"Walking in the Light" Ephesians 4:25-32 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Let's open our Bibles now to Ephesians chapter four.

We'll finish Ephesians 4, Lord willing, this morning.

There is so much in this passage though that part of me thinks we might circle back to it maybe for Sunday evenings in the fall.

I'm not sure yet, but I'm excited to see what the Lord has for us this morning.

Ephesians 4, verses 25 to 32.

Ephesians 4:25–32

So the end of the chapter, we'll look at this.

And then after that we'll celebrate the Lord's table together.

This is the Word of God, verse 25.

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 in your anger and give no opportunity for 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.

It was on my honeymoon when the extreme makeover began.

I had traveled with a roommate's jacket that I had borrowed.

It was winter, and so I borrowed a roommate's jacket.

I had shirts that I thought were quite nice shirts.

They were borrowed from a friend of mine who was easy 100 pounds heavier than me.

And I had shoes that were easily two sizes too big and two decades out of date.

I was unaware of all these deficiencies, though.

I was quite content.

But it started walking around in a city, and there's a shop, and my new wife asked me to go inside the store and asked me, Do you like any of these jackets?

Like, yeah, schlunk, bought one.

So it begins.

That shirt doesn't need to be washed.

Here's a shoe store.

We walked inside a shoe store, and my participation in this one was even less.

It was like, yes, this is the right size.

I like these.

No, we don't need a box because we're not taking those.

Now I was not reluctant to this.

I wasn't, you know, hostile towards it.

I in fact I I appreciated it.

She was helping me out.

Had I known how um, I don't know, I don't know what the right adjective is.

Had I known how disheveled perhaps those clothes made me look, I would have been eager to replace them myself.

However, I was blind to it.

I needed somebody else to make those kind suggestions.

This is the function of a passage like this in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

That believers have areas of their life that don't look right.

They have parts of their life that they need to put off and put on things that are more in keeping with being a Christian.

They're taking off the clothes that are out of fashion, out of style, that don't fit right, and they're putting on clothes that are more appropriate for somebody who walks in the light.

The only catch is, like me on my honeymoon, we are often unaware of which articles of clothing that is.

We don't know how our conduct, which conduct, which speech, which thoughts, which passions, which lusts in our hearts are the ones that are out of place.

And so we need help.

One of the ways we get that help is from a passage of scripture like the one I just read, Ephesians 4, 25, down through verse 32, because it functions like a mirror and it puts the mirror up to you, and then it activates your conscience and it addresses how you look to the Word of God.

It shows you that this part of your life is out of place.

Obviously, I'm not talking about your, you know, your literal external clothes, but I'm talking about the conduct.

That's what you're robed in.

You're robed in your conduct, you're robed in your speech, you're robed in what's in your heart, your affections, your emotions.

That's what clothes you.

Before you came to Christ, you were dressed like the world.

You fit in just fine in the world because that's where you lived and that's where you operated, and you looked more or less like everybody else.

But when you come to faith in Christ, the old is dead.

The old is passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

You're a new creation in Christ.

And so now you should dress like it.

Now, this is kind of list of sins here, it's not talking about works righteousness.

It's not saying clean up your speech and clean up your anger and clean up your gossip and that kind of thing and stop stealing and all the things in the list here.

It's not saying do that so that you can be a Christian.

The whole logic of this kind of passage is saying because you are a Christian, now you should act like it.

It's a because God saved you, now you should live out your salvation.

And last week we, this was very general.

The same passage last week talked about how you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, verse 17, the futility of their minds.

And most of last week's sermon was spent on how the world thinks about life and what it looks like to walk in the darkness.

This week is not talking about anything generally.

This week is specific.

Specific actions that you have in your life, specific clothes that you still wear that you should not be wearing anymore.

It's this whole put off from verse 22, put on from verse 24.

You're taking off the old clothes and you're putting on the new clothes.

That's the transition, that's the change.

And of course, if you remember from last week, we talked about how you come out of the rain and it's you're pouring wet and your clothes are soaked and you're soaked down to the bone, so to speak.

You take your clothes off, you take a warm shower, and you don't put back on the wet clothes.

You put back on dry clothes.

This is what happens when you come to faith in Christ.

Your sin has consumed you.

You have an encounter with Christ, you put your faith in him, you are a new creation.

The old way you live should be put away.

And now there's a new conduct that is fitting how you should live, a new conduct that is more apt for Christians.

