience, it actually sets us up for imperative number two, which is to bear with one another in love. And this word "bear with one another" in the Greek, it means to take responsibility for again and again.
So we as disciples, we are taking responsibility for the person next to us because this walk that we're supposed to walk is hard. It's not easy. But if we lock arms with the person next to us, when they trip and stumble, we can help carry them. We can bear the load for them. And the same thing when we trip and when we stumble, they're there to lock arms and to grab us and to help us carry that burden too.
So we bear with one another in love because we are eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And this is actually our third imperative. I love that chapter four starts one, two, and three, three verses, three imperatives. I wish he had continued that out the rest of the way because we'd be done at verse 15, but he wrote 32 of them.
But two things I want you to notice here, okay? Who's making the peace? Not us. Who's got the unity of the bond? It's the Spirit. It's his. It's his unity. What are we supposed to do? Maintain it. He makes it because we are one in Christ. The Spirit brings unity by default. The moment you're in Christ, unity is there. Your job is not to mess it up, which is why he gave us verse two, because when you swap humility for pride, you destroy peace.
When you swap gentleness with pushiness, you destroy peace. When instead of patience, you got a short fuse, you destroy peace. When instead of bearing with one another, you're condemning one another, you destroy peace. And so if we'll just do number two, it leads us to maintain number three, which is all based on number one, walking in a manner worthy of the calling.
Don't you love how Paul just weaves it all together? It's beautiful. All right, now I'm going to disappoint you, because we're going to skip a bunch of stuff now. We're going to go from verse three, we're going to jump all the way to verse 11. It's not that four through 10 isn't important, it's just we have to save some time. You'll notice I'm talking fast, because I got a lot to say.
And so we're going to skip that section, but that's what your DC groups are for, right? That's what Between Sermons is for, right? So we can get a little bit deeper, right, and all that stuff. So we're going to jump now. The part that we're skipping, just so you've got an understanding, it's basically saying Jesus gives us peace, or Jesus gives us grace, sorry, and in his grace, he gives us gifts, right?
And then verse 11 starts to define for us what we're supposed to do with those gifts, the why behind those gifts. Now, the next imperative isn't going to come till verse 17, but we got to go from 11 to 16, because it really, it's the setup for those imperatives starting in verse 17. Make sense? All right, hopeful.
Verse 11, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers, and we'll pause right there. There are some people that just get so obsessed with verse 11. They just love to talk about the five-fold ministry, and how all these different things operate and function, and it's just not my thing. Like, that's just not my jam, so I apologize.
Maybe this weekend, Between Sermons, Taisha will kind of pull a little bit out of me, because I do have some strong opinions about the misuse of verse 11, but we'll save that for later, because really what I want to draw your attention to is verse 12, because I think that verse 12 is way more important than verse 11, because verse 11 tells you about these roles, but verse 12 tells you the purpose.
To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. Who are the saints? You are. According to scripture, when you put your faith in Christ, you are now referred to as a saint. Okay. So you are a saint and you have a work to do. What's your work? Well, first it's ministry and the ministry is for building up.
So here's the thing. Like I recognize I have the title of minister and I recognize like what that means and how the government looks at me as the minister, but that's how the government looks at me. How scripture looks at me? Yes, I'm a minister, but not because I stand on a stage on Sunday. I'm a minister simply because I'm a follower of Jesus Christ as a disciple, which means if you are a follower of Jesus Christ as a disciple, what does that make you? You are also a minister of the gospel.
Congratulations. You can pick up your business card at the exit. I'm kidding. There's no business cards out there. Somebody's going to be like, "Where's mine?" You can make it at home. It's okay.
Okay. So you are a saint. You have work of ministry to do for the building up of the body of Christ. Who's the body of Christ? The church. We are like, we are the, that's what Paul lays out for three chapters that we are unified. We are one body. We are the body of Christ, the church.
