What Does The Change Look Like?

Good morning, Good News Church. It's good to see you guys. My name is Mario.

I'm one of the pastors here. And today we are finishing up our series called Changed.

It's a series on spiritual growth. We've been in it for five weeks now.

So today is part six, what does change look like?

So we are going to conclude our series. If you haven't been here before,

I can't say everything that we've said already in this series to prepare you

for this concluding message.

But I will just tell you a little bit about what we've covered so far.

On the very first week of the series, I drew a drawing on the smart board and

it looks sort of like this.

So we drew this. This is a timeline of someone's life from their birth all the way to their death.

And so as we're trying to describe the Christian life, particularly change in

the Christian life, we said that there were three major changes that take place in the Christian life.

Conversion, spiritual growth, and glorification.

Conversion being the change from non-Christian to Christian.

Spiritual growth being the change from baby Christian to mature Christian.

And glorification being the change from mortal to immortal at the return of Jesus Christ.

And we said that this series is going to primarily be about this middle section

right here, the change that happens over time after we become a Christian,

but before Jesus comes back, years and years of spiritual growth,

sometimes it's referred to as sanctification.

So that's what we talked about the first week, that we're going to focus on this.

And then when we talked about how are we changed in this process.

We covered that in weeks two, three, four, and five of this series.

We said there were multiple correct answers to how does this change happen.

So we've covered God's Word's role in changing us. We've covered the Holy Spirit's role in changing us.

We've covered our role in changing us. Last week, we covered other believers' role in changing us.

And so today, we're doing a different question.

Like, I feel like the question, how does the change happen, has been sufficiently answered.

So now I want to ask the question and then answer, what does this change look like?

Not how does it happen, but what does it look like if someone is changed?

So I believe the answer to that question is that if there's spiritual growth

or sanctification happening in your life, like post-conversion,

it involves growth or it involves progress in three areas, okay?

And there's other ways you could say this, I'm sure.

These are just categorized, like categories that I made up in order to categorize things.

I think if we were just to look at the Bible and go, what are the things that

change once you become a Christian?

Like after conversion, what is it that should be different?

Well, I think if we looked all over the Bible, we could come up with like 50

or 100 different answers to that.

But if we were trying to simplify it and get all of the answers to be in some

categories, I think all of them would fall into these three areas.

So you progress in these three areas. The first one is knowledge of God,

okay? Or you could call it right thinking.

That someone becomes a believer in Jesus Christ and then over time,

they increase what they understand about God, what they understand about God's word.

They understand like proper doctrine and right thinkings and then behavior comes

from like thinking God's thoughts after him, okay? The second category is abstaining from sin.

This is one that kind of comes to my mind right away when I think about the

process of spiritual growth, that we are someone who has been saved from our sins and then as we grow,

we wanna be someone who is saved even from the power of our sins,

that we wouldn't keep committing them anymore, that after we are converted,

we want to be people who like choose not to sin.

And so we want to abstain from sin. As in my spiritual growth or in my sanctification,

it's important that I, like, if you're looking at that process,

I think it's important for the Christian to be able to say, like, I sin less than I used to.

Like, I am moving away. I'm growing. I am progressing away from unrighteousness.

I want to have less unrighteousness in my life, and that's what I see.

And then the third category is ministry, participating in God's mission,

that what it is that God has for us to do.

It seems to me that over time in our Christian life, there are all sorts of

behaviors that the Bible commands that would fall under this category,

that as we follow Jesus, there should be some kind of increase,

it seems to me, in either the quantity and or the quality of your ministry,

you participating in God's mission and doing what he's called you to do.

These three categories, like I said, I put this up here because I think that

most every single verse in the Bible that you're going to look at that talks

about what it is that you are supposed to do or what it is that you are supposed

to increase in over the course of your Christian life after conversion,

I think pretty much every verse that I could think of falls under one of these categories.

So I believe all of these speak to like just what the Bible reveals to us about

our Christian life. So for instance, knowledge of God.

In the book of 2 Peter, Peter writes his readers a letter, and at the very,

very end, the last paragraph of the book of 2 Peter, he says to them,

grow in the knowledge of Jesus, our Lord and Savior, okay?

Grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So this is what I was thinking.

If Peter tells these Christians...

To grow in the knowledge of Jesus. It must be because it's possible to like

grow in your knowledge of Jesus, right?