The way this whole passage is structured, and I know sometimes you read a passage like this, and it's a long list of things, and your eyes can just kind of go through the list of all the nouns and all the different synonyms, and you just kind of get to the next familiar verse.

So I want to pause here and kind of give you some structure to this, because that's how I can sometimes read a list like this.

My eyes can just go through it and I get to the next familiar thing.

I don't really understand how it's all put together, but this is intricately put together.

There's a structure to it, and in a broad sense, the structure is basically this.

Paul moves from sins that you need to repent of, righteousness that you need to apply, and then the reason why.

So repent, apply, and why.

Sins to put off, clothes to put on, and then the reason for this.

Now, this process here, repent, apply, and why, it's not chronological.

You don't learn about the reasons why you're doing this afterwards.

It's it's all comes together.

So he's giving you what sins to put off, what righteousness to put on, and then he's explaining to you why you should do that.

The why becomes the motivation.

Now, there's a series here of five of these sins, and all five of them have the what you put on afterwards and the why to it.

And so I think it's helpful to look at all of them together.

Now I'm gonna put them all on the screen.

And I'm warning you don't be overwhelmed by the next slide.

Because normally my outlines are like three words, right?

So normally it's pretty easy to follow along.

So if you're you like impulsively write down everything on the screen, you will be overwhelmed in one second, but we will then go through it more slowly.

So don't try to write it all down now.

We'll go through it each one line at a time.

It'll make sense by the end.

But this is the passage that is, as I put structure to it, this is what it looks like to me here.

You have the lies that you take off and you put on truth and the reason why.

You have anger you take off and you put on contentment and the reason why.

You have stealing that you take off and you put on working and then the reason why.

You have the tearing down of other people that you take off and you put on the building up and then the reason why.

And then you have the outbursts that you take off, you robe yourself in kindness, and then the reason why.

So that's the structure of this whole passage.

It is very symmetrical.

Uh Paul has is very intentional here.

He's not just spouting out adjectives and synonyms here.

He's got a process in mind.

There's even intricacies in how these all parallel each other, which we don't have time to draw out today, but I will go through these one at a time so that each gets the attention I think Paul wants you to have in your life to them.

The first sin he calls out here is lying.

Therefore, verse 25, having put away falsehood.

And he even uses the language, having put away, that is keeping with the clothes metaphor here.

When you take off the old clothes, you put them away.

And he's using this language here that you're putting them away not for the night, not for, you know, the dirty clothes.

You're putting them in storage.

It's your winter jacket you took off.

You've put it in the box, it's Memorial Day, that box is going down into storage, you're not going to see it again for a long time.

This is the metaphor he's using for your old conduct, how you lived outside of Christ.

Take off that old conduct, box it up, and pack it away.

You're not going to need it anymore.

And the first of those things you're taking off is lying.

Lying, of course, marks the world.

Our world is in many ways defined by lying.

Lying was the, in a sense, the first sin.

The devil came into the garden, he introduced a lie to Eve.

Eve believed the lie.

The lie, of course, that God didn't want her to be happy, that God didn't want her to know certain things, that God didn't want her to be like God.

That was the lie.

Eve believes the lie, violates God's command, sin enters the world.

Adam believes the lie, violates God's command.

Sin is now perpetuated in the world.

Sin, of course, produces division and distance.

Adam and Eve immediately are ashamed of each other.

They hide.

They're ashamed because of their nakedness to each other.

They hide from God, they hide from each other.

The whole thing is just a tragedy.

Death has now entered the world, and that's because of lies.

Lies then are an inherent characteristic of sin.

Behind every sin is the belief of a lie, that the sin is not as evil as it should be, that the sin will actually make you happy.

Every sin has lies behind it.

So lying is a sin, and every sin involves believing a lie, so that Jesus can rightfully say in John's Gospel that if you lie, you are children of the devil.

The devil brought the first lie into the world.

Every other lie comes from him.

God is a fountain of good things, the devil is a fountain of not just bad things, but particularly lies.

So when you lie, you're acting like the devil.

When you believe lies, you're a victim of the devil.

When you spread lies, you're doing the work of the devil.

Christians shouldn't do any of that.

So, therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.

So lies go away and they are replaced with truth.

You speak the truth to your neighbor, particularly, it says, this is a quotation from the book of Zechariah, chapter 8.

