Mature in Christ (Ephesians 4:24-32)

Ephesians chapter 4, we'll start reading in verse 24.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

And to put on the new self.

This is the new creation that we are in Christ, the one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

Now our passage today is in regard to that.

Look at verse 25.

Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another.

Be angry and do not sin.

Don't let the sun go down on your anger, and don't give the devil an opportunity.

Let the thief no longer steal.

Instead he is to do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something to share with anyone in need.

No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need.

So that it gives grace to those who hear, and don't grieve God's Holy Spirit.

You were sealed by him for the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness, anger, and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you, along with all malice, and be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for your word.

We thank you for this passage that's here before us.

Lord, as we are here to allow you to mold us and to shape us and to make us more like Jesus, we pray that you would do exactly that.

That we would come before you in all humility, just allowing you to examine us from head to toe and allowing you to make those changes in us that you so desire to make.

So help us with all humility to come before you and just ask you, Lord, what is it that you want to do in me through your word here this morning?

And then allow that Holy Spirit, or allow the Holy Spirit to do that in and through us, we pray.

Have your way in our hearts.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So if you remember, last week was instruction on putting off the old man and putting on the new.

You know, we talked about Paul painting this before and after picture.

We talked about home renovation shows and how, you know, we can look at it kind of through that lens.

He painted a bleak picture last week in our passage of what we were like before coming to Christ.

You know, living in the futility of our own thoughts with hard and calloused hearts towards the things of the Lord.

And then talked about the work that God desires to do in us to make us more like Jesus while we are still on this earth.

A lot of it having to do with saturating our minds with truth.

You know, today things are going to get very practical in our passage.

And he tells us what the after picture should look like.

Should be in a keyword there, what things will look like as we mature and become more and more like Jesus.

You know, every one of us, this side of eternity, is going to fail, right?

You can say amen.

That's okay.

And we're gonna fail at all of the things that are to come today here at the end of chapter four.

But thank God for forgiveness.

Amen.

What we see in this passage, this is the goal.

This is what we will act more and more like as we mature in our faith and surrender to God's will on a deeper and deeper level as we mature in our faith.

Now, if I had to pick a few words today that sum up our passage, I think it would be words like self-control.

It'd be words like intentionality.

It would be phrases like think before you speak.

It would be phrases like think before you act.

And there are a lot of Proverbs that speak about these things and coincide with our passage today.

And so for you note takers, I have a lot of cross-references to Proverbs, so I'm just giving you a warning.

Be ready for that to write those down.

But I really can't stress enough, like I did last week, if we try to do any of these things we're talking about today, and we try to do those things on our own, under our own willpower, I think that we would find that we may win a few battles in the beginning.

We kind of white knuckle it and push through.

But we will all soon find out that we get tired of fighting.

We burn out, and then we give in.

You know, we have thoughts like, I just can't do it anymore.

I just give up.

I'm tired of fighting these battles, I can't do it.

But if we're dependent on Jesus to fight our battles through the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us, that's when we find lasting victory in these things that we're about to talk about.

That's when we'll find victory without burnout and without legalism as well.

Maturity looks like what we're gonna get to at the end of today, maturity looks like walking by the Spirit, walking by the Holy Spirit.

So that's kind of where we're going here today.

Now look at verse 25 with me.

Just the first part.

It says, Therefore, putting away lying.

This is instruction to put off, to put away, to lay aside lying.

Paul said in the previous passage, to put off the old man.

This is part of that old man that we need to put off on a daily basis.

You know, and I like to think of it as if it was clothing, you know, taking off and laying aside and putting in a drawer lying and then putting on Christ.

You know, the old man says, you know, just lie.

It'll be easier.

That person doesn't need the truth.

Or you'll hear thoughts from your flesh of, well, it's not really lying, you're just kind of stretching the truth just a little bit, and it goes on and on of all of the things that we will hear from our flesh trying to get us to lie.

The flesh, the old man that we're talking about, it's always about the easy path.