That this is something that can increase over the course of our spiritual life.

Another example of probably knowledge of God or right thinking would be early

in this series, we looked at Romans chapter 12, verse two.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

Do you remember where it says that to be transformed?

And you remember what it says, like how you are transformed?

Do you remember this from several sermons ago to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, right?

So we know that we want our mind to be renewed. We want to be thinking the right

kind of thoughts that come from God. We want to grow in our knowledge of God. But that's not it.

I also think about abstaining from sin. There are a lot of verses that talk

about that and even tie it to our sanctification.

The verses that I thought of when I thought about this were the ones that we

looked at on the week where we talked about our role in sanctification.

In our role in sanctification, our role in, you know, like spiritual growth,

what is it that we're supposed to do as far as changing ourselves?

We looked at 2 Corinthians chapter 7, which says that we are to cleanse ourselves

2 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

from every impurity, completing our sanctification.

So our sanctification is like God sets us apart as holy.

There is some role we play in completing our sanctification.

And what they said is the way, what you're supposed to do is you're supposed

to cleanse yourself from every impurity.

In that sermon, we talked about the fact that that doesn't mean like cleanse

yourself is not like forgive yourself, like what Jesus did on the cross.

It is like, turn away from unrighteousness and toward that which is pure.

2 Timothy, we looked at the same sermon, and it also has a verse like that.

It says that anybody who purifies himself from anything dishonorable will be useful to the master.

We are supposed to purify ourselves from that which is dishonorable.

Early on, like in the same chapter, it talked about how these Christians were

to turn away from unrighteousness.

So we see that that is what we are supposed to do. After conversion,

I'm to turn away from unrighteousness. But that's not all.

There's also ministry. And it seems to me there are all sorts of Bible verses

that talk about us becoming believers and then doing the works that God has

for us, accomplishing the will of God in our life.

So like I said, it seems to me, there's a lot of ways you can say,

what does it look like for you to be changed by God? What does spiritual growth look like?

But I think pretty much all of the verses I can think of, of what the Bible

says about after you are converted, I think everything falls into these three categories.

So I give them to you today and I bring them up for a couple of reasons.

One reason is when we look at our text this morning, which the text that we're

going to learn today is Ephesians chapter four, starting in verse 11 and going

to the end of the chapter, If you have your Bible with you, you can even turn there now.

Ephesians chapter 4, 11 to the end of the chapter. And as I teach this text

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

and as I read through this chapter, we're going to look at a lot of verses.

And the reason I'm showing you this first is I'm hoping that once we get to

our text this morning, you will start to notice...

These categories in the chapter I'm gonna read to you because I definitely noticed it.

When I was studying it this week and like reading through it,

I just had little hash marks that I had on a piece of paper and I wrote it down.

It seems to me these three things come up at least five times each in the chapter

that I'm about to read to you.

The other reason I bring it up is in my experience, sometimes Christians use these categories.

And when I say in my experience, I don't have a Bible verse for this.

I'm just sharing to you, like from what I have observed,

it seems to me Christians often use these categories as a way to ascertain the

spiritual maturity of someone, but they make a mistake, seems to me,

they make a mistake by evaluating spiritual maturity by just using one of these categories.

Have you ever seen this? Yes. So there comes a point where you're trying to

decide if someone is spiritually mature for some sort of reason.

Maybe you're trying to pick who's going to be the pastor of the church.

Maybe you're trying to decide who the next elder is gonna be.

Maybe you're trying to figure out who's gonna teach the Sunday school classes

or who's gonna be a youth leader, who should lead this community group.

And so someone asks, well, is that person a mature believer?

And it seems to me there are some groups or some like tribes,

whatever you wanna call them, some people groups within Christianity that this

is the one thing they use to answer that question, right?

So you go, I was thinking about that person being a youth leader, what do you think?

Are they mature Christian? And the answer back will be like, yes, they know so much.

That guy can, he can define justification. He can define sanctification.

He can define glorification.

He knows what the book of Ezekiel is about.

Like I didn't know anybody that knew what the book of Ezekiel is about.

That guy knows what the book, you say, what's Ezekiel about?

He has an answer, right? This guy knows a lot of stuff.

But have you ever met someone that fits that description and they're a jerk?

Have you? Okay, I'm not the only one that met this guy, right?

