Ephesians: From Grace, Live and Speak as Grace

Well, good morning.

We are studying our way through the book of Ephesians.

We are toward the end of chapter four.

Here's what we've been saying if you haven't been with us.

The main point of Ephesians is this: what God has done for us in Christ and how we should live in light of it.

It's the main port of the entire book.

What God has done for us in Christ, and we see that in chapters one through three, and how we should live in light of it.

That's chapters four through six.

So even the structure of Ephesians is Paul teaching us something because we've been saying this.

We can only live out chapters four through six, our godly behaviors, who we should be, how we should live through chapters one through three.

We worded it this way: our walk with Jesus is not for God's love.

Our walk with Jesus is from God's love.

That distinction can really help you from being a self-righteous, judgmental, arrogant, weary Christian, or perhaps in despair and condemned because you aren't pulling it off, weary Christian, to a Christian that's living from God's love, already forgiven in Jesus, already righteous in Jesus, already valuable in Jesus.

And out of that wellspring is the life of walking with God.

Ephesians 4, 17 through 19.

Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, and the futility of their minds.

So he's saying, those who don't know Jesus, then verse 18, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.

Why?

Due to their hardness of heart.

They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

Point number one is this our godly behaviors flow from an inner identity in Jesus.

Paul is saying, you used to be one way, one person, one identity.

You now have a new source for your identity.

Your heart is not hard to God anymore.

So don't live in darkness anymore.

There is a better way.

Paul's saying there's a better way.

Seven years ago, we took our three girls to Disney World for the first time.

So seven years ago, here's a picture of the three girls there in Disney World.

What you don't see is Christy and I behind the camera melting because it was already 117 degrees in Disney World as it always is.

And I'm not a Disney guy because it's hot and I don't like hot.

There's lines, I don't like lines.

And I don't want to be hot in a line.

That's the worst scenario, which is what you primarily do at Disney World.

So I'm just not a Disney guy, but like we're there because we're gonna do the family thing, and so we're gonna do that.

It's our first time, and so we kind of go in and we mosey this way and that way, we do some rides over here, and then we kind of do that over there.

I went up to one ride, this one particular ride, and I promise you I thought, I thought this was a 35-minute line.

I thought maybe 40, maybe 40 minutes tops.

And I go up and I look at the little sign, you know, that they put the little signs out.

It said three and a half hours.

And I'm like, you're in line.

Like you made this decision.

You thought to yourself, like you thought to yourself, I'll get in this line.

I will wait three.

I could be on the other side of the country in three and a half hours.

I could build a ride in three and a half hours.

There are so many things I could do in three and a half hours.

Uh, so we had a great day at Disney World.

That's what I wanted to say.

Amazing.

It was an amazing day at Disney World.

Now, a few years later, we went to Disney again because we had not had enough.

And Christy, this time Christy reached out to a friend that's a Disney Super fan.

Like she's in the Disney Vacation Club, she has the special app.

Some of you have the special app.

You y'all know stuff.

You know stuff, the rest of us don't know.

We're in ignorance, you're not.

She begins to explain to us how to get in early.

And she's, oh, you don't start at the front of the park.

Don't just mosey around.

Like when you go in, you gotta walk to the back and you gotta walk fast.

And you get back there because you can chip off four rides before anybody knows what's going on.

And you work your way from the back to the front, and you're working your fast passes and your reserve and stuff, and she explained the whole system.

There's a system to this madness, is what she actually charted out our entire day.

And we went from darkness to light that day.

We really did.

And our day was so much better.

We had a great day.

We were ignorant in the darkness.

We don't know how this works.

We don't know how this works.

Yeah, I'll just get in a three and a half hour line and think that's normal.

Like we don't know, we just don't know how this works.

To somebody explaining to us, like, oh, here's how it works.

And all of a sudden, we're not ignorant.

All of a sudden, our our experience doesn't feel like futility, right?

Everything changed.

Here's the reasoning of these verses.

Paul says, the power of ignorance, that you don't know how something works, you don't know how life works, is error and corruption.

And he explains it this way darkened understanding.

So you live apart from God, and then there's a loss of self-control.

Right?

When you don't understand life, you do some crazy stuff.

I mean, even this week, some people told me some stuff that's happened in our town and community the last few weeks.

And I'm like, they they let what happen at their house?

They they they did what with their children?

They what why would like, oh, they're they're ignorant, they're living apart from God, and so there's a loss of self-control.

Yet, yet, there's a better way.

There's a different way, there's a new way.

And Paul says, there's a power of truth when light comes into darkness.

How does life work?