It's always about pleasing the flesh for the short term.

You know, if we're all honest, it's tempting to lie.

Because we want to avoid consequences until we get caught in that lie, and then the consequences are four times as bad as if you told the truth up front.

You know, I heard a long time ago, and it's so true, it's easier to tell the truth.

There's less to remember.

And it's very, very true.

Any of our younger people here, I'm I imagine, you know, for anybody my age or older, you've seen I Love Lucy.

But have the younger ones ever seen?

You know, we sometimes watch it with our kids.

As an adult now watching I Love Lucy, I can't help but think, if she would have just told the truth in the first five minutes of the show, her life would be so much easier.

But our flesh doesn't think like that, does it?

Our flesh wants the easy road and it wants the easy road right now.

So the Holy Spirit, through Paul, says here, just take off lying and put it away and don't ever open that drawer again.

Lying has no place in a Christian, it has no place in the body of Christ either.

But look at the second half of verse 25.

Instead, we should speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another.

This is from Zechariah 8, 16 that's being quoted here.

You know, in other places in Scripture, it says to speak the truth in love.

Other places in Scripture, it says to love your neighbor as yourself.

So as Christians, as we bring those things together, we don't ever have an excuse to lie.

Or to speak the truth in hate.

Those are two things that we are not ever supposed to do.

And some of us might be good at giving truth.

But is it done in love and is it done in grace as Scripture commands?

And on the other side of things, and maybe more a more important question for us, is how do we receive truth as believers, as Christians?

Proverbs 27:6 says the wounds of a friend are trustworthy.

Proverbs 27:6

True friends will speak to us with truth in love, filled with grace, but how do we receive it as believers?

You know, I want to challenge you.

The next time that a friend gives you a hard truth, and your first reaction is to get defensive or deny what they are saying is true, instead of defending yourself, I want to challenge you with this.

Just tell the person, I will pray about that, and I'm gonna take it to the Lord.

I'm gonna see what he has to say about this.

You know, I was challenged to do this years ago, and it has been some of the best advice that I've ever received.

Because if a true friend is willing to speak a hard truth to you, listen.

Because it's hard to speak a hard truth to a good friend, isn't it?

Now I've both done it and received it, and neither side of that is easy.

But when um when I've been on the receiving end and I've taken it before the Lord to ask him if it's true and if he wants to change something in me, I've found that my friends are usually right, or at least partially right.

Only a few times since I was challenged with this probably 15 years ago, only a few times has the Lord told me, you can ignore this, the person was wrong, they were speaking in their flesh.

It's only been a couple times in my in the last 15 years, I think.

And the thing is, even if a person is dead wrong and they think they're speaking truth to you, and they're not a friend, and they're not doing it in love filled with grace, there could still be a kernel of truth in whatever they're saying.

Taking it to the Lord is a humble way to allow him to search you and then to enact any change that he desires in your life.

Yeah, I found there's really no downside to asking the Lord if there is truth in what the person said.

Just coming before him saying, Lord, if there's any truth in what this person just told me, would you confirm it?

And then would you make that change in me?

And then Paul says, he goes on, verse 26, be angry.

Some of you wish it stops right there, don't you?

No.

Be angry and do not sin, it says, right?

Psalm 4.4 says, be angry and do not sin.

Reflect in your heart while on your bed and be silent.

We will be confronted with two types of anger in our life.

There's righteous anger, and that's when we see an injustice, you know, something like pedophilia or abuse or someone using the church for their own personal gain.

You know, when I think of righteous anger, I think of Jesus and the money changers and how he acted on it, but he did not sin.

You know, he sat and he made a whip first.

So his action was thought out, it was measured, it was controlled, it wasn't an outburst of anger that where he lost control.

He actually sat and he thought about it, and all of his action within that righteous anger was controlled.

And then we see God displays righteous anger all throughout scripture over injustice and over sin.

But the majority of the time that you and I are faced with anger, if we're honest, it's mostly unrighteous anger that we have to deal with.

