Two Journeys

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Ephesians 5:18. The main subject of the sermon is what it means to be filled with the Spirit.

Forty days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a new era of human history began. It was on the day of Pentecost, it was in the city of Jerusalem. The era of the Spirit came, and it came pouring down from Heaven to earth, and it identified its coming first with a sound. It was a sound of a violent rushing wind, like a hurricane I imagine. Like a mighty rushing powerful wind. Now, the sound was audible to many there in the city of Jerusalem, if not everyone in the city. And it was so amazing, it was so stunning, so supernatural, that had attracted a crowd, people came to find out what this sound was, what caused it. 

Now, at that time, the church was assembled in the upper room for prayer and the Holy Spirit was poured out on them first. With this sound there came what seemed to be “tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them,” and they were all filled with the Spirit of God and they spoke the Word of God, and they themselves then poured out into the streets of Jerusalem and began to change the world by the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ, crucified and resurrected they began to change the world. And 3000 brothers and sisters in Christ were added to their number that day by simple faith in Christ, by the power of the Spirit and the church began and started to explode. The very thing that Jesus promised those 40 days before when He said, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth.” 

Now, this supernatural power of this invisible wind has been blowing through human history ever since, but not the destructive power of a hurricane that leaves devastation in its way, just buildings flattened. No, actually amazingly, just the opposite. As the Holy Spirit blows through human history, He leaves construction in His wake, He leaves an ever more glorious structure or building, the Church of Jesus Christ. And as I said in my prayer, it's something that we can now only begin to see by faith, eyes of faith, this ever growing city of God, this heavenly Zion, this new Jerusalem, this Bride of Christ getting more and more glorious all the time. But that is the effect of this powerful working, this wind of the Spirit blowing through human history and the Spirit is blowing now every bit as powerfully as He did that first day. All over the world, the Spirit is blowing and building the Church of Jesus Christ.  

Now, when I was a child, maybe seven, eight years old, I don't remember how old, my father took me hiking in the White Mountains, in New Hampshire, and I'll never forget that night. We were up in a fire tower, I guess the kind of tower that fire wardens or whatever, build to look out over vast expanses of forest. And it was the middle of the night, and I got up and I went out on the platform and I heard the sound of the wind blowing in a ravine nearby, and I couldn't describe it, I'd never heard it before. I don't know how to put words as certainly as a seven or eight-year-old wouldn't have been able to put it into words. But I still can hear it in my mind. I almost want to call it a three-dimensional sound. It was just deep and long and wide. And ever since then I've had a love affair with wind. I just love the sound of wind. I guess the wind of the Spirit is more, I don't know, four-dimensional or ten-dimensional or something like that, just doing supernatural things in people's lives and hearts. And I want to talk about that today in one-half of a verse.  

Ephesians 5:18, "Be filled with the Spirit." So that's what we're going to talk about today, and I want to try to understand what this command means. So as we look at these words, "Be filled with the Spirit." We have to just start by asking what does that mean? What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, just think in your own mind of images of filling, something filled, like a vessel overflowing with a liquid, you’re just pouring and pouring, it just gets higher and higher and then it starts to overflow. Remember when Jesus changed the water into wine, he commanded that these six stone jars be filled up to the brim. So I was talking to my kids this morning, so we're driving in, and said, "What do you picture when you think of something filled up to the brim?" So just nothing more can go in because it's maximally filled. Or you could picture a sail, like one of those old clipper ships, you picture one of those, ever seen one of those tall, ships or you've seen pictures of them. The sailing age is over in terms of commerce and all that, but you could picture these beautiful clipper ships with three mass and all of these sails, just absolutely filled with wind and the ship just ripping through the water as fast as wind could ever move it. Or maybe like a sponge, just completely saturated, nothing more could fill that sponge. That's the picture I have in my mind of being filled. But what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit?  

Well, last week we talked about the first half of the verse which says, "Do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery, instead, be filled with the Spirit." So I think if you put it together, then the idea of being drunk with wine as the idea is the alcohol is dominating the mind, dominating the person's brain, and so the effects of the alcohol which they have been drinking are evident. Evident in the way they speak and the way they act, etcetera. The wine is dominating their brain, it's dominating their behavior. So then, by contrast, to be filled with the Spirit means to be controlled and dominated and affected internally by something that has come to you externally, the Holy Spirit of God resulting in a pattern of behavior that we're going to talk about today. 

You can see that a person is filled with the Spirit by how they act, by what they do. Jesus said in John 3, "The wind blows wherever it wishes. You hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell where it comes from and where it's going. So it is with everyone who has been born of the Spirit.” So you can tell the wind of the Spirit has come in someone's life by how they're living. By how they talk, by how they act. So to be filled means, I think, to be controlled, to be moved, to be empowered, to be dominated, to be saturated by the third person of the Trinity, the Spirit of God. So in order to understand that, we have to go back a little bit and try to understand the Holy Spirit, the theology of the Spirit. Who is the Spirit? 

Remember what we learned a few weeks ago in Ephesians 4:30, where it said there, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you are sealed for the day of redemption." So we learned then that the Spirit is a person with emotions, with intelligence, with a will, with a personality. He can feel things. He's not impersonal like electricity or magnetism or gravity or something like that. We must also remember that the command to be filled with the Spirit is based on a prior promise that's been made to us by Almighty God, that God has promised to give us the Holy Spirit of God, that's going to be vital to understanding this command. 

In Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost. After the Spirit was poured out and the church flowed out into the streets, the apostles began to preach the Gospel, and Peter in particular, preached very plainly the history of Jesus, who He was, what He had done, and “the people there in Jerusalem were cut to the heart, they were pierced, and they said, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” So, the Philippian jailer later would ask, "What must I do to be saved?" That's what they were asking. Peter answered this, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call." So there's the promise of the Holy Spirit to anyone and everyone that hears the Gospel, and believes, and repents, and is baptized. That's the promise. 

Now that promise was actually given centuries before that in the Old Testament by the prophet Joel, which Peter quoted that day in Acts 2. In the last days, God says, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I'll pour out my Spirit in those days and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below. Blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Well, that's the promise in the book of Joel centuries before Jesus was even born of the coming outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God by calling on the name of the Lord, who we now know is clearly the Lord Jesus Christ.  

The same was seen in Ezekiel 36, as we seen many times before in verse 27, "I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” So those three people that were just baptized. The fifth question that Chase asks is, "Do you promise to live a life of obedience to the commands of God," the last part is so vital, "by the power of the Holy Spirit?" And they said, "I do." They're just speaking out that Ezekiel 36, promise. “I have a new nature now. I want to obey God's commands and so by the Spirit, I'm going to obey Him.” 

Now, the power of the Spirit of God is limitless, it's equal to that of God Almighty because the Holy Spirit is God Almighty. There are over 20 verses in the Bible linking the Spirit to power. And so, we've got a sense of the power of the Spirit of God here. Now, what I'm going to say, this is straightforward assertion, the Spirit-filled life is the true, the genuine Christian life. Every true Christian has the indwelling Spirit, every true Christian is already sealed with the Spirit. You don't need another sealing, it's already happened, it's once and for all. But it's not true that at every moment, every Christian is filled with the Spirit. There is a distinction between the sealing of the Spirit, what I also think is the baptism of the Spirit, once and for all, and then there is the filling of the Spirit, which must happen again and again, and that's what we're talking about today, the filling of the Spirit. 

So let's talk now about what are the effects of being filled with the Spirit. Now, there are a lot of things I could talk about here, but I want to zero in on three, and if you're taking notes, I think it might be helpful to just know with these three are. Number one: Three key effects of being filled with the Spirit, number one, overflowing joy in Christ. Overflowing joy in Christ. Number two: Victory over besetting sins. And number three: Power in witnessing or in evangelism. Those are the three things I'm going to talk about. When an individual is filled with the Spirit, those three things you will see in their life, overflowing joy in Christ, power over besetting sins, and then power to be witnesses or to do evangelism.Let's talk about them one at a time.  

First, overflowing joy in Christ. To be filled with the Spirit means to overflow with joy in Christ. John Piper put it this way. Basically, it means radiant joy because the Spirit who fills us, is the Spirit of joy that flows between God the Father and God the Son, because of the delight they have in each other, therefore to be filled with the Spirit means to be caught up into the joy that already flows among the Holy Trinity and to love God the Father and God the Son with the very love with which they love each other. 

So we have been somewhat caught up into Heaven by the Spirit, and we are receiving a flowing and re-flowing of the love that the Father, Son and Spirit already have with one another. That's what it means to be filled the Spirit, overflowing with that kind of joy. Acts 13:52, I love this. “And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” That says it all, doesn't it? “Filled with joy and filled with the Holy Spirit” or, again, even in the book we're studying here, if you look back at Ephesians 3:16-19, Paul says this, "I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." So there's the Spirit, the work of the Spirit. "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,” again by the Spirit, “may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ and that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” That's what I think of when I think of being filled with the Spirit. Feel to the measure of all the fullness of God because Jesus loves you.  

You have a sense of the infinite dimensions of God's love for you in Christ and it moves you, it brings you genuine joy overflowing with joy. Now, I'm not going to be among those pastors that make any kind of distinction, whatsoever, between joy and happiness. I actually get frustrated by people who do that. Many of my brother pastors do that. What do they tell you? They say, “Happiness is earthly. It's tied to earthly things, but joy is a heavenly thing.” I'm like, look, I don't know how you define joy without at some point, using the word happy or happiness. Go ahead and try to do it. Talk about joy for five minutes without using anything to do with happy or happiness. In the end, they're the same thing, and you can have a joy in your team winning the Super Bowl or you can have happiness in Christ being resurrected. 

I think it's just happiness. It's just joy. It's something that comes on you where you just know that God loves you and you're going to Heaven when you die, and it just simply makes you happy. Now, I'm not denying that we go through great sufferings and we go through great grief, sorrowful, yes, but always rejoicing. I understand that there can be a great mingling, I understand all that. But it's just a joy. It's a joy focused on Christ, it's a joy that's focused on the resurrection, like the women. Remember how they went to finish the burial of Jesus, and there was no need. There was no need to finish the burial because Christ had risen from the dead, and in Matthew 28, this angel greets them. It's one of my favorite angels of all time. Do you have favorite angels? I don't know, I'm not getting weird, I'm not naming them with different weird names that aren't in the Bible like some people do. But that angel went down and rolled back the stone. Talk about, any of you strong guys, you've never done anything like that. The angel moved that stone and sat, and I picture angel legs dangling. I mean, do angel legs dangle?  

But I just picture that, I just have that picture of the angel sitting on the stone and announcing to the women, "He is not here. He is risen, just as He said.” And what does it say? In Matthew 28:5, so the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid, yet, filled with joy. That's what the Holy Spirit does. And why? Because Christ is every bit as much risen today as He was yesterday or as He was 2000 years ago. And the joy we should have in that should be the same from age to age, even from hour to hour. 

So it's just a joy that comes in Christ crucified and resurrected. Just know your sins are forgiven, His blood is sufficient for you, and you're just overflowing or I think, again, that same morning, when Jesus was with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. You remember, these are two of my favorites as well, and they're walking along with this stranger who seemed to have no idea what was going on. And it's so amazing how Jesus supernaturally hid Himself from them, they couldn't recognize Him. He was blocking something in their minds. They were kept from recognizing Him. But He began to unfold the scriptures, the prophecies about Christ, death and resurrection. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into his glory? 

And so, He ends up having that meal with them, and He breaks the bread and their eyes are open at last and they realize it's Jesus, and He disappears, He's gone! And then they say, "Were not our hearts burning within us. When He opened the Scriptures to us?” So that's what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit makes your heart burn inside you by revealing Christ to you from the Scriptures. That's what happens. And then, the filling of the Spirit, this joy just starts to be evident to everyone around you, because it flows out. 

Look at the text that Herbert read. Verse 19 through 21, "Addressing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing, making melody to the Lord with your hearts." Verse 20, "Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." These are activities, these are actions that come out, they're acts of a person filled with the Spirit. It has to do with something internal. You're singing and making music in your heart, you're giving thanks to God for everything that's happening in your life by faith, even if some of it's very difficult and then, you're joining with other brothers and sisters in Christ corporately because you're speaking to one another with “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” So, there's that corporate worship aspect of being filled with the Spirit. 

We're happy in Jesus. Or, if you prefer, joyful in Jesus. And we're just singing and praising, and enjoying being together. And it's so powerful that really is, I think, the Philippians 4 secret of being content in any and every situation, it is by the power of the Spirit of God that you're able, look at verse 20, to give thanks always and for everything to God the Father. Always and for everything. Like Paul said in Philippians 4, “I've learned the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well-fed or hungry, living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.” So the strength for abiding joy that is not tied to circumstances comes from the Holy Spirit of God, He gives you strength to rejoice. 

Now, you may be going through amazing affliction. And I have had opportunities even the last number of weeks to talk to people whose hearts are breaking with earthly circumstances. I know some of the things you're going through, but I know I don't know all of them. But I believe that we can have through the Holy Spirit of God an abiding joy, a contentment in Christ, and that's what it means to be filled with the Spirit for me. 

So let me just ask, does this characterize you? Would you say this transcendent consistent joy in Jesus characterizes your life? Do you consistently experience this joy, the joy of your salvation in Christ? Does your heart overflow with the sense of the infinite dimensions of how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ? Do you have a sense of that? And you just are characterized by joy with the people around you say, "Now, there's a brother, there's a sister, they're just characterized by joy in Jesus." Would you say this characterizes you? Remember I've said before that every Christian is sealed with the Spirit, indwelt by the Spirit, but not constantly filled with the Spirit. So do you have a sense of that? Do you have a sense of Christ dwelling in your heart, by the Spirit? And though you may be disturbed by circumstances from time to time, like a needle in a compass returning back to true north, do you return quickly to joy in Jesus? Is that you're settled abiding state? 

Okay, secondly, the second effect of the filling of the Spirit is victory over besetting sins. To be filled with the Spirit means to see consistent victory over besetting sins. Now, we believe that we Christians are indwelt not only with the Holy Spirit of God, but we are indwelt with sin, still. We have indwelling sin. Romans 7 makes it very, very plain. “I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.” And he says, "For what I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I hate, I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it's sin living in me that does it.” 

Now, so we all, all Christians, have this powerful, indwelling sin nature. Now, we Christians, we do not all sin in the same ways, but we all sin daily, and we struggle with what's known as besetting sins. So these are habitual sins. Christians have different habits of sin, but we all have these besetting sins. These are avenues of access that the enemy has to our souls because they work, it's where our walls are broken down and he, the enemy, just knows the weak spots and just keeps on coming right there. Those are those besetting sins. Perhaps, it's a recurring lust issue. Perhaps you're struggling with internet pornography or something like that, or maybe you have an ongoing battle with sinful anger, you're just characterized by angry outbursts or even low-level irritation with loved ones. Maybe it's a battle of food, you just can't seem to get enough, and you're trying to find happiness and joy in eating. Or maybe it's a struggle with materialism, you just can't own enough, you just have to keep buying things so you go online and buy something else. You don't even know why you bought it, it just made you feel better. Or maybe it's a battle of depression, just a dark, inky blackness that comes over you or maybe it's laziness. Procrastination, you're putting off things you know you need to do, but it's just a recurring habit in your life and there it is. 

So, to be filled with the Spirit then, means to gain victory over those patterns of sin, to see actual temptations dead at your feet by the Spirit. A Spirit-filled person puts sin to death. It says in Romans 8:13-14, "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if, by the Spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live because those who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the children of God." 

So, this is the issue of mortification of sin, you're putting sin to death, you're mortifying the sin nature. John Owen, the Puritan who wrote best, I think, on this of any writer in history said, "You must mortify, you must make it your daily work, you must be constantly at it while you live. Cease not a day from this work. Be killing sin or sin will be killing you." Owen said this, "The choicest believers who are assuredly free from the condemning power of sin ought to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin." So you've been delivered from the condemning power of sin, you're not going to go to hell, but now it's your business to fight sin everyday. And Owen also said this, “The vigor and power and comfort,” I would add the word ‘fruitfulness,’ “of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.” You want to be spiritually healthy? Put sin to death. You want to be spiritually fruitful? Put sin to death. If you wonder why you're not feeling strong spiritually, look to this place. If you wonder why you're not leading people to Christ, or there's not fruit in your life, look to this. 

Now, what Owen said is that only by the power of the Spirit can this mortification really take place. Owen said this, “All other ways of mortification are vain. All helps leave us helpless. It must be done by the Spirit. This is the work of the Spirit, by Him alone is it to be wrought and by no other power can it be brought about.” Now listen to this, “Mortification from a self-strength carried on by ways of self-invention unto the end of self-righteousness is the soul and substance of every false religion in the world.” Every religion is trying to put to death a lot of these same sins, but they do it in their own invented ways, by their own strength, and for their own glory.: No, no, Christians do it by the Spirit. By the Spirit.” 

So, to be filled with the Spirit is to know the power of the Spirit of God coming on you in the day of battle. When you see those same old lusts, those same old temptations coming at you along the same quarter, here they come, the battle is on by the Spirit you can kill all of them, all of the temptations. So picture, I read this morning the story of Samson with the jawbone of a donkey. If you're going through the ESV everyday in the Word, that was today, this morning. So, there is Samson with the bloody jaw bone of a donkey, killed what? A thousand Philistines? How did he do it? Did you ever wonder about that? They're coming at him with sword and shield and spear, he's got this little jawbone of a donkey. He must have been real quick that day, ducking under the spear, spinning around as someone slashed at him with a sword. One hit though from Samson and the jawbone, you're finished. At the end of the day, he was standing. Pile of dead people at his feet. 

Now, that's a picture of the Spirit of God coming on someone in power, only let's translate it now into the spiritual realm. Your sins are going to come hard after you, and by the power of the Spirit, you can kill every temptation, they can be dead at your feet, all of them. Now, no warrior has ever been mightier in this than Jesus. How many of his temptations did he kill? Answer: All of them. 100%. 

In the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of holiness, we can kill our besetting sins. How does He do it? Well, the Spirit fills you with such a joy and such a satisfaction in Christ, the fruit of the Spirit: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control,” just filled and then when the harlot Babylon comes, Revelation 17, she's pictured there riding, dressed in purple and scarlet, and she's holding this glittering gold, precious stone pearl cup filled with abominable things and all of her adulteries, and she hands you this cup and says, "Here drink, you'll enjoy," you can see her for what she really is. You'll see her the way you'll see her on judgment day because the Spirit has filled you with satisfaction in Christ, you don't need those things. And it drives out the world with all of its alluring temptations and lust. That's how he does it. And as a result then, as David said in Psalm 101, "I will be careful to lead a blameless life. When will you come to me? I will walk in my house with blameless heart. I will set before my eyes no vile thing. The deeds of faithless men I hate, they will not cling to me." So the filling of the Spirit brings the cross of Christ to your mind. You see that he suffered and died for just such sins as that, and then it brings the glory of the resurrected life to your mind and then the glory of the heavenly life to your mind, and that's what the Spirit does, He fills you, fills you, fills you with these things and then you fight, and you're able to kill sin. 

Thirdly, to be filled with the Spirit is to have power for witnessing. This is well known from Acts 1:8, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." So, the Spirit, a Spirit-filled person has a boldness for witnessing. Take the case of Peter. Peter, the night Jesus was arrested, as you remember, followed Jesus at a distance, got himself into nothing but trouble. Remember that? A slave girl speaks to him at the door, says, "You're not one of his disciples, are you?" "No, no, I'm not." A little slave girl. Remember, Peter is ready to die for Jesus that night. Apparently not. But that same Peter, a month and a half later, is in downtown Jerusalem preaching boldly the Gospel, and some time after that, he and John were arrested for healing a lame beggar. Remember that? They're hauled before the exact same Jewish authorities that had condemned and killed Jesus, and this same Peter filled with the Holy Spirit, when called to account for what had happened to that lame man said, "We're being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed? Then know this, you and all the people of Israel, it is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is the stone you builders rejected, which has become a capstone. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men, by which we must be saved." Wow! A month and a half later, that's what Peter is like. Where's his fear of death now? Gone because by the power of the Spirit, he was able to preach and speak boldly. 

Now, there's lots of examples of this, Acts 4:31, end of that chapter. The whole church prayed, the whole church was shaken, the whole church was filled with the Spirit, the whole church went out and spoke the word of God boldly, Acts 4:31. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, told the truth to his Jewish countrymen, "You stiff neck people with uncircumcised hearts and ears, you're just like your fathers, you always resist the Holy Spirit. Was there ever a prophet your fathers didn't persecute and kill? And now you've betrayed and killed the righteous one. You who received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it." That's Stephen filled with the Holy Spirit of God. 

So yeah, the Holy Spirit comes on us and gives us a power and a boldness, and dear brothers and sisters, do you not notice? Can you not see the signs of the times? We're going to need it. We're going to need power and boldness to tell the truth to our co-workers and our neighbors, and it's accelerating, it's getting faster and faster. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It's going to take courage. Now listen, that doesn't mean you're not going to be afraid. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2, "I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling so that my speaking might be a display of the Spirit's power." So there's going to be weakness, there's going to be fear, there's going to be trembling, but there's going to be witnessing. You overcome all those things and you do the right thing, and say the words that need to be said, weak as you are, and to God be the glory. 

So those are the three effects: Overflowing joy in Christ, victory over besetting sins, and power in witnessing. Now, let me ask you, and you're asking this question, "How can I be filled with the Spirit?” Well, grammatically, Ephesians 5:18 is really pretty weird. It is something called a passive imperative. "Alright, Pastor, do you not know what time it is? It's like 10 still, I thought we were like in the landing mode now." We're doing quick applications then we're done. Well, we'll be done soon. But bear with me. Grammatically, this is something known as a passive imperative. Let's take the second word, imperative. This is a command. You Christian, are being commanded here, there's something you need to obey, okay? Something you need to obey but it's a passive imperative. What is passive? We know active and passive, it's like do you do the action or do you receive the action. Like a soldier might say, it was, "Kill or be killed." 

Is there any difference to the soldier between those two? Kill or be killed? Yeah, life or death. That's the biggest difference between active and passive. So, this is not a mild grammatical excursion here. So, what we actually have here is a command to have something done to us. You are commanded to have something done to you. So that brings us right to the mystery, the infinite mystery of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, or some call it free will, or whatever. We are commanded to receive the influences of the Holy Spirit of God. So, there's a cooperation here. It's very similar to what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:7, "You must be born again." It's the exact same thing. "Something has to happen to you, Nicodemus, or you're not going to Heaven. If you're not transformed by the Spirit, and if you don't believe in Jesus, you're going to be excluded, you're going to die and go to Hell. You must be born again.”  

I say that to all of you that are here that are in an unconverted state. Maybe you're here as a friend, or you just walked in off the street, or someone invited you, you came to watch the baptism. If you know you're unconverted, I'm just saying to you what Jesus said to Nicodemus, "You must be born again and if you're not born again, you'll be condemned." But it's the exact same idea. You must have something happen to you. And so, this thing has to happen and herein lies the rub of the Christian's individual life, Christian's marriage, Christian's parenting, church life. The Holy Spirit, the coming of the Holy Spirit guarantees that everything that must happen to get the elect finally saved and into Heaven will most certainly happen. But it is not true that everything that could happen or even should happen will happen. And you know what I'm talking about. Marriage could be so much better if we would just be being filled with the Spirit, and that's the translation, be being filled with the Spirit. A continual thing. We could have such a richer, fuller church life if we were more continually filled with the Holy Spirit of God. It's because we disobey, it's because we sin that we don't see that. It's because we're so weak in our sin. 

Right before preaching his last sermon, George Whitefield, one of the most powerful evangelists that ever lived is overwhelmed with weariness, and with asthma, the breathing problems that would take his life that very night, his last day on earth. He didn't know it, but he probably suspected it. And a huge crowd of 6000 people gathered to hear him in Newburyport, Massachusetts; 6000 people, without one of these things. And so, he had to from his diaphragm, from his lungs, find a way to speak to 6000 people one more time, and he just stood there. They set up two barrels and put a plank of wood across them and they helped him up, this dying man. And a friend who knew him well said, "You're more fit for bed than for preaching." He looked at him and said, "True sir." And then he stood there unsteadily, weary and then he cried out these words, he said, "Lord, I am not weary of your work, but I am weary in your work. If I have not finished my course, let me go and speak for you once more in the fields, seal your truth and come home and die." And he waited for another period of time, maybe as much as five minute just standing there and then, empowered by the Spirit, he preached for two hours. Someone who had heard him many times said it was the most powerful sermon they ever heard him preach. So that's a picture of God's strength and his power made perfect in weakness.  

That's why we need to be being filled with the Spirit because we are weak and not just physically weak, but we're morally weak and we yield to temptations, and so we lose the filling of the Spirit, so we need to be filled again and again and again. How? Well, I'm going to go back to the beginning of the verse. "Be not drunk with wine." I said last week, it was quite possible that the wine that was drunk back then had a much lower alcohol content than that which we have today. So what it meant is that someone who wanted to be drunk had to go after it, and go after it hard, they had to drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and then in there somewhere, they would get drunk. That's why Peter said, "You know, it's really impossible for us to be drunk, it's only 9 in the morning. There hasn't been enough time." So in a similar manner, you have to go after this life being filled with the Spirit. You have to say, "I want this, I want to be filled with the Spirit."  

So what do you do? Well, by faith. You do it by faith. Go to the promise. In Acts 2, the promises for you and for all your children, for all of us, you have promised me the Spirit. Also, every command is also a promise. The more you think about it, you'll know it's true. If God has commanded you be perfect then say give that command, make me perfect. So what you do is you take this command and bring it back to God in your weakness, in your frailty, and you say, “I need you to fill me, I am weak, help me.” And so by faith, you are filled with the Spirit, by faith in the promise of God, Romans 15:13, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope." 

So it's in faith, that's how you do it. By seeking, by going after the things of God, saying, "I want the Spirit-filled life, that's what I want." And I don't mean just occasionally, I mean continually “setting your heart on things above, setting your mind on things above, seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness.” And by Scripture, just take the Bible and say, "God, speak to me by this word. Speak to me by the word of God, I want this." By prayer and by Christ, he will do it. One last thing is confessing any sin. He may show you a block in the pipeline and say, "I cannot fill you while this sin is not dealt with.” Confess your sin to Him. Say, 'Search me, O God and know me and show me, show me my sin, show me what I didn't know I was doing wrong, and those things that I did, I was violating willfully, violating your commands. Forgive me and fill me.'" 

So, are you a Christian? Start there. You can't be filled with the Spirit if you're not a Christian. So just start with that. Be born again. Trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. We'd love to hear one of you say, "Six months from now, three months from now, I was at that sermon on Ephesians 5:18, I came as an unbeliever. I heard three baptisms. I heard the Gospel multiple times, I trusted in Jesus that day." Secondly, if you are a Christian, just let me ask, are you consistently filled with the Spirit? Is your life characterized by a consistent joy in Jesus? Thirdly, do you see at your feet metaphorically at your feet everyday, temptations killed by the power of the Spirit? Are you seeing that? And fourthly, do you see a power for witnessing that doesn't make you no longer afraid to witness whatever but enables you to get over that and speak to people? Do you see power for witnessing in your life? That's what it means to be filled with the Spirit. If not, seek the filling of the Spirit. 

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to study your word today, thank you for Ephesians 5:18. Help us, O Lord, help us to be being filled with the Spirit, to know the Spirit-filled life, and the fruit and the joy that comes from that. O God help us, help us to be overflowing with joy in Christ. Help us to be holy by the power of the Spirit, putting sin to death. Help us, O Lord, to be witnesses for you here in Durham and even to the ends of the earth. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. 

Introduction

Amen. Well, this journey in Ephesians has been for me amazing and marvelous. It's been very rich. It's really been a journey of worship for me to see the greatness of the salvation that God has been working and continues to work in our hearts, and in the world. Now, we've been learning for many, many weeks of the life of magnificent, new life of holiness and righteousness to which God calls us now that we have been born again, now that we are Christians. As Christians we were chosen, we're instructed in the book of Ephesians, “from before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in God's sight.” We're taught right there in Ephesians 1 that “in love, God predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ.” And what this means is that we were to be conformed to the family image and likeness, we're to be conformed to Christ. And so, this life of holiness is a life of conformity to Christ's likeness, and it's a beautiful thing. And we're told from the very beginning of our Christian life that all of our sins past, present and future have been atoned for by the blood of Christ. “In Him,” [in Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” and how lavish a gift that is I think all of us infinitely underestimates. But we'll know on Judgment Day just how rich, and fully our sins have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and we'll spend eternity thanking Him for it. And we're also instructed in Ephesians 1 that “when we heard the word of truth, the Gospel of our salvation, having believed, we were marked in Christ with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. And that that Holy Spirit that sealing of the Spirit is a deposit, guaranteeing our full inheritance until the day of redemption, until the end of all things.” Now we know without a doubt as Christians that we are going to Heaven when we die. And how at the end of Ephesians 1, Paul prays for the ministry of God to be on the Ephesian Christians, and then through them we can read for us that we would have a sense of the power, the sovereign power of God at work in us to bring us to that rich inheritance we have in Christ. And that we would have absolute certainty that Jesus reigns over heaven and earth, over all powers, visible and invisible to complete our salvation, and what a rich thing that is.

Imitate God in Love

Now, we're in a section in Ephesians where we're told practically how we are to live out this faith that we have. How we are to live out this salvation. And I just, again and again, want to lay that foundation, which I've just been doing for you over the last few minutes, of “justification by faith in Christ apart from works of the Law.” That we are forgiven by faith not by works. We are redeemed by faith in Christ not by works. And we just need to go back to that again and again because the life of holiness is a challenging life. It's a searching life, it's an infinite journey in which we can ever increasingly see sin and weakness in our lives and we know how far we are from perfect conformity to Christ, and we need the power of the Holy Spirit. And so in Ephesians 4:1, he begins that ethical section, "As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." These things I've been talking about since I began. This is the life of holiness in imitation of God. A life of love Ephesians 5:1 it says, "Be imitators of God therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love."

And so we're called to walk in love, to “walk in the light as He is in the light,” to walk in holiness. We're told in Ephesians 5:8-10, "For you were once darkness but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light, for the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. And find out what pleases the Lord." So this is a life, this life of holiness is a life, a daily walk of wisdom. Not of foolishness. As we saw last week in verse 15 of chapter 5. Be very careful then, be meticulous, be rigorous in how you live, not as foolish, but as wise. This is a life of redeeming the time, of not wasting resources that have been given us, precious days, and money, and energy squandered on sin. That we would not live that kind of a life. This is a beautiful new life of holiness that is ours and it's both negative and positive. We've been seeing that rhythm again and again in Ephesians 4 and 5. There are some things that we must put off, that must not be part of our lives, and there are some things that we must put on. And so, we are actually putting even the negative part very positively, we have been set free from soul killing sins. We've been set free from things that are destroying the world, and ruining families. We've been set free from these sin patterns. It says in Romans 6:21-22, "What benefit, [what fruit, what harvest] did you reap at that time from those things of which you are now ashamed? Those things result in death, but now that you've been set free from sin and have become slaves to God the benefit you reap, [the harvest you reap] leads to holiness and the result is eternal life." So Paul teaches the new life in Christ, both negatively and positively. Things we must not do that must never be part of the Christian life, and then those things that we must do. We are taught in verse 19-21 of Ephesians 4, “that we are to put off the old self to be made new in the spirit of our minds and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” And so, that is the life that leads to Heaven and no other. Do not be deceived. That life of putting off being made new in the heart and putting on, that's the life that leads to Heaven, the other life is a life of deception, self deception.

So we've seen again and again, specific aspects of this putting off putting on. So we're told to put off lying, and then put on speaking the truth. And so there's this one-to-one correspondence of what we're told put off, put on. We're to put off stealing, and instead work hard with our own hands, so we may have something to share with those in need. And put off anger and instead put on compassion and mercy and forgiveness like God's been merciful to you. Put off sexual immorality, and put on the beauty of a Christian marriage which we're going to be talking about in a few weeks. Put off, as last week, foolish squandering of time, and instead redeem the time by wisdom and finding out what pleases the Lord.

Clear Prohibition: Do Not Get Drunk on Wine

Personal Context

Now we come to the topic of drunkenness, and we are commanded here, clearly, to put off drunkenness. And again, in that corresponding way that he's been speaking instead “be being filled with the Spirit.” And so we're looking at this clear commandment, this prohibition, "Do not get drunk on wine," verse 18, "which leads to debauchery but instead be filled with the Spirit." Now, let me just speak personally, just to lay my cards on the table. I have not had an alcoholic drink since I became a Christian. I haven't drunk any. My wife occasionally uses wine in cooking, but I've been told the alcohol is gone within a few moments of that. I've had some interesting moments buying single cans of beer for a recipe she had for barbecue once. Felt like I was smuggling drugs across the state line, that was kind of my feeling, I was glad that was in Louisville, glad to get out of there before anyone saw me. Conscience was clear but I wasn't acting like my conscience was clear, so that was kind of interesting.

Actually, I gave up drinking any alcoholic beverage a couple of years before I became a Christian. You may ask, "why?" Well, some of it had to do with just my own family upbringing, and I'm not going to go into detail about that, just for my own reasons. But I've seen personally the effect that alcohol can have in destroying a family, and I'm not going to go into any more detail on that. So my heart here is the heart of a pastor. I'm very concerned about assuming that none of you, that there is no one here listening to me now that needs to hear a warning about alcohol, that may be a couple of negatives. Let me say it again. I think it would be foolish for me to assume that all of you are fine with wine or alcohol. That would be foolish for me as a pastor. And it's not just a matter of now but in the future as well, that there may be habits and patterns that are being laid now that can lead some of you into trouble. And so I think about 1 Corinthians 10:12 where it says, "Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall."

So I want to issue from the text and in faithfulness to the text, a warning to any of you who feel that it's well within your Christian freedoms to drink alcohol, which I will say that it is, but half of this sermon is going to be exactly what I think Paul wanted when he penned this command years ago, and that is a clear warning or prohibition against drunkenness. A warning that this sin has the power to blow up your family, blow up your marriage, blow up everything you care about if you are not careful, if you don't heed the warning. I'm willing as I preach this sermon to risk being labeled as legalistic. I'm going to talk about legalism and license in the sermon, but I'm willing to risk that. I hope you'll hear a pastor's heart in this sermon, as I seek to teach accurately what the Bible says about wine and be faithful to Paul's warning here. I also want to very positively contrast the drunkenness caused by wine with the overwhelmingly pure and free and clear joy caused by being filled with the Spirit. Now I'm intending to preach, God willing, a full sermon on what it means to be being filled with the Spirit next week. So the only thing I'm going to say this week will be in contrast to the wine just fitting into the verse itself. Next week, I'm going to give more of a kind of a big picture New Covenant view of what it means to be filled with the Spirit.

Long History of Christians Battling Over This Issue

Now, when we come to the issue of fermented beverages: alcohol, wine, or whatever you want to say, you must know we step into a long history of Christians battling on this issue. Christians have been battling this from the beginning of the Church. There have been movements of both very strong prohibition and even bordering or even crossing the line into legalism, some would argue. And then issues of license as well, this is the kind of thing that is going on. Modern Christians are often surprised to learn that Martin Luther brewed beer in his own basement, and apparently it was very good for those that like that kind of beer. I don't know, what would I know. I feel a little bit like a lifelong celibate speaking about marriage here, but the Bible says that wine and beer are a blessing, and we'll talk about all that. And then people that bought it said he brewed good beer. The pilgrims drank beer when they crossed the Atlantic, and that John Calvin was paid by the city of Geneva, with I think 250 bottles or casks of wine, which he either used or sold for his own benefit. Jonathan Edwards drank wine regularly without any record of him ever getting drunk.

But then on the other side, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, John Wesley and his Methodist movement in England identified gin houses as one of the major corrupting influences of London and indeed of the entire nation of England, and they led a major crusade against drunkenness, and against gin in their country. Denominations and mission agencies, seminaries, local churches, have had heated debates and have instituted policies that have offended the convictions of Christians, and as some have believed violated their freedoms. Many church covenants in our denomination, Baptistic Church covenants, had battles over the language, the actual verbiage of alcohol. So church covenants were saying a bunch of things we're pledging to do and be for each other. And originally, the covenant would read something like this, "To combat the use of alcohol." And then you have war and debate, war and debate, war and debate and it gets moved over and they just add two little letters A, B, "To combat the abuse of alcohol." there's a world of difference between fighting the use of alcohol and the abuse of alcohol, but lots of debates on them. 

South Eastern Seminary, where I am an adjunct professor, has a policy of complete abstinence from alcohol, which has engendered a great deal of debate and discussion. Of course in our nation's history, there's the era of prohibition, and maybe you don't know how powerfully active evangelicals were in getting prohibition to be ratified and passed. The temperance movements were led by Evangelical Christians, many of them women, who saw the devastation in their family lives caused by drunk husbands, who were abandoning their responsibility to their wives and children. And so it led to the 18th amendment which made illegal the production, sale, importation and transportation of all alcoholic beverages, that one from 1920-1933.

Well, as I mentioned the battle, this battle always seems to come down to two opposite extremes of legalism on the one side and license on the other. And I think Tim Keller wisely said, "If you really think that one of those two is the biggest danger in the church, you're almost certainly involved in the opposite." So if you really think the pastor has to be really, really careful about legalism, I would say be aware of license, and then the opposite would be true. So it's just that we have to drive a wise road between these two extremes.