Yeah, and so you're like, really? Are they spiritually mature?

Like, they have a lot of knowledge.

They have right doctrine, right? But I kind of want to run away from them when I see them.

And so it seems to me there's a point at which we go, yeah, I don't know that

that's spiritual maturity just because they have right doctrine.

Okay, but then the second category comes up sometimes. I can imagine some,

like, tribes within Christianity, they go, is that person spiritually mature?

Oh, yes, she is. How do you know?

Well, there's a long list of stuff she won't do, okay? I mean,

there's just so much stuff she doesn't.

You do it, and she's like, oh, she frowns and looks at it and goes, we're not gonna do that.

That's bad. And the longer she's been a Christian, the longer the list of things

she won't do, right? And so that's how we know.

Like, she is a mature Christian, and it's not that it's bad.

Of course, it's great to abstain from sin. I think there should be a long list of stuff we don't do.

But there's got to, the Christian life has to be more than a gist about what we avoid, right?

If the only thing you know is just the list of things you're supposed to avoid

and you're not doing anything other than avoiding things, isn't there something

we're missing in our spiritual growth?

And then there are some people who this is the way they gauge it, okay?

Without even thinking of these two categories, it's just like,

whoa, look at what that person is accomplishing for God, right?

Look at this person. They are doing so much ministry.

This person, they help the poor, and they care for the oppressed,

and they are looking out for kids in foster care system, right?

And they're standing up for the vulnerable people, right?

And they're working with all these different nonprofit organizations and doing

all these things to make Marion County a better place, right?

And have you ever seen that?

And then that person's like private personal life is a sinful mess,

but they're getting a lot done.

Have you ever met someone that they are a very good like evangelist?

They're able to speak God's word and there's people that come to know Jesus,

but like they also treat their family like dirt.

And so it seems to me, it's gotta be all of these things.

If we're gonna try to say like, well, what is it? What's the change look like? What are we looking for?

What is it that's supposed to be different about us over time after we're converted,

it seems to me that it's got to be all three of these things together.

So with all that in mind, let's go to our text, Ephesians chapter four,

and we'll hopefully notice all of these things in there as we see this passage.

So Ephesians chapter four, I'm about to start reading in just a little bit from

verse 11, but just to give you some background, um.

Ephesians is a book that's written

by the Apostle Paul. He's writing it to these Christians in Ephesus.

And at this point of the letter that I'm about to read to you is,

he's telling the Ephesian Christians how to like operate as a church,

how they're supposed to interact with one another and be the church they're supposed to be.

And then he talks about them as individuals, how they are to live now that they are followers of Jesus.

Like that's the topic of this chapter I'm about to read to you.

Okay. So Ephesians chapter four, starting in verse 11, it goes like this.

And he personally gave some to be apostles,

some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers for the training

of the saints in the work of ministry to build up the body of Christ.

I have more to read, but let's go ahead and stop there because there's already

a lot in there. Okay. So it says, and he personally gave. The he there is, anybody want to guess?

Okay, it's Jesus. In fact, in church, you can almost always just go,

Jesus, you'll be right like a lot of the time.

Okay, so if you'd read the verses that come just before this verse,

you would see Jesus is the correct answer here, okay?

The he is a pronoun referring to Jesus earlier on.

Okay, so he, Jesus, personally gave some to be, and then he lists apostles,

prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.

Jesus, according to this verse, Jesus gives gifts to his church.

And in this particular verse, the gifts that he gives to his church are church leaders, okay?

And he gifts the church leaders to the church for a reason. It says it in verse 12.

He gifts them to the church for the training of the saints in the work of ministry,

okay? This is very important.

So the reason that the church leaders are given to the church by Jesus is so

that the saints will be trained.

Now, this is difficult for if you grew up in a different, like a different tradition.

A lot of you are kind of programmed to think that the word saints is like a dead person, okay?

And they were very holy, but it was a long time ago. And now they are like a

statue out in the graveyard. And that's what a saint is.

And that is not the way the word saint is being used in this passage.

Clearly, if the pastors and teachers are training them, then they must still be what?

Alive. That's correct. So saints is just the word that Paul uses to mean Christians.

Like there was actually a long time where the name Christian wasn't really like

invented and wasn't used very widely.