Zechariah 8 · chapter mention

And one of these days, maybe we'll go through Zechariah and give this passage the attention it really deserves.

But in Zechariah 8, there's a contrast between the world of sin and rebellion and the kingdom that God is going to build in Israel.

The kingdom will be marked by those who believe the Savior and the Messiah, and it'll be marked by those who are building a city called truth.

Or the ESV renders it a city of faithfulness.

But it's Zechariah 8, verse 16, the God's people are together operating through truth, advancing God's kingdom and the kingdom of light through spreading truth.

Zechariah 8:16

That is what's happening in Zechariah 8.

That's the passage Paul uses here in Ephesians 4.

Each of you should speak the truth with his neighbor because you're advancing truth.

Truth produces unity.

Truth produces shared knowledge, shared relationships.

Truth is light, lies are darkness.

Lies division, truth, unity.

And so for you to have real fellowship with one another, and that's the reason why, the motivation here in verse 25 is we're members of one another.

For you to have fellowship with one another, that fellowship is predicated on truth.

The phrase, we're members of one another, that's the theme in Ephesians 4, isn't it?

The Holy Spirit is building us into a body of believers.

One believer to another believer.

We're bricks built into a body.

That's the Spirit's activity.

He builds us together.

He's making us members of this body.

If you're members of one body, you shouldn't lie to other members of the body because lies are creating division in the body.

Lies divide.

If you have a building with a weak foundation, it collapses.

If you have a building missing a supporting wall, it collapses.

That's what lies are in the church.

Lies in the church are weakness in the structure, and it will ultimately affect the building.

And so don't lie to each other because that destroys the church.

If you have friendships that are uh spiritual friendships, your friendship is predicated on truth.

I have friends that uh that ask me accountability style questions, and I ask them questions, and we have a rich, robust spiritual relationship predicated on truth.

The moment lies enter that kind of relationship, it can no longer be stable because you can't encourage one another in spiritual weaknesses or in deficiencies if you're lying about it to each other, because now there's no advancement, now there's no cooperation, now there's no fellowship, so to speak, because lies have entered in.

It has to be predicated on truth.

And I'm just speaking of a friendship relationship, but obviously in a marriage, amplify that by infinity.

If you have lies that are multiplied in your marriage, that is goes back to Adam and Eve.

That is destruction, that is distance, that is separation.

And so you put off falsehood, which creates a distance, and you put on speaking the truth to each other.

There's gospel implications of this, there's evangelism implications, you bring the truth to the world.

There's the way that you live and the way that you speak.

So you take off lies, you put on truth.

Second category.

You take off anger and you put on contentment.

And it says here in verse 26, be angry and do not sin.

That's kind of a confusing way of putting it.

I mean, the whole, you know, pages and chapters and commentaries are spilled over this.

What does it mean to be angry and do not sin?

Is it commanding you to be angry?

Is anger good for you and should you do it?

Or is it, you know, saying, don't be angry, but if you accidentally be get angry, you know, what's the what's exactly implying here?

And it is awkwardly worded, and that's because it's very different than lies.

You know, God never lies.

And the theme of this, all of Ephesians 4, is to look more like Christ, right?

God never lies, Jesus never lies, so you should never lie.

But now we move to anger, and God does get angry.

God does get angry.

2 Samuel 22, verses 7 through 10.

2 Samuel 22:7–10

Uh, David describes this from the temple.

God heard my voice, my cry came to his ears, the earth reeled, it rocked, the foundations and the heavens trembled and quaked because God was angry.

Smoke went up from his nostrils, David writes.

Devouring fire came out of his mouth.

Flaming coals came from him.

He bowed the heavens, he came down with darkness under his feet.

That's a very poignant description of God's anger.

It says he was angry and he acts in his anger and he comes to earth.

And if you're familiar with the story in 2 Samuel, that God is angry over the sin that is being cultivated in his people in Israel.

And so it's a righteous anger.

God is holy and demands complete obedience, and so he has anger when the people who claim the name of God act in sinful rebellion against him, it produces anger.

He is righteously angry.

And so Paul doesn't say you never be angry because you're supposed to look more and more like God here.

So in that sense, he leaves room for righteous anger.

But if we're being honest here, God can be righteously angry because he's perfectly holy.

You are not like God.

You have a lot less righteous anger than you think.

Because isn't that how we excuse our anger?

No, it's okay.

This is righteous anger.