What is true?

What is good, what is noble, what is right?

And there is liberation and refinement for us.

In verse 19, it says, those in darkness have given themselves over to sensualities.

This is the giving yourself over to things and experiences that please your senses.

So you become enslaved to the very things that please you.

This pleases me, I'm gonna keep partaking in it, but yet I need to keep having more of this.

An affair, greed, gossip, backbiting, lust, pornography, all of these are like bite-sized five-minute sensualities.

Little, little bite-sized sensations.

And then it's gone.

And then you need another bite size, and it's gone, and you need another bite sign.

And all that's left is, as we all know, shame and destruction.

And Paul says, that's the old way.

Like you can begin to learn how your heart and how your mind, how life works, and you don't have to live that way anymore.

I read this this week in my devotions by priest Henry Nowen.

You feel overwhelmed by distractions, fantasies, the disturbing desire to throw yourself into the world of pleasure, but you know already that you will not find there an answer to your deepest question.

Nor does the answer lie in rehashing old events or in guilt or shame.

All that makes you dissipate yourself and leave the rock on which your house is built.

So now and rightly describes the human experience, but even the human experience as a Christian.

I want to read it again because I think I read it to you that time, but I want to read it again and you let it read you.

Right?

There's a difference between reading something and letting something read you.

So just sort of ponder this as I read it.

You feel overwhelmed by distractions, fantasies, the disturbing desire to throw yourself into the world of pleasure.

But you know already that you will not find there an answer to your deepest question.

Nor does the answer lie in rehashing old events or in guilt or in shame.

Okay, so now and tells us exactly what happens, but he also reminds us who we are, and here's where he says it all of that makes you dissipate yourself and leave the rock on which your house is built.

So there's good news in there, and the good news is this you can build a house, your heart and your mind, on a rock that actually is stable.

That's not just bite-sized sensations.

Verse 20.

And here's where Paul says, but that's not the way you learned Christ.

Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness.

Those words learn, heard, taught, they all evoke an image of school.

You're in a process of being educated, you're growing.

That's point number two.

Jesus teaches us from the inside out.

Heart change leads to life change.

But Paul won't let us move on to verse 25, which begins the list of how we should live without giving us these verses 20 or through 24.

Because we live, verse 25 onward, through who we are in Jesus.

That's what we said to begin the sermon.

I'll say it again, and I'll say it this way: Christianity is receiving and being with Jesus before it is doing and serving for Jesus.

Now, Christianity is serving and doing for Jesus, but it is that through receiving and being with Jesus.

And so when you're doing great, you're not self-righteous and judgmental to others.

And when you're not doing great or you fail, you're also not crushed in despair.

Because Jesus is your forgiveness, and he is your righteousness.

And your identity with God and God's delight in you is not based in your performance, but in Jesus' performance for you, so you can repent and begin again.

Being a Christian is this laying aside of our old tattered way of life and then being clothed.

That's the image Paul's, being clothed in a new way of life.

There's a new way.

But it's not just a new to-do list.

You're actually a new creation.

You're learning a new way to live out this identity that you have now.

Forgive me, I know I told this story last year.

We're going through the book of Colossians, because in Colossians, Paul speaks about the same thing, uses the same image.

Old clothes, new clothes, old way of life, new way of life, coming from the new identity that we have in Jesus.

And for me, the first time Colossians was making sense, or even this imagery of old clothes and new clothes, old way of life, new way of life, this made sense to me when I was in college, went on a mission trip to Ghana, Africa.

The first day I walked into this village with my teammate, a pastor from about an hour away town.

So we're like an hour outside of a city, and then another hour outside that town to make it into this village that didn't have a Christian church.

So this pastor that lived an hour away wanted to plant a church here.

A white person hadn't even been in this village in years and years.

The children have never seen a white person.

Imagine if a purple person shows up this morning.

Imagine what our children would do.

Our children would just walk around looking at this purple person, want to touch their skin, right?

Like that's what would happen.

That's exactly what happened to us as we walk through these village streets.

We're meeting with people, seeing who's interested and want to hear about the gospel, and then let's start a church, let's start a small group.

We're walking through, children, just a hundred children, just following behind the whole entire day.

Every time I'd sit down, because it was hot as Disney World there, it was about 117 degrees.

Every time I would sit down, I would look over the side.

There was this one little girl, and she had tattered clothes on.

And every time I looked at her, she would run off.

And I'd think to myself, what a loving missionary I'm being, scaring the children.

Scaring the children away.

And then toward the in the evening, we were sitting down and we're gonna have like an event.