Okay. Now here's the thing. That means your job is to build up the church, build up the body of Christ, which means that's why you cannot follow Jesus in isolation. It's why you need to be a part of a church. Not only that, but you need to be part of a group of believers where you are actually building each other up, where you're encouraging each other.
It's because you cannot build up the church if you're hiding from it. And you cannot build up the church when you show up to worship during the third song and you leave before I say amen. I love you and I'm glad you're here, but can I just say according to scripture, you are neglecting a work that you are supposed to be doing.
Those of you online, I love you. I'm so glad you're a part of the service. I got a feeling there's more people online right now than normal because of daylight savings time. So I'm so thankful for technology that enabled you to be a part of the service, to watch the service. But I want to caution you that that doesn't become the only thing you do.
You are not supposed to just watch church happen. You are a minister, not a spectator. Your job is to build up the body of Christ to encourage one another. You are not supposed to just watch church. Be a spectator. You're supposed to be a participant. Church isn't something you watch; church is something you are.
And can I just say this for everybody in the room? For everybody in the room, you got to understand that there is no such thing as a consumer, only disciple. To just take, take, take, take, take, that's not how discipleship works. You are a minister of the gospel. You are supposed to be building up the body of Christ, encouraging one another. It's not about what you take; it's about what you give.
And there is a work for you to do, the work of ministry. It's not even my job to build up the church. I mean, it kind of is, but only because I'm part of the collective, because it's all of our job to build up the church because it's all of us that are supposed to build up the body of Christ.
All right, and we're going to do that until we, how many of us? Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That was a lot, but basically what this means is we're going to build each other up until all of us have unity, until all of us know God, until all of us are found to be spiritually mature.
So what does spiritual maturity look like? It's a great question. Thankfully, Paul lays it out for us. It's when you and Jesus line up. Oh, that's a big bar. When you are walking in a manner worthy of the calling and you look more like Jesus than you look like you, that is spiritual maturity.
And here's the caution: you can grow old in Christ without actually growing mature in Christ. Don't just get old; get mature by walking in a manner worthy of the calling and all 40 of these imperatives that Paul's going to give us. When you walk those things out, you will be found mature in Christ.
But you got to remember something else. The measuring stick is Jesus. You are not measuring your spiritual maturity against the person sitting next to you. You're not measuring your spiritual maturity against the guy on the stage. You're definitely not measuring your spiritual maturity to the person out in the streets that has nothing to do with Jesus.
You are measuring your spiritual maturity against Jesus himself, which means I don't know if you recognize this lately or not, but Jesus is kind of awesome. So like Paul sets a really, really high bar for us. And there is absolutely no way we're going to be able to live up to that standard.
But when we go back to chapter three and we remember that all of the fullness of God now dwells within us, then it becomes possible. And so we take these 40 imperatives and we begin to walk them out because that's what it means to be mature in Christ.
So that, this is why you got to be mature. It's so that we may no longer be children. It's kind of the opposite of maturity, right? Tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Because when you are immature, you fall for anything.
And you need some spiritual maturity so you don't fall for false teachers, which is what this is talking about. In fact, there are 27 books in the New Testament. 25 of them contain instructions for how to resist false teachers. 25 of the 27 warn you about false teachers coming. I think that means it's pretty important.
There were false teachers in the first century. But guess what? I think it's more of a problem today than it has ever been in history because of the internet and social media. Because now anybody with a camera and an internet connection can take a false message and put it in front of the entire world.
And if we are not found to be mature, we're going to get tossed around by all the pretty things that people say. And we can hear something that sounds so good. And it was like exactly what you needed that day to make you feel like you're special. But here's the problem. If you don't know what God actually said, you can hear the devil and think it's God.
And so we have to be mature in our foundation and we got to be building each other up and we got to be reading our words so that we know what truth is. So that when you hear the lie, you can say, "That's not right. That's not it."