This was like one of the first words they used. Saint means like the called

out ones or the holy ones, the people that believe in Jesus and have been forgiven of their sins.

They're the saints. So he says, the church has given leaders so that the Christians,

the saints, would be trained in the work of ministry, which is our first hint

that this box is one of the things that's supposed to happen in our spiritual growth.

The reason that God gives pastors and teachers and evangelists and prophets,

et cetera, is so that the people of God would be trained.

This seems to be, this is a reference to some sort of progress or growth, right?

If you're trained, you're going from something to some other better thing, right?

So the goal of these teachers when they're doing these things with the saints,

the Christians, is that they would be better trained or grow or progress in ministry, right?

That they would do works for the training of the saints in the work of ministry

to build up the body of Christ. Next verse.

Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's son,

growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ's fullness.

Okay? So this is helpful. We see here, we got a reference to that we are supposed

to grow into the knowledge of God's son. Do you see that?

So the reason that the church leaders are teaching their stuff is so the people

will do ministry, but the goal of that is so that the church itself would have

unity in the faith and knowledge of God's Son.

Growing into a mature man. So we picked the right Bible verse.

This is a verse about like Christian maturity, like as a church,

how does this church mature and grow?

Growing into a mature man with a stature. So we want to be people who are ready

for ministry. We have this knowledge of God's son.

Growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ's fullness.

The standard for our growth that we are like what we want to progress into or

grow into is Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the standard. More on that later. Let's keep going. Verse 14.

Then, so this is after this training has happened and the work of ministry has

happened and the knowledge of God's son is in unity of faith is happening among us.

Then we will no longer be little children tossed by the waves and blown around

by every wind of teaching by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.

So what is the goal here for the church? You can see it's saying,

well, we want to be people who have a correct knowledge of God.

How do you know? Well, because we wanna be people who are not tossed around

by every wind of teaching.

Like when someone says something false, we wanna be like, oh,

okay, that's what he just, this is the most recent thing I said,

this must be true. Then someone else says something, oh, well, that's more recent.

All right, and then I'm good, but this is true. Like instead,

we should be people who know what it is that God has said.

In fact, I think that's why it says, then we will no longer be children,

right? This is about maturation, isn't it, this passage?

He's saying, at first, we're children, and children are the people who are like,

Well, they don't know. And he said, but we wanna no longer be children.

Well, what do you have to do to no longer be a child?

Jesus is not the answer, so it's a little bit harder. But what do you have to

do if you want to no longer be a child? Yeah, you have to grow, right?

So if we're going to be no longer children, we're going to be people who have

the right thinking, the right knowledge of God, and we're not blown away by

every false doctrine. Verse 15.

But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ.

From him the whole body, fitted and knit together, by every supporting ligament,

promotes the growth of the body, for building up itself in love by the proper

working of each individual part.

The concept that's in this verse reminds me a lot of last week's sermon.

Does it remind you of that?

Okay, like when you see each person doing their part, like the body of Christ

is like a body with each person in it being a body part, each body part doing

their part so that the whole body grows.

So I want you to notice in this passage, for a body to grow and for like the

people of God to be like a working, growing body, what has to happen according to the verse,

is not simply that a pastor trains the people in ministry.

It doesn't say the pastor trains the people in ministry and then the body is built up.

It's the pastor trains the people in ministry and then the people minister to

one another and then the body is built up. Do you see that?

Like one guy can't do it. One guy could say, this is what we do.

Then everybody does what they do and then the body is built up. It takes everybody.

Okay, so, so far in Ephesians chapter four, 11 through, what have we got to so far? 16.

We've seen quite a bit of ministry participating in God's mission being referred to.

We've seen several verses that talk about the knowledge of God and right thinking,

okay? But so far, no abstaining from sin.

Mario, are you sure that abstaining from sin is something we've got to do?

I'm 100% sure. Here it comes.

Verse 17, therefore, right? In light of what we just said, Therefore,

I say this and testify in the Lord.

You should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk in the futility of their thoughts.

Okay? This verse is very helpful. First of all, we have in the futility of their

thoughts, which would be a reference to this, right?

He's saying prior to conversion, when someone does not know God,

they don't have the right knowledge of God, right? They don't have right thinking.

They are in the futility of their thoughts. They're not going to do what God's

called them to do because they're not thinking the right thing.

So you're not supposed to be like that.