Understanding the Prohibition

Well, let's dig in and try to understand what Paul's warning here or commanding. He says simply, "Do not get drunk on wine." Now for us, for law enforcement officials, etcetera, drunkenness is pretty scientific at this point. We have actual detection devices that can tell if you're legally drunk. There's a billboard right there in North Durham that shows some young guy blowing into a breathalyzer and said, "You just blew." just humorous, I guess, "$10,000". Like if your blood alcohol level is over a certain level on the breathalyzer, it's a $10,000 fine. So they would define the blood alcohol concentration, BAC is that's a percentage of alcohol in the blood compared to the volume of blood, 0.1% is legally drunk. So that means for every 1,000 milliliters of blood the body would contain 1 milliliter of alcohol. Also most states practice a zero tolerance policy when it comes to underage drinking. So if you have any evidence of alcohol and you're below the age of 21, it's against the law. More specifics, apparently the faster you drink alcohol in a given occasion, the higher the BAC is. It's probably just physiological, it's hard to process the alcohol, and the more dangerous the drinking becomes.

A BAC of 0.37% to 0.40% can be fatal. Along with that comes the journey and here's where it gets interesting even for the purpose of this text. At 0.02%, that's like one-fifth of the way to legally drunk, drinkers can begin to feel moderate effects. At 0.04%, that's two-fifths of the way to legally drunk, drinkers can begin to feel relaxed, mildly euphoric, sociable and talkative. At 0.05%, that's halfway to legally drunk, judgment, attention and control are somewhat impaired. The ability to drive safely begins to be limited. Sensory, motor and finer performance issues are impaired. People are less able to make wise decisions about their capabilities, for example, about driving itself, they can think that they're able to do it when they really aren't. Then at 0.08% which actually is legally drunk in many states though not all, a clear deterioration of reaction time and control occurs. By 0.12 to 0.15% vomiting usually occurs. Drinkers are drowsy, emotionally unstable, have lost critical judgment, perception, memory, motor coordination all severely impaired. So that's all technical scientific. Somewhere long before that level, Christians will have violated Paul's command here.

Now, of course, people's body weight and other biological factors significantly impact this. But I think for us in terms of the issue of wisdom, the question is not how close to the line can I skirt and not go over it. And therein lies some of the problem with alcohol, is it becomes somewhat of a slippery slope. And it's hard to know, “Have I crossed the line? Am I sinning now based on Ephesians 5:18?” So biblically, then drunkenness in that they didn't have breathalyzers and BAC reading devices, etcetera, it would be the drinking of fermented beverages to the point of impairment of judgment and motor skills, so that outside observers note, and can tell that you've been drinking wine, because it affects your behavior and your speech. Now, the Bible consistently condemns drunkenness. Obviously, the first example is right after the flood, Noah planted a vineyard and he got drunk on the wine and lay shamefully exposed. After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, we have the story of Lot in a cave with his daughters and they got their father drunk, and had children by their own father which led to the Ammonites and the Moabites.

There's some evidence in the text that Nadab and Abihu, Aaron's sons, were drunk when they offered the illegal offerings by fire that the Lord killed them for, because in the same chapter a few verses later, he warns priests never to be drunk in approaching the altar. And it seems that some of the Corinthians were drunk at the Lord's Supper. In 1 Corinthians 11:21, it says clearly that some were drunk. And in verse 30, it says because of just the way they were dealing with the Lord's Supper, a number had fallen asleep. In other words, had died. So we could imagine wouldn't be surprising that if you came drunk to the Lord's Supper in Corinth that the Lord might strike you dead. Now, the book of Proverbs has many warnings about wine and Proverbs 20:1 it says, "Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler, whoever is led astray by them is not wise." Proverbs 23:19-21 says, "Listen my son and be wise and keep your heart on the right path. Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor and drowsiness clothes them in rags." 

Later in that exact same chapter, in Proverbs 23:29-35, the proverb says this, "Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaints? Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes? Those who linger over wine. Who go to sample bowls of mixed wine. Do not gaze at wine when it is red. When it's sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly, in the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper. Your eyes will see strange sights and your mind will imagine confusing things. You'll be like one sleeping on the high seas, lying on the top of rigging. ‘They hit me, you'll say, but I'm not hurt. They beat me but I don't feel it. When will I wake up so I can find another drink?’" That's a pretty clear warning against the dangers of alcohol, in the end it bites like a viper. Interestingly, in between those two clear warnings in Proverbs 23, is a very strong warning against sexual immorality with prostitutes. It's almost as though the life of wine is linked in some way to a life of sexual immorality. Many of you that are involved in college ministry know how often this happens, there can be parties and whatever and because of alcohol or drugs, you can do things that you would ordinarily never do with people you don't even know, and it can really lead to a terrible level of shame. God makes it clear that those who are unrepentant drunks will not inherit the kingdom of God, as it says in 1st Corinthians 6:9-10, "Do not be deceived, drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God."

The Pagan Background: Drunken Worship

Now, there is a pagan background concerning worship that becomes relevant even for the verse we're looking at here. All around the pagan world drunkenness was part of idolatrous polytheistic worship. And the idea went that as you would drink the gods and goddesses, would kind of take over your body, and make you do things or act out things that they wanted you to act out, including immorality, gross immorality, and other things like that. I think for this reason, alcohol has frequently been called ‘spirits.’ Like back in the Colonial days, you knew that spirits meant fermented beverages, and so there was a link to the pagan or that world of the gods and goddesses. So pagan worship frequently involved drunkenness combined with alluring music, wild dancing, revelry, and sexual immorality.

I think this is part of what Paul means when he talks about debauchery, he says in verse 18, "Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be being filled with the Spirit." So pagan worship like this would have been very familiar to the people of Ephesus, they would have seen it regularly in connection with the temple of Artemis. Paul is presenting a different kind of worship here. An infinitely better kind of worship and an infinitely better kind of life. Look again at the text, verses 18 through 20. Let's look at that, it says, "Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." It's a whole different kind of worship. An infinitely better kind of worship than that of the pagans.

Some Thoughtful Questions About Wine

So what I want to do now is stop and just ask some questions, I think, I hope will be thoughtful and helpful for you concerning wine.

Question 1: Is Wine Use Universally Forbidden?

Question number one; is wine use universally forbidden? Well, the answer obviously, biblically, must be no. There's no universal prohibition against the drinking of wine in the Bible, actually quite the opposite. Wine is often presented as a blessing from God in the Bible. In Deuteronomy 7, the Lord talking about the blessings of the Promised Land and all of the rich blessings He would give them, He said this, "The Lord will love you and bless you and increase your numbers, He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land, your grain, new wine and oil, the calves of your herds, the lambs of your flocks in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you." Again, Psalm 104:15, it says that “God gives wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread that sustains his heart.” Amos 9:13 speaks about the glories of the restoration of Israel, the post-exilic and ultimately eschatological restoration of the people of God. And it says this in Amos 9:13, "Lavish blessings will come on you. The days are coming when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills."

The book of Proverbs itself has many passages that speak of the blessings of wine. In Proverbs 3:10, "Then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine." And then in Proverbs 9 Lady Wisdom is personified, and so Lady Wisdom is going to spread a banquet and a feast for any that will partake. And it says this, Proverbs 9:1-2, "Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn out its seven pillars, she has prepared her meat, mixed her wine, she has also set her table." Wine is among the things that God commanded to be offered on the altar to Him. Of course most famously you're saying when is the pastor going to mention Jesus changing water into wine. Well there you go, I have now mentioned it. Jesus changed water into wine, and said, "None of you are to drink it now. No one drink it, but isn't it beautiful to look at." Well, you know that didn't happen. It was sampled and said to be high quality wine. A sense of instant aging that came on it, but no permission toward drunkenness, not at all. You shouldn't think because there's a large quantity of it he would have counseled drunkenness.

Frankly, Jesus Himself is the key on this question, is wine drinking universally forbidden? We have the example of John the Baptist contrasted with that of Jesus, and here I think there are two godly responses to alcohol. The Angel Gabriel when he came to Zechariah, spoke to Zechariah saying that John the Baptist, He didn't say his name at that point, but this boy would be effectively a Nazirite from birth, he was not to drink any alcoholic beverage or anything, any fermented or strong drink. For he will be filled with the Spirit from birth. So there's a strong link to even the text we're looking at here. But then Jesus in teaching about John the Baptist, he said this amazing thing, He said, "John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and they said he had a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners, but wisdom is proved right [or justified] by her actions." Jesus was no drunkard and He was no glutton, but He drank wine. And I don't know how you could come to any other conclusion from a simple exegesis “of the Son of Man came drinking” in context. 

So here we have, I think, two godly examples of what to do about wine. Some are just going to say, it's not for me for my whole life. I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to drink, I have my own reasons. Could be that you think physiologically in terms of family heritage, whatever you might be prone to alcoholism, for whatever reason, you don't need to give a reason. You can just say, "I'm just not going to drink." and that's fine. We'll talk about judgmentalism, we'll talk about that, but I'm just saying on the issue itself, you're free to decide to never drink wine, and no one should judge you for that. But conversely in Jesus' case, you're free to also drink wine just as long as you're as holy about it as Jesus and never get drunk. So that's the first question.

Question 2: Is Today’s Wine the Same as the Wine in the Bible?

Secondly, is today's wine the same as the wine of the days of the Bible? Now that's a question I don't think we can finally answer. We need a baseline on which to compare it with. We don't really have any accurate measurement of the alcohol level of the wine that was served at banquets back then. John McArthur has done a careful study of it. He says it's much lower, especially because of dilution. There was a lot of dilution with water that would happen, etcetera. And you can read what he wrote and I find it somewhat compelling. In any case, we're not really sure there is some evidence, however that it was of a much lower alcohol content. If it was much lower alcohol content, you had a lot longer run up to drunkenness. It became much more of a willful decision on the part of the drinker to get drunk. And I think there's some evidence in the text in Acts 2. You remember how they having been filled with the spirit had just been exuberantly preaching the Gospel and ministering and joyful and all that? And they said “they must be drunk.” You remember what Peter said? "It's impossible." He didn't say that, but in effect he said, "It's only nine in the morning. There's not been enough time. We were just up a few hours ago and there just isn't enough time.” It implies then low alcohol content at least.

Now modern wines, McArthur says probably ancient wine alcohol at 3% or less content, modern wines much higher and apparently growing ever higher. I want you to notice, if I can just borrow a verb and just bring it out to just in general, the distillation principle of pleasure going on in front of us. There's a law of diminishing returns, since you have to have more and more of the thing that brings you pleasure in order to get the same kick, and it just keeps going higher and higher and higher all the time. You look at any area of pleasure, you're going to see that that's what's happening. There's more and more concentration. An in-flight movie is not enough, now we need 50 of them. And we need to be able to choose. Is that a sin? No, but just watch what's happening, it's like more and more of the thing you love. Same thing with music, you can just zero in and make your own playlist and just drown yourself in your own favorite songs, until they're not your favorite songs any more, because you've heard them into the ground. It's happened to me. I used to like that song. I've heard it 10,000 times now I don't like it anymore. But there's that distillation thing. Well, same thing with alcohol. The content is very high. 10-21% in wines, gin would be 35-40%, vodka 35-46%, whiskey 40-60%. For me, I must assume to drink a small glass of whiskey would be a decision to get drunk. I just look at it that way, sides on the fact I have no desire to do it. I don't know if that's true, but I just think the alcohol is extremely high.

Question 3: Is Wine Drinking Required?

Third question, is wine drinking required? Are there any commands that say that you must drink wine? Well, clearly there aren't, because we have Nazirites that take vows and they don't drink, we have the Rechabites in Jeremiah who swore off alcohol and drank nothing. We have the case of John the Baptist as I already mentioned. We also have the statement made in 1 Timothy 5:23, "Stop drinking only water and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses." So that implies that one of the reasons for drinking wine would be just the sanitary nature of it. So wells of water back then were dirty things. Animals used them, and there are other issues as well. Now, we're very aware, post Louis Pasteur, of the microbes and the dangers. And so beverage bottling companies are meticulous in their cleanliness with an amazingly wide array of safe, non-alcoholic beverages that are available. Fruit drinks galore. How many are there? I don't know if anybody's geeky enough to do this, but go into an average, well stocked convenience store, and count the different number of non-alcoholic products there are available and come back and tell me that number. Jenny thought it might have been in the 300 range. I think it's somewhere in the 150 range. You're like, "Well, how do we know?" are there like seven or eight refrigerator doors. Maybe you could go per refrigerator door how many non-alcoholic beverages are there. My point is, you have a wide array of choices that they didn't have back then.

Beyond that, drinking is not necessary to being a witness. Just because you're at an office party, a Christmas party and everyone's drinking, you don't have to do it, especially post AA. Most people are aware that some just swear off alcohol their whole lives, it's not even a religious commitment, it's just something they've done themselves, and generally it won't pressure them. Even the alcohol bottling companies are making the designated driver a hero, man or woman, this guy's a hero or girl's a hero, because they're not drinking anything at all. They would like them to drink next time and be it on a rotating basis I think, but I don't know that for sure. So I think you have the ability in this day and age to say, "No, I'm not drinking." You don't have to preach about it at that moment but you can say it. So it's not required to be a witness. Now, some may ask, yes it's not required, but is it permitted? Well, I already covered that. Yes, it's permitted but it's not required either.

Question 4: Is Wine Habit-Forming?

Fourthly, is wine habit forming? Is it addictive? It is the devastating testimony of many, not of all but of many, how addictive alcohol can be. People become enslaved to the bottle, unable to get through a single day without drinking. Alcohol clouds the brain and it affects bodily functions chemically. Beyond that, just the mental habit of turning to alcohol to solve problems, the saying "drown your troubles." Well they actually don't get drowned. You actually end up having a bigger overriding trouble that has conquered all the others, and that's alcohol, for those that get addicted. There are an estimated 18 million alcoholics in the United States today, 18 million, estimated, one out of every 12 adults. That includes, tragically, between three to four million teenagers. Ministries that work with people, so enslaved, say plainly that the hardest day for them is they have broken away from this enslavement is the first day, just getting through the first 24 hours of not drinking. So yes, for some people, not for everybody, but for some people wine is habit-forming, it is enslaving. Either way, even if it's a matter of Christian freedom for you and something that you do just beware, beware. Paul said this in 1 Corinthians 6:12, "Everything is permissible for me but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything."

Question 5: Is Wine Drinking Potentially Destructive?

Fifthly, is wine drinking potentially destructive? Well, Paul mentions the word debauchery here, debauchery means literally, “that which is incapable of being saved.” That's what the Greek word means, it speaks of a person who is dying of an illness that can't be cured. It also the word implies wild living profligates, like the prodigal son. Debauchery is a form of self-destruction. Now medically, alcohol has a long track record of killing people who drink it unrestrained. It leads to cirrhosis of the liver, long-term damage, it destroys brain cells, causes multiple other diseases. Then alcohol is directly involved in over 40% of all violent crimes in our country, and over 50% of all traffic fatalities. It's the number one killer of teenagers, alcohol connected traffic fatalities. Beyond that it's just the damage done to families. And I don't know how you can even talk about this. Most of this is just anecdotal, but just what happens, even if the individual manages his or her drinking and they can hold down a job, there's still damage done everyday to the relationships.

 Story of Spurgeon

Some time ago I read this account and it never left me, Charles Spurgeon talked about this of a man he led to Christ, he was addicted to gin, this man destroyed his family by his addiction, he spent every available coin on drink, he stole money to feed his habit. He worked, but spent all of his wages on his own alcohol addiction. His family was slowly starving to death, his wife was begging in London to have enough money to feed their children. His daughter had a dangerous, but curable illness, and this man drank away the money that would have been used for her medicine and she died. It's one of the saddest stories I've ever read in my life. Well, the neighbors basically passed the hat to buy a coffin and a dress, a beautiful dress for this little girl to be buried in. This wretch broke into the undertaker's shop the night before the funeral, opened the casket, stole the dress off the dead girl, closed the casket, sold the dress, drank the money. Confessed all of this Spurgeon after he was converted, conscience ripped to shreds. Can I be forgiven? Is it even possible? Well, thanks be to God. The grace of God is infinitely greater than any wretchedness, any alcohol or drug has ever produced in any life. Yes, he can be forgiven so can you. But I'm just wanting you to note the danger that comes from this debauchery that Paul mentions here.

Question 6: Is Wine Drinking Potentially Offensive to Other Christians?

Is wine drinking potentially offensive to other Christians? Can it cause other Christians to stumble? Yes, it can. First Corinthians 8, Paul talks about a weak brother for whom Christ died is offended by your eating of meat sacrificed to idols. “He said when you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I'll never eat meat again so I'll not cause him to fall.” Well, he takes the same argument and applies it to alcohol in Romans 14:21. He says it's better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.

Question 7: Is Wine Drinking Potentially Harmful to my Witness?

Next question, is wine drinking potentially harmful to my witness as a Christian? A moment ago I was asking is it offensive to other Christians, now I'm asking, could it affect other non-Christians who are watching you drink? And the answer is it could. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:31-33, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews or Greeks or the Church of God. Even as I try to please everyone in every way, for I'm not seeking my own good but the good of many so that they may be saved." So yes, you can impair your witness by what you do with alcohol if you sin with it. So then the question comes, is it wise to drink wine at all? And that's where I just want to give you those examples of John the Baptist and Jesus. You have to make your own decision. If you want to celebrate as many passages do the gift of wine and drink it, just be sure that you are not violating Paul's clear prohibition here. Be clear that you can drink wine in as holy a manner as Jesus did, or be like John the Baptist.

Question 8: Is It Right to Judge Other Christians?

Now, the final question, is it right to judge other Christians on what they do with this? The answer must be no. It is not right. As long as they're not getting drunk, they've not sinned. Romans 14:4, "Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand for the Lord is able to make him stand." So churches I think are wrong to set up legalistic covenants or rules saying that none of their members may drink any alcohol at all. But having said that let me ask a corollary question, is it right to give counsel or advice to other Christians? Yes, and that's different than judging. I think you should come to your own convictions about this, and then talk about them with each other, and give and receive grace and mercy to each other. But my desire is to just protect this church from sin, that's my desire, and the sin here is drunkenness.

A Clear Contrast: Be Filled with the Spirit

The Joy and Celebration the Spirit

Now, for the few minutes that we have left, I want to give you the clear contrast with being filled with the Spirit. Like I said, we're going to do this much more fully next week. Look again at the text, "Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." So like I said, next week we're going to talk much more about the Spirit-filled life and what that means. But here, I just want to focus on the joy, and the elation, and the celebration in these verses. Just the sheer happiness of being a Christian.

The fact that it just flows out in worship. Our hearts are just so elevated and so saturated with the good news of the Gospel that we can't help speaking about what we've seen and heard, and we can't help singing about it, and speaking to one another about it, we can't stop talking about it, because the good news about Jesus is so joyous that it just must take over the whole world as it's already taken over our whole hearts. You think about how when Jesus was born the angels were just celebrating, a great choir of angels just celebrating and praising God from the heavens, Luke 2:13. And then how much more Jesus' resurrection victory. Where it says in 1 Corinthians 15, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" It says, "Thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

The Joy of the Spirit is Supernatural

So it's just so much joy and celebration, this joy is supernatural. It does come from the outside in. Like wine, it's similar in that way. It comes from the outside in, and we can drink the Holy Spirit, it says that in  Corinthians 12:13, it says, “we have all been given the one Spirit to drink.” So drink up of the Spirit. The Spirit in the Old Testament is often linked to or likened to a liquid, boy that was hard to say. Likened to a liquid. But we can drink in like the earth drinking in the rain and producing fruit, so it is the ministry of the Spirit. The Spirit is poured out like a liquid and we can just drink in, and He fills our hearts with joy. You look again at Ephesians 3:17-19. Just listen, I don't have time to look there now, but remember the prayer there, I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, listen to this, so that you will be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Super saturated with God.

Now, that's something the world will sit up and take notice of. They did on the Day of Pentecost, they thought they were drunk. There's no other explanation for this joyful behavior, and this joy just bubbles out to others. Look at verse 19, "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs." You may say it said, speak to one another I'm not really good at singing. So maybe for you, you should just speak the psalms. Others like I've said before, I sing best corporately with really loud people singing around me. I actually don't have a bad voice. You can talk to Rick Lesh afterwards, because I was singing right in your ear so just ask him how I sounded. But we can just enjoy singing psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. And just include one another, O magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt His name together. But it comes from hearts filled with joy, with singing in our hearts, and giving thanks from our heart. So it's coming from inside out, and it's just so contagious and so beautiful, and it's something that we just want to do by the power of the Spirit.

Let the Joy Flow Out of You

Now, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. I don't really know the difference between them. Maybe some people would have to be meticulous, and I don't know that we can differentiate to some degree, but I think all of them involve a meticulous high level of intellectual endeavor. Where individuals are capturing deep theological themes in poetic language. And when you write poetry, you're constraining yourself in rhythm and verse. And so you have to be really efficient and sharp, you think about every word. And so these brothers and sister hymn writers have served the whole Body of Christ, by writing magnificent psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and then we come together and sing them, and it's so intelligent and so thoughtful and so theological, it's so different from the debauchery of drunkenness, when somebody's drooling and stammering. We are singing truth and it just makes us joyful. That's better than drinking. There's no hangover, there's no sin, there's no financial cost. There's just the joy of the Holy Spirit.

Application

Repent and Believe

So briefly, application. First and foremost, I just want to appeal to any of you who are enslaved right now to sin. Any that there might be, it might be alcohol, it might be drugs, it might be any sin at all might have nothing to do with alcohol or drugs, but you know you're a slave to sin, you know you're not a Christian. And you came here today, maybe somebody invited you here I just want to point you to the cross. I want to point you to Jesus who is crucified on the cross and shed his blood for sinners like you and me. And all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and if you will just trust in Him, all of your sins, no matter how dire and how repulsive can be, will be, forgiven. And then if you are genuinely converted, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit will come in and show you that your chains are broken. And He'll teach you that you're already free from sin. And that you never need to sin again, and He'll begin to lead you in new habits of holiness and righteousness. So come to Christ.

Evaluate Your Heart

Secondly, to my Christian brothers and sisters, concerning wine, just start with this, just simply obey the command here. Don't ever, ever get drunk on wine because it leads to debauchery. Start with that. But then secondly, if you believe that wine is going to continue to be part of your Christian freedom in your life, you're certainly free to do that. I think I've made that case, in the pattern of Jesus. I'm just saying beware, the slippery slope. How do you know when you've gone too far? How do you know? How do you know when alcohol, wine has too great a grip on your life? I think, ask people around you? Are they worried about your drinking? Look in your own heart, if you can't live without it, it's gone too far. Any created thing you can't live without is an idol. If you turn to it more and more when you're having problems, it's probably too great in your life already. Turn to the Holy Spirit to solve your problem, if you need wine to feel friendly, outgoing, and loving at a gathering, can I commend the fruit of the Spirit instead, be filled with the Spirit and go reach out to people. Stop thinking about yourself and how you look and all that, don't worry about nobody cares about you. Well they do, but just move out and be friendly and minister and forget what people are thinking about you. You don't need alcohol to do that. If you've ever been drunk before, and especially if you've been drunk recently, then clearly wine is a dangerous place for you. Does that mean you should turn to total abstinence? Maybe, maybe, maybe not. But I'm just saying beware. If wine dominates you're thinking, you just can't imagine life without it then that's how you know.

Drink in the Spirit

And then finally, and we'll talk much more about this next week. Just drink the Spirit, be being filled with the Spirit. Sing to one another, speak to one another, speak God's word to each other, be happy, be evidently happy and joyful and hopeful in this sad world that we live in. People might wonder if you're drunk, you'll be able to speak very rationally that you're not. But you're filled with the Spirit. Close with me in prayer. 

Prayer

Lord, thank you for the time we've had to study today. We thank you for the word of God and how it speaks the truth to us. Father, I want to pray right now for any brother or sister in Christ, who needed to hear this sermon, perhaps they have been hiding drinking patterns, hiding addictions. Oh God, I pray that you would give them help, the help that they need. Set them free. And Lord, I pray for others who have already openly identified these things, and are in various programs, and are making progress. Lord, give them strength for the journey help them to know the good work that they've already done by putting distance between them and the last time that they were sinfully drunk. And God, I pray for any that are addicted to drugs in a similar way, though they're not mentioned in the text, they're implied, Oh Lord set them free. Lord give us the wisdom to know what to do about this, help us not to judge another servant, but to be wise. And God fill us oh Lord, all of us with the Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus name, amen.

Introduction

The Miracle of a Late Conversion

Amen. Some time ago, I was reading one of John Piper's most moving books, at least for me, personally. And in that book, he shares a powerful memory from his days traveling with his father, who was, among other things, a traveling Evangelist. And his father went from church to church and they would do revival services in that style, that pattern, and there would be a very, very clear, powerful preaching of the Gospel. And there was one time that stuck out in John Piper's memory, unforgettable, in which there had been a particularly notorious, hard-hearted, elderly man whose family and friends had been praying for years that he would come to faith in Christ. And finally, really, to the amazement of everyone, this man accepted Christ after hearing the Gospel clearly explained by John Piper's father, and with tears and repentance and brokenness, he received forgiveness of sins and came to faith. And it was just an amazingly powerful, moving moment.

But then, something crashed in on this elderly gentleman with vivid reality, and he began to realize how many years he'd resisted people coming to him with the Gospel, how many family members he'd turned away, how many times he'd said no, and all of the years that had been wasted, “walking in vanity and pride,” as the hymn puts it. All the years of his life that he had wasted. And he began crying out from the bottom of his heart, "I've wasted it, I've wasted my life."

We Will Give An Account for How We Spent Our Time

Well, in the spirit of that kind of bitter realization and to remedy that, Piper wrote his book, "Don't Waste Your Life", and I would commend it to you. But it's in the spirit of that that I stand before you today, and I want to preach this text. The deepest desire I have is that you would redeem the time, that you would realize how precious a thing time is. And if I could speak just quite bluntly, that you would stop wasting it. And I'm speaking to myself, to all of us, that we would not waste our lives. The basic concept of that book and of this text today is that there's going to be a day coming in which we will give God a careful account for everything in our lives, everything that we've ever said or done, or everything we didn't say and didn't do. Everything, we're going to give God an account.

2 Corinthians 5:10 says, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good or bad." I just think about that Bible verse every day. Someday, I'm going to give God an account for this day. And this text, Ephesians 5, especially verse 16, this text, with this section, verses 15 through 17, is of incalculable assistance in helping us get ready for Judgment Day. "Be very careful, then, [or look carefully] how you live [how you're walking], not as unwise, but as wise, not as fools, but as wise." I'm going to stick with the more literalistic, "Redeeming the time." Many translations say something like, "Making the most of every opportunity," which I think gets at the spirit of it, but I'm going to stick with these words, "Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is."

So, we're looking this morning at the issue of time. I've been thinking much about time this morning. I have my app up, it's 11:11. I have timed this sermon. It started at 27 pages. It went down to 21. Now, it's at 17. So, there's some hope we'll finish it today. And isn't that ironic? I thought, "Alright, I've shortened it, I've shortened it, I've shortened it." Now, I've given you folks the gift of 12 minutes you didn't think you would have. Now, you have no idea what I'm talking about, but trust me. I gave you the gift, and I thought, "How will you spend them?" And that's another message, another day. But what will you do with your extra 12 minutes. 

But from the very beginning, God has wanted us to be aware of the passing of time. “There was evening, there was morning, the first day. There was evening, there was morning the second day. And He put up in the sky, the sun and the moon and the stars.” It says in Genesis 1:14, "To mark seasons and days and years." Since that time, we, using inventiveness that God gave us, have developed various time-keeping pieces, like this smartphone and like this clock and other time-keeping devices, that let us know where we're at in the day. So, early on, there were sundials, which would trace the movement of a shadow across a face. Certainly thereafter, the Egyptians invented water clocks, the Chinese invented candle clocks. About 100 or 200 years before Christ, someone invented, in Alexandria I think, the hourglass, so dry sand, very fine sand, moving down through a necked in place in the glass and flowing down, so there's a sense of, "How many more grains of sand are left in my life?" Or how much is left in the day? Mechanical clocks really came in when something called an escapement, which is a sprocket, or something like that, which would rock back and forth and it enabled accurate mechanical time-keeping.

Wisely Spending Time

Calvin and I were in a museum of technology in Dresden, and my favorite part, I don't know what Calvin's favorite part was, but my favorite part was the clock section because right around Dresden, there's some of the most advanced watchmakers in the world. Switzerland's known for it, and well, they should, but also that area of Dresden, Germany, has some incredible watchmakers. And so, I saw one watch about that big, about 100 years old, that kept the day and the month and the year as well. It was over 100 yeas old, but it's all from gears and springs, and I was just amazed at the technology. But as I stood in that part of the museum, I could literally hear just almost deafening “tick-tock, tick-tock.” I was standing near a pendulum clock that was going back and forth, the sense of just the consistent measuring and the passing of time. 

Now, for businessmen, the adage "time is money" is well known. And I don't think that all of the clock inventors really cared about the themes I'm preaching about today. Their desire was to make the most of the day, so that they wouldn't get behind in business. So that they could run the race, what we have called perhaps the rat race, against competing businessmen, and be able to make the most money. Benjamin Franklin had a lot of proverbs and adages about that, that type of thing, making the most of the day. And so, that's just kind of a worldly wise theme, but if I can say, that kind of hard working non-Christian businessman, who is very aware of the way he's spending his time at every moment and is driven by a desire for material gain is every bit as much a fool as the lazy heir of an oil tycoon who sits around in the Riviera and just get a tan all day long, they're actually equally foolish. 

To the hard-working, time conscious, non-Christian businessman, Christ would speak these words of wisdom from Mark chapter 8, "What would it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Or on judgment, what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” So this idea of redeeming the time in Ephesians 5:15-17 has not so much to do with the accurate measurement of the seconds and hours and days, etcetera. I think it's there, that's something we're aware of, but it more has to do with a unique opportunity that God has set up every day. That you would cherish that opportunity maximally. Ephesians 2:10 says, "We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them." The same verb of walking, “walk wisely” equals, so in 5:15, "walk wisely" equals 2:10, "walk in a pathway of good works if you've come to faith in Christ." If you haven't come to faith in Christ, this is the work of God, believe in the one that God sent, believe in Christ. That's the work. But having come to Christ, walk wisely equals do all of the good works that God has set up for you to do today.

God’s Desire for Our Use of Time

So, God created this world with its physical laws, including the rotation of the earth on its axis for 24 hours a day, evening and morning a day, and then the revolution of the earth around the sun. There we have the seasons, and they changed, and the years passed by, 365 days is a year, but he did all of that, I believe, to tell a story, a true story of His own glory, in the redemption, in the salvation of sinners. From Satan's dark kingdom, that's what all of this was for. That's what the history was for. I don't think history has any other purpose apart from that, and so you and I and every person that God has ever created or ever will create are a part of that story, and God has a role for us to play in that story. 

And sin wants to intervene, and wants to intercept and stop you from playing that role, so if you could picture it like a play, you missed your cue, and you're supposed to come out and say these lines on the stage but you missed it because you were asleep, or drunk, or missed the bus. And that's what sin wants to do at every moment. And it never happened, we missed that good work that God had set up for us to do, and that is a great tragedy. And we will not comprehend how great a tragedy that missed opportunity is until Judgment Day, then it will be clear.

My job as a pastor is, by the preaching of the Word, by the ministry of the word, to make invisible things very vivid to you. And like the invisibility of Judgement Day is a hindrance to us when we don't have a strong faith. So my job is to make that Judgement Day very vivid to you today this morning, so that you will be wise and not be a fool, and that you will redeem the time and make the most of your life, to make the most of every opportunity.

Wisdom vs. Foolishness

A Powerful Warning

 So, as we go to verse 15, we begin with the issues of wisdom and foolishness. We have this very powerful warning from Paul. "Be very careful then, see." [look is the verb,] how you live, [therefore, how you live, or how you're walking,] not as fools but as wise. So in context, as we've said, this is in the application section of the Gospel, Ephesians 1 through 3, those chapters lay the foundation of God's saving purpose, His eternal saving purpose in Christ. And then Ephesians 4-6 says, "How then shall we live?"So Ephesians 1, “from the very beginning, we celebrate the grace of God the Father, for He chose us in Christ before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ. And in Christ, we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of sins. And how we, when we heard the word of truth, the Gospel of salvation, having believed we were marked in Him with a seal.” And how, in Ephesians 2, there's this vision of a glorious church, a temple, a holy temple rising, little by little, little by little, more and more glorious, larger and larger every day, being built in the heavenly realms, a place where God presently does, and in the future will, live by His Spirit. That's what's going on in the world.

And we are told in Ephesians 4:1, “to live according to the calling, or live up to the calling, a life worthy of the calling that we have received.” This is just a part of that whole appeal. It's all part of that section. Live a life worthy of that calling, a calling to be holy, a calling to build the church, etcetera. That's the calling. And then, in Ephesians 5, he talks about, and this is the immediate context, "You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, and righteousness and truth, and find out what pleases the Lord." And don't have anything to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness that he's been unfolding from Ephesians 4:17 on. He's been very clear about the way pagans live, the way you used to live, the non-Christian life, a life of lying, a life of stealing, a life of sinful anger and bitter disputes, and unforgiveness, a life of using your mouth to hurt other people, a life of unforgiveness, a life of sexual immorality, a life of laziness. And idolatry. Not that life. Those are the fruitless deeds of darkness. But now, a different kind of life in which righteousness and truth drives out of all of those sin patterns. Truth-telling and hard work, so you can have something to share with those in need. And not sinful anger, but forgiveness and mercy and kindness to people who have sinned against you. And not sexual immorality, but living a life as pure as light. A different kind of life. That's what it means to walk wisely.

Walk Circumspectly

Now, Paul says in verse 15, in the KJV... I love this. It says, "See then that ye walk circumspectly." That's a great word, isn't it? I guess it's great if you know what it means, so I looked it up. Circumspectly. It's like carefully, accurately, meticulously, that's the idea. There's a sense of accuracy to the walking here. Accurate walking, what does that mean? A precision. Well, imagine that you're a soldier in a war zone, and you wander away somehow from your unit and you get yourself in a place and it’s not familiar, and you sense there's danger. You just stop. And then you look around and you notice, because you know what to look for, that you're in the midst of a minefield.

You can see the New Earth and the dirt and all that, and you can see the pattern, but you're in grave danger of having your leg blown off or even your life ended, and you know that. Now, you know you can get out because you have the skill to do it, but you have to be very careful how you walk. So, I want that image in your mind. There's a sense of circumspect walking in this world. There's a precision to the holy walk. The Puritans, the English Puritans, were called by their enemies "Precisionists", and there is a derision to that. It's like, they weren't "live and let live" people. They were very careful. I mean, Jonathan Edwards actually weighed out, and measured his food, and then saw the impact of various foods on his energy level. He was like a scientist of nutrition for the purpose of holiness, the purpose of fruitfulness. "I want to eat in such a way that I'll be maximally energetic for Jesus." And not only that, but physically, but also just, he would analyze how he did every day and how it went in conversations and he was just a very careful man of God. He was walking circumspectly, he's walking precisely in the world.

Wisdom and Foolishness: Basic Definitions

So, what does it mean? Now, how do we live not as unwise, literally “unwise,” or “fools.” Not as fools, but as wise? Well, I think it has to do with living a life of faith as opposed to a life of the flesh. I think that's what Paul has in mind here. And so, faith, for me, is first and foremost, it's the eyesight of the soul, so we're going to go with "see" or "look", that's the verb in verse 15. Let's see the physical realm, but see it spiritually, and let's see beyond the physical realm into the spiritual realm. And what are we going to see in the spiritual realm? We're going to see Almighty God enthroned, we're going to see Him with eyes of faith. That's wisdom. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

So, fundamentally, lost people are fools because they say there's no God, and they live a practical atheism. But tragically, occasionally, Christians, too, live a practical atheism. We forget the invisible God, God enthroned. And so, for me, to walk as wise means to have a vivid sense of God all the time. A sense of God enthroned, of “God who is light and in Him there is no darkness.” A sense of the reality of God all the time. And not just God, His existence, but that He has spoken through the prophets, and He has given us the Bible, He's given us the Word, He's not left us in the dark. And how Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." I know what to do because you've told me what to do.

And so, the life of faith is a life of the reality of God, the invisible spiritual realms being real to you, and then the truth of the Word of God. "I'm going to live according to this." That's what it is. So, it says, "The righteous will live by faith," Romans 1:17. It's the faith walk that leads to Heaven. It says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "We walk by faith, not by sight." So, that's what I think it means to walk wise, as a wise man or woman. It means a life of faith, not the life of the flesh. Martyn Lloyd-Jones puts it this way, that, "Unbelievers are living an anti-faith life, a life of the flesh, by instincts of mental pride, selfish lusts, sensual pleasures, worldly themes. They seem to have no knowledge of what is going to come upon all of us at the end of this age." No knowledge of it, the terrifying day of God's wrath that will come on the world. So, that's what it means to walk as wise, not as fools.

Christ is Wisdom

Every One of Us Begins as a Fool

Now, here I want to zero in on Christ as wisdom. Christ, for us, is wisdom. Because at one time, Titus 3:3, “we were all fools.” We were all of us foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and lusts. We were living the lives of fools. Just like everyone, we were all foolish. But thanks be to God, Christ appeared, and He has become for us wisdom from God, wisdom from God. First Corinthians 1:30, “That is our righteousness, He is our holiness, He is our redemption. That is Christ.” This is God's wisdom to the human race, and He is the wisdom of God. And the wisest thing any person can ever do is repent of his or her sins and come to faith in Christ. That is the wisest way you can redeem the time.