So do me a favor. Next time you get a Christian post that sounds really good, before you share it, check the source. The next time you're listening to a preacher that's saying a lot of stuff, but then you realize he hasn't opened up his Bible once. I'm not saying he's off; I'm just saying that should be a place of caution.
And so here's the question that I want to empower you to always ask. Social media, at church, wherever you go, this is the question to ask: Show me the verse. Show me the verse. Because it sounds good, but if it isn't backed up by scripture, then it's man's wisdom, not God's.
And the only sure foundation we have is God's wisdom. And they might be right, and they might be smart, and it might be good, but if it isn't God, I'm going to take caution with it. So show me the verse. And in context, please. Because one of the favorite pastimes of false teachers throughout history has been to take scripture out of context to make you believe that's what God said.
In fact, Satan tried the same thing with Jesus. To take scripture out of context and get you to believe a lie. So we need it in context, please. Stick to the book, and you'll be all right. Okay, that's the solution to false teachers and maturity.
And then he says, "Rather," so instead of being tossed around by all the lies, "speak the truth in love." Now, when you are surrounded by lies, what do you need? The truth. And so if we're going to grow mature spiritually, we need to be speaking the truth in love.
If the person sitting next to you is going to become mature in Christ, they're going to need you to speak the truth in love to them. If you're going to grow spiritually mature, you need somebody in your life that has permission to speak the truth in love to you.
But we have to understand it's truth in love. Like it's two sides of the same coin. You cannot separate them or you destroy the message. Because the truth spoken in hatred and a lie spoken in love are equally dangerous to your spiritual growth.
And the goal of a disciple is spiritual growth. In fact, that's what Paul says. We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ. In fact, Ephesians 4:15, this is one of our foundational verses as disciples church. Because the goal of a disciple is to grow up in every way, not just the convenient ways, not just the easy ways, but in every way to be more like Jesus.
That's why some of the mirrors in the building still ask the question, "Do I look like Jesus today?" Because the goal of a disciple is to look more like Jesus today than we did yesterday as we grow up in maturity. From whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped. When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
So the whole body is held together by Jesus. Jesus, if we remember, he is the head, we're the body, we're the parts, but he's the brain. He's the one that sends the signals to tell the body what it's supposed to do. A bad body doesn't listen to its brain. A good body does what the brain tells it to do.
So when each part is working properly, that's when the body grows. Which means when the parts are not working properly, what happens to the body? It doesn't grow. So if you want the body of Christ to grow, what do you need to do? You need to work properly.
You actually need to do the thing that God created you to do. Because we don't want any lame body parts. We don't have to drag a foot around that isn't doing its part. So every part is supposed to be working together so that the body can grow.
So are you doing your part? In the church? Outside of the church? In a small group? In your community? Are you doing your part to build up the body of Christ? Talk about that one in your groups.
All right. Verse 17. We're finally back to the other imperative. So this is all set up for the rest of the imperatives. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.
They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God. So Paul has spent 16 verses talking about this walk in a manner worthy of the calling, that we are unified in Christ and he has given us a job to do. We are to build up each other in the body of Christ. It's beautiful.
But then he comes in here and he says, it's not just about the new things you need to do. It's also about the old stuff you need to stop doing. No longer walk as the Gentiles do. Another way to put this is stop walking the way you used to walk. That there was a way you walked before you met Christ and there's a way that you're supposed to walk after Christ and they should not be the same walk.
And then he comes in and he talks about being alienated, which means to be separated from God. And we're separated from God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart. And so you can be separated from God, either due to a lack of information or by choice. It's either ignorance or it's a hardness of heart.
If it's ignorance, we need to teach them. If it's a hardness of heart, we need to pray for them. But in both cases, we need to be careful of not going back to the old walk ourselves, or else we could be the ones that have become callous and have given ourselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
And when we continue to walk the way we used to walk, when the Holy Spirit is telling us, "Hey, stop that. That's not you anymore. That's not what it means to be in Christ. Stop that. Stop that." We keep doing it over and over and over again until we develop calluses, where now we can no longer even feel his presence.