I actually know the truth about this situation, and I am the innocent victim, and so this is righteousness that I'm angry.

It'd be wrong if I wasn't angry.

That's how pure my motives are right now is that I would actually be sinning if I wasn't angry at you.

That's the way we often think.

And so it's interesting that Paul quotes here Psalm 4, verse 4.

Psalms 4:4

In your anger, or be angry, and do not sin, do not let the sun go down in your anger.

This is Psalm 4, verse 4.

Psalms 4:4

In Psalm 4, David is laying in his bed and he has been lied about.

People have lied about him, people have slandered him, and it's going to result in him being exiled from Israel.

He's going to lose the throne over these lies.

He is an innocent victim.

And they're lying about him, and he gets thrown out of his own country.

And he is, how do you sleep after that happens?

And he's laying down in his bed, and he wants to know, God, why do you let this happen?

He's angry because the lies are harming him.

But Psalm 4 is such a short Psalm, and by the end of it, he has taken off his anger and laying there in his bed, he has put on trust in the Lord.

He's put on joy in the Lord.

He's put on contentment in the Lord.

He trusts the Lord is at work for good in his life.

So don't let the sun go down in your anger means work it like David did.

Work it out in your heart to the point where you trust the Lord.

The opposite of anger here is contentment with what God is doing.

Sometimes people say the opposite of anger is self-control, like, oh, I feel the anger boiling up inside of me.

If I get my emotions under control, that's how I fight anger.

I'm in control.

Self-control versus anger.

I understand what's meant by that, and there's some cases in which that's true, but for me, viewing anger as opposed to self-control kind of feeds the self-righteousness.

It puts you at the center of the world.

You're angry over how people are treating you, but you're in charge of your emotions, so you get it under control.

I don't think that's the real contrast here.

I think the better contrast, at least in Psalm 4, is that you're angry about being mistreated and about being lied about and about being wronged.

And then you start asking yourself some questions.

Who is allowing this?

Who's allowing your coworker to lie about you in a way that's harming you?

I mean, the Lord is.

The Lord's allowing it.

The Lord knew about it, and the Lord could have stopped it, and he didn't.

So if you're angry about it, you're actually angry about something the Lord is permitting.

And so you're kind of angry at the Lord.

And once you start thinking like that, you can no longer excuse it with self-righteous anger.

You can no longer excuse it by saying, this is actually a godly, righteous anger once you understand that it's actually directed at the Lord.

There's no such thing as a godly, righteous anger that's directed at God.

God's allowing it.

Even at a more humorous level.

You know, you cultivate a beautiful rose bush in your front yard, you put all kinds of effort into it, and you trim it, and you put fertilizer in it, and it pokes your hands and you bleed, and you buy expensive gloves, and it produces this beautiful rose, and then in your ring camera you catch your neighbor creeping over and stealing the rose.

What?

I put so much work into this.

That thing made me bleed.

I dug a trench around it, I fertilized it, I watered that thing, and they steal my rose?

Rawr! I'm allowed to be angry.

That is theft.

That is wrong.

I'm angry.

But who allowed your neighbor to steal the rose?

God.

That doesn't mean you don't talk to him about it or you don't confront him, but it definitely means you need to check your anger because God is the one who's working through this.

You don't be angry because this is something that God is at work in.

This is why you realize this situation is from the Lord, so I need to be content in it.

Now, this is kind of big boy theology here.

That you have this view of God's sovereignty even over things that are wrong, even over sin, even over lies that bring destruction, that lead to a king getting exiled in David's case, it lead to theft, it leads to wasted effort.

Lies do cause harm.

Doesn't mean you can be angry about him.

Because God is sovereign over those things.

That's why I say it's kind of the big boy theology.

You have to have a big, expansive view of God that's bigger than you in your own life to be able to understand that God is at work even through things that are suffering, even through things that are sinful.

He's at work for his glory and my good.

And I want to spend a little bit more time on the anger one here.

Because anger, I think, is of all the sins in this list.

Perhaps the one that is most prevalent in our own society, in our own culture.

You know, you think of Anger towards your kids.

Something common in marriages, and you think, oh, it's it's fair to be angry at my kids because they're not doing what I asked them to do.

I asked the kids three times to get ready for bed.

And they are no more closer to being ready for bed on the third time than they were on the first time.

And it has been 27 and a half minutes since I asked them the first time to get ready for bed.