But then before he says in the

futility of their thoughts, he uses this phrase that is very important.

It might not be obvious to you what it means, but he says, you should no longer

walk as the Gentiles walk.

For some of you, if you're used to reading the Bible, you go,

I know exactly what that means. For others of you, you might go like, what is that?

It's a little bit difficult to understand because there are two words in that

verse that are not used literally.

At least they're not used the way we usually use them. The way the word Gentiles

is used in this verse is not the way we use the word Gentiles.

And the way that the word walk is used in this verse is not literal. Okay.

So if you don't know a whole lot about the Bible, you could read this and go,

okay, I am no longer to walk as the Gentiles walk.

So I look at that guy, that guy's Korean. So he's a Gentile for sure. And he walks like this.

So I guess, I guess I shouldn't walk like that because he's a Gentile and I'm

supposed to walk with like the Gentiles walk. That is incorrect.

Okay. The word Gentile here is not really referring to ethnicity as the primary

thing it's trying to describe.

And the word walk is not being used to mean literal walking.

The word Gentiles here is being used to mean the people who do not know God yet, okay?

In this context, and you may not know this, but at this point,

like almost every Christian in the world was Jewish at this point, okay?

The gospel was revealed to the Jewish people first. The gospel happened in Israel.

Like if you don't know what the gospel is, the gospel, the good news of Jesus

Christ is that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and he rose again.

So the gospel happened in Israel.

Then the people who realized Jesus is the Lord and Savior who has forgiven us

of our sins and he is the Lord who we are to obey, they realize this message

is good and it needs to be spread to the whole world.

Now, if you're in Israel, what is the rest of the world? What are you gonna

call them? The Gentiles, right?

So all of the other nations, all of the other people groups that don't know

about God yet, we gotta make sure they know about God.

So this is very early on in that process. So when he says, don't walk as the

Gentiles walk, he's saying, don't be like the way unbelievers are,

the people who don't know Jesus yet.

That's what you are to avoid, right? And when he says walk, and this is just

real easy for you to know, the Bible does this a lot.

Often the Bible uses the word walk as a synonym for the word live, okay?

It's just a metaphor for live. Why are you supposed, so you should no longer

walk as the Gentiles walk means you should no longer live as the people who don't know Jesus lived.

So as Paul was writing this to the Ephesians, it's probably helpful for you to know this.

The Ephesians would have been primarily made up of Gentiles.

So he is saying to them, don't live the way you used to live before you knew

Jesus. There's a whole new way of life.

And so this would be, in my opinion, the first of many times in this chapter

where we are going to see that this is a command to abstain from sin, right?

Don't walk as the Gentiles walk might not obviously look like abstain from sin,

but that's what he's saying.

Now, as the passage goes on, he's going to get real specific.

He's going to start naming specific sins. But at this point,

he's just being very general and saying, don't live like the people who don't know God.

Verse 18, they are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of

God because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts.

They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice

of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.

He's saying the people who don't know God yet, they have an ignorance and it

is leading to a behavior that they're not supposed to do that you need to abstain from.

Verse 20, but that is not how you learned about the Messiah.

Assuming you heard about him and were taught by him because the truth is in Jesus.

In those verses, you see a lot of this being referred to, right?

Just when you look at the words, how you learned about the Messiah,

assuming you heard about him and were taught by him because the truth is in Jesus.

You took off your former way of life, the old self, that is corrupted by deceitful desires.

You are being renewed in the spirit of your minds.

You put on the new self, the one created

according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

So if we're trying to find passages about the change that happens in the Christian

life, we're definitely on the right chapter, right?

You took off your former way of life. You are being renewed. You put on the new self.

Now, it seems to me, I assume it's in this passage, and there are other passages

that are like this, when the Bible says,

talks about the change that happens in our life, and it talks about it in the past tense.

It seems to me a lot of times what the author is referring to is conversion.

Like when they say things like, you took off your former life,

it seems to me that at that chart that we showed at the very beginning of the

service, a lot of that seems to me to be a reference to conversion.

This is a thing that you did at one point.

But when the New Testament talks about things in the present tense,

this is what you are to be doing now, then it's not talking about conversion

anymore, right? It's talking about spiritual growth.

It's talking about post-conversion, how you are to now live.

So then he gets real specific now, verse 25.

Since you put away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor.