I prayed this morning as I was going over the sermon. I prayed that God would bring lost people to hear this moment of the sermon. So I did, I prayed that, and if they did, that they would hear with ears of faith, while there was still time for them to flee, from the wrath to come, to flee from judgment that is coming, to see it, to believe that it's true, and to flee to find salvation in Christ. There's no wiser thing you can do. And to not do it would be infinite foolishness. He is offering us full forgiveness of all sins, past, present, future. He's offering the gift of adoption into the family of God. He's offering us a bright future in this world of good works, which I mentioned earlier, and I'll talk more about in a moment. And then, eternity in His presence, and a glorious New Heaven, New Earth. Free, just completely free. Not by works, but by faith. It's what He's offering to you. Christ is wisdom.

Christ is Our Wisdom

And then, for the Christian, Christ continues to be wisdom. Walking as Christ walked in this world. God could have incarnated Jesus and put Him right on the cross as an atoning sacrifice, and in some sense, I suppose, His righteousness would have been met. But in His wisdom, Jesus lived an entire life under the law of physical life and He gave us an example that we should follow in His steps. So Christ has become for me wisdom from God. Live like Jesus did. We'll get back to that toward the end. But now, we come to the centerpiece of my message and what I want to share to you now, redeeming the time.

Redeeming the Time 

Fundamental to Walking in Wisdom: Redeeming the Time

Look at verse 16. "redeeming the time, because the days are evil." Fundamental to walking in wisdom is this idea of “redeeming the time.” Now, what does redeeming mean? What does it mean to redeem? It's not a word that we necessarily know or understand fully. I think what it means is to free a captive from captivity by the payment of a price. That's the basic, biblical idea. A captive, someone is kidnapped or someone's enslaved, and a price is paid, and the captive is set free. That's the idea of redemption. That's what Jesus did for us by His blood. He redeemed us from Satan's chains, from Satan's dark kingdom, by His blood. We've been redeemed. But now, we're supposed to redeem the time. So, the idea here is like the time, that word there means the opportunity. It's a different word for, "the days are evil." But the opportunity is enslaved, and you have to get up and go do something to it or it's going to be lost. The Romans said, "Carpe diem", seize the day. Now, Christians would say redeem the day. Let's go redeem it.

So, the image I have here is the day is like, I don't know, a snarling beast out there, a wild dog, and I'm a homesteader in the early 1800s. I have a historical imagination, so I'm like Daniel Boone. I'm out there, and every day, these wild dogs go running by my homesteading property. And my job, my mission, is to go out early in the morning and hunt down one of those wild dogs, capture it, and tame it until it's a hunting dog, and it brings in my dinner that night. That's the image of life I have. It's like, "Wow, what a weird image." Hey, look, if that doesn't work for you, think of another one on redeeming the day. But the idea is, get up and go grab the day. If we chill, if we hang out, I've always pictured bats hanging upside down. "What are we doing? We're hanging out. We're just kind of chilling and hanging out." One of the great dangers of this sermon is that you'll think that I'm going to go so far as to say things like that are never appropriate. I'm not saying that they're not. Jesus, however you defined it, chilled and hung out with his disciples. But He was always purposeful. There was a reclining at table, but there was always a purpose to everything He did. But if you're just going to be kicking back, you're on the inflatable tube of life and you're on the wide water, you're going to get swept downstream. That's the image here. You can't live your life that way. And if that's how you're living, you're going to lose. You're going to lose every day and you're going to lose on Judgment Day, so that's what we're talking about.

Time is Precious

Now, I'm following here as a mentor Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest sermons he ever preached was on this very text, "redeeming the time, because the days are evil". I would suggest it to you. You can read it for free online. It's called The Preciousness of Time, and I just want to follow somewhat his warnings and outline in this section of my sermon. His doctrine of the sermon is this: Time is a thing that is exceedingly precious. That's what he was trying to teach his people. Time is a thing that is exceedingly precious.

Reason number one: Time is precious because eternity depends on how you improve the time. It is in these days now, in this present era of time, that we hear and believe the Gospel. And so, your eternity will depend on whether you improve the time wisely. So, time must be a pretty valuable thing if your eternity depends on it. And not only that, but salvation isn't an instant, but it's a life process. There's a whole race of salvation to be run. That initial, justifying faith will be with you for eternity, but then there's a sanctifying race to be run, and we run it in time. And so, the soul is to be saved in time, so time must be a precious thing. That's his first point. 

The Brevity of Time

Second point: Time is precious because it's very short. If I can add a word here, it's shorter than you think it is. It's shorter than I think it is. The more scarce a precious commodity is, the more valuable it is. Basic economics, law of supply and demand. If there's a high supply, low demand, it's valuable. Or, vice versa. If there's a high demand, low supply, it's valuable. Well, I've already established that time is precious, but it's even more so because it's short. The Bible testifies that there's not much of it. So, Job said, in Job 7:6, "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle.” So you picture like an old loom like that and the warp and woof etcetera, you got the strings like that and you got the weaver's shuttle with the thread on it and the weaver goes like this, “woosh” and just it's gone. Job said that that's what my life is like. “Swifter than a weaver's shuttle.” Blink of an eye. It's gone. James said, "What is your life? It's a mist that appears for a little while then it vanishes.” It's like the morning mist. I've seen that out where I live. There's one field in particular, it's misty almost every morning and then give it an hour and it burns off it's gone. Our time on earth is like a blink of an eye, compared to eternity. Time is so short for the greatness of the work that's in front of us. And if time is already short, and then we squander a proportion of it, how great is that loss?

Louis Zamperini’s Chocolate Bars

Some of you may have seen the movie, or I read the book and saw the movie Unbroken about Louis Zamperini. I don't know if you know that story, but Louis Zamperini was a World War II bomber pilot, or was on a bomber and the plane got engine trouble and crashed in the Pacific and only three men survived. And they are in two inflatable rafts, in the middle of Pacific with very scant hope of survival. They had very small supplies of food, and very small supplies of water and among their supplies of food, were some candy bars, three of them I think, and they calculate if they broke off squares each of them having a square a day, could extend their lives, but one of them in the middle of the night freaked out and ate all the candy bars. All of them. Just out of terror and fear and whatever and just ate them all. I was telling that story to somebody I said, "I would have thrown him overboard at that moment" But no, I mean they overcame and it's really quite an amazing story, but that's an image of it was the time was already short and now we wasted some. That's the sense I have here. It was already short, now we wasted some.

Reason number three, time is precious because time is actually uncertain. You don't know the amount you have. So it's precious and it's short and it's uncertain. Our lives could end tonight, or they could continue for many years, we actually have no idea. And we have to make the most of what God gives us. How much more would many people prize their lives if they knew they had but a few months to live, or even a few days left in this world. And so it is with multitudes in this world who assume that they have many years left to enjoy. They're in good health, plenty of money, resources, like the rich fool of Luke 12, remember who's land produced a bumper crop? He said, "I don't know what I'm going to do, what I'm going to do with all this harvest, I know what I'll do, I'll tear down my barns and build bigger barns and then I'll say to my soul, "Soul you've got things laid up for many many years, take life easy, eat and drink, and be married". But God said to him, "You fool, this very night, your soul will be required of you". Meditate on the word required, not requested. Death doesn't come and make a request. That’s it. And yet how many will be surprised by the coming of their death, and think to themselves and this is from John Bunyan, "Cries from hell", "I always thought I would have more time. I always thought I would have more time." I wonder if there are Christians saying that. I always thought I have more time. 

Reason number four: Time is precious because when it is spent, it can never be recovered again. Now, hear the illustration that came to me is of a pawn shop. Imagine you had a precious heirloom maybe you men, you had a watch that your father gave you, that his father gave him. Or maybe you women, you would have a piece of jewelry that the same thing your mother gave you, that her mother gave to her. And you're under such economic extremity that you feel like you have no choice and you go sell it in the pawn shop. Actually, you can get it back, if you have enough money, and if it still exists, somewhere on earth, and you pursue it enough and you're willing to spend, you could get that heirloom back, but you can never get last Wednesday back. Never! Another illustration I have of this is of God as a chef and a table waiter. Let me shift the image here, cooked up in advance that we should eat, think of it that way. And so in effect, God in the kitchen, the divine kitchen, the Heavenly kitchen cooks up a recipe for you, it's a soup maybe or a stew or something, and he sets that dish in front of you, and you know what? He will never make that dish again, never. It's got a combination of spices, it's got an aroma to it. He gives you a spoon, and then he just stands back and just looks. And if you just don't eat it, he'll wordlessly pick it up and bring it back in the kitchen or rake it into the dumpster. And you'll never have that particular dish again, ever. You can't find it, you can't go anywhere on planet earth to find last Wednesday, it's gone. You never get it back. That moment was unique, it was unrepeatable, it was special and precious.

Now if we live 50 or 60 or 70 years, and for the most part haven't improved those years it can't be help. There's nothing I can do to help you about that. It's gone. All of it is gone. All that we can do is make the best of whatever time God may graciously give us still. That's the point. So, what do we do with all this?

The Four R’s of Valuing Time

I'm going to give you four Rs that I think will help you. First, reflection, second rebuke, third repentance, fourth reformation.

First, reflection. What have you done with your time? Just think. You don't need to tell anyone, just think about it, you've heard now the preciousness of time, this concerns you, it applies to you. God created you. Gives you a reasonable soul. Reflect. How have you lived up to this point? You've already had a great deal of time that was given to you, what have you done with it? Let your conscience answer for you. Perhaps you may conclude that your lifetime is half gone, it may well be, I don't know. If you're 35 or 40, you may think you've got half of your life still ahead of you, you may be right, you may be wrong, you don't know. But let's say you did. You've spent half your life. What have you done with it? Every day that God has given you, has been unspeakably precious. How have you spent it? Have you spent it wisely or foolishly or have you wasted hours and days and months even years?

Now, if you look back and search your memory, do you find that in a large measure, you've wasted your time or used it well? Think of how much can be done in a day in which you gave absolutely everything to Jesus. Think of what that day would look like. You gave yourself fully, energetically, mentally, and physically, everything you had for Christ that day. That's how much you can do in one day. How many of your days have been like that? And what have you done with all the time you spend in spiritual pursuits? How many sermons have you heard? How many teachings, how many books have you read? How many things has God poured into your soul of the word of God, how much has He given you?

Now, we're in America today, not in Jonathan Edwards day. We have far more leisure time than those did who listened to Edwards preach this message back in 1734. They were carving their existence out of a recent wilderness maybe 100 years before that, a little over the 100 years they began settling in that part, so they were farmers, they were merchants. It was a rough life, they didn't have a lot of leisure time. We are glutted with ways to waste time. I don't know if you noticed that but we are glutted with opportunities to waste time. They didn't have internet, they didn't have Netflix, they didn't have endless sports. I don't think they had sports in colonial New England maybe they did, but they certainly didn't have 24/7. And they didn't have the resources to eat at restaurants or to do the different things that we do, etcetera. They didn't have that kind of life. This is the life we have. The question we're asking in reflection is how have you spent your time?

Number two. The second purpose of this is rebuke. Another way to look at it would be conviction of sin. I really believe in Christ as a Christian the only good thing ever to be gained at looking back at past sins is to repent and be convicted and live differently. So I'm not trying to marinate everyone, so we all go out feeling guilty. That's not it at all. We'll get to that in a moment, but it's all about conviction. To those who waste time, to those who actually are convicted that they have had a habit of squandering it as though it were an endless resource like tap water. Not in a well system, by the way. Just turn it on, it just flows forever. If you've been thinking like that and you've been wasting time, then be convicted. This text kind of stands over you to rebuke that way of thinking.

So I want it to speak to those who spend a lot of time in idleness. That may not be any of you, it maybe many of you, I don't know, I'm just putting out the shoes and if they fit, wear them. But if you know that you're spending a lot of time in idleness, doing nothing at all, following no business, not improving yourself, not working on spiritual strength, not working on a skill set, not working on your spiritual health, not praying, interceding, not studying scripture. Not being out leading others to Christ, not being out serving others in the Body of Christ. You're not doing those things, but instead you're just pouring hour after hour down the hole of mindless recreation, I'm just setting out a pair of shoes. If you know they fit you and you can put them on, then the text calls on you to repent. It calls on you to labor and live differently to a different kind of life.

I want to take Ephesians 4:28 and apply it to you. "He who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work doing something useful with his own hands, that he may benefit those in need." So just do that. It's like you've been stealing from God. So use your time going forward well for others. Invest in your heart, in your mind, and your soul, so you can bless others. And then, get out and serve. Use your spiritual gifts, use the Gospel. Get out and do things. Even worse are those who spend their time not merely in idleness, but actually violating their consciences. I'm talking about you know you're sinning. It will be better for those people to have done nothing than to do that because what sin ends up doing it puts you further behind. You're like negative 20 now and you have to put all of this effort to get back up to zero and then go on from there. Jonathan Edward says sin is a terrible time waster.

I'll just take a little example. Let's say a husband and wife are intending to do something and instead they get in some big conflict or argument. They spend a couple of hours to rectify that, just get back to square one. When, if they had been humble and loving and patient with each other, they wouldn't have to spend any time on those things. Or, you may develop a bad habit, a corrupting habit and you have to now invest a lot of time to get out of that hole. I would say invest the time and get out of the hole but just understand sin has stolen from you. 

Number three and number four, I'm going to put together, repentance and reformation. Edwards, as I said, makes it clear that the time once spent has gone forever. So Pastor why are you burdening us with this? There's nothing I can do about last Wednesday. No, but you have a memory and you can look at how, if you remember at what you did last Wednesday. And as I already said, "The only reason for looking back in the Christian life is not to have a murky, guilty feeling. But to just do better, repent. Live better. God, in His grace, may give you more time." And so, repent, turn in your mind and thought. The time you've wasted can still serve a useful purpose in your soul's endeavors if a sense of conviction and a kind of holy passion, a zeal, of resolution fills us, then the painful memory of those wasted hours will actually serve us well. God may still be pleased to bless some that up until that moment were in an unconverted state like that man who wasted all those years but still you can gain the victory that overcomes the world, which is faith in Christ, and all of Heaven will rejoice. So there's that.

But then, for you Christians God wants you to feel the weight of the preciousness of time and reflect seriously on how much depends on it, to feel the brevity of life, and how short time is and how rapidly it's flowing. And you feel the weight of these truths, then you will buy back each hour of the day, and you'll acknowledge yourself accountable to God for how you're living. As part of it, it's like our time to spend how we want. And actually it says in Romans 14:7-8, "None of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord and if we die we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” So, seek to find out what pleases the Lord. What good works he has for you to do. You may feel the sting of time already wasted, you should, if you're alive you should feel that sting. Some of you may feel the sting of conviction, realizing you wasted some of the best years of your life, your youth, the years when you had maximum physical energy, maximum vigor, maximum idealism, but you were deceived into squandering it. Now you're middle aged, you're older and there's nothing you can do about that except resolve to spend your middle age years and older years better.

So, do not be discouraged. God is gracious. I remembered a verse this morning, I looked it up. It's Joel 2:25 God is able to "restore the years the locusts have eaten." But I'm going to tell you who he does that for. He does it for people who seriously repent, and feel the weight of what's happened. If you haven't repented, he won't restore the years the locusts have eaten. They'll eat more years is what will happen. So, it is madness at Edwards for you to just sink back in a bed of depression over all this, over what's happened and do nothing. Let me give you an illustration of this. Alright?

How to Respond When You Have Wasted Time

Imagine you are a wheat farmer in Kansas 100 years ago. Okay. I love these historic illustrations. So, we were Homesteaders with Daniel Boone in Kentucky. Now, we're wheat farmers in Kansas. Alright, so it's middle of the nights harvest time, but there's a fire in the harvest field near the house. And it's already burned a third of your harvest. And it's now caught the corner of the house on fire, and a friend and neighbor sees it and runs in. It's three in the morning, everyone in the house is asleep and he rouses everyone to wake up. "Get up, get up, you're in danger, your crop is burning, your house is burning get up." And imagine they sit up, the farmer looks out, and sees that a third of the harvest is burned and smells a smoke in his own house, and he's just so depressed and just lays back in bed. It's like, "Wrong answer!" You can still save two-thirds of your harvest, get up, put the fire out in your house, save your life, and run out and save your harvest. Don't get depressed, get energetic, be zealous, have a fire in your belly, zeal for the glory of God. Not, "There's nothing I can do." Last Wednesday is gone forever. I don't do that. That's madness. It's not the right answer. So, understand verse 17 what the will of the Lord is. Understand what He wants out of you. "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of God, and finish His work." That's Jesus's wisdom for you every day. What does he want you to do today? And do it.

Application

Mothers of Young Children

I'm going to close with just a couple of specific words of application to you. You may be in a unique place in life. I want to speak directly to you. I want to begin by speaking to mothers of preschoolers. Okay? You have a unique opportunity to pour into your little ones as they're growing. Make the most of it. It's tiring, I've seen it. My wife worked hard with our toddlers. I've seen other moms. I see some of you moms. I see the look of fatigue, I understand. It's hard, make the most of it, it doesn't last long. You turn around three or four times and it's done. So I just want to urge you make the most of it.

Parents of Teenagers

Are you perhaps the father of a teenage boy? You don't have long to teach him how to be a man, to speak into his life, and get him ready for the warfare he's going to have to fight to be a warrior for Christ, to learn how to put on his spiritual armor. Are you speaking into the life of your son? Like I said, a couple of times you turn around and they're gone. Are you the father of a teenage son or the mother of a teenage girl getting her ready for the things that are going to come? Just make the most of it, that's all. 

Teenagers

What about you, are you a teenager yourself? Maybe you just finished Disciple Now. You're barely struggling to keep awake. Alright, I get that. Alright, two in the morning. Actually, the kids who are with us were phenomenal. Went to bed. You guys were great. You guys right here. I see you guys, you guys were awesome. It didn't cost me any sleep. So thank you very much, I appreciate that. But I mean, you're a teenager, I already mentioned about five minutes ago, you are about to come into the prime years of your life physically, in terms of zeal, idealism, energy. It's incredible what young men and women have done for the cause of Christ, in missions, evangelism, in church building. Incredible. Don't waste your childhood, don't waste your teen years, don't waste your young men and young women years. Get ready for them. Come to Christ, be sure that you're born again. Don't assume because you're in a good Christian home that you're born again. Be sure that you're born again and then make the most.

Retirees

What about you, are you a retiree? You’re thinking, “Lots and lots of my years are passed.” Yeah, but you might have some freedom, you might have some money and some wisdom and some resources and some things that, boy, the church could use them. Are you squandering your years? John Piper talks about a couple that spent their years on their shell collection. Wandering the beaches, collecting shells. Early retirement, 59,60. You got extra years of shell-collecting. Don't waste it, don't waste your retirement years. You could go on mission, you could go overseas, you could do things to enrich the Church. Many of you are. Praise God. But don't waste your retiree years.

How about a specific circumstance? Maybe you're diagnosed with cancer or the closest loved one, a spouse to one who is, don't waste it, you're like, "How in the world? What you mean don't waste it?" What I'm saying is it may put you in a unique position, a platform that other Christians can't use to minister.

Single Christians

Perhaps you're single, don't waste your singleness. You yearn for a spouse and God may give you one, he may not, but make the most of your years. 1 Corinthians 7 says that Paul had a kind of a freedom as a single man that he wouldn't have if he were married. So, make the most of your years when you're single, and God may well bless you with a spouse, but he may not, but just make the most of it. Friends, I could go on and on. I actually did go on and on, but I cut it down. Alright. So I'm just asking you each of you to redeem the time for the glory of God. Let's live as though every moment were precious and live it maximally for Him. Close with me in prayer.

Prayer

Father, we thank you for the time you give us. Help us to make the most of every minute. Help us, O Lord, to live for your glory. Help us to be balanced in recreation. Help us to use it only to renew and recharge your battery so we can serve you and others. Help us, O Lord, to run the internal race of holiness, and the external race of evangelism and missions. Oh, God, help us to live for what you have laid before us to do in Jesus' name, Amen.

Introduction

Oh man, well I have so much joy in preaching the text that Walter just read for you. We get to talk today about the supernatural connection between light and fruitfulness, and I've been thinking much about light in my mind's eye, I was thinking about some of the most glorious sunrises I have ever seen in my life. God in His kindness has led me to some amazing places in the world and there are a lot of contestants, for that. I think about one sunrise, I saw over Acadia National Park in Maine, one of the most beautiful place I ever seen, up on a rocky kind of outcropping, and I could see the ocean and the rocky shoreline, as it went north and south away from where I was and that was beautiful. Of course, I think about in my mind's eye the Grand Canyon, and seeing that and how beautiful that was as the sun just filled in all of the deep, deep crevices of that canyon.

But one in particular that sticks out in my mind is the sunrise I saw in the northwest frontier province of Pakistan, and the Hunza Valley there and how amazing that was and the Indus river cutting through there and it's very arid except where there had been some human irrigation, and there was just a line of green below that irrigation, above it was just very desert-like. Spectacular mountains there, the Karakoram mountain, the second highest mountain range in the world. And then the Hunza Valley, one of their agricultural specialties is cherries, kind of white-pink cherries, they were incredibly sweet. And we were there right at the harvest time. And all of these blankets were under these trees and they would just come and beat the branches with sticks and they would just fall down, and we can eat as many as we wanted, and they were just so delicious. And I can picture the sunrise coming up in my mind now, and how beautiful that was.

 The Light and the Darkness

And as I come to Ephesians 5:8-14, I think about this supernatural connection between the light of Christ, the light of the Gospel, the light of truth and the fruit that God wants to see in our lives, we have a powerful image here, of light and darkness. And that expresses very clearly the kind of lives that God wants us to live in this present age. The Bible is full of language of light, light is a very important theme in the Bible. Right from the very beginning, as “God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was formless and empty and darkness over the surface to the deep, and the Spirit was hovering over the waters.” And then the first thing that God says in the Bible is, "Let there be light". I've meditated on that before, I've tended, I think, erroneously thought the first thing God ever made was light, but it seems that the first thing He made was the heavens and the Earth, but it was dark, and the first thing God said in the Bible is "Let there be light", and that just shows a desire that God has to tell us what there is. What really exists, what He made, that we would see it and know it, it's a sense of revelation that God wants us to know the truth of what's out there in the heavens and the earth. And so He created light. That's the way I understand it.

And then also from the beginning of the Gospel of John, we have that same imagery, coming over from Genesis 1 where it says, "In the beginning was the Word [Jesus Christ] and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning through Him all things were made and without Him [Jesus Christ] nothing was made that has been made and in Him [in Christ] was life and that life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it.”So the word darkness, then means far more than just the absence of light in the Bible, more than that, because in Genesis 1, God separated the light from the darkness, and very poignantly, He called the light good. Doesn't say anything about the darkness, but the clear implication there is that, it is the light that is good, not the darkness. And we get that even more clearly in 1 John chapter 1, where we're told, "God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all." We're going to come back to that passage later in the sermon but there's that clear sense that the light is beautiful, and good, and attractive, and the darkness is evil.

One of the plagues of Egypt in Exodus 10:21, the Lord said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward the sky, so that darkness will spread over all of Egypt, a darkness that can be felt." It's a very powerful statement, a darkness that can be felt, a pervasive evil that settles around, and in us, like a damp fog, there's that sense of a darkness in this present age, a darkness that can be felt, I think that that is a description of Satan's evil reign on planet Earth. His evil kingdom, which covers the whole earth. We're going to see this later in the next chapter in Ephesians 6:12, if indeed we ever get there, I think we're going to get there, but some of you are commenting to me, but bear with us I think if God gives us grace we'll get to Ephesians 6. And then perhaps even beyond. But there in Ephesians 6:12 it says, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark age”, “or this present darkness." And so, Satan has this dark realm, this dark organized kingdom with rulers and authorities, and powers, and dominions. And it is this present darkness, and Jesus is the light of the world shining in that darkness. As we're told beautifully in Isaiah 9:2, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, and those living in the land of the shadow of death, the light has dawned, and that light is Jesus Christ.”

So when Jesus entered the world, the light began shining and the devil has never been and never will be able to put it out, he cannot extinguish it, he cannot understand it, he cannot block it, he cannot stop it, that's the light of Christ. And when Christ entered your life, a supernatural light began shining in your hearts. Which 2 Corinthians 4:6 says, "It's the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ", in other words how magnificent and great and glorious God is when you look into the face of Christ. That's the light that is shining in the heart of every true Christian, is a sense of the glory of God in Christ.

We Must Bear Fruit

Now, Paul calls on each one of us in this text, then to bear fruit from that light. One of the amazing features of light, is that it is essential to all life on Earth. There's an intimate connection between light and life, it's essential to all food, to the entire food chain. Everything starts with light. Here, I speak of the marvel of photosynthesis. Now, that's a bit weird that we're talking about photosynthesis, and I'm not going to say much about it, except that the word just means ‘manufacturer or creation from light.’ So the manufacturer of things from light. And so we're surrounded every day by the marvels of biology, the marvels of life. And how God in a very mysterious way uses light, at every moment to create chemical processes in plants that produce ultimately fruit, and all life comes from that process. Now, I don't pretend to stand in front of you here, and explain exactly how it happens. But somehow the light shines on, let's say the leaves of an apple tree, and as the light shines on that, and as the soil conditions are right, and if the tree is healthy and there's rain, the proper amount of rain as the light is being soaked in by these green leaves, something is happening within those leaves that enables the apple tree to produce buds, flowers and buds.

And then eventually at the right time, you see the makings, the very beginnings of an apple and if all things are right for the growing conditions at the right time, on a warm autumn day there's going to be a harvest of apples. And one of the favorite things my family is, love to do in the past, is go pick apples, and just the full fruit of all of the light that that healthy apple tree has been drinking in all summer long and be able to pick an apple right out and just eat it right away and it's so crisp and hard and sweet, you know what I'm talking about, my mouth is watering already. Just the tart, sweetness, and the juice just ready, somehow in a way that I don't think we'll ever fully understand. Light has produced fruit.

It's a marvelous world that God has made, and Paul uses that kind of analogy in Ephesians 5:8-14, to speak of the lifestyle of the genuine Christian. And in this marvelous passage, Paul is commanding us to walk, or live our daily lives to walk as children of the light and then so doing produce the fruit of the light which he says “consists in all goodness, all righteousness and all truth.”We'll talk about all of that, but by contrast in the same passage where we see that fruitless deeds of darkness, he says. The lifestyle of the non-Christian, it produces nothing of value, nothing that commends our Lord or glorifies our Lord, nothing positive of eternal consequence comes from that life of darkness. This is the contrast we have before us in today's text. So, along with it comes the constant call to each of us as believers in Christ, to be fruitful. To bear fruit. And that we evaluate our lives on the basis of fruit. So today, I'm going to call you to look at your life honestly and see what fruit there is in your life. I've said again and again, and I'm going to keep saying, if there's no fruit, there's no life, do not be deceived. And so I want you to be able to look at the fruit of your life and know yourself and to understand the kind of life that really does lead to Heaven and be aware of that and be clear about that. So you evaluate yourself, your own fruitfulness.

I want you to see, is there something sweet, is there something delightful, something honoring to God, something that He's pleased with in your life, something that's coming from your love of Jesus and your knowledge of the word and the power of the Spirit in your life? Is there's something flowing? Is there something the Lord can move through the garden and pluck from you, and enjoy in your life, you have to evaluate yourself. And if there is no fruit, it's not too late, there is time for you to repent and trust in Christ, and come to salvation and begin bearing fruit of righteousness.

So look again at the words, Walter's already read them. But I just want us to immerse ourselves in these words, and understand them. Beginning of verse 8, "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret, but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible." This is why it is said, ‘Wake up, O sleeper, arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”

What You Were and What You Are (v. 8)

Only A Good Tree Can Bear Good Fruit

So, let's begin with this in verse 8, what you were and what you are. What you were and what you are. This is one of those magnificent verses, that encapsulates the supernatural change that comes on a genuine Christian, supernatural transformation, something that we cannot do on our own. Only the sovereign grace of God can bring this about. Now behind this is the concept, and Jesus taught it very plainly. “Only a good tree can bear good fruit.” So the immediate focus of these verses is be what you are, if you're a Christian. Be what you are. So we're going to be discussing fruit. But a fundamental change in nature must happen in you in order to bear good fruit for God.

Jesus taught us this in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:17-20. He said, "By their fruit, you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes on thorn bushes or figs from thistles. Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit. But a bad tree cannot bear bad fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus by their fruit, you'll recognize them.” So, the key principle there is a tree is known by its fruit. It is impossible for a good tree to bear bad fruit, Jesus says and a bad tree to bear good fruit. Now, obviously we know in Galatians 5, we're mixed, and so there's a lot of things coming out of us. And James says, "Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. This should not be.” We understand that. I'm not getting into all that. I'm just saying essentially, if there is any good fruit in your life, it's because God has done a sovereign work in you to make you a good tree, and it is impossible for a bad tree to produce good fruit, that's what he's saying.

Now, I would say only a specialist, a trained botanist, let's say, or agricultural expert can tell the difference from one, let's say tree limb to the next or by looking at bark or the roots, right?  We can't do that. Maybe some of you I'm talking to today, you're specially gifted people. And if I showed you five different leaves, you could tell me what those trees are. I can't do it. There's no way I could do it. But I think almost every toddler can tell the difference between a peach tree and an apple tree at harvest time. I mean, "that's a peach tree Mommy, that's an apple tree.” We just know because you know what a peach looks like and what an apple looks like, and so by their fruit, by what is coming out of that tree, that's how you know what kind of tree it is. So the fundamental spiritual concept here is a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.

You Once Were Darkness

In order for us to change the fruit of our lives, then we must become essentially different. We must become a different kind of tree. Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 12:33, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and it's fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.” But you realize when you make a tree good He is actually telling you something in command form that you cannot do. You have no power to do that, you cannot make the tree good. You can't make yourself become good, it's actually impossible. Only the sovereign grace of God can make a previously bad tree to become good, so it bears good fruit for God, something only God can do. We who loved wickedness, we who loved darkness, we who loved to sin, how can we be transformed?

Jeremiah put it very plainly in Jeremiah 13:23. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing wickedness." You can't do it. Your habit patterns have shown that you love wickedness, etcetera. You can't change yourself any more than the Ethiopian can change his skin. Something only God can do. And we're told in this text, amazingly. You once were darkness. Just be amazed Christian brother and sister, what God has done to you. You were darkness. Look at it, look at the words, verse 8, "You once were darkness." Now, darkness is moral evil, it's wickedness, it's rebellion against Almighty God. First John 1:5, “This is the message we heard from the beginning, and declared to you God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” You were once, at one time in the past, in the days before you are Christians, you were darkness.

Now, notice he doesn't blame your environment. He doesn't talk about what kind of family life, you were raised in, or any of those kinds of things. He doesn't talk about the fact that you lived in darkness, here. He's not actually saying this. He doesn't say you are walking in a land of darkness surrounded by dark people and all that. Those things are all true and taught elsewhere. Here He doesn't say that, He says "You were darkness." Darkness was in the very fiber of your being, it was in your heart, it was what you loved, it's how you lived and it wasn't accidental. We didn't just do dark things. We actually loved the darkness. Jesus taught this plainly in John 3:19, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” That's who we were. So, darkness, moral evil penetrated to the very core of our being.

Look back, maybe one chapter, in Ephesians 4:18, speaking about the lost, the pagans, the Gentiles who are unconverted. He said in Ephesians 4:18, "They are darkened in their understanding, and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardening of their hearts." That's the darkness of the pre-Christ condition, it's the very thing asserted earlier. If you look even further in Ephesians 2:1-3, as we said time and again, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live. When you follow the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient, all of us also lived among them at one time. Gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts, like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath.”

Now, as I was thinking about "you were darkness", and all that, I know that some of you were raised in Christian families. Maybe you came to Christ at a very early age. We do believe that that you can be genuinely converted very, very young. But I'm just banking on the statement that Paul makes when he says, "All of us lived among them." This is true of all of us, even if you were converted at an early age and you didn't have much chance to develop in wickedness and sin, just as a son or daughter of Adam, that's what you were born into, that darkness and wickedness and if God hadn't converted you, you would have continued to love darkness as the rest of the human race does. So that's true of all of us. So apart from Christ, the darkness of evil penetrated our minds how we thought our hearts what we loved, our wills, what we chose. And we weren't merely surrounded by an evil world, fighting off evil temptations, doing the best we could, being basically good people. That's not what's taught here. We were darkness itself. We were part of the darkness and we added to the darkness of the world. Jesus said this in Matthew 6:22-23, "The eye is the lamp of the body." If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness, and if the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness?

A Decisive Break Between Us and Darkness

Well, that's what we were. Just completely characterized by darkness, our spiritual eyes were blind, we couldn't see invisible spiritual realms, we couldn't see Christ crucified and resurrected and God in His glory, we didn't understand Satan and all of his power, we didn't know any of these things, we were in the dark, we were blind, and we were darkness. Don't you love these verses? “For you were once darkness, but now you are children of the light.” I mean, we just can't ever stop celebrating that.

It just dwarfs any problem you're having in your life right now, it dwarfs any sadness that you brought in here today. If you're a genuine Christian, this swallows up in victory anything that's dragging you down, now it's just so infinitely greater than anything that could ever happen or ever has happened to you. You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. And how magnificent is that. Oh God, give God thanks for your conversion, it's a supernatural act of grace. It's something you couldn't have done to yourself, and He speaks of the transformation that's occurred for us. We're not merely surrounded by light, we're not merely interested in light, we're not merely walking in light, we are light now. Just every bit as much as we were at once darkness. Light characterizes us now in Christ. Light defines you, it permeates you, it characterizes you, it's a radical change, that God's worked in your soul. You've been born again by the sovereign power of the Spirit of God. And you have been rescued from the dominion of darkness, Colossians 1:13 and “you've been transferred over into the Kingdom of the Beloved Son,” that's where you live. Jesus said in John 5:24, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes Him who's sent me has eternal life, and will not be condemned."

He has crossed over from death to life. It's permanent. You will never be darkness again. Never. Forever, you will be light in the Lord. Isn't that amazing? Think about that. There's nothing the darkness can do to get you back. Now this new light, as we've already said in 2 Corinthians 4:6, is shining from within us. It's an internal work, that's done. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ is shining within our hearts. And we love it, we love how glorious God is in Christ. It's absolutely the ravishing delight of our souls. We love it.

Christ is the Light of the World

Now, this is something that God has done inside you if you're a Christian. Jesus is the light of the world. He said in John 9:5, "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world, and in Him was life, and that life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it, the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being.” And Phillip said, "Show us the Father and it will be enough for us" and Jesus said "Don't you know me? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."

But we're told in 1 Peter 1, we haven't seen Jesus. Oh yes, you have. The eyes of your heart through the faith in the Gospel, through the word of God, you've seen Jesus spiritually, the eyes of your heart were enlightened, and you now see Him and you see how radiant and glorious He is in the crucifixion, in the resurrection, and you love it, and you delight in it. And Jesus reveals the Father to us. The world was in darkness, alienated from God. Have you ever walked in an unfamiliar room with furniture in it and especially if it's a kid's room and it's not cleaned up? Have you ever walked in a totally dark room and hurt yourself? The thing that used to get me when I was growing up was Lego blocks. Have you ever stepped on a Lego block, with bare feet on a hardwood floor?  Worse. Have you ever jumped from a bunk bed down on to a Lego block? I think, you actually can see colors in the dark when that kind of thing happens, something happens. I don't know what it is, but it's unforgettable.

And so, non-Christians, they're moving through God's universe bumping into things and hurting themselves. They're bumping into furniture because they don't see that it's there. And they're falling into pits that they didn't see the enemy had dug, “if the blind lead the blind, both of them will fall into the pit,” Jesus said. So there's this image of they don't have any idea what's going on. They just can't see the lay of the land, they can't see what's in the room, they don't know what's happening, they're blind. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit, but verses 13-14, everything exposed by the light becomes visible. I think that's a better translation than the ESV. I think in this case, for it is light that makes everything visible, not everything that becomes visible is light, that just isn't true. I mean think about it. But it is light that makes things become visible, and so it is light that tells you what's where. What evil is and what good is, and where God is and where Satan is, and you can see it all now, and you can see the lay of the land and now you got it. And that's that spiritual vision that God gives us when we are converted.

And now, not only that, now that we can see light, and delight in light and all that, but we are light and we have become like Jesus in a smaller way, the light of the world. We have become the light of the world, Christians have. Jesus, I know he said, "I'm the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." John 8:12. But he also said in the Sermon on the Mount "You are the light of the world." A city on a hill cannot be hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it up in its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in Heaven. That's a life of fruit that's going to lead people to ask questions and eventually to come to Christ and they're going to glorify God. That's what's going on. So we are called on be light, and to shine light. To be holy and to show what we are.  So here's how it works, this is New Testament sanctification. You are light, so live like light. You are holy, so be holy. You are a child to the King, now live like it. That's how sanctification is taught in the New Testament. What you are, now live it. Maybe you didn't know what you were. But you are light, if you're a Christian, that's what he's saying.