I know this because I started my stopwatch.

Twenty-seven and a half minutes, and they're still not ready for bed.

It's like my words don't have meaning.

I say them, but they don't accomplish anything.

They go forward and bounce off the wall and out the you know, the fox in the backyard is more likely to be ready for bed than my kids are, despite me saying it three times.

So you see how this goes to anger?

It goes to anger.

Or a neighbor brings over your kids and some other kids.

There's neighborhood kids, you know?

A thing of Starburst.

There's 12 of them, and there's 12 kids.

This should be easy.

But your kid grabs four of them.

Totally unaware of the math, totally not thinking, grabs four of the Starburst.

And the other kid, you can see the other kid starting to cry.

And it's your kid that's doing this.

Like how?

How?

How?

So you justify your anger.

These are examples I've heard about in books, of course.

I've heard from other people that have maybe had situations like this.

So you have to start to ask yourself, why am I angry?

Why?

Because you justify, you say, I listen, I worked all day long to provide for my family.

I worked all day long.

I come home, and my kids are acting like my words don't mean anything.

That's how the justification goes.

Don't they know what I have done for them?

I want them to be in bed because there's other things that I have planned to do tonight, and they're running around every which way, and they're not listening to me.

That's the golden word right there.

Me, me, me.

So some questions that you can ask yourself in that moment.

Why am I really angry?

Is it because I really value the 8:30 bedtime?

Like, is that the key?

They need a good night's sleep?

Is that what I'm angry about?

Probably not.

Am I really angry over all the kids not getting equal amounts of Starbursts?

Is that what I'm angry about?

Also, probably not.

So why are you angry in those scenarios?

Well, maybe you're angry because you have things you want to do.

You wanted to look at your computer, you wanted to spend time with your wife, you wanted to read a book, you had desires of what was gonna happen tonight, and it's not happening because of these children.

See how you're the center of that?

And of course that's gonna produce anger.

Of course it will produce anger, because you're the one in your mind that's being wronged.

Or the Starburst scenario, you know, why are you angry?

Because of you, it's pride, you know.

You the other parents are seeing this, and it's your kids that are causing the problems, and you know how they are gonna think about you now?

It's pride and it's it's uh it's all about you, which is not a valid excuse to be angry.

It's not.

It's you in the center of your world.

So what are you really angry about that you're being deprived of something you want?

And go to another question: why are you being deprived of those things?

Because of the kids.

No, not because of the kids.

Have you trained your kids to listen to you when you tell them to do something?

Have you trained your kids to ask before they grab food?

Have you trained them that?

I'm talking little kids here.

I'm talking, you know, I'm not talking high school kids here, because if you're going through to the high school kids, you know, that that bus has kind of left the station.

I'm talking about littler kids.

Like, have you trained them to listen to you when you tell them what to do?

Because they're sinners, they're not going to want to listen to you.

You have to train them.

And if you don't train them, and now they're not listening to you, well, honestly, if we're talking just, you know, amongst family here, it's your fault.

Because you haven't trained them to listen.

You haven't disciplined them when they don't listen.

Oh, but disciplining them is a lot of work.

Uh now we're starting to get to the real action.

It's too much work for you to discipline your children.

Or discipline doesn't work on my kids.

Okay, you know what that attitude produces in you?

Anger.

That's where that, that's where that goes.

I read a book, I forget if Kathy, Kathy Hawley maybe even gave it to DJ and I a while ago.

I don't remember where it came from, but Ginger Plowman was her, was the name, Don't Make Me Count to Three, which is such a great title for a parenting book.

Don't make me count to three.

Isn't that a great title?

And she had an interesting observation in there that has stuck with me ever since I saw it.

When your kids are acting in a way that produces anger in you, the culprit there is you for not training them to not act that way.

And that just sobers me up every time I feel the anger boiling up in my heart.

Because no, it's I should have taught them to obey when I tell them to get ready for bed.

They are living in a world where they can ignore me three times without consequences, and now I get angry.

And listen, you can't discipline your kids when you're angry, right?

We're gonna get said in Ephesians 5.

You cannot discipline your kids when you're angry.

So if you're angry at your kids ignoring your words, your anger means you can't discipline them for ignoring your words, which means they're gonna keep ignoring your words.

See how the cycle grows?

All because you're angry.

Your anger is keeping you from being the parent that God has called you to be.

So how would you repackage this?