And I sat down, I took this picture because she came back and she she looked different.

She had she had gone home, I don't know where she, but she found this dress.

I'm imagining it's her only dress she had based on the clothes that she had on before.

And for me, Colossians is imagery of old life and new life, battered clothes and new clothes started to make sense.

The only difference here is that she went off on her own.

And in the gospel, God says, I love you as you are, not as you should be.

So I'm actually with you in the process of you putting on new clothes, better clothes.

Put on the better way of life.

There's verse 23 is wedged in this old clothes, new clothes language.

And it says that our minds need to be renewed, verse 23.

What does that mean?

Like we say that in church all the time.

Like the renewing of our mind.

Right, the renewing of our mind.

We always use that phrase, the renewing of our mind.

Like, what does that mean?

The commentary explained it this way.

In addition to the decisive rejection of the old and assumption of the new implicit in conversion.

So being like, all right, you're a Christian, so implicit in that is that a new way of life is going to play out in your life.

Is a daily, indeed, a continuous inward renewal of our outlook is involved in being a Christian.

If heathen degradation is due to the futility of their minds, then Christian righteousness depends on the constant renewing of our minds.

And I read that and I thought to myself, that's a lot of words.

That's actually what I thought.

I was like, still a lot of words, I still need a little help.

And so R.C.

Sproul helped me make sense of that.

And here's how he explains this idea of the renewing of the mind.

The renewing of the mind is not simply acquiring more information, it is a transformation in the way we reason.

What we value and what we love.

The spirit changes the very faculty by which we understand the world.

The very way you reason through a scenario, a situation, a problem, what you value, what you love.

The spirit changes the very faculty by which we understand the world.

The question is, is are we letting and are we open to the Spirit doing that work in us?

Or are we open to the Holy Spirit changing our hearts, desires, and values, what we love and how we reason through something?

Now we're ready for verse 25.

Now we're ready for the list of who we should be, how should we live?

And that's why Paul says, 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.

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.

And then Paul sums it up.

Be kind to one another.

Be tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

If I could just sum it up, it would be something like we don't have to trash talk each other or anybody to feel important because we're already important to God and Jesus.

If your importance is already settled, imagine how free that makes you when you're in conversations with people.

That you don't need their acceptance or affirmation.

You don't even need their agreement with your opinion on this person or this thing.

You are really set free.

If you're already important because of your identity with God through Jesus, you are set free.

To be kind, to be truthful, to be gracious.

Point number three is this Jesus is and shows us a new way of life.

Truthful, self-giving, grace-speaking, and tenderhearted.

Jesus is this for us.

We won't ever live that out perfectly.

Jesus is that for us.

All the ways we failed, Jesus was that, lived the righteousness for us, which is given to us perfectly, and he shows us at the same time this new way of life.

So all that lofty theological talk finds itself into the reality of our lives, which is relationships.

As soon as Paul gets a chance to talk about how we should actually live, he talks about how we relate to each other.

The first thing he goes to when he talks about godly behavior is how we treat each other, how we speak about each other, how we speak to each other.

The commentary says this about these verses.

Holiness is not a mystical condition experienced in relation to God, but in isolation from human beings.

You cannot be good in a vacuum, but only in the real world of people.

And this is all good.

Like this verse 25 on, this is all a good guide.

But if all you have is verse 25 on without verses 20 to 24, or if all you have is chapters 4 through 6, without chapters 1 through 3, the list without Jesus, we're doomed.

Isaiah 4 · chapter mention

A faith-to-do list or performance without Jesus will wear you out.

Because none of us are going to live verses 25 through 32 perfectly.

In fact, even when I read it, some of you are like, oof, ooh, like boy, getting hit here, getting punched in the mouth by the Bible, right?

Like, I mean, some of you felt that you're like, you have no idea what I was saying about you earlier.

Like, you don't even know.

We're just not going to live it perfectly.

And in all those ways, Jesus lived it perfectly for us.

That's why we're not just forgiven, but we're actually righteous in Jesus.

This week I was doing some research for my dissertation.

I'm at the toward the end of my doctorate process.

And so in that, I'm interviewing a whole bunch of senior pastors on contemplative pace and practice of pastors and church staffs and church and stuff like that.

It's kind of think a pastor likes to study.

So I'm interviewing a senior pastor from Naples, Florida, a big, prestigious, very impressive church.

Even when we got on the Zoom call, I'm like, that is an unbelievably impressive bookcase.

There's like mahogany, leather-bound books.

I was like, this is a very impressive Zoom call.

And it's an impressive church.

He's an impressive guy.