Producing Fruit as Children of the Light (vv. 8-10)

The Command: Live/Walk as Children of the Light

Secondly, we have this in verses 8-10, producing fruit as children of the light. The command here is "live as children of the light or walk", is more literalistically true, "walk as children of the light." So our daily life should show light, that's in our souls, our hearts. There should be none of the darkness, the former darkness of the pagan world that we've been walking through in Ephesians 4. From those verses 17, 18, 19, all the darkness of the ignorance and the hardening of heart, and all that. And then he gets into specific patterns in chapter 4 verse 19, the enslavement to lust of the flesh that corrupted life. The lying in 4:25, the sinful anger in 4:26, the stealing in 4:28, the corrupted talk in 4:29, anything that grieves the Holy Spirit of God. In 4:30, the bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander of 4:31, the unforgiveness of 4:32. The sexual immorality of 5:3. The impurity, the greed of 5:3. The idolatry of that, 5:3. Also the obscenity, foolish talk and coarse joking of 5:4, all of these things and many other patterns besides, they formed darkness. That's what the darkness is.

Each of them though, in Ephesians 4 and 5 was giving out a corresponding pattern that drives it out. You remember, we've been through each of these, but instead now, it's truth-telling, hard work, generosity to the poor and needy, speaking wholesome words, that edify and give grace to those who listen, a sweet forgiving temper which keeps no record of wrongs, sexually-pure, free from immorality, free from idolatry, a heart that's free from covetousness, living instead for constant fellowship with Almighty God, that's what it means to walk as a child of the light.

John uses the same expression in 1 John 1:5-7, “This is the message we heard from Him and declared to you: God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth, but if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies.” It's powerful, continual present. Purifies us from all and righteousness. That drives out perfectionism. We're not talking about perfection. Cannot be. You can walk in the light, and still need an ongoing purification from the blood of Jesus. We all do that. But there is a life that's righteous and holy, and good, and possible. Not perfection, but it's walking in the light as He is in light, and the blood of Jesus purifies you ongoing.

“Children of the Light”

And he calls us here, children of light. It speaks of our transformed nature by the Spirit of God, we have believed the Gospel, and “He gave us the right to become children of God.” Children born by the sovereign grace of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Not biological reproduction but a supernatural work of God's grace, and we have become children of the light. And I love it when you see large families with kids and they all share some genetic link. Alright, it could be like curly brown hair, or it could be a certain shape of the nose, or something like that. And you just know that they're all sons and daughters of the same pair, the same couple. 

For us as children of God, we're not sharing physiological things, it's moral, it just has to do with how you live, how you talk, the things you love. And so, we are to show the family likeness as children of the light, that's what he's saying. And we are to produce fruit, look at verses 9-10. "For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth and find out what pleases the Lord." So continual abiding in Jesus results in fruit bearing. There's going to be fruit in your life, and this fruit is the proof of your Christianity. No fruit, no Christianity. I hope we're done here in the Bible belt with nominalism, and the idea that it's okay, it's enough to have been baptized in a church member for many decades. Out with such a religion, out with such a Christianity, it's a counterfeit. “Let no one deceive you with empty words.” That is not true Christianity, no fruit no Christianity, no justification, no forgiveness of sins, condemnation on Judgment Day. 

The “Fruit of the Light”

So the fruit, is there fruit in your life? That's what you're looking for. “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit,” John 15:2. “Such branches he collects up and they're burned in the fire.” John 15 and verse 6. So we are, like John the Baptist said to the Scribes and Pharisees who are very religious, "You brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, produce fruit in keeping with repentance?" That's what we're talking about. There's a life of fruitfulness, that comes from genuine conversion, and as we abide in Christ, that will come. Now, what is the fruit?

Goodness, Righteousness, Truth

Well, he says, the fruit consists number one, “in all goodness, righteousness and truth,” and then number two, in what pleases the Lord. They end up being the same thing, but he just gives us two different ways of talking about it. So the fruit consists” in all goodness,” and put the word "all" in all three of them, “all goodness, all righteousness and all truth.” That's what the fruit is. So what do we mean by these things? Well, I was meditating on the goodness of God. Now goodness comes to the very essential nature of His being. Do you remember when Moses was up on the mountain, he said "Now show me your glory." Remember that? Or God said to Moses, "I will cause all of my goodness to pass in front of you." It's like that almost sums up who I am. What sums up my glory is my goodness, God's goodness. So it consists in His benevolence, and His loving kindness, and His free generosity to all the creatures that He's made. He's just lavishly generous to everything He has created. 

God’s Goodness to All

It says in Psalm 145:9, "The Lord is good to all, He has compassion on all He has made", in the same Psalm, Psalm 145:16, "You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing." So God just feeds everything and just by His goodness, He's just lavishly generous. So every time a thirsty animal, like a deer, a panting deer finds a mountain brook and drinks to her heart's content, that deer is experiencing the goodness of God, though she doesn't know it, and she's not in the image of God, cannot know that God gave her that water, but we know. And every time the skies pour down rain, and the showers come in the spring, and the land just drinks in the goodness from God and starts to bud and flourish and flower, that land is drinking in the goodness of God.

Picture in your mind's eye a zoo, and you go around to one of the key exhibits. Okay? The lion. Alright. And it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon and it's a warm summer day, not too hot, warm, though. 80 degrees. And there's this huge flat rock. Big, big rock. Where is that lion right there? 2:00 in the afternoon. It is just laying on that warm rock sleeping. I'm like, "I didn't pay for that. I want to hear roaring, I want to see some... " But the lion is just drinking in the goodness of God in that sunshine. It doesn't know it. But it's drinking in goodness from God, He is good to all that He's made. God's goodness flows like a river of blessing on all creation, like sunshine and rain, and cool breezes, and the fragrance of spring and every succulent peach, you ever ate or every warm loaf of bread you ever took out of the oven and after it cooled you sliced it and ate it, it's goodness of God, and God shows that goodness to the evil and the good alike, to his friends and his enemies, that's just the goodness of God. Surely, “God is good to everything that he has made.” So the fruit of the light consists in being like that to the people in your life, you're just an open stream of benevolence and goodness to the people who know you. It just flows through you. People just blessed by being around you. They're blessed by your words, they're blessed by your money, they're blessed by the way you spend your time, they're blessed by your goodness.

Now, you weren't good at one point, but now you are. And the fruit of the light consists in being good, like God is good, even to your enemies. And then, all righteousness, what does that mean? It means living up to God's perfect moral standard. I have a picture in my mind's eye, it comes from Amos 7 verses 7-8. And Amos, the visionary prophet, God showed him a vision, this is what he showed me. “The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb.” Now picture a plumb line, it's a string with a heavy metal weight that's pointed and He's hanging it there. “And the wall had been built true to plumb.” The plumb line is used for righteous building, if you can know what I say, the law of God is His standard of all righteousness, He always lives up to it. He displayed His righteousness at the cross. So, if you're a child of God, you're going to love God's law, and live up to it, you're going to show all righteousness as defined by the Law of God, not for the salvation of your soul, but because it's right, because you love it. You love the Law of God and you want to live up to it. All righteousness.

And then all truth, it corresponds to the Word of God. Jesus said in John 17:17 "Sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth", and so everything that flows from the Scripture, everything that flows from the truth of God, especially as culminating in the person of Jesus, you just delight in the fruit of truth, you want to tell the truth. And it says next, proving or finding out what pleases the Lord. It's the summary of the life we should live at all times, we have as our ambition, whether we are at home or absent, to be pleasing to the Lord. To find out what's acceptable, what is pleasing. It's like in the NIV, it's like a scavenger hunt. "Hey, let's find out what pleases the Lord."

Proving What Pleases the Lord

So I went through and I just took that phrase, "pleased the Lord" or "what's pleasing to the Lord" and just positively, not that things that were not pleasing to the Lord, but I went through and found those things that are pleasing to the Lord. I'm not going to read all the verses, but believing in His Son pleases the Father. The Father is delighted when we believe in Jesus and love Him. And knowing Him pleases the Lord. “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his wealth, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he knows me.” Just knowing Him, for you to know Him that pleases God, it pleases Him if you obey his commands, because to obey is better than sacrifice, it's just pleasing to God, to obey His commands. "If you love me you'll obey me" Jesus said. Fearing the Lord, the fear of the Lord pleases Him. “The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love.” Heartfelt worship. When you come here and you sing with all your heart and you just are lifting up spirit-filled songs, hymns, and spiritual songs from a full heart, not hypocritically, but from the heart, that pleases the Lord. It's a pleasing aroma. The prayers of the godly, are said to be a pleasing aroma that wafts up, that pleases the Lord for you to pray. The pure thoughts. “May the words of my mouth and “the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you oh Lord.” I want to speak pure words and think pure thoughts that will please the Lord. Proverbs 15:26, "The Lord detests the thoughts of the wicked. But those of the pure are pleasing to Him." “Bearing holy fruit in always,” Colossians 1:10. "Children obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord."

So, you children, you teens, you young people, maybe you're in elementary school, you're in middle school, maybe you're in high school, and you're thinking, "This doesn't apply to me." It does. It pleases the Lord when you obey your parents gladly. It's pleasing to the Lord to obey them. To pursue righteousness pleases the Lord. To care for the poor and needy, pleases the Lord. To save souls. So that God can have that celebration in Heaven in the presence of the angels. Evangelism pleases the Lord. All of these things. Find out what pleases the Lord. Conversely, we're told to expose the fruitless deeds of darkness, verses 11 and following, "Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness but rather expose them, for it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible."

So this is negative sanctification. Don't partner yourself with people who are later going to experience the wrath of God. Don't buy shares in what they're doing. That's what I think the idea here is. Don't be partners with them. Don't have fellowship in the fruitless deeds of darkness. Don't partake in it. As it says in Revelation 18:4 about Babylon, "Come out from her, my people, so that you will not share in her plagues and her judgments." These are fruitless deeds of darkness. People who live for the deeds of darkness, at the end of their lives, they will look around at the evidence of a life of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” And if you can just think image-wise their life, the floor of their life is cluttered with a bunch of empties, just empties everywhere on the floor. They look in the mirror and they see a sallow complexion and their skin is jaundiced and their eyes are bloodshot. The parties are over and now there's nothing but the wrath of God. Don't live like that.

It says in Proverbs 5:11-12, "At the end of your life, you will groan. When your flesh and body are spent and you will say, ‘How I hated discipline, how my heart spurned correction.’" That's the empty, fruitless life of rebellion to God. It ends like the prodigal son feeding pig, saying, "How did I get here? I was lavishly blessed by my father with a big inheritance, spent it all on riotous living, and now I have barely rags on my body. I stink like pigs, and how much better it would be if I were in my Father's house." So don't live like that but that's not enough to just live and let live, it's just that's the way they're living.

Exposing the Fruitless Deeds of Darkness (vv. 11-13)

 We're actually called on to expose these fruitless deeds of darkness. We're called on to a courageous life of exposure. Now, the Greek word here means, to prove by argument, that's what it means. We're going to show by argument, not by having an argument but showing by the word of God that this is a wicked thing to do. We are to show by evidence how evil those sins are by the word of God and by how we live. We're to bring to bear with power, the word of God, seeking to produce faith in the souls of the people so that they'll be convicted of their sins.

Speaking Against the Darkness: Our Spiritual Ancestors

Christians have done this throughout church history. Their godly lives have exposed wickedness of the society around them. I think about John and Charles Wesley during the Methodist revival in the 1700s. In 1736, every sixth house in London was a gin house. It was a grog-shop, every sixth house in London. And the gin sellers would hang out boards announcing they would make a man drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two pennies, but give him free straw to sleep it off. In that year, 1736, five million gallons of gin were distilled in England. Seven years later, the number had risen to seven million gallons of gin. By 1750 it was up to 11 million gallons of gin. London doctors, around that time, reported that there were 14,000 medical cases beyond their ability to cure, directly related to drinking gin.

John Wesley's preaching among that of others and the revivals of God’s work transformed that society. It didn't get rid of all drunkenness and it certainly not but, it transformed London, so that by the end of his life, by the end of the 1700s, things had radically changed. I think also about William Wilberforce and the Clapham sect how they exposed the wickedness of the slave trade, and then eventually of slavery itself, over a 25-year fight. They just popped the lid off so people could see. You've seen the movie Amazing Grace? They put the fetters on the table and would  say "Look, that's what they're wearing", as they're making that passage from Africa to the colonies. They exposed it, they made it clear.

Amy Carmichael, missionary in India exposed and fought hard against the wicked practice of child abuse in Hindu temples and that brought a great deal of suffering and persecution even attacks on her life. African-American leaders in our country, in the Civil Rights Movement, exposed the wickedness of the Jim Crow laws and segregation, and the unfairness and injustice and brought lasting change in our society. Christians nowadays are exposing the wickedness of Planned Parenthood and the selling of body parts from aborted babies, and just how disgusting and evil that is. We are to do this kind of ministry, we're to expose the fruitless deeds of darkness. It's so easy for us to live and let live, but we're called on to be light and salt, the light drives back the darkness. 

I picture in my mind, a big bonfire in the middle of an Alaskan forest, and you can see the eyes and hear the howls of the wolves and the light keeps the darkness at bay. We are the light of the world, keeping the darkness, barely, the darkness at bay. We are the salt of the earth, so that the salt moves through the meat and it's a desiccant, and it keeps bacteria from spreading and the meat going bad later that afternoon, but salted meat will last a long time. We are a preservative, we're called on to do this, and this is going to take courage. I'm telling you, brothers and sisters, American Christians and Christians around the world. But I'm saying to you it's going to get harder and harder in our lifetime, to expose the fruitless deeds of darkness, but we're called on to do it. It's going to take courage, but we have to do it.

So… Rise and Let Christ Shine On You! (vv. 14)

Trust Jesus

So finally, verse 14, "Therefore it says, Awake O sleeper, arise O sleeper, arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you." This is first and foremost a call to all of you who are unconverted. If there are any unconverted people, he is calling on you to wake up and rise up from the dead through faith in the Gospel. God sent His son who lived a sinless life and who died on the cross in the place of sinners like you and me so that our fruitless deeds of darkness will not condemn our souls, but rather, we can have forgiveness and eternal life. Trust in Jesus, crucified and resurrected, trust in Him and arise and wake up from your darkness and your dead life.

Christians, Wake Up!

But now, I want to say the same thing to you Christians, don't live like a non-Christian. Wake up. Wake up. I just sense a sleepiness sometimes in some Christians who are in this church or in Evangelical Christianity and I just feel like this text is just standing over us and saying, "Wake Up. The Night is nearly over. The day is almost here, it's coming close." I was having a conversation at breakfast, a couple of days ago, with a dear brother, and he was talking about the zeal of the cults. And they're out killing it. That means they are working hard in the name of a false Gospel and so are the Jihadists and the terrorists. They are fully alert in the name of a false God. We have the truth. And it's like, as Keith Green said years ago, like we're asleep in the light. This text is calling on us to wake up to the fact that our neighbors are dying in these sins and we're called on to expose the fruitless deeds of darkness. So let's be faithful. Let's wake up, and let's rise as from the dead and Christ will illuminate us every day. And let's live for the day and there's going to come a day when there'll be no more sun or moon or stars or lamp, but the glory of God will radiate the New Heavens and the New Earth. And there's going to be something that I can't fully understand but it's called "transparent gold". What is that, what is transparent gold? The streets are gold, but they are clear as crystal, and if the whole place is going to sparkle and radiate with the glory of God in Christ, let's live for the light of that New Heaven and New Earth, let's live lives of light. Now, close with me in prayer.

Prayer

Father, we thank you for the magnificence of this text, we thank you for all the things you've called on us to do and to be. Oh God, I pray no one would leave here unconverted. No one would leave here sleepy, or in some kind of pattern of sin. And I ask for my brother and sister Christians O Lord, that we would be faithful to bring forth fruit and keeping with repentance and the fruit of the light that “consists in all goodness, all righteousness, all truth.” We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen.

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Ephesians 5:3-7. The main subject of the sermon is that our contentment is key to avoiding sin that is brought about by our dissatisfaction with what God has provided.

Well, recently, I've had the opportunity to consider the night before Jesus was crucified, as we led into Holy Week and all that, and meditating on the things that Jesus did with His apostles, with His disciples, that night, and how powerful that time was as the events are recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In John's Gospel in particular, the evening broke into different parts. Jesus washed His disciples' feet and then gave some instructions about that. And then He taught them many things about what life was going to be like after He has ascended to heaven. And then He prayed for them. And we know that also there was the Lord's supper as well in Matthew, Mark and Luke. But in John 14, Jesus said this, "I will ask the Father and He will give you another counselor to be with you forever. The Spirit of truth, the world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him for He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans." And I was meditating, I thought, "Wow!" In other words, if you ascended, Lord Jesus, and you didn't send the Spirit it'd be like we were left as orphans in this world, spiritually.   

That speaks to me of great danger, doesn't it? That we would be bereft of protection and provision. That we'd be in trouble if he left us. If the Spirit didn't come, we would be in deep trouble and then you get that actually even more intensified when Jesus prays in John 17, verses 11-12, He says, "I...," He's praying to His Father in reference to the Church, in reference to the disciples that He's leaving in the world, and He says, "I will remain in the world no longer. But they are still in the world, Father, and I'm coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave Me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe, by that name you gave me. None of them has been lost," he said, except the one doomed to destruction. There's a sense of terrifying danger behind those words. "I'm going to leave them here Father, in this world." And the scripture is, we're going to get to it later in Ephesians 6, where we're told to put on the spiritual armor, the armor of God, when we're told to fight. We're left here in a spiritual war zone that every single person here, including me, greatly underestimates. "We are like a walled fortress," John Bunyan said, in his Holy War in his book allegory, Holy War, constantly besieged from the outside by the world and the devil, and then there's this devastating enemy from within the walls are flesh that gets up in the middle of the night, and it opens our enemies and lets them in. It's a terrifyingly dangerous situation. 

In 2004, you may remember, there was a terrifying tsunami in the Indian Ocean, magnitude 9.3 on the Richter Scale that caused tidal waves over 100 feet high. And these waves struck the day after Christmas that year killing almost a quarter of a million people in 14 countries. In the year that followed, I came across a YouTube video that showed little children splashing, hit by the waves and building sand castles, moments before the waves struck. I had a hard time watching. I have a hard time even talking about it now, because they just don't know the danger, they don't know what's about to happen, and the water came and swept them away. I think Jesus had a sense, as he was praying in John 17 for us, leaving us in the world, that "They don't know what's going to come. They don't understand the kind of devastating power that the devil and the world have on them, and the devastating enemy within of indwelling sin." And so, He cried out, "Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, so that they may not be lost." So the more I go on in my Christian life and the more I go on as a pastor, the greater I have a sense of the spiritual danger that we're all in in this world, and Ephesians 5:3-7, gives a plain sense of some aspects of that spiritual danger that we're in, not all of the aspects but there's some very powerful, soul-killing sins that are listed here, devastating sins. 

And as I continue to go on pastoring, and walking, just as a Christian man in this world, I realized more and more one of the hardest topics or issues that I have to address in my own life, and then as a pastor is our right relationship with the world we live in. So we have this command, this warning in 1 John 2, "Do not love the world, or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, for everything in the world, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh and the boastful pride of life comes not from the Father but is from the world, and the world and its pleasures is passing away, but he who does the will of God, will live forever.” So that's the world, that's the way that John uses the word, "world" there. Now, in John 3:16, he says, "God so loved the world," and so there's different uses of the word, but there, that's the world system, that adulterous, a constant attack on our souls that the world is, and we are not to love it.   

But how do we live in it? Am I loving the world if I watch a ballgame? Am I loving the world if I use the internet? Am I loving the world if I read this book or pick up this magazine? The men surrounded by secularism all the time. How do I know if I'm loving the world? What do I do?  And then when we start being led into sins by some of those things, to what level am I to fight, how do I know? Am I overreacting? What do I do? So these are real questions. We have this text in verses 3-7, he says there in the NIV, "But among you, there not must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things, God's wrath comes on,” the ESV says, "the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not be partners with them.”  

So, here's my main idea in the sermon today. As we look at this list of soul-killing sins that are so devastating, and we see it more and more in church work, the main idea is this, the more thankful that we are in Christ, the more power we will have to destroy sin. So I see a picture in my mind of this raging bonfire of lust and covetousness and sins that kill our souls and out God wheels this weapon called thankfulness. And the first time I was like, "That's what you're giving us in this text? Thankfulness?" I picture this little thing, a squeaky whiff. And out comes this little hose, and there's this World War II London blitzkrieg fire, and there's this garden hose. I'm like, "That's what you give us?" And the Lord convicted me, He said, "You are clearly greatly underestimating thankfulness." As a matter of fact, that's the problem. The reason you're sinning is you're not satisfied in what I've done for you and given you. And so you are wandering, like a demon through the world, looking for something to satisfy you, and I've already given you Christ crucified and resurrected. And then a lot of lesser blessings besides that, and you're just not satisfied with all that and so off you go. So, you are actually greatly underestimating thankfulness, because you are greatly underestimating how generous I have been to you.” That's the main idea. The more thankful you are in Christ, the more power you will have to defeat soul-killing sins. 

So let's look at it now, in verses 3-5, we have evils never to be named among us. That's what Paul says. Now, the context overall here, just going to step back, and look. We're in a section of practical holiness in Ephesians 4-5, practical holiness on into 6, based on the finished work of Christ on the cross and we must get that right. It's not like God is saying, "Be holy, so that you can earn your way to Heaven." That is not the Gospel, that's not Christianity. And so, we have Ephesians 4:1, "As a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." That life, that calling, is ours from eternity past where God named us, the elect, chose us in Christ before the creation of the world, says in Ephesians 1, "In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons," and that means, in Romans 8, completely conformed to Christ, “conformed in every way, that we would be holy and blameless in His sight.” That's our calling, and knowing that we are so far, infinitely far from being holy and blameless in his sight in our natural state, He sent His Son, and in Him, in Jesus, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. Past, Present, Future, how marvelous is that? All of our sins are forgiven and boy, do we need to hold on to that.  

As we look at Ephesians 5:3-7, I tell you, there's not one of us that hasn't sinned in these areas and we wonder, can there even be forgiveness? Can I be restored? Yes, by the blood of Christ, you can be restored. It's the only forgiveness, there will ever be. But there is this forgiveness, and this is the calling that we have and we have been saved that I think in Ephesians 2:8-9 means justified, forgiven, “for by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.”  

So, we have been justified, saved in that text, forgiven for all of our sins, simply by grace, by faith in Jesus. And now, on the basis of that solid unshakable work of grace by the blood of Christ, we are now told to live a certain kind of life, a life of holiness. Now, that life of holiness must follow justification. If it doesn't, there hasn't been justification. You haven't been forgiven, you're deceiving yourself. And that's going to come up in the text today, self-deception or deception that comes from false teachers that lie to you about these things. That is not biblical. But what I'm saying is that justification inevitably leads into sanctification, which is a co-operative effort between you and the Holy Spirit, whereby, you “work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” your fear and trembling is we're dealing with some deadly sins here. We're dealing with some dangerous things, and we know the wrath of God is real and we don't want to be disciplined by God for sins and this is a serious thing. So, that's Philippians 2, “we're going to work out our salvation for it is God who works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose.” So, there's a cooperation in our sanctification, Romans 8:13-14 says, "For if you, by the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the flesh you will live." 

The only ones that live eternally are those who are at war with the deeds of the flesh. If there's no war, if there's no fight, if there's no actual growth in holiness, you're not alive. You're deceiving yourself. That's the universal, consistent teaching of the New Testament. And so, we're in this section, and so, Paul calls on us in verse 1 of Chapter 4, "To live a life worthy of the calling you've received." And later in that chapter, he talks about Ephesians 4:24, "true holiness." Now, maybe that's a combination of words you hadn't looked at there before, but “in righteousness and true holiness.” So, the idea is not a sham holiness, we're not talking about something that just looks good on Sunday, it's a whitewash tomb kind of holiness. We're talking about true holiness.  

Now, in Ephesians 6, he's going to talk about the breastplate of righteousness. Well, you better be sure that it's real. When the arrow starts coming right for your heart. So I want that the real breastplate at that point. I don't want a sham. I want to know that I am truly fighting the good fight of faith, and that there's true holiness. So, that's Ephesians 4:24. That's what we're talking about. Now, we come to verses three and four here, in Ephesians 5, "But among you," NIV, "there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or have any kind of impurity or greed, because these are improper for God's holy people nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, which you're out of place, but rather thanksgiving." So these are things the ESV says, more accurate translation says, "These things should not even be named among you." 

We shouldn't even speak of them to some degree in vivid detail, let's put it that way. It says later in the same chapter 5:12, we'll talk about it next week, "For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret." So, to talk about some of the things that I'm going to talk about in this sermon today, in great detail, would actually lead you into sin. It would be to lure our minds into dark places that actually Satan can use to cause us to sin. So Paul's going to give the names of sins which is needful. And I can give a definition of that sin which is also needful. But to talk about details of how that sin unfolds in people's lives would not be helpful.  

So, NIV gives, I think, a more picturesque sense, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality. Get a sense of the aroma of sin, you get that sense? Like there's a slight whiff here. Think of someone with a drinking problem and they mask it with mouthwash or something like that, or breath mints, but they can't do it enough and so you just know. There's this aroma of sin. The TSA dogs, I had my luggage sniffed the last time I was walking to them, it don't happen every time, but I just ignore them for many reasons. Some of you know I'm not, anyway, I'm not going to say anything about dogs anyway. But they just come and sniff my luggage and sniff me, and we're supposed to just let them sniff. And why? Because they're trained to, they can just smell things that we can't. And that would be controlled substances, that's what they're... So the idea here is that these corrupting things that are listed here, there shouldn't be any whiff of that in the Church. The tragedy is that there's more than just a whiff of these things in the Church today, that's the problem. There seems to be in some sense, very little difference between the evangelical Church and the world on some of these sins. And that's a great grief to the Holy Spirit. It should be a great grief to us. It should call on us like we're fighting a war back in the Middle Ages before gunpowder and all that, and there's a huge breach in the wall, and the enemy is running in, and that's where we have to give our attention because that's where sin is just flooding in, it's a dangerous area.  

So the first one listed here is sexual immorality, literally ‘pornea,’ in the past, generally translated fornication. So let's just talk about fornication, sex between two unmarried persons, sex between two unmarried persons, singles. Generally accepted in popular culture today, I would say, perhaps even universally accepted. Evangelical Christians, as I said a moment ago, seem to participate in this sin in similar proportions to the world. And it's not exactly the same, but it shouldn't even be named. There shouldn't even be a whiff. And there's more than just that. But this is why the warnings in this passage are so needful for you, for all of you to hear this, especially you singles. You unmarried people, for you to hear then heed these warnings. Now, I think we can take the word pornea and extend it beyond just fornication, to all areas of sexual misconduct, sexual immorality, NIV, I think rightly translates it here. Christians should be clearly pure sexually. I was reading an article in our state magazine about Billy Graham, and some of you know the story of this was his grandson, Will, talked about his father's commitment to sexual purity, and evident, the issue is evident sexual purity. 

So that when he would travel, and he traveled all the time, he had a man with him. And his grandson, Will, said this, one of the guys that traveled with him would literally go in to his hotel room, and my granddaddy would stay outside until the man had checked the room to be sure there was no one in there, he'd look under the bed, he'd look in the closets. Because he knew all it would take would be a woman dressed inappropriately or whatever, to run out and someone snap a photograph, and he wouldn't be able to live it down, there'd be no way he could say what had happened, a percentage of people wouldn't believe him. So he just always had this evident commitment, not even a hint of sexual immorality. 

And so, now the lust behind the immorality is particularly in view. Internet pornography has been mentioned earlier this morning, is a huge problem for us today. Now, in the past, Christians would have had to go to a specific place, a specific location, wasn't just Christians, just people, anybody. You have to go to a certain place in town. You always talk about on the other side of the tracks, or something like that. You have to go somewhere. Everybody knew where that district was or that place was. Now it's just right there with a click of a finger, really, it's just that easy and therefore that much more devastating. It makes living in the world without being corrupted by it harder than ever before. William Gurnall, I was reading this morning in his 1300 page treatment of the spiritual armor in Ephesians 6. You can look forward to that, that's going to translate to what? About 50 sermons, 60 sermons in 11 verses. For him probably he got 200 sermons.  

So I was just doing some quick reading just this morning and I opened up to a random page, and he was talking about this issue of true holiness, and he had this illustration, it was so impactful, it was trout in a stream and they're all swimming together, and then there's this thing with some food on it that just gets dropped down, or something like that. And one of the trout said it looks good and then trout's gone. Now we know what happened to the trout, it ended up in a, Gurnall put it this way, in a seething pot of boiling water or a sizzling fry-pan. Hell. And yet, the hook comes down and we're still in the stream nibbling, “it's not going to happen to us,” food looks good. That's the analogy Gurnall was using for temptation. And it's like we have to not be like mindless trout having no idea what happens if we take that hook. That's what this sermon, that's what good Christian teaching is about, it's about warning you, that there's a hook in the middle of that bait. And it's a soul killing thing. That's the issue, so not even a hint. 

And he says, any kind of impurity, Paul expands it at this point to talk about any kind of uncleanness. The soul of the Christian is to be clean, is to be holy, it is to be free from all corruption. So, he's talking about anything that broadly speaking defiles your soul, that violates your conscience, that filters its way into your mind, and pulls your heart to lust and evil desire. So I mean it could be something on Netflix, it could be something you're streaming, it could be something online, it could be something you see in a mall, it could be magazines you read, or novels that you pick up and read, anything that would lead your mind to think about anything other than the Philippians 4, “whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy,” anything that corrupts your mind that's impurity, that's what he's talking about here. 

And then he mentioned greed. The general term for covetousness, desire for something that's not yours, it's not been given to you. It could be longing for another man's wife, or another woman's husband, it could be property, their house, their car. Could be any other material thing, money, greedy for more and more, relentlessly discontent, restlessly discontent with what God has given you. And a continual lust for more, then he mentions obscenity, shamefulness, indecency, filthiness. Focus here is on speech patterns. Speaking obscene things, talking about what is vile and disgusting. Like many stand-up comedians who just make their living doing that. Telling off-color stories you know innuendo, ribald jokes those kind of things. Speaking of shameful things in an alluring way, that's obscenity. And then there's foolish talk, different translations of this “chatter,” “silly speech,” you know frothy empty bubbles that just pop and pop and pop and it's like, "Well I'm going to preach this to a whole church is that like everything's got to be serious all the time and weighty.”  

Well no, but I think you need to be a serious person. Jesus was a man of sorrows, filled with joy through the Holy Spirit as people are getting saved, so there's a joy but there's sorrow, and there's a weightiness, and if you're an elder it says there's a gravity or weightiness of speech that cannot be questioned. So there's a sense of “gravitas,” of weightiness, of heaviness about life, about the glory of God, about eternity in Heaven or Hell, and that's your home base. And so if you're just known for frothy talk about things that don't matter, like the NCAA Tournament, or other things like that. Am I saying you can't watch it? No. But if this just dominates your speech, and this is like people just know what they're going to get when they come to you and they're going to get that frothy, foolish talk that doesn't line up with spiritual reality that everyone in the room is going to either be in Heaven or Hell eternally. So, there's a balance there and people have different personalities, I know that some people are just fun-loving and they love to laugh, they love to talk and all, I get all that, but then every Christian there should be a weighty center to your life. 

And it comes out in your speech generally. And this is the reason that these are improper for God's holy people for the saints, In verse 4 he says, "They're out of place", like they will be in Heaven it's just, it's not fitting, it's out of place for us. Doesn't line up. And the word “saints” is so valuable for us to meditate on, we are God's set apart people. We are set apart for His own pleasure, for his own use, and there's a beautiful analogy that's in Exodus 30:22-25, of a certain recipe for the sacred, or holy anointing oil. He's got 500 shekels of this cassia and Kane, and oil, and all of these fragrant things myrrh, and cinnamon and they're mixed in, and the recipe is given there in the text, but then the people are warned not to make it. And if anyone makes this, other than for the express purpose of anointing the levitical priests and setting them apart as holy unto God, they will be cut off from their people. So it's this sacred anointing oil that's set apart unto God, we are like that.  

We're in the double analogy here. Both the oil itself is sacred, and the priests are sacred, and so we through the Holy Spirit, we've been “sealed with the Spirit,” we're set apart for God, we're His private possession, we belong to Him. So we're set apart. So these things are not fitting for those that are set apart for God's pleasure. That's what it's saying.  

Now, verse 4 as I've hinted at, I already said it. Contentment expels sin. This is your weapon, this is what the text is giving you, there are other weapons. But I want to talk about contentment, I want to talk about thankfulness. Verse 4, "Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving." Isn't that amazing that that's the weapon of choice. And it's not a squirt gun, and it's not a garden hose, it's a water cannon if you see it properly, it'll put the fire out of lust. Thankfulness, thankfulness. By that I mean being deeply, fully, completely satisfied with what God has given you in Christ Jesus crucified, resurrected and then the lesser blessings of food and clothing and shelter and other things you're given, content with all of that, that's enough for you. So the only way to deal with sin is to drive it out by a greater expulsive desire, and I think that's what he does here, he says instead, “but rather Thanksgiving.”  

And so, this speech, instead of these putrid practices, we're to give speech that gives grace, Ephesians 4:29, "Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for edifying, building others up that it may give grace to those who listen.” “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt,” it says in Colossians 4:6. 

So we're getting rid of immoral or dirty speech, we don't swear. My brother-in-law used to take a trip from Lancaster County Pennsylvania to New York City weekly, for a while there, that was his job and he said, "Wow, changing culture.” If you know anything about Lancaster County that's where Amish are, you know a lot of you Evangelical Christians, by the time he's like on the subway in New York City, he's hearing more swear bombs, or whatever they're called, in almost every sentence. And it's like, "Mmm". And then it like starts to affect your brain. We just don't do that. There's a reason why Christians don't use those four-letter words, we don't use that kind of speech. It's filthy, and we clean it up. You clean up your speech or off-color jokes or buffoonery, these things that we've been talking about, flipping lightweight worthless conversation that harms, “but rather thanksgiving” and what that is, is we're going to speak the praise of God, we're going to thank God in front of people, we're going to worship God in front of people, we're going to just be so thankful for how good God has been to us.  I love that song, "my heart is filled with thankfulness".  Man that was awesome, Jared, thank you for choosing that song because I'm thinking that's it.  

If your heart is filled with thankfulness you're not going to sin. I mean that's the sermon in a nutshell. Pastor are we done now? No, I have a little ways to go. So then that's it. If your heart is filled with thankfulness to Christ, for His blood shed for you and His mighty resurrection, victory. And what that means for you and your promise, and you're going to be welcomed into heaven, and you're going to be in the New Heaven and New Earth, in a resurrection body and you're going to spend eternity in joy and all that. Oh, there's so much to say thank you for. And you're going to be satisfied with what God's given you, and you know the paradox, one of the paradoxes is the more you meditate on what you really deserve, the happier you'll get as a Christian. It's a paradox, the more you meditate on this. I should be burning in Hell right now. It would have been just for God to have condemned me years ago but instead, here I am with these people, here I am in this circumstance, here I am eating this food or going through this experience, no matter what it is, no matter what it is. And I can be thankful.  

Now Andy Winn was talking about Philippians 4 and that has just been dominating, if anybody's gotten near me in the last week, I've been hearing about contentment. Because in men's Bible study on Thursdays, we have at noon on Thursdays, we're going through Philippians, Philippians 4:12-13. Paul says, "I've learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, living in plenty or in want, I can do everything through him who gives me strength", that's what the text says. So I was reading this book by this Puritan The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, oh I would commend it to you, Jeremiah Burroughs, and his doctrine in that book is this, the doctrine is. What is its point? He says, "To become, to be well-skilled in the mystery of Christian contentment is the duty, glory and excellence of every Christian." I thought, Wow, that's awesome.   

And then comes the definition of contentment. This is a typical Puritan thick definition. But contentment is that sweet, inward, gracious frame of spirit which freely submits to God's fatherly disposal in all things. So it's the sweet contented feeling of God is my father he loves me, He's chosen this set of circumstances for me, and I can thank Him. And I can thank him all the time. I can be content all the time, because God is so wise and so loving to me. But I said with my kids, we were having a family devotion on this. And I said, "What do you think about the phrase well-skilled, to be well-skilled in Christian contentment. So what do you think about?", and so Daphne said, "I think of a musical instrument," she plays the violin, and to get really good at an instrument you have to practice, and play a lot and Calvin said he thought about basketball and you know it's a player with skills, you know, he's got skills. What that means is he's played a lot, he's really really good at basketball. Alright, I want to get skilled at the mystery of Christian contentment. Paul talks about any and every situation, “well fed or hungry.” So then it hit me, I'd never had this thought before, this is amazing. I need to practice this skill. If I'm going to get good at it right? I need time to practice and opportunity. God said, "I'll give you time, today." The text says, "Any and every situation". Alright, When? Now? Be content now, be content right now.  

It says any and every situation. You'll find most of the situations are kind of average and mediocre. They'll be right in the middle. Can you be content on an average mediocre day? Try it out, let's work at it. Let's become well-skilled in Christian contentment, that sweet inward thankful disposition of, “I am satisfied in Christ with what He's given me.”  

Thanksgiving is linked to this, contentment is a weapon to destroy that. Each of the sins that Paul listed, sexual immorality, fornication, viewing pornography, they happen when you are discontent with what God has provided for you, and you go roaming like a devil, looking for something to satisfy. Like David wandering on the roof of his palace when he should have been out fighting with the army, remember that? And he's up there and he's on the roof, and he's bored, and he's just wandering, and suddenly there's a woman. He saw her bathing. And this is the very one who said in Psalm 16, Verse 5, "I will praise you because the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." Well, he did, but he wasn't satisfied with his estate at that moment. He wasn't satisfied with the boundary lines, and so he jumped the line, he jumped the wall, and went off after another man's wife because he was discontent with what God had given him. That's why he wandered, that's why he roamed. 