And the Holy Spirit is still telling us no, but we can't even hear it anymore. Because for so long, we've continued to walk in a manner unworthy of the calling. So we need to be careful not to walk as we used to.
And then he's going to define that a little bit more for us. He says, 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.
And this put off language is actually, it's talking about clothing. Like the way it's described, it's about taking off one set of clothes so that you can put on a different set of clothes. And this is actually, this is imperative number five for us, I think. And there's like this change of clothes that's supposed to take place.
And the emphasis here is that there should be something different about you after you come to faith in Christ than there was before Christ, right? Like we love the message that you come to Jesus as you are, but you're not supposed to leave it there. That's a comma kind of statement. Like the end of that is not a period, it's a comma. You come as you are, but you're supposed to leave different.
Like you're supposed to be changed. That's why Paul talked about how we are new creations in Christ, right? There's something new about us. So we've got to take off the old and put on the new. Watch your feet.
The problem that a lot of Christians have is that they try and just add Jesus on top of the old life. And so it's, it's my original life, but I like the Jesus message. So I'm going to add Jesus stuff to the life that I'm living.
That I'm going to continue living. And so what that looks like is I was a drunk and I'm going to keep being a drunk, but now I'm a drunk with a Bible. And I used to live with my girlfriend and then I got saved and I keep living with my girlfriend, but now we go to church together on Sundays.
And I was a liar and I'm still a liar, but now I'm a liar who prays. Stop it. Stop it. That's a Holy Spirit message for you. Stop it. You have to take off the old way of doing things. You can't keep walking the way you used to walk.
And yes, there's grace and yes, there's love, but you got to stop walking the old way and begin to walk in this new way. You got to take off the old clothes to put on the new. I've heard somebody describe it as you got to take off the grave clothes to put on the grace clothes, right?
There's a change that takes place in us when we are in Christ. The best image for this I can give you, I know this is a really weird analogy, but you remember the movie Back to the Future? When Biff crashes the car, the convertible, into the manure truck and it just dumps all of that stuff onto him?
Can you imagine if he just went through the rest of his life wearing those same clothes? Like if you were covered in filth, like your clothes are just nasty, stanky, just like people knew you were coming before they saw you or heard you because they could smell you? That kind of nastiness.
And then I came in and I was like, "Oh dog, bro, come on." And I bought you a brand new set of clothes and I resent them to you. And I'm like, "Man, I just, I know that your life's a mess, but man, clean yourself up. Here you go." And you were so grateful. And you're like, "Man, Brent, this is changing my life. I'm so grateful."
And you just started putting on those new clothes right on top of the manure and the... How stupid is that? How stupid is that? So in love, when Christ gives you new clothes, take off the old ones, you can put on the new.
Because the old stuff, the old stuff belongs to your former manner of life and it's corrupt through deceitful desires. And now we need to be renewed in the spirit of your minds. This is our next imperative, imperative number six, being renewed means to be made new again.
And it's in our minds that we're being renewed because basically what this is saying is that there was a way you used to think before Christ and there should be a different way of thinking after Christ. That the thoughts that you had before Jesus should not match the thoughts you have after Jesus.
We talked about this a while back where there's this thing called neural pathways. That when you think a specific thought enough times, it creates like a groove in a carpet where now all of a sudden the thoughts just flow in that direction really easily, very quickly. It's like muscle memory. You don't even have to think about it. It just runs.
So when we come to faith in Christ, we are actually called to renew our minds. That means we need to make new grooves. We need to replace the old grooves. We gotta buff those things out and start putting in a new track so that our thoughts go to godly things, not to ungodly things.
So we need to fix our thinking. And the way we do that is either through the power of the Holy Spirit or the power of choice. Both are valid. Both are probably gonna happen at the same time. But it does require choice. You actually can think, choose what you think about.