He was about 50 years old.

He was an achiever.

He is an achiever.

I mean, he has an engine in him that can get stuff done.

Some of you know I'm talking about.

You have that engine.

You wake up and the engine's already cranking, you're like, I'm ready to clear the plate.

Give me stuff to do, right?

And he can get stuff done.

And what he said is the only way that each semester five is being a pastor now, it's 50 years old, is he takes one week each semester and he disappears.

He goes to a monastery in California for seven to ten days twice a year because his normal life and his normal way of being is just so overloaded.

I'm like, that's so interesting.

That's so interesting that that's the way that he's figured out how to even how to process and deal with who he is.

So just at the end of the interview, I said, what would you as an achieving 50-year-old pastor say to your 30-year-old pressing, pushing, you know, performing self?

And he just sort of paused and he said, I would just tell him that he's in love before he achieves anything.

And as he said it, it's almost like he he heard it, like he heard himself say the thing.

And then he like closes his eyes again and he said, Oh, he said, that's still what I need to hear.

And then he said, Everything else changes from there.

That's what Paul's doing in Ephesians.

It's what Paul does over and over and over again.

If we can believe that we are already loved fully in Jesus, how does that free you and how does that change how you're kind to?

Each other, how does that change how I speak about you behind your back or how I speak to you in front of your face?

Well, if I'm set free from needing you to view me as important or me needing to push you down so I feel a little more important, if I'm free from all of that mess, imagine how I could be tender with you or kind toward you.

You remember that movie Inside Out?

You remember Riley, right?

That's the animated movie.

Some of you remember it?

Yeah.

Okay, so the emotions movies about the emotions.

Anyways, Riley, the girl, she um in the movie, she moves from uh Minnesota, where she loved hockey, she had her friends, and her mom and dad and her moved to San Francisco, and it's like the end of her world.

I think she's preteen, 12 or 13 years old, and it's the end of her world, and hockey's not working out, and she just wants to go home, and she has a horrible first day of school, and so she decides she is going to run, she's gonna run back to Minnesota.

She's gonna run away from home.

And so she packs her bag and she gets a bus ticket and she gets on the bus, she's gonna run home, and then she's on the bus and she realizes she can't do it.

She just can't do it.

So she ends up back home.

Meanwhile, the parents are in disarray.

Um, you know, where is their daughter?

You know, she's ran away.

Is she gonna come back?

Is she safe?

And so she comes back home and she apologizes.

And when she comes in the house, this picture of the scene, when she comes in the house, mom and dad and her, they they they embrace her and they just fall to the floor.

And her mom says this.

Her mom says, We love you no matter what.

That's the line.

We love you no matter what.

And it's her turning point in the movie.

It's it's Riley's turning point, is knowing she's loved in her mess, knowing she's loved in her process.

It's the same thing the pastor in Naples was saying that he needs to be told that he's loved.

Because if he knows that, everything else changes from there.

It's what Ephesians 4 is teaching us.

See, it's not just about new patterns or lists of how to live.

Those are great.

We're gonna live those out, but we live them out through who we are in Jesus.

It's about being loved in our darkness so that we'll know the light.

So we even want the light.

And we're gazing more on this Jesus as we say, show us how to live.

Show me how to live.

I want to live for you.

Oh, I failed.

Okay, I'm sorry.

Help me again.

Help me again.

I want to live for you.

I want to live like you.

Show me this new way of life, this better way of life.

And Jesus says to us, I love you as you are, not as you should be.

None of us are as we should be.

So I love you as you are, and I want to walk with you.

A few weeks ago, when I went on a retreat with a few Redeemer men, I was reading through the Valley of Vision prayer book, and this one particular few lines spoke to me that week.

Here it is.

I think it's my prayer for all of us this morning.

Revive a deep spirituality in my heart.

Let me live near to the great shepherd.

To hear his voice, to know its tones, to follow its call.

Heavenly Father, we come before you and confess when it comes to the condition of our heart, sensualities, when it comes to the condition of our heart of what we love and value, and when it comes to how we speak to each other, it is not always good.

And for that we're sorry.

Thank you that we are as forgiven as righteous as we've ever been.

Thank you that we are as righteous as your son Jesus.

Thank you that you love us and delight in us and you are endeared to us just as you are in your son Jesus because of Jesus.

Help us to rest all the more in that forgiveness and to discover this new way of life that this identity has.

Where we are set free for a whole new way to reason, to think, to process, to value, to love, and a whole new way of speaking to and about each other.

Give us more grace for each other, more truth, more kindness, and more tenderness.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.