And so, all sins are rooted in wandering discontent. We sin, sin is what we do when Jesus isn't enough. Sin is what we do when Jesus is not enough. So when you're sinning, you're saying to Jesus, "It's not enough." So, Thanksgiving then is the expression of the rare jewel of Christian contentment, that we realize that at one time we were wicked, we were foolish, deceived and disobedient, and slave to all kinds of passions and pleasures. But when “the grace of God appeared, He saved us, not because of deeds, righteous acts we had done, but because of His own mercy.” He saved us through faith in the blood of Christ, Titus 3, that's what happened and we have grounds for thankfulness. 

Well, the flip side of this is in Verses 5-7, faith-filled fear of the coming wrath. “For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person, such a man is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." Verse 6, "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient." Verse 7, "Therefore do not be partners with them." This is a serious warning. “You know this,” he says, "Of this you can be sure," in the NIV, knowing, you must know. "No immoral, impure or greedy person has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." No inheritance. People who live like that, who Paul calls “sons of disobedience,” that's a key expression, it means they are living out the life of disobedience. They are characterized, like Barnabas was the son of encouragement, he is characterized by encouragement. Jesus said to His enemies, "You are sons of the devil." I think that's the same thing as “sons of disobedience.” They are objects of wrath, they are unregenerate, but there's a consistent pattern of disobedience here. "They have no inheritance," he says, “they're on the road to destruction.” They have nothing to look forward to. It says, "Except the fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God." 

Romans 1, it says, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men, who suppress the truth by their wickedness." Verse 24, Romans 1:24, "Therefore God gave them over to their sins." That's the nature of it. They have been given over to a pattern of wickedness in this area, and because of that the wrath of God is coming, the wrath of God is coming. Our neighbors, our co-workers, fellow students, people around us, they underestimate, they don't believe that there is a coming wrath, but there is a coming wrath. Just because God has been silent, doesn't mean He doesn't care about these things, or that He's changed the standards and that fornication is now okay. He hasn't and the wrath of God is coming. It's pretty much the exact same teaching in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 10, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor homosexuals nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." And it says, "The Kingdom of Christ and of God." Some commentators say that's an experience of God's grace now in the kingdom and then the coming Kingdom of God later.  

I don't know if we can be that technical, but just know you have no future inheritance in Heaven, at least understand it that way. And so what that means is if they have no inheritance, they will have wrath, they will have judgment. Jesus will say to such people, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." This kind of life described in these verses leads to hearing that on Judgment Day. I'm just warning you, “flee the wrath to come.” That's what I'm saying, “flee the wrath to come.”  

Now, Christians understand that. Both in 1 Corinthians 6 and in this text, it talks about deception, let no one deceive you with empty words. Don't find teachers who will tickle your ears and tell you that you don't have to fight sexual sin to go to Heaven. I say, because of the free grace and because of full forgiveness, it doesn't really matter how you live, that is a false teaching, it does matter. Jesus said, "If your right hand causes you to sin, then cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one hand than to have two hand to be thrown in the fire of Hell," and there he's talking about lust. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown in the fire of Hell.  

So, it is wrong for me or any teacher to deceive you with empty words, and say, "That's not so." So you have to fight. We must live holy lives. Now, Paul is not speaking here of Christians who occasionally stumble into sin, I must speak this word of grace and mercy to you. It's like, “First time I click on something on the internet, I'm going to Hell, there's no hope for me, there's no forgiveness?” No, that's not the Gospel, that's not what Paul is teaching. There is mercy and forgiveness. James says, "We all stumble in many ways." Would he exclude lust and other sins that are listed here? It's like, "Well, I wasn't thinking of that, I was thinking of other things." No. When Paul says in Romans 7, "The very thing I hate, I do." I think he would include these things that we struggle with.  

“Therefore, Do Not Be Partners With Them”  But a genuine Christian does not give himself over to these sins. He's not a son or daughter of disobedience. It's not who you are. A genuine Christian hungers and thirsts for deliverance, they hunger and thirst for holiness, they yearn to be free. Oh, they look forward to the day when they will be freed at last from sinning, and they're yearning for that. Genuine Christians also see actual successes by the power of the Spirit in killing temptations, they actually see some temptations at their feet. And genuine Christians see an increasing pattern of holiness long-term in their lives as they grow in grace, in the knowledge of Christ. But genuine Christians may occasionally stumble into sin and deeply grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Question is, what do you do then?  

Do you repent and fight, or do you wallow in it? So he says, "Therefore, do not be partners with them.” Let's not settle in, and just live that life. Because honestly, if you share their lifestyle, you will share their judgment. I think that's what Paul is saying here. “If you share their lifestyle, you will share their judgment.” So if this is your lifestyle then be warned and “flee the wrath to come.”  

So how do you fight? Well, first and foremost, come to Christ and trust in Him. For the forgiveness of your sins. Put your full trust in Jesus, you can't fight alone. And then identify if you're a Christian, identify determine in your mind, you're going to be holy and identify areas of weakness, in this list or in any of the lists that we've talked about here. And be willing to cut off things that have brought you pleasure. Because they're also leading, you inevitably to sin. And you're like, "Well does that mean I never use the Internet again?", it's like, "Well. I don't know how to answer you. That's one of the hardest things. Like do I never use the telephone again, if I ever used it for slander or gossip? No.   

Well, we talked about the Amish that's where that life leads. Alright? Cut off from all electronic things, etcetera. And I think in one sense you could say you could argue for that, but I don't think that's biblical. No, you're not excused from this. You have to fight, and not sin. Be in the world but not of it, that's what you have to do, but if something that you don't need to do is inevitably causing you to sin, then cut it off. As I've said before, the key is death by starvation. The longer it's been since the last time you yield you to a particular lust, the weaker that lust will get in your life that's your hope. So put some distance between you and your sins and they'll get weaker and weaker.  

Final point I want to make. Let's be attractively holy people in a repulsively evil world. Let's make holiness appear attractive because honestly, holiness is the best possible life you can ever live, it's the life of maximum pleasure, it's the best pleasure life, you can ever live is walking with Jesus. There is no better life than the life of holiness it is the best life there is, and the more content you are with your blessings in Christ, the more the non-Christians will call you weird, but they want to know you. It's like, "What is it with you like Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail? That's weird." You guys got beaten, and your back's bleeding, didn't have anything to eat. You're in the darkness, and you're singing? That's weird, but whatever it is you have, I want." It's very attractive to be thankful in all circumstances, and to drive out sin with sweet, holy thankfulness to God, that's a powerful attractive thing. Christians should be the most attractive people in the world. So I just want you to go through the inventory of the blessings that God's given you. Start with your salvation blessings and thank God. Thank Jesus for drinking your wrath for you. Just thank Him. And then go through your lesser blessings. 

Husbands thank God for your wives. Thank God for who they are. Strengths, weaknesses, everything. Wives, thank God for your husbands, strengths, weaknesses, and everything. Thank God for your children, parents, thank God for the stage they're at. If they're toddlers, if they're teens, thank God for them. Let your kids know how thankful you are that they're in in your lives, and teens thank God for your parents.  It's like "Now you're asking too much." No. Thank God for your parents, who provide for you and protect you and love you and teach you. Just thank God for your possessions, thank God for your education, thank God for your opportunities, thank God for everything you have and you will not be so prone to be covetous and yearning for things you don't have. We should be the most attractive people in the world. We should just make the Christian life look beautiful and attractive.  

I want to close with an illustration, some time ago, I watched a very powerful movie called Babette's Feast. Maybe some of you've seen it, and it's a powerful movie. Because in the story, there's a Christian sect, that's extreme and ascetic and they just live off on the coast of Jutland in Denmark, 19th century, and this woman, Babette comes to live with them and they don't know that much about her, but she gets a job as a cook, and she just settles in there. And this is an extreme ascetic sect. That wears  very draped clothing and eats very simple food, and basically has stripped the sense side of life entirely, and in this way, they think that they're going to go to Heaven.  

Well, anyway, turns out that she wins a lottery, a ticket she had bought years ago, and she won it and it also turns out that she had been at one point one of the greatest chefs in Paris and she decided to take all of that money and make a feast for this sect, for the people in that community. 

And it is the most overwhelmingly sensuous, delicious food they could ever imagine, and they don't know what to do, they don't know if there's any sin in eating the food, but they don't know what to do and so, they decide that they'll all eat it in silence and say nothing about it. Now, you have to watch the movie to find out what happens. But I'm like, "That's not what I'm talking about here." I'm talking about taking God's delightful gifts such as marital relations within marriage, and the possessions and the good things you have and enjoying them and being thankful for them, but above all, infinitely above all the blessings of the Gospel by which you're going to go to Heaven when you die and not be condemned. Take those things and live a life of thankfulness, you'll make the Gospel you adorn it, and make it beautiful to the lost.   

Let's close in prayer: Father we thank you for the time we've had to consider your word. And God, I pray, protect us from sin, help us oh Lord, to have the expulsive power of deep thankfulness, help us to put sin to death. Oh, I pray that you would work in each one of us and I pray if there are any that are here that are in chains to sin and they know that they're not Christians, that they would find in Christ crucified and resurrected their savior. We pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen. 

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Ezekiel 37:1-14. The main subject of the sermon is the hope we find in Scripture's testimony about resurrections.

I would love to ask that you turn in your Bibles to Ezekiel 37. I'd like you to look along with me as we're gonna be preaching through that and talking about the significance of the resurrection. And as Ray mentioned, if you didn't come here with a Bible, you certainly are free to take a pew Bible right there in front of you, the black one. You can take it home with you if you don't have a Bible at home. These are our gift to you. As he mentioned, Ezekiel 37 is on page 724, and I'd love for you to just look along with me. 

This is a day of celebration for us who are Christians. And I've had the privilege of traveling all around the world in my ministry, and I've been with brothers and sisters in many different countries. And I thought about it, and I've often thought about this before, just the circuit of the sun around the world, 24 hours. The 24 time zones. Actually, I find out there’s more than 24 time zones, so that kind of blew the illustration. There's actually a tiny time zone all by itself near the island of Australia and New Zealandhe. They’ve got their own time zone. And there's like 450 people there but I know that there's some Christians there. So what I'm saying, in every time zone, there are believers, there are brothers and sisters. 

And Christi and I had the privilege of worshipping with brothers and sisters in Japan, the land of the rising sun. And our brothers and sisters there have already risen long before us to praise Christ the resurrected Savior. And I've seen Christian brothers and sisters in China — I haven't been with them for Easter, but I've seen them. And our brothers and sisters in India have already done their diligence and they've risen and they're praising Christ. And I've been with brothers and sisters in Africa. And I've been with brothers and sisters in Europe. I've even been with brothers and sisters in Christ worshipping in Newfoundland — it's the easternmost part of North America, and I stood at this rocky point that's the most eastern place there is. It’s like halfway from here to Ireland, and I stood there and I praised God and how — I wasn't there on Easter, but I thought of a sunrise service — and how awesome it would be there to gather with brothers and sisters in Christ and celebrate the resurrection of Christ. All the way across the four time zones of our country. Not been to Hawaii yet. If there's anyone there that wants to invite me to come preach, I'd be delighted to come. Maybe even for Easter. I haven't been to the Aleutian Islands yet, or in Alaska, but all around the world, our brothers and sisters are assembling and worshipping, and we are here now today.

And it's a special time for us to say, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” not “He was risen” or “He has been raised.” Those things are true, but he's still alive, and he will never die again. And we get to celebrate this. And as I have the privilege of preaching, year after year, I get to choose a text of Scripture, and I yearn to take the words of Scripture’s testimony and just bring it forward to you again —the simple stunning fact, the history changing fact, that Christ Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day after being crucified for our sins. As 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 says, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” 

So Christ was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures. So in Paul's day, the Scriptures would have been the Old Testament. And Daniel was talking about how it might have been surprising to some of you to turn back to Psalm 16, but that's the very text that Peter preached from to prove the resurrection of Christ. What a magnificent text that is. But we must know that Christ's resurrection was not for his own sake, but he came, he was born, he lived, he died and was raised for our salvation. For our sakes, he was raised. Job asked poignantly a question, and it stuck with me since the first time I heard someone preach on it — a question for the entire human race. All of us are under the death penalty. If the Lord doesn't return in our generation, every single one of us will die. All of us. We are facing our own mortality. And not only that, but we're facing death of loved ones, even if we should live many years beyond a beloved spouse or parents, brothers and sisters, even children. How tragic that can be to bury a child. We understand from Hebrews 9:27, “It is appointed to each one of us to die once and after that to face the judgment.” 

So death is coming and we're aware of it. And if you're not really acutely aware of death, it probably just means that you're young, you haven't lived long and you haven't experienced. But even some young people have come face-to-face with the death of a loved one of a father or mother or someone close to them. And so we're aware of this. And Job asked this poignant question in Job 14:14, "If a man dies, will he live again?” “Is there a resurrection for me? I wanna live, I want to be raised from the grave, I don't wanna die, I don't want all of the things I cared about to go into dust in the wind, I want to live forever.” And all of us — you know it says in Ecclesiastes that he set eternity in our hearts — we wanna know if we can defeat death.

And that's why this morning I wanna preach an Easter sermon for you from Ezekiel 37. The astonishing vision of Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones. Now, some of you are saying, “Why oh why, dear pastor, are you bringing us here, Ezekiel 37?” You thought there might be the chance that Ray would read a Scripture and I'd preach from something else, something like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, something from that. But no. You know, if you've been here long enough, that's likely to be what the pastor is gonna get up and talk about. Why oh why, the valley of dry bones?

It's one of the eeriest and creepiest prophetic visions there is in the Bible, honestly. Like something from a horror film. One commentator said it's like strolling through someone else's hallucination. And you read that and it's a sense of eeriness and sense of terror almost. Ezekiel was lifted by the Spirit and placed in a vast valley of dry bones — not a cemetery, but what seems somewhat to have been an ancient battlefield. A vast army — the word army is used of dead people whose bones are not all piled up in one place, like in some slaughterhouse — but they're just scattered all over this vast valley. 

And these dry bones are summoned to life by a preached message. By the word of God given through a human messenger, and by the howling of a powerful supernatural wind that came from the four corners of the earth that comes and breathes life into this vast army of dead people, and in stages they come to life. They stand up on their feet and they're alive.

So why is this a fit message for Easter Sunday? Some years ago as I was doing evangelism in the workplace, I was sharing with one individual. And I love to use miracle stories as a platform for sharing the Gospel. I would just commend that to you, my brothers and sisters in Christ. We have a responsibility to take the Gospel to this region, to Durham, and to the surrounding area or wherever you're from, you might not be from here. But if you're a believer, it's our job to preach the Gospel to people who are lost. And I would just commend this pattern to you of memorizing accounts of miracles, of Jesus actually doing miracles.

And of course, one of the most powerful ones is the account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus has been dead for four days, and I love to use the kind of “you are there” approach to evangelism. And I try to bring the lost person into the story, and I say, “What would you have felt if you had been there and the stone was rolled back, and Jesus calls out in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus come forth!’ And there he comes this dead man still wrapped in grave clothes, coming out into the sunshine. ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go.’ What would you think if you were there?" He said, "I'd be running as fast as I could the other direction, screaming in terror." 

That was not the reaction I was hoping for. I was hoping he'd say, "Oh, I would think Jesus was the Son of God. I'd wanna believe in him." But he's not... “I'm running as fast as I can.” Think he probably watched too many horror films or something like that and he thought maybe it was like a zombie thing or something like that. No, it was an actual resurrection. Well, whatever he might have been feeling at that, what about this? This isn't just one individual, this is a whole army of dead people, and they come to life in stages where you get to see kind of the construction of the human anatomy before the skin even goes on these dead people. So it's a bit eerie. 

And so you're saying, "Why here, oh pastor?" Let me say it very plainly: I believe that this text prophesies ultimately not just Jesus’s resurrection, although it's because of his resurrection that we have hope, but it predicts our resurrection from the grave. 

And so what I wanna talk to you about is four resurrections that I take from this text. First, I'm gonna talk about Christ’s bodily resurrection, which I'm not gonna find directly in the text, but it's implied. And I'm just gonna say Jesus paid it all, as we already sang. And there wouldn't be any life, there wouldn't be any history, there wouldn't be anything worth doing if Christ hadn't been raised from the dead. So we'll start with Christ’s bodily resurrection. Secondly, I'm gonna talk about Israel's national resurrection and what God was doing in the nation of Israel. Thirdly, I'm gonna talk about the church's spiritual resurrection. And then fourthly, the church's bodily resurrection from the dead. These are the four things.

Let's start with the first, Christ’s bodily resurrection. This is the reason for our celebration today. This is why we're assembled. This is why Christians assemble on the first day of the week around the world — not on the seventh day, the Sabbath, but we moved over to the first day to celebrate the new creation of which Jesus's resurrection body is the beginning. It’s a start of a new universe, his physical body raised from the dead. And so we Christians, we worship on the first day of the week in honor of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So we're gonna celebrate — as Andy said this, “We're gonna be here next week” — please join us 'cause we celebrate the resurrection every week to some degree, But it's good for us, isn't it, to have a focused day to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. And that's what we do.

Now, we understand that before the resurrection, there had to be the death. And so we celebrate not just Jesus's resurrection, but we celebrate his atoning sacrifice, his death on the cross for our sins. We learn from the Bible that “…the wages of sin is death.” [Romans 6:23] That from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden, God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” [Genesis 2:17] God said the death penalty came on them that day, and they did die, though not that day. And Ezekiel said in Ezekiel 18:4, “... the soul who sins shall die.” It's universal. We have all sinned, all of us, and fall short of the glory of God.

And therefore there is a death penalty over us, and I don't mean just physical death. We know that Christians do die physically — that's true  — but there is a second death. A terrifying second death, which is clearly depicted in the book of Revelation, of being cast into the lake of fire to eternally die under the wrath of God. That’s the second death. And Jesus came to deliver us from that second death, and then ultimately from the first death as well, by our resurrection.

That is the salvation that Jesus paid for in blood on the cross. And so we celebrate that. We know that Christ died in our place. Isaiah 53:6 says very plainly, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” That's substitutionary atonement. Jesus stood in our place, and he took the lightning strike of God's wrath in our place and carried it safely away from us who believe in him, so that the wrath of God will never strike us down. But Jesus is our substitute, and we do not fear death. We do not fear death because we know that after death comes life and not second death. After death comes eternity in the presence of God, and Jesus paid for that in blood. And we celebrate that.

But God raised him from the dead on the third day to vindicate the atoning work of Christ. He was put to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification, our vindication, the book of Romans says. And so in that way, we know that God has accepted the blood atonement of Jesus. He’s accepted it by raising Jesus from the dead.

And so the actual accounts of Jesus's resurrection are thrilling. All four of the Gospels have different accounts, sometimes slightly different, sometimes significantly different, but easily harmonized. Matthew 28:1-10 is one of them. It says there, “After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.” Now I have told you.’” So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” This is my favorite part.

“Suddenly Jesus met them.” Every genuine believer in Christ looks forward to that moment. Oh, I look forward to seeing Jesus. I yearn to see him who died for me and who was raised for my justification. “Suddenly, Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said.” I love that. It's like… “Hi! Chaire.” It's just, “Hi, how are you?” And there he is. “Greetings.” And then “They came to him, clasped his feet…” they're falling at the ground in worship, which is completely appropriate. They're grabbing on to him and they’re “worship[ing] him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’”

John's Gospel [John 20:19-21]. They're assembled there “on the evening of that first day of the week,” and the doors are “locked for fear of the Jews.” Suddenly — there's that word again — Jesus comes and stands in their midst and says, “‘Peace be with you.’After he said this, he showed them his hands and side… [and] Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, [even so] I am sending you. … And then he breathed on them and said…, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” So there's the different accounts, and so the bodily resurrection from the dead is testified to clearly in Scripture.

The Case for Easter by Lee Strobel is an apologetic work defending the resurrection. I'll tell you how I will defend apologetically the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The Bible says Jesus was raised from the dead. I believe the Bible; therefore Christ has been raised from the dead. That's the apologetic. And I actually think it's going to be in the end as simple as that: You will believe in the resurrection if you believe in Scripture; if you don't believe the Scripture, you won't believe in the resurrection. They’re indissolubly linked together.

But the clear implication that Jesus has given us here, and this is so beautiful, John 14:19: “Because I live, you also will live.”  Oh, we can't get enough of meditating on that link. In effect, “My resurrection victory is your resurrection victory. I'm giving you the spoils.” So that's the link to Ezekiel 37. There will be no one raised out of a grave if it weren't for Jesus's death and resurrection. No one.

Jesus said in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Then Jesus asked that penetrating question, "Do you believe this?" Well, do you? You're attending worship here today, it's Easter Sunday. Do you believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? And if you do, you will be raised from the grave and spend eternity with him. 

And this resurrection that Jesus has planned is worldwide in its extent. Revelation 7:9-10 says, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” So Christ's resurrection is a historical fact. We Christians believe it. There is no religion in the world for which history is so important as Christianity. If Christ has not been raised, we are all wasting our time being here today. I say that honestly. But Christ has been raised from the dead. We believe in the history. We believe it actually happened, and it is on the basis of that that everything else I'm gonna say to you flows. God knew from before the foundation of the world what he would do, and that Jesus would die and he'd be, not just killed, but raised to life on the third day, and on that basis come these other three resurrection. 

Let's talk about the second one now. And that is Israel's national resurrection. Now, Ezekiel the prophet lived in a time 600 years before Christ. He was a prophet called by God in a time of national crisis. The northern kingdom of Israel had already been deported by the Assyrians 150 years before that because of their sins. They violated the law of Moses; they could not stay in the Promised Land.

The Jewish nation was divided into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom had gone quickly into idolatry and despite many warnings from prophets, they were deported, exiled 150 years before that. The southern kingdom of Judah tragically followed their same example and fell into the same pattern of sins. And the time had come — in Ezekiel's lifetime, in Jeremiah's lifetime, in Daniel's lifetime — the time had come for the southern kingdom of Judah to be deported by the Babylonians as an act of judgment against them for their wickedness and sins.

And so Ezekiel's book begins with a stunning vision of the glory and the grandeur of Almighty God, a vision that just stretches human language almost to the breaking point where you're trying to understand this vision of the glory, of the likeness of the glory of God, I think it says. And then he commands… this glorious God commands this man Ezekiel to go and minister to the Jewish exiles, who are on their way to or already in Babylon, to minister to them.

Now, this exile is a severe punishment. The Jews were now finally removed from their promised land after many warnings. The inheritance that God had promised them in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that he had given them through Joshua — this Promised Land — was now taken from them because of their sins, because of their wickedness. And they were going to Babylon. Actually, most of the Jews of that generation died. They were slaughtered by the sword, famine and plague. They died because of their sins, most of them did. A tiny remnant of them would march in chains as slaves to Babylon, and they would live out the rest, for the most part, the rest of their lives in captivity. The Jews as a race, it seemed at that point, was dead. Their hopes had died. Because honestly, usually what happens is with some of these nations and they get absorbed and drawn into a conquering nation, like the Moabites and the Ammonites and the Syrians and all that. You get drawn into some conquering nation — you lose your national identity, you just melt in. You inter-marry and you just become Babylonian, basically. 

So Israel as a nation seemed dead. Jeremiah the prophet who lived at the same time as Ezekiel, spoke the chilling words of the desolation of Jerusalem in Lamentations 1:1. I picture him sitting perhaps on the Mount of Olives looking down over the city, smoldering, destroyed, the temple destroyed. People dead everywhere. And everyone else deported. And he's there alone. And he says, “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!” So it seemed that Israel's hopes were dead.

And so God moves Ezekiel to a place of vision. Look at verses 1 and 2, “The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.” So God moves Ezekiel back and forth through this horrifying valley. It seems like a battlefield, 'cause they're called an army at the end. But they're dead and they've been dead a long time. This isn't like Lazarus who's been dead four days and there's a bad odor. We're way, way, way, way past bad odor now. Any moisture there was in these corpses is long since gone. The carrion birds have had their way with them, and then the worms and the microbes, they're done. There’s nothing left, and they're gone too, they're just... It says very dry. 

I was talking to one of my kids about this a few days ago. And you remember when Elijah was on Mount Carmel and he pours out the water and says do it again and pours out the water on this sacrifice. It's like really, really wet. That means it's gonna take a really great miracle for fire from heaven to burn it. I just think it's interesting. It’s like, it's a miracle either way, but no, this is a great miracle 'cause it was really wet. Well, this is a great miracle because these bones were really dry. Like how dead were they? Really dead. Not just a little dead — really dead. You're like, “Well, that doesn't make any sense you're dead or you're not.” But these are very dry bones. It’s a sense of that — complete. So this isn't one of those out-of-body experiences on the gurney at the ER. This is long, long decades beyond that. Centuries beyond it, maybe.

As you read this account, see your own future. It would be wrong for me to say right now, “I don't want to be morbid.” I want to be morbid — I want you to look at your own death. I want you to be aware that you will die. You don't know when. You don't know how much longer you have, but you will die. If you're not part of that mysterious final generation, you will most certainly die. So as you look into the picture of bones, think about yourself. Think about this: There is no other Savior than Jesus. There’s no other way to be saved from your own death and from the judgment of God except faith in Christ. So that's what I want us to see. 

Now, God asks a stunning question, and Ezekiel gives a very humble answer, verse 3: “He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’” You know, it’s actually not much different than Job's question that I mentioned: “If a man dies, will he live again?”  It's actually pretty much the same thing, except that this time, God's asking his spokesman. Now, we shouldn't imagine that God didn't know what he was gonna do. God knew exactly what he was going to do. But he asked it to test Ezekiel, and Ezekiel, I think, passed the test with flying colors. “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.” So, I'll say this: if God doesn't raise you from the dead, you will not be raised. No one else can do it. God is the only one who can do this, and he's the only one who can will it, and so the question is, will these bones live? Only God knows if they will live. God alone. But here's the beauty of the Gospel. God can raise the dead to life. Death isn't the end if God doesn't will it to be the end. And so it says beautifully in Romans 4:17. It speaks of “the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” God has the power to do that.

 And so he gives him a command and a promise, verse 4-6: “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.”’” So God alone can give life to the dead, but amazingly, he chooses to use faith-filled messengers to proclaim the word over the dry bones. In effect, he tells us ahead of time what he will do when as yet there is no evidence that he will do it. He promises ahead of time he will raise us from the dead, and there's no indication, there's no evidence, no proof, just the words of God.

Ezekiel is the prophet. He cannot give life to these dry bones, but he is a tool, an instrument in the hand of God. "Speak over these dry bones, oh Ezekiel." The prophetic words will make these dry bones live, even to the detailed level — tendons and flesh and skin, all of the vital organs, the systems needed for life, the muscles, intestines, the blood vessels, the brains, the nerves, and then the skin covering — all of it.

Now, God doesn't need prophets. There was no one helping God when he formed Adam out of the dust of the ground. He doesn't need us. Doesn't need you or me. But he chooses to use prophets. He chooses to use messengers. And so he uses Ezekiel, in his grace. Now he alone will get all the glory: Then all of them “will know that I am the LORD.” We're gonna spend eternity knowing that he is the Lord; we're gonna spend eternity studying what that means, that he is the Lord.

So the first phase in verses 7 and 8, the preached word, brings a partial resurrection. “So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.” They're still lying flat, dead on the ground, but now assembled. So Ezekiel obeyed. He spoke to these dead bones. It was just an act of faith. “Go preach to the dry bones. Speak to them.” No indication of life. Just a simple act of faith.

And as he was preaching, suddenly, I think, this eerie rattling sound comes. Can you hear it in your ears? It's scary. And I think it's like a very deep, vast, large sound. I think it's loud and I picture, if you can go with me on this, like a three-dimensional sound. It’s a deep sound, like I remember hearing the wind blowing in the Grand Canyon, and you felt like it was a mile away and deep. And so you have a sense of how wide and long and high and deep is this work, this huge valley. And this assembly that's going on. While the word is being preached, things are getting assembled, things are getting put together, things are coming into their proper alignment, bone to bone. Seems like, I think, might have been gruesome, but absolutely enthralling. Imagine what it would have been like to be Ezekiel watching this happen. But as yet, there's still no breath in them, they're still dead. I hadn't noticed until I worked through the sermon this morning, I said that they're up in their feet, they're not, they come in their feet in a minute, so they're still laying flat, they're just dead. But everything's in place.

Now we get the second phase: breath enters them. Look at verses 9 and 10. “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.”’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet-- a vast army.” So here we have an amazing play on words in the Hebrew. The Hebrew word for breath and spirit and wind is all the same. It's the same word — ruach. I love that word. They tell us, “Don't ever pronounce Greek and Hebrew.” But I'm gonna say, ruach. Isn't that awesome? Ruach. So, there's this moving. Jesus said in John 6:63, "The flesh counts for nothing. The spirit gives life. The words I have spoken to you are spirit, and they are life.” It's powerful. And so the wind comes from the four corners of the earth and breath enters into them, and they come to life. The Spirit comes. John 3:8 says, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” So that's a picture of that. 

And then the vision is interpreted. The whole thing seems to have been merely a vision in Ezekiel's mind. But now its meaning had to be spoken. And look at verses 11-14. “Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” Therefore prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. [Verse 14] I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.”’” It's powerful. Powerful and beautiful. 

So this army represents, in some sense, the Jewish nation, and I mean the whole nation now, not the divided kingdom. He uses the word Israel but he's not meaning the northern kingdom. He's meaning the Jewish people, the Jewish nation. And so they had been scattered, divided then scattered, and it seemed like their hopes were gone forever. The image of death was real. These were real people who had really died — in the vision, I mean. The sword, famine and plague had slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews around the time of — actually — both of the exiles. They died for their sins. But the dry bones also represented, in some sense, their hopes for the future — they had none. How would it even be possible? Though many prophetic utterances in Isaiah and Jeremiah and others said that God was going to restore them, still to some degree, their hopes were dead. But God's prediction must also be seen, not just symbolic, but real. God intended to bring them back and restore them in the Promised Land and put his Spirit in them, and that they would live and he would also raise them up out of their graves, plural. 

So I think this resurrection speaks of the restoration of the Jews to the Promised Land as a symbol, but that's not enough, it just isn't enough, because it alludes to a spiritual resurrection that is to come. Verse 14, "I will put my spirit in you and you will live." Now, if you would look back one chapter, probably on the same page, actually in the pew bible, it is on the same page. Ezekiel 36:24-28. This is the promise of the New Covenant. “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will live in the land I [give to your forefathers] … I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God.”

Friends, these are nothing less than the promises of the Gospel of salvation through faith in Christ. Christ's death and resurrection opens the door for a new covenant by which all the people of God, not just the genetic descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but I mean everyone from around the world, from every tribe, language, and people and nation, can be saved and raised from the dead.

So that brings me to the third resurrection, the church’s spiritual resurrection. In order to understand this, we have to understand our spiritual state. Those of you that have been here in my preaching in Ephesians, these will be very familiar verses to you. But in Ephesians 2:1-3, it says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”

We were dead while we lived. We were dead in our blindness; we were dead in our lusts; we were dead in our worldly pursuits; we were dead to the glory of God — it meant nothing to us; we were dead to the future of judgment and wrath that was going to certainly come on us. We were dead to these things. But God intended a spiritual resurrection for us through faith in Christ. He intended to send forth his Spirit on spiritually dead people like you and me and raise us to life. Missionaries and evangelists go out with this simple message of Christ — of Christ the son of God — who lived a sinless life, who died a bloody atoning death on the cross for sinners like you and me, and who was raised to life on the third day, and that if you repent and believe in him, your sins will be forgiven and you will live forever. And in hearing that message and believing it, you are raised to life. 

It says in Ephesians 2:4 and following, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-- it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” That is our spiritual resurrection. 

The Holy Spirit comes and you are born again. It says in John 5:24, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” So I just wanna ask, has that happened to you? Have you crossed over from death to life? Did you hear the Son of God calling to you in the words of the Gospel and say you're a sinner, you're in danger of hell, you must flee the wrath to come? “I am your Savior. I’m here. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Have you heard him say that to you? 

Now you say, “I don't know, I've been to church for years. I've heard this; it's nothing new.” But look at Ezekiel 36, has God taken the heart of stone out and given you the heart of flesh? Has the Spirit come on you and moved you to delight in God's law and seek to keep it? Do you see a pattern of new life in you? New desires? Has this happened to you? And there's nothing I can do to make it happen to you, if you came in here spiritually dead. I could preach 100 really, really good sermons and you wouldn't... None of them would hit you unless the Holy Spirit moves in your heart. Is that happening to you? Has it happened to you? Are you alive spiritually? Have you crossed over from death to life?

And if you're a Christian, do you see the miracle that you are? Do you understand the miracle of God's sovereign grace that you are? It doesn't matter to me if you were raised in a magnificent Christian home and you never... there was never a time you didn't know Jesus. Our kids are like that. I understand. But it's still a miracle. If you're a Christian, lots of people grew up in good homes and they are not believers. Or it could be you came to faith in Christ later in life and you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know the miracle of grace that God showed you because all the people you're talking to, they're not coming over. They’ve not crossed over from death to life. That's the spiritual resurrection.

And I guess, church, if I could urge you, just we need to pray as never before for the working of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel from the pulpit, and then throughout the week. It is the Spirit that gives life. So pray for me, every time I preach. Pray that I... Pray right now. Pray that my words would be mingled with the sovereign power of the omnipotent Spirit of God. Apart from that, nothing will happen. And pray for one another, brothers and sisters in Christ, throughout the week, that we go out and speak with the Spirit's power, transforming power.

Well, that brings me to the fourth, and that is the church's future bodily resurrection. Ezekiel, I think, is very specific about this. Look at verses 12 and 13. “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them;’” I mean, what could be clearer? Now, if it were “grave” singular, I would think it might have been a metaphor or kind of a linguistic or literary device, but there's just something very specific about “I will open your graves and bring all of you up out of them.” I think that this is predicting what's known as the general resurrection, our resurrection through faith in Christ. “I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.”

Now, our graves will contain our physical bodies, and if time goes on long enough, and if we've not been embalmed well (I had to add that 'cause I have a brother in Christ who wanted me to know that actually the body can last a long time; okay, so it may not just be bones), but you'll be dead, I mean really dead. And there will come a time that that's all you will be. But Jesus spoke about a future time, even beyond that, John 5:28-29: “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out — those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.”

So the Apostle Paul taught plainly the details of the bodily resurrection from the grave. 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable…” Meditate on that, imperishable. “…it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised…” and here's the mystery of the future resurrection, “…a spiritual body.” Whatever that is. And you will get one of them if you're a Christian. You’re going to get a spiritual body and in that body, you will experience no more death or mourning or crying or pain. You'll be free from those things forever. That's what's coming.

Now, the details are mysterious. You say, "How can God do this?" I don't understand the mechanism. What if you're incinerated in a plane crash? What if you're eaten by a shark and then something else eats that shark? I mean, what happens? I mean, you wouldn't believe the kind of things people say.

I think the eggheads on the Areopagus were asking Paul the same kind of question. “This is utter foolishness!” But Jesus said to the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, “You are in error because you don't know the Scriptures or the power of God." Don't underestimate what God can do. God is actually presently holding together every atom in the universe and actually knows where they all are. Bible doesn't say that, but he might have even named them all. We know that he's named all the stars and because of his great power, not one of them is missing. So do not underestimate the power of God to resurrect you in some mysterious sense from the dead. So there’ll be some continuity between what was sown and what is raised. He will raise you from the dead if you are a Christian.

And into what will he raise you? He's gonna raise you into a future world that will be in some senses similar to this one, and in some senses gloriously different. It's going to be, I think, effectively, a resurrected world. So I really could have called this “Five Resurrections”, but then you would have been very discouraged and say, “We're never gonna get out of here by noon.”

But there is a future world coming, a new heaven and new earth, and we will live not merely in Palestine in the land of Israel. Because honestly, what happened was those Jews, they came back and they lived, but their hearts hadn't been transformed. God hadn't done a universal work of transformation. There were definitely Old Testament saints, but the nation as a whole culminated all of their rebellion against God by murdering his son, and rejecting him.

And then the exact same thing that happened in Ezekiel's day and Jeremiah's day and Daniel's day under the Babylonians happened again in A.D. 70 of the Romans. No different. Place was razed to the ground, just destroyed. So no, no, that's not been fulfilled. He's going to plant us not just in one locality, but in a new world. The meek will inherit what? The earth. And that new heaven and new earth will be our home forever, and it's gonna be beautiful. It will be free from all decay, free from bondage to decay, and in that world, we will live forever.

So applications. I've been giving you those applications, but here it is. First and foremost, I just ask, did you come in here today dead in your transgressions and sin? Did you come in here on the outside? I plead with you to be born again by hearing and believing the Gospel. You don't have to do any works — you must not do any works — not for the forgiveness of sins. Just believe the Gospel. Trust in Jesus, and you will most certainly be raised spiritually immediately, and then in the end, you'll be raised physically by the voice of your Savior, Jesus. He’ll raise you out of the grave.

Now, if you're a Christian, just pray for the working of the Holy Spirit. Pray right now, silently in your heart, pray that the Gospel will find fruit in people's hearts. And then esteem higher than you ever have before the work of the Holy Spirit already in your life. He took out your heart of stone, gave you a heart of flesh. Worship God for his indescribable grace to you and stand in awe of Jesus. Picture him standing in victory, in resurrection victory. Just picture that in your mind.