Like just because it popped in your head doesn't mean you have to let it run. Paul actually tells us to take every thought captive, right? So when that thought starts running that groove, you snatch it and you say, "No, I'm putting in a new pathway," and now I'm replacing those old thoughts for some new thoughts.
I'm replacing my fleshly thoughts for some godly thoughts. Renew your mind. And to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. So you gotta take off the old clothes but don't run around naked. You got new clothes you gotta put on.
Okay, put on the new self. And this new self is defined by righteousness and holiness. God said, "Be holy as I am holy." So now we walk in Christ, we walk in righteousness, not in unrighteousness.
And the next few imperatives actually kind of define for us what righteousness and holiness looks like. So if we'll do the rest of these imperatives, we actually will be walking in our new set of clothes. So here's the first one. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
So the next imperative, if you're gonna walk a walk of righteousness, you gotta stop lying. Because lying is unrighteous. The truth is righteous. And so we need to actually fix our speech.
And the best advice I can give you for how to begin to do this is to start with a truth audit. And so you have to be honest. Like, don't lie in your truth audit, okay? But truth audit means you're going to get a piece of paper, and you're just going to make note of all the times you lie in a day.
And for some of you, that's real easy, right? Because you don't say a lot of lies, but include the lies you type. Because when you replied in that text message, you said, "I'm on my way," while you're still sitting on the couch. That one was a lie.
"I'm almost ready," when you know you got like 45 minutes worth of getting ready to do still. That is a lie. When you emailed your boss and you were like, "Man, I thought I turned that in to you already," even though you know good and well, you ain't never done nothing about that task that he gave you. That is a lie.
And so you're going to count up your lies spoken or typed. And if that number is greater than zero, you need to take off the old clothes. You need to put on the new clothes because lying stinks.
Be angry and do not sin. So it's actually, you can be righteous and angry at the same time, but you cannot be righteous in sin. So be angry. That means that there are some things in life that should make you angry. When someone hurts someone innocent, it should make you angry. And if it doesn't make you angry, there's something wrong.
When somebody manipulates and takes advantage of somebody else, it should make you angry. But in your anger, don't sin. Because if you match evil for evil, everybody loses. So instead we get angry and then we go to God in prayer.
And we get angry and then we take action. We do something to counterbalance. That when the world is dark, we show light to the dark world. And so we need to take action, not with evil, but with good.
Be angry and do not sin. The next imperative kind of matches it. It says, do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Because when you get angry and sin, you're giving an opportunity to the devil.
But also, this may be the best marriage advice in the Bible. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. And this is my marriage tip for you. And I don't know if you realize this or not, but your pillow is a liar.
Your pillow will lie to you all night long. Because when you get mad at your spouse and then you go lay down in bed, you're rehearsing that argument. You're rehearsing that disagreement in your head. And now it isn't even accurate anymore because the more you think about it, the worse it gets.
And you let it grow because the pillow is a liar. And then you wake up in the morning and now you've given opportunity to the devil to destroy your marriage. So your marriage advice is simply this: either deal with it or let it go before you put your jammies on.
Okay? 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. And some of you just took a deep breath of freedom. Because you're like, "Oh man, finally one that doesn't apply to me."
Because you got this picture in your head of a thief as the guy in the mask breaking into the bank. And you're like, "I ain't never done nothing like that. I'm good." You know me better than that, don't you? How good is you?
Because I got a question for you. It's tax season. And you didn't try and steal anything by embellishing on your tax return, did you? And you haven't been taking time or supplies from your workplace, have you? And you're at church and we already had offering time. You didn't rob from God, did you?
Just going to let that one sit there for a second. I just want to make sure that we don't skip over this thinking, "Well, I'm not a thief." Because the Bible defines a thief not as somebody wearing a mask, but somebody that takes something that doesn't belong to them. So be careful. Check yourself.