Well, you would start over and say, what's my goal here?

My goal is for my kids to learn that there is authority in the world and they need to honor that authority, or it produces pain.

That's the goal.

So they listen to God's voice and they listen to God's word.

And so they need to see me as an authority.

And if I tell them to do something and they do not do it, there is going to be a consequence that involves pain, so they learn that basic lesson.

And if I'm not willing to do that, then my voice will be ignored, and chaos will ensue and anger will grow up in me.

So the right motivation is not to have equitable starbursts, the right motivation is not to have an 8:30 bedtime, the right motivation is not so you look better in front of other parents, the right motivation is that your kids learn authority.

And that produces an area of peace in the house that comes through discipline.

This is not a one-day fix, by the way.

It's like a one-year fix kind of thing.

And teaching that when they're younger and they grow up and the anger disappears.

I spent a lot of time on this because I think this is a huge, prevalent issue in our world where we get anger, we let anger rule us.

We get angry at other people for things that are ultimately our own fault and our lack of engagement.

We have to understand to pay it off your anger, put on contentment.

God has called you to this family, God has called you to this job, God has called you to this situation.

Now your question is, what should you do in that situation?

How should you lead your family?

How should you parent in your family?

How should you act in work in this kind of situation?

What does God want you to do when you're lied about?

What does God want you to do when you were ignored?

Depends on who's doing the lying and who's doing the ignoring.

You have to think through that.

That's how you guard yourself from anger.

And if you're ambivalent to it, then you get angry at God for this situation.

You get angry at the people that are not acting like you want them to act.

And anger runs everywhere.

And when anger runs everywhere, verse 26, you give opportunity to the devil.

The devil is in your family, the devil is telling lies, the devil is sowing disunity and causing conflict, and you believe the lies.

Of course, lies and sin go hand in hand.

So don't be angry, give up because it gives opportunity to the devil.

And then Paul gives a very practical timeline here.

You're like, yes, but I am angry because they wronged me.

Very practical timeline here.

Okay, fine.

Be angry.

But you better work it out in your heart before you go to bed.

What a practical piece of advice that is, isn't it?

Okay, you're angry, deal with it before bedtime, okay, big boy.

And he's not saying deal with the other person.

The anger's in your heart.

You got to deal with the anger in your heart.

This is Psalm 4 again.

David wasn't interacting with anybody, it was him and the Lord, and he works through it in his own heart by the end of the Psalm.

That's what Paul's saying.

So your wife wrongs you.

She was wrong.

You know, you had a disagreement, and she was wrong, and you know she was wrong, and she knows she was wrong, and everybody should know she's wrong, and that's the status right now.

So, how are you gonna act?

Are you gonna make things right before you go to sleep or not?

Because if you don't, you've given the devil an opportunity in your marriage.

And the devil here is just uh kind of a euphemism for your own sin, your own sinful heart.

So better deal with it.

And what are the options?

You know that you are angry with her, or that you forgive her.

Those are the two options.

I mean you forgive her, it's throw it out the window, as far as the east is from the west.

You don't bring it up, it's over.

Can you do that, or would you rather be angry?

Well, Paul says, do what you need to do in your own heart, but you better work through it by bedtime.

Verse third, 28.

Next level here.

Stealing.

We'll go through these others pretty quickly.

Stealing is the next command here.

Let the one who steals no longer steal, but rather let him work.

Let him work with his hands.

This is down in verse 28.

Let the thief no longer steal.

There's a permissive attitude here.

Like, don't permit the stealing anymore.

Stop it.

Confront the thief, corner him, challenge him, no longer allow him to steal, don't entertain his filthy lucre.

Rather, let him labor, point him to work.

If he won't eat, I mean, if he won't work, he doesn't get to eat, Paul tells the Thessalonians.

You have him work with his hands, the rest of the phrase says, Doing honest work with his hands.

Now, stealing is a violation of the Eighth Commandment.

The Westminster Confession says the best example of the violation of the Eighth Commandment actually is slavery.

That's what the Westminster Divines pointed out.

Slavery is the functioning violation of the Eighth Commandment.

That's the extreme example in society that you steal someone's labor without paying for it.

That is stealing, and it is sinful and it is wrong.

1 Timothy 1, man stealers should have no part in the church.

They're outside of God's kingdom.

Now, Paul's not talking specifically about slavery here.