You know, the best definition I've ever come across for unrighteous anger is the emotion we experience when we don't get what we think we deserve.

I just love that definition.

Best definition I've come across.

Because every time that I've experienced unrighteous anger, and then I kind of put it through the filter of this definition, it's never been wrong in my whole life.

You know, you can be angry and not sin at the same time.

We just need to make sure we don't sin.

And we need to make sure, even when it is righteous anger, that we don't sin.

Just like Jesus did when he was turning the tables with the money changers.

Continuing on with anger, uh look at the second part of 26.

It says, Don't let the sun go down on your anger, and don't give the devil an opportunity.

You know, the longer we allow unrighteous anger to fester, the more opportunity we give our flesh and the enemy to tempt us to sin.

This here it's saying, don't allow a day to pass while you are still angry.

You know, I found that simply reminding myself of what unrighteous anger is, according to that definition behind me, so often, just coming to that place of thinking about that will diffuse the anger.

You know, just thinking, oh, this is an emotion that I'm experiencing because I'm not getting what I think I deserve in this moment.

You know, I'm experiencing the emotion that I am because I'm selfish is really what it comes down to.

Because I don't think I'm getting what I deserve.

And then I've come to realize that really unrighteous anger is entitlement when it comes down to it.

And simply realizing that in the moment of what it is will so often diffuse the anger when we can finally recognize the source of where that anger's coming from.

And then what we should do next is once we identify that, is we can remind ourselves of what we do deserve as sinners.

We deserve death, hell.

We deserve the broken world that we live in.

And the only reason we no longer deserve those things is because of Jesus.

The only reason we no longer deserve those things is because of Jesus' unselfishness.

It's hard to hold on to anger when you take yourself through this process.

But we have to be willing to initiate that process and to allow the Holy Spirit to walk us through that process because our flesh is saying, don't go through that process.

You're angry, and you have a right to be angry, and you need to stay right there in that anger as long as you can.

But that's not what the Holy Spirit wants to do as it's battling, as he's battling our flesh.

Says here to not let the sun go down on your anger.

You know, I think I like to think about it like this the longer that you're in a pin with an angry bull, the more opportunity there is for you to get gored by his horns.

If you find yourself in the arena of anger, jump the fence and into the arms of Jesus.

The longer we're in that arena, the more there is uh more of a chance that there is for us to sin.

Now, Paul moves to another behavior that belongs to our old man here in verse 28.

Look at it with me.

Let the thief no longer steal.

Instead, he is to do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something to share with anyone in need.

Now it's simple.

Work for everything you have unless it's freely given to you.

So don't steal anything.

From five-finger discounts to lying to the IRS.

Don't steal anything.

And this phrase that we see here, where it says do honest work, it means to labor to the point of weariness.

This is talking about hard work.

To the point that you're not only earning enough to bless yourself, but you're earning enough to bless others by the fruit of your labor.

You know, when I was going through my uh biblical counseling courses years ago, we had this one section on depression.

And we had a book that was required reading.

It's an amazing book.

But the author said, and I'll never forget it, he said he wouldn't even expect good mental health from someone that wasn't doing some sort of productive work six days a week and then resting on the seventh.

He wouldn't even expect them to have good mental health because God created us to be workers and creators.

And his point was not a nine to five job five days a week, but doing some sort of productive work six days a week.

That's how God created us.

Because it helps us, his point was, it helps us not dwelling on things too long.

Helps us to not harbor anger because we're too busy doing other things, helps us from not overthinking fear and worry in our own life because we're being productive, we're thinking about others, we're doing productive things.

And it allows us to focus our time and attention, you know, on things that are not about us.

And if you're thinking right now, well, Chris, what about shut-ins?

What about those that are physically unable to work with their hands?

They can be laboring in the productive work of prayer.

We can all be productive in labor for God's kingdom in some capacity, and I really honestly believe that.

We're not talking nine to five jobs.

We're talking about being productive for God's kingdom, being productive for the people around us, for our neighbors, whatever it might be.