And if I can just say this, tenderly, do not... Let's not grieve like pagans at the death of a loved one in Christ. Let's not grieve like those who have no hope. It says in the text, “Our hope is cut off.” The answer is, “No it isn’t.” The resurrection of Jesus gives us a new and living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, 1st Peter 1. And so your loved one who's died in the Lord, you will see him or her again. And so yes, you should grieve, but don't grieve like those who have no hope. We have a good hope in the resurrection.

Fourthly, let's yearn for the power of the Holy Spirit to operate in our lives, making us more obedient to his law than ever before. Let's live out the spiritually resurrected life he discusses in Ezekiel 36.

And then finally, if I could just fill you with hope, I just wanna minister hope. I just want you to be filled with hope about the future. If you're a Christian, your future is indescribably bright. Picture it in your mind. Picture yourself in a resurrection body, a spiritual body that's glorious and powerful, and living in a perfect world. Fill yourself with hope and joy.

Close with me in prayer. Lord, we thank you for Easter Sunday. Thank you for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We thank you for Ezekiel 37, the valley of dry bones, and all that we learn from it. And we are aware, oh Lord, of our sins. We’re acutely aware of them, and we see the corruption in our lives, but we know that our sins and the process of physical death will not be the final word for any of us in Christ. And Lord, I just wanna finish by praying for those who came in here unregenerate, that they would find in Christ, through faith in Christ, salvation in Jesus name. Amen.

His Attributes

So we come to Ephesians 5:1. We come to one of the most remarkable commands that the Apostle Paul ever gave to any group of Christians. There, in these verses, we're commanded to “be imitators of God.” Maybe you've read that for many years, or even just now as you heard Tom reading it, it just washed over you and you didn't realize just how remarkable that is. The Bible says that “God created the heavens and the earth by the word of His power,” that, “He sits enthroned above all the surface of the earth, and all the nations before Him are like a drop from a bucket and like dust on the scales compared to His majesty and His great power,” Isaiah 40:22. Psalm 99:1 says, "The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim. Let the earth quake." Moses records that Almighty God, the creator and sustainer of heaven and earth, descended on Mount Sinai in fire and spoke out of a cloud and out of fire, and the ground beneath their feet shook as God spoke these words, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me," and the sight was so terrifying that Moses said, "I'm trembling with fear."

The holiness of God caused the seraphim in Isaiah's vision in Chapter 6 to cover their faces, not daring to look upon the glory of God, though they had never committed any sin, and they weren't defiled in any way or they had never been rebellious. And yet, they were covering their faces and their feet in the presence of the holiness of God, the infinite gap between God, the creator, and all of us, his creatures. No one has captured it better than A.W. Tozer in The Knowledge of the Holy. He said, "Forever God stands apart, in light unapproachable. He is as high above an archangel as He is above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is but finite while the gulf between God and the archangel is infinite. The caterpillar and the archangel, though far removed from each other on the scale of created things, are nevertheless one and alike in that they're both created. They both belong in the category of that which is not God and are separated from God by infinitude itself." And we're commanded to imitate God.

The Westminster theologians who gathered together. They wrote these words about God: "There is but one only living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit without body, parts or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will for His own glory. God has all life, glory, goodness and blessedness in and of Himself. He is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made, not deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom and to whom are all things, and has most sovereign dominion over them to do by them, for them and upon them whatsoever Himself pleases. In His sight, all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, it is infallible and independent upon the creature and to whom is due, from angels and men and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service or obedience He has pleased to require of them."

We Are Not God

Well, we are not God  We are not God. These things cannot be said in total of us. Theologians have tended to divide the attributes or the descriptions of God into two categories: communicable and incommunicable. Incommunicable are those things that are true of God but will never be true of us, cannot be true of us, and communicable attributes are those things that are described of God, and we can in some way reflect them. For example, we are not self-existent. God exists in and of Himself and He needs nothing created from the outside to come in, like we need food and air and water to stay alive. God doesn't need anything created to come into Him to sustain His existence. He is self-existent, but we are not, for “in Him we live and move and have our being.” We are dependent on God for our existence. We are not immutable. God never changes. Malachi 3:6, "I the Lord do not change." But we are constantly changing. Indeed, we must change. Actually, the text in Ephesians 5:1 says, "Become imitators of God as dearly loved children." We are not immense, omnipresent beings that fill the universe with our existence, but God is. Jeremiah 23, he says, "'Am I only a God nearby,' declares the Lord, 'and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?' declares the Lord. 'Do I not fill heaven and earth?' declares the Lord." 

But we are not sovereign. We don't get to do whatever we please and be accountable to no one for our decisions as God is. In Daniel 4:35, Nebuchadnezzar said, "He does as He pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'" We are accountable to God. We are totally under his sovereign will. So there are these incommunicable attributes of God and many others, but there are also communicable attributes.

There are ways in which we are commanded to be exactly like God, and as we come to Ephesians 5:1 and 2, we come to the centerpiece of that communicable attribute, and that is love. We are commanded to love, to live a life of love, to walk in love as God has loved us in Christ. We are commanded to be like God, and this makes sense, for in creation, in Genesis 1:27, we were all, as human beings, created to be like God. We are created in the image of God. And again, in salvation and earlier in the last chapter, in Ephesians 4:24, it says, "Put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." So we are to imitate God.

Now, this is amazing because the Apostle Paul in other places tells people to imitate him, and we need role models. We need men and women to stand up in front of men and women in the Body of Christ and say, "Imitate me." We need mentors. And Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 4:16, "Therefore, I urge you to imitate me." That takes a lot of boldness, doesn't it? "Imitate me. Be like me." In another place, he says, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." So the implication is we're seeking to imitate Christ. Christ is our role model. We want to follow after Him, and so in the text as well. But here we're commanded to imitate God. And how is that? Well, in an immediate context it is that we are to walk, or to live a daily life that's characterized horizontally to other people with self-sacrificial love, especially in forgiveness of those that sin against us. Sometimes I think the chapter divisions hurt the flow and we don't fully understand the context, so I think it might be better to just remove the chapter division from Chapter 5 and just flow on from Ephesians 4:32 on to 5:2. "Be kind and compassionate to one another," it says in verse 32 of chapter 4. "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God has forgiven you. Be imitators of God, therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love [or walk in love,] just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Context

Now I never tire of saying exactly where we are in the book. It's important for us to understand context. And so we're in the middle of an ethical or moral imperative section of the book of Ephesians in which we Christians are told how we are to live. This is built on the foundation of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. We're going to talk more about that later in the sermon, but on the foundation of Christ’s blood atonement for us and the foundation before that of God's sovereign grace in choosing us before the foundation of the world, to be adopted as His sons and daughters, and the foundation of the saving work of Christ and then this vision of a holy temple rising to become larger and larger with living stones quarried from Satan's dark kingdom from all over the world, every tribe and language and people and nation, we the living stones built into this spiritual house to be a temple, a spiritual house in which God lives by His spirit, on the foundation of that, Ephesians 1-3, we have Ephesians 4-6.

Beginning in Ephesians 4:1, it says, "As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." Then one chapter later, now in this verse, Ephesians 5:1, "Live a life of love. Imitate God and live a life of love or walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself." This is the kind of life we should live. Now this morality, this Christian ethic, flows from the Gospel. We are commanded in chapter 4 verses 17-24, "I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They're darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more." That's the nature of the darkness that was in us apart from Christ. That's the nature of the darkness of the people we're going to try to reach with the Gospel as Nathan was just talking about, our neighbors, our co-workers. Their hearts are hardened. They don't walk in love. They don't live a life of self-sacrificial love. They're filled with bitterness and unforgiveness toward people who have sinned against them. They harbor that bitterness. They feed it. They nurse their grievances and I think often about them. But he said, "You didn't come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard him and you were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self," as we've already said, "created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." And so, then that flows out into morality in all areas of life.

In verse 25, "Put off all falsehood and instead speak truthfully to your neighbor." Verse 26, "Put off sinful anger. Don't let the sun go down while you're still angry." And verse 28, "Put off stealing, but instead work hard and bless and benefit your neighbor by your labor so that you can share with those in need." And then verse 29, "Put off all corrupting speech, [anything that's corruptible and wicked] and instead speak only those things that build up your neighbors and give grace to those who hear that it might benefit them." And put off this unforgiveness, this wickedness, this anger of all level, any kind of malice or anger or brawling or any of these things. Be kind and compassionate to one other instead, forgiving one another, just as in Christ, God has forgiven you.

And so, these moral imperatives I think, atheists that want to be moral, or Greek philosopher types that want to live an upright life, Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Almanack-type morality, they can do that, the horizontal thing, and we can imitate some of that, but for us, it's all founded on our vertical relationship with God, on the fact that we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, whom we are not to grieve, and how we are to imitate our adoptive Heavenly Father and walk like Him. It's a whole different type of ethic. And so, we're told here to imitate God or be imitators of God in His love. Look at verse 1 and 2, "Be imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children and walk in love."

God is Love

Here, we are to imitate, I think, the central attribute of God as He presents Himself to us. God is love. 1 John 4:16, "God is love. Whoever lives in love, lives in God and God in him." This is the strongest statement about love in the Bible, 1 John 4:16. “God is love.” God certainly commands love and He exemplifies love and He teaches us about love, but 1 John 4:16 says God actually is love, and from this, as I meditate on it, I see He's the source of all love there is in my heart. He's the source of everything, and as I come to this ethical command that I'm to live a life of love or walk in love, it's not long before I realize that I don't, that there is still some of that residual darkness in my heart, a hardness in my heart, and that I don't love my neighbor as I should, as myself, and so to know that God is love, that if I want to be transformed, if I want to live a life of love and walk in love, I need to get closer to God. He is the source of all love.

Now, what do we mean by love? Well, I've come to see it this way. It has to do with our heart, the essence of our, the centerpiece of our being, our minds, our hearts, our souls, and their ability to either be attracted to something or repulsed from something to a greater or lesser degree, like magnetic attraction or repulsion such as we talk about liking or loving something, being attracted to it, or disliking, or hating something. We all have that nature created in the image of God. We can be attracted to or repulsed from something to a greater or lesser degree. We're made like this. And so, love is on the positive side of attraction. It's that my heart is drawn to something, attracted to it, but then this ethic, this morality of love, moves beyond heart attraction into cheerful sacrificial action that benefits the person that I'm loving. So, it's heart attraction resulting in cheerful action. That's the essence of love, and God is the source of all of that love. God's heart is attracted to all that He has made. He is attracted to His universe. He's attracted to the things that He shaped and molded with His own hands. “So, after God had created everything in six days and looked out over everything that He had made, and behold it was very good, and you see a sense of God's attraction to the works of His hands, and even after the fall, even after sin entered in, there's still that love of God toward His creatures, all of them.”

And so, in Psalm 145, verses 13-17, it says, "The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made. The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up those who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you O Lord, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and you satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all He has made." So God's heart goes out toward His creation and He is delighted. He finds personal joy in doing His creation good. So that's the essence of love. We are commanded to have our heart go out horizontally toward others, and to find personal delight in doing good to people around us. It's not enough to just do good, we have to find personal delight or joy in it. “God loves a cheerful giver.” He wants us to love loving one another, if we could use that redundant expression. He wants us to be cheerful in giving to one another.

So God's love is on display every time He feeds one of His creatures, every time the sun rises and then warms a field of wheat or barley, every time there's a feeling of a breeze on your face or the rain soaking the earth and sustaining life. All of these things are gifts from God, and God gives it to people whether they love Him or not. He gives it to His enemies. “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” He is generous toward everyone that He's made whether they acknowledge Him or not, and God overwhelmingly has loved His enemies, human beings who do not acknowledge His gifts. They owe him thanks. They ought to be thankful. They ought to worship Him and glorify Him as God and give thanks to Him, but they don't, and yet God is generous to them.

It says in Psalm 103:5, "He satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles." Well, God has loved us, we who are Christians, at an even infinitely higher level. Even before we were born, even before the creation of the world, God set His love on us in Christ. Look again. Go back at Ephesians 1:4 and 5. It says, "He chose us," He, God the Father, chose us, in Christ, "in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." “In love, [in love,] He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will.”

God Loved Us Before We Were Born

So what I'm saying is that God's heart went out toward us by name before the creation of the world. And He set His affection on us and delighted to do us good. He delighted to do us good. And so He loved the world like it says in John 3:16, "God so loved the world" or in this way, "God loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." And so He loved His elect by setting His electing love on them, and by sending Christ in the world, and by offering His Son as an atonement for our sins. As Romans 5:8, says "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners...", and again, 1 John 4:10, "This is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin.” So God loved us directly in saving us. God put up with all of your sins for the days, weeks, months and years before you were regenerated, covered them.

He was gracious and patient to you in all that time and He loved you by sending the Gospel to you, maybe again and again, He sent messengers of the Gospel to you, who sought to persuade you to trust in Christ. Maybe it was your parents, maybe a brother or a sister, maybe it was a friend, someone in college, maybe a co-worker. And God reached out to you again and again, and then if you're a Christian, He loved you, ultimately by sending the Holy Spirit to take out that heart of stone, and give you the heart of flesh, so that you would love Jesus and believe in Him, and trust in Him. It's because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, it says in 1 Corinthians 1, "It's because of the Holy Spirit's work on you that you believe in Jesus." God has been so loving to you and in all of this, God was delighted to do it. 

It's something that's hard for us to understand, but God really enjoys saving people. I love what Jesus says in Luke's Gospel, He says, "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." It's been one of the most fruitful verses I've ever meditated on, on the pleasure of God in saving me. He enjoys saving me, He enjoys forgiving me, He enjoys “washing me with water through the word.” He enjoys presenting me to Himself as holy and blameless. And He will enjoy raising my corpse from the grave, and making it glorious and radiant in His glory. He enjoys creating a Church and then He will enjoy creating the New Heavens and the New Earth as a home for His bride to live in forever, He enjoys this, He delights in it.

Now: God Commands Us to Imitate His Love

And so, we are called on to imitate God in His love, this lavish display of God's love comes with an inherent command, “if God has so loved us, we ought to love one another.” That's what's going on in Ephesians 5:1. 1 John 4:11, "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another," and this is especially poignant, when it comes to the issue of forgiveness of sins.

We saw this last week, but I don't think I can say it too much. We are commanded to be gracious and merciful and forgiving to people who sin against us. Whether they're Christians or non-Christians. But especially within the Body of Christ, we are commanded to be gracious and to be forgiving toward those who sin against us. As we saw last time, God is likened to a king to whom we owed an incalculable debt. The 10,000 talents, and God forgave all of that debt just out of His grace and mercy and with it, comes an obligation, the vertical relationship of forgiveness carries with it a horizontal imperative, we ought to so love one another. We ought to forgive one another. We ought to not find some fellow servant who owes us a third of a year's wages, and choke them and say, "Pay me what you owe me." This life of love should be one of tenderness and compassion to other sinners, we should feel the weight of their misery in sin and yearn to set them free.

The love of God in Christ should constrain us to reach out. Like Nathan was saying, like we've been saying, we want to reach out, not just this week but throughout the year, to people who are in bondage, to people who are without hope and without God in the world, to show mercy to them and show compassion, even if they treat us very poorly. Let me tell you, throughout church history, Christians have amazingly loved their enemies in ways that has had converting power. So actually, it might be better if you ventured out in evangelism in the workplace and get smacked down this week. Or by your neighbors and get badly treated. And then love and forgive, and who knows but a month later, they might be in some medical emergency, and you'll be the only one that shows any consideration for them, or maybe their spouse, or their child, and they'll remember how badly they treated you and how gracious and loving, you're being toward them. I was incredibly rude to Steve Chamberlain who led me to Christ and the Lord never lets me forget it. So don't tell me you don't want to witness remember how you treated Steve, now go out and share your faith.

But it actually was instrumental it doubled back on itself because I realized, “Why was I being so rude to this guy. What did he ever do to me, he's actually only been kind to me.” That was the beginning of seeing my own sin, and the need I had for Christ, actually the way I treated him so badly, and the way he was so kind to me, was actually instrumental to my salvation. So we see this again and again, Stephen as he is being stoned to death cries out saying, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." You must believe that that had an impact on Saul of Tarsus, who heard him say those words. 

An Anabaptists Self-Sacrificial Love

There's a story of an Anabaptist man named Dirk Willems, Anabaptists were persecuted by almost every authority in Continental Europe, back then, and this godly man, Dirk Willems was fleeing for his life, across a frozen lake, and suddenly his pursuer, he heard his pursuers getting closer and closer, but he heard a crack in the ice and then the unmistakable sound is that man fell through the ice, and Dirk Willems stopped, he was free now, he could get away, but he went back on the clearly dangerous ice, and got close to where he'd fallen in and he rescued this man and saved his life pulled him out, but the time he took to go back and pull that man back out of that freezing water, allowed some others that were chasing as well to lay hands on him. And though this man that Dirk Willems had pulled out of the freezing water, pleaded with them to let him go, and he eventually came to faith in Christ at any rate, Dirk Willems was burned at the stake for his heterodox beliefs according to them. So he basically traded his own mortal life, so that at least one man could have eternal life. Just the forgiveness that is shown.

Burdened to Forgive: Corrie ten Boom

I read an account and some of you have read it too of Corrie ten Boom, who is a Dutch woman, who with her family risked much to protect the Jews during the Nazi occupation during World War II. Eventually, they were discovered and they were arrested and they were put in the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, and it eventually led to the death of her sister, Betsie. She never forgot that, obviously, it was on one of most terrible experiences of her life, but in the years that followed God gave her a ministry of speaking about her experiences in the concentration camp, and her experiences in her Christian walk, and the amazing forgiveness that God gives In Christ and how God takes our sins and throws them into the depths of the sea. And we never see them again. Well, to her horror at one particular church service, after it was done, a former SS guard came up, and she recognized him and he came up smiling and said, "Isn't it wonderful how God takes all of our sins and throws them in the depths of the sea, and we see them no more? Well, I've become a Christian and I want to say will you please forgive me for what I did to you and your family?" And he stuck out his hand like that.

Well, she stood there looking at his hand and this is what she said, she said "I knew I had to forgive him. The message that God forgives has a prior condition that we forgive those who have injured us. Jesus said, "If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses." I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but I saw it as a daily experience since the end of the war, I had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality, and those who were able to forgive their former tormentors were also able to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what their physical or emotional scars. But those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and horrible as that, but now there I stood. And as I looked at that man's hand extended toward me, there was a coldness clutching my heart, but I realized that forgiveness is not first of all an emotion. I knew that too forgiveness is an act of the will, it's a commitment, and that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

So I prayed, "Jesus help me," I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You must supply the feeling."  And so, she said, "woodenly mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me, and as I did something incredible took place. There started to be a feeling in my shoulder like electrical current that flowed down my arm and sprang into our joined hands and then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being and it brought tears to my eyes. "I do forgive you brother, with all of my heart." For a long moment we grasped each other's hands. The former guard and the former prisoner I have never known God's love so intensely as I did at that moment.”

Now, by the way, I think that is exactly why we will remember everything that happened on earth. Because we will feel God's grace and power and forgiveness and saving work of Christ far more powerfully when we remember the details of the stories or the things that happened here on earth. Apart from that, how can we celebrate God's grace? What would it even mean if we have no memory of all the sufferings that sin caused in this world? So, we are to walk in love as God has loved us. Is there someone you need to forgive? I asked you this last week, you had a week to think about it. Is there someone you're still bitter toward?

We Imitate God Because He Adopted Us

God is commanding you in Ephesians 5:1 to imitate God in His loving forgiveness of those that have sinned against you, and He's commanding you to do it as beloved children, as dearly loved children, He says. We are the adopted children of God. “In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ.”

1 John 3:1, "Behold what manner of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God", and that is what we are. This is a motive for our walking in love because we bear the family likeness. More than that, we bear the family name, and Jesus said, "By this will all men know that you're my disciples, if you love one another if you walk in love in this kind of forgiveness, then everyone around will know what it means to be in the family of God. You're putting the Father's name on display, His reputation, by how you live, and we are to imitate Christ's love." He goes from the Father to the Son. "Be imitators of God, therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love or walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." So ultimately, Christ is the example of walking in love.

Christ is the Greatest Example of God’s Love

At every moment, He loved the Lord his God vertically with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then horizontally, loved His neighbors as Himself. Think about His healing ministry, His healing ministry, was so successful and so famous so pervasive that huge crowds from multiple cities around wherever He was poured out every day to be healed by Jesus, it was so much and so overwhelming that people couldn't even get physically near Jesus, even to touch Him. He did this out of compassion, out of love. How do you know that? Well, in Mark 1: 40-42, it says "A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees. If you are willing, you can make me clean. Jesus filled with compassion, reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing, be clean and immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy." You know, Jesus could have healed 10,000 people with a word, you know that, don't you? 10,000 people, “You're all healed go home.” But Jesus wanted to be able to look people in the eye and say, "I love you, I want a relationship with you. I want to touch your hand and heal you. I don't have to touch your hand, but I want to. I want to look you in the eye and I want a relationship with you." It was out of love that he did those healings, same thing with his teaching ministry.

And one of the accounts in Mark chapter 8, Jesus landed and when he saw a huge crowd that they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, He had compassion on them, and taught them many things, so His teaching ministry, was an evidence of His love for other people. So also His feeding ministry in Mark chapter 8. He said, "I have compassion with these people. They've been with me many days, three days now. And if they go home, they'll collapse on the way, feed them." Everything Jesus did was motivated by love for God and others, He walked in love, He lived a daily life of love and especially you see that in His sacrificial love on the cross, and not just this time of year, not just holy week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, leading up to Easter Sunday.

Sacrificial Love at the Cross

Do we Christians contemplate the death of Jesus? Jesus gave Himself up for us, as a fragrant offering, it says, in sacrifice to God. Have you noticed how similar this verse is to Galatians 2:20? Galatians 2:20 says, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and the life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself up for me." But this verse says that “Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us. I think both of those things are worthy of meditation.” There is an intensely personal love that God has for each of His sheep. He knows us by name and we can say honestly from Galatians 2:20, "He loved me, and gave Himself up for me, so I should love others and give myself up for them." But then we can expand and say, "Well there's a lot of us, there's a multitude greater than anyone could count. He loved us and gave Himself up for us, as well. And it says that He gave Himself up as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

The Atonement: The Centerpiece of Salvation

The Old Testament again and again, animal sacrifices were spoken of as a fragrant offering well pleasing to God. Like Noah, remember when he took some of the clean animals and he offered them up and the aroma of the pleasing sacrifice went up to God, the pleasing aroma. Now, you shouldn't imagine that God just has a taste for meat. God doesn't have a taste for meat. He just loves the smell of a barbecue, just oh God, no that's not it. He's looking at the heart of Noah and his faith, and the sacrifice and his willingness to give at that point, and that's the offering of Jesus. Jesus gave Himself up to the Father on our behalf, the fulfillment of all of the animal sacrificial system. He gave Himself up. He died in our place that we sinners trusting in him might have forgiveness of sins. 

The Aroma of a Pleasing Sacrifice

Now that's an aroma wafting heaven-ward from what Jesus did, the life He lived and the death He died. It's an aroma, a fragrant offering to God. What is the aroma wafting heaven-ward from your life? What does your life smell like to God? Let's put it that way. Is it fragrant? There are a number of things that are said to be wafting heaven-ward like our prayers are caught in a ball, they're like incense that goes up. Our prayer life can waft heaven-ward. Revelation 5:9 says, "The prayers of the saints are caught like incense. And our service to other sinners." It says in Hebrews 13:15, "Therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name and do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices, God is pleased."

So there you have two-fold sacrifice. Vertical, praising His name, it's like a fragrant offering, a heart of worship, and then horizontally, doing good to others, whatever that means, is a fragrant offering and sacrifice with which God is well pleased. Even money given to missionaries is spoken of in Philippians 4:18, He talks about the money that Epaphroditus brought and he said they're a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. So the money you give to church workers, to mission workers, or to any other brother and sister in Christ, is doing some kind of ministry is a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God and our evangelism. 2 Corinthians 2:15 and 16, "For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and to those who are perishing, to the one we are the smell of death, but to the other the fragrance of life."

How Then Shall We Live?

So, we are called on to live a life of love. What is the fragrance that floats from your life? What's the fragrance of your home life? What's the fragrance of your marriage? What's the fragrance of your parenting? What's the aroma of how you live towards the poor and needy, toward lost people? What about toward those who sin against you, hurt you, in some way? What is the fragrance wafting from your life?

As we come to this text, this is a very plain, straightforward text but it challenges me. Do I find my delight in blessing other people? Am I a cheerful giver? Something that my son Calvin and I were, we've been talking about, we were going through discipleship and we've been talking about love and it's something that I said, "Pray for me, I want to pray for you too, but I want to find my joy, my delight in blessing others. I don't want to complain when serving others, I don't want to be negative. I want to be joyful and delight in forgiving others, that's the kind of life I want to live, and that's the kind of life I want this church to live. I want us to be a beacon of hope in this community. I want us to live a life of love just as God loved us in Christ and gave His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Close with me in prayer.

Father, these words will continue to challenge us the rest of our lives. We know that you have loved us and we know that you have forgiven us through Christ, and you loved us when we are most unlovely, when we were in some ways repulsive. Father, thank you for that love, and I pray that now you would do a work through the Holy Spirit of God, of love in our lives. Help us to love one another, to find joy and delight in blessing others, to find personal happiness in alleviating other people's suffering, whether that's through evangelism or through mercy ministry, or through simple forgiveness, I pray that you would enable us to alleviate the suffering of people that we find around us. Help us to live a life of love, to walk in love, just as Christ did. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Well, I was just praying a moment ago about the spiritual vision that faith gives us, the ability to see into the invisible realms. That's faith. And I don't doubt that many of you walked in here today in some kind of spiritual bondage, as though there were chains around your heart. I'm speaking even to believers in Jesus Christ, that there are chains that Satan can put around our souls that hinder us in our walks with Christ. And I don't doubt that if the Lord has sovereignly brought unbelievers here, that you are wrapped up in the chains of bitterness and unforgiveness. And the thing that's so beautiful about the Gospel is that Jesus has the power to set us free. He has the power to set prisoners free. And my desire for this sermon today is that you would be set free from bitterness and unforgiveness, that the Word of God might be at work in your lives and in your heart so effectively that you would feel a sense of liberation. Jesus said this in John Chapter 8, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. But if the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed,” or truly free. That's my vision, my heart is that all of God's people would have that sense of liberation.

 The Key to Escaping Doubt

As we come to the last two verses of Ephesians 4, I had in my mind, a picture of a dark and looming castle, foreboding and terrifying, and the image comes quickly in my mind to Pilgrim's Progress, which we were reading with my family. And you remember that story about how Christian and Hopeful are making their way on the journey to Heaven, it's an allegory of the Christian life, and as they're making their way to the celestial city, they come to a particularly difficult stretch of the road. And there's this convenient, pleasant little path along the side, in this meadow, and it looks a lot easier than the path they're in, so they jump the fence, which you just learn in Pilgrim's Progress never to do. Never leave the straight and narrow. As soon as you do, you're in trouble. But for a while, it ran alongside and things were comfortable and things were good for a while. But soon they found themselves in great distress, for they were on the grounds of a dreadful castle called ‘Doubting Castle.’ It was owned by a terrifying ogre, a giant called Giant Despair, and that was his property. And he found them sleeping on the ground because they couldn't find their way back onto the road, and he arrested them, seized them, and threw them into his dreadful dungeon. And there he kept them, and tortured them, and tormented them and afflicted them so bitterly that they wanted to die, and as a matter of fact, he tempted them directly with suicide. He offered them dagger, or a little vial of poison, or some rope whereby they could kill themselves. And he was saying, "If you don't do it, I am going to just rip you limb from limb. Here are the bones of all the others that I have killed." And so they were in deep despair until suddenly at one moment, Christian remembered something. Something came to his mind. "Why are we sitting in this stinking dungeon?" And he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a key, a miraculous key that fit every lock in Doubting Castle. It was called the Key of Promise. And by believing in the promises of God, they were set free, and they were liberated from Doubting Castle.

The Castle of Bitterness

So, I haven't asked John Bunyan's permission for this, that would be weird, but I want to take the images and transfer them some. I want to imagine that some of you pilgrims, who are on your way, are locked up in a different kind of castle, but very much like this one. And I'm going to call it the ‘Castle of Bitterness’ or ‘Bitterness Castle.’ And the giant that's beating you up is, I'm going to give him the name Giant Vengeance. And there you are languishing in these chains in this prison of bitterness, and everyday the giant comes and gives you a seemingly delicious elixir to drink. And it's sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the stomach. And it fills your mind with all kinds of hallucinations and images of harm done to your enemies, all the people who have hurt you and sinned against you. And you have dark thoughts of what you would like to do to them, and this poison that you're drinking makes you, increasingly angry, and unbeknownst to you, makes you more and more powerless, more and more enslaved, less and less likely to get out of Bitterness Castle, when suddenly Christian remembered that you have a key in your breast pocket and the key is called forgiveness. And by forgiveness, you can be set free from this vicious castle. That's the image I have in my mind today.

The Causes of Bitterness and Unforgiveness

There may be many of you in the throes of bitterness, the bitterness of unforgiveness, and that Satan has wrapped, or continually is wrapping chains around your heart, secretly around your heart. Perhaps you have been sinned against greatly in your life. I've been in pastoral ministry for well over 20 years, I've done a lot of counseling, and I don't doubt at all that many of you have been sinned against, even very viciously. Perhaps you were abused as a child, maybe physically, emotionally, maybe even sexually. Maybe you were attacked or assaulted by a criminal. Maybe you were mugged, or some other criminal act happened to your family. Maybe some loved one was murdered, even. Perhaps you are and have been for many years a victim of racism or other social injustice. And so, those kinds of terrible things happen.

We know that around the world, our brothers and sisters are viciously persecuted. I mean they are actually persecuted. They're tortured, they're imprisoned. We know that these things actually happen in the world. Then there's the other context, and I was just thinking about all of you. I'm thinking about the context of marriage, and I don't doubt that many marriages have been severely hurt by serious sin. That there is the sin of sexual infidelity, of adultery, or internet pornography, or other things that have seriously damaged trust, and there's one of you that's deeply wounded by the sin of another. Or, I think about the parent-child relationship, which is so challenging and so imperfect as sinners try to train other sinners and things aren't done well, and it's so easy to have bitterness up toward your parents, or for the parents to feel bitterness toward, especially grown children who aren't walking with the Lord. And so, in the family life, there's so much of temptation toward bitterness. And then I think about church life and how church life, local church life, I mean is so poisoned by bitterness and unforgiveness. Things happen. Sinners are gathered together in covenant relationship with one another and things get said that shouldn't be said. Things get done that shouldn't have been done, or vice versa, things that should have been said weren't. Acts of kindness that should have been given or sacrificial acts of love that should have been given weren't. I don't doubt that for a moment. And so, there can be a deep-seated hostility towards that specific church, or just church in general.

I remember years ago, I was witnessing to a man and he hadn't been to church in years, raised in a Christian home, but he just hadn't been and it wasn't long until we got talking and he told me a tale of woe about something that happened years ago at a local church. I thought it was a significant issue, but it was even more significant that he hadn't been back to church since. So I asked him, I said, "Have you ever had food poisoning? Has that ever happened to you?" He said, "Yeah, actually, I have." I said, "Was it bad?" He said, "It was really bad." I said, "Did you give up eating?" He said, "Good point." We don't give up eating because we had one bad meal and we don't give up on local church because something happened once. But you may lack the means to know how to have a complete work of forgiveness in your heart, a work of grace so that you're genuinely, truly set free. As Jesus said, "free indeed." And that's the desire I have. So I don't doubt that there have been real hurts in your life.

I also wonder so much about imaginary hurts. You can be so genuinely hurt that you lose trust in other people and then you start ascribing bad motives, and reading people's hearts, and looking into what they're doing and looking at a look on the face, or a reluctance, or something, and you just see so many sins there as though you can read their minds. Those imaginary sins can be just as powerful as real ones.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus can set us free from all of this. And that's the beauty that I have of preaching at the end of Ephesians 4, these two verses. Now, I want you to know that I don't intend to continue to go this slowly through the Book of Ephesians. I was talking to one brother. He said, "You know, I was talking to another person and we were thinking that you are preaching through Ephesians as though you'll never preach through this book again." “Well,” I said, "Actually, I always preach like that." I never assume that I'm going to get a second crack at Isaiah 55 or Genesis 12 or Galatians 3. I try to maximize the time we have, but I don't want to slow down in a micro-way. I really am excited about what books are yet to come, and the passages yet to come. So yes, we are right in the middle of a sermon from last week. 

So I preached on one verse last week, verse 30, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you're sealed for the Day of Redemption." I'm going to rectify the problem today by preaching on two verses. So that's my desire. I'm going to preach on two whole verses today. But I think, as you can see, and you can always see, already see the way I've kind of set up, or introduced this is how vital these verses are for us. And honestly, I don't apologize for slowing down in this very practical section of God's word because I actually think some of the topics that Paul addresses in Ephesians 4, 5 and 6 are going to be the weightiest, most significant, most practical issues you'll ever face in your life, and we may never have a chance to look at specifically how Ephesians addresses these things again. And so, I want to maximize it.

So look at verses 31 and 32. There it says, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." So, the context of all of these ethical injunctions should not be ignored. We're not just being told to be moral, to be good people, we are taught in Ephesians how the morals, the ethics of the Christian life are built on the solid foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The plan of redemption that God has worked, “that God planned from before the foundation of the world, how God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight and how in love He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ and how Christ shed His blood on the cross. In Him we have redemption through His blood the forgiveness of sins,” and that's going to be vital for the lesson even today. 

Brief Overview of Ephesians

So we're told in Ephesians 1, the depths of the work of God, His eternal plan and how Christ executed, and how the Holy Spirit then in His sovereign grace to you applied it to you personally. It says in Ephesians 1:13, "And you also, when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of God." And so, he gives us that great vision in Ephesians Chapter 2 of this, of the spiritual temple rising brick by brick, “living stone by living stone to be a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit, the eternal Church of Jesus Christ.” So, that's Ephesians 1-3.

Then in Ephesians 4-6, he talks about how then shall we live in light of these things given that we have this incredible Gospel, this eternal plan of God, what kind of life should we live in this world? Begins in Ephesians 4:1 where Paul says, "As a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." He goes right from that into talking about unity. He says in verses 2-4, "Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit," he says.

So I think all of that's very relevant. Anything that ruptures the Body of Christ, any sin that hurts the Body of Christ is grievous to the Holy Spirit, and damages the work of God in this world, any sin. But I would say, there are a few sins so destructive as bitterness, and anger, and unforgiveness. They're just guaranteed to destroy families and they're guaranteed to destroy churches. And so we have in Ephesians 4, a beautiful vision of the power of God to liberate His people from these sins. The remedy for us is we, Christians, who have been forgiven so much, must forgive much as well. That's the lesson that we're going to see.

A Central Work of the Spirit: Supernatural Unity in Christ’s Body

And so last week, we talked about the grieving of the Holy Spirit of God, verse 30, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the Day of Redemption." We talked about how this teaches us about the person of the Holy Spirit, and how the Spirit is a person. He is not an impersonal force like electricity or wind, for He can be grieved. And so, we have this sense of the sins of our lives being grievous to Him and so we spent the whole time on that, but we're transitioning now to talk about what flows from that. "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the Day of Redemption." And then it says, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger."

So the idea here is that our bitterness, our unforgiveness is grievous to the Holy Spirit of God, and how He is commanding us here now to get rid of it. So, this is talking about a life of tender-hearted forgiveness in the Spirit. So the central work of the Spirit here is the supernatural unity of the Body of Christ that we just mentioned.

Get Rid of Defiling Sins that Destroy the Body

And so, Paul then lists sins that work to rip apart the unity of the body, that pollute us, that corrupt our souls. So we're talking about the pattern of sanctification, of becoming more and more holy, and how He gives us a rhythm of sanctification in verses 22-24. Look again at that if you would. In verses 22-24, Ephesians 4, it says, "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off the old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires," put it off, "to be made new in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." And then, He just goes through various topics of the Christian life. He talks right away about lying. “Each of you,” verse 25, “must put off falsehood.” So, we're going to put off lying and deceit and falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor for we're all members of one body. So, we're putting off lying, we're putting on truth-telling.

And then again in verse 28, "He who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work, doing something useful with his own hands that he may have something to share with those in need." Same thing, we're putting off the corruption of stealing, but we're not left neutral doing nothing not knowing what to do. Instead, we are putting on labor, we're going to work hard with our hands, we're going to develop a skill, a craft, and we're going to generate money and resources with which we can now help others, not hurt others by stealing from them, it's a new way of living. And the same thing in verse 29, with our speech, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth." So this is negative sanctification, things that we must not do. “Don't let corrupting speech come out of your mouth,” “but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may give grace to those who hear.” So no, we're not taking a life time vow of silence, but we're actually supposed to speak, we're supposed to speak the truth in love, and build each other up by the Word of God, and by gracious words that will strengthen the Body of Christ. So it's that same rhythm here. “Get rid of these sins that defile the body, that corrupt the body, and be made new in your mind and put on a new way of relating” that we're going to see the same rhythm in verses 31 and 32.

The Taste of Chloroquine

And so, we come right away to this issue of bitterness, bitterness. So what is bitterness? When you think of bitterness, what does that mean? Well, I think it's a deep-seated anger. It's a long-term unforgiveness that corrupts the heart. Something happened a long time ago, and maybe a pattern of sins happened, and you just can't let it go. I remember on my first mission trip, it was in 1986, I went to Kenya. And I had to take medicine to prevent me, hopefully to prevent me from getting malaria. And one of the medicines that was prescribed for me with something called Chloroquine, and the “quine” is related to quinine. I have never, in all my life, put something so bitter in my mouth as that pill. It was a bitter pill. I mean literally, not metaphorically, literally a bitter pill. And to make matters worse, it was incredibly water soluble. So it didn't matter how much moisture I sucked from my tongue and got it absolute as dry as I could, having a bottle ready to take it down, it would start to melt instantly as soon as I put it on my [tongue]. It just was bitter, it would taste bitter for 15 minutes. Well, that was good when it was 15 minutes.