I'm just giving the extreme from the Bible, from Paul's other writings, that slavery is the most extreme example of theft.

But that chain goes down to more minor examples: cheating on your taxes.

Driving in the easy past lane with the HOV thing flipped the other side when it's only you in the car.

Is stealing.

And it is the same family of sin as slavery.

That's what he wants you to see.

Stealing is taking something that you don't want to pay for.

That's stealing.

So all the way down, the extreme example of slavery and stealing people's labor to the minor example of drive carpool theft.

And you justify it too, don't you?

You're like, you know, my tax money paid for this highway, and they don't know how many people I'm avenue, and how does State Patrol even force it?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Stealing.

Don't do that.

But rather work with your hands.

I used to cut grass.

We're a landscaping company back in college, and this is one of my favorite verses right here, because it was like, this is godly work right now.

With my hands.

I'm working with my hands.

I'm like, keyboard, blah, I'm cutting grass.

God calls men to work.

This is the first command given to Adam to subdue the earth with his hands.

There's something about a husband or a man's identity that is rightly wrapped up into his work.

And our culture militates against that.

Our culture downplays work ethic.

You know, the less you work, the better.

Our culture often pits a hardworking man against other obligations to make it feel like a husband who's working hard is actually, you know, robbing his family of his time and whatnot.

Now, obviously, you shouldn't work to the detriment of your family, otherwise, you'll be ruled by anger.

But you do work to provide for your family, and it is right for a husband to see part of his identity in that as long as he recognizes that he's working for the Lord, because the Lord made him with that calling.

Whether you're on a lawnmower or a keyboard, working is adding something of value and virtue to society.

You're producing something.

Shorter grass, subduing the earth, or you're producing intellectual content, whatever you're doing, you're producing something, you're contributing to society.

That is what God has called husbands to do.

To work.

So you feel good about yourself?

Nope.

Why?

So that you can give things away.

If you're stealing, you can't give things away.

Not with a clear conscience, you know.

You steal something, don't give 10% of it to the church to wash your conscience, you know.

I stole a thousand dollars, but I gave a hundred to the church, so we're good.

No, may your money perish with you.

I don't want the hundred bucks if you stole it.

The thief makes everybody he gives charity to a kind of complicit in his crime.

So you put that off and you put on working, not so you can build bigger barns for yourself.

You put on working so you can share, so you can help other people build their barns.

That's the idea here.

You're strengthening the church through giving things away which you can't do if you don't work hard.

Verse 29, the next category.

No tearing down.

The language Paul uses in verse 29, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth.

The word corrupting, it's the word for poisonous or ruinous.

It's the word, interestingly, you might be interested in this.

It's from Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

It's the word for a bad tree, a rotten fruit, rotten branches, rotten tree.

The Greek word for that is this word here.

When you're having bad things come out of your mouth, it's showing that the tree is corrupt.

The heart is corrupt.

It's poisonous.

Words that show you have sin in your heart.

It tears people down, is the idea.

It poisons other people.

You're supposed, the thief is supposed to produce something of value with his hands.

The corrupting talk person is supposed to build edifying things with his words.

See how the parallel?

Instead of saying corrupting things, we're just talking about gossip and slander and cursing and coarse jesting, and we'll get another list of this in chapter five.

But instead of saying those things, and Paul doesn't give you a list of banned words or anything either.

I've heard people say, you know, where's the list of words you're not supposed to say?

Oh, come on.

Words that tear down, words that produce and propagate sin are what he's talking about.

Don't speak like that, he says, but instead build use words that build up.

This is the word for edify.

It's the word that's all over chapter four, for the Holy Spirit is building up the church.

It's the same word.

So when you gossip about someone or slander someone, you're tearing them down.

You're working against what the Holy Spirit is doing, who's trying to build the church up.

Even if it's true.

So somebody in the church wrongs you or you know does something horrible, and you are saying, you're talking about it, everything you're saying could be true, but if it's tearing that person down, you're working against what the Holy Spirit is doing.

Who's trying to build up the church, you're tearing it down, you're at cross-purposes.

Don't get cross-purposes with God.

And in fact, that's the language that Paul uses here.

Because if you're letting corrupting talk come out of your mouth, then you are grieving, verse 30, the Holy Spirit of God.

It's an attack on God to slander or gossip or lie or curse.

God who sealed you for the day of redemption, the Holy Spirit who brought you your faith, is trying to build up the church.