It's interesting, in this particular verse, he doesn't even tell them not to

lie. Like, he just assumes, like, we are the people who don't lie, right?

He says, since you put away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor.

Like, so it's just a given, we're going to abstain from lying,

right? but we need to also like speak the truth that God has given to us.

Why? Because we are members of one another, right? Which he's referring to back

in, like we're each doing our part.

Be angry and do not sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't give

the devil an opportunity.

So we now see, and this is gonna keep happening as I keep reading,

he's going to be listing sins and he tells them to abstain from them, right?

Well, don't lie. You're not supposed to stay angry, right? Right?

Verse 28, the thief must no longer steal.

Instead, he must do honest work with his own hands so that he has something

to share with anyone in need.

No foul language is to come from your mouth, but only what is good for building

up someone in need so that it gives grace to those who hear.

Right? So he's listening to things like no longer do this, instead do this,

no longer do this, instead do this.

Verse 30, and don't grieve God's Holy Spirit. You were sealed by him for the day of redemption.

All bitterness, anger, wrath, shouting, and slander must be removed from you.

Along with all malice, be kind and compassionate to one another,

forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.

So we see lots of abstaining from sin in these verses, lots of a call to do God's will.

And so I would say to you as I read through this chapter, I think it's fair

to say this, if we're trying to answer the question, what does the change look

like? What does spiritual growth look like?

That's what it looks like. It looks like people who are trained by church leader

in order to do God's work, in order to do ministry.

These are people who are thinking rightly about God. They are on the same page

when it comes to the knowledge of God's son.

So they are no longer walking as the Gentiles walk.

That's what the change looks like.

So if we were to get very specific. Let me go ahead and illustrate what I think

this looks like in a particular life of one kind of person that has one particular kind of sin.

So I'm going to go back to one of the verses in the chapter that I didn't cover

a whole lot. So I want to go back and look at chapter 4, verse 28.

And I'm going to use this verse just as an illustration. If we're asking the

question, what does change look like? Okay, we know what it looks like generally speaking.

It looks like this increasing knowledge of God, this abstention from sin,

and this ministry, I'm doing what God's will is.

But what does it look like specifically in someone's life? So this is what I'm

about to show you is what spiritual growth looks like in the life of a former thief.

So here's the verse, Ephesians 4, 28. It says, the thief must no longer steal.

Instead, he must do honest work with his own hands so that he has something

to share with anyone in need.

This is a fantastic verse, more fantastic than you know, I think.

Okay, first of all, I want to show you how I see these things in the verse.

Knowledge of God, I think, is something that is just assumed in the verse.

It does not actually say it. There's nothing in this verse that talks about

the person growing in the knowledge of God.

I think there is an assumption that there has already been knowledge of God

and right thinking prior to the beginning of the verse.

So when it says, the thief should no longer steal, what does he mean by thief?

I think he means a thief who has come to the knowledge of God.

He is not writing, when he says the thief must no longer steal,

Paul is not talking to every thief in the whole town of Ephesus.

He didn't write this letter to every thief in the whole town of Ephesus.

He wrote it to a particular congregation, people that believed in Jesus.

So just before he says the thief must no longer steal, he had said,

like what he said to his readers was, you took off your former way of life,

right? You put on the new self.

So he's not just talking to random thieves. He's talking to the person who was

a thief and now became a Christian.

Are you following that? So this is a Christian now, Christian thief, all right?

Which if he's a Christian, he's not supposed to stay in that category, right?

So we've got this person who formerly, like their habits, what they're used

to is, if I don't have enough stuff, I take it from someone else.

So now this person has come to know Jesus. So I'm just assuming that there is

a certain amount of knowledge of God that's already taken place,

and that's why he's giving the command.

When he says the thief should no longer steal. He is speaking about a thief

who at the very, very least knows that Jesus is Lord.

And I'm supposed to obey him. He died on the cross. He's the savior of the world.

He's the Lord of the world. And he says, don't steal.

So I got to do something in reaction to don't steal. Okay. So I think the knowledge

is already there. Now, what does the verse actually say though?

The verse actually says this, doesn't it?

It says, the thief must no longer steal. This is very simple. So you're a Christian.

You were a thief. You're taking stuff. Now you're a Christian.

What do you do? Step one, stop taking stuff from people, right?

