BBC Sermon Cast

There’s a point to penitence. When a believer becomes sensitised to their sin, and then does something about it, they benefit eternally and find ultimate relief.

If lying is perhaps the most destructive sin in our world, anger may well be second. Anger has caused a lot of damage, and Christians are not immune from it. Paul therefore urges Christians, in Ephesians 4:26–27, to “cool it.”

The community of faith is to be a community of trust (v. 25) and a community of peace (vv. 26–27). The community of faith is an emotionally righteous, rather than an emotionally raging, community. In the church, there are plenty of occasions for anger; we must be careful how we respond.

Integrity: It’s an important word—and a most neglected concept. In Eden, the lying serpent literally spoke with a forked tongue, and to this day all our tongues have been tainted with the slithering propensity to falsehood—such as lying, slander, deceit, manipulation, cooked books, and broken vows.

But what is so common in the world should never be so in the church. Paul tells us so in Ephesians 4:25. By the power of the gospel, the Christian has been translated from the domain of falsehood to the domain of truth. And we are to live like it.

Paul’s concern here is for the community of faith (4:1–16), and perhaps what is of fundamental importance for the community of faith is that we be a community of trust.

In much of the world, interracial marriage, for the most part, has historically been frowned upon. In fact, in both SA and the USA there was a time when it was not only socially taboo but in fact illegal. The laws, thankfully, have been changed, but for many—including many in the church—it is still taboo.

The question we must address is whether opposition to interracial marriage is biblically justified. If it is, then we must oppose it. But if not, then we are wrong to oppose it. More to the point, if it is biblical then we should celebrate it. We should perhaps even promote it.

We as a people can look at the works of others and appreciate their creativity. As we look at 2 Corinthians 5:14–21 we can appreciate how great and wondrous God through Jesus Christ is at changing us. He makes the old, once loved by and found in Christ, to become new creations.

Jeremiah 17:12–18 records the third of Jeremiah’s five “confessions.” In it, we see that he was not going to abandon his prophetic functions simply because he had been persecuted. Instead he prayed for grace to withstand opposition until the truth should be manifested, when all would see that it was God’s word, not his own, that he had been proclaiming faithfully.

Psalm 3 is an individual lament in which the psalmist expresses confidence in personal and individual deliverance by God. As the psalmist looked over the multitude of his enemies, his eyes of faith were focused on the Lord, who grants His beloved sleep. In his prayer he expresses confidence that the Lord would deliver him and, through this, restore His blessing to His people.

There is something in the human mind that drives us to want to know what people are like behind closed doors. Sometimes, it is little more than idle curiosity fuelling our desire for gossip. But sometimes it is a deep-seated desire to learn from God’s servants how we ought to conduct our lives in private. The book of Jeremiah gives us several glimpses into what Jeremiah was like when he was out of the limelight. One of those glimpses is in Jeremiah 15:15–21, and it is highly instructive for us.

We have spent three studies thus far looking at what the Bible says about racism. We have seen that racism matters—a whole lot. It matters, we have seen, because God’s purpose matters, because God’s commandment matters, because God’s church matters, and because God’s gospel matters. In this study, we will consider two more reasons that racism matters: because God’s commission matters, and because God’s glory matters.

As Christians, we need to realise that there is no magic spiritual pill that will change our life, at least when it comes to sanctification. There is no secret mantra to “victorious Christian living.” Rather, if we will continue to become remade in the image of God’s dear Son, we will have to do it the old fashioned way. We will have to do some things. This is Paul’s burden in this second half of his epistle to the Ephesians.

We have spent considerable time studying vv. 17–24, and we will bring our consideration of these verses to a close by exploring what I am calling the dynamic trio that Paul reveals concerning how change is effected in the life of the Christian: put off (v. 22); put in (v. 23); and put on (v. 24).