And when you speak wickedly about other people, you're working against the same Spirit who saved you.

We've seen this phrase sealed with the day of redemption all over Ephesians.

Remember, this is a big package here.

The first three chapters of Ephesians are about the theology of salvation, how the Father sends the Son who dies on the cross, the Father and the Son sends the Spirit who saves you, and now is building the church up.

And now we're practical.

Well, you're gossiping and slandering, you are going against that.

You want to be against the gospel and call yourself a Christian?

Yikes.

Well, that's what happens when you go to war against God's people with your words.

You're actually going to war against God.

Much more could be said about that, but we'll go on.

Final category here is outbursts.

That's just a catch-all at bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, malice.

Get rid of that.

Notice the progression, how this starts.

Lies are inside you.

Other people don't know the truth.

The lies are in your heart.

Nobody knows you're lying, just you.

Anger starting to spill out to those around you.

Stealing, now you're actually acting on this, still secretly, though, you don't want to get caught.

Tearing down, now the secrecy is gone.

Anybody that can hear you is privy to your, you know, the fountain of sin coming from your heart, all the way to outbursts.

Now it's on full display.

See the progression here?

If you don't deal with lying, it's going to end with outbursts.

I mean, that's the where this, that's where this river flows.

Lying was Adam and Eve's sin, again, believing the lie, which produced anger and separation in them, produces sin, Cain murdering Abel, gossip, explosions of wrath and anger.

If you don't deal with this sin, that's where it goes.

Instead of that, be kind to one another.

Tender-hearted.

Tender, soft towards each other.

Don't be nobody wants to hug a porcupine, you know?

Be soft towards each other.

Forgiving one another.

As God in Christ forgave you.

Remember, somebody wronged you?

What's your choice?

Be bitter about it, angry about it, or forgive them.

And your pattern here is that God forgave you.

You replace all of this with benevolence and kindness and charity and giving.

This is why this is all supernatural.

This is not works righteousness.

Some people look at this list and say, hey, this is works righteousness.

You gotta be kidding me.

You cannot do these things on your own.

Imagine somebody who's wronged and lied about and cheated and all this stuff, who's able to do any of this on their own strength and merit.

I mean, that's nuts.

It's the Holy Spirit who's working in your life, producing these things, causing you to do a total 180 where you're actually giving things away to the people that were lying about you.

I mean, that is just, that would require a supernatural intervention of the third person of the Trinity on your heart to get you to live like this.

Well, that's exactly what God gives.

The Holy Spirit who changes you.

And so to draw that point home, let me share this final slide.

This is the list of just the reasons.

I pulled out just the reasons.

I mean, you could do the same kind of study with any of those three columns, but just the reasons.

Why should you be taking off your old clothes and putting in a new ones?

Because God made you part of the church.

And your sin affects those around you.

Because the devil is attacking the church, and you want to let him in.

Don't be the one who opens the door to the devil.

We had somebody come in and vandalize the church a couple months ago, and of course, we got everything on camera and we went through security, and I'm not going to say who the one who let them in is, but he's on the camera.

He's like, opens the door, invites the homeless guy right in who vandalizes the church.

Like, you don't want to be that guy.

Don't be that guy to the devil.

The devil's outside knocking on the church door, and you, oh, it's on the camera for everybody.

You open the door and invite the devil right on in.

No.

Bad move with the devil.

Sharing.

Instead of inviting the devil in to tear people down, why don't you share the good things that you have?

And this brings you to God.

Because God shares Himself with us.

Don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God, but rather put your faith in God and the gospel, who seals you for the day of redemption.

This is the gospel.

And because of your faith in Christ, you have forgiveness of sins.

This whole progression is leading you to understand when you gather around God's table, you do so because you have been forgiven.

Lord, we're grateful that you have shown us a better way of living.

And we don't want to take off our dirty clothes and put on our clean clothes to impress you, but rather we do so because you have saved us.

I pray for anyone here today that has never put their faith in the gospel.

I pray they'd be convicted of their own sin, of their own speech, of their own anger and greed and malice, and they would confess that to you, and they would believe that Jesus died on the cross for their sin.

They'd believe that he rose from the grave and put their faith in him.

That's a supernatural work that only the Holy Spirit can do.

So God, we pray that you would save people today, and that you would, through the conviction of sin, cause us to live lives that are in increasing conformity to your will and to your word.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master's Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.