Abstain from the sin of stealing.

But what has always fascinated me with this verse is he doesn't end there.

I think a lot of us think we're supposed to know things about God.

And then we look at the bad stuff in our life and I go, all right,

I'm gonna stop doing that. And that's the Christian life.

But the verse doesn't end at stop doing that, does it?

Paul could have said the thief should no longer steal and then moved on to another sin. He does not.

He says the thief should no longer steal. And then he says, instead,

he must do honest work with his own hands.

He doesn't just say, okay, so we have this knowledge of God and you've taken

off the old self, so now stop stealing.

He says, stop stealing and get a job, bro, right?

Isn't that what he's saying? He says, you need to go out there and get a job.

Stop taking from people and get a job, right? You need to do what it is that God's called you to do.

But he doesn't stop even there, does he?

He could have said, the thief must no longer steal. Instead,

he must do honest work with his own hands, period.

Move on to the next sin. He doesn't. He says, the thief must no longer steal.

Instead, he must do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something

to share with anyone in need.

He's supposed to not just stop stealing. He's supposed to not just earn enough

money for himself to survive.

He's supposed to earn more than he needs in order to survive so he can share

the extra with people who don't have enough.

Right? Do you see this? It's not just abstaining from sin. It's all the way

to ministry. It's not just the thief needs to no longer steal.

The thief needs to no longer steal and care for the poor.

So sanctification in the life of a thief is not that the thief just goes from

a thief to a Christian thief.

Sanctification in the life of a thief is not that a thief goes from,

I'm stealing, now I stop stealing, right?

Spiritual growth in the life of a former thief is to get to know Jesus and then

go from taker all the way to giver. Do you see that?

That's the pattern. That's what spiritual growth looks like in the life of,

and I just picked that particular sin. But that's what it is with all of them.

I mean, it seems to me it is. Look at the very next verse. It's the same thing

happens again in the next verse. Look at verse 29.

No foul language is to come from your mouth, right?

But he doesn't stop there. He could have just said that and moved on. But what does he say?

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

Spiritual growth in the life of a verbal abuser means to go all the way from destroyer to builder.

Do you see that?

This is good. All right, let me read you two more verses that serve as,

I think, sort of a bit of a summary of what we just learned.

These are the next two verses after what I was reading to you.

So I read to the end of the chapter, and so I'm gonna just read the next two

verses of the next chapter, but this might be helpful for you to know, okay?

In my Bible, there's a chapter heading that shows that we now moved on to chapter

five, but people added that later.

I don't know if you know that. So when Paul wrote this, he didn't say,

and now chapter five. Okay, he just kept writing.

So I'm going to read, and I'm not moving to a new chapter. I'm just reading

the very next sentence that he wrote right after he said, and be kind and compassionate

to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.

Therefore, be imitators of God. So therefore means in light of everything I

just said about all of those sins and all of that stuff.

Therefore, be imitators of God as dearly loved children and walk in love as

the Messiah also loved us and gave himself for us,

a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.

I want you to notice, first of all, the word walk here is used in the same way

it was used earlier. It means live, right?

Walk in love is not like, oh, I'm so in love, right? He's like,

live a life of love as the Messiah did. So it has nothing to do with walking, right?

Live in love as the Messiah also loved us. So when we look at this verse,

we see that, well, first of all, we're supposed to imitate God.

That's what the first sentence says, be imitators of God.

And then the second verse, it says, walk in love as the Messiah loved us.

So we're told in this verse to imitate God, and we're told in this verse to

imitate Jesus, right? Be like the Messiah, be like God the Father.

So the reason I say this is a summary is it seems to me if you were to take

all three of these things and just combine them all into just one thing and

you wanted to answer the question even more simply than three things,

I think the way you could answer the question is what is this change supposed to look like?

What is spiritual growth supposed to look like? It's supposed to look like the

mature person being godly, God-like, right? An imitator of God.

What is the goal of sanctification?

That we would look like Jesus, that we would walk like the Messiah.

That's what the change looks like. So we talked about how it happens,

but we got to, sometimes you got to like, if you're not going to hit the target,

if you don't know what the bullseye is, if it's not painted on there,

right? We got to know, well, what is the goal?

It's be godly. It's be like Jesus.

That's what we're growing toward. That's what we're progressing toward.