There was one time, and I'll never forget it as long as I live, when as I was washing this pill down, it got wedged right between my molar and the inside of my cheek, just stuck there and completely melted in my mouth. Now some things you want to melt in your mouth, some things you don't. This is in that category of things you absolutely don't want melting in your mouth. I was thinking about Chloroquine and malaria the rest of the day. I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth, it was so bitter. Some people are like that in life. They're just bitter to interact with. Every encounter you have with them, you're left with that bitter taste.

What is Bitterness?

It's a persistent gloomy disposition. It's an outlook, a way of looking at life: grumpiness, irritability, sourness, negativity. It's usually displayed in sharp words, in a negative outlook, a negative way of looking at the providential circumstances that God brings in life. Seeing negative things in people. They complain about circumstances. There's not a lot of worship, not a lot of joy. Now, I would say unbelievers are persistently characterized by bitterness. However much they may cover it over with a veneer of joviality or their personality, but they are, inside their hearts, in some sense, nursing grievances. I think this is where secular counseling makes a lot of its money, it's just people just can't forgive their parents, or they can't forgive their spouse, or they can't forgive this or that, and they're just forever getting counseling as a result, and it's just an ongoing rhythm of bitterness.

And so, I picture inside the heart of a bitter person, it's like they have one of the world's largest private zoos, a menagerie, and you've got all these wild, and untamed animals roaming your property, and roaming the halls of your zoo. And I was thinking I was reading about William Randolph Hearst, he had the largest private zoo in the world at the time, in the 1930s. He had skilled veterinarians that would feed these animals. Some of them roamed free. And I just get the picture of his veterinarians and animal handlers just going up and down and feeding these animals. And so, just metaphorically, they're just people that feed, that nurse their grievances. They keep them strong, they keep them alive, they bring them up again and again in their own minds, they feed those grievances. It's as though you don't ever want to forget that so and so did such and such to me. And so you're feeding it by remembering it.

So, I believe non-Christians struggle deeply with this. It says in Romans 3, "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." Peter said to Simon, who tried to buy the power of the Holy Spirit with money, he said, "I see that you're full of bitterness and captive to sin." So I just think this is characteristic of the unbeliever's life. But friends, it should not, it should not, it must not be characteristic of the Christian life. We've been set free from that. We have been set free. We should not be negative. We should be filled with joy and contentment in the Christian life. The Apostle Paul said so beautifully in Philippians 4, "I've learned the secret of being content. In any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, living in plenty or in want, I've learned that secret of being content." Bitter people have learned the opposite secret of being discontent in any and every situation. They could be very well-fed, they could be staying in an incredible hotel, they could be wearing the best of clothes. They're still not happy. They're high-maintenance people, if you know what I mean. We should not be that way. We should be walking in a sense of contentment and forgiveness. Psalm 34:8, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Now, we've tasted, haven't we? We've tasted the goodness of God. We've tasted His kindness in Christ. So we must get rid of all bitterness.

Ridding Ourselves of Sinful Anger

Secondly, he talks about rage and anger, we'll take it together. Earlier in the chapter, Paul spoke of, I think, righteous anger, "Be angry, but don't sin." So there's righteous anger. This is not talking about righteous anger here at all, in verse 31. This is all unrighteous anger, wickedness. So get rid of it all. So, there's a whole range of sinful anger, from just normal anger, I don't know, peak irritation, all the way up to red faced, vein popping, and here's this word, “brawling.” Do you see this? Are you shocked by this word? “Get rid of all brawling. Dear friends stop that brawling. No more brawling.” Think about that. Do you guys struggle with brawling? Is this a problem for you? I picture a Western, a movie, a saloon with a bunch of drunken cowboys and gun-slingers throwing chairs at each other and people through windows. And I think it's just amazing the range of sins that the Apostle Paul felt it necessary to address. Well, some translations say it's a brawling, just like clamor. And so there's a sense of really the top end of anger, where you've really lost self-control. You're yelling, face is red. Now you've lost self-control. It says in Proverbs 29:11, "A fool gives full vent to his anger." So you're giving full vent to this person that you're zeroing in on and yelling at. How terrifying is this list of sin, and how great a cancer it is, and how far it will take us.

Then he mentions something different; “slander.” Evil speaking is mentioned here. That's a little bit different, a little cooler, more calculated, in some ways, more vicious. It's like with a calm, cool, collected heart, you're going to assassinate someone's character by slander or gossip. The word here is related to our word for blasphemy. So you're going to just tear down someone who is created in the image of God, speaking against him, as James mentions. And then malice, which is just a deep seated determination to do someone harm. It's, I think, very related to vengeance at that point. Get rid of all feelings of vengeance.

The word malice probably had its most famous use in American history in the second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln. As you remember, at the end of that incredibly painful war in which so many hundreds of thousands of men were killed, North and South, he already had a vision for the reconciliation of the nation. And then in the second inaugural, he said this, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right. Let us strive on to finish the work that we're in, to bind up the nation's wounds, and to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and for his orphan."

So, Lincoln had a view of that. So I can imagine how bitter, some of those women and sons and brothers could have felt about their loved ones that died, and how much they still perhaps wanted to get vengeance on the other side, whoever the other side was, it didn't matter, but there's that sense of malice of vengeance. All of these things listed in verse 31, “grieve the Holy Spirit of God.” And we are told very simply to get rid of them. Like is it really that simple? Can we just take them out like the trash? I would say take them out like toxic waste. Take them out like something that's going to destroy your family. Yes, take it out. And frankly, in the end, it's going to be as simple as that, you're going to make a decision to forgive, and you're going to ask God for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit of God. I'm going to talk about how to do this at the end. But yeah, in the end, that's what it's going to be.

Put On a Godly Demeanor Toward Others

Instead, put on godly demeanor toward others, look at verse 32, "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you." So, here we've got that same rhythm, put off the old, the corruption, and then put on the new, and so we have this command. Now literally, it says, "become kind." I think that's more realistic, isn't it? Not, “Be as kind as you've been being toward this person.” You weren't being kind. Become kind. There's a transition that has to happen. There's a beautiful image that Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave me, as I was preparing for this message. And as you can see it my yard, there are trees that hold on to their old dead leaves all winter. Have you seen them? Some, they're old, get rid of them. But there's some that hold on to their dead leaves until the spring. And then they start falling because these beautiful, shiny new green leaves are coming in behind them, and pushing out the old. And that's a beautiful picture here of how kindness pushes out bitterness. 

So, what does it mean to be kind? That's a very common word. And as I've analyzed and I've studied it I think it has to do with a generous helpfulness. Kindness is a generous or a cheerful helpfulness. Whereas bitter people don't help at all, there's nothing helpful about bitter people. Kind people want to alleviate suffering wherever they see it. It's everything from giving a cup of cold water to somebody that is thirsty, to propping pillows behind someone who's bed ridden or alleviating suffering, even scratching someone's back or anything that you can do to alleviate misery in this world, that's kindness, done cheerfully. That's the key is your demeanor, your disposition.

There's a cheerful helpfulness in kindness. Now it goes all the way up to infinity, because we're told that God was kind in saving us in Jesus. There's a link between kindness and salvation. And so it says if you look back at Ephesians 2:7, I love that verse. And it says in Ephesians 2:7 "In order that in the coming ages, [in the coming ages,] He might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus." He's going to show us how kind He was to us, while we lived in this world, and how kind He still wants to be to us going forward. I just love that picture. There's a beautiful illustration of this kind of kindness in the life of Joseph. You remember how Joseph was so viciously dealt with by his jealous brothers. And how they were so jealous of the affections of Jacob who didn't handle his family life well, we know that, but he just showed clear favoritism and Joseph's brothers hated him, and were jealous of him, and they wanted to murder him, instead they sold him into slavery. It's just a vicious story. Do you remember how God in His providence raised Joseph up to be second in command in Egypt? And how in the course of time, Joseph's entire family, Jacob and all of his brothers came to live with them in Egypt and it's just incredible and very moving, very emotional story. 

But then Jacob died. The father died. And the brothers came crawling to Joseph. Basically pleading for their lives. They thought that Joseph had been waiting for Jacob to die, and now that he's dead, he's going to take vengeance on them. And Joseph wasn't like that, he was just so free from bitterness. Jacob noted that his arm stayed limber in his blessing on Joseph, he wasn't stiff, rigor mortis hadn't set in, he was limber and yielded to the purposes of God and he says, very beautifully and very famously, he says "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good to save many lives."

Forgiving Others

 Now that's a famous verse. The next one is the one I want to focus on, Genesis 50:21. Listen to this. "‘So then don't be afraid, I will provide for you and for your children’ And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.” That's stunning to me. He's got the big picture theology right. And then, rubber meets the road, he provides food and clothing and shelter, and then even below that just speaks kindly to them. That's a stunning picture of the kind of supernatural kindness God wants us to have. It's not like ostrich head in the sand. "Oh, you didn't hurt me. Oh, don't think about it, it was nothing." No, sin is sin, and he felt the weight of it. You did mean it for evil but you know God had a higher purpose and I can see God's higher purpose in all of that, and he dealt with them kindly.

Oh, I yearn to see that in my life, to just see other people that way. And so it says, "Be tender-hearted, look at other sinners like you are a sinner. See them in the bonds of their sin, even if they are not Christians, even if they've never even confessed the sin to you, or don't even think they did anything to you. See them the way God saw you when you were unconverted, and how you were seething with malice and at one time, you were hating and being hated. ‘But God in His kindness, showed you mercy,’ Titus 3, ‘and He saved you by the washing of regeneration and rebirth through the Holy Spirit,’ that's what God did when you were seething with hatred and wickedness, so be tender-hearted, see other sinners the way God was tender-hearted to see you in your slavery to sin, and be compassionate towards them, be tender-hearted and forgive.”

And so, we come to this clear command, “forgive each other just as in Christ, God forgave you.” Here we come to the power of forgiveness. The power of forgiveness is the cross of Jesus Christ, that's the power. We're going to forgive, horizontally, other sinners the way, vertically, God forgave us in Christ. This is deep theology, this is even more significant theology than Joseph seeing the hand of God with the famine and the rhythm of bringing the Jews to Egypt. He saw some of God's overarching plan. This is bigger than that. This is the overarching plan of God to forgive sinners like you and me through the shed blood of Christ. That's how God the Father, in Christ, forgave you. He sent His only begotten son who drank the bitter cup of God's wrath, the cup He shrank back from at Gethsemane. He drank to its dregs for you. And so He completely atoned for all of your sins and so the wrath of God has been removed from you forever. And you will never taste the bitter wrath of God, ever. You're going to go to Heaven, all of your sins forgiven. That's how God forgave you. Picture the father and the prodigal son running down to embrace this repentant sinner coming home. That's how the Father forgave you. So gracious, so cheerful to welcome you back. In that same way, you must forgive.

The Unmerciful Servant

Jesus told a parable about this. Many of you have heard it. I'm going to go ahead and lean on it, and tell it again. You remember how Peter one day said, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" I think Peter would be the guy that would bring the apple to the teacher and hope to get an A because he brought the apple. It's like, "Alright, the rabbi say three. I'm going to double it and add one." "Up to seven times." Jesus said, "I tell you not seven times, but 70 times seven times." And then He told this parable:

“There was a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And as he began the settlements, a man who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the king ordered that he and his wife and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before the king and said, ‘Be patient with me and I'll pay everything back,’ but the king took pity on him, or mercy on him, forgave the debt, and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a 100 Denari, and he grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay me what you owe me!’ He said. Same thing. The servant fell on his knees before him and said, ‘Be patient with me and I'll pay back everything,’ but he refused. Instead, he went off and had that man thrown into prison until he should repay the debt. Well, the other servants heard what had happened and they went told the king, and the king called that servant back in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger, his master threw him over to the jailer to be tortured until he should repay the debt.” Now, listen to what Jesus says. "That is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you if you do not forgive your brother from the heart."

 Now it's an overwhelming parable. The 10,000 talents is an incalculable amount of money. But I'm a calculator, so I went and found out how much 750,000 pounds of gold would be worth today, it fluctuates day by day, but it's about $15 billion worth of gold. 15 billion. But more helpful is just realizing that that's more than the Roman empire took in in taxes in a year. So think of it as the total tax inflow to the federal government. Why did Jesus set the amount so high? I'm telling you, you, all of us, we infinitely underestimate how much we owed God because of our sins, we infinitely underestimated it. God didn't underestimate it, so He sent us an infinite atonement in Jesus. The infinite worth of His Son, His only begotten Son who shed His blood on the cross for sinners like you and me. That's what we owe. We should, we must forgive our fellow servants as God has forgiven us. We have been forgiven infinitely much.

Motivation to Forgive

Now, the 100 Denari, you are not well-served to think of it as pocket change, it isn't pocket change. It was about a third of a year's wages for a daily laborer. That would be about $25,000 to $30,000 today. It's a lot of money, it's a lot of money. And so, horizontally the sins we commit against each other are weighty things, but they are as nothing compared to the vertical dimension of our sin against God. And so, what I think the Lord is saying here is, it's a very negative presentation on this. There's fear involved that God won't forgive us and we should fear that. We should go more than that on the negative side, see how ugly the unforgiveness is. It was ugly to the other servants when they saw that, it was just an ugly thing. It was immoral to them that he didn't forgive. They were offended by it. And so, all on the negative side, it's ugly, horizontally, to not forgive. It's unjust, it doesn't line up with what God's done in our lives, and if we live like that, we are not Christian. We have not been justified, we don't have the indwelling Holy Spirit of God in us. That's all the negative side.

Positively, do you realize how beautiful and attractive supernatural forgiveness is to a world that knows nothing of it? How many times have Christian brothers and sisters been grievously hurt and wronged, even to the point of loved ones being murdered, and the mother or the parents or the father will stand up and say, "I forgive you because God has forgiven me." It happens a lot, and it's an incredible witness, and it's very beautiful, and it's virtuous and attractive to forgive. So you may ask, "What is forgiveness? What are you talking about?"

Thomas Watson Defines Forgiveness

The Puritan pastor, Thomas Watson, gives us seven descriptions. I'm not going to unfold them, I’m just going to read them.  Forgiveness means resisting revenge, totally giving up on revenge. Secondly, not returning evil for evil. Thirdly, wishing them well. Fourth, grieving at their calamities, not rejoicing in them, but grieving when they're hurt. Fifthly, praying for their welfare. Sixthly, seeking reconciliation horizontally, as far as it depends on you. If they'll have it, you seek it and you want it. And then seventh, coming to their aid and distress.

That's a full, rich forgiveness that only God can work. Now, this whole chapter, this whole sermon really has been application. I don't have a lot more to say by way of application, but I want to just appeal to you who know yourself to be unconverted. You know that you're on the outside looking in, I'm telling you, I'm pleading with you to come to Christ and trust in Him. These verses have nothing to say to you because God in Christ hasn't yet forgiven you, in Christ. And so the most important thing is not for you at that moment to give forgiveness to your parents or to others who've sinned against you, that will come. It's the very thing I've been preaching about. But the first thing is you need to feel yourself a sinner under the just wrath of God, and that Jesus is delighted to save sinners like you and trust in Him. And if that happens, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will be working deeply in you to forgive those who have sinned against you. So, come to Christ, that's the first thing.

But secondly, if I can just plead with all of you who are Christians, is there someone who comes to mind that you've not forgiven? Is there some situation? Even as I'm talking right now, I don't know what you're talking about, but you know. You know what the application is for you, you know there is a man, a woman, or a group of people, or something, and you've not forgiven. And you need to. And God is calling on you in this sermon, He's calling on you as a Christian, to forgive. And you're like, "How do I do that? How do I do that?" Well, just let me give you some practical steps.

First, as it just happened a moment ago, see the beauty, just the beauty of holiness, the beauty of virtue. And corresponding to that, the ugliness of unforgiveness. Just see those things as they really are. Look at it, just get a vision of how beautiful forgiveness is and how ugly unforgiveness is.

Secondly, commit yourself to forgive no matter what you're feeling. Commit yourself, your feelings need to come. Without it, you haven't forgiven. So it's not "fake it til you make it," I want you to just make it. So I want you to feel the feelings of forgiveness, but commit yourself, "I will forgive in this relationship. I will do what it takes to forgive."

Thirdly, repent of past bitterness of all the time you've spent up until point not forgiving and all the actions that came from that, there have been many. Maybe you underestimate how many moments you withheld kindness, you spoke a sharp word, you withheld love, you've grieved people around you because you wouldn't forgive, and they knew it, but you wouldn't do it. So repent, be humble. Say, "I've been wrong to hold out this long." Part of the reason we do it is pride, we want to keep the whip hand in the relationship. It's really arrogant. We want to keep that person subjugated, walking on eggshells around us, it's just wickedness. So please, forgive me Lord, repent of past bitterness. 

Fourthly, understand it's going to be a battle, it's going to be something you'll have to be determined to do over a long period of time because Satan's going to try to get back in through that door. And now that you've locked it and barred it, he's going to be banging on that door so you have to be determined to forgive going forward, permanently. 

Fifthly, trust in God's word. Go over these verses, just read them as just God's word to you. He's commanding you to do this. Read the parable in Matthew 18 I just quoted. So trust in God's word.

Sixthly, be humble about how much God has forgiven you. You're to forgive as God has forgiven you. Ramp up in your own mind a sense of how much that is. I don't think you'll ever get to 10,000 talents, I don't think you'll ever think you owed God that much. We all struggle. It's like, "That's just outrageous." No, that's it. We owed an infinite debt. The more we can feel the weight of that, not to feel guilty but to feel glad, and forgiven, and then give us power to forgive, the better it is for us. So be humble.

And seventh, rely on the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. He has been grieved over your bitterness and unforgiveness, that's grieved Him. Now, you be grieved too and follow Him back to the joy of just clear as light forgiveness, to follow Him. He's going to lead you to the “fruit of the Spirit, which includes love and joy and peace and patience.” He's leading you there, follow the power of the Holy Spirit. And then start acting in kindness, if you can, if there's an opportunity, act in kindness toward the person that you have not been forgiving. I don't know that you have to confess, it's not always helpful. "By the way, I've been bitter at you for the last 16 years and I wanted you to know." "Whoa! You have got to be one of the better actors I've known in my life. I never knew it." I don't think that's helpful. It's just between you and God. But if some things have happened, you'll actually need to go seek forgiveness because you have been unkind, etcetera. Whatever God leads you to do.

But act in kindness according to those seven things that Watson gave us today, let's close in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the things that we've learned from the Word of God. It's so powerful, so beautiful, but yet we find it so difficult sometimes to obey, though it's the very thing we need the most. Oh God, I pray that in marriages, I pray that husbands would forgive wives, and wives would forgive husbands. I pray that parents would forgive children, and children, their parents. I pray that brothers and sisters within this fellowship, First Baptist, would forgive whatever grievances they may have against one another, forgive freely and readily from the heart and not be bitter and negative people. Oh God, make this a sweet church, an oasis of Heaven, an oasis of the New Haven and New Earth, not a place where you're going to bump into some sharp and bitter people. Oh God, make this be a place where people can be set free from bitterness and know the joy of forgiveness. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God, [the Spirit of God] was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light, and God separated the light from the darkness and He called the light good.” Those are obviously very familiar verses, but many of us don't realize that they contain the first reference to the Holy Spirit of God in the Bible very early in Scripture. Now, I honestly don't know what the Holy Spirit of God was doing hovering over the waters of creation, but I know He was there. And I've learned since that time that my own salvation was like that moment of creation. I've learned that from 2 Corinthians 4:6, where it says, "For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."

So God said, "Let there be light," and God spoke a light into my heart, 33 1/2 years ago. I remember distinctly, I was in a lab and I heard a voice telling me I was going to a college retreat that I had no interest in going to. I had been fighting, fighting the Gospel, I'd been fighting becoming a Christian, I didn't want to become a Christian. The next reference to the Spirit of God as I read it in the Bible is in Genesis 6, where God said, "My Spirit will not strive forever with man." And so in my case, the Spirit didn't strive with me forever, He won. He overcame.

And so, today, what I want to do is I want to give each one of you a greater estimation of how much you owe, if you're a Christian, how much you owe the Holy Spirit of God that you are a Christian. I want you to be able to sing not just, "Thank you, Jesus," but "Thank you, Spirit." Because I believe theologically, Jesus would mean nothing to you if it weren't for the Spirit of God. That Jesus would be remote and distant, or even you would even be hostile to Jesus, because it says, "The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot." And so, if it were not for the sovereign Spirit of God hovering over your darkened heart and ministering in a miraculous way the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, you would still be in darkness to this very day. And I believe you ought to say thank you to Him. I think you ought to appreciate Him, the person of the Holy Spirit of God.

As far as I can see, the next mention or illusion, not mention, but allusion of the Spirit, I see after the waters of the flood when the dove brought back that branch, that olive branch in his beak, and you have, in effect, the Spirit of God hovering over the waters of judgment and bringing back, I think pictured for us, bringing back to the elect a mention of salvation, of peace, of forgiveness with God. And that causes my mind to go ahead to the baptism of Jesus, different waters which Peter says, "Are likened to the waters of the flood." But likened for us, not waters of judgment, but waters of forgiveness and cleansing from wickedness and sin. And the Holy Spirit of God descends like a dove and remains on Jesus.

And so we come in Ephesians 4 that you just heard read in verse 30, to a mysterious text, a very deep, an infinitely deep text. Here we're going to ponder the mystery of the personhood, the personality of the third person of the Trinity, the personhood of the Holy Spirit of God. And my task today, I think, is to greatly increase your sense, your esteem of His personality. And let me just go even beyond it into where the text goes. That you would not grieve Him. That you would realize that sin is grievous to the indwelling Holy Spirit of God, and that if we can put it this way, He takes it personally. And that this should be, amongst some other motivators, one of the greatest motivators you could ever have to live a holy life. That you do not want to grieve this tender loving powerful Spirit who has saved you by ministering Christ to you. Now, I don't understand fully the doctrine of the Trinity. To me, it's an infinite mystery. I don't think we'll ever understand it. But I think we should meditate on this text, and we should meditate on the deep theological truths that teach us about God from this, that we would understand the life that God has for us

Understanding the Flow of the Chapter

Now, we need to understand this in the flow in the context of the Book of Ephesians. And I see, is I look at at these six chapters, how they divide neatly into two main sections. Ephesians 1-3 gives us the theology of our salvation, how we should worship and praise God who “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight, and how God in love predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ. And how in Christ, we have redemption, forgiveness of sins through His shed blood.” That's the theology of our salvation, and how when we heard the word of truth, the Gospel of our salvation, having believed, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of God. And the unfolding of the theology of our salvation, so mystical and so deep and powerful in the first three chapters, that's what I see there.

And then in chapters 4-6 then, we have the theology of right Christian living, of ethics, of morality, of how then shall we live, based on the saving work of God in Christ. And that begins as we've noted again and again with chapter 4 verse 1, "As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of your calling." Your calling is to “be holy and blameless in His sight,” your calling is to Heaven. Live a life worthy of Heaven. And how He hasn't left us in the dark, wondering what that is. He's given us toward the end of Ephesians 4, a rhythm of sanctification in our lives, how we are to “no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they've given themselves over to sensuality, so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more. You, however, did not come to know Christ, that way. Surely you heard Him and were taught in Him, in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the spirit of your minds. And to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

So we have this rhythm, this basic rhythm of put off and be transformed in your mind and put off the old put on the new. And we've seen that in various case studies like lying, put off falsehood, and speak truth. Like anger, put off anger and then at the end of the chapter the text we just heard read, "Now instead put on forgiveness and tenderness and compassion toward others, and put off stealing, and instead labor and work hard with your hands so you can give to the needy." So this rhythm of put off and put on, it's a new life. We are in Christ now, a new creation, and we are to live a new life, an entirely new life, and evil speech, “put off all corrupting speech, all of the evil speech, that was part of the old life, and instead speak only those things to your neighbor that will edify them, and it will give grace to those who listen.” This is the rhythm, in the middle of the flow. In the middle of all of this, we have this statement about the Holy Spirit of God, Ephesians 4:30, "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you are sealed for the Day of Redemption." And then moral issues, get rid of bitterness and rage and anger and brawling and slander, and be kind and compassionate and then sexual immorality, there should not be even a hint of sexual immorality or any of kind of impurity of greed. And obscene talk, all of these things, all of these ethical issues flowing. And the whole thing, verse 30, Ephesians 4:30 serves as a kind of a center. In some ways, both the culmination and the preface to everything that follows, it's all of that. The presence and the personality and the power of the Holy Spirit of God is the centerpiece of the beautiful virtuous Christian life.

That's what Paul is doing, and the capstone of this toward the end of this section is going to be in Ephesians 5:18 where it says, "Do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery, instead be being filled with the Holy Spirit of God the Spirit." So only by understanding and yielding to and being empowered by the Holy Spirit of God will we be able to live out this virtuous life. Honestly, many moral people will follow us on many of these issues, on lying and stealing and language and topics like this, and caring for the poor and needy, there'll be a lot of moral non-Christians, but they will not live out their morality like we do by the power of the Spirit of God, for the pleasure of Almighty God. In that way, they are very different and so this is Christian morality, that's what makes this kind of morality different than any other type there is in the world.

The Culmination and the Preface of What Will Come

So now we come to in verse 30, the idea, the doctrine of the personality of the Holy Spirit of God, the personality, the personhood. The verse commands us not to grieve the Spirit of God. Do you see that? “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.” Grief is a highly emotional state. It's a reaction we would think, it's an extreme word, it's not just sad, but grief. It's a reaction to, I would think of tragedy, something that somewhat ruptures your world. That's what we use the language of grief for. Usually I think associated with death in many cases. But this word theologically implies that we Christians are in a relationship with the Spirit of God, that is personal, He is a person, He can be grieved. Now, I must say it is hard for us to understand the Trinity. I mean the doctrine of the Trinity is an infinitely complex theology, a study of God. It's something beyond the ability that we have to comprehend.

We can understand, I think the natural mind, can understand one God, monotheism. We know that because there are many unregenerate people in the world who believe in one God and only one God. But this I think of unconverted Jews, Jews who have not embraced Jesus as Savior, believe in one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I think about Muslims, who believe that Allah is one God, they're monotheistic. So I don't think it takes any supernatural work to believe in one God, I think actually polytheism may be our home state in our rebellion against God. You look at the number of religions that have been throughout the history of humanity that have been polytheistic, I would say most of them have been. Hinduism is certainly polytheistic and animism and all of these religions, these things are polytheistic. So the idea of separate gods. Three gods, I mean that seems like a small number to a Hindu. But the idea of three separate gods, I think they would understand that, but we somehow mysteriously combine those doctrines, one God eternally existing in three persons.

We don't really even know how to think and talk, do we use the plural or the singular? Do we say He or They? We don't really know what to do, and so we go to the theologians and say, "Please teach me how to talk about God," and when they start using this kind of language and find they didn't get burned or stoned as heretics then we feel relieved and we're good and we'll follow these human theologians, and they say, "We can speak of separate," if you use that language, "Persons of the Trinity."

The Person of the Holy Spirit

Now, this battle for the doctrine of the Trinity has generally been fought on two main fronts, the first has to do with the deity of Jesus Christ. That's been battle one on the doctrine of the Trinity, that Jesus, the son of Mary, was also the Son of God. And that's essential to the doctrine of the Trinity. But the second battlefront, is on this issue today, the personhood or the personality of the Holy Spirit, the personality of the Holy Spirit. So, who or what is the Spirit of God? That's the issue that we're trying to understand, and we would say, who is the right way to ask that question. Is the Spirit an impersonal force unifying all living beings? Some capacity, some power that flows mindlessly like electricity or the wind, something you tap into that power, that impersonal power, that source, and you are energized in some mindless, impersonal way?

I'm going to date myself here, but in 1977, I went and saw Star Wars, when it was first out. I went the first week it was out, I never dreamed that, what 33 years later or more I would be seeing the 9th Star Wars movie. How many more will there be? Some of you will be able to tell me, I have no idea. But you know what exactly I'm talking about, one of the most famous lines in that movie as you remember was, "Use the Force, Luke," remember that? How Obi-Wan dead in some way, in the pantheistic weird universe where he was at, was able to speak into the fighter cockpit, and tell them to use the Force. “Use it.” And so it's like, what is the Force? So, we're educated according to Obi-Wan-Kenobi, I can't believe I'm saying these words, but anyway, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power, it's an energy field created by all living things, it surrounds us and penetrates us, it binds the universe together. Yoda, when training Luke, you're wondering how many more quotes, just one more. Yoda, when training Luke said, "My ally is the Force and a powerful ally it is, life creates it, makes it grow, its energy surrounds us, and binds us."

Well in that polytheistic, or better pantheistic world, the force is impersonal. It's something you use, it's something you learn about, you tap into. I guess it's not much different than wind or electricity. Electricity is mindless, it doesn't have anything against a person it electrocutes, it's just the natural force, there's no mind to it, no intentionality. Not so the Holy Spirit of God. Not so. How do you know that? This verse, this one, that I can grieve Him by my sin, that's how I know. He's not to be used. This is actually for me, what makes sanctification so powerful, is that sin is personal. “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to me, after I've done all of these things for you, how could you do this to me?” That's very powerful. It's a motivator for me. I don't want to grieve Him, who has been so good to me. That's the motivator.

The Bible doesn't teach morality as simple rules for right living. Like Poor Richard’s Almanack, “early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Turn it around, you want to be healthy and wealthy and wise? Then go to bed early and get up early. It's impersonal, it's moralistic, that's a virtuous life. That's not what we're saying here. What we're saying is the best kind of life is a life that pleases God. A life in relationship with God, a life in which He expresses, "I'm pleased with you." Conversely, it's not a life in which He would say, "What you just did grieved me. Don't ever do that again." So, to me, that's very very powerful.

The Word Order

The word order here, the text literally says this, "Grieve not the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God." That's how it's written, it's very intensive, the structure of it, "Grieve not the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God", as if you're saying, "Do not grieve the Spirit even the Holy One of God in whom you have been sealed", that's what's mentioned here, at the end of the verse, "The Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the Day of Redemption."

The Sealing of the Holy Spirit

Now this “sealing” we've already looked at, in Ephesians 1:13 it says, to the Gentile converts there in Ephesus, "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit." So, this sealing, as we discussed it at the time, is a mark of ownership, I think of authoritative ownership. It's God's way of saying, "You are mine, you belong to Me," it's a sense of authority, like the sealing of an official letter from a king with the signet ring of the king on the molten wax on the seal. And so you have been sealed, and the sealing is the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This indwelling Spirit enters your life the moment that He works new life in you, the moment that He brings you to life, He enters you and seals you with a “Spirit of adoption.” It says in Romans 8:15-16, "By which you cry out Abba, Father." And so, that's the sealing of the Spirit. He's testifying to your spirit that you are a child of God. He ministers intimate knowledge about Jesus to you. The infinite dimensions of Jesus' love for you, that's been the Spirit's work in you. Remember how we went through four sermons at the end of Ephesians 3, and how Paul prayed that you “would have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ, and that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Do you remember those words? It is the Holy Spirit's job to do that for you, to greatly expand your sense, the dimensions, your sense of the infinite dimensions of Jesus' love for you, that Spirit wants you to understand that about Jesus. How much He loves you, Jesus I mean, that's the Spirit's ministry.

Now, before the Spirit's work in you, or apart from the Spirit's work in you, you would be distant from the work of Christ crucified and resurrected. It would mean very little to you. It would be historically distant, it would be a dark, historical fact, like something you'd get on a test or something. It would be geographically and culturally remote, it's another place, another time, another era, nothing to do with me. And that's the essence of the way unbelievers live every day. “Jesus? What does Jesus have to do with me? He's a historical figure, distant from me.” Or if you started to educate yourself in the basic ideas of Christianity, you would become increasingly hostile to them, it would be something that you would be angry about, the ideas, the moral teachings of Jesus, the things He claimed, the statements He made about Judgment Day, and the wrath to come, and all of these things would stimulate within you a certain kind of enmity and hostility toward Jesus. How is it then that any of you and I, how is it that we have come to love Jesus? How is it that we have come now to survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, and we look up and we see wonder and glory and majesty, how did that happen? It was the Spirit that did that in you.

The Holy Spirit took redemption accomplished and then applied it to you. He painted the blood of Jesus on the doorstep and the lintels of your heart, He applied it to you directly. Without that, you'd still be lost, you'd be an outsider. It was by the Spirit that the Apostle Paul was able to say, "I have been crucified with Christ," Galatians 2:20. "And I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God," you know the rest don't you? "Who loved me and gave Himself for me." It's by the Spirit that we make it that intensely personal. Jesus loved me. Jesus died for me. That is the awesome, mysterious invisible hidden work of the Holy Spirit of God. He was hovering over your darkened heart in your unregenerate days. He was over the waters of turmoil, and then through the Father and the Son, He, the Spirit, spoke light into your heart. He the Spirit said, "Let there be light, the light of Christ in your heart." That's how it happened, and at that point, He gave you eyes to see, faith. He gave you the eyesight of the soul, the eyes of your heart were enlightened by the Spirit, He gives illumination, and you see Christ, and you were justified by faith, forgiven, adopted, all of that by the working of the Spirit. “You were sealed for the Day of Redemption.”

And so this mysterious third person in the Trinity, who you read more about in the Old Testament, the Spirit shows up, if we can use that language, in some key moments in the Old Testament on, key individuals. You see that, He comes on Moses and enables him to lead Israel through the Red Sea, and you see that same Spirit comes on the prophets, the Old Testament prophets, and enables them to look into the distant future, and write things that were going to come through centuries, even a millennia or more beyond when they live, they're able to write those things down by the Spirit of God. And the Spirit comes powerfully on key individual like Samson, the Spirit came powerfully on Samson and he tore that young lion limb from limb as one would tear up a young goat. The Spirit came on Samson powerfully. Spirit came on Saul and made him fit for kingship over Israel. The same Spirit came on David. But we see in the case of Saul and some others, the Spirit can come and go in the Old Testament. That's why when David sinned with Bathsheba, he was frantic in his prayer in Psalm 51, "Take not your Holy Spirit from me." He didn't want to lose the influences of the Holy Spirit of God and become insane like Saul became.

Well, in the New Covenant that will never happen. Amen? In the New Covenant we have the promise of the Holy Spirit of God. We see that in Acts chapter 2, "The people when they heard this they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, 'Brothers what shall we do?' And he said, 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the promise is for you and for your children,'" and listen to this "'all who are far off.'" The promise of the Holy Spirit, for those who are far off, far off geographically, far off in time. “For everyone whom the Lord our God will call.”

So I just thought this would be a good time as I was going over the sermon this morning, to just stop and say, is there anybody who came here today, unregenerate, lost? You're in darkness still? And you came here today? I hope that the Holy Spirit brought you here for such a moment as this, that you would understand that in Christ alone, there is forgiveness of sins, that Jesus is the Son of God, He shed His blood on the cross for sinners like you and me, and that the Spirit is able to take out your hardened heart, that is so filled with hostility and opposition to the things of God, and give you instead a sweet submissive yielded heart to the Gospel and you will believe in Jesus as your Savior, and trust in Him for the forgiveness of your sins. I prayed this morning that that would happen and even now I ask that the children of God that are listening to this, pray for any of your neighbors that are sitting in the pews here, that are lost, that they will come to faith in Christ. Because you cannot receive the gift of the Holy Spirit if you're unregenerate, you cannot receive the pouring out of the Spirit in a lost state, and that's what the Spirit does. This is the very promise made by the Lord Jesus Christ, He says this John 14, "I will ask the Father and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever." Forever. He will not be taken from us. We don't have to faithlessly cry out, "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me," we know that the Spirit will never leave us or forsake us, He'll be with us forever, the Spirit of truth He's called. He'll be in you forever, and in that Spirit we were sealed. And that Spirit comes to every true child of God, not to the special ones or the extra above credit ones, etcetera. As a matter of fact, Romans 8:9 says, "If you do not have the Spirit of Christ you do not belong to Christ." 

What Does it Mean to be Sealed Until the Day of Redemption?

Now, what does it mean in the text to be sealed until the Day of Redemption? Well, redemption, to be redeemed means to be bought with a price, to be bought with a price. We were slaves to sin, Christ paid the price of His precious blood to redeem us from sin. But here's the thing, apparently, because there's still this Day of Redemption yet to come, there is a fuller redemption that we don't have yet, and that spoken of in Romans 8 is the redemption of the body, the resurrection from the dead. And so the Day of Redemption is that future day, the end of the world, when all of God's people will be raised up in glorious resurrection bodies, and we are sealed temporarily, that sealing work of the Spirit is temporary, until we have been fully redeemed. And then we don't need that sealing anymore. We will be in intimate perfect fellowship with Father, Son and Spirit, face-to-face fellowship, no need for faith any longer, no need for the sealing testimony no longer that we're children of God, we'll be in His presence, glorious in resurrection. So that's what it means, sealed or redeemed, sealed until the Day of Redemption.