So Paul encourages right here hard work, so much so that you have something to share with others in need who might not be able to earn their own food through the laboring of our hands.

So Paul's instruction work hard, remain others focused right here.

Now, Paul warns again about another thing a mature Christian should not participate in.

Look at verse 29.

No foul language should come from your mouth.

Some other translations right here will say corrupt or abusive or unwholesome language.

And foul right here, it means rotten, putrefied, corrupted by one and no longer fit for use, worn out, of poor quality, bad, unfit for use, worthless.

So think about something that is rotting.

If something's rotting, it has no life in it, right?

Or maybe there is life, but part of it's dead or diseased or dying.

As I was thinking about this, I was thinking like blossom end rot on tomatoes, or fire blight on fruit trees, or like gangrene on the body.

We are to avoid any language that brings harm, not only directly to a person, but through gossip as well.

There is so much power in our tongue.

We can bring life or we can bring death, scripture tells us through our tongue.

Proverbs 18, 21.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Again, think before you speak, and when you do speak, make sure it's truth, spoken in love, with all the grace that the Lord can give you in that time.

Speak life to one another.

And instead of foul language, look at the next part of 29.

But only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear.

These are words right here that bring life.

Proverbs 16, 24.

Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the taste, and health to the body.

Proverbs 12, 18.

There is one who speaks rashly, like a piercing sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Our words have so much power.

So I just want to encourage all of us, speak encouraging words.

Speak truth to one another, even hard truths.

Pair it with grace and build up even in the hard truths.

Look at the end of 29 again.

Good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear.

That's how we as mature Christians should be speaking.

Now look at verse 30.

And don't grieve, some translations say bring sorrow.

To God's Holy Spirit.

You are sealed by him for the day of redemption.

Scripture tells us we can resist the Holy Spirit, tells us we can quench the Holy Spirit.

But here are the words grieve, as Paul is writing to this Christian church in Ephesus.

And there are so many questions about what it means to grieve the Holy Spirit.

But if we just simply keep this in context, which we absolutely should, it's everything that Paul has mentioned in chapter four so far.

These are things that grieve the Holy Spirit, like not walking worthy of the calling we have received, not walking in unity, not growing in maturity, being tossed around.

These are all the things from chapter 4.

Being tossed around by every wind of doctrine.

Living as the Gentiles of that day, being sexually immoral, living for our old self.

And then just the things that we've covered here today.

Lying, anger leading to sin, stealing instead of working, speaking with foul language.

Basically, the spirit is grieved, is saddened really, when we act the opposite of what he would like to do through us.

You know, like I keep saying, Holy Spirit never forces himself on us, but we do play a part in allowing him to move in us and through us.

You know, we're so blessed with him living in us at salvation.

We are sealed, as it says right here, by him, claimed as God's own.

We become God's temple when we come to Christ.

And when we choose to act in our flesh, instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to move through us, that grieves him.

When we claim to be Christians and a representative of Jesus, but then we exemplify the world around us, or we exemplify our own flesh in us, that makes us a horrible example of who God is.

A horrible representation of Jesus to the world and to the church body as well.

That is what grieves the Holy Spirit.

You know, when we from up here, when we talk about walking by the Spirit, or we pray about it, or we teach about walking by the Spirit, that's what we're talking about.

Allowing Him to move through us, to accomplish His will through us so that when the world and other Christians see us, they see Jesus.

Not somebody with a Christian bumper sticker that's, you know, in traffic and not acting like a Christian.

That is grieving the Holy Spirit.

But even when we do grieve the Holy Spirit, there's still forgiveness.

That is not an unpardonable sin grieving the Holy Spirit.

There's still forgiveness.

Praise the Lord.

Now, Paul has some more things that grieve the Holy Spirit in verse 31.

He says, Let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you, along with all malice.

These are all things that we need to constantly surrender to the Lord.

He's speaking to a church and he's telling them what should not exist in the church body.