So, I hope that these three categories are helpful to you. I would imagine.

There are some of you here who maybe excel in one or two of these, but not in the other one.

And maybe it's good for you to read them this way. So you can think like,

oh, I think I realized what I need to do for my part.

There are probably some of you that are very good at this. Okay.

You've got incredible memories. And so like knowledge of God,

you're like, you're very good with doctrine.

You're very good. I know the stuff and I studied the stuff and I know all the

stuff and my doctrine is very good. Okay.

And it might be good for you to realize like you are actually supposed to do

things with this knowledge. There are things to avoid and there are things that you are to do for God.

There may be some of you in this room that you have a lot of right doctrine

and perhaps, I'm just going to suggest, perhaps God's will for you is not for

you to sign up for a 15th Bible study, but maybe it is for you to focus on the

areas of your life where you need to come into conformity with God's will,

both what he forbids and what he commands.

Now, there may be some of you that this is your category, okay?

Because some of you, you're rule followers.

Christianity was great for you. You became a Christian, and then they were like,

don't do this stuff, and you're like, I cannot do stuff, okay?

Like, in fact, some of you, they said don't do this stuff, and they listed all

these bad things, and you were like, yeah, I remember. I did those things. They hurt me.

Like, I am thankful to walk away from all that and not do that anymore.

I don't want to go back into that life.

Sure, I'm happy to avoid the stuff, and that's good. Keep avoiding the stuff.

But it's important for you to know more than just the list of things that you're

not supposed to do. Like the Bible is not just a list of don'ts,

right? There's more to it that you need to know.

And God's will for you is not just for you to sit around and not do stuff,

right? God's will is for you to do what he's called you to do.

His will for you is a lot more than just avoid stuff. I mean,

you could, honestly, I mean, you could pull this off at least pretty good by

just kind of staying home all day, every day, right?

And then you'd avoid a lot of it, But that's not God's will. He has stuff for us to do.

And then for those of you that are in this category, this is the easiest one for you, okay?

I want you to consider this, because I'll call you, I call these people the world changers, okay?

The people that ministry is their primary thing, and they're going out,

and they're like, when I say world changers, I mean, you have that personality

that you're like, I'm gonna change the world. I'm gonna make the world a better place, okay?

I love God, and again, this world is messed up, and I'm gonna make the world

a better place. And I would say to you, that's great. Make the world a better place.

But as you are making the world a better place, do not have like a personal

life filled with sin that dishonors the God who owns the world,

you're trying to make a better place.

And you need to be aware of what he says. So as you make the world a better

place, you are realizing it's his world.

So you have to make his world a better place by his definition,

right? That affects what you do here.

Lastly, I wanted to remind you the purpose of this sermon and the purpose of

this whole series for these past six weeks has been to address spiritual growth, not conversion.

So if you're new here and you showed up and this was your takeaway,

you go, okay, Mario, I think I got it. All right. So I need to,

I need to understand God.

I need to stop sinning. I need to do what God's called me to do and, you know, do his will.

And if I do that and I try really hard, then maybe God will accept me.

That wasn't the point. That wasn't the point this morning. The last verse that we looked at said,

and walk in love as the Messiah also loved us and gave himself for us.

Okay, past tense, loved us and gave himself for us.

We get to know God and we abstain from sin and we do his will in reaction to

his love, not to earn it. Let's pray.

Thank you.

Lord, I pray that which is of me would be quickly forgotten,

but that which is of you would be remembered for a long time.

I pray that you would use this sermon and the prior ones and these passages

that we've been learning for good in our lives. I thank you for sending people ahead of us.

It's so crazy to think that Paul was writing a letter to some Ephesians and

I don't know if he, I bet you he did not think that it would be something that

you would use to help people thousands of years later.

But thank you for giving us a picture of how it is we are to be trained for

ministry and how we need to be in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of

God's son and how we need to walk no longer as the Gentiles walked.

And so I pray for us and our spiritual growth. I pray that we would be a church

that is growing, that is mature, that is progressing toward the measure of Christ's fullness.

I ask that you would do that through the power of your spirit and I ask that

we as individuals would do our part. and I love you and I thank you for this

church and I love you and I thank you for your grace upon us.

And so we praise you for all of this. In Jesus' name, amen.

Let me end with these good words from God's word. Walk in love as the Messiah

also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. That is good news.