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. How much corrupting talk are you allowed? None. Because life and death is in the power of the tongue.
And so we can let no corrupting talk come out of our mouths. So what's coming out of your mouth? And the way I have to gauge this in my own life is I have to ask this question of myself: Is Jesus happy with the things I've been saying?
Is Jesus happy with what comes out of my mouth? Because for some of you, if you wouldn't tell that joke to Jesus, why are you telling it to your coworker? And the scripture says, use it for building up. How many of your words have been tearing people down instead of building them up?
And if you were trying to get your life turned into a movie that gets a G rating, how many words this past week would have had to be bleeped out of that movie? Got real serious, real fast. Let no, zero, none, zilch, nada, no corrupting talk come out of your mouth.
Got that? Move on, spirit. You're like this. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. I love this verse. This is imperative number 13, and it acts as the catch-all.
Like, Paul doesn't have to list out every sin or every behavior issue or every problem, because he just throws a blanket over everything that you think, everything that you say, everything that you do. And he's like, just make sure you're not breaking God's heart when you do it.
And so, if you're saying it or doing it, and it's breaking God's heart, stop it. Don't grieve the Holy Spirit. And remember, the Holy Spirit is with you all day, every day. He doesn't take vacations. There's no time off.
And you are filled with all of the fullness of God. So, you have to ask yourself, have you grieved the Holy Spirit this week? And I want you to understand that this isn't about condemnation.
Do you know that he grieves over your sin because he knows the pain that it causes? He grieves over sin because he knows the price of sin. He grieves over the sin in your life because he knows the damage that it does to you and the damage it does to the people around you.
And he is grieved because the person he loves the most has been hurting themselves. And that breaks his heart. And I'm not standing on a stage saying this in judgment over you because I know I'm guilty of it too. That I have grieved the Holy Spirit.
But when I grieve him and when you grieve him, what do we do? We repent. We get back up. And we get back on track. And that's why the foundation of chapters 1, 2, and 3 are so important.
Because in this moment, none of y'all feel like you're measuring up to Jesus. Because I'm preaching it, I don't feel like I measure up to Jesus. But that's why the grace and the love and the blessings from chapters one, two, and three are so important first.
Because we have to understand, we have to remind ourselves that we did not earn it by our good behavior. Which means when we have bad behavior, it doesn't make us unearn it. And so we have to have the peace and the grace and the love of God to recognize, "I have messed up, but that did not remove the relationship."
But because of the relationship, I know I messed up and I wanna do better next time. And so I'm gonna get back up and I'm gonna stop doing the old thing. I'm gonna take off the old clothes and I'm gonna put on the new. And I'm gonna walk out this journey in a manner worthy of the calling.
31, we're almost done. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And so letting go of all the bitterness basically means you can choose to be bitter or you can choose to get better.
But it's a choice that you have to make. But if you're gonna walk in a manner worthy of the calling, you have to let go of bitterness. And all of the emotions and all of the actions tied to that bitterness.
You gotta get rid of the wrath and the anger and the clamor and the slander and the malice and all of that. But it's more than that too. You gotta get rid of the gossip and the backbiting and the rage. Just all of that stuff is old grave clothes. And you gotta take those off and swap them for some grace clothes.
Let go of the bitterness. And then imperative number 15 gives us the solution to this problem. How do we do that? By being kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.
And I love that Paul closes this thought, the last of these 15 imperatives from chapter four with this command. Just forgive others the way God has forgiven you. Because if we're all trying to walk in a manner worthy of the calling, the truth is somebody near you is gonna fail you.
And you need to be quick to forgive them. Because at the same time, you are going to fail the person close to you. And you're gonna fail Christ. And you need to be quick to repent, to get back up and to try again.
And so we have to live a life of forgiveness, both for others and receiving God's forgiveness as well. If we're gonna walk in a manner worthy of the calling, if we're gonna take off the old and put on the new.