Deep Gratefulness to the Holy Spirit

So what does this mean for us? Well it means that we should have deep, powerful gratefulness to the Holy Spirit of God. We will spend eternity worshipping the triune God, we will worship Father, Son and Spirit. We will spend eternity particularly thanking each person of the Trinity for what they did for us. You will thank the Father for choosing you by name from before the foundation of the world and for sending His Son. And for crafting this entire redemption plan. You'll thank Him for that, and you'll certainly be able to say, "Thank you Jesus," as we sang earlier, to be able to thank Jesus for shedding His blood on the cross in your place, you'll be able to thank Him and say, "Thank you Jesus for saving me." But you will also thank the Spirit of God for taking the blood of Jesus and applying it to you personally, and for hanging with you through all of those years. That He never gave up on you, though you grieved Him many times, that He was so patient with you and He finished the work that He began in you, you'll be able to thank Him for that too.

I don't believe I can last a single day in Christ apart from the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit of God. I can't make it a single day. The world, the flesh, and the devil are too powerful for me, and so without His work in me, I would stop believing in Jesus. I would have continued in my sins the rest of my life, if it weren't for the Spirit's work. I would have continued to live a life of rebellion, caring nothing for Jesus at all, but the Spirit moved in me, and this is the unique ministry of the Spirit of God. In John 16:14, Jesus said these words, "He will glorify me." Think about that. The Spirit has come to glorify Jesus, and so, the Holy Spirit is always pointing to Jesus, always pointing to Jesus. Now, some go too far in this teaching, they say, "The Spirit never focuses attention on Himself, ever. Always deflecting to Jesus." That cannot be true. Why? Because how would you have a verse like Ephesians 4:30, that teaches us that sin grieves the Holy Spirit? As a matter of fact, how would you know anything about the Spirit of God at all, except the teaching ministry of the Spirit? So, apparently the Spirit wants you to know some things about Him.

And here's my whole approach on this sermon, if the Spirit can be grieved, He can be thanked, if the Spirit can be lied to, He can be talked to. And the Spirit is lied to in Acts Chapter 5 by Ananias and Sapphira, so He can be talked to. And so the Holy Spirit is here to glorify Jesus. Now you may say, "I don't understand the relationship between the Spirit and Jesus." Like in Romans 8:9 it says, "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ." Is that different than the Holy Spirit? No, that's not different than the Holy Spirit. The Spirit has different names.

Do you remember that amazing moment before Jesus was crucified, do you remember when Philip said to him, "Lord show us the Father and that will be enough for us"? Do you remember that? You remember what Jesus said, "Don't you know me Philip?" Show us the Father. "Don't you know me? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." So, now I think you can take the same thing over and you say to the Spirit, "Show us Jesus," and He's going to say, "Don't you know me, after I've been in you all this time? Anyone who has interacted with me has interacted with Jesus." I think this is the only way we can make sense of how the resurrected Christ can say, "Surely I am with all of you always." Or as some folks say, "All y'all always." And you heard it here from me saying, "All y'all." I said I would never say it, but I just did. How Jesus can say, “I'll be with all y'all always.” How is that? By the Spirit. Anyone who has interacted with the Spirit has interacted with Jesus. Please don't quote me on that. I mean the last part yes, not the first part.

What Does it Mean to “Grieve” the Holy Spirit?

So what then does it mean to grieve the Holy Spirit of God. What grieves the Spirit? Well, the Holy Spirit, that's only one of His names, He's called the Counselor in other places. There are other, advocate, there are other names for Him. But the Holy Spirit is most common name, it's because He hates sin. He is set apart, He is light, and in Him there's no darkness at all, He calls on us to be holy because He is holy. And so when we try to consider what grieves Him, simply put, sin grieves Him. And so, the things we've been talking about in Ephesians, lying and stealing and selfishness in reference to the poor and needy, and corrupting speech and sexual immorality, and bitter divisions and factions and unforgiveness, those things grieve the Spirit of God. All of those things grieve the Spirit of God. The Spirit has called on us to follow Him. And what is He like? How do we understand Him? It's a mystery.

The Spirit is a Dove, a Wind, and a Fire

At Jesus' baptism, as I mentioned, the Holy Spirit descended as a dove and remained on Jesus. Now, when you think of a dove, what do you think of? I think of a gentleness and a purity. I have a picture of gentleness and purity. There are other pictures of God like a ravening eagle, that if you touch His young, He'll rip you to shreds, I think that's fine, but the picture that He wants to present first and foremost is the Lamb of God, Jesus, very gentle, and the dove of God, also very gentle. That's His presentation to us as sinners first and foremost. But that's not the only way He presents Himself, sometimes He presents Himself to us as a wind, a wind. Well, what kind of a wind? Well, also a fire, a wind and a fire, like at the day of Pentecost you remember? How there was a sound of a violent rushing wind, like a hurricane. Now no air was moving, there was no movement of air, but there was the sound of a violent hurricane wind, and then this fire came down, and not a raging fire like it would burn the house down, but like a surgical strike, fire that came to rest on each one individually, filling them with passion, with fire for the glory of God and of Christ. And the sound of the wind was so awesome and so overpowering that it assembled the crowd for the preaching of the Gospel. But then at another time, you remember when Elijah is running for his life and he goes to this holy mountain, Mount Horeb, and he's in this cave, you remember that? And he needs an encounter with God or he's done in his ministry, and God knew that. And so God appeared to him, but first there's the sound of a terrifying mighty wind that tore the mountain apart, but we are told that God was not in that powerful wind. And then there's this earthquake that shook the ground under His feet, but God wasn't in that, no, God instead was in this still small voice, the KJV gives us this, this gentle whisper.

And I tell you, the most of the time, that's how the Spirit's going to lead you. He will whisper to you, “Don't do that.” “Get up, have your quiet time.” Put that sin to death. And if you don't listen to that gentle, quiet Spirit, you're going to become increasingly hard of hearing, you won't hear it as much. And that is the essence of the grieving of the Holy Spirit of God, the increasing hardness of our heart when we don't listen to Him whispering holiness to us and whispering to witness to our co-worker and to make a phone call of encouragement to somebody, to use our spiritual gifts to give money to the poor and needy, to the church. They're these whispered moments and that's the power of the Spirit of God.

If the Spirit is Grieved, We Should Be

Now I believe that we should be grieved when the Spirit of God is grieved. It's a quarter of... I am not finishing this sermon. Is it okay if I preach on just one verse today? Is that alright? You have no choice, please nod and say, "Yeah that's fine," thank you. We'll get to the forgiveness part next week because I don't want to short change it in seven minutes. I guess what I want to say to you is this, when you grieve the Holy Spirit of God, you should be grieved too. You should be grieved too. And frequently or not, at least not at first, when we sin, we often go on happily playing like sheep going astray, we just keep on jumping and laughing and eating in the fields of sin, while He stays behind grieving over us. But the thing is, He's not passive and just wringing His hands grieving, He's going to go get you and bring you into grief. That's what He's going to do, He's going to go get you and bring you into a grieved state if you're a child of God. If He's rescuing you, that's what He's going to do. He won't give you over and let you play. He's going to go get you and bring you back and say, I want you now to feel what I felt when you did that or said that, or didn't do this or didn't say that. I want you to feel my grief.

It is the Work of the Spirit to Cause Us to Grieve With Him

Now, this is not incredibly popular, this idea, but it is true. The Spirit rescues us by making us weep for sin, when we've sinned. Think about when Peter denied Jesus, remember he denied him three times and then the rooster crowed, then Peter remembered, went outside and wept bitterly. Those are the steps, you remember you get away from the sin that you're doing, put a separation and you weep bitterly over what happened. I think we kind of skip it, we're like, "No I am forgiven, you know, the grace of God, grace abundant more than all," it's like don't do that, because it says in Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." It says in 2 Corinthian 7, "Godly sorrow brings repentance, it leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow produces death. See what this godly sorrow has produced in you. What earnestness? What eagerness to clear yourself, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done?"

Godly Sorrow is Part of Repentance

So godly sorrow energizes, you don't languish in guilt, and lay back in a black pool of muck. You confess your sin, you grieve over it, you repent and you go kill it. That's what He's calling on you to do, because those who are led by the Spirit of God to mortify the deeds of the flesh, those are the children of God, and so that's what He's going to do, but He's going to call on you to grieve and I think we're just too hasty in this. Watson in his work on repentance said there's six elements of repentance: Sight of sin, sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, hatred for sin and turning from sin. The second is, after you've seen it, grieve over it. Sorrow for sin. Watson said this, "It is to intentionally embitter your soul over it," and you do that by talking about it. “How could I do this to you? You told me not to do this, you told me to stay away from that, you told me not to sin in this particular area, and you have been so good to me and you have loved me and look what I have done.” 

You have to be like Nathan to yourself. Remember God sent Nathan to convict David of his sin with Bathsheba and he spoke for Him, and told him this parable, drew him in and then nailed him with the words. "You are the man." And then he said, "Hear the Word of the Lord, I took you from following your father's sheep, and I gave you a Kingdom and if this had been too little, I would have given you more. How could you do this to me?" Talk that way to yourself, preach to yourself. So how could I do this to God, how could I do this to Jesus, how could I do this to the Spirit of God? So, it's not superficial, it's a holy agony. It's called in Scripture, a breaking of the heart, the sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite heart, a rending of the heart. Watson said this, "Sin breeds sorrow and sorrow kills sin," that's how it works.

In James 4, James is addressing worldly Christians who are immersing themselves in the world and they're adulterous spiritually and they don't know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God, and they don't understand how jealous that makes the Spirit of God inside them. And so, he calls on them to grieve and mourn and wail and change their laughter to mourning and their joy to gloom, and to humble themselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up. Lift you up into what? Happiness, joy, restoration, forgiveness. “The work is done now, so move on. You're forgiven, I love you. We've got more life to live, we've got more battles to fight and let's move on.” But don't skip going down into the valley of darkness and grief with the Holy Spirit and let Him take you back up out of it, don't jump that and go straight over to happiness quickly by a light dealing with sin. When you grieve the Holy Spirit of God, you should be grieved too.

Alright, well next week I have no idea what we're going to do. I guess we're going to talk about the next verses, we're going to talk about forgiveness of sins. Maybe I'll combine it with the next sermon, maybe I'll have no idea what we're doing, maybe we'll do something from the Book of Jeremiah, I don't know, but for now, I would just urge you to meditate on this. What this did for me, it moved me to tears, probably four or five times of thankfulness to the person of the Spirit. It made me just want to say, “Thank you, Spirit for loving me.” And so I would urge the same to you. And it also made me zealous as I have never been before in this particular way to be a holy man. So close with me in prayer.

Father, thank you for the things we've learned today, thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit of God, who grieves over our sin, and who communicates that grief to us if we'll listen to Him. But who also communicates the joy as fruit of the Spirit, the joy and the peace and the forgiveness that comes from genuine faith in Christ and confession of sin. Oh God I pray that as never before, we would be a congregation that loves righteousness and hates wickedness, that grieves over sin, as the Holy Spirit of God does and fights it by the weapons of righteousness the Spirit gives. I pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.

As we come to today's text, we're coming to two moral issues, issues of the virtuous life, and I've really been pondering these two issues, and thinking about my own life. And in my pondering as I'm led to consider one of Jesus' most famous parables, it's in Luke chapter 10. Don't turn there, but just listen, you're very familiar with it. It's the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus taught it to people who asked Him, adversaries really, who asked Him concerning the two great commandments, to “love God with all of our heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves,” and someone challenged Him saying, "Who is my neighbor?" And Jesus told the parable, the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan.

I'll never forget a mentor of mine, a man that I worked with in the North Shore of Massachusetts, did a great ministry with orphans, with refugees, and others, tremendous ministry, Nick Granitsas, and he preached a sermon on the Good Samaritan, and I never forget how he laid it out. You know the story of the Good Samaritan, how there was a man that was traveling, just a traveler going from Jericho on the road. And suddenly, some highway robbers assaulted him, and beat him, and stripped him and took all of his possessions, and left him half-dead and half-naked, laying by the side of the road. And then a priest in turn, and a Levite come and see him and walk right on by, and do not care for his needs. But then comes a Samaritan who sees the need, goes over and cares for his wounds, binds him up, puts him on his own animal, takes him down to an innkeeper, stays with him all that crucial night, gets him through the night, then pays him money, the innkeeper, money, to care for him until he should return. And what Pastor Granitsas said, he said there's different approaches to life that you see in this parable. The robbers look on people on the highway and they say, "What's yours is mine, if I can take it from you." And the priest, and the Levite seeing this man bleeding by the side of the road, say, "What's yours is yours and what's mine is mine," and that's that. Live and let live. The innkeeper says, "What's mine is yours for a price." But then there's the Good Samaritan who is a loving neighbor who says, "What's mine is yours, if you need it." I never forgot that. 

But in my mind this morning, as I'm thinking about the injunction, the command to the church in Ephesus, that they should stop stealing, I'm thinking about Daniel's comments about what kind of bride Jesus is taking on here. A bride characterized by thievery. And then I think about my own life, and I think about sins that I do struggle with and don't struggle with. And as a preacher, I'm thinking about relevance, and I'm wondering how many thieves I'm going to speak to this morning. The Lord led me to consider this parable, this morning. I was just pondering it. And I was thinking I want to continue the parable.

The Parable Continued

The Good Samaritan, we try to find ourselves in it, we don't want to be the robber, we don't want to be the priest and the Levite. The innkeeper, he has a job to do, but we are called on to something better, to love our neighbor sacrificially, etcetera, so we want to see ourselves in there. For me, as I look at it, Jesus is the Good Samaritan, He's the one that found us by the ditch in the road, bleeding to death, and He cared for us, He loved us, and as a good neighbor, no one loved in a neighborly way as Jesus. No one fulfilled the law like Jesus. But I want to continue the story. Imagine that Jesus leaves the inn and goes back up the Jericho Road. By evening, He finds the robbers that beat this man up and they're sitting around the campfire and they're looking at today's loot, the plunder that they took, and Jesus goes and walks and stands boldly in their midst. They're startled, because for the most part, you don't want to be out at night along that stretch of road, and in comes this man boldly, and He singles out one of the thieves and says, "You need a Savior. You need a Savior and I am your Savior."

The Thief on the Cross

And so, fast forward 13 chapters later, in Luke's Gospel, to the most famous, perhaps the most famous convert in church history. The thief on the cross. Now, I don't say that he's the same one that was in that group, but he was a thief, he was a robber. That's what he did, and you know what happened with him. Somehow, some way, by the sovereign grace of God, as he was dying on the cross next to Jesus, looked over and saw in Jesus a Savior and a coming king. Where did that vision come from? How Christ crucified, shedding His blood on the cross, for sinners like you and me, he felt was dying for him, rebukes his fellow robber, his fellow thief, who doesn't see it, doesn't have any vision of faith at all, but he says, you know, “Don't you fear God? We're under the sentence of God. We're going to die today. We're thieves and we're getting what we deserve under the law of God, but this man has done nothing wrong." And then he looked over at Jesus and said, with an astonishing boldness, "Remember me when you come in your kingdom." On what basis is this thief going to spend eternity with God in Heaven, what does he have to offer? He has no way to make it right, no way to pay recompense to his victims, there's nothing he can do, there's nothing he has to offer. But he's got the boldness of faith to look over and see in Jesus, a Savior. And I don't know everything he understood, but he knew his own guilt, Jesus' innocence, and the fact that He was a King and He was coming in His kingdom, and the kingdom would be made up of redeemed sinners. Thieves who had repented and been saved by simple faith, not by works. And Jesus gave him that beautiful assurance, "Today, you'll be with Me in paradise." On what basis? On what basis do sinners like that find salvation? On what basis will that thief sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, on what basis? On the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, on the basis of simple faith, not by works. That's how thieves are redeemed from their thieving.

A Sin We All Commit

Now, you may look at that and say, you know, as we come to this passage, "I don't really steal." And as a pastor, what I could do is I could find perhaps ways that you didn't realize you were stealing and convict you of that, etcetera and I could do that, but I want you to step back and look with me in a bigger picture, okay? First of all, whether you suffer from that particular set of symptoms or another particular set of symptoms or another, remember how Jesus said, "The healthy don't need a doctor but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." For you to say, "You know, I don't have that set of symptoms, I don't struggle with stealing," well, just thank God that you've never been in an economic situation which the Book of Proverbs says we can understand in the context of adultery, says we can understand a man stealing, if he's desperately hungry, we can understand it, but we're still going to make him pay fourfold for what he took. We understand that. Well then, thank God that you were born in a wealthy country, and born to wealthy parents and got a good education, you never needed to steal. But what I've learned to do is say there is no sin pattern that exists that I couldn't commit. If the circumstances were set up, I could have been a thief.

I actually was a thief for a very little while. I was in elementary school and the place was White Hen Pantry, and it was a candy bar and it was a dare. I had fallen into some bad company. Talks about it in Proverbs 1, isn't it interesting one of the very first things that Proverbs deals with is, "Don't fall in, my son, with thieves who say let's share a common purse," it's like in the 14th verse of Proverbs 1, it's like an issue right away, but I just thank God. I could have been a thief, I was delivered. My parents, knowing my financial resources, wondered where that candy bar came from, asked some questions, and I went back in and confessed in full to the shop owner, and I was delivered from that. But for us, saved by grace, we have to learn not to excuse ourselves from passages of scripture. And we also need to realize God is doing a worldwide saving work. And what's fascinating about the verses that we're looking at today is that there are some verses that you probably don't struggle with. There's one verse here that you'd say, "You know actually I'm not a thief honestly, but I know I'm a sinner," but then the next verse talks about how you use your words every day, do you ever use your words in a way that doesn't glorify God? Everyone will say based on the book of James everyone will say, "We need a transformation of our mouths."

The Gospel’s Transformative Power

And so this is the marvel of the Gospel, isn't it? The “Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of every sinner, every kind of sinner.” So isn't it wonderful that a band of thieves like the one that beat up that man on the Jericho road could actually find salvation in Christ, isn't it beautiful that in the 24 time zones of the Church of Jesus Christ, there actually are some people that have struggled with thieving, that made a living doing it, that were really tough individuals and the Gospel of Christ came and transformed the whole way they lived. Romans 1:16, Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." All sinners who repent and turn to Christ, in the abandonment of faith like that thief did on the cross, can find salvation through faith in Christ. We can find total forgiveness.

Deliverance Only Through Christ

Now, in Ephesians the implication here is if you have found Jesus a savior, if you have trusted in Him, as a savior, and you have had all of your sins forgiven by the blood of Jesus, you've come to Him, you who are weary and burdened and troubled in sin and you have trusted in Him and you have been forgiven, you are now told by the Gospel to live a different kind of life. And so he addresses that very, very directly, and it's marvelous to me, for us sitting in the comfort of this sanctuary, in the comfort of our socio-economic condition, it's a stretch for us to understand why we need to be told that we who have been stealing must steal no longer but must work. Some of you sitting here, it wouldn't surprise me, know exactly why you have to be told this. Praise God that there is a Gospel that liberates us from all the symptoms of the disease of sin and death, and that this one Gospel of Christ, crucified and resurrected, is the “panacea.” It is the healing for every disease of sin there is in the world. And there are going to be brothers and sisters up in Heaven, we're going to meet them who did make their living by thieving, and Jesus delivered them.

Defining Stealing

So let's look at this first command and then the second, the first is not stealing, but labor in love and generosity. Look at verse 28, "He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need." So when we're talking about stealing, what is it? Well, before we can even have stealing, we have to have something before that, and that's the idea of private ownership. The idea that some created items, some goods, some possessions belong to people. They are theirs, possession. So without possession, then there is no possibility of stealing. So this is the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:15, "You shall not steal," but behind that we've got the idea of mine and yours. Just like Nick Granitsas was saying in that sermon, "What's mine is mine and yours is yours," there's mine and yours. Okay? So we get this in Acts Chapter 5, Peter said to Ananias, "Didn't the field belong to you before it was sold?” Your fields? “And after you sold it, wasn't the money yours as well? You could do whatever you wanted with that money. Why did you lie?" So the issue is not private ownership or what you did, it's that you lied about it. But private ownership's clearly established not just there, but throughout scripture. So stealing then is to take someone else's property, without their permission or without legal right, without intending to return it, especially secretly or by force.  Now, this is actually in our society a bigger problem than we might think. 

According to Forbes Magazine, I looked this up, shoplifting and worker theft cost retailers $32 billion a year. $32 billion a year. And the cost of protecting from that drives the price of everything up, we're all affected by stealing, whether we steal or not. Walmart alone loses $300 million a year to theft. So yesterday, Calvin and I were at Walmart and I did the you scan the check thing. But now they've got someone at the door, and they go through your bag. So at Walmart as at the airport, I get to a be treated temporarily like a criminal, but I understand it completely and I had no problem doing it because I know I was going to preach on stealing, and I knew about the $300 million and I was like, "Okay, I understand why Walmart is doing this now." It's kind of an irony because they've got the you scan for maximum convenience, and then they've got the lady rummaging through your bag for not so much convenience. And so, they're trying to balance that, and it's hard for the retailers, but their employees are stealing from them, their customers are stealing from them, it's a big issue.

I was at Lowe's two months ago, I was buying some vacuum cleaner belts, isn't it exciting that I can bring vacuum cleaner belts into a sermon? Various ones if you give me a challenge, "I want you to say this word sometime in the next year from the pulpit," I won't do it all right? But vacuum cleaner belts. So, I wanted to buy several bags, so I wouldn't have to go back, they're not that expensive. So I grabbed two bags off of the display and as I was walking forward I took a close look, and one of the bags had two vacuum cleaner belts in it as the bag promised, the other one was completely empty with a hole in it. And I don't see anyway that Lowe's could protect themselves from that kind of theft. I mean, it's such a cheap thing, it's got no little marker on it, it just got stuffed in someone's pocket. So this is an issue, we're surrounded by it all the time and then there's with the Internet with electronics and all, there's identity theft that's going on, a number of you I know are dealing with that at the other end as victims. And so, we understand this is a huge, a huge problem.

Is This Really Stealing?

Now, for ourselves, it's like, "Is it a problem for our church as a member...  .".Well, you just have to look at your own conscience, you look at how you're living and asking. Obviously the issue of pretty soon taxes going to come up, it's stealing to not pay to the government every dollar that they deserve. And so, cutting corners, cutting edges. I think for me not to put in a full day's work or for any employee to not put in a full day's work, and Paul's going to deal with this in Ephesians 6, with the master-slave command, but you know for you to only work when your master's eye is on you, but then cutting corners, that's a different kind of stealing. So there's that kind of thing. If you take 20 napkins from Chick-fil-A, intending to have some of them in your glove compartment, and some of them you're going to use for the actual food you're eating a Chick-fil-A, I don't know, I've done it. I'm not quite at the point of conviction yet. Subway, they don't have it available, have you noticed? They put two napkins in there, in the bag, so they've cut that off at that point.

Alright, we could do that. You could say, "Alright, do I steal?" But if I could just urge you, look a little bit bigger. One of the most important verses in the Bible on the universality of sin is Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The more you meditate on that, the more you realize every sinner is a glory thief. CJ Mahaney in his book on pride said, "Basically pride is when I take God's place and steal from Him what should be going to Him." So all of us are glory thieves to some degree, even if you haven't stolen in the standard way. We need Jesus as a Savior, we need to be able to look over to Him and say, "Remember me when you come into Your kingdom because I am no better than any other sinner that's ever lived."

Stop the Wrong, Start the Right

Now, what Paul does here is he doesn't just say, "stop stealing", he does say that. This is very, very simple and direct. “If you have been stealing, you must stop.” It is evil, it is wicked, it is not harmonious with the Christian life. But he doesn't just stop there, he goes into a power that will drive out stealing, and that is a whole disposition of your heart where you say, "I'm going to take my mind and I'm going to take my energy and my hands, and I'm going to use them in productive labor that's going to produce a profit. And out of that profit, some of it I'm going to give to the poor and needy." It's a whole different mindset. It is the remedy. Whereas before, all you cared about was your self, as you laid in wait for some victim. Now you're going to see who's been beat up by providential circumstances in life, and you're going to love them as the Good Samaritan did. It's a whole different perspective.

A good friend of mine, Vic Carpenter, who's with the FBI and we were talking about white collar crime, which he was trying to address in Florida, and he was marveling at just how inventive and creative and skilled these thieves are. And he said, "Why don't they just put all that inventiveness and creativity into productive work? They really would do very well." And in effect, that comment is exactly what Paul was saying here. Fundamentally, these folks have taken their amazing brains and their skillful hands and their creativity and their ingenuity and they're using it for corruption. Instead, what they should be doing, is that they should by the power of the Spirit, stop stealing and begin laboring, begin working with their own hands, delighting in work. Now, it seems that the thief hates honest work. They don't want to do it that way. They want a shortcut, they want some shortcut in life toward prosperity, and toward having that thing that they see.

All Labor Can Glorify God

But from this, the Christian should delight in work. Work is a delightful thing. The labor that God gives us is a beautiful thing, that we get to in some ways imitate God who fashioned and created worlds by the word of His power, and like Jesus said, "My Father is always at His work to this very day and I too am working," and we get to join the Father and work. And we talked earlier in Ephesian 4 about our spiritual gifts and we don't all have the same career or the same gifts or talents, but we have some. And we can take those talents and those gifts and we can develop them, and God just watches us and delights in it. Remember how He brought the animals to Adam to see what he would name them and whatever he named them, that's what was the animal's name? The idea, it's almost like God's observing, saying, "Here I'm giving you these gifts and talents, these hands, this mind, do something with it. Labor with it, do something creative with it, make something useful with your own hands. Work at your job.”

For a long time in the history of the Church, there was a hierarchy of holiness, the medieval Catholic Church had established very wrongfully I think, the idea that the mystics, those that remove themselves from everyday life, the priests, the nuns. Anyway, monks and nuns, they remove themselves from everyday life, and just meditated and fasted and all that, and that was the high level of holiness, whereas your standard peasant who worked out in the field or the shopkeeper had a very low level of holiness.

But, Martin Luther, with his priesthood of all believers doctrine, and then ultimately I think the Puritans more than anyone, established the beauty of a calling from God. Of having a career that you can labor with your own hands, and if you're called into the vocational ministry fine, but you may be called on to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a shopkeeper, a farmer, or a craftsman, and you can glorify God with how you develop your skills in your career. And what the Puritans found is the more they sought to do all of their work for the glory of God, the better they got at it. And the more their products were in demand and the more money flowed in, and this was the fulfillment, even of this verse, so that they would have something to share with those in need. And how beautiful is that?  So, the former thief is now living for the glory of God and living for his neighbor, he's using his skill and his talents to alleviate suffering.

Pray to See Your Sin and for Forgiveness

So on this one, ask God to show you examples where you have been taking from others what didn't belong to you, where you have been stealing, and repent. Understand, big picture, you're no different than any other thief that's been saved by grace, even though you haven't perhaps been tempted in that area, you could have been if the economic circumstances were different, so don't be arrogant. Understand also the same Gospel works to heal thieves and bring them over and look forward to spending eternity at the table, the feasting table, with some thieves that have been saved by the same grace that saved you. I am looking forward to meeting that thief on the cross, aren't you? I'm looking forward to talking to him and saying, "You know, you have been an inspiration to so many who had no hope, at the end of their life." And is it possible for me, even at the very end of a life of wickedness to find forgiveness? Yes, all you need to do is look to Christ crucified. I'm calling on you if you're unregenerate I'm saying right now look to Christ crucified, see yourself like that the thief on that the cross and say, "I have no other savior", and Jesus will speak a word to you saying, "You will be with me in paradise."

Now, the second verse, much more applicable I think to all of us. Look at verse 29, I would say this is one of the verses in Ephesians I think about the most. It's very, very helpful to me, very practical. "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths. But only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs so that it may benefit those who listen." So, I've called this verse before a “mouth filter.” Now our home, we're on a well, we're on a well, some of you folks are on city water, we're on a well. And early in our ownership, within a month or so, it became obvious we needed a whole house water filter. One of the most courageous things I've ever done in my life as a homeowner, is cut the copper pipe that fed the water to our entire house. I'll never forget that. I had one of those copper pipe cutter things, and I was like, "Here it goes," and then bang it was gone. I had shut off the water and it's like, "Okay I'm in it now. I've got to get this water filter in this line today or we have no water tonight," which is a big deal. And so I put that filter in, I'll tell you after about less than two or three weeks, the filter needed to be changed. I was like horrified, like for a month we drank unfiltered water, and I was so delighted that we had that filter in there.

The Mouth Filter

Now what is a filter? A filter is something that's designed to take out, or remove out of the water stream in that case, particulates and pollutants and other things that would be harmful, or would not be beneficial for you to drink. So basically then picture the stream of your words coming out of your mouth. You need a filter. You need to filter some of the things that you say and not say them anymore. And this verse is a great “mouth filter” or “word filter.” Look at it again, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths." That's 100%. Like, if there's anything unwholesome, let it never come out of your mouth; and then on the other side of the equation, but “only what is helpful for building others up that it may edify, only those things that will edify, that it might give grace to those who listen.” So Paul in effect wants the Ephesians to ask it every moment before they speak is what I'm about to say going to be helpful for building others up according to their needs. Will it benefit or give grace to those who listen, and if the answer is, "No," don't say it. Don't say it.

“Unwholesome Talk”: An Amazing Gift Gone Bad

So what does this mean, unwholesome talk? Well unwholesome talk, the word in the original means rotten, putrefying, or corrupted talk. It's a very strong word. The word translated unwholesome. So you could picture just leaving some chicken, uncooked chicken on your counter as you're away for a weekend in August. You know what I'm talking about? And then you come back Sunday night, and you know immediately you did something, you forgot something because the smell is horrible. So that's how some of our talk looks to God. It stinks. It's moral filth, it's evil, and we ought not to say it. So any word that hurts someone else, so verbal attacks or insults or slander or gossip, fighting words, arguments, dissensions, words like that, lies, or complaining. I mean complaining doesn't give grace to those who listen. So any time you're going to want to just put in... And complaining is anti-praise is what it is, it's exactly the opposite of praise. Praise is you're just thanking God for His goodness and you're just speaking words of joy, and all that, complaining is the exact opposite, very dissatisfied with the providence of God. So, you're complaining. And certainly harsh things like false doctrine, that doesn't benefit, that doesn't give grace. Or blasphemy, coarse words, foolish talk, joking, things that we'll get to that in Ephesians 5, but all of these corrupted ways, idle chatter, things that just don't benefit people. Just get rid of it, all of it. It's a whole  mouth filter here.

Out of the Fullness of the Heart the Mouth Speaks

The problem with the mouth, with the words, is that there's such a strong connection between what you say and your heart, the state of your heart. Jesus said this, "Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.” The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. “Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks," so whatever your heart's full of, you're going to speak. It's really hard not to. And on Judgment Day, we're told that we'll have to give an account for every careless word we've spoken, think about that.

I was in a witnessing situation once, and I used that verse and he said, "Whoa whoa whoa, I don't... " The guy said to me, "I don't remember most of what I've said." I said, "That's alright, God's got it written down. He's got it all down." That was horrifying to that individual. They're like, everything I said. All of it. Not just our words, but our actions, inclinations of the heart, everything. That is a great verse for witnessing. "I tell you on the Day of Judgment, you will have to give an account for every careless word you have spoken, for by your words you will be acquitted and by your words you will be condemned." So what that means is really actually Jesus can just boil it down to this, a full transcript of all of your words of your life, He will be able to accurately gauge the state of your soul. By the fruit of your words He will know you.

So the key to transforming your speech is a transformation of the heart, transformation of the heart. You say, "Lord, I want my heart to be filled with light and not darkness. I want to be filled with love for You and love for my neighbor." And so I would commend Philippians 4:8, as the partner verse for this whole “mouth filter.” It says there, "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, or lovely or admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about those things." And I just in my mind, I insert the word “only.” “Think only about those things.” And what's going to happen, is you're going to start speaking what's true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable. So if you're saying corrupting things, if you're arguing, and lying, and slandering, and gossiping, and complaining, and doing things with your mouth you ought not to do, the problem is your heart. The mouth is just a slave, it's going to do what your heart tells it to do. So go into your heart with the grace of God and say, "Oh Lord, can it really be that my heart is this bad?” It is. And, “Oh God, would You by the Word of God and by the Spirit of God transform my heart and fill it with light and joy and love for neighbor, so that I use my mouth as a blessing."

James 3: The Restless Evil of the Tongue

Now, it's not going to be easy. James 3 talks about this. James 3 talks about how hard it is to control the mouth. He says in James 3:2, "We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault, in what he says, he's a perfect man, able to keep this whole body in check." In other words, if you can get the tongue controlled you're a perfect man or woman. "The tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison," James says. It's really hard to control. I like Psalm 141:3. It says, "Set a guard over the door of my mouth, keep watch over the door of my lips."

So, every once in a while, I ride on my bike past Butner prison. It's a maximum security prison I think, it's got guard towers and lights and it's got razor wire and it's got all of these things there, and as I'm riding I just look at all of the lengths that they've gone to keep those prisoners in. Because the idea is that it's very likely, if these folks get out into the community, they will do severe damage in the community. And so the guard's job, the warden's job, is to keep them in, at least in part, that's part of the job, to keep them in so that they can't get out and do damage in society. So when I go then to Psalm 141:3 where it says, "Set a guard over my mouth O Lord, keep watch over the door of my lips." The idea is that some of my words will be like those inmates. They will do damage out in society. So please, don't let them escape, please don't let my bad words get out of my mouth.

Be Slow to Speak

James gives us more help in James 1:19 when he says, "My dear brothers, take note of this, everyone should be quick to listen," what's the next one? "Slow to speak." So slow down. Slow to become angry, slow down. I don't know if it's the FCC or the networks where they put in some time ago a seven-second delay, you know so that if something gets said that ought not be said they can beep it out, right? So it's almost like you need a seven-second delay. Seven seconds is a long time. Now that would get a little weird in, like at a party. That's been about four seconds. But just the idea is slow down, think about what you're about to say and bring it back to Ephesians 4:29, "Is what I'm about to say unwholesome talk? Or on the other hand, is it helpful for building others up?" The focus should be, "I want to use my words to further the Kingdom of Christ. I want to use my words to edify, that's one of the words here. I'm going to build my neighbor up, so I get that image from Ephesians 2 of that beautiful spiritual temple rising with the living stones. I want to use my words to speak to a lost person, the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that they find forgiveness and become a living stone in that wall. I want to edify and build that person up, moving them from darkness to light." Okay, "If they're a Christian, I want to build them up in maturity in Christ. I want to help them in some way, I want to edify them." And the NIV says, "that it may benefit those who listen," but all the other translations I think are a little sharper. It says, "That it may give grace to those who listen." So I want my words to be a river of God's grace to you. And not just when I'm preaching, I want that to be my regular habit.

Give Grace With Your Words

So how do I do that? How do I make my words a river of grace? Well, I would just commend the quiet time to you. Every day get up, begin your day and store up grace in your heart by the ministry of the word of God. Feed your soul with messages of grace that you can give to people through the day. Say, "This morning I met with the Lord, I had the most encouraging time, let me share something of it with you." And so you're giving grace. I love Isaiah 50:4, I think it's talking about Jesus, but I also take it for myself too. Isaiah 50:4, "The sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary," isn't that beautiful? I want to know a word today that could sustain someone that's weary, weary in this world, weary of physical afflictions, and disease, weary of struggling with sin. I want to speak a word that will give grace to that person that will sustain him. Isaiah 50:4, "He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught." So just say, "Lord fill me like a sponge with messages of grace, fill my heart with light, drive out the darkness so that I'm not complaining about my job or complaining about our finances or about my medical situation, I'm not complaining. That doesn't give grace to the people who listen to me. I want to be filled with joy, I want to set my heart on the New Jerusalem, I want to be talking about that."

Speak to Your Neighbor’s Needs

And it says, "According to their needs that it may give grace." So study the needs of your neighbor, find out what's going on in people's lives. Maybe they're going through trials, financially, physically, with illness, maybe the marriage is in trouble, maybe their child is rebellious or seriously ill or something. Find out, find out where they're at in the discipleship, maybe they're doctrinally immature, you can give grace to them in a discipleship relationship or at least just say some words that'll help. Perhaps there's a sin issue and God wants to use you to "restore them gently,” Galatians 6:1, and bring them back into a healthy relationship with God. There's all kinds of messages of grace that God wants to use. And pick up on the social cues, okay? I like this in Proverbs 25:11 it says, "A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver," isn't that beautiful? Apples of gold in a setting of silver, but it says it's a word aptly spoken, it's the right time.

So let's say you had the most awesome quiet time, and you have this intricate three-part mini message you want to give and you run into a church member at Kroger, and they are happy to see you and it's like, "Yeah, it's great. Yeah, we got a lot to do," where you know it's like, "Oh stop, I got something I want to share with you." That's not the time. If they're physically giving off cues that they're needing to roll, this is not the time. So there's a sense of social sensitivity, alright? That's where it's an apple of gold in a setting of silver, it's a word aptly spoken, the time is right. Time is right. But oh, brothers and sisters, let us use our mouths to build up the Body of Christ.Let's use our words to speak grace to the people around us. Let's get rid of arguing and complaining and gossip and lying and slander and corrupting speech, and instead speak words of edification to one another, close with me in prayer.

Father, thank you for the Gospel. Thank you for Christ, thank you that you spoke that word of forgiveness to the thief saying, "Today, you'll be with Me in paradise." Thank you that you save thieves, repentant thieves, you save them. And thank you that you save other kinds of sinners too, and thank you, oh Lord, that you've given us such a rich treasure trove of messages of grace that we can speak to one another. Oh God, fill our hearts with light that we may speak words of light, that give grace to those who listen. In Jesus' name, Amen.