These are not emotions and outward expressions that can exist in a healthy church.

The new man that we're instructed to put on in the previous passage should have the ability to control these emotions and outbursts through the strength of the Holy Spirit.

These actions in verse 31 do not represent Jesus and unchecked grieve the Holy Spirit.

Now, instead of those things in verse 31, this is how we are called to act.

This is what it looks like to walk by the Holy Spirit.

Look at verse 32.

And be.

The verb tense here is really be ye becoming.

It's speaking of a process.

It says, and be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.

If we're doing verse 32, we cannot be doing verse 31, can we?

I'm going to pause for a second so you can look at those two verses and ask yourself that own that question as well.

If we're doing 32, can we also be doing 31?

Take a look at it.

I'm going to give you a second.

Verse 32 here is a picture of maturity.

Of what it looks like when we're surrendered to God, when we're abiding in Christ, when we're walking by the Spirit.

We're becoming sanctified.

Speaking of that process.

We're not earning our salvation.

We can't confuse that.

But becoming more like Jesus after we are saved.

After we are already forgiven by Jesus.

You know, if we can't extend, if you think about it, if we can't extend forgiveness to each other like Christ has done for us, that's the definition of hypocrisy.

To accept that from Jesus and then to not extend it to the people that are sending around us.

You know, Jesus told the parable, if you remember, of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18, where there's a king and he forgave a huge debt of one of his servants, about 20 years' wages back then.

And then that servant went out and demanded of one of his debtors to pay a debt back.

And it was minuscule compared to what he was just forgiven.

And the debtor begged for mercy from this first guy, and he begged for forgiveness, and the first guy had him thrown in prison.

Then the king found out what this first guy had done and had him thrown in prison too, because he did not extend the same mercy and forgiveness that he had been extended.

You see, we can't freely receive verse 32 from Jesus and then also not extend it to others.

We can't say, thank you, Jesus, for your kindness and your compassion and your forgiveness that you so freely extend to me, and then turn around and be verse 31 to everybody else in our life.

Another thing that grieves the Holy Spirit.

This is the work God desires to do in us.

This is the process of sanctification, of becoming more like Jesus that we talk about all the time.

You know, in the very next verse that we're going to be covering next week, Paul's going to flat out say, be imitators of Christ.

That's what all of this can be summed up down to.

All the things that we talked about that God desires us to be, it comes down to imitating Christ.

Maturing as a Christian looks like laying down the old man and its desires and putting on the new man, which is found in Jesus Christ.

So that we look like him, so that we act like him.

So when people see us, they see Christ in us.

They see the example of Christ that we are living.

And as we're talking so much about this, the last thing that I want to happen today is for anybody to leave here and think, I just need to try harder to look like Jesus.

It's not going to work.

Maturity and Christ-likeness, it comes from surrendering to God's will.

It comes from abiding closely in Christ.

It comes from walking by the Spirit.

Please pray with me.

Lord, through the power of your Holy Spirit, will you strengthen us and equip us to do these things?

We recognize that we cannot do these things on our own, and it's not going to come from us trying harder, but by walking by your spirit, being sensitive to your spirit in us, and the direction and the counsel that He gives us.

Realizing that we can do nothing of worth, nothing good on our own, but only that which is done through us by abiding deeper in Jesus.

And Lord, help us to become more surrendered to your will more and more each day.

Just desiring what you desire for us.

Will you implant your desires into our heart and make them match with you of what you desire?

Lord, show us how to do this.

And I pray that we wouldn't leave here and just try harder, but we would surrender more deeply to the things that you have for us.

That we would allow you to move through us, that we would have that desire to do these things, the desire to initiate these things, and to allow your spirit to move us in these ways.

So would you strengthen us, we pray.

And we need you so deeply.

Help our dependence to grow on you, to grow in you.

Lord, and help us to do these things that we cannot do on our own, we pray.

We want to daily take off that old man, lay it aside, put it away, and put on the new man, the new creation that's found in Jesus Christ.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.