So that is Ephesians chapter four. That's a lot. So here's what we're gonna do. Grab your phone, get ready. I'm gonna put all 15 of those imperatives on the screen, because here's what I want you to do. I want you to take this list and I want you to go over it this week with your group.
And I want you to talk about it and dig into it a little bit, but I also want you to take this list to the Holy Spirit in prayer. To say, "Holy Spirit, help me identify the one that I need to work on right now."
Because the reality is, every one of us in this room, everybody watching online, we all need to work on all 15. But if we run out of here trying to do 15 different things, we're going to trip and fall on our face. We're going to get discouraged. We're going to be like, "Well, it ain't for me."
But if you just take one at a time and you say, "God, this is the one I got to focus on." And you ask the Holy Spirit to point that out to you. If you need help, you can ask the voice of the Holy Spirit in your life, aka your spouse.
And I'm pretty sure they can tell you which of the 15 you need to work on right now. Or you can go to your group and you say, "Hey guys, you know me really well. Which one do I need to be working on?" If the Holy Spirit doesn't show you.
All right, you got your picture here. Six more for you. Six more for you. And so I want you to keep working on it until you feel like I've conquered this hill. Like, do it until you get to a place where you're pretty consistent. Maybe 98% of the time you're getting it right.
And then you're going to go to the Holy Spirit and you say, "What next?" And if you're anything like me, then the Holy Spirit's probably going to laugh at you and say, "You ain't even close to fixing that one. Do it again."
But if he does say, "Hey, good job. Now it's time to move on to the next one," he's going to show you what next to get working on. And you're going to get working on it. But what we have to remind ourselves in all of this is that it is a walk.
We're on a long journey. And so like, if number 12 is your thing, and actually, you know, probably a lot of you can just forget the other 14 on the list. Just highlight number 12. 12. That's probably the one you need to work on.
But if that's yours, please understand that you've been talking that way your whole life. You're probably not going to fix it in seven days. So give yourself some grace. Keep working on it. And then you're going to take that to your group.
You ready for the last three? Here's the last three. You're going to take that to your group. That was really funny. Like, it was like the whole room just like, I wish we had a camera of like that moment. That was hilarious.
I get so distracted so easily. It's dangerous. I'm glad that's not one of the 15. But you take it to your group and you say, "Guys, I've been trying to do number 14, but I'm having a really hard time letting go of this bitterness. There's some things in my past that I'm struggling to find healing. What have you done to conquer this one?"
And now as a group, what are you doing? You are building up the body of Christ. You are ministering one to another as Christ has called you to do. And so now in your group, you can offer advice and counsel and support and help to the people in your group, which is why if you ain't in a group, you're going through this journey all by yourself and you're missing out on the support.
There's people that want to bear with you in this. So find your group. We're good? All right. Just remember, maturity doesn't come overnight, but we are on a journey to walk in a manner worthy of the calling so that we can grow to be more like Christ.
And our decision, our desire today is that we would be more like Jesus today than we were yesterday, and tomorrow's looking even better. Let's pray.
So Father, we just thank you today because your word is so rich and so powerful in our lives. And Father, we just say thank you for the reminder, even when it's challenging, even when it hurts, to recognize the areas that we've failed.
Father, we just thank you that you reminded us for three chapters all about how much you love us, the measure of your love, how deep and wide and high and long your love is. It is so overwhelming for us.
And now in response to that love, we want to live a life that is worthy of that calling. And so Father, in the areas that we're struggling, in the areas where we've failed, in the areas that maybe we haven't even realized were an issue until this moment, Father, we just ask that you would give us strength and give us wisdom.
Holy Spirit, speak to us to help us identify the thing that we need to start working on so we can take off the old and put on the new. Give us strength in our groups to be vulnerable, to open up and to share what's really going on. Help us find healing and strength together.
In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. That's Jesus.
on Mar 